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Subscribe to RSSThe calendar says December, but no one east of the Rockies is singing "Baby It's Cold Outside" -- most of the U.S. is enjoying unseasonably warm weather. NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports.
A warm winter, a record warm spring, a record hot July and a warmer than average autumn combined to make it even more likely that 2012 will go down as the warmest year in the contiguous United States on record, the federal government reported Thursday.
Just how likely?
"For 2012 not to be record warm, December would have to be unprecedented," Jake Crouch, a scientist at the National Climatic Data Center, told NBC News. "December temperatures would need to be more than 1 degree F colder than the coldest December on record, which occurred in 1983."
Based on past numbers, he added, "the odds of that occurring are less than 0.3 percent."
In other words, he said, "2012 has a greater than 99.7 percent chance of being record warm." That's up from Crouch's odds just last month of 90 percent.
January-November was already the warmest first 11 months of any year in records that go back to 1895, according to data released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which oversees the center. The average national temperature through November was 57.1 degrees F.
The year has had a string of warm events, Crouch noted. "We had our fourth warmest winter (2011/2012) on record, our warmest spring, a very hot summer with the hottest month on record for the nation (July 2012), and a warmer than average autumn," he said.
"The warm winter and spring were associated with an unusually northern track of the jet stream, which kept cold Arctic air out of the contiguous United States," he added. "The early start to spring was a precursor to the summer drought. The large size of the summer drought was associated with a large area of the country experiencing a very hot summer. Those conditions continued into much of the fall season."
"When you put these local and regional factors on top of a warming trend for the contiguous United States and the globe," he said, "the result has been the warmest year on record for the Lower 48."
If 2012 does go down as the warmest year on record in the U.S. it would depose 1998, which averaged 54.3 degrees F.
Related: Arctic 'Report Card' lists worsening warming signals
Related: Snow, cold missing from much of US
Globally, 2012 is likely to be among the top 10 warmest on record, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization said last month.
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...well if you live in Seattle...that's awesome!!! suckers!!!
But we don't have global warming......I forgot. DeMint is leaving the Senate. Maybe we can get help with our changing climates.
I don't know about you guys, but I live in Kansas (Stereotypes aside) and I think that Spring like weather during winter is just wrong on so many levels. Sure it's great! But those crops aren't getting any moisture this means=even more dreadful harvest, which leads to even higher food prices next year.
But hey? What do I know...? For all we know we can easily import food for half the price...
2% of the Earth's surface. That is how much the United States covers.
FACT: NOAA admits that over two thirds of the weather stations are incorrectly sited. They are too close to parking lots, parked cars, buildings, air conditioning units, even barbeque grills. All things that absorb more heat than natural surroundings and radiate that heat out more slowly which raises night time temperatures. It is the night time temperatures that aren't dropping as much as they used to that is raising the average temperature.
FACT: NOAA has a new weather station system that IS properly sited. This system which is not used for official records averaged 2 degrees cooler than the corrupted system. This two degrees is 1.9 degrees cooler than the record hottest year from the 1930s. (In other words it isn't warmer than it was in the 1930s). Some of the properly sited weather stations recorded temperatures 7 degrees cooler than the nearest corrupt station.
FACT: The GHCN temperature data DOES NOT show 2012 to be warmest. The NCDC "adjusts" the data after the fact. It has made the past cooler and the present warmer due to these manipulations.
This link shows a plot of the GHCN data and then a plot of the same temperature records AFTER NCDC plays with the facts.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/noaa-2012-fraud-continues-unabated/
More proof of "adjustments". Fibbing really.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/how-ncdc-hides-the-decline/
If it is really getting warmer than why the adjustments? Why make the past cooler? The weather stations in the past had less artificial influences on the instruments. There sure weren't as many roads, buildings, parking lots, cars and air conditioners in the 1930s.
And even if it is really warmer is that a bad thing? July 2012 set a new record for the fewest tornadoes. A new record is currently being set for the longest length of time since a major (cat 3 or higher) hurricane has hit the US. Old record goes back to 1900. Sure New York had to deal with post tropical cyclone Sandy this year but back in 1954 when there was a cooling trend the east coast was hit by THREE Cat 3 hurricanes. One of them hitting during a full moon and combining with a cold front just like Sandy did. The number of violent tornadoes has been trending down since 1974. You remember 1974 don't you? That was when the scare was global cooling and the next ice age.
And for 2012 the total number of tornadoes is DOWN. 400 fewer tornadoes than average.
Sounds like warm isn't so bad. Fewer tornadoes and hurricanes. Weaker tornadoes and hurricanes. Yet even the number of wildfires were down this year.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/11/04/2012-us-fire-count-fourth-lowest-on-record/
And remember that 2% of the Earth that is the 48 states? Let's looks at the rest of the GLOBE.
Snow and record cold for December in Australia(where it is summer). Record cold in Norway. Huge snowfall in Sweden, Ukraine, Turkey. Record cold in Alaska. Arctic sea ice refreezing faster than ever recorded. New studies that show increased snow in Greenland and increased snow in the Himalayas.
