Is the present mini-global cooling period just a cold winter?

Question

'Cuz, it's summer on half the globe.....

Answer 1

It's the start of a new cooling trend.  Some scientist expect the cold to be around for the next 50 years.

Better get used to these kinds of weather each year!

Answer 2

Looks like we have a Global Cooling. I hope its not a mini Ice Age...

Answer 3

There is no evidence to indicate a cooling period (meaning years) has begun, but there has been decades of data showing warming.

EDIT - Kent, if you don't understand that weather is fickle, no one can help you.

EDIT - How is it that people can ignore decades of warming with 1 cold period? You see, the same thing happened in 2000 and 2002 with a drop in temperature year-over-year, then 2001 and 2003 temps went up again. Nobody seems to want to talk about that. Why? Because the temps went up again! Point is, yearly data are variable, but displayed together in decades shows an upward trend. Don't believe me, see the data...

Who is the alarmist here? One who tracks data and notices warming over decades, or one who sees a few months where global temps decline and yells global cooling...

I'm not going to jump the gun like a denier looking for anything to refute AGW.

Answer 4

You're oversimplifying things. Lower than average anomalies in the SH don't mean temperatures there are cold, they just mean they're below average.

Of course, SH anomalies aren't even below average anyway. Looking at the below chart of global temperature anomalies you can see that temperatures were above average in Europe, northern Asia, the eastern and central parts of the contiguous U.S., and most of Australia. The cooler than average temperatures the denialist crowd is trumpeting as proof of "global cooling" occurred in the Middle East, central Asia, southeast China, and the western U.S.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/res...

Also keep in mind that January experienced cold-phase La Niña conditions all month, which you can clearly see if you look at the equatorial Pacific in the above image.

All told, January 2008 was globally the 31st warmest year on record:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/res...

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Edit: I don't know what you're talking about with the averages bit. I've never looked at anything *but* averages. I was explaining in my first paragraph why lower than average anomalies don't equal frigid temperatures. It's possible to have an anomaly that's 5 degrees below average and still have it be hotter than hades. It' just a minor point that seems lost on most denialists.

I also don't know what it means to say that we've given back all of 20th century warming in a single month. The warming we've experienced for the past century amounts to less than 1ºC, so by your reasoning we "give back" global warming every winter, and get it back again every summer.

Answer 5

At least weathermen are right HALF of the time...Climatologists haven't been right YET...but it keeps them busy tweaking their models (that justifies their government salaries, right?)

Answer 6

The daily world wide temps are not what the climate scientists are predicting.  It's the overall patterns of climate that have been predicted to change. One of the things that have scientists concerned ,are the ever widening parameters of weather records. When each storm brings record rainfall,winds or snow,that's just one of the results of global climate change. How hot is too hot? How deep can floodwaters get?  There are some areas of the US that are facing disaster if things continue to get worse.

Answer 7

It's all an Al Gore myth...

http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Mon...

Answer 8

It took decades for (activist) scientists to build up the current frenzy about CO2 levels and global warming, and it will take a decade or more of actual cooling to shut down the current money machine that is the IPCC process.

We can only hope that they don't so hamstring our economies in the meantime that we are unable to cope with the inevitable cool period which will follow this current warm period.

Answer 9

No it's just the beginning

Answer 10

From what I've read on climatologist blog sites.This current anomaly has taken both sides by surprise.It wasn't foreseen, and is one of the fastest negative STD's ever seen.The predominate speculation seems to dwell on the solar sleep cycle and it's correlation to present PDO patterns.If it continues...more of the same and worse.

Answer 11

Yes, an unusually cold winter is all that's going on.  Some winters are colder than average, of course.

The Northern Hemisphere has far more land while the Southern Hemisphere has far more ocean.  So, the Northern Hemisphere responds much more rapidly to changes in the weather.

This is one reason why climate change is more obvious in the Northern Hemisphere, and weather changes more extreme.

It will all average out.  Basic physics proves that man made climate change isn't going away until we do something about greenhouse gases.

Answer 12

In the US midwest, the seasons seem to have shifted a month forward. For the past three years anyhow.