2015 Was the Hottest Year on Record by a Long Shot

An illustrative graphic from Bloomberg.com arrived in my inbox.  As they put it: "We just obliterated another heat record." To view it, you'll have to head over to here: 2015 Was the Hottest Year on Record by a Long Shot  

Caltech: Robotic Ocean Gliders Discover Why Antarctic Polar Ice is Melting

Dear Readers, Find below an interesting press release I may as well share verbatim: The rapidly melting ice sheets on the coast of West Antarctica are a potential major contributor to rising ocean levels worldwide. Although warm water near the coast is thought to be the main factor causing the ice to melt, the process …

Bad news, good news, bad news.

So, the bad news is that it is looking increasingly likely that the world will experience a very strong El Nino event this 2014-2015 winter (winter in the N. hemisphere, summer down under).  There is even talk of a super-El Nino, one to rival 1998's phenomenal event.  Lots of good information on that here at …

Yes, it was a remarkable cold snap, but in what way?

[Update: it seems clear that records were broken after all as has been pointed out in the comments. So we are only left with Fox's reaction and youtube fog-pee videos. And let's face it, Fox's reaction was pretty predictable...] The recent cold snap was indeed remarkable and the media was buzzing about it for days.  …

130 Years

Watch the video below and see if you can see where the warming stops: (seen at the wonderful APOD site)

What did temperatures do as the last glacial minimum ended 120K years ago?

A commenter on the most recent edition of het's AWOGWN asks an interesting set of questions: How would temperature data have been seen during the last 10,000 years prior to the peak of each of the previous Milankovich cycles? What caused the temperature to reverse course in those cycles and why would we not expect …

Volcanos may be countering greenhouse warming

(image info and credits) Fake skeptics of anthropogenic global warming love to set up the straw man that mainstream climate science believes that CO2 is the one and only driver of climate change.  They can then use it in many different attacks, such as gee whiz isn't it stupid that they haven't even thought of …

The Greenhouse Effect in a Water World

The natural world is complicated. Therefore, so is the science that tries to understand it. Complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity are all a part of the story that describes processes that are as extraordinary as they are mundane. While these are the very characteristics of scientific study that motivate professional and amateur alike, they are also the …

Global warming has been underestimated by HadCRU

Oh boy, get out the tinfoil. Here's one the conspiracy nuts will howl over. The temperature record that has been showing the lowest anomaly in the recent decades, HadCRU, the dataset managed by the UK's Met Office and the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU), is about to be revised upwards. Met Office …

Global and seasonally averaged means seasonally and globally averaged

[Update: I am closing this thread as it is now over 500 comments long. However, because the discussion is still ongoing it will continue on this post. There is also the possibility of Chris S coming back with his own analysis of Richard's data. This is a quick summary of what we can conclude thus …