
Children walk down Sixth Avenue wearing t-shirts thanks to 60-degree weather on Dec. 10, 2015, in New York City.
(Photo: Andrew Burton--Getty Images)
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Children walk down Sixth Avenue wearing t-shirts thanks to 60-degree weather on Dec. 10, 2015, in New York City.
Let's talk about December 2015. In the interests of brevity--and so you can get away from this screen and outside where the weather, odds have it, is probably flipping gorgeous right now--I'd like to step through a brief montage of recent examples from around the nuzzlingly warm eastern U.S. and get to the point:
This warmth is due to several things, including global warming.
Some recent coverage has muddied this point, so let's help with the clean-up.
People are golfing and mowing lawns in Wisconsin. They're gawking at cherry blossoms in Philly and D.C. My family recently played touch football in t-shirts on a field dotted with dandelions.
Day after day, popular outdoor spots in Northeast cities are transformed into a sea of naked arms, hatless heads, and the occasional bare chest, even as Christmas festoonery blinks incongruously nearby.
Santa, in an enigmatic move, was spotted water skiing in ice-free, snow-free, cold-free Buffalo, NY, and Coon Rapids, MN. My kids are saying things like "it's practically CHRISTMAS!!" and "What the HECK??" And no one in my house has touched a mitten in weeks.
A friend and I recently traded notes about the previous night when she had narrowly avoided the squashing of a non-hibernating frog, and I had squashed a non-waiting-for-spring-to-be-born mosquito.
The nightly news is covering black bears in New England who have put off hibernation to molest bird feeders. Bulbs are sprouting like it's springtime, and my March-flowering quince is December-flowering. There are scattered reports of birds acting badly, like the half-dozen species of warblers, who should by now be as far South as Central America, observed lingering on in Maine and thus courting death. And there are reports of monarch butterflies as if they didn't have enough problems, emerging in December in several New England states briefly. Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, because migration is for suckers.
These things are due to the fact that it's freakishly warm out there.
We've all experienced unusually warm spells. But these numbers help explain the unique nature of recent warmth.
It's warm and snowless because of El Nino, the Arctic Oscillation, AND global warming.
Some recent coverage has muddied the connection and disseminated the idea (mainly through poorly worded headlines, unlike mine) that this heat is not the result of global warming. But of course, the vital underlying fact is that we've already created a good deal of warming (1 degree C, as of these past months), globally, and so the climate phenomena that play out on the world stage today--like this Oct-Nov El Nino, the third hottest since 1950; and this fall's warm Arctic, the highest land temperatures north of 60 degrees North since 1900--are inevitably playing out on top of, and being influenced by, these altered conditions.
The specifics of what's happening where El Nino, Arctic dynamics, and underlying warming meet are complex, and scientists are actively discussing how things might play out. However, the collective bottom line recognizes that global warming plays a role.
As the Guardian reported, NOAA's Deke Arndt puts it this way: "Long-term climate change is like climbing a flight of stairs: over time, you get higher and higher. El Nino is like standing on your tippy toes on one of those stairs. Together, both of those work to create the warmest temperature on record. We would not repeatedly threaten records if we had not climbed the stairs for decades."
Studies suggest that global warming will cause the formation of more extreme El Ninos. However, as the stairs analogy communicates, whether it's possible to blame climate change for this unusually strong El Nino or the ongoing behavior of the Arctic Oscillation doesn't diminish the role of climate change in our current experience.
2015 is the hottest year on record by a wide margin, topping 2014. 2014 became the hottest year, even in the absence of El Nino. We're climbing the stairs, picking up pace, and taking two at a time.
Whatever we want to call December's freakishly warm weather, whatever we're tempted to call the punishing cold and snow that could follow, we ought not to leave out the global warming propping it all up.
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Let's talk about December 2015. In the interests of brevity--and so you can get away from this screen and outside where the weather, odds have it, is probably flipping gorgeous right now--I'd like to step through a brief montage of recent examples from around the nuzzlingly warm eastern U.S. and get to the point:
This warmth is due to several things, including global warming.
Some recent coverage has muddied this point, so let's help with the clean-up.
People are golfing and mowing lawns in Wisconsin. They're gawking at cherry blossoms in Philly and D.C. My family recently played touch football in t-shirts on a field dotted with dandelions.
Day after day, popular outdoor spots in Northeast cities are transformed into a sea of naked arms, hatless heads, and the occasional bare chest, even as Christmas festoonery blinks incongruously nearby.
Santa, in an enigmatic move, was spotted water skiing in ice-free, snow-free, cold-free Buffalo, NY, and Coon Rapids, MN. My kids are saying things like "it's practically CHRISTMAS!!" and "What the HECK??" And no one in my house has touched a mitten in weeks.
A friend and I recently traded notes about the previous night when she had narrowly avoided the squashing of a non-hibernating frog, and I had squashed a non-waiting-for-spring-to-be-born mosquito.
The nightly news is covering black bears in New England who have put off hibernation to molest bird feeders. Bulbs are sprouting like it's springtime, and my March-flowering quince is December-flowering. There are scattered reports of birds acting badly, like the half-dozen species of warblers, who should by now be as far South as Central America, observed lingering on in Maine and thus courting death. And there are reports of monarch butterflies as if they didn't have enough problems, emerging in December in several New England states briefly. Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, because migration is for suckers.
