Global warming is like the Energizer bunny. It just keeps going and going and going. The big difference is that there aren’t any “Energizer bunny” deniers, claiming that the bunny stopped moving 18 years ago!
Not only did NOAA report Monday that last month was the hottest September on record, but they also pointed out, “The past 12 months — October 2013–September 2014 — was the warmest 12-month period among all months since records began in 1880.”
NOAA climatologist Jessica Blunden says “It’s pretty likely” that 2014 will break the record for hottest year.” The AP reports:
Some people, mostly non-scientists, have been claiming that the world has not warmed in 18 years, but “no one’s told the globe that,” Blunden said. She said NOAA records show no pause in warming.
To paraphrase Taylor Swift, fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake, but we’re just gonna bake, bake, bake, bake, bake.
What’s especially amazing is that 2014 is poised to break the global temperature record despite the fact that it isn’t an El Niño year. It is usually the combination of the underlying long-term warming trend and the regional El Niño warming pattern that leads to new global temperature records, as NASA has explained.
But the underlying trend of human-caused warming is simply too strong to be denied, as it were. If we want to slow it down and ultimately stop it before it destroys a livable climate, we need to slash carbon pollution ASAP.
Why does NOAA think 2014 will be a record? They released this chart as a supplement to their September global temperature report (click to enlarge):
NOAA explains:
These graphics compare the year-to-date temperature anomalies for 2014 (black line) to what were ultimately the five warmest years on record: 2010, 2005, 1998, 2003, and 2013. Each month along each trace represents the year-to-date average temperature. In other words, the January value is the January average temperature, the February value is the average of both January and February, and so on.
The graph at the top of this post, by Things Break, uses NOAA’s purple projection, which assumes that each of the last three months of 2014 matches its 3rd warmest value on record. As NOAA explains, “Each of the last six months (April through September) have been 3rd warmest or warmer.” In fact, four of the last five months — May, June, August, and September — have been first (or tied for first) warmest, so there’s a good chance 2014 will be warmer than this projection.
I asked Dr. John Abraham, a climate expert who follows global temperature trends closely, what it would mean if this becomes the hottest year on record despite the fact that there’s been no El Niño. He told me:
It is likely we will have the hottest year on record. The surprising fact is this year has not had an El Niño. This year was not supposed to be hot, at least according to those who think climate change had stopped. But the real facts tells us a different story, the Earth is still warming, the “pause” never really was, and once again…. The contrarians were wrong.
When will the media and politicians will stop paying attention to the dangerously wrong deniers and confusionists?