2014 Hottest Year Ever? Scientists Unveil Data Today

[Buster's Uncle]

2014 Hottest Year Ever? Scientists Unveil Data Today
LiveScience.com
By Becky Oskin  3 hours ago



Global temperature through November 2014.



Even though winter is pummeling the United States with full force, expect today's (Jan. 16) weather news to focus on record heat.

Climate scientists are scheduled to announce today that 2014's global temperatures shattered earlier records by a full degree, making 2014 the hottest year since 1880. The temperature data will be released by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at 10:30 a.m. EST (3:30 p.m. GMT). A news conference with NASA and NOAA scientists will be held at 11 a.m. EST. NASA will stream live audio and graphics from the briefing at http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio.

At the end of November 2014, the planet's average temperature was on track to soar 1.22 degrees Fahrenheit (0.68 degrees Celsius) above the 20th century average, NOAA said during its December 2014 monthly climate update. The 20th century average is 57.1 degrees F (14.0 degrees C).

2014 has already been declared the warmest year on record by one of the planet's four leading weather-tracking organizations. The preliminary 2014 readings were 1.1 degree F (0.63 degrees C) hotter than its 20th century average, the Japan Meteorological Agency announced Jan. 6. That kicks 1998, the previous record holder, out of the top spot by just 0.1 degrees F (0.06 degrees C), the agency said in a statement. 1934 was the hottest year in the United States, closely followed by 1998.

All of the 10 hottest years on record have come since 1998. February 1985 was the last month in which global temperatures fell below the 20th century average.

The United Kingdom's Hadley Center also tracks global temperatures but has not released its final numbers. However, Britain's Met Office said that 2014 was unusually warm and wet in the United Kingdom, with the highest temperatures measured in central England since record keeping started in 1659. (NASA and NOAA are the other two temperature keepers.) Other regional standouts included Australia and its searing heat waves, Russia's early spring and Europe's broiling summer, plus record surface warmth in the tropical and eastern Pacific Ocean.

There was one notable cold spot last year: central and eastern North America, driven by the brutally cold winter of 2013-2014. States surrounding the Great Lakes were much colder than average, but in the West, California and Arizona saw record warmth that exacerbated ongoing droughts. Alaska and Nevada also had their warmest years on record, according to NOAA.


http://news.yahoo.com/2014-hottest-ever-scientists-unveil-data-today-120547601.html

[Buster's Uncle]

2014 was hottest year recorded on Earth: U.S. climate analyses
Reuters  39 minutes ago



(Reuters) - Last year was Earth's warmest on record, bolstering the argument that humans are altering the planet's climate by burning greenhouse gas-emitting fuels, according to a pair of analyses by two major U.S. agencies released on Friday.

Separate studies by NASA the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed that with the exception of 1998, 10 of the warmest years on record have occurred since 2000.

The reports come at the start of a year when representatives of about 200 governments will meet in Paris to try to agree on a deal to limit global warming to avoid floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels blamed on increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, which result from burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

"Taken together, the warm temperatures of the recent decades demonstrate the impact of greenhouse gases on our climate, and invalidate the sound bite that global warming has somehow 'stopped,'" said Joe Casola, a staff scientist at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions.

Since 1880, when record-keeping began, Earth’s average surface temperature has warmed by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius), a trend that is largely driven by the increase in carbon dioxide and other human emissions into the planet’s atmosphere, NASA said.

"While the ranking of individual years can be affected by chaotic weather patterns, the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases," Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz and Scott Malone; Editing by Alden Bentley)


http://news.yahoo.com/u-noaa-says-2014-hottest-record-reports-155625951.html

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White House says 2014's warming shows 'we can't wait'
Reuters  26 minutes ago



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. reports showing 2014 was the warmest year on record are a reminder that climate change is happening now and that action to fight global warming must not be delayed, the White House said on Friday.

The new data is "another reminder that climate change is not a problem for the future - it's happening here and now and we can't wait to take action," a White House official said in a statement after NASA and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration released reports that last year was the warmest since record keeping began in 1880.

President Barack Obama has been using executive authorities to fight climate change, setting new rules on carbon emissions from power plants and vehicles. "We will continue to move forward on this vital issue," the official said.

