7 ms·

More here at John Baez's blog: https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2016/03/03/global-temperature-spike/ https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2016/03/03/global

• msravi 11y ago
  Since the graph plots "monthly mean global surface temperature" how do we know that it is not skewed by large temperature increase in a few urban cities, versus a widespread increase across the globe? The reason I ask, is that higher urban temperatures can be explained by local effects rather than global effects, and we need to be sure where the problem is to tackle it effectively. Is there per-city/region data that goes back a significant number of years to do this sort of study?
  • anon1385 11y ago
    Yes that data exists. No, urban effects don't account for much of the temperature rise. http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect.htm http://www.skepticalscience.com/urban-heat-island-effect.htm In the case of last month in particular a lot of the biggest anomalies were in the arctic where there are no urban cities (see the map in the Guardian article).
    • mSparks 11y ago
      I wonder what that graph looks like if you scroll it back 10000 years... You know during the ice age. Wish these climate nutters would stop trying to send us back there. It wasn't very nice.
    • th0waway 11y ago
      I'd have to disagree with the UHI paper because of personal experiences in my own life - I live outside a major metropolitan city. Over the past twenty years, I have noticed that the heat-island has expanded as the city has expanded. There is a noticeable difference. Any measurements made within the heat-island are affected.
  • Arnt 11y ago
    Sure, lighthouse logbooks for example.
  • hackuser 11y ago
    It seems very unlikely that all those local anomolies coincidentally aligned and were so extreme that they resulted in this extreme, first-in-history, global event.
• mkesper 11y ago
  From that blog: Keep in mind that it took from the dawn of the industrial age until last October to reach the first 1.0 degree Celsius, and we’ve come as much as an extra 0.4 degrees further in just the last five months. As of Thursday morning, it appears that average temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere have breached the 2 degrees Celsius above “normal” mark for the first time in recorded history, and likely the first time since human civilization began thousands of years ago.
  • barney54 11y ago
    We are in the middle of a powerful El Niño. Let's see where global temperatures are in 6 months when El Niño fades.
    • tremon 11y ago
      probably even warmer: The month did not break the record for hottest month, since that is only likely to happen during a northern hemisphere summer, when most of the world’s land mass heats up.
    • hackuser 11y ago
      El Ninos have been occurring for (thousands? millions? billions?) of years, yet nothing like February ever happened before.
      • writtles 11y ago
        I didn't realize the scope of our data went back that far!
  • Nutmog 11y ago
    "highest in recorded history" is quite a misleading statement. What if used daily measurements instead? Maybe the peak would have been some other time. What if you looked at specific places, their peaks would all be at different times, and many would be wildly far from that baseline by tens of degrees C. What if you averaged over a whole year instead of just a month? This peak will surely flatten out if you do that. What if you averaged over several years or any other time period? So it's not as if people haven't experienced this type of climate before. We didn't even know we'd had it until the satellite told us! That's how hard it is to notice. Yet we easily notice the difference in local temperature from day to day because the swings are much more massive.