January global temperatures 11th - 17th warmest on record
January 2011 was the globe's 17th warmest January on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC). NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies rated January the 11th warmest on record. January 2011 global ocean temperatures were the 11th warmest on record, and land temperatures were the 29th warmest on record. Global satellite-measured temperatures for the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere were average,the 16th or 17th coolest in the 34-year record, according to Remote Sensing Systems and the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH). The global cool-down from November, which was the warmest November on record for the globe, was due in large part to the on-going moderate strength La Niña episode in the Eastern Pacific. The large amount of cold water that upwells to the surface during a La Niña typically causes a substantial cool-down in global temperatures. Notably, the January 2011 global ocean temperature was the warmest on record among all Januaries when La Niña was present. The ten warmest Januaries occurred during either El Niño or neutral conditions.
FIgure 1. Departure of temperature from average for January 2011. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).
The coldest places on the globe in January, relative to average, were Mongolia, Southern Siberia, and China. China recorded its coldest January since 1977, and second coldest January since national records began in 1961. Record or near-record warm conditions were experienced in Northeast Canada, Western Greenland and Northern Siberia.
A cold and dry January for the U.S.
For the contiguous U.S., January temperatures were the 37th coldest in the 116-year record, and it was the coldest January since 1994, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Despite the heavy snows in the Northeast U.S., January was the 9th driest January since 1895. This was largely due to the fact that the Desert Southwest was very dry, with New Mexico recording its driest January, and Arizona and Nevada their second driest.
Sea ice extent in the Arctic lowest on record during January
January 2011 Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent was the lowest on record in January, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center. This was the second consecutive month of record low extent. Satellite records extend back to 1979. The area of missing ice was about twice the size of Texas, or 60% the size of the Mediterranean Sea. Ice was notably absent in Northeast Canada and Western Greenland, and Hudson Bay did not freeze over until mid-January, more than a month later than usual. This was the latest freeze-up on record, and led to record warmth over much of Northeast Canada. Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island had its warmest January on record, 1.1°C above the previous record set in 1985. Weather records for the station go back to 1942.
An incredible 110° temperature swing in 1 week in Oklahoma
The temperature in Bartlesville, Oklahoma shot up to a record 82°F yesterday, just seven days after the city hit -28°F on February 10. This 110°F temperature change has to be one of the greatest 1-week temperature swings in U.S. history. The -31°F that was recorded in nearby Nowata last week has now been certified by the National Weather Service as the new official all-time coldest temperature ever recorded in Oklahoma. What's more, the 27 inches of snow that fell on Spavinaw, Oklahoma during the February 8 - 9 snowstorm set a new official state 24-hour snowfall record. The previous record was 26", set on March 28, 2009, in Woodward and Freedom.
A 100+ degree temperature change in just six days is a phenomenally rare event. I checked the records for over twenty major cities in the Midwest in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana, and could not find any examples of a 100-degree temperature swing in so short a period of time. The closest I came was a 108° swing in temperature in fourteen days at Valentine, Nebraska, from -27°F on March 11, 1998 to 82°F on March 25, 1998. Valentine also had a 105°F temperature swing in fifteen days from November 29, 1901 (71°F) to December 14, 1901 (-34°F.) Our weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, lists the world record for fastest 24-hour change in temperature as the 103°F warm-up from -54° to 49° that occurred on January 14 - 15, 1972, during a chinook wind in Lowe, Montana. This week's remarkable roller coaster ride of temperatures in Oklahoma is truly a remarkable event that has few parallels in recorded history.
Tropical Cyclone Carlos' deluge abates
Darwin, Australia suffered its greatest 24-hour rainfall in its history on Wednesday, when a deluge of 13.4 inches (339.4 mm) hit the city when Tropical Cyclone Carlos formed virtually on top of city and remained nearly stationary. Carlos has now dissipated, and brought only an additional 1.50" (38 mm) of rain yesterday to Darwin. Over the past four days, Carlos has dumped a remarkable 26.87" (682.6 mm) of rain on Darwin (population 125,000), capital of Australia's Northern Territory. Australia's west coast is also watching Tropical Cyclone Dianne, which is expected to remain well offshore as it moves southwards, parallel to the coast.
Figure 2. Solar flare of February 15, 2011, as captured by the SOHO and SDO spacecraft. Image credit: NASA.
Space weather: biggest solar flare in 4 years
The strongest solar flare in more than four years erupted on the sun at 0156 UTC on Tuesday, when giant sunspot 1158 unleashed an X2-class eruption. X-class flares are the strongest type of x-ray flare, and this week's flare is the first X-class flare of the new 11-year sunspot cycle 24, which began in 2009 - 2010. The flare was accompanied by a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), which means that a portion of the sun's atmosphere was ripped away and thrown into space. High-energy particles from the CME arrived at Earth at 01 UTC this morning, and sky watchers at high northern latitudes may be able to see auroras over the coming few nights. Consult NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center or spaceweather.com for updates.
Jeff Masters
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New BLOG entry by Dr. Jeff Masters
By Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Feb 16, 2011 (IPS) - Human-induced heating of the planet has already made rainfall more intense, leading to more severe floods, researchers announced Wednesday.
