Excuse me while I get out my mink-lined thong...
So after what has been in some cases a record-breaking February here are the facts: a city in Siberia set a new all-time low temperature of -56C. South Carolina had the coldest February on record. California had one of the coldest Feb's ever. Here in Ottawa Canada, the second coldest capital city in the world already (only "wursted" by Ulan Bator of Mongolia) we had one of the six coldest Februaries on record. The temperature in the southern Atlantic has dropped over two degrees, making last year one of the 'lightest' ever for violent storms. And the northern Indian resort town of Shimla had the coldest February on record and the most snow since 1908!
Serve these plums to Chicken Littles everywhere:
A new report on climate over the world's southernmost continent shows that temperatures during the late 20th century did not climb as had been predicted by many global climate models.
This comes soon after the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that strongly supports the conclusion that the Earth's climate as a whole is warming, largely due to human activity.
It also follows a similar finding from last summer by the same research group that showed no increase in precipitation over Antarctica in the last 50 years. Most models predict that both precipitation and temperature will increase over Antarctica with a warming of the planet.
David Bromwich, professor of professor of atmospheric sciences in the Department of Geography, and researcher with the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, reported on this work at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science at San Francisco.
"It's hard to see a global warming signal from the mainland of Antarctica right now," he said. "Part of the reason is that there is a lot of variability there. It's very hard in these polar latitudes to demonstrate a global warming signal. This is in marked contrast to the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula that is one of the most rapidly warming parts of the Earth."
Bromwich says that the problem rises from several complications. The continent is vast, as large as the United States and Mexico combined. Only a small amount of detailed data is available. There are perhaps only 100 weather stations on that continent compared to the thousands spread across the U.S. and Europe. And the records that we have only date back a half-century.
"The best we can say right now is that the climate models are somewhat inconsistent with the evidence that we have for the last 50 years from continental Antarctica .
"We're looking for a small signal that represents the impact of human activity and it is hard to find it at the moment," he said.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/osu-atd021207.php
It's not that Mark Johnson, Dick Goddard, Mark Nolan, Jon Laufman or former Cleveland weatherman Don Webster disbelieve the data entirely.
But they're skeptical, and they don't believe that it's necessarily our fault or that we should panic over it.
"We have maybe 100 years of data on a rock that's 6 billion years old," said Johnson, a WEWS Channel 5 weatherman. "Mother Nature tends to even herself out, and the fact is, the Earth is cyclical."
Goddard, WJW Channel 8 meteorologist, said scientists have flip-flopped on the matter: "I have a file an inch thick from 30 years ago that says the planet was cooling," he told the crowd of several hundred.
They cautioned listeners not to put too much stock in what they said was an insufficient history of warming.
"The term global warming' strikes fear in the heart of people every time you say it, but it's simply a rise in temperature over time, and it's happened before," said Nolan, meteorologist at WKYC Channel 3. "I'm not sure which is more arrogant for humans: to say we caused it or to say we're going to fix it."
http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1171620847309210.xml&coll=2
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