January Was America's Warmest on Record

[G_j]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-5600887,00.html

January Was America's Warmest on Record

Tuesday February 7, 2006 10:16 PM


By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Recording the warmest January on record allowed Americans to save on their heating, but like all good things, last month's mildness seems to have been too good to last.

The country's average temperature for the month was 39.5 degrees Fahrenheit, 8.5 degrees above average for January, the National Climatic Data Center said Tuesday. The old record for January warmth was 37.3 degrees set in 1953.

On the other hand, while much of the United States was basking in warm weather, parts of Europe and Asia were being battered by bitter cold. Climate details for the rest of the world for January are expected to be available next week.

During the month the jet stream, a strong high-altitude wind that guides weather fronts from west to east, stayed unusually far to the north, keeping the coldest air in Canada and Alaska, the agency said.

..more..

[Mithras61]

1. Are you telling me...

that even the jet stream is avoiding visiting the USA? :silly:

[lapfog_1]

2. What they are telling you, without telling you

is that global climate change is here... and getting worse.
It's not just a warm winter or two... or even a few other indicators. It's the longest and strongest hurricane season on record, one which saw what was likely the strongest hurricane ever recorded, now the warmest January on record for the US, while Europe suffers one of the coldest winters on record. Everything is a "record"... And that means the climate is changing, at least climate variability is changing. And that's bad news for all of us. (Start by asking what the winter wheat forecast is for the upcoming havers season, follow up by asking what the insect season is going to look like, then start asking when will Europe be able to do spring planting... and then realize that food prices are going up and not just by a little bit. And some places will have food shortages...)

Our climate is like a spinning top... and the top just hit a bump called humankind and our greenhouse gases... so now the top is starting to "wobble" a bit. And that's not good news.

[Mithras61]

3. I'm very aware of all of what you said...

but I was trying to inject a little levity into a very depressing subject. We've squandered most of the time we had to do something and despite the ever increasing signs the current administration keeps telling us everythingisjusthunkydorydonchaworryboutitcauseglobalwarmingisjunkscince.

[lapfog_1]

6. I know... it's all depressing... and a little levity helps

my remarks were not meant to be critical of your humor (which I do appreciate, even though the sky is literally falling).

[Mithras61]

7. Sometimes I laugh...

to keep from crying, and this is one of those times. I'm a little scared by the speed at which the warming seems to be happening, and scared that the tipping point may in fact have come & gone (though there's still debate about IF it exists). We may not be exclusively responsible for the entire climatological shift, but we certainly haven't done much to slow it down. I keep expecting another mini-ice age like the one at the dawn of the industrial revolution.

Of course, to top it all off, we have dinks like the fool at Exxon saying it doesn't matter because we will always be dependant on foreign oil, which aside from being self-serving strikes me as being along the lines of "we'll continue to make sure..."

[Barrett808]

12. It's the mass extinction that depresses me the most

Watching all the beautiful animal species I grew up with disappearing forever. Polar bears, elephants, amphibians. All gone in another generation.

"Watching the world fall apart on TV may be too much for even the stoutest brains to take." -- The Book of the SubGenius

[liberalhistorian]

5. And we are fast reaching

what scientists call the "tipping point", the point beyond which anything effective can really be done to turn things around and try to get back to "normal." And it's happening far faster, and at a far greater rate and scope, than most scientists, even climatologists, had thought.

[lapfog_1]

9. I think this may be the largest surprise that mother nature has

scientists were simply used to thinking in geologic time scales, after all, when the earth reaches the next "stability point" (ice age, warming period, hot zone) it tends to stay there for thousands of years... I think they thought the change was gradual, happening over 100 or 500 years, not a decade or 2... but mother nature may well prove that theory wrong, just like the chemistry lab experiment where you keep adding a drop after drop of acid to the solution, the color change is sudden and complete.

Hopefully, we aren't to the last drop into the beaker just yet... if we can reduce our CO2 emissions by an enormous amount AND do some things to start restoring a balance (plant a bunch of trees... and I remember some experiment where a German scientist scattered granite dust all over the forest floor - just as if an ice age had occurred), maybe, just maybe, we can reverse the climate change scenario.

[Art_from_Ark]

15. Here in the Tokyo area, it's been one of the coldest winters in a while

That's not to say that it was cold by upper Midwest standards or anything, but there was some snow on the ground for a week or more, even in the central city area of Tokyo, which is very unusual. And on the Sea of Japan coast, especially in the Niigata area, there has been record snowfall, and excessive snow accumulation was even blamed on the derailment of a Japanese express train last December.

