Hawaii Travel

Remember the cold weather of January, February and March?

They were days and nights so chilly that some climate change deniers of my acquaintance actually cited them as proof against climate warming.

Well, that’s just so last season.

April warmed up some. The fifth warmest April since records have been kept. Here’s the citation for that, from NOAA: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2009/apr/global.html.

Next? May was hot, too. The fourth warmest ever. Here’s that citation: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/2009/may/global.html.

As you might expect from those figures, the spring season as a whole is also turning out pretty warm. March to May had the fifth warmest record for any northern hemisphere spring.

It wasn’t that hot everywhere all the time, of course. In fact, NOAA cites Hawai’i's cool late winter and early spring:

“March-May 2009 temperatures were above average across Mexico, Europe, southern South America, northwestern Alaska, northwestern and southern Africa, parts of Australia, and most of the contiguous U.S., and Asia. Cooler-than-average temperatures occurred across the Hawaiian Islands, Canada, and parts of the north central and northwestern United States,” the agency said.

Climate, after all, is variable on any number of scales. It’s variable over time. It’s variable over geography. If you can’t step back and see the bigger picture, it’s hard to draw reasonable conclusions.

The graphic at the upper right of this post shows how January to May temperatures around the world have differed from the average since about 1880. Over an extended period of time, the short-term variations fall into the background and the warming trend is quite clear.

But it is also clear that there’s a significant amount of variability within the larger trend.

Some folks point to the flat to downward trend of the past five or six years as proof of a cooling climate. That’s a little like claiming that a cool week in February is proof of cooling.

To descend into hackney, we’ll just say this: That dog won’t hunt.

© Jan TenBruggencate 2009

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Related posts:

1. A hot August, on average, but not everywhere
2. Hip boots and sandbags: Climate change isn’t coming–it’s here
3. Hot Hot Hot. Global temperatures still rising, El Nino extending
4. Angst and lies over climate predictions
5. Climate change for Hawai’i weather: maybe drier, but generally few big changes