May 2016 Is the Eighth Temperature Record-Breaking Month in a Row

From Slate:

October. November. December. January. February. March. April. And now May.

For the sixth seventh eighth month in a row, we’ve had a month that has broken the global high temperature record. And not just broken it, but shattered it, blasting through it like the previous record wasn’t even there.

According to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, March April May 2016 was the hottest March April May on record, going back 136 years. It was a staggering 1.28°C 1.11°C 0.93° C above average across the planet. The previousMarch April May record, from 2010 2014, was 0.92° 0.87° 0.86° above average. This year took a huge jump over that.

Welcome to the new normal, and our new world.

2015 Was Hottest Year in Recorded History

From the New York Times:

Scientists reported Wednesday that 2015 was the hottest year in recorded history by far, breaking a record set only the year before — a burst of heat that has continued into the new year and is roiling weather patterns all over the world.

In the continental United States, the year was the second-warmest on record, punctuated by a December that was both the hottest and the wettest since record-keeping began. One result has been a wave of unusual winter floods coursing down the Mississippi River watershed.

Scientists started predicting a global temperature record months ago, in part because an El Niño weather pattern, one of the largest in a century, is dumping an immense amount of heat from the Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere. But the bulk of the record-setting heat, they say, is a consequence of the long-term planetary warming caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases.

Study reaffirms link between conservative religious faith and climate change doubt

We already knew that conservative religiosity in the United States was closely tied to denying evolution. What wasn’t so obvious was why views of global warming, or the environment, would seem to so closely track views on where we humans (and the rest of all life on Earth) come from. Yet it seems they do.

The new study, which David Konisky of Georgetown authored with Matthew Arbuckle of the University of Cincinnati, draws on a vast dataset from the 2010 installment of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, which not only asks people about their religious views, affiliations, and habits, but also samples a huge group of Americans — some 55,000 of them.

That large number allows the researchers to conduct a fine-grained analysis of the divergences in views on environmental matters between members of different major religious traditions (Catholics, Protestants, Jews) and also members of different denominations (Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, and so on) in the United States. That includes looking at how “religiosity,” a measure of how committed people are to their faiths and how much they’re involved in religious activities (like going to church), seems to influence those environmental views.

More from the Washington Post.

Heaviest Downpours Rise across the U.S.

Record-breaking rain across Texas and Oklahoma this week caused widespread flooding, the likes of which the region has rarely, if ever, seen. For seven locations there, May 2015 has seen the most rain of any month ever recorded, with five days to go and the rain still coming. While rainfall in the region is consistent with the emerging El Niño, the unprecedented amounts suggest a possible climate change signal, where a warming atmosphere becomes more saturated with water vapor and capable of previously unimagined downpours...

Across most of the country, the heaviest downpours are happening more frequently, delivering a deluge in place of what would have been routine heavy rain. Climate Central’s new analysis of 65 years of rainfall records at thousands of stations nationwide found that 40 of the lower 48 states have seen an overall increase in heavy downpours since 1950. The biggest increases are in the Northeast and Midwest, which in the past decade, have seen 31 and 16 percent more heavy downpours compared to the 1950s.

More from Scientific American

U.S. Climate Change Policy

Directorate-General for Internal Policies (EU)

This document provides an overview of the climate change policy in the United States. Starting with the emissions trend it then makes some general remarks about policy making in the U.S. before entering into concrete climate policy, both domestically and at international level. Finally, there is a section displaying three climate topics of mutual interest for the EU and the U.S.

2014 Was Hottest Year on Earth in Recorded History

Last year was the hottest in earth’s recorded history, scientists reported on Friday, underscoring scientific warnings about the risks of runaway emissions and undermining claims by climate-change contrarians that global warming had somehow stopped. Extreme heat blanketed Alaska and much of the western United States last year. Several European countries set temperature records. And the ocean surface was unusually warm virtually everywhere except around Antarctica, the scientists said, providing the energy that fueled damaging Pacific storms. In the annals of climatology, 2014 now surpasses 2010 as the warmest year in a global temperature record that stretches back to 1880. READ MORE » http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/science/earth/2014-was-hottest-year-on-record-surpassing-2010.html

UN Draft Climate Report Leaked: Greenhouse Emissions Getting Worse, Not Better

From Daily Kos:

Those hoping for good news about the effects of climate change are not going to find it here.

