March Was 10th Warmest on Record Globally First Quarter 2009 8th Warmest

The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) today released their preliminary analysis for March 2009. It shows that the global average temperature for the month was the 10th warmest on record. The first quarter of 2009, January-March, was the 8th warmest.

The warmest regions during March were Mexico, Europe, most of Asia, South America, and large portions of the contiguous United States. On the other hand, the north central and northwestern U.S., southern Canada, southern Alaska, and central Russia were cooler than average.

The equatorial Pacific was in a cold (La Niña) phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), although some warming took place in a portion of the region. Sea surface temperatures were warmer than average in the northern Indian and western Pacific oceans, and most of the southern and northern Atlantic Ocean.

Average Northern Hemisphere snow cover for March was the 12th lowest in the 43 years since satellite observation began in 1967. The contiguous U.S. observed several severe winter storms during the month, with 20 new all-time snowfall records, 84 new monthly records, and 1,053 new daily records being set. For North America overall, however, the snow extent was near average.

Images (click to enlarge): March 2009 global surface temperature departures from average, Jan-Mar global temperature history, and Northern Hemisphere snow cover departure from average from NOAA/NCDC

Happy No Snow Day!

April 10 is the earliest date in the year on which no measurable snow has ever been observed in Washington, DC. A trace fell on this date in 1975. An inch or more has occurred as late as the 12th, when 2" fell in 1918. The latest measurable amount was 0.5" on the 28th in 1898.

The most snow on a single day in April was 5.5" on April 1, 1924. That also made April 1924 the snowiest April.

A trace of snow has been observed 4 times in May:
May 1, 1963
May 5. 1993
May 9, 1923
May 10, 1906

Official snowfall records in Washington began in 1888.

Mid Atlantic Drought Update: Week Ending April 7

Following the near-record dry February-March, showers in the first week of April have kept the month to date above average for the Washington, DC region. Including 0.77" falling in 24 hours on the 2nd-3rd, Washington National now has a total of 1.1" for the month. In the longer run, however, the region remains in Moderate Drought conditions. The state of Virginia has improved from 27% Moderate to 17% in the current week, but Maryland has worsened from 52% to 79%.

The year-to-date precipitation deficits for major reporting locations in the region have all decreased compared to 2 weeks ago:

Washington National 4.09"
Washington Dulles 4.03"
BWI 4.41"

The dry conditions extend westward into West Virginia, where Martinsburg is 5.12" low for the year to date.

Images (click to enlarge): 30-day precipitation history for Washington DC from Climate Prediction Center/NCEP/NOAA; Maryland and Virginia drought conditions from U.S. Drought Monitor, USDA and NOAA

"It Hasn't Warmed Since 1998"

Although it's been shown to be unsupported by the data, the claim that global temperatures have declined since 1998 continues to be high on the climate skeptics' hit parade. This canard reared its disreputable head again last week in George Will's latest bag of climate lies.

Even if this discredited claim were true, it still wouldn't mean anything by itself, since it's a classic case of cherry-picking. Andrew Revkin's April 3 post at the NYT's DotEarth blog picks up on that theme with a discussion of a paper to be published in the American Geophysical Union's peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters. Despite the clear evidence that out-of-context short-term trends are meaningless at best in the presence of random natural variations, the comments to the post contain many of the typical knee-jerk reactions from the Usual Suspects.

John Mashey, however, suggests a little experiment with the Swiss Army Knife of Data Analysis, Microsoft Excel. The graph at the top of this post shows an example result using Mashey's recipe. The blue line shows a series of 30 points with an overall upward trend (black line). The red line, however, shows the trend of the first 10 points alone. Notice that this trend is downward, and in fact, the value of point 10 is actually less than the value of point 1. For an animated display of a series of such randomly fluctuating trends, click here. In the example, the short-term trend may be much above, much below, or nearly equal to the longer trend, but the overall trend is always upward.

Image: Trend with random fluctuations based on DotEarth comment by John Mashey; graph created using Microsoft Excel and animation from Picasion.com.

Hot Air

Swift Boater Mark Moron-o "debates" energy expert Joe Romm on Roll Call TV's Green Politics:

Analysis Indicates Ice-Free Arctic in 30 Years

A new analysis published yesterday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) predicts that the Arctic could be virtually ice-free as soon as 30 years from now. Previous forecasts had indicated that such an event was likely by the end of the century. The researchers, Muyin Wang of the University of Washington and James E. Overland of the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, stated

Using the observed 2007/2008 September sea ice extents as a starting point, we predict an expected value for a nearly sea ice free Arctic in September by the year 2037. The first quartile of the distribution for the timing of September sea ice loss will be reached by 2028.

The analysis was done using the 6 IPCC models which were most accurate in simulating currently observed sea ice conditions.

Image (click to enlarge): "The heavy red line is the sea-ice extent observed since the 1950s. Six models that most accurately depict that ice extent are shown with thin colored lines. The heavy blue line is the average of those six models and projects ice-free Septembers in 20 to 30 years. In contrast, the heavy yellow line is the average sea-ice extent of all 23 models including outliers unable to reproduce current sea-ice conditions." (From Univ. of Washington/NOAA)

WaPo Wall of Climate Shame

Weekend update:
April 5

• Target, partial color
  
• GM, black&white
  
• Safeway, color
  

April 4

• none
  

Original post:
Here are today's full-page A-section advertisers supporting the WaPo's continued tolerance of climate lies:

• Home Depot, full color
  
• Shoppers supermarket, full color
  
• Macy's, full color

Previously:
April 2

• GM, black&white
  
• Oil and gas industry, partial color
  
• Shoppers supermarket, full color
  
• Macy's, full color
  

April 1

• GM, black&white
  
• Verizon, full color
  
• EADS (aerospace), full color
  

March 31

• Lord & Taylor, black&white
  
• Verizon, color
  

March 30

• Chevron, color (also 1/4 on earlier page)
  
• Verizon, color
  
• Cato, black&white
  
• IBM, color
  

March 29

• VISA, partial color
  

March 28

• none
  

March 27

• Shoppers supermarket, color
  
• Macy's, color
  

March 26

• Oil and gas industry, partial color
  
• Super Hornet strike fighter (Raytheon/GE/Northrup Grumman/Boeing), color
  
• Bank of America, partial color
  
• Shoppers supermarket, color
  
• Saturn, black&white
  
• Macy's, color
  

March 25

• Jet Blue, color
  
• Verizon, color
  
• Macy's, color
  

March 24

• none
  

March 23

• Chevron, color (also 1/4 on earlier page)
  
• Verizon, color
  
• IBM, color