October 2012: Earth's 5th warmest October on record
October 2012 was the globe's 5th warmest October on record, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) today. NASA rated October 2012 the 2nd warmest October on record. Global temperature records begin in 1880. October 2012 global land temperatures were the 8th warmest on record, and global ocean temperatures were the 4th warmest on record. October 2012 was the 332nd consecutive month with global temperatures warmer than the 20th century average. The last time Earth had a below-average October global temperature was in 1976, and the last below-average month of any kind was February 1985. Global satellite-measured temperatures in October 2012 for the lowest 8 km of the atmosphere were 7th or 2nd warmest in the 34-year record, according to Remote Sensing Systems and the University of Alabama Huntsville (UAH), respectively. Wunderground's weather historian, Christopher C. Burt, has a comprehensive post on the notable weather events of October 2012 in his October 2012 Global Weather Extremes Summary.
Figure 1. Departure of temperature from average for October 2012, the 5th warmest October for the globe since record keeping began in 1880. Several regions around the globe were much warmer than average, including northeastern and southwestern North America, most of South America, northern Africa, southeastern Europe, southwestern Asia, and far eastern Russia. A heat wave brought record warmth to large areas of Brazil and Bolivia. Record heat was also present in southern India. It was cooler than average in parts of northern Siberia, Mongolia, and northern China along with much of central North America. Western Canada was much cooler than average. Image credit: National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) .
El Niño watch discontinued
Neutral El Niño conditions exist in the equatorial Pacific, where sea surface temperatures were 0.4°C above average as of November 12. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center (CPC) has cancelled their El Niño watch, and expects neutral El Niño conditions for the coming winter. Temperatures in the equatorial Eastern Pacific need to be 0.5°C above average or warmer to be considered an El Niño. El Niño conditions tend to bring cooler and wetter winter weather to the Southern U.S.
Figure 2. Arctic sea ice extent in October 2012 (thick black line) was the second lowest since satellite records began in 1979. Sea ice extent has sunk to the lowest values on record for this time of year during the first half of November. The previous record low occurred in 2007 (magenta line.) Image credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and meteomodel.pl.
Arctic sea ice falls to 2nd lowest October extent on record
Arctic sea ice extent during October reached its second lowest extent in the 35-year satellite record, behind 2007, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). Beginning in late October, Arctic sea ice extent began setting new daily record lows again, and it is very likely we will have a new monthly record low for the month of November. I have much more to say about this year's extraordinary loss of Arctic sea ice in my October 20, 2012 post, Earth's attic is on fire: Arctic sea ice bottoms out at a new record low.
Jeff Masters
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I try to stay away from it..it brings out some ugly posts on here from bloggers..
Keep Calm and Carry On!
"A Central Texas river authority will seek an emergency order that could cut off irrigation water from rice farmers for the second year in a row if drought conditions worsen."
This is for the Colorado River. The article needs a better editor though. It contradicts itself on whether the emergency order is to withhold or release water, but bottom line is that drought is still here.
Dr. Masters previous blog covered it. HERE'S A LINK. Sounds like it's supposed to bring some flooding to eastern NC before heading off to sea...
The 5-day precip map shows the worst of it is expected to stay offshore.
1. To what extent are we influencing our climate? (i.e. how much warming are we responsible for? how much is natural variability?)
2. Future projections for a warmer world. (i.e. what are the future consequences of continued warming and how much more will we warm?)
3. What are the best solutions to mitigate this warming?
Debates over whether or not we are warming or whether or not we are responsible only continue as a result of ignorance and stupidity.
Thank goodness for that. And here I'd been needlessly feelin' pret darn ancient what with mistakenly believin' I warn't no teenager no more.
Atlantic
Figure 5. This image provides a snapshot of how ocean depth in the Arctic influences sea ice extent. Sea ice cover for August 28, 2012 is shown in semi-transparent white; ocean depths are indicated in blues, with deeper blues indicating greater depth. Sea ice data are from the Multisensor Analyzed Sea Ice Extent (MASIE), which provides more accurate ice edge position.
Credit: National Snow and Ice Data Center courtesy Jamie Morison/Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington
Research by our colleagues Jamie Morison at the University of Washington Seattle and NASA scientist Son Nghiem suggests that bathymetry (sea floor topography) plays an important role in Arctic sea ice formation and extent by controlling the distribution and mixing of warm and cold waters. At its seasonal minimum extent, the ice edge mainly corresponds to the deep-water/shallow-water boundary (approximately 500-meter depth), suggesting that the ocean floor exerts a dominant control on the ice edge position. However, in some cases, ice survives in the shallower continental shelf regions due to water circulation patterns. For example, the shelf area of the East Greenland Sea is almost always covered with sea ice because the southward-flowing cold Arctic surface water helps to limit melt.