Runaway growth in the emission of greenhouse gases is swamping all political efforts to deal with the problem, raising the risk of “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts” over the coming decades, according to a draft of a major new United Nations report.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN panel of over 800 scientists and climate experts that periodically assesses and updates the state of climate research, will release its summary "synthesis" report in October.  A draft version of the report, still subject to final editing, was provided to member governments this week and a copy was obtained by the New York Times.  While much of the research underlying the synthesis document can be found in the IPCC's three Working Group Reports released during the past year, the summary and conclusions carry particular weight and are presented in starker language designed to motivate lawmakers from those countries that choose to pay attention.

Earth just experienced hottest June ever recorded

From BoingBoing

"The world just experienced its hottest June on record. The heat was driven in large by part by the hottest ocean temperatures since recordkeeping began more than 130 years ago. That makes this the third-warmest start to the year." This follows the hottest May recorded.

When looking at land areas only, this was the 7th-hottest June. Temperatures averaged over land were 1.7°F above average.

It’s the ocean surface temperatures that put the month over the top.

But, according to NBC News, it was only the 33rd warmest June in the United States.

April 2014: tied for warmest April on record

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for April 2014 tied with 2010 as the highest on record for the month, at 0.77°C (1.39°F) above the 20th century average of 13.7°C (56.7°F).

The global land surface temperature was 1.35°C (2.43°F) above the 20th century average of 8.1°C (46.5°F), marking the third warmest April on record. For the ocean, the April global sea surface temperature was 0.55°C (0.99°F) above the 20th century average of 16.0°C (60.9°F), also the third highest for April on record.

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–April period (year-to-date) was 0.64°C (1.15°F) above the 20th century average of 12.6°C (54.8°F), the sixth warmest such period on record.

More from NOAA.

Wide Impact of Climate Change Already Seen in U.S., Study Says

The effects of human-induced climate change are being felt in every corner of the United States, scientists reported Tuesday, with water growing scarcer in dry regions, torrential rains increasing in wet regions, heat waves becoming more likely and more severe, wildfires growing worse, and forests dying under assault from heat-loving insects.

Such sweeping changes have been caused by an average warming of less than 2 degrees Fahrenheit over most land areas of the country in the past century, the scientists found. If greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane continue to escalate at a rapid pace, they said, the warming could conceivably exceed 10 degrees by the end of this century.

“Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present,” the scientists declared in a major new report assessing the situation in the United States.

Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability

Human interference with the climate system is occurring, and climate change poses risks for human and natural systems... The assessment of impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability... evaluates how patterns of risks and potential benefits are shifting due to climate change. It considers how impacts and risks related to climate change can be reduced and managed through adaptation and mitigation. The report assesses needs, options, opportunities, constraints, resilience, limits, and other aspects associated with adaptation.

Climate change involves complex interactions and changing likelihoods of diverse impacts. A focus on risk, which is new in this report, supports decision-making in the context of climate change, and complements other elements of the report. People and societies may perceive or rank risks and potential benefits differently, given diverse values and goals.

Compared to past reports, the WGII AR5 assesses a substantially larger knowledge base of relevant scientific, technical, and socioeconomic literature. Increased literature has facilitated comprehensive assessment across a broader set of topics and sectors, with expanded coverage of human systems, adaptation, and the ocean.

Summary for Policymakers
Final Drafts Downloads

Where in the U.S. will you find the most “pleasant” days in a year?

“Pleasant” here means the mean temperature was between (55° F and 75° F), the minimum temperature was above 45° F, the maximum temperature was below 85° F and there was no significant precipitation or snow depth.

More from Kellegous.

November 2013 Global Temperature Was Hottest On Record

November 2013 was the warmest November since modern temperature record keeping began in 1880, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced in its latest State of the Climate report, which summarizes climate-related news from around the world.

