The new monthly data from NOAA’s National Climactic Data Center agrees with the NASA data I blogged on a few days ago:

• The globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the fifteenth warmest on record for February, the sixteenth warmest for boreal winter (December-February), and the January-February year-to-date period ranked twenty-second warmest.
• The presence of a strong La Ni±a contributed to a global average temperature that was the coolest since the La Ni±a episode of 2000-2001.

So it was relatively quite warm, even with a strong La Ni±a. No doubt the next El Ni±o year we see will be the warmest year on record. Anybody want to take a $1000 bet against that? Delayer-1000s, where are you?

Jeers to the Bush Administration’s NOAA/NCDC for the headline “NOAA: Coolest December-February Since 2001 for U.S., Globe.” Presumably they are happy to feed the delayer-1000 meme that we’re in a cooling trend. And the Drudge Report was happy to oblige them by running that exact headline.

Let’s get this straight. We have some short-term cooling from a strong La Ni±a. And a little more cooling from being at a solar irradiance minimum. And we still have the 16th warmest winter on record. The planet is warming — deal with it (please). Not only that, but the most abnormally warm place is the worst possible location from the perspective of carbon cycle feedbacks [click to enlarge]:

That’s right. We’re running upwards of 9°F warmer than normal in the land of the permafrost permamelt. This is worrisome because:

1. Siberia contains probably the world’s largest amount of carbon locked away in the permafrost.
2. The permafrost is increasingly not so perma.
3. Much of that carbon would be released as methane, which is 23 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

I’m working on a two-part permamelt update for Climate Progress. Definitely not for the squeamish.

Part 2 of this post will deal with Arctic ice.

See also this Jeff Masters post.

Remember Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, when the Queen’s poisoned apple causes Snow White to fall into a deep sleep until her prince comes to kiss her? If Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Edward Markey (D-MA) have their way, coal-fired power plants will have a similar fate until they can be built with carbon capture and storage.

Tuesday the Congressmen introduced legislation that would put a moratorium on “uncontrolled power plants.” As if Wall Street‘s hesitance to finance coal plants and the looming Lieberman-Warner climate legislation isn’t a big enough hint, Waxman and Markey are hoping to send the very clear signal that regulation is on its way.

Sierra Club has a slightly different spin on the message for coal (subs. req’d):

Sierra Club national coal campaign director Bruce Niles said the Waxman-Markey legislation would challenge electric utility companies into following through on their multimillion-dollar commercial campaign aimed at promoting “clean” coal technologies. “This bill holds them to their rhetoric and will demonstrate whether there is any truth behind the industry’s slick public relations campaign,” he said.

Again, I find it ironic how much money the industry dumps into PR and not, well, the best way to generate electricity.

Back on topic… the bill proposes to ban coal plants that cannot capture and store 85 percent of their emissions and would stay in place until either the EPA (riiight) or Congress enacts global warming policy.

Though Waxman and Markey are two of the top seats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, I doubt this legislation will make it very far. Perhaps if it did, it could kick Congress into gear to discuss global warming legislation (at this point, the Lieberman-Warner bill) and move it through quicker so that the moratorium wouldn’t last as long. But since when has common sense and a clear end goal ever accomplished much in politics?

– Kari M.