NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reports:
Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the second warmest on record for October and ninth warmest on record for the January-October year-to-date period.
Given that this report is just out, I'm assuming they have sorted out the data entry issues that briefly caused problems for NASA (see here and here). Also worth noting from the NCDC report:
- According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the October 2008 Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent, which is measured from passive microwave instruments on board NOAA satellites, was the third least October sea ice extent on record, behind 2007 and 2006. Average ice extent during October 2008 was 8.4 million square kilometers, which is 9.5 percent below the 1979-2000 average. Sea ice extent for October has decreased at a rate of 5.4 percent per decade, since satellite records began in 1979.
- El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions remained in a neutral phase during October.
Since interest in the monthly temperature reports is so keen these days, let me repeat the key points from my an earlier post on the monthly data. While the monthly data doesn't tell us much about the climate, the peer-reviewed scientific literature has a couple of interesting forecasts for the next decade:
- The "coming decade" (2010 to 2020) is poised to be the warmest on record, globally.
- The coming decade is poised to see faster temperature rise than any decade since the authors' calculations began in 1960.
- The fast warming would likely begin early in the next decade -- similar to the 2007 prediction by the Hadley Center in Science.
That is why they call it global warming.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments
View as Flat
WWAGD?! Posted 10:20 am
20 Nov 2008
The Crazy World Of Joseph Romm
Tonight
Lows: 36-44
http://www.king5.com/weather/
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Chris McMasters Posted 2:46 pm
20 Nov 2008
Jabailo Strikes his Foe Down! Take that Romm!
You posted some brilliant song lyrics, my friend. Props. Nice work as usual. The low temps in your town certainly prove - nothing.
Chris McMasters
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Bob Wallace Posted 2:10 am
21 Nov 2008
Hey! A sing-a-long...
Wonder why these lyrics came to mind?
Unless our local temps are an anomaly, November figures are going to up in record land.
But most of us know that one swallow does not the summer make....
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 11:57 pm
21 Nov 2008
Joe Romm is willing to remember what...........
.......many people want to forget. Joe is willing to speak out about what others wish to deny.
Please consider an allegory: that a titanic struggle between human beings and the natural world is in the offing. It seems this struggle is fulminating now precisely because too many leaders of the 6.7 billion {soon to be 9+ billion} members of the human family generally do not share the perspective of many within the Orion community. Many too many of our brothers and sisters, especially those with great wealth and power, evidently see human organisms as separate from, and somehow superior to, life as we know it on Earth.
At least to me, it appears that an epochal contest is taking shape on the far horizon between the `team' of "mother culture and father profit" on one side and `Team' Mother Nature on the other.
This could be the greatest show on Earth in 10,000 years.
The team of "mother culture and father profit" appears adamant in its willful intentionality to stay the same old business-as-usual course of recklessly overconsuming limited natural resources; relentlessly expanding large-scale production and distribution capabilities without regard to physical limitations of the natural world; and overpopulating our planetary home, come what may for children and coming generations, biodiversity, the environment and the Earth's body.
Team Mother Nature simply is.
Which team will likely be seen by reasonable and sensible observers as winning the contest for success in 2012, 2020 and 2050, if the human community continues its idolatry of distinctly human overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities by choosing evermore unbridled growth just as we are doing now?
If the leaders of the family of humanity do not choose change, do you have any ideas about which team will prevail and when will the outcome of the colossal contest no longer be in doubt?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1 ...
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