Diary Of The Last Age

Alaska crushes record for hottest December as Arctic sea ice hits record low In its hottest December ever recorded, Alaska was a stunning 15.7°F above the 20th century average. And the year ended with Arctic sea ice hitting an all-time record low. While the East Coast had a cool December and New Year’s week, Alaska baked. Last Tuesday, Anchorage hit 48°F , warmer than southern cities from Atlanta and Jacksonville to Houston and New Orleans. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reported this week that Alaska averaged 19.4°F for the month, topping the previous record (1985) by a whopping 2.1°F. “That’s really quite astonishing,” said Rick Thoman, the National Weather Service’s climate sciences and services manager for the Alaska region. As he explained to the Anchorage Daily News , “Usually you’re breaking those by a tenth of a degree or two-tenths of a degree.” The Arctic as a whole was so warm in December that Arctic sea ice set a new end-of-year record lo

2017’s costly climate change-fueled disasters are the ‘new normal,’ warns major reinsurer As global warming advances, serious environmental disasters are going to increase.  I warned about this two years ago.  “We have a new normal,” Munich Re’s Ernst Rauch told Reuters. Rauch, who runs the group tracking climate change risks, pointed out that “2017 was not an outlier” in having more than $100 billion in insured losses (see chart below). “We must have on our radar the trend of new magnitudes,” Rauch said. 2017 was a record-breaking year: Climate-related disasters cost the U.S. $300 billion For the past year, average temperatures for the contiguous United States have been 2.6°F warmer than the 20th century average — an especially noteworthy distinction because 2017 did not have an El Niño episode , which usually gives a temporary boost to global temperatures. This is now the third consecutive year that temperatures across the United States have been above average. Five st

This Should Freak Everyone Out: The Arctic Will Never Be Frozen Again NOAA: Arctic saw 2nd warmest year, smallest winter sea ice coverage on record in 2017  Using 1,500 years of natural records compiled from lake sediments, ice cores, and tree rings as context, the NOAA report says the Arctic is changing at a rate  far beyond what’s occurred in the region for millennia . Now in its 12th year, the Arctic Report Card , released today at the annual American Geophysical Union fall meeting in New Orleans, is a peer-reviewed report that brings together the work of 85 scientists from 12 nations. Warmer air temperature. Average annual air temperature over land was the second highest after 2016 in the observational record, with a temperature 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit (1.6 Celsius) above the average for 1981 to 2010.   Declining sea ice. This year’s maximum winter sea ice area, measured each March, was the lowest ever observed, while this year’s minimum area, measured each Sep