Record leap in carbon dioxide seen in 2015, say NOAA scientists

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The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increased at a record pace last year, US government scientists reported, raising new concern about one of the top greenhouse gases and the effects of global warming.

The measurement came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.

"The annual growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide... jumped by 3.05 parts per million during 2015, the largest year-to-year increase in 56 years of research," said a NOAA statement.

Last year also marked the fourth consecutive year that CO2 grew more than two parts per million.

As of February, the average global atmospheric CO2 level was 402.59 parts per million. This is a significant rise over pre-industrial times. Prior to 1800, atmospheric CO2 averaged about 280 ppm.

"Carbon dioxide levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of thousands of years," said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA's Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network.

"It's explosive compared to natural processes."

NOAA said the jump in CO2 is partially due to the weather phenomenon known as El Nino, which warms some parts of the world's oceans and causes unusual precipitation and drought patterns.

The rest of the growth is driven by continued high emissions from fossil fuel consumption, said NOAA.

The last time a similar jump in CO2 was observed was in 1998, also a strong El Nino year.

"The impact of El Nino on CO2 concentrations is a natural and relatively short-lived phenomenon," said a statement by World Meterological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

"But the main long-term driver is greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. We have the power and responsibility to cut these," he added.

"This should serve as a wake-up call to governments about the need to sign the Paris Climate Agreement and to take urgent action to make the cuts in CO2 emissions necessary to keep global temperature rises to well below 2 degrees Celsius."




http://phys.org/news/2016-03-carbon-dioxide.html
 
2015/16... Warmest winter on record.

Lower 48 States Just Experienced the Warmest Winter on Record
Winter 2015-16 was the warmest on record in the contiguous United States dating to the late 19th century, according to a government report released Tuesday.

The mean temperature from December through February, known as meteorological winter, over the Lower 48 states was just over 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term (1901-2000) average for that three-month period.

This shattered the previous record warm winter set in 1999-2000, according to NOAA's February U.S. State of the Climate Report.
Warmest of all was New England. Every New England state topped its record warmest winter.

Traditionally cold Maine was a whopping 8.6 degrees F warmer than average, and the statewide mean December-February temperature in Massachusetts was above freezing (33.7 deg. F) for only the third time on record, topping winter 2001-2002 and 2011-2012.

Only winter 2001-02 was warmer in both New Jersey and New York than December-February 2016.

Alaska also had its second warmest winter, with the statewide temperature just over 10 degrees above average. Only the winter of 2000-2001 was warmer in the "Last Frontier". February 2016 was the record warmest in Alaska, topping a record from 1942.
https://weather.com/news/climate/news/record-warmest-winter-us-2015-2016

Poor Borrbo
 
Watermark is The Enemy said:
You blasted your anomaly from the rooftops, don't expect us not to respond in kind.
Click to expand...
Yes it is all about by the US of A, Central Vietnam had snow for the first time in living memory but that doesn't count. In fact both Vietnam and Thailand were incredibly mild in January and February. If you ever got a job you might actually travel and wise up a bit about the world.
 
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Moonflower said:
Yes it is all about by the US of A, Central Vietnam had snow for the first time in living memory but that doesn't count. In fact both Vietnam and Thailand were incredibly mild in January and February. If you ever got a job you might actually travel and wise up a bit about the world.
Click to expand...

It's never been hotter in the winter all across the nation for two months.
Poor Borbo
 
Climate science has progressed so much that experts can accurately detect global warming's fingerprints on certain extreme weather events, such as a heat wave, according to a high-level scientific advisory panel.

For years scientists have given almost a rote response to the question of whether an instance of weird weather was from global warming, insisting that they can't attribute any single event to climate change. But "the science has advanced to the point that this is no longer true as an unqualified blanket statement," the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reported.

Starting in 2004, dozens of complex peer-reviewed studies found the odds of some extreme events — but by no means all — were goosed by man-made climate change. This new field of finding global warming fingerprints is scientifically valid, the academies said in a 163-page report released Friday. The private non-profit has advised the government on complex, science-oriented issues since the days of President Abraham Lincoln.

When it comes to heat waves, droughts, heavy rain and some other events, scientists who do rigorous research can say whether they was more likely or more severe because of man-made global warming, said academies report chairman David Titley, a Pennsylvania State University meteorology professor. And that matters.

"While we plan for climate, we live in weather," Titley, a retired Navy admiral, said in an interview. "These extremes are making climate real when in fact they are attributable to climate change."

"For a certain class and type of event there is a human fingerprint," said report co-author Marshall Shepherd, a University of Georgia meteorology professor. The report says there is "high confidence" in studies looking for climate change connections between extreme hot and cold temperatures, such as the Russian heat wave of 2010.

In some cases heat and lack of rain combine and the studies find a viable connection to global warming, such as in the recent four-year California drought and the drought that hit Syria and neighbors, Titley said.

"The fog of uncertainty that obscured the human role in individual events is finally lifting," said Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer.

Good attribution studies are based on what Titley calls a "three-legged stool" of observational records of decades of past events, detailed understanding of the physics that cause the weird weather itself, and sophisticated computer models that simulate the chances of the extreme event if there were no man-made, heat-trapping gases warming the atmosphere.

"It's just like an autopsy," said Martin Hoerling, a National Oceanic Atmospheric and Administration research meteorologist who has conducted several attribution studies, finding a climate change connection in some events and not finding a link in others. "We're following the data wherever it goes."

Titley said attribution studies are "based in physical science and statistics that don't value Republicans or Democrats. The ice just melts. This has nothing to do with politics."

http://www.heraldandnews.com/news/nation_world/panel-finding-climate-fingerprints-in-wild-weather-is-valid/article_c96e4d78-be17-5e84-b61a-116a68a50dcd.html
 
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