{"id":280,"date":"2013-01-09T10:28:17","date_gmt":"2013-01-09T15:28:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/?p=280"},"modified":"2013-01-09T10:28:17","modified_gmt":"2013-01-09T15:28:17","slug":"2012-was-hottest-year-on-record-in-contiguous-u-s-noaa-says-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/?p=280","title":{"rendered":"2012 was hottest year on record in contiguous U.S., NOAA says – The Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>

2012 was hottest year on record in contiguous U.S., NOAA says – The Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

2012 hottest year on record in contiguous U.S., NOAA says<\/h1>\n

By\u00a0Juliet Eilperin<\/a>,\u00a0Published: January\u00a08<\/span><\/h3>\n

Temperatures in the contiguous United States last year were the hottest in more than a century of record-keeping, shattering the mark set in 1998 by a wide margin, the federal government announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The average temperature in 2012 was 55.3 degrees, one degree above the previous record and 3.2 degrees higher than the 20th-century average, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. They described the data as part of a longer-term trend of\u00a0hotter, drier and potentially more extreme weather.<\/a><\/p>\n

The higher temperatures are due in part to cyclical weather patterns, according to the scientists. But the researchers also said the data provided further compelling evidence that human activity \u2014 especially the burning of fossil fuels, which\u00a0produces greenhouse gases<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0is contributing to changes in the U.S. climate.<\/p>\n

The new report has broad ramifications for policy \u2014 and everyday life. Americans who might have thought\u00a0climate change<\/a>\u00a0was a problem for the distant future are experiencing warmer temperatures in their own lifetimes \u2014 \u201csomething we haven\u2019t seen before,\u201d said\u00a0Thomas R. Karl<\/a>, who directs NOAA\u2019s\u00a0National Climatic Data Center<\/a>. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean every season and every year is going to be breaking all-time records, but you\u2019re going to see this with increasing frequency.\u201d<\/p>\n

Temperatures were above normal for every month from June 2011 to September 2012, a 16-month stretch that had not occurred since the government began keeping records in 1895. Alaska and the Pacific Northwest did not have record-setting heat last year; a cool-weather pattern over the Pacific Ocean kept temperatures lower.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s report did not address global temperatures. Still, the NOAA analysis has triggered an intense debate over whether global temperatures will reach dangerous levels by the century\u2019s end. In 2009, the world\u2019s leaders\u00a0pledged<\/a>\u00a0to keep global temperatures from rising above pre-industrial levels by\u00a0two degrees Celsius,<\/a>\u00a0or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Now many experts say that goal may be out of reach.<\/p>\n

\u201cA hundred years from now, they\u2019re not going to be talking about health care or the fiscal cliff,\u201d said\u00a0Vanderbilt Law School professor\u00a0Michael Vandenbergh<\/a>. \u201cBut they will ask, \u2018What did you do when we knew we were going to have serious climate change?\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all scientists see the situation as urgent.\u00a0John R. Christy<\/a>, who directs the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, said some researchers are exaggerating the threat of climate change. He added that the right climate target is \u201cin the mind of the beholder,\u201d given that rising energy demand is a sign that many poor people are struggling \u201cto be lifted out of their current condition.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one in Washington can stop that,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd, right now, carbon is the most accessible and affordable way to supply that energy \u2014 so CO2 emissions will continue to rise because of the undeniable benefit carbon energy brings to human life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judith A. Curry, an atmospheric scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said in an e-mail that it is premature to blame droughts or hurricanes on human-caused warming. \u201cNatural variability continues to dominate the occurrence of extreme weather events,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

But some Democrats, including Rep. Edward J. Markey (Mass.), seized upon the report to press the Obama administration to move aggressively on climate change \u2014 including imposing new carbon limits on existing power plants through regulation.<\/p>\n

In light of the extreme weather events the United States experienced in 2012, Markey said, \u201cit\u2019s time for the politicians to start catching up.\u201d<\/p>\n

