Global Warming? When its this cold in October, they should call it Global Cooling! Global Warming is still correct. The Earths average surface temperature is rising, and has by about 0.8°Celsius (1.4°Fahrenheit) since 1880. Two-thirds of the aforementioned warming has occurred since 1975; at a rate of approximately 0.15-0.20°C per decade. This is causing regional Climate Change directly affecting regional weather patterns and ecosystems variably, dependent upon a number of anthropogenic factors. The global temperature record represents an average over the entire surface of the planet. The temperatures we experience locally and in short periods can fluctuate significantly due to predictable cyclical events (night and day, summer and winter) and hard-to-predict wind and precipitation patterns. But the global temperature mainly depends on how much energy the planet receives from the Sun and how much it radiates back into space--quantities that change very little. The amount of energy radiated by the Earth depends significantly on the chemical composition of the atmosphere, particularly the amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Temperatures in the lower troposphere have increased between 0.13 and 0.22 °C (0.22 and 0.4 °F) per decade since 1979, according to satellite temperature measurements. Climate proxies show the temperature to have been relatively stable over the one or two thousand years prior to 1850, with regionally varying fluctuations such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age (NASA defines the term as a cold period between 1550 and 1850 CE). A one-degree global change is significant because a vast amount of heat is required to warm the oceans, atmosphere, and land by that much. In the past, a one-to two-degree drop was that was required to plunge the Earth into the Little Ice Age. A five-degree drop was enough to bury a large portion of North America under a towering mass of ice approximately 20,000 years ago. Generally, warming is greater over land than over the oceans because water is slower to absorb and release heat (thermal inertia). Warming may also differ substantially within specific land masses and ocean basins due to topographic, climatic and other variations. From 2000-2009, land temperature changes are 50 percent greater in the United States than ocean temperature changes; two to three times greater in Eurasia; and three to four times greater in the Arctic and the Antarctic Peninsula. Warming of the ocean surface has been largest over the Arctic Ocean, second largest over the Indian and Western Pacific Oceans, and third largest over most of the Atlantic Ocean. This is an obvious effect of human activity--of global industrialization and mass development otherwise, beginning just a few centuries ago. The result is Anthropogenic Climate Change.
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 22:49:12 +0000
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