18 January 2018
2017 Was Another Year of Amazing Heat. It’s not Natural, and It IS the Greenhouse Gases
Posted by Dan Satterfield
NASA and NOAA both announced their global temperature results for 2017 today. NASA says it was the second warmest year on record and NOAA which does the analysis slightly differently came up with the 3rd hottest. Interestingly, if you remove the impacts of El Nino and La Nina, 2017 was THE hottest on record (see below).
Forest Vs. Trees
There are only three things that affect Earth’s temperature:
- Incoming radiation from the Sun. (Virtually unchanged)
- The albedo (reflectivity) of the planet (How much of the incoming energy gets immediately reflected back into space. Volcanoes can increase this and cool us from time to time).
- Greenhouse gas levels. (Rising rapidly).
If someone tells you this is part of a natural cycle, they are wrong. That has been ruled out.
The most interesting graphic I saw today came from Dr. Gavin Schmidt at NASA GISS. If you remove the impacts of El Nino and La Nina you see a true trend showing 2017 was the hottest on record.
Here is a look at how the planet has warmed since 1880.
Dan Satterfield has worked as an on air meteorologist for 32 years in Oklahoma, Florida and Alabama. Forecasting weather is Dan's job, but all of Earth Science is his passion. This journal is where Dan writes about things he has too little time for on air. Dan blogs about peer-reviewed Earth science for Junior High level audiences and up.
does the 1900 downward trend imply that the planet has been accidentally saved from an impending ice age beginning ?
No, the next ice age is likely many thousands of years away, and it will likely be significantly delayed until the co2 naturally decays. In the meantime, the planet will warm to levels never seen in human history.