Summit County Citizens Voice

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2012 likely to be warmest La Niña year on record

By Summit Voice

FRISCO — You know something is up when the incessant shrieks from global warming deniers get louder than ever. Last week’s refrain was, “global warming ended 16 years ago,” based on  incomplete and cherry picked data from the UK.

Instead, the official numbers just released by the National Climatic Data Center show that Sept. 2012 tied 2005 for the warmest global September on record since 2005, despite the fact that the U.S. (only a small percentage of the globe) didn’t come close to setting a record average high temperature. Read the full report here.

According to the NCDC, most of the planet recorded average monthly temps that were well above the long-term norm,including central Russia, Japan, western Australia, northern Argentina, Paraguay, western Canada, and southern Greenland.

Below-average readings were reported in far eastern Russia, western Alaska, southern Africa, parts of the upper midwest and southeast United States, and much of China.

The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for September  60.21 degrees, which is 1.21 degrees warmer than the 20th century average. Land surface temps were the third-warmest on record, 1.84 degrees above average; the global sea surface temperature was 0.99 degrees above average, tied with 1997 as the second-warmest on record.

The year to-date, through September, ranks as the eighth-warmest on record, with sea surface and land surface readings both in the top 10.

Information from the NOAA National Climatic Data Center, State of the Climate: Global Analysis for September 2012, published online October 2012, retrieved on October 15, 2012 from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2012/9.

Filed under: climate and weather, Environment, global warming Tagged: | climate, global warming, National Climatic Data Center, September 2012 global temperatures, State of the Climate