Global warning is “undeniable” says a new report published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which looked at 10 climate indicators and concluded they “all tell the same story.”
“People have spent thousands of years building society for one climate and now a new one is being created – one that’s warmer and more extreme,” the NOAA report states.
The 10 indicators included shrinking glaciers, melting spring snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere, declining sea-ice in the Arctic, sea-surface temperature, higher air temperature over land, air temperature over oceans, humidity and temperature in the troposphere, and ocean heat.
The NOAA report was released during a week when, faced with the specter of a filibuster, U.S. Senate leaders abandoned efforts to pass a comprehensive clean energy-climate bill.
Climate reform legislation did pass the U.S. House of Representatives last summer, against fierce opposition from Big Oil, the coal industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
In the Senate, however, it faced opposition from Republicans and Democrats from coal and oiul producing states.
The NOAA report was compiled by investigators from 48 different countries. It noted that each of the preceding three decades was hotter than the decade before.
The 1980′s was the hottest decade on record – prompting initial alarm about global warming – only to find temperatures increasing every year during the 1990′s. The warming continued into the 21st Century.
Temperatures increased between 2000 and 2009, with the first half of 2010 the warmest on record.
“Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying and heat waves are more common . . . There is now evidence that more than 90 percent of warming over the last 50 years has gone into our oceans,” said Deke Arndt, manager of the NOAA Climate
Monitoring Branch and co-editor of the new report.
Extreme weather conditions have been part of the trend.
Pakistan has just experienced its most intense Monsoon rains on record. Last year, floods in Brazil left 376,000 people homeless. Record heat waves led to furious fires last year in Australia, and this year in central Russia.
In reaching their conclusion, scientists used data from weather satellites, weather balloons, weather stations, buoys and ships.