All of that just in the past week.
Add the record sea ice extent this year for Antarctica. And NASA issued two reports that pin the low Arctic sea ice on wind and currents and a strong August Arctic storm that broke up the ice. That led to the low sea ice this year in the Arctic.
The rest of the Earth getting colder and we are supposed to be worried about 2% of it with a bad system of weather stations and manipulated data shows warming?
Really?
Now there is one informed student of climate! Well done economykiller, this is indeed a rare treat to see someone actually looking at the data! Bravo!
No climate change? Maybe someone should ask the polar bears.
The Polar Bears say: "Things are Great, Thanks!".......population increasing, vastly higher than in 1950's and 60's.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/canada/120404/polar-bear-population-healthy-may-be-growing-northern-c
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/story/2012/04/04/north-nunavut-polar-bears.html
"If you think statistics are a pointer towards the growth or decline of a species, it will be interesting to have a look at the estimates published in a 2008 report by U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s. A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain noted that the polar bear populations 'may now be near historic highs,'" it read."
http://www.ibtimes.com/polar-bear-population-higher-20th-century-something-fishy-about-extinction-fears-821075
Twenty-eight percent of the population polled is ignorant and living under a rock... or possibly eating up everything they want to hear and ignoring the rest.
This is really interesting. Here in Central PA, we did have a mild winter, but for the first time in a long time, we actually had a nice spring (we didn't go right to summer), what seemed like a normal seasonal summer, and a normal fall. Also had normal, or very slightly above normal rainfall. Yes, for the last 2 days we had warmer than usual temps, but it's cooled down. I don't think we hit 100* at all this past summer, and it wasn't overly humid either.
It feels to me like the temperature here has gone down steadily since noon.
/sarcasm
Horsehockey....the climate isn't going to change at all in the next 15 days...that's all we have left before whatever plague the Mayans predicted comes and dusts us all.
One of the warmest on record, one of the warmest on record, one of the warmest on record.....we hear a lot.....then they say the records only go back 120 years.
I'll go ahead and admit that when it comes to Social Legislation and Economic Policy I'm a conservative and right leaning. However, extremists on both sides of the aisle need to shut up and the moderates on both sides of the aisle need to sit down and discuss this obvious change in climate patterns world wide. While I'm sure there is some truth to natural climate cycles (warming and cooling) there's also got to be some truth to human activity contributing to it as well. We need our energy, I understand that, and every animal alive will leave a carbon footprint to some degree and humans are no exception, but we all have a responsibility to minimize that as much as we can and to stop being extremists and start being realists. Obama and the Democrats are going after the coal industry for political reasons under the guise of caring about the environment while turning a blind eye to the disastrous effects of fracking for natural gas going on right next door. Meanwhile the Republicans are doing the same thing for the oil and gas companies moving heaven and earth to try and keep these companies from having any environmental liability or responsibilities at all in the name of record profits. It doesn't matter how rich or poor you are, this is a problem that if we don't address now, no amount of money is going to be able to save any of us. Let's expect more of our leaders and expect them to sit down and give climate change some serious attention and open minded thought. If this continues then the rest of the issues we're arguing about won't even matter because whether your state allows gay marriage and pot smoking or not will be a moot point when you wake up one day and your state is under water.
there are no disastrous fracking effects....nearly the entire anti-fracking hysteria is based on a video in which a guy's water lights on fire because he drilled his well into a pocket of naturally occurring methane.....which had nothing to do with fracking at all.
Real environmental hazards from fracking are virtually non-existent. There's been a tiny handful of incidents.
Not referring to the video of the famous lighting the tap water on fire incident. Do some research about ill and dying livestock near these fracking sites. It's possible it's more atmospheric than water related. I'm not saying that it is, I'm just saying keep an open mind and ask questions. If there are no negative side effects from fracking fluid then why not disclose what's in it whether you're required by law to do so or not? Even if fracking fluid does turn out to be harmless, there's enough going on around those sites to warrant investigating more in depth and we should do so. We should repeal any and all laws that guard energy companies from having to disclose information on materials and chemicals used in their process just like any other industry. If it's harmless then it's harmless but don't just follow blindly because the people making a profit off of it say there's nothing to be concerned about.... especially when there's evidence to the contrary.
Leftist BS.
NBC sucks.
I don't know man.... not sure it's doing us conservatives much good by just being competely closed minded to the issue and not even being willing to discuss possibilities and precautions. I mean, we can't deny that there's a whole lot of us and we do leave pollution and a carbon footprint of some degree in our wake. There's enough evidence out there to suggest that something could be happening and we could be contributing to it more than we think. What's wrong with being cautious? I don't propose that we should bend over backwards to the rediculous demands of the extreme left but surely there's some room for compromise and caring. What's the worst that could happen? We leave the air and water a little cleaner for the next generation?
