The Planet Has a Fever

Have you felt it? The sweltering summer that has strained the grid? The floods and tornadoes and the hail? The increased humidity where it was a dry heat? The dry heat where it was moist?

The planet has a fever. That's not supposition. The National Climactic Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has recorded year-to-date combined global and and surface temperatures that are the warmest on record.

• The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for April-June 2010 was 1.26°F (0.70°C) above the 20th century average—the warmest April-June period on record.

• For the year-to-date, the global combined land and ocean surface temperature of 57.5°F (14.2°C) was the warmest January-June period. This value is 1.22°F (0.68°C) above the 20th century average.

• June 2010 was the fourth consecutive warmest month on record (March, April, and May 2010 were also the warmest on record). This was the 304th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last month with below-average temperature was February 1985.

• It was the warmest June and April–June on record for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole and all land areas of the Northern Hemisphere.

• Arctic sea ice continued its annual decline, typically reaching a September minimum. Similar to May 2010, the Arctic sea ice continued to decline at a record rapid rate—the fastest measured for June (more than 50 percent greater than average).  Continued...

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NCDC: Drought Spreads across 43% of US

by Janet Ritz

The National Climate Data Center reported this week that the drought parching the south and the west has now spread to the mid-Atlantic states:

National Drought Mitigation Center Drought Monitor

NCDC animation:

1. Short-term U.S. drought conditions
2. Long-term meteorological U.S. drought conditions
3. Long-term hydrological U.S. drought conditions

The agency, according to this CNN report, has pronounced 2007 as the warmest year on record worldwide on land, so far, and was close to the record over the oceans and the fourth warmest overall:

Impacted regions include California, experiencing its driest year on record, which has led to problems like this; the Great Lakes, which are becoming less great daily; Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York, which are all instituting water rationing; Tennessee, which just shut down a nuclear power plant due to inadequate water supplies; Florida, with its disappearing lakes, and Georgia, whose reservoirs have all but disappeared.

At the end of September about 43 percent of the contiguous United States was in moderate to extreme drought, the National Climate Data Center said Tuesday.

Conversely, as indicated in green on the NCDC chart, Texas, which has seen extreme flooding over the past few months, as a great deal of the water that would normally fall upon the rest of the south seems to have stalled there, can expect to see more.

For the 43% of the country desperate for Texas' rain? The NCDC charts point those areas out from beige to brown.