In contrast, ice disappears in shallow areas like the Barents and Chukchi seas that are subject to warm ocean waters and river runoff. River runoff and ice melting have also contributed to changes in the amount and distribution of fresh water in the Arctic.
http://now.dartmouth.edu/2012/10/dartmouth-and-pa rtners-launch-elementa-a-new-scientific-journal/
I'll go out on a limb and suggest that people are more civilized when they are happier. There's an interesting TED talk by Dan Gilbert about how we judge what makes us happy Link. The speaker points out that we tend to overestimate the effect that future events will have on our happiness. For instance, paraplegics surprisingly appear to be just as happy as lottery winners. I invite everyone to watch the video.
From this video, the moral of the story to me is that as climate change continues to narrow the options available to us, we should be just a bit braver when facing the future than we tend to be. We should not be quite as afraid of the change being forced on us as it seems we are--in the speaker's words--not as cowardly.
Tom's in California, he doesn't have a boat.
Read the first sentence in Dr. Master's blog above.
"October 2012 was the globe's 5th warmest October on record, said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) today.
The topic came up because of the news released today.
I doubt Dr. Masters enjoys having serious science being constantly discarded and reviled by deniers every day. He's reporting facts. Today new facts came out.
Why do so many people (this isn't aimed at you ncstorm) assume there's some sort of agenda here besides reporting the facts and our understanding of future models? I really don't understand why the worst trolls here bother to come onto this blog when they're obviously disturbed by the facts day in and day out, unless they're just that pathetically in need of negative attention (or they work for big oil/coal PR firms).
Anyway, the long-term, month to month story of Arctic ice area:
FWIW, 2012 Arctic sea ice area is currently 450,000 square kilometers less than it was on this date in either 2011 or 2007, previous recordholders. 153 daily records have been set so far this year.
Hey, that is very disrespectful to Dr. Jeff Masters.
A Climate Change blog? All it does is show the October temperature anomalies for the globe. He writes one for every month, in case you haven't noticed, but I think you have.
For someone who is a regular of Dr. Jeff Masters' blog you certainly don't pay him the respect he deserves.
If you hate Climate Change arguing so much I think you would be better off just stepping aside and ignoring the discussion instead of posting a needless, disrespectful comment which only adds gasoline to the fire you, yourself, want extinguished.
What does what Reagan did have anything to do with what Obama has done now? Stop attempting to excuse a candidate's failures due to political preference. That's the problem in the first place. We just have a large amount of extremists on both sides that point the finger at the other side and say it's all his/her fault when that individual or that party in power has a fault. However, instead of deciding to make a balanced wise solution, people decided that throwing decision making to the opposite spectrum must be done in order to fix things. Conservatives never take blame or seem to remember how bad an unregulated economy can be as businesses run on ego trips while workers are abused and are treated as slaves.
Now you have left side looking at how conservative extremes failed, and decide that the left extreme can fix things, but now they fail to take the blame for their own failures or seem to even acknowledge them. It doesn't matter which side, its extremism and its the cycle that continues until division between views eventually destroys a nation. Of course, in reality its far more complex and diverse than that, but you should get my point.
Its ironic because there is a growing number of people claiming to be moderate or independent. Yet many political scientists have found this movement has no grounding, because many of these same individuals have very partisan, divisive views when actually questioned where they stand. The amount of people with balanced views always seems to remain small. I don't know why. I hope that might change someday, and it certainly can, but people have to believe they can, and live it.
In all honesty, though, this is a pretty common phenomenon with many more things in life than climate change. At one time when I was younger, I used to be very skeptical of it, and did not believe it, because of individuals like Al Gore who seemed to use it as political movement rather than a motive of scientific education. Furthermore, the media began to simultaneously freak about it for a time. I then concluded it must be fabricated, and they just have maybe one or two scientists who backed it but in reality didn't have enough research.
However, being a meteorology enthusiast, at some point I began to explore the topic for myself, and I have done plenty of research. The more research I've done tells me there has to be climate change. There is too much evidence for it, and too little against it. There is nothing wrong with healthy skepticism. However, the problem is most people don't want to actually do the research, and even if they do, they go in with an attitude against the evidence from the start therefore they label all of it as a hoax, regardless of how much compiled evidence exists.
