Cooler Heads on 'Warmest Year Ever'

Copyright 1999 Electricity Daily
January 13, 1999



Once again, the U.S. media this week was mindlessly trumpeting NASA's statements that 1998 was the hottest year ever, sea levels continue to rise, and man-made carbon dioxide is the culprit. But it's time to hear some cooler heads.

"Attempting to understand the climate is not aided by the fixation on extreme events as indicators of climate change," says John Christy of the University of Alabama-Huntsville, who monitors satellite temperature data for NASA. "This exercise is misleading because of our limited knowledge of the rates of occurrence and the ability to publicize even marginal extremes to fantastic proportions without looking at history. Perspective is often lost."

Tim Barnett, Scripps Institute of Oceanography climatologist, notes, "Hindsight shows that much of last year's unusual warmth was due to the recent El Nino short-term climate shift. Subtract the El Nino effect and you'd probably say something different about that nominally 'warmest' year. Once again, natural weather changes muddled what seemed to be a clear global warming signal."

Adds University of Virginia environmental sciences professor Patrick J. Michaels, "Observed global warming remains far below the amount predicted by computer models that served as the basis for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Whatever record is used, the largest portion of the warming of the second half of this century has mainly been confined to winter in the very coldest continental air masses of Siberia and northwestern North America, as predicted by basic greenhouse effect physics. The unpredictability of seasonal and annual temperatures has declined significantly. There has been no change in precipitation variability. In the United States, drought has decreased while flooding has not increased."

Finally, R. Steven Nerem with the French-American TOPEX/Poseidon satellite project, says, "Once again, hindsight shows that this dramatic sea-level rise was a short-lived response to El Nino. So too was a 0.7 F rise in sea-surface temperature between October 1996 and December 1997. Both sea-level and sea-surface temperatures have returned to normal levels."

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