The Hot Climate Trend Continues in April and the Arctic is Melting

2014 set a record for the hottest year on record. 2015 beat that to become the new hottest year. And 2016 is well on its way to becoming the third year straight setting a new record for hottest year in global climate.

So much for the non-"pause."

NOAA released its April 2016 data this week and reported that April is the 12th straight month of heat records. It wasn't just the hottest April ever recorded, it was the biggest heat gain for April since global records began in 1880. The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces was 0.10 degress C (1.98 degrees F) above the 20th century average. That's huge.

In the graphic above (larger here), all the pink and red are warmer than normal, with the darker reds showing the greatest warming. The blues and whites are areas where it was cooler in April. Not surprisingly, climate denial lobbyists like to talk about the small areas of blue and ignore the rest of the red planet.

This isn't just warming, it's staggeringly increased warming. And this is even though 2015 already showed a huge jump from the normal range of warming. In short, it's getting hot. Really hot.

NASA released its data a few days prior to NOAA and it also shows a record April and continuation of a long trend of record heating. There really is no way to deny the heating that has been taking place. Nor the cause, which is primarily human combustion of fossil fuels that is putting huge amounts of excess CO2 into the atmosphere and oceans.

The Arctic is melting

All of this heat is having a horrific effect on sea ice extent in the Arctic. We've seen a continuing trend towards reduced ice extent during the summer in the Arctic. This year it's been even worse. As noted many times, Arctic sea ice grows in the winter and melts in the summer (though not completely). This winter had the worst sea ice extent growth on record. Not only is that bad but it starts off the melt season with a lot less ice than normal, which is reflected in the current sea ice extent as of mid-May that is well below this time during the record season of 2012. (Larger here)

The annual minimum won't be until September and conditions could change, but with such a bad start it's entirely possible we could hit a record low ice amount this summer.

Alaska is baking

Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it does. At 320 miles above the Arctic Circle, Barrow, Alaska is the last place you would expect to lose snow cover. It's already melting. Alaska has experienced record heat and May 13th set the earliest snowmelt date ever recorded. It smashed the previous record.

The early melting follows a record-setting winter that saw temperatures average more than 11 degrees above normal...shattering the previous record set in 2015.

Worse, "an ominous series of openings, known as leads, extending deep into the Arctic" have opened up as sea ice is already showing signs of massive breakup. It's not pretty.

All of this doesn't bode well for the summer. This year (2016) is currently on track to break the global heat record set in 2015 (which broke the previous record of 2014), and we're on pace to have the worse Arctic melt year on record to boot.

While climate denier lobbyists desperately search for a "pause" in warming, the climate just keeps on getting hotter.

How Climate Deniers Take Advantage of Science to Lie About Science

It's a recurring practice. A new climate study comes out and suddenly the internet is saturated with "reinterpretations" by climate deniers of what the study says. This is how climate denier lobbyists misrepresent, aka lie, about the science. The most recent is how they have lied about a new study released by NASA regarding mass gains in Antarctica.

Keep in mind that science is incremental. One study generally isn't meaningful by itself. Science is the compendium of all related studies. For example, one study may suggest that (under the conditions of the study) Antarctica is gaining more ice than it is losing while other studies show that West Antarctica may have gone into a state of irreversible retreat. That doesn't make any one study right or wrong, merely additional data points in the total understanding of the science. It's how science works.

A summary of this particular study being misrepresented can be found in NASA's press release. You can download the full study as a PDF file from this journal site. I highly recommend anyone wanting to understand the study read the actual paper because press releases often do a lousy job of communicating the science. Yes, I know, communicating the science is what press releases are designed to do, but my experience tells me that they  introduce confusion as often as they inform, in part because they report single studies and not the total science. I'll tackle that topic in another post.

The inadequacy of press releases for studies and the very nature of how science works results in opportunities for climate denier lobbyists to exploit uncertainties. And that is exactly what they do.

In this case we have information that may (or may not) contradict other information and the lobbyists pounced on it. As is their standard tactic, deniers take one point from the paper, fabricate an entire story line that fits their narrative, and put the false story line out on their paid lobbyist blog and media outlets. These lobbyists know that their false story will be plagiarized and repeated on every conspiracy and political blog by ideologues until the blogosphere is saturated with the false interpretation. That's how climate denial lobbyists work.

