2012: The year climate change got real.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Hurricane Sandy



2012 was the warmest year on record for the lowest forty eight, and along with the ratio between warmest and coldest continues to widen (11:1), further proof of significant warming:



The New York Times gives more information on this, along with a beautiful graphic as well:

The numbers are in: 2012, the year of a surreal March heat wave, a severe drought in the Corn Belt and a huge storm that caused broad devastation in the Middle Atlantic States, turns out to have been the hottest year ever recorded in the contiguous United States.

How hot was it? The temperature differences between years are usually measured in fractions of a degree, but last year’s 55.3 degree average demolished the previous record, set in 1998, by a full degree Fahrenheit.

If that does not sound sufficiently impressive, consider that 34,008 daily high records were set at weather stations across the country, compared with only 6,664 record lows, according to a count maintained by the Weather Channel meteorologist Guy Walton, using federal temperature records.

That ratio, which was roughly in balance as recently as the 1970s, has been out of whack for decades as the country has warmed, but never by as much as it was last year. “The heat was remarkable,” said Jake Crouch, a scientist with the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., which released the official climate compilation on Tuesday. “It was prolonged. That we beat the record by one degree is quite a big deal.”

A dry section of the Morse Reservoir in Cicero, Indiana, in July.

One of the biggest concerns affecting commerce in 2012, was the drought's impact on the height of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, both important for transportation of everything from grain, coal, and recreational use. But more significantly, energy markets could be significantly disrupted in the future, affecting traditional power plants, as well as several nuclear power plants.


Over 60 percent of land in the lower forty eight were in drought conditions in 2012.

Here is a video summary of 2012:

The evidence continues to mount in our real world experiences that global warming is a fact, and will continue to get worse unless we take action now. Many of the models' predictions have turned out to be either correct, or if they were wrong, they underestimated the fastness or severity. 2012 could be indeed the red letter year where the scales have tilted in the public's mind. Let's hope it's not too late.

Comments

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

wow, in the hurricane study picture, is that frost forming across the states?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

It would be nice if people were a rational, logical species convinced of the existence of something by actually seeing its effects.

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

I heard the other day that if you were born after 1980, you have never lived in a colder-than-average year. That's some scary shit.

[foreverbeach.livejournal.com]

Wow, a hurricane? Global warming must be "true science"!

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Rush Limbaugh - "This is not anecdotal. Temperature research surveys: we are actually cooling."

Don't you love good ol' Rush? He's so accurate, so on the ball. We need to make him head of NASA, or some other scientific organisation: he'll know how to separate the good science from the unBiblical atheistic Muslim Communist nonsense most of these so-called scientists come out with.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

I understand you inquired if you could share this info, but I also understand you were supposed to add some short presentation of the issue in your own words (your 2 cents, so to speak). Unfortunately I haven't seen that on the post, so could you please amend it? I think a paragraph would suffice.

[frodomyhero.livejournal.com]

Nah, there's no climate change, don't you hear people say it's just "naturally occuring" all this energized storms and droughts ? Come on, get with the "real " science. Our Congressional Republican leaders don't believe it so there's the truth.

[foolsguinea.livejournal.com]

I live in the middle of one of the dark red spots in the middle of the map on the NY Times chart. We've been in drought for 18 months, and had two much hotter than normal years in a row. I didn't realize that the deviation was so much less for the rest of you.

You'll see.