WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth got so hot last month that federal scientists struggled to find words, describing temperatures as “astronomical,” ”staggering” and “strange.” They warned that the climate may have moved into a new and hotter neighborhood.
This was not just another of the drumbeat of 10 straight broken monthly global heat records, triggered by a super El Nino and man-made global warming. February 2016 obliterated old marks by such a margin that it was the most above-normal month since meteorologists started keeping track in 1880, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The old record was set just last December and the last three months have been the most above-normal months on record, said NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden. And it’s not just NOAA. NASA, which uses different statistical techniques, as well as a University of Alabama Huntsville team and the private Remote Sensing System team, which measure using satellites, also said February 2016 had the biggest departure from normal on record.
NOAA said Earth averaged 56.08 degrees (13.38 degrees Celsius) in February, 2.18 degrees (1.21 degrees Celsius) above average, beating the old record for February set in 2015 by nearly six-tenths of a degree (one-third of a degree Celsius). These were figures that had federal scientists grasping for superlatives.
“The departures are what we would consider astronomical,” Blunden said. “It’s on land. It’s in the oceans. It’s in the upper atmosphere. It’s in the lower atmosphere. The Arctic had record low sea ice.”
“Everything everywhere is a record this month, except Antarctica,” Blunden said. “It’s insane.”
In the Arctic, where sea ice reached a record low for February, land temperatures averaged 8 degrees above normal (4.5 degrees Celsius), Blunden said. That’s after January, when Arctic land temperatures were 10.4 degrees above normal (5.8 degrees Celsius).
Worldwide, February 2016 was warmer than about 125 of the last 136 Marches.
It was also the warmest winter — December through February — on record, beating the previous year’s record by more than half a degree (0.29 degrees Celsius).
Georgia Tech climate scientist Kim Cobb said she normally doesn’t concern herself much with the new high temperature records that are broken regularly.
“However,” she added in a Thursday email,” when I look at the new February 2016 temperatures, I feel like I’m looking at something out of a sci-fi movie. In a way we are: it’s like someone plucked a value off a graph from 2030 and stuck it on a graph of present temperatures. It is a portent of things to come, and it is sobering that such temperature extremes are already on our doorstep.”
Scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina, were astonished by the “staggering” numbers, said Deke Arndt, the centers’ global monitoring chief.
“Usually these are monthly reminders that things are changing,” Arndt said. “The last six months have been more than a reminder, it’s been like a punch in the nose.”
NASA’s chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt usually discounts the importance of individual record hot months, but said this month was different, calling it “obviously strange.”
This was due to the long-term warming from heat-trapping gases and the powerful El Nino, so these types of records will continue for a few more months, but probably will not be a permanent situation, Schmidt said in an email.
But other were not so sure, including Arndt, who compared it to moving into a new hotter neighborhood.
“We are in a new era,” Arndt said. “We have started a new piece of modern history for this climate.”
Jason Furtado, a meteorology professor at the University of Oklahoma who wasn’t part of any of the government teams, simply wrote in an email: “Welcome to the new normal.”
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Online:
NOAA: www.ncdc.noaa.gov
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Follow Seth Borenstein at http://twitter.com/borenbears and his work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/seth-borenstein
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
GOP: See even “expert scientists” admit that global warming is “fiction”.
Yeah… When the history of this period is written (assuming something like functioning humans are still here to write it), it will tell of how one of the two major parties in the most powerful country in the world went insane, and – abetted by a “mainstream media” that decades of browbeating and corporate ownership turned into a “balanced” travesty of journalism – essentially forced the destruction of modern civilization.
And the vast majority of the American people don’t really give a fuck. Oh, a good percentage say they do, but would completely balk at paying more in taxes to transition to a green energy economy.
Then again, a good percentage of people in America are completely brainwashed, deluded, or insane. See: Trump voters.
Events like this should wake the public up to what is coming, but I doubt it will. The media is consumed with Trump’s latest kerfuffle, and the future of the world isn’t important compared to that. The El Nino effect also means that next year will most likely be cooler compared to this year, so we’ll hear all the old BS about “global warming not being real” once again. It’s depressing to watch the way this is treated, especially when a lot of people get it and still can’t do anything about it.
Pole flip! Hold on to something!