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

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Prediction of complex system behavior is hard...

Peer-reviewed Scientist, circa March 2000: (http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html)

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event".

13 Years later... (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21121138)

[telemann.livejournal.com]

The hysterically funny part is you wag you finger talking about complex systems and then used a localized event to make your point. But I digress, did you miss this part? Certainly you did.

Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared.

And yes, I've seen several anti global warming websites about Dr. Viner being wrong. They typically take very specific local observations and point their fingers and go "See! Science wrong. SCIENCE BAD!" Essentially a real life version of the editorial cartoon I posted earlier.

Is the Amount of Snow and Ice on the Earth Decreasing?

Yes. Observations show a global-scale decline of snow and ice over many years, especially since 1980 and increasing during the past decade, despite growth in some places and little change in others (Figure 1). Most mountain glaciers are getting smaller. Snow cover is retreating earlier in the spring. Sea ice in the Arctic is shrinking in all seasons, most dramatically in summer. Reductions are reported in permafrost, seasonally frozen ground and river and lake ice. Important coastal regions of the ice sheets on Greenland and West Antarctica, and the glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsula, are thinning and contributing to sea level rise. The total contribution of glacier, ice cap and ice sheet melt to sea level rise is estimated as 1.2 ± 0.4 mm yr–1 for the period 1993 to 2003.

Continuous satellite measurements capture most of the Earth’s seasonal snow cover on land, and reveal that Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover has declined by about 2% per decade since 1966, although there is little change in autumn or early winter. In many places, the spring decrease has occurred despite increases in precipitation. Reductions in snow cover and in mountain glaciers have occurred despite increased snowfall in many cases, implicating increased air temperatures.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

The point is that the alarmists were and will continue to be wrong.

13 years after it was predicted that England would not see another snow fall, snow is still falling.

40 years after the Population Bomb was published, not only are we still here but average calorie intake has increased.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

I guess you missed the blinking text highlighting where the statement was qualified, or snow fall world wide has decreased overall. Yeah, but don't let facts get in the way here.

[dwer.livejournal.com]

and yet, the basic numbers show the basic conclusions to be correct, year after year.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

What? that the Earth's climate is not static?

That building a house on a sand-bar or flood plain is a bad idea?

[telemann.livejournal.com]

And a stitch in time, saves nine!

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Bullshit, enviromentalism was never about saving any one's life.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Like you'd know.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

que sais-je always que sais-je

[telemann.livejournal.com]

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Lol coming from you?

Neat *.gif by the way.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

:-)