Very close to last month's average.
That was an isolated case. Most of the people have been
extremely nice at least here in Jersey.
Skye,here is the Mid-November update of the models.
I googled to read the news reports about utility workers being attacked because I've seen this referenced elsewhere and was curious about it. The only references I could find reported one worker from Florida being brutally punched in the face outside a restaurant ...his friend was also injured in coming to his rescue. They have arrested the attacker.
While this was certainly a vicious and brutal act, and fortunately they caught the idiot who punched the poor guy, it's not clear the victim was working or identified as a utility worker before the attack. The guy was badly hurt and I don't minimize that, but I'm not sure it had anything to do with his being a utility worker.
I also googled "sandy kindness and relief efforts" and got a lot of different examples, small and large, from folks donating food and medical care to Katrina survivors sending donations to celebs donating cash and more - quite a range. And, of course, there's Portlight. Are humans capable of being vicious? Absolutely. But they also are capable of pulling together and helping one another in incredibly stressful situations.
Yeah I've noticed that too even though I do not live there. I always keep track of temps across the area during such events. It does appear there is a "barrier" in that region. It's strange to think there would be such drastic change over such a short distance given similar soil composition and virtually the same flat elevation.
What's interesting about human nature, is that it's the long term periods of ease and "good times" that breed the most wickedness in man, whereas in times of trouble, while we never wish them, bring out the best in most people.
Thanks~ The NASA site I get them off of many times has the month before..but it's useful when you can throw in observed a month later & see which models got it. With yours added it stands out even better. The newer ones are trending lower & flatter like the ones that were close the month before.
Is interesting that the CFSv2 model has that big swing down and up and strays from the consensus.
― Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
I enjoy lurking here but I do wish troll-feeding wasn't such a popular pastime. Just point 'em at the relevant bits of http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php or http://grist.org/series/skeptics/ or the relevant RealClimate piece.
Incidentally my favourite explanation about what you can say about climate, statistically, from record-breaking extreme weather events: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/201 1/11/on-record-breaking-extremes/
how is my post disrespectful?..the last blog stayed up how long?..what is mostly in the contents of those so called temperature/climate change/AGW blogs..ARGUMENTS AND NO COMPROMISE!! lets even use some metrics here..count the blogs with just solely content of tropical weather vs climate change and then build an algorithm showing posts complaining about climate change in each of the blogs..guess which topic of blog will come out on top with complaints about AGW/climate change bloggers..its pretty clear who is being disrespectful BUT yet WU has seen an increase in the climate change blogs even adding a dynamite stick rule about discussing politics..I only call it like I see it..
still raining here in NC..looks to stick around for a while..
Link
"We should have preferences that lead us into one future over another, but when those preferences drive us too hard and too fast because we have overrated the difference between these futures, we are at risk. When our ambition is bounded it leads us to work joyfully. When our ambition is unbounded, it leads us to lie, to cheat, to steal, to hurt others, to sacrifice things of real value. When our fears are bounded, we're prudent, we're cautious, we're thoughtful. When our fears are unbounded and overblown, we're reckless and we're cowardly.
"The lesson I want to leave you with from these data is that our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience."
Dan Gilbert
I honestly dont have a problem with the blog topic..its the bloggers who constantly argue about the topic and take it to a whole 'nother level (not speaking of you).. we may be outnumber here but there are bloggers like myself who just get sick of it all..I rather see the blog go at a snails pace than to come in here and see the same bloggers along with their followers call someone ignorant or stupid on account of their belief or reasoning and its allowed..I even emailed Dr. Masters himself about the usage of those words and got ZIP..sounds like to me its not a big thing here to put people down..
High pressure over New England will maintain a cool air wedge over our region. This stagnant weather pattern will allow low clouds and patchy fog to redevelop over most of the region overnight. Isolated showers will remain possible in coastal locations. Lows will generally fall into the 40s inland, ranging to 50 to 55 at the coast and for locations in north central Florida. On the coastal waters, small craft advisory conditions will spread into the nearshore waters as north to northeasterly winds increase. Rough surf will create a high risk for rip currents at area beaches. Scattered showers and isolated thunderstorms will remain possible as a coastal trough develops.
30's and 40's in my area tonight..
Current Newport/Morehead,NC radar
Does that say Sandy's total damages will be over 100 billion? Wow.
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