With a combined land and ocean surface temperature of 56.6 degrees Fahrenheit, November 2013 also was the 345th consecutive month – and the 37th November in a row – with a global temperature higher than the 20th century average, the NOAA report added.

Higher-than-average monthly temperatures were reported on nearly every continent around the world, including much of Europe and Asia, coastal Africa, Central America and central South America, as well as in the North Atlantic Ocean, southwest Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean.

Russia experienced its warmest November since national weather records began in 1891, as some parts of the country like Siberia and the Arctic islands in the Kara Sea recorded temperatures more than 14 Fahrenheit degrees higher than the monthly average.

At the same time, cooler-than-average temperatures were reported in parts of North America – especially in the southeastern U.S. – as well as in northern Australia and southwest Greenland. No record cold monthly temperatures were reported.

More from The Weather Channel.

Public Information about Government Data Will Improve With New Obama Policy

From APDU:

The Obama Administration released an Executive Order and a Policy Directive that move the federal government forward in a significant direction -- officially requiring that, going forward, data generated by the government be made available in open, machine-readable formats (with appropriate protections). Most notably, it requires that agencies create and maintain an “enterprise data inventory, if it does not already exist, that accounts for datasets used in the agency's information systems" -- with the ultimate goal of including all agency datasets, and with indications whether the agency has determined that the individual datasets may be made publicly available and whether these are currently available to the public. Here's what you need to know:
• The Executive Order declares that information is a valuable resource and strategic asset for the nation.
• Newly generated government data will be required to be made available in open, machine-readable format by default -- enhancing their accessibility and usefulness, and ensuring privacy and security.
• These executive actions will allow entrepreneurs and companies to take advantage of this information -- fueling economic growth in communities across the Nation.

Watch a short video and find out more about the announcement HERE. Also, read more HERE.

In conjunction with those steps to unleash troves of useful data from the vaults of government, the interagency US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) launched a new online tool that promises to accelerate research relating to climate change and human health—the Metadata Access Tool for Climate and Health, or “MATCH.” MATCH is a tool, driven by open data, which could open the door for new scientific insights in the public health and climate science communities. It is a publicly accessible digital platform for searching and integrating metadata—standardized contextual information—extracted from more than 9,000 health, environment, and climate-science datasets held by six Federal agencies. Read more HERE.

NOAA aquatic bots break the ice on climate research

From GNC Tech:

Over the years, NOAA has sent various data-taking probes deep into the Arctic Ocean looking for answers about climate change. In this latest, extreme test of technology endurance, the agency's swimming robots deliver high science at low cost.

The National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation (draft)

Source: U.S. Department of the Interior

In response to increasing impacts of climate change and other stressors on America’s natural resources, the United States Congress has called for the development of a national, government-wide strategy to safeguard fish, wildlife, plants, and the natural systems upon which they depend.

My Big Fat Planet, Climate Change Chronicles from NASA

NASA currently has more than a dozen Earth science spacecraft and instruments in orbit studying the oceans, land, and atmosphere. With these tools they measure several key climate change indicators like carbon dioxide concentration, global surface temperature, Arctic sea ice, land ice, and sea levels.
Visit my big fat planet, a blog hosted by Dr. Amber Jenkins, as she explores fantastic images of our changing Earth.

Climate change: How do we know?

From NASA:

Earth has warmed since 1880. Most of this warming has occurred since the 1970s, with the 20 warmest years having occurred since 1981 and with all 10 of the warmest years occurring in the past 12 years. Even though the 2000s witnessed a solar output decline resulting in an unusually deep solar minimum in 2007-2009, surface temperatures continue to increase.

2009: Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest Decade

2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880.

Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade — due to strong cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean — 2009 saw a return to near-record global temperatures. The past year was only a fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest year on record, and tied with a cluster of other years –1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007 1998 and 2007 — as the second warmest year since recordkeeping began.

Seventh Warmest January for Global Temperatures

The combined global land and ocean surface average temperature for January 2009 was the seventh warmest since records began in 1880, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.