Greg Laden, a scientist who writes on Science Blogs, explains how the NASA study has been "misunderstood." [I think Greg is giving the blogosphere too much benefit of the doubt by using the term "misunderstood;" as the recent revelations about Exxon's knowledge decades ago that fossil fuels were causing climate change show, climate denial lobbyists know they are misrepresenting (i.e., lying about) the science. It's intentional.] That said, Greg notes that to begin with, the study may not be correct. While touted as "recent data" the data set used actually ended in 2008 so would miss the rapid ice loss of the last seven years. As Greg notes:

The last decade of research on Antarctica have shown, in many studies using a variety of techniques, that Antarctica is contributing to sea level rise. They have also shown that the rate of melting in Antarctic is probably increasing. Even more importantly, they have indicated that certain areas of Antarctic are current in a state of instability, suggesting that the rate of contribution of the southern continent’s ice mass to sea level rise may increase abruptly in the near future.

So the study, like all studies, needs to be placed into context with the state of the science. Deniers never do that; they cherry pick what they like and make believe all the rest of the science doesn't exist. This tactic is so prevalent in climate denial that the lead scientist of the study even predicted that climate deniers would misrepresent his work, which is exactly what they did, as reported in the above linked article:

"I know some of the climate deniers will jump on this," but "it should not take away from the concern about climate warming."

The first lesson here is that it isn't appropriate to take one study and assume it represents the total state of the science. Science is the sum total of all the relevant studies. The second lesson is that the climate denial lobbyists knowingly and willfully misrepresent single studies and then draw global "state of the science" conclusions that are inconsistent with the sum total of all the science.

NASA Reaffirms Scientific Integrity Policy

According to a press release issued on December 16th:

NASA has reaffirmed its commitment to science with the release of a new framework on scientific integrity. The framework summarizes the agency's policies and practices that strengthen and uphold scientific integrity. This represents the first time NASA has codified these policies under the umbrella of scientific integrity.

"Integrity is woven throughout the fabric of NASA, and science plays a leading role in that," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "This framework reflects and strengthens our commitment to open, honest, unrestricted and fair science practices, and sustains a culture that promotes them."

To support this culture of transparency, the framework reaffirms NASA's public communications policy of 2006, which states NASA scientists may speak freely with the public about scientific and technical matters.

"The ability to accurately and widely communicate our amazing science discoveries is one of our highest priorities," said NASA Chief Scientist Waleed Abdalati at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "NASA set a high standard with its forward-looking communications policy in 2006, and today we welcome the opportunity to join other agencies that are re-dedicating themselves to the highest standards of scientific excellence and advancing public trust in our discoveries."

NASA and other federal agencies submitted scientific integrity policies in response to a memorandum issued by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in December 2010. NASA's framework expands on the President's Memorandum to Department and Agency Heads on Scientific Integrity issued March 9, 2009, and specifies how the agency will address key issues.

In addition to public communications, the framework addresses professional development of government scientists and engineers, peer review and other topics. In developing its framework, NASA leadership evaluated the agency's existing policies and sought opportunities to improve and build on them. The agency currently is revising certain policies, including directives on the use of federal advisory committees. NASA will continue evaluating and improving policies within the framework through its formal review and renewal process.

Click here to download a PDF and read NASA's Framework on Scientific Integrity.

2010 - Warmest Meteorological Year, Tied for Warmest Calendar Year

The warming of the planet has been on a bit of a tear lately, with most of the hottest mean global annual temperatures occurring in the last 10-15 years.  Last month the National Air and Space Administration (NASA), one of the major climate science research agencies in the world, announced that the 2010 Meteorological Year (which runs from Dec. 2009 to Nov. 2010) was the warmest in NASA's 130-year historical record.  This week another climate research agency, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), reported that the 2010 calendar year (Jan. 1 through Dec 31) was tied with 2005 as the warmest in the record.

The NASA-reported Meteorological Year data show ocean and land average global temperature as 14.65˚C, which is 0.65˚C warmer than the average global temperature of the reference period between 1951 and 1980.  NOAA's data for the calendar year show that the average temperature in 2010 was 58.12˚F, the same as in 2005, both of which are 1.12˚F above the 20th-century average of 57˚C.

Overall, it was the 34th straight year that the average global temperatures were above the baseline average.  And this year did so despite the presence of a La Nina in the eastern Pacific, a phenomenon that generally dampens the warming effects somewhat.  The January to December 2010 (calendar) year temperature anomalies can be seen in the graphic below (source: NOAA National Climatic Data Center).

The bottom line is that the planet continues to warm dramatically.  According to NCDC, "the decadal global land and ocean average temperature anomaly for 2001–2010 was the warmest decade on record for the globe, with a surface global temperature of 0.56°C (1.01°F) above the 20^th century average. This surpassed the previous decadal record (1991–2000) value of 0.36°C (0.65°F)."

For more of the NOAA data, check out the National Climate Data Center web site.