But Republicans, who gained control of the Senate in November's elections, have made slowing down the administration's issuance of new rules on climate-linked emissions one of their top priorities.

(Reporting by Timothy Gardner, Roberta Rampton, Caren Bohan; Editing by SUsan Heavey)


http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-says-2014s-warming-shows-cant-wait-183008974.html

[Buster's Uncle]

The heat is on; NOAA, NASA say 2014 warmest year on record
Associated Press
By SETH BORENSTEIN  35 minutes ago



In this July 1, 2014 file photo, Amanda Ouellet wipes her face with a cold wet towel to cool off while working outside holding an advertising sign in Las Vegas. Federal science officials announced Friday that for the third time in a decade, the globe sizzled to the hottest year on record. Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA calculated that in 2014 the world had its hottest year in 135 years of record-keeping. Earlier, the Japanese weather agency and an independent group out of University of California Berkeley also measured 2014 as the hottest on record. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)



WASHINGTON (AP) — For the third time in a decade, the globe sizzled to the hottest year on record, federal scientists announced Friday.

Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA calculated that in 2014 the world had its hottest year in 135 years of record-keeping. Earlier, the Japanese weather agency and an independent group out of University of California Berkeley also measured 2014 as the hottest on record.

NOAA said 2014 averaged 58.24 degrees Fahrenheit (14.58 degrees Celsius), 1.24 degrees (0.69 degrees Celsius) above the 20th-century average.

But NASA, which calculates temperatures slightly differently, put 2014's average temperature at 58.42 degrees Fahrenheit (14.68 degrees Celsius) which is 1.22 degrees (0.68 degrees Celsius) above the average of the years 1951-1980.

Earth broke NOAA records set in 2010 and 2005. The last time the Earth set an annual NOAA record for cold was in 1911.

NOAA also said last month was the hottest December on record. Six months in 2014 set marks for heat. The last time Earth set a monthly cold record was in December 1916.

"The globe is warmer now than it has been in the last 100 years and more likely in at least 5,000 years," said climate scientist Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University, who wasn't part of either research team. "Any wisps of doubt that human activities are at fault are now gone with the wind."



In this July 25, 2014 file photo, a roofer works under the mid-day sun in Gilbert, Ariz. Federal science officials announced Friday that for the third time in a decade, the globe sizzled to the hottest year on record. Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA calculated that in 2014 the world had its hottest year in 135 years of record-keeping. Earlier, the Japanese weather agency and an independent group out of University of California Berkeley also measured 2014 as the hottest on record. (AP Photo, File)


Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler and other experts said the latest statistics should end claims by non-scientists that warming has stopped. It didn't, as climate denial sites still touted claims that the world has not warmed in 18 years.

2014's heat was driven by record warmth in the world's oceans that didn't just break old marks: It shattered them. Record warmth spread across far eastern Russia, the western part of the United States, interior South America, much of Europe, northern Africa and parts of Australia. One of the few cooler spots was in the central and eastern United States.

"Every continent had some aspect of record high temperatures" in 2014, said Tom Karl, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.

Nine of the 10 hottest years in NOAA global records have occurred since 2000. The odds of this happening at random are about 650 million to 1, according to University of South Carolina statistician John Grego. Two other statisticians confirmed his calculations.

Climate scientists say one of the most significant parts of 2014's record is that it happened during a year where there was no El Nino weather oscillation. During an El Nino, when a specific area of the central Pacific warms unusually and influences weather worldwide, global temperatures tend to spike. Previous records, especially in 1998, happened during El Nino years.

Every year in the 21st century has been in the top 20 warmest years on record, according to NOAA.



In this July 30, 2014 file photo, girls cool themselves in a fountain after a sunny and hot day in Alexandrov Garden at the Kremlin Wall in Moscow, Russia. Federal science officials announced Friday that for the third time in a decade, the globe sizzled to the hottest year on record. Both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA calculated that in 2014 the world had its hottest year in 135 years of record-keeping. Earlier, the Japanese weather agency and an independent group out of University of California Berkeley also measured 2014 as the hottest on record. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)


Temperatures have risen by about 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) since the mid-19th century and pre-industrial times, said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where the space agency tracks warming temperatures.

