Summit County Citizens Voice

Early season snowstorms aren’t a sign of global-warming slowdown

Average October temps across the country were nearly a full degree above average, but cooler than normal readings prevailed in Summit County.

By Summit Voice

SUMMIT COUNTY — Despite a record-setting Nor’easter — and to the likely frustration of cherry-picking global warming skeptics, who claim that global warming has stopped — October was another warm month across the United States, with the average at 0.9 degrees above the 1901-2000 average.

Eighteen states reported monthly temperatures readings above their long-term averages, while 11 states reported readings below the monthly average. In the Pacific Northwest , in the central and southern plains, and parts of the Midwest reported near average temperatures for October. Most of the states with below average readings were in the Southeast, which was the coolest region for the month, according to the monthly report from the National Climatic Data Center.

For the August-October period, readings across the U.S. were well above the historic average, ranking as the 10th warmest such period on record, especially across the West, where 10 states reported near-record readings.

The Nor’easter at the end of the month brought record snow to several locations, including Central Park, in New York, where 2.9 inches of snow piled up. More than 30 inches were reported in western Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire and knocked out power to more than 3 million people.

With classic disinformation tactics,  global warming deniers like the purveyors of the Real Science website use isolated weather occurences like this storm  to try and cast doubt on the overwhelming body of science showing that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases are causing the Earth to warm at a rather alarming rate. For example, in a classic case of cherry picking, Real Science claims that October 2011 was the coldest of the millenium, ignoring long-term climate trends and bad-mouthing climate scientists at the same time.

Dry and warm weather conditions also resulted in a record-setting wildfire month. More than a half a million acres burned in October, the most-ever on record and more than twice the average for the month.

As of Nov. 1, about 9 percent of the country was categorized as being in exceptional drought, with some improvement across the southern plains, which recorded near-normal precipitation for the month.

Information compiled from the NOAA National Climatic Data Center, State of the Climate: National Overview for October 2011, published online November 2011, retrieved on November 8, 2011 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/2011/10.

Filed under: climate and weather, Environment, global warming Tagged: | climate, global warming, National Climatic Data Center, State of the Climate, weather