These things are due to the fact that it's freakishly warm out there.
We've all experienced unusually warm spells. But these numbers help explain the unique nature of recent warmth.
It's warm and snowless because of El Nino, the Arctic Oscillation, AND global warming.
Some recent coverage has muddied the connection and disseminated the idea (mainly through poorly worded headlines, unlike mine) that this heat is not the result of global warming. But of course, the vital underlying fact is that we've already created a good deal of warming (1 degree C, as of these past months), globally, and so the climate phenomena that play out on the world stage today--like this Oct-Nov El Nino, the third hottest since 1950; and this fall's warm Arctic, the highest land temperatures north of 60 degrees North since 1900--are inevitably playing out on top of, and being influenced by, these altered conditions.
The specifics of what's happening where El Nino, Arctic dynamics, and underlying warming meet are complex, and scientists are actively discussing how things might play out. However, the collective bottom line recognizes that global warming plays a role.
As the Guardian reported, NOAA's Deke Arndt puts it this way: "Long-term climate change is like climbing a flight of stairs: over time, you get higher and higher. El Nino is like standing on your tippy toes on one of those stairs. Together, both of those work to create the warmest temperature on record. We would not repeatedly threaten records if we had not climbed the stairs for decades."
Studies suggest that global warming will cause the formation of more extreme El Ninos. However, as the stairs analogy communicates, whether it's possible to blame climate change for this unusually strong El Nino or the ongoing behavior of the Arctic Oscillation doesn't diminish the role of climate change in our current experience.
2015 is the hottest year on record by a wide margin, topping 2014. 2014 became the hottest year, even in the absence of El Nino. We're climbing the stairs, picking up pace, and taking two at a time.
Whatever we want to call December's freakishly warm weather, whatever we're tempted to call the punishing cold and snow that could follow, we ought not to leave out the global warming propping it all up.
Let's talk about December 2015. In the interests of brevity--and so you can get away from this screen and outside where the weather, odds have it, is probably flipping gorgeous right now--I'd like to step through a brief montage of recent examples from around the nuzzlingly warm eastern U.S. and get to the point:
This warmth is due to several things, including global warming.
Some recent coverage has muddied this point, so let's help with the clean-up.
People are golfing and mowing lawns in Wisconsin. They're gawking at cherry blossoms in Philly and D.C. My family recently played touch football in t-shirts on a field dotted with dandelions.
Day after day, popular outdoor spots in Northeast cities are transformed into a sea of naked arms, hatless heads, and the occasional bare chest, even as Christmas festoonery blinks incongruously nearby.
Santa, in an enigmatic move, was spotted water skiing in ice-free, snow-free, cold-free Buffalo, NY, and Coon Rapids, MN. My kids are saying things like "it's practically CHRISTMAS!!" and "What the HECK??" And no one in my house has touched a mitten in weeks.
A friend and I recently traded notes about the previous night when she had narrowly avoided the squashing of a non-hibernating frog, and I had squashed a non-waiting-for-spring-to-be-born mosquito.
The nightly news is covering black bears in New England who have put off hibernation to molest bird feeders. Bulbs are sprouting like it's springtime, and my March-flowering quince is December-flowering. There are scattered reports of birds acting badly, like the half-dozen species of warblers, who should by now be as far South as Central America, observed lingering on in Maine and thus courting death. And there are reports of monarch butterflies as if they didn't have enough problems, emerging in December in several New England states briefly. Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, because migration is for suckers.
These things are due to the fact that it's freakishly warm out there.
We've all experienced unusually warm spells. But these numbers help explain the unique nature of recent warmth.
It's warm and snowless because of El Nino, the Arctic Oscillation, AND global warming.
Some recent coverage has muddied the connection and disseminated the idea (mainly through poorly worded headlines, unlike mine) that this heat is not the result of global warming. But of course, the vital underlying fact is that we've already created a good deal of warming (1 degree C, as of these past months), globally, and so the climate phenomena that play out on the world stage today--like this Oct-Nov El Nino, the third hottest since 1950; and this fall's warm Arctic, the highest land temperatures north of 60 degrees North since 1900--are inevitably playing out on top of, and being influenced by, these altered conditions.
The specifics of what's happening where El Nino, Arctic dynamics, and underlying warming meet are complex, and scientists are actively discussing how things might play out. However, the collective bottom line recognizes that global warming plays a role.
As the Guardian reported, NOAA's Deke Arndt puts it this way: "Long-term climate change is like climbing a flight of stairs: over time, you get higher and higher. El Nino is like standing on your tippy toes on one of those stairs. Together, both of those work to create the warmest temperature on record. We would not repeatedly threaten records if we had not climbed the stairs for decades."
Studies suggest that global warming will cause the formation of more extreme El Ninos. However, as the stairs analogy communicates, whether it's possible to blame climate change for this unusually strong El Nino or the ongoing behavior of the Arctic Oscillation doesn't diminish the role of climate change in our current experience.
2015 is the hottest year on record by a wide margin, topping 2014. 2014 became the hottest year, even in the absence of El Nino. We're climbing the stairs, picking up pace, and taking two at a time.
Whatever we want to call December's freakishly warm weather, whatever we're tempted to call the punishing cold and snow that could follow, we ought not to leave out the global warming propping it all up.