Just for fun, we asked the experts at the Rutgers Snow Lab to show us what their data (based on NOAA satellite images) had to say about whether the number of snow-covered days during the week of Christmas has changed at all across the U.S. in the past 50 years.
The Antarctic ozone hole did not cause global warming. But there is a connection between climate and the annual thin spot that forms each spring in Earth’s UV-blocking ozone layer: colder winter temperatures tend to lead to larger ozone holes.
NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center announced that last month was the warmest September on record for the planet. If the surface temperature remains elevated at the same level for the remainder of the year, 2014 will set a new record for the warmest annual average temperature since records began in 1880.
The annual minimum was 5.02 million square kilometers (1.94 million square miles), making 2014 the sixth smallest extent in the satellite era, which began in 1979.
U.S. temperature extremes and the polar jet stream
September 16, 2014
Spring climate plays major role in Lake Erie algae blooms
September 8, 2014
2014 temperature extremes: U.S. runs hot and cold
August 29, 2014
Earth’s hottest periods occurred before humans existed. Those ancient climates would have been like nothing our species has ever seen.
Through June, the eastern Pacific was warmer than average, but the lack of a strong gradient in sea surface temperature anomalies between the eastern and western Pacific may have kept the atmosphere from getting in sync with the developing El Niño.