NASA: Easily the hottest April - and hottest Jan-April - in temperature record

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Plus a new record 12-month global temperature, as predicted

It was the hottest April on record in the NASA dataset. More significantly, following fast on the heels of the hottest March and hottest Jan-Feb-March on record, it's also the hottest Jan-Feb-March-April on record.

The record temperatures we're seeing now are especially impressive because we've been in "the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century." It now appears to be over. It's just hard to stop the march of manmade global warming, well, other than by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that is.

Most significantly, NASA's March prediction has come true: "It is nearly certain that a new record 12-month global temperature will be set in 2010.″

Software engineer (and former machinist mate in the US Navy) Timothy Chase put together a spreadsheet using the data from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (click here). In NASA's dataset, the 12-month running average temperature record was actually just barely set in March — and then easily set in April.

Actually, NASA first made its prediction back in January 2009:

Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance."

Of course, there never was any global cooling — see Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira — "To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous."

In fact, the 12-month record we just beat was set in … 2007!

Moreover, the overwhelming majority of recent warming went right where scientists had predicted — into the oceans (see "How we know global warming is happening"):

Figure 1: "Total Earth Heat Content [anomaly] from 1950 (Murphy et al. 2009). Ocean data taken from

Domingues et al 2008

."

Another 2009 article (draft here) details an analysis of "monthly gridded global temperature and salinity fields from the near-surface layer down to 2000 m depth."

Figure 2: Time series of global mean heat storage (0–2000 m), measured in 10⁸ Jm^-2.

Still warming, after all these years! And just where you'd expect it. This study makes clear that upper ocean heat content, perhaps not surprisingly, is simply far more variable than deeper ocean heat content, and thus an imperfect indicator of the long-term warming trend. And the surface temperature is even more variable.

NASA's recent draft paper reported: "We conclude that global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade" and "that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20°C/decade that began in the late 1970s."

link

Edited May 18, 2010 by El Buscador

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

We have been freezing our butts off, and they are still getting snow in the Sierras. I call bullshit! Edited May 18, 2010 by ##########

[The_Dude 1,142]

We have been freezing our butts off, and they are still getting snow in the Sierras. I call bullshit!

Because 'Bill's Anecdotes' trumps NASA science

[George W. Bush 6]

Clearly, Obama has filled NASA to the brim with government-knows-best liberals with their fancy thermometers and spreadsheets and science.

[The_Dude 1,142]

Clearly, Obama has filled NASA to the brim with government-knows-best liberals with their fancy thermometers and spreadsheets and science.

So whose sock puppet are you?

[JohnSmith2007 353]

Ok, so the short term weather has been warm in some areas. It has been cold as hell here in Minnesota. It even snowed the other day. It proves nothing. Climate and weather are two different things.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Because 'Bill's Anecdotes' trumps NASA science

Common sense trumps hippie propaganda.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

So whose sock puppet are you?

Member #1. He likes to play.

[Obama 2012 1,714]

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

A crippling carbon tax MUST be imposed!!!