{"id":2683,"date":"2016-03-18T08:01:34","date_gmt":"2016-03-18T15:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/beyond-record-hot-february-was-astronomical-and-strange\/"},"modified":"2016-03-18T08:01:34","modified_gmt":"2016-03-18T15:01:34","slug":"beyond-record-hot-february-was-astronomical-and-strange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/beyond-record-hot-february-was-astronomical-and-strange\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond record hot, February was ‘astronomical’ and ‘strange’"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 <\/strong>Earth got so hot last month that federal scientists struggled to find words, describing temperatures as \u201castronomical,\u201d \u201cstaggering\u201d and \u201cstrange.\u201d They warned that the climate may have moved into a new and hotter neighborhood.<\/p>\n

This was not just another of the drumbeat of 10 straight broken monthly global heat records, triggered by a super El Nino and man-made global warming. February 2016 obliterated old marks by such a margin that it was the most above-normal month since meteorologists started keeping track in 1880, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.<\/p>\n

The old record was set just last December and the last three months have been the most above-normal months on record, said NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden. And it\u2019s not just NOAA. NASA, which uses different statistical techniques, as well as a University of Alabama Huntsville team and the private Remote Sensing System team, which measure using satellites, also said February 2016 had the biggest departure from normal on record.<\/p>\n

NOAA said Earth averaged 56.08 degrees in February, 2.18 degrees above average, beating the old record for February set in 2015 by nearly six-tenths of a degree. These were figures that had federal scientists grasping for superlatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe departures are what we would consider astronomical,\u201d Blunden said. \u201cIt\u2019s on land. It\u2019s in the oceans. It\u2019s in the upper atmosphere. It\u2019s in the lower atmosphere. The Arctic had record low sea ice.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything everywhere is a record this month, except Antarctica,\u201d Blunden said. \u201cIt\u2019s insane.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Arctic, where sea ice reached a record low for February, land temperatures averaged 8 degrees above normal, Blunden said. That\u2019s after January, when Arctic land temperatures were 10.4 degrees above normal.<\/p>\n

Worldwide, February 2016 was warmer than about 125 of the last 136 Marches.<\/p>\n

It was also the warmest winter \u2014 December through February \u2014 on record, beating the previous year\u2019s record by more than half a degree.<\/p>\n

Georgia Tech climate scientist Kim Cobb said she normally doesn\u2019t concern herself much with the new high temperature records that are broken regularly.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever,\u201d she added in a Thursday email, \u201cwhen I look at the new February 2016 temperatures, I feel like I\u2019m looking at something out of a sci-fi movie. In a way we are: it\u2019s like someone plucked a value off a graph from 2030 and stuck it on a graph of present temperatures. It is a portent of things to come, and it is sobering that such temperature extremes are already on our doorstep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scientists at NOAA\u2019s National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina, were astonished by the \u201cstaggering\u201d numbers, said Deke Arndt, the centers\u2019 global monitoring chief.<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually these are monthly reminders that things are changing,\u201d Arndt said. \u201cThe last six months have been more than a reminder, it\u2019s been like a punch in the nose.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt usually discounts the importance of individual record hot months, but said this month was different, calling it \u201cobviously strange.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was due to the long-term warming from heat-trapping gases and the powerful El Nino, so these types of records will continue for a few more months, but probably will not be a permanent situation, Schmidt said in an email.<\/p>\n

But other were not so sure, including Arndt, who compared it to moving into a new hotter neighborhood.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in a new era,\u201d Arndt said. \u201cWe have started a new piece of modern history for this climate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason Furtado, a meteorology professor at the University of Oklahoma who wasn\u2019t part of any of the government teams, simply wrote in an email: \u201cWelcome to the new normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Online:<\/p>\n

NOAA: www.ncdc.noaa.gov<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow Seth Borenstein at http:\/\/twitter.com\/borenbears and his work can be found at http:\/\/bigstory.ap.org\/content\/seth-borenstein<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Earth got so hot last month that federal scientists struggled to find words, describing temperatures as \u201castronomical,\u201d \u201cstaggering\u201d and \u201cstrange.\u201d They warned that the climate may have moved into a new and hotter neighborhood. This was not just another of the drumbeat of 10 straight broken monthly global heat records, triggered by a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2683\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2683"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}