[Lisa]

13. as a climatologist, I think that's the funniest one-liner ...

.... I've heard all week! Between all the new global warming impacts studies, and hearing about people I know being fired or barred from speaking out -- I've been feeling kind of bummed out lately. Thanks for the laugh!

[Mithras61]

14. Thanks! (n/t)

[liberalhistorian]

4. I'll tell you just how unbelievable and warm this

January was. I moved to Rapid City, SD, from the Cleveland, OH, area, this summer. Rapid City and the rest of western SD don't get the winter weather nearly as bad as the rest of the state, in fact it can actually be pleasant more than once in awhile during the winter.

But we had virtually NO SNOW at all during the entire month of January. That's right, virtually NO SNOW AT ALL. And temps were often in the fifties and upper sixties; in the middle of January, people are walking around in shorts and t-shirts. NEVER, ever, have I ever in my forty one years of life experienced a January with not only virtually NO SNOW but with such constant warm temperatures.

And were things any different back at home, in Cleveland? Hell, no, which is what REALLY surprised me. My son and my parents report that they also hardly had any snow and it was often in the 40's. It rained, but it didn't get cold enough for the rain to freeze or for snow. And one weekend, in the middle of January, it was warm enough for the neighbors to have a fire in their outdoor fire grate, something we usually can't do in the winter. And, get this, not only was it warm enough for a fire, it was warm enough to roast hot dogs and marshmallows, WITHOUT a coat. I couldn't believe it when I heard that. January is almost always a bear of a month in Cleveland, constant cold, blowing snow and ice and several snowstorms. And it was like that throughout much of the rest of the country.

Nope, no global warming/climate change here, nothing to see folks, move along, move along now. :eyes: :mad:

[Boxturtle]

21. Here in south central PA, I found dandylions blooming in my yard

just 2 weeks into the new year!

[Vidar]

8. And still it costs almost $400 to heat a well-insulated home.

[murray hill farm]

10. It is....

warmer everywhere!

[wishlist]

11. Last summer was hottest I ever remember in Western N.C. (mountains)

We were glad to have finally put in central air although we had gotten along fine without it in our house for 25 years due to the elevation with the breezy weather and summer cool spells that used to be typical in the summer. But it was sweltering with high humidity and in the 80's with no relief the entire summer. January was mild here and so was last January too with many days getting up to 60 compared to years ago when it used to be below zero many days in January.

[hatrack]

16. Nothing to see here! Move along and go shopping! Nothing to see here . .

:eyes:

[PurityOfEssence]

17. No rain in Southern California, either

Much as last year was the wettest I can remember here, there have only been three or four days of any appreciable rain since October, and the season is now almost over.

[raccoon]

18. I was just thinking yesterday that this fall/winter, I haven't had to

scrape the frost off my car windows but a very few times.

[Earth_First]

19. Would someone explain that to my energy supplier?

Pigs.

[Tracer]

20. Apparently, it takes a while for energy prices to catch up.

December here was pretty cold. My (gas) heat bill was $492.

January was extremely mild. My heat bll was $495.

Now, I read in the paper that prices will DROP 10% in the next month.

That really makes me excited!! I'm jumping up and down!!

Maybe then I'll only have to pay $445.50!! ($150 more than last year).

[trogdor]

22. My oil usage this season.

Start of season to Dec. 26th: 220 gal.
Dec. 26th to Feb 6th: 130 gal.

November was cold early, so New York ice wine will be abundant and of excellent quality. After that, it got warmer. Only 6 in. of snow on the ground on Christmas Day, and that was a couple weeks old. In January it all melted, and it rained every day. If that were snow, we'd be armpit deep in it. Now it's cooler again. How much cooler? Probably not that much. A couple days in the teens, that's it. I think winter's a wash at this point.

[kineneb]

23. NorCal is soggy

We have had lots of rain, and several big storms that could only be termed monsoons. Over the New Year's weekend, some places got up to 16" of rain. That is why it flooded so badly. CalTrans is still cleaning up the roads that were covered by mud slides. And it is not over.

Judging by the last several years, we will be getting rain into June. This is definately a change from the 1960's (when I was a kid). It would stop raining in mid-May and the rains would return in October. Now we don't get serious rain until mid-November. So the whole rainy season is shifting forwards by a month.

Ok, I am a California Weather-Wuss. But then I have the right- I was born here, and so was Mom.

[donheld]

24. Denver's winter seems to have been cancelled

Steamboat Springs, however, has had 27 feet of snow. That's 324 inches. http://www.steamboat.com/home.aspx