Climate

For those of us living in the northeast or a good part of the U.S. we might have felt that April was cold and it was. It is easy to use that as evidence that climate change is “fake news” yet it is good to keep in mind that if …

The NASA article Can’t ‘See’ Sea Level Rise? You’r looking in the Wrong Place by Alan Buis (5/13/2020) combines the quantitative facts of sea level rise with stories of places feeling the impact. “Thanks to satellite and tide gauge data, we know that sea level is rising about 3.3 millimeters …

From the NOAA Global Climate Report – March 2020: Averaged as a whole, the global land and ocean surface temperature for March 2020 was 1.16°C (2.09°F) above the 20th century average of 12.7°C (54.9°F) and the second highest in the 141-year record. Only March 2016 was warmer at 1.31°C (2.36°F). …

The Climate.gov article Nature’s archives: piecing together 12,000 years of Earth’s climate story by Alison Stevens (4/15/2020) provides an overview of paleoclimate proxies and links to a new database of these records. Paleoclimate proxies indirectly record climate and atmospheric conditions present when they formed or grew; air bubbles in ice cores sample …

The picture here is a snapshot from an animation by NASA in the article Visualizing the Quantities of Climate Change – Ice Sheet Loss in Greenland and Antarctica by Matt Conlen (3/9/2020) that shows a gigatonne of ice. A gigatonne isn’t much since Satellite data show that Greenland and Antarctica …

From the article The 2019/2020 summer of Antarctic heatwave by Sharon A. Robinson et. e. (3/30/2020) in Global Change Biology: Heatwaves are rarely reported in Antarctica, but elsewhere are often classified as three consecutive days with both extreme maximum and minimum temperatures. Using this classification, Casey experienced a heatwave between …

From NOAA’s Global Climate Report  – February 2020: Averaged as a whole, February 2020 was near-record warm with a global land and ocean surface temperature departure from average of 1.17°C (2.11°F) above the 20th century average. Only February 2016 was warmer. The February 2020 temperature departure from average was also the third …

Climate Central has put together their 2020 Spring Package (2/2/2020) with information and a selection of city graphs. For example Analyzing average spring temperatures since 1970, the top increases occurred in the Southwest—where spring is the fastest warming season. Reno, Nev. topped the list with an increase of 7.2°F, followed …

No, as can be easily seen by the graphic here copied from the NASA article There is No Impending ‘Mini Ice Age’ (2/13/2020). At the same time we won’t be seeing an ice age anytime soon: This is called a “Grand Solar Minimum,” and the last time this happened, it …

The Climate.gov article Climate Change: Spring Snow Cover by LuAnn Dahlman and Rebecca Lindsey (2/14/2020) provides the answer as seen in their graph here. This change is another example of a feedback loop. About one-third of Earth’s land surface is covered by snow for some part of the year. The …