White House spokesman Clark Stevens said President Obama has already restricted carbon emissions on vehicles and new power plants, adding: \u201cThe president has made clear that his administration will continue to build on this progress, and climate change will be a priority in his second term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Key Republicans, including\u00a0Rep. Ed Whitfield<\/a>\u00a0(Ky.), who heads the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy and power, have indicated that they will fiercely oppose any new government rules to curb greenhouse-gas emissions.<\/p>\n

Last year, the United States experienced several weather events \u2014 including extreme storms, a\u00a0historic drought<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0wildfires\u00a0<\/a>\u2014 in addition to record heat.<\/p>\n

Deke Arndt, chief of the National Climatic Data Center\u2019s climate-monitoring branch, said the higher temperatures were \u201cconsistent with what we would expect in a warming world.\u201d He also said that current science shows the accumulation of carbon in the atmosphere leads to more frequent \u201cbig heat\u201d and \u201cbig rain\u201d events.<\/p>\n

A combination of high temperatures and dry conditions last year took a serious toll on the nation\u2019s agricultural sector.<\/p>\n

In 2012, NOAA\u2019s Karl said, \u201cboth the day and the nighttime temperatures were breaking their all-time records,\u201d and that, combined with drier conditions, amounted to \u201ca double whammy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite researchers\u2019 concerns, global carbon emissions continue to rise. The International Energy Agency\u00a0estimated<\/a>\u00a0last month that coal will come close to surpassing oil as the world\u2019s top energy source in 2017 , when an additional 1.2\u00a0billion metric tons will be burned annually. In late November, the World Resources Institute reported there are\u00a0nearly 1,200 proposed coal plants around the globe<\/a>, three-quarters of which are planned for China and India.<\/p>\n

By Jan. 1 of this year, the Kyoto Protocol was supposed to have cut the world\u2019s greenhouse-gas output by 5 percent compared with 1990 levels. But while the signatories as a whole are likely to meet that target \u2014 in part because of the shutdown of Eastern European factories during the 1990s \u2014\u00a0global carbon emissions overall rose 54 percent<\/a>\u00a0in that same period, according to the Global Carbon Project.<\/p>\n

Many experts are discussing whether they should continue pressing for ambitious carbon cuts in the near term or adjust their goals given the prospect of a much warmer world.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to begin the conversation about cruising past\u201d the 2009 pledge on limiting global temperature increases, said\u00a0John D. Po\u00addesta<\/a>, who chairs the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and is a member of a United Nations advisory panel addressing climate change and other issues. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to contemplate and scary to contemplate, but it has to be addressed at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2004, Princeton University professors Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala wrote an influential paper outlining how the world could\u00a0stabilize its greenhouse-gas emissions<\/a>\u00a0by mid-
\ncentury through a series of \u00ad\u201cwedges<\/a>,\u201d using current technology, such as sharply increasing nuclear power worldwide, eliminating deforestation and converting conventional plowing to no-tillage farming.<\/p>\n

Socolow has more recently published\u00a0an article<\/a>\u00a0in the Vanderbilt Law Review that he describes as his \u201clet\u2019s get real here\u201d lecture. He says environmentalists will have to accept that fossil fuels will not disappear in the next few decades.<\/p>\n

Several activists who track\u00a0international climate talks<\/a>\u00a0insist, however, that the next three years are critical, saying negotiators need to forge a new pact by 2015 to lock in needed carbon cuts.\u00a0Alden Meyer<\/a>, who directs strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said major emitters will not agree to meaningful cuts until they view it as in \u201ctheir national self-interest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2012 was hottest year on record in contiguous U.S., NOAA says – The Washington Post. 2012 hottest year on record in contiguous U.S., NOAA says By\u00a0Juliet Eilperin,\u00a0Published: January\u00a08 Temperatures in the contiguous United States last year were the hottest in more than a century of record-keeping, shattering the mark set in 1998 by a wide margin, the federal government announced Tuesday. The average temperature in 2012 was 55.3 degrees, one degree above the previous record and 3.2 degrees higher than the 20th-century average, scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. They described the data as part of a \u2026 Continue reading this post → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}