Showing posts with label 2010 temperatures. Show all posts

Written by fatih al-farahat in ,


It Was a Toasty, Stormy October


It Was a Toasty, Stormy October

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Michael D. Lemonickby Michael D. Lemonick, Climate Central, November 10, 2010
U.S. temperature departures from average during October 2010. Credit: NOAA/NCDC.
Today’s business pages are packed (as always, it seems) with some of the periodic economic reports that give snapshots of the economy, giving an idea of where things stand and where they may be headed — last week’s unemployment numbers, the September trade deficit, the October oil-price increase and more.
The government’s economic agencies aren’t the only ones who put out reports like this, however. Each month, the National Climatic Data Center, part of theNational Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), issues its State of the Climate report, and the numbers for October have just come in. The document is packed with enough maps and data to satisfy the wonkiest climate junkie, but for the rest of us, a few highlights stand out:
  • The average temperature in the U.S. for October was 56.9 °F (13.8 °C), which is 2.1 °F (1.2 °C) above the 1901-2000 average, the eleventh warmest on record in the United States. Warmer-than-average conditions prevailed throughout the western U.S. and into the Midwest. Of the nine climate regions, none had below normal temperatures and only two, both along the Eastern Seaboard, experienced a monthly average temperature that was close to average.
  • No state had below normal average temperatures, while more than half were above-average. Wyoming had its fourth warmest October and Montana its seventh.
That’s for the lower 48 states of the U.S.; for the world as a whole, the numbers are a month behind, since the data takes longer to process and quality control. You can peruse the whole global section of the reportat leisure, but here’s the bottom line:
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September 2010 was 0.90 °F (0.50 °C) above the 20th century average of 59.0 °F (15.0 °C), and tied with 1998 as the eighth warmest on record. September 2005 is still ranked as the warmest September on record.
What makes all of this — and especially the U.S. temperatures — so significant is that we’re now under the influence of the cool Pacific ocean and atmospheric cycle known as La Niña. La Niña, which appears every five to seven years on average, tends to lower global temperatures by about a tenth of a degree C from what they would otherwise have been. Here’s how meteorologist Dan Satterfield puts it on his blog for the American Geophysical Union:
In spite of this, 2010 may end up being the warmest year globally on record. With the La Niña in full bore, we still set 8 record highs for every record low in October…. We are almost certainly witnessing something that has not been seen in all of history. Human interference with the planet’s climate. While there are month to month and even decade to decade fluctuations in the global temperature, there is nothing left to explain the  long term rise. Everything except rising greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have been ruled out…
Satellite image showing the massive storm over the Midwest on October 26, 2010. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory.
But wait! There’s more! Climate change involves more than just warmer temperatures; it also leads to extreme weather events, and the NCDC report has some data on those as well. One of them is the “megastorm” that battered the Midwest a few weeks ago, bringing rain, snow, high winds and no fewer than 78 tornadoes to the region, along with an atmospheric pressure reading that bottomed out at 28.24 inches of mercury — a record low for a continental storm, and equivalent to a major hurricane. (While scientists cannot say that this particular storm was related to climate change, there is evidence that the odds of certain extreme weather events are increasing). As the National Weather Service put it:
The bottom line is that the storm that struck the Upper Mississippi River Valley on October 26-27, 2010, was a very intense and rare storm, something that is not seen in this part of the country very often. While the minimum sea level pressure may not necessarily be the lowest on record, the storm was undoubtedly one of the most intense on record in the continental United States"



Written by fatih al-farahat in


A Warm October in America


A Warm October In America

Posted by Dan Satterfield, Wild Wild Science Blog, AGU blogs, November 8, 2010
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The incredible warmth globally this year has continued into October across America. Almost the entire 48 states were above normal in October. The Mountain West and the North were the warmest.
From Gerald Meehl Nat. Centers For Atmospheric Research.
This warmth also shows up in the temperature extremes. Nationwide, there were 1544 new record highs in October. Only 321 record lows were set.
This trend has actually been increasing for decades now! Another sign of our warming global climate? I wrote a post on this awhile back.
It now seems that 2010 will be no different. The trend continues. Over 2 record highs for every record low.
What makes this even more incredible is the strong La Nina in the Pacific right now. La Nina’s are (in many, but not all) ways the opposite of El Nino. Look at the ocean temperatures on the image from the Earth System Research Laboratory.
A large area of colder than normal water is cooling the air over the Pacific Ocean. This actually cools the planet down some (about 0.1° C). El Nino’s warm us up about the same amount.
Image from NOAA-ESRL. Blue is colder than normal water. The La Nina shows up well in the Equatorial Pacific.
In spite of this, 2010 may end up being the warmest year globally on record. With the La Nina in full bore, we still set 8 record highs for every record low in October.
We are almost certainly witnessing something that has not been seen in all of history. Human interference with the planet’s climate.
While there are month to month and even decade to decade fluctuations in the global temperature, there is nothing left to explain the  long term rise. Everything except rising greenhouse gases from fossil fuels have been ruled out…

Written by fatih al-farahat in ,


North Atlantic sea surface temperatures were well above normal in October 2010

North Atlantic sea surface temperatures ran high in October

by Tom Yulsman, CEJournal, November 8, 2010
Sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic during October were well above normal, as seen in this image from NOAA’s Environmental Visualization Laboratory.
Air temperatures in the Arctic region overall, although below freezing, were also high in October, as seen in the map to the left. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, temperatures were 4-6 °C (7-10 °F) higher than normal.
“The warm conditions resulted partly from regions of open water releasing heat to the atmosphere, and in part from an atmospheric circulation pattern that brought warm air from lower latitudes to the Arctic,” the NSIDC’s latest report states.
The extent of Arctic sea ice in October was the third lowest for the month in satellite record, which extends back to 1979. Even at the end of the month, “extensive open water areas remained in the Beaufort, Chukchi, Kara and Barents seas,” according to the report. “This region had the warmest ocean surface temperatures at the end of the melt season.”
Globally, sea surface temperatures ran high in regions beyond just the North Atlantic during October, as the image to the right from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center shows.
But there is one prominent exception. The long band of blue in the tropical Pacific indicates a pool of cool water associated with La Niña conditions, which alters weather patterns in several parts of the world, including North America. And by one measure, it’s particularly intense. Klaus Wolter of NOAA’s Earth System’s Research Laboratory is reporting that in September and October, the La Niña was the second strongest on record for that time of year.
For more information, please see my post about this from Nov. 5, 2010.
Lastly: as this image from Remote Sensing Systems shows, air temperatures during October were also warmer than the long-term average across much of the globe — with the exception of the tropical Pacific.
The image shows what’s known as the “brightness temperature” of the lower troposphere, as measured by instruments on orbiting NASA satellites. Brightness temperature provides a measure of the temperature of the atmosphere. For more information, see this page from RSS.