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Feds: Cold winter is not 'global cooling'

By Pat Brennan, The Orange County Register, Source: MCT News Service

Temperatures were colder than normal across the United States this winter, according to the latest assessment from the nation's climate-monitoring agency.

But the cold weather, including heavy snow on the East Coast, is not a sign of 'global cooling' _ an assertion made in recent weeks by some who take issue with the idea that the climate is warming.

The winter temperature assessment from the National Climatic Data Center, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, says 63 percent of the nation experienced below-normal temperatures during the winter season, December to February.

The average temperature for February was 32.4 degrees Fahrenheit, 2.2 degrees below the long-term average of 34.6.

The cold air was the work of several Arctic air masses moving over much of the nation in February, making things especially cold in the deep South, and bringing below-average temperatures to the Plains and mid-Atlantic states.

And while monthly climate assessments shed little light on long-term climate trends over decades, the National Climatic Data Center also released a separate statement debunking the notion that snow and cold weather _ such as heavy snowstorms in the nation's capital _ were evidence of a global cooling trend, or against a long-term warming trend that most climate scientists agree is occurring.

"Although record-low temperatures were experienced in February 2010 in some regions, these are part of the short-term regional variability that has always been a characteristic of weather and will continue to be even as the Earth's climate experiences an overall warming trend," the statement reads.

"The data showing that the world as a whole has been warming on the average are unequivocal, and over time this means there will be fewer (but not zero) cold spells and more (but not constant) hot spells," it says. "In the 1950s, the number of record hot days was about the same as the number of record cold days, but in the 2000s we saw twice as many record highs as record lows."

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ON THE WEB

Read the full statement from the NOAA regarding "global cooling": www.noaa.gov/features/02_monitoring/index.html

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Originally posted at Green OC (http://greenoc.freedomblogging.com/).

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(c) 2010, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.).

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