Science · Weather

Warm enough for ya?

Bob CollinsBob Collins Nov 18, 2015
2

Weather is not climate, we’re constantly told and while I know it to be true, it was near 60 degrees on the BlogDog walk before sunrise today and that’s not right.

This was confirmed, too, with a headline in the Star Tribune today:

October was the warmest ever recorded on Earth

The average earthly temperature didn’t just break records, the story, originally published in the Washington Post, said; it obliterated them.

In August, the Earth’s average temperature was running so far ahead of 2014, the previous warmest year, that NOAA said there was 97 percent chance 2015 would surpass it. Then, the planet recorded its warmest September ever recorded, also by an unprecedented margin.

A different analysis of satellite data of atmospheric temperatures from the University of Alabama in Huntsville released earlier this month showed that October 2015 was the warmest October in its archive of satellite data.

Britain’s weather service, the Met Office, and NASA said Earth’s average temperature is likely to rise 1 degree Celsius above preindustrial levels for the first time this year.

This milestone is significant since it marks the halfway point to 2 degrees Celsius, the internationally accepted limit for avoiding the worst consequences of climate change.

Check out this new website which gives your local weather for 50 years from now.

The average temperature for this date will be 42, WXshift.com says. You can probably still fetch a good price for your snowblower. If you hurry.

42

It’s been 370 months since the average temperature was average.

The website is a project of Climate Central, Fast Company reports today.

“You can tailor it,” Richard Wiles, Climate Central’s senior vice president tells Fast Company. “In Minnesota, you do the number of days below -10. And you can see it’s just dropping. In St. Louis, how many days below zero. In the past 10 years, they haven’t had a night below zero, and they used to have them all the time.”

“From our point of view, climate is the future for weather,” he says. “It’s the next thing in weather. I think it’s where the stories are, and it’s what people care about more and more.”

It’s about to turn colder, all the way to the 30s in the Twin Cities. That should be a relief from the delight of a warm November morning.

Bottoms up: Climate Change: A boost for northern wines? (Updraft)