It's Official... Warmest March Ever!

[marmar]

NOAA: March 2012 the Warmest on Record

by Chris Dolce, weather.com Meteorologist
Updated: April 9, 2012 8:15 am ET


Last week we revealed the dozens of cities that had their warmest March on record. Now we have the official word from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that March 2012 was the warmest March on record in the contiguous United States. In addition, the January through March period of 2012 was the warmest first quarter of the year on record. Records date back to 1895 in both cases.

NOAA also released information stating that the early March tornado outbreak in the Ohio Valley and Southeast was the first billion-dollar weather disaster of 2012.

NOAA's full report on March 2012 will be released at 11 am on Monday. Click the link below to see more information on the record-breaking month as we examine March 2012 by the numbers.


http://www.weather.com/outlook/weather-news/news/articles/march-warmest-on-record_2012-04-09

[xchrom]

1. Du rec. Nt

[Renew Deal]

3. I believe it

It was pretty nice in March. Normally we get cold, wind, and occasional snow. We got none of that this year.

[mathematic]

4. Unsurprising, of course

But there IS a lesson about natural temperature variability here.

The link says that march was 8.6 deg above the 20th century average yet only half a degree above the previous record, set in 1910. Global warming over the last 100 years has been about a degree and a half. Therefore last month's temperature deviation from the average was mostly due to extremely rare natural variance.

It's interesting that the march 1910 record was broken by less than the amount of global warming over the last 100 years. That means that the march 1910 was an even more rare natural variance than last month. Though it's true the range of temperature has been decreasing with global warming so it might not be that much more rare (I don't know by how much the range has decreased).

[jimlup]

5. Only partially true...

The likelyhood of unlikely events has increased dramatically due to changes in the arctic ice sheet.

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/04/04/457823/arctic-warming-extreme-weather-events-drought-flooding-cold-spells-and-heat-waves/

[mathematic]

6. Thanks

I've been trying to keep an eye out for studies like that. Most of the time I see heat waves discussed it's with respect to a historical average temperature, which seems like it makes "more heat waves" a gimmie considering rising mean temps. I'm much more interested in changes to the variability of weather.

Here's a direct link to the study: PDF

The study itself says that relatively faster warming of the arctic compared to the mid-latitudes have increased the waviness of the jet stream (i.e. it's amplitude), decreased it's eastward speed, and shifted it northward. In particular, the slower eastward movement leads to more persistent weather patterns thereby increasing the likeliness of extreme weather events that are characterized by persistence (persistent lack of rain = drought, persistent cold = cold spell, persistent heat = heat wave). The study makes no estimate regarding the size of the increase of persistence or the size of the increase in likeliness of extreme events. I expect somebody will write a paper on those estimates soon enough.

[Poll_Blind]

7. I read this last night. I find these facts very disconcerting. nt

PB

[emilyg]

8. Yes - I see all the

fleas and mosquitos dancing with joy.