Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Climate Change Update

Image credit: Cujo359

This is the cherry tree I photographed a week ago. As you can see, it's in full bloom, at least a week ahead of the earliest I can remember seeing these blossoms. Over at Two Ton Green Blog, Suzanne reports that the daffodils are up as early as she's ever seen them, and she used to live in California.

As anyone who has been watching the Winter Olympics is probably aware, this has been one of the warmest winters ever in this part of the world:

The Pacific Northwest Canadian city[,] which will host the games from today through February 28, 2010[,] just experienced its warmest January since record keeping began in 1937. Temperatures averaged 44.8 degrees Fahrenheit (7.1 degrees Celsius), considerably warmer than the average of 37.9 degrees Fahrenheit (3.3 degrees Celsius). Average February temperatures for Winter Olympic host cities are typically below freezing.

Vancouver 2010 to Be Warmest Winter Olympics Yet

It's just as unusually warm on this side of the border:

SEATTLE -- It's the worst-kept surprise party in Seattle -- the city officially set a record for the warmest January on record.

The average temperature was 46.97 degrees -- toppling the record of 46.56 degrees set in 2006, and a full six degrees above the normal average of 40.9 degrees. In fact, it's even warmer than a typical March! (which has an average temperature of 46.2 degrees.)

January Was Warmest On Record In Seattle

It's looking to be one of the warmer Februaries, too.

Last month, various Fox "News" personalities suggested that Al Gore and all those climate scientists don't know what they're talking about because it was snowing back East. That would certainly imply that those Fox "News" clowns don't know what they're talking about either.

The same "logic" certainly applies.

Afterword: Yes, I keep harping on this. Rank stupidity deserves to be called out, particularly when it endangers those of us who aren't too stupid to listen to the people who study these things, instead of ridiculing them for telling us things we don't want to hear.


4 comments:

Suzanne said...

other than a couple days where it got down into the teens at night, this oregon winter has felt more like the winters i had 700 miles to the south in the sf bay area in ca.

i figure that i'm double irish enough to know that -- now that i've said its been warm -- we will get some freak snow on the beach in march thing to make a liar outta me.

Cujo359 said...

Unless early March is horrendously cold, I don't think we'll have to worry much about that. This should still be one of the warmest winters on record here. February is shaping up to be a repeat of January. I just hope there's still snow up in the mountains come June, or this could be another summer of water rationing.

Efrique said...

As I've been pointing out to anyone who'll listen, just because it's snowing in Washington D.C. (like that's never happened before!) doesn't mean the *world* is colder.

It's plenty warm where I am. In fact this summer was almost tropical in pattern, warm, high humidity, rain and thunderstorms on many afternoons /evenings. It's only the shift to a more tropical rain pattern that seems to have stopped it being deadly hot (like it was further south - i.e. further from the equator - for a good part of the summer)

Cujo359 said...

In fact, Efrique, in at least some parts of America, it usually has to warm up in winter for snow to form. Something to do with the Gulf Stream. In any case, it's the average temperature that counts, and that's been going up for about a century now.