Two credible scientific datasets are suggesting that Earth, like George Clooney or Elle MacPherson, is getting hotter with age. Buckle your seat-belts and let the Climate Change debate begin!
The past three months were collectively the warmest ever experienced since record-keeping began in the late 19th Century. The Japan Meteorological Agency, which has been tracking global temperatures since 1891, reported that April, May and June nabbed individual titles as the warmest-ever of those months on record – and, when considered together – they also represent the planet’s hottest quarter year .
Bear in mind, this isn’t just saying that these temps are the highest in the past 123 years. We don’t have records predating 1891 – so, theoretically, these could be the peaks of the past 1,230 or 123,000 years!
The agency states that the quarterly average was about 0.68 degrees Celsius (1.22 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 20th-century average. Hardly enough to ruin your summer vacation, but the knock-on to worldwide weather and climate events is arguably significant.
As reported by tech website Future Slate,”abnormally warm ocean water helped spawn the earliest hurricane ever recorded to make landfall in North Carolina, and a rash of heat waves have plagued cities from India to California to the Middle East.” Additional heat is being produced by a building El Niño emerging in the Pacific, and, for this time of year, Arctic sea ice is trending near record lows.
Don’t put much stock in the Japanese data? NASA also released its monthly global temperature numbers for June. Using different calculation methods, NASA arrived at nearly identical results (June 2014 dropped to third all-time third warmest, and April was tied for second).
At the same time, these agencies report that in April, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels reached a monthly average of 400 parts per million for the first time in at least 800,000 years.
A “weird science” coincidence that this data is concurrent with Hollywood blockbusters “Godzilla” and “Noah”? Are the numbers (and the conclusions drawn) just fear-mongering and quackery? Or rational indicators that we need to quickly clean up our post-industrial behavior?
We can argue, or we can act.
Image of warming earth from Shutterstock, temperature graph from The Japan Meteorological Agency
