Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.
No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.
Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.
Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging
than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans --
and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer
to 70.
Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate
Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as
the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.
Update 2/27: The graph for HadCRUT (above),
as well as the linked graphs for RSS and UAH are generated month-to-month; the
temperature declines span a full 12 months of data. The linked GISS
graph was graphed for the months of January only, due to a
limitation in the plotting program. Anthony Watts, who kindly
provided the graphics, otherwise has no connection with the column. The
views and comments are those of the author only.
From: Mathaba
The dangerous snow load has kept roofing contractors and homeowners scrambling.
"People can't keep up with the snow. They think it's going to stop, but it's just not stopping," said Shawn Greenwood, owner of Greenwood Construction, in St. Johnsbury, Vt. "I've been roofing for 20 years and this is the worst I've ever seen. I was shoveling a roof off one day two weeks ago and the house next door caved in."
In Vermont, Burlington's 7.6 inches pushed the official snowfall past the February record of 34.3 inches and the winter record from December, January and February of 96.9 inches.
Concord already had set a record for the snowiest December, January and February, and the storm pushed the total for the three months to 97.5 inches. For the entire snow season, Concord has seen 99.6 inches, off the record of 122 inches, set in the winter of 1873-74, but still enough to make it the 10th snowiest winter on record.
In northern Maine, Caribou had seen 144.5 inches this season as of Wednesday morning, putting it on pace to break the record of 181.1 for the entire season, said National Weather Service meteorologist Mark Turner.
Parts of eastern New York State also had gotten as much as a foot of snow, closing dozens of schools in the region, mostly in the Albany area.
Farther west, lake effect snow fed by moisture from Lake Michigan piled up nearly a foot deep Wednesday in northwest Indiana, and forecasters said totals could reach 20 inches by Thursday morning.