And you're right.... NBC is very leftist. FOX is just as much to the right. I recommend spending equal time listening to all of the national media stations with an open mind and after careful consideration of everything you're read and heard from extreme left and right POV's, I think you'll find most of the real truth somewhere in the middle. We have to come to those conclusions ourselves though and not allow any group or agency to form our opinions for us. Lack of independent thinking and critical thought is the main reason the country is so divided down the middle right now with no hope for compromise or moving forward. Our stalemate congress only reflects what's going on in the hearts and minds of the people they represent. No one is willing to compromise or budge an inch. Much less even consider for a minute they may be wrong about something.
What a completely moronic poll. The answer is actually that AGW is making what would have been a warmer than normal year much warmer than it would have otherwise been. AGW cannot be defined as the definitive and entire cause, but neither can the temperatures be entirely random as it falls well outside of the normal climate behavior and has done so for several years.
TL;DR - AGW is making it warmer than it would otherwise be. It still would have been warmer than normal.
Dumbass polls like this that represent all-or-nothing thinking (ignorance) is why people still stand around arguing about GW and climate change.
More people have air-conditioning in their cars than their homes. More people will be sitting in their idling cars with the air-conditioning on next summer.
Insanity at it's best. Air conditioning.
Some guy gets hot, figures out how to make a machine that takes the heat from his area and dumps it somewhere else. This machine, of course, requires an electric motor releasing BTUs into the environment, same as a small fire. Next guy gets hot because first idiot dumped heat into his area and now gets his own AC.
Next thing you know there are a million zillion ACs, each with their own little fire, dumping heat everywhere just to "cool" us off. Insanity at its best.
2012 will only be the warmest in the USA after 2°F adjustments added by activists. 2012 is not even close to a record in terms of temperature extremes. You can check this yourself. NOAA will still call 2012 a record, that was decided in January. 2013 will be a record too. The adjustments have gone exponential. The temperatures have not.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/ushcn-2-5-cheating-goes-full-hockey-stick/
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/tracking-us-temperature-fraud/
For millennia, Earth has gone thru hot & cold cycles, caused by changes in jet stream patterns. There is no way to control these cycles; man must learn to adapt, or eventually perish like the dinosaurs. North polar icecaps are melting; South polar icecaps are thickening; part of the current cycle. All the hysteria and hand-wringing by the liberal establishment isn't going to change nature.
NOAA and NCDC has got the adjustments at approximately 300% of the presumed AGW signal. The deception is staggering. Fortunately, this is becoming widely known since it is pretty easy to look at the data. One thing they can't control is the record high / record low data, since adjustments and homogenization don't apply (which still doesn't excuse them from using many multiples of the adjustments considered applicable by the literature, mainly Menne and Karl). Get a load of this chart. The recent past is clearly the highest, huh:
http://stevengoddard.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/screenhunter_320-dec-01-11-30.jpg?w=640&h=484&h=484
If they keep cooling the past at the rate they are going, we will never have come out of the last ice age and it will prevent the industrial revolution in the first place. Maybe this is what they are trying to do to prevent sea level rise. Proactively put it back in the glaciers by cooling the past. There can be no other explanation. But this has been going on now under NOAA leadership, and now the deception has gone truly full blown hockey stick. By 2017, I would expect to NOAA to report either the seas are boiling, or they will all be in jail and they will report what the thermometers say. I don't hold out much hope for the 2nd choice.
That's funny, got a couple old folks, 90 and 87 respectively at Church who are saying just the opposite they recall what we had and are having as far as weather as being the norm for this area. And if you read a lot of the books by the people who settled this country, say Lewis and Clark you kind of wonder where the people who write these fantasy pieces obtained their information from. I mean when they got caught and backed into a corner over their lies about Global Warming, which messed up the minds of nearly an entire generation of school children, to save their inflated incomes they collectively created Climate Change...Well I will agree, since the earth was formed, in what ever manner you had imprinted in your mind by the propaganda, the Climate has been changing and I guarantee that to be truthful statement.. The other item the Media is totally ignoring is the HAARP Project in Alaska which warms up a portion of the Ionosphere above it and I surely believe this must be having an effect on the weather since the primary air currents flow over that portion of Alaska which now makes me wonder if Sandy was not created by our own Government....Wouldn't put it past a Socialist Demoncrat to try and create problems in that manner ,Lenin and Stalin both did similar things to fool the people and then disarmed them and executed some 173 million who disagreed with them. Might ask what has happened to the 100 AK-47 type assault weapons stolen out of a Railroad Car in Atlanta in the past week or so, seems the Socialist Media is ignoring that story. I wonder why.. Holderer at work again?
Here is the latest report from people who actually look at the data:
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/18723/New-Report-Extreme-Weather-Report-2012-Latest-peerreviewed-studies-data--analyses-undermine-claims-that-current-weather-is-unprecedented-or-a-new-normal
It's December and I keep my doors and windows open all night long to help keep the house cool. If I close them I need to turn on the Air Conditioning.
Don't you love these brain dead republicans. If you believe what the scientists say about global climate change (or anything the scientists say about anything else) it's your religion and not anything based in reality or science. But to deny science is based in non-religious reality.