Feb 11 2014
The Earth is gaining heat faster than ever In 2013 the Earth’s oceans accumulated energy at a rate of 12 Hiroshima atomic bombs per second, according to global ocean heat content records from the US National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC). This rapid heating in 2013 compares to an average of 4 Hiroshima bombs per second …
Mar 16 2013
Figure 1: Examples of extreme weather records broken during Australian summer 2012-13. (Source: Climate Commission) Australia is recovering from its hottest summer on record, dubbed the “Angry Summer” by the Australian government’s independent Climate Commission. Australia has been experiencing record heat since September 2012. Central Australia suffered a spate of heatwaves during spring, culminating in …
Jan 24 2011
Last year’s global temperatures are in, and the result is that 2010 is statistically tied with 2005 for the title of the warmest year since records began in 1880. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center (NOAA NCDC), the global temperature for both years was 0.62°C above the 20th-century …
Nov 23 2010
This post was written for Skeptical Science as the first part of a series on the fake scandal of Climategate. It’s bad enough that global warming contrarians are successfully misleading the public by propagating misconceptions about climate science. But recently it has become popular to attack climate scientists themselves, to accuse them of fraud and …
Oct 23 2010
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) have just updated their global surface temperature anomalies to include this September, so I thought it was time I updated my 2010 temperatures page, which was becoming rather neglected. To recap, the year began with an unusually cold winter in northern land areas which had a disproportionate impact on …
Sep 25 2010
I haven’t been posting very often recently, and one reason is that I’ve been busy writing for another climate blog called Skeptical Science which, unlike mine, actually has a readership. Skeptical Science is run by John Cook, and basically the core of the site is an increasingly comprehensive database of rebuttals to the arguments of …
Jul 18 2010
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) have announced that the Earth has just experienced its warmest June on record, 0.68°C warmer than the 20th-century June average of 15.5°C. Most of the globe was warmer than usual, with the highest temperature anomalies seen in eastern and western Asia, eastern North America, western South America, and most …
Jul 09 2010
After a two-month hiatus, I’ve finally completed the next installment in my increasingly non-linear series of posts examining the (mostly bad) arguments against the reality of global warming. Originally I had planned out a sort of arc of subjects to cover, but as I learn more about climate science, I find I want to go …
May 12 2010
In Part 2 of this series of posts examining the (mostly bad) arguments against the reality of global warming, I debunked the oft-heard claim that global warming stopped in 1998. Basically, the people who make that claim are just joining endpoints, rather than looking at the trend from 1998 to now. But there is a …
Apr 17 2010
There’s a good chance that 2010 will be the warmest year in the global surface temperature record. So I figured it’s worth keeping an eye on global temperatures this year. I’ll be posting regular updates on a new page called “2010 Global Temperature Watch”. Here’s a sample: 16 April 2010 According to NCDC, the global …