"We are witnessing, before our eyes, the effect of human-caused climate change," said Pennsylvania State University professor Michael Mann.

Some non-scientists who deny man-made global warming have pointed to satellite temperature records — which only go back to 1979 — which show a warming world, but no record this year and less of a recent increase than the longer-term ground thermometers. But Mann, Dessler, Francis and others say there have been quality and trustworthy issues with some satellite measurements and they only show what's happening far above the ground. They said ground measurements are also more important because it is where we live.

University of Alabama Huntsville scientist John Curry, who measures temperature via satellite, puts 2014 in a cluster of warm years behind 2010 and 1998. He said he is "puzzled that this difference between surface and deep atmosphere continues to occur as it has now for 36 years. Our theories can't explain it. I don't know what is going on."

Georgia Tech professor Judith Curry, who is not in the mainstream of climate scientists, wrote that talk about the record implies that temperatures will get warmer, something she says won't happen for at least another decade. But she added in a blog post in response to the NOAA announcement: "I'm not willing to place much $$ on that bet, since I suspect Mother Nature will manage to surprise us."

NASA's Schmidt says temperatures will continue to rise with year-to-year variations and he wouldn't be surprised if 2015 breaks 2014's record: "The increase in greenhouse gases is unrelenting and that in the end is going to dominate most things going on."

This was the 38th year in a row that the world was warmer than the 20th century average, according to NOAA data. Most people in the world and the United States were born after 1976 and have never lived in a cooler than normal year.

"You want to understand what that (cooler) world is like and you wonder are you ever to going to experience that," said Victor Gensini, a 28-year-old meteorology professor at the College of DuPage in Illinois.

___

Online:

NASA: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

NOAA: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/13

___


http://news.yahoo.com/heat-noaa-nasa-2014-warmest-record-153323365.html

[Unorthodox]

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[Buster's Uncle]

And I'm older than most Unos in the world...

[Geo]

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[gwillybj]

And I'm older than most Unos in the world...

Can we claim our age begets wisdom as well?

[gwillybj]

The New York Times | Environment
2014 Breaks Heat Record, Challenging Global Warming Skeptics
By JUSTIN GILLIS | JAN. 16, 2015

Last year was the hottest on earth since record-keeping began in 1880, scientists reported on Friday, underscoring warnings about the risks of runaway greenhouse gas 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. Records were set across large areas of every inhabited continent. And the ocean surface was unusually warm virtually everywhere except near Antarctica, the scientists said, providing the energy that fueled damaging Pacific storms.

In the annals of climatology, 2014 surpassed 2010 as the warmest year. The 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1997, a reflection of the relentless planetary warming that scientists say is a consequence of human activity and poses profound long-term risks to civilization and nature.

“Climate change is perhaps the major challenge of our generation,” said Michael H. Freilich, director of earth sciences at NASA, one of the agencies that track global temperatures.

Of the large land areas where many people live, only the eastern portion of the United States recorded below-average temperatures in 2014, in sharp contrast to the unusual heat in the West. Some experts think the weather pattern that produced those American extremes is an indirect consequence of the release of greenhouse gases, though that is not proven.

Several scientists said the most remarkable thing about the 2014 record was that it had occurred in a year that did not feature a strong El Niño, a large-scale weather pattern in which the Pacific Ocean pumps an enormous amount of heat into the atmosphere.

Skeptics of climate change have long argued that global warming stopped around 1998, when an unusually powerful El Niño produced the hottest year of the 20th century. Some politicians in Washington have seized on that claim to justify inaction on emissions.

But the temperature of 1998 is now being surpassed every four or five years, and 2014 was the first time that happened without a significant El Niño. Gavin A. Schmidt, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, said the next strong El Niño would probably rout all temperature records.

“Obviously, a single year, even if it is a record, cannot tell us much about climate trends,” said Stefan Rahmstorf, head of earth system analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “However, the fact that the warmest years on record are 2014, 2010 and 2005 clearly indicates that global warming has not ‘stopped in 1998,’ as some like to falsely claim.”