Two new studies document significant impacts with just a fraction of the heating yet to come from the burning of fossil fuels. Fortunately, another new report shows the world can end its addiction to climate-wrecking fossil-fuel energy by 2050.
"Warmer air contains more moisture and leads to more extreme precipitation," said Francis Zwiers of the University of Victoria.
Extreme precipitation and flooding over the entire northern hemisphere increased by seven percent between 1951 and 1999 as a result of anthropogenic global warming. That represents a "substantial change", Zwiers told IPS, and more than twice the increase projected by climate modeling.
Zwiers and Xuebin Zhang of Environment Canada used observations from over 6,000 weather stations to measure the impact of climate warming on the intensity of extreme precipitation for the first time. The study was published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The planet is currently 0.8 degrees C hotter from the burning of fossil fuels. However, global temperatures had not yet started to increase in 1951, the first year of rainfall data Zwiers and Xuebin examined. By 1999, global temperatures had climbed by about 0.6 degrees C. The average temperature increase over that 50-year period is relatively small compared to the present but major impacts have been documented in terms of storm and flood damage even with this small increase in temperatures.
This suggests that the Earth's climatic system may be more sensitive to small temperature increases than previously believed.
The global costs of extreme weather events shot up from less than five billion dollars a year during the 1950s to 45 billion dollars a year during the 1990s, according to Munich Re, a major reinsurance company in Germany. Not all of this increase is due to climate change. Some is due to population and infrastructure growth and better disaster reporting. However, the number of significant floods has tripled in the past 30 years.
Those costs came during a time when the planet was cooler than present - a period of "relatively weak anthropogenic forcing", Zwiers said. But as temperatures climbed, there was a sharp increase in intense rainfall events during the 1990s, suggesting an acceleration in flooding and damaging rainfall. Zwiers said it is too soon to know if the 1990s increase represents a new trend.
Global temperatures are guaranteed to increase further from today's 0.8 degrees C to at least 1.0 degree C by 2020. This will boost the amount of water vapour and heat in the atmosphere, which are the fuel for even more and harder rainfall events.
Scientists have long known extreme events would increase with a hotter planet but have maintained that a single flood or storm could not be explicitly linked to climate change. Now another study published Wednesday in Nature lays odds they've found the "smoking gun" behind Britain's severe flooding in 2000.
During the fall of 2000, the UK experienced some of its most damaging floods and wettest weather since the first records began in 1766. Using the distributed computing power from thousands of personal computers around the world, researchers at Oxford University and others determined that human emissions of greenhouse gases had more than doubled the odds of the devastating 2000 flood.
"We simulated a parallel world in which there were no greenhouse gas emissions," said lead researcher Pardeep Pall of Oxford University.
Thousand of computer simulations were tested against reality and the results revealed that climate change more than doubled the odds of the 2000 flooding, Pall said at a press conference.
"This study was 20 times more demanding than anything we're tried before. It is not easy to precisely say what caused what when it comes to a single weather event," added Myles Allen of Oxford University.
The UK Met Office is developing new methods for assessing extreme weather events and determining the factors that caused them in hopes of improving predictions. In future, the Met Office may be able to predict such events and explain why they happened, said Allen.
With human-induced heating of the planet expected by many to reach at least 2.4 degrees C in the coming decades, extreme events of the recent past will seem very tame indeed. However, this calamitous future can be avoided with a rapid transition to a renewable global energy system.
A detailed new study demonstrates that 95 percent of global energy needs can be meet with renewables utilising today's technologies alone.
The Energy Report by Ecofys, a leading energy consulting firm in the Netherlands, is the first to show that 95 percent of all energy can be renewable by 2050, while offering comfortable lifestyles for a growing global population and allowing a tripling of the global economy.
"We can do this by using and improving the technologies that are already at hand," said Manon Janssen, CEO of Ecofys. "It is a business opportunity, as much as it is a technological challenge."
Ecofys spent two years preparing the report in partnership with the World Wildlife Fund.
Paramount will be major increases in energy efficiency in all sectors so that by 2050 energy use is 15 percent less than the energy use in 2005. And this is all possible with existing technology, the report noted. Emissions from burning fossil fuels for energy will fall more than 80 percent by 2050, offering a real chance of keeping global temperatures below 2 degrees C, the report said.
While the transition will be costly, the savings from lower energy use will amount to a five- to six-trillion-dollar "windfall" for humanity by 2050.
The move to renewable energy is already well underway in places like California, where the cost of generating solar energy is now as cheap as fossil fuels, said Justin Gerdes, a California journalist specialising in energy issues.
"Renewables already benefit from lower upfront costs to install - especially onshore wind - compared to huge one- gigawatt fossil fuel or nuclear plants," Gerdes said. "And, then, of course, the renewables have no cost for fuel."
And this is happening in the U.S., where climate change is a non-issue politically and there is no price or cap on carbon emissions.
"In short, this can happen," Gerdes said.
(END)
Thanks 4 the McCartney tune, Pat... really hit the spot...
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