Saturday, April 10, 2010

No, the Record-Setting April Heatwave Doesn't Prove Global Warming. But...





from TreHugger.com
by Brian Merchant, Brooklyn, New York

If you happened to be in part of the country that was hit by it, you sure noticed the warmer-than-usual temps caused by the April heat wave. It caused meteorologists across the country to ask if it was "July in April" and even got a few to mention global warming! But hold on--I am not about to suggest that a single hotter-than-usual week is evidence that the entire planet is experiencing global warming. That would be ridiculous, and that would be the same logic climate deniers use when it snows more than usual. In January. But with the high temperatures setting records around the world, it certainly means something in the greater scheme of things . . .

And it does, of course. Here's Climate Progress:

We all know that you can't use a single weather event as evidence for or against climate change -- unless of course that weather event is a big snowstorm [wink] ... What people should be talking about are record highs versus record lows across the country. The figure above comes from a Weather Channel post by Jonathan Erdman, "July or April? Spring skipped?":


"To the south of this front, temperatures had soared into the 80s and, yes, 90s in many locations, shattering daily record highs. In fact, according to the National Climatic Data Center, in the seven-day period from March 29 through April 4, over 1100 daily record highs were either tied or broken in the nation!"


Now that is a heat wave!... Read the full story on TreeHugger


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