Such claims are unlikely to go away, though. John R. Christy, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville who is known for his skepticism about the seriousness of global warming, pointed out in an interview that 2014 had surpassed the other record-warm years by only a few hundredths of a degree, well within the error margin of global temperature measurements. “Since the end of the 20th century, the temperature hasn’t done much,” Dr. Christy said. “It’s on this kind of warmish plateau.”

Despite such arguments from a handful of scientists, the vast majority of those who study the climate say the earth is in a long-term warming trend that is profoundly threatening and caused almost entirely by human activity.

After the Warmest Year on Record, West Virginia Feels the HeatJAN. 16, 2015
Calculating the running mean temperature -- over periods of 12, 60 and 132 months -- provides a way to see long-term trends behind variability. Warming has continued, but slowed.A Closer Look at the Global Warming Trend, Record Hot 2014 and What’s AheadJAN. 16, 2015
They expect the heat to get much worse over coming decades, but already it is killing forests around the world, driving plants and animals to extinction, melting land ice and causing the seas to rise at an accelerating pace.

“It is exceptionally unlikely that we would be witnessing a record year of warmth, during a record-warm decade, during a several decades-long period of warmth that appears to be unrivaled for more than a thousand years, were it not for the rising levels of planet-warming gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels,” Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at the Pennsylvania State University, said in an email.

NASA and the other American agency that maintains long-term temperature records, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, issued separate data compilations on Friday that confirmed the 2014 record. A Japanese agency had released preliminary information in early January showing 2014 as the warmest year.

One more scientific group, in Britain, that curates the world’s temperature record is scheduled to report in the coming weeks.

Separate temperature measurements taken from satellites do not show 2014 as a record year, although it is close. Several scientists said the satellite readings reflected temperatures in the atmosphere, not at the earth’s surface, so it was not surprising that they would differ slightly from the ground and ocean-surface measurements that showed record warmth.

“Why do we keep getting so many record-warm years?” Dr. Schmidt asked in an interview. “It’s because the planet is warming. The basic issue is the long-term trend, and it is not going away.”

February 1985 was the last time global surface temperatures fell below the 20th-century average for a given month, meaning that no one younger than 30 has ever lived through a below-average month. The last full year that was colder than the 20th-century average was 1976.

The contiguous United States set a temperature record in 2012, a year of scorching heat waves and drought. But, mostly because of the unusual chill in the East, 2014 was only the 34th warmest year on record for the lower 48 states.

That cold was drawn into the interior of the country by a loop in a current called the jet stream that allowed Arctic air to spill southward. But an offsetting kink allowed unusually warm tropical air to settle over the West, large parts of Alaska and much of the Arctic.

A few recent scientific papers say that such long-lasting kinks in the jet stream have become more likely because global warming is rapidly melting the sea ice in the Arctic, but many leading scientists are not convinced on that point.

Whatever the underlying cause, last year’s extreme warmth in the West meant that Alaska, Arizona, California and Nevada all set temperature records. Some parts of California essentially had no winter last year, with temperatures sometimes running 10 to 15 degrees above normal for the season. The temperature in Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city, never fell below zero in 2014, the first time that has happened in 101 years of record-keeping for the city.

Twenty years of global negotiations aimed at slowing the growth of heat-trapping emissions have yielded little progress. However, 2014 saw signs of large-scale political mobilization on the issue, as more than 300,000 people marched in New York City in September, and tens of thousands more took to the streets in other cities around the world.

The next big attempt at a global climate agreement will come when negotiators from around the world gather in Paris in December. Political activists on climate change wasted no time Friday in citing the 2014 heat record as proof that strong action was needed.

“The steady and now record-breaking rise in average global temperatures is not an issue for another day,” Michael R. Bloomberg, the former New York mayor who is spending tens of millions of dollars of his personal fortune to battle climate change, said in a statement. “It’s a clear and present danger that poses major economic, health, environmental and geopolitical risks.”

A version of this article appears in print on January 17, 2015, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: 2014 Breaks Heat Record, Challenging Global Warming Skeptics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/science/earth/2014-was-hottest-year-on-record-surpassing-2010.html

[Buster's Uncle]

And I'm older than most Unos in the world...

Can we claim our age begets wisdom as well?

Yes.