I know we’re supposed to be going into a period of cooling, at least according to people who don’t believe in the scientific method, but for those who do, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center reports in its “Climate of 2008 June in Historical Perspective”:
Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the eighth warmest on record for June and the ninth warmest for January-June year-to-date period.
It is pretty darn hot in Greenland and Siberia, not like there’s anything important in those regions:
Seriously, though, a 4°C to 5°C anomaly over Siberia is bad news for anyone who worries about the 1000 billion tons of carbon locked away in the permafrost. Speaking of sea ice:
According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the June 2008 Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent, which is measured from passive microwave instruments onboard NOAA satellites, was below the 1979-2000 mean. This was the third least June sea ice extent on record, behind 2006 and 2005.
(Yes, I’m aware that in the last couple of weeks the ice-extent trend line has diverged from last year’s record.)
The bottom line is that this decade is going to be the hottest decade in the historical record, as is the next decade, and the decade after that, until it is so friggin’ hot even Senator Inhofe may start to wonder if he was wrong.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
