Weather, Climate Change, and Related Matters in 2015

I had considered writing an accounting of all the outlandish weather events of 2015, but that project quickly became a tl:dr list of untoward happenings which is both alarming and a bit boring, since it is so long. So, I decided to generate something less comprehensive, focusing more on the context and meaning of the diverse and impressive set of outcomes of anthropogenic global warming, an historically strong El Niño, and, well, weather which is already a pretty whacky thing.

See: Highlights of Climate Change Research in 2015

It should be noted right away that 2015 is the last year in which any human alive will see CO2 levels dip below 400 parts per million.

What is the biggest single weather related news of 2015?

Floods, probably. Around the world, there were a lot of floods, and a lot of them were very damaging and deadly. Also, many of these floods appeared with little warning, even in places like Texas, where the meteorology is pretty good. Those Texas floods were of special note, as were the floods in the Carolinas. But outside the US there were major floods in Asia, especially Vietnam and Myanmar, as well as Yemen. Alaska, Oklahoma, Atacama in South America, also saw severe floods.

Why were there so many floods?

I’m pretty sure it is accurate to say that there was more flooding, and more severe flooding, than typical for, say, 20th century climatology. We had many 1,000 year flood events, too many to assume that these events remain as 1,000 year events.

See: Global Warming Changing Weather in the US Northeast

There are probably two or three reasons for increased flooding, which of course is caused by increased and concentrated rainfall along with other factors such as land use changes that cause rainfall to result in more flooding. One is the simple fact that a warmer atmosphere, due to global warming, contains more water, and thus, we get more rain. How much more? Not a lot, but enough to make a difference. If you put together a bunch of weather data and plot the annual precipitation rate over the last century or so, and fit a line to the data, the line will look flat. It isn’t really flat, and in fact, a properly fitted line on good data will show a statistically significant upslope. But still, the total amount of extra precipitation is a small percentage of the usual amount of precipitation, so the slope is not impressive unless you draw it out using heavy-handed graphing methods.

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A few other places are doing end of year reviews. Inside Climate is doing a series of 2015 retrospectives. Skeptical Science has an overview of the year. Environmental health news has a wish list pivoting on 2015 and a year in review. And Then There's Physics summarizes 2015. Critical Angle takes a critical look at 2015 here. If you see any more out there in the wild, let me know. Media Matters has "The 15 Most Ridiculous Things Conservative Media Said About Climate Change In 2015." Media Matters also has 5 New Year's Resolutions For Reporting On Climate Change. HotWhopper has The Fake Sceptic Awards for 2015 here.
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A second factor is a set of changes in how, when, and where the rain falls. Normally, in the temperate regions, rain storms move along with trade winds, guided or influenced by jet streams, fairly quickly. But if the jet streams slow down, the storms slow down, so we may see 4 inches of rain fall in one place that normally would have been spread out over a larger area, never exceeding half (or less) of that amount in any given area. The jet streams have slowed down and also become curvier, which both increases the amount of rain that falls in a give area but also may transfer moisture from and to places that are normally not involved as much in such a process. For example, the storm we are expecting today in the upper Midwest and Plains is not a typical Canadian Clipper, but rather a Gulf Coast storm related to the deadly blizzards and tornado swarms we’ve seen over the last few days to the south.

See: Does global warming destroy your house in a flood?

This clumping of rain in smaller areas also means that other areas that would normally have received some rain don’t, causing what my colleague Paul Douglas refers to as “flash droughts.” These are dry periods that don’t last long enough, and are not severe enough, to register on any official drought-o-meter, but nonetheless stress local water systems (such as farming) enough to be a nuisance.

A third factor is sea surface temperature. This really relates to, and is probably one of the main causes, of the first factor (increased precip overall), and feeds into the second factor (clumping of rain) but deserves its own consideration. Elevated sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic off the US coast last winter caused a lot more moisture than normal to feed into nor’easter storms, which in turn have become more common (because of increased sea surface temperatures and other factors), thus dumping large quantities of snow in the US Northeast. The same thing dumped lots of extra snow in a region that normally gets very little snow, the US Southeast, the winter before.

See: A selection of books on climate change

These changes have been happening for decades, and are due to global warming. The warming caused by the human release of extra greenhouse gasses, and other human effects, increase the warmth, thus the evaporation, thus the precipitation. Part of this warming trend involved increasing the warmth of the Arctic at a much higher rate than most of the rest of the planet. This, in turn, seems to have caused the jet stream to become wavy and slow down. The jet streams and trade winds are ultimately caused and controlled by the Earth spinning, which has not changed, and the temperature differential between the warm equator and the cold poles, which has changed quite a bit.


See: Weather Whiplash Is Like My Old Broken Sprinkler

But what about El Niño?

Didn’t El Niño cause these changes, and thus, aren’t these weather events unrelated to global warming?

No, and for two reasons.

First, many of these events happened during the first half of the year, before the start of the current El Niño, which is in fact the strongest El Niño so far observed directly, and possibly the strongest El Niño in millennia.

The second reason is that the heat released by the El Niño (the release of heat stored in the Pacific Ocean is what an El Niño is, in functional terms) is added to an already warmed world. It may even be that the extra severity of this year’s El Niño is upscaled by anthropogenic global warming. In any event, any records we set during the current El Niño exceed earlier El Niño years because the El Niños we experience are shorter term warming events on top of a steadily increasing global warming phenomenon.

We had a lot of fires

Last year and this year, or really, the last few years, have seen excessive, above normal rates of forest and brush fires in various regions. We have seen major fires in Australia, North America, and Southeast Asia during this period, with North America breaking several recent records this year.

See: Forest fires in Indonesia choke much of south-east Asia

These fires are caused by a combination of factors, but ultimately heat increasing evaporation, prior rainy years increasing available fuel, and warm winters increasing tree death to parasites (thus increasing fuel), all have contributed.

North America, in the old days, had much more fire-heavy years than anything recent because we were busy cutting down the forest, piling up “slash” (left over tree parts) and running sparky old fashioned coal-driven railroad engines up and down between the slash piles, catching them on fire. In addition, just burning the slash on purpose contributed to the overall amount of fire, especially when the slash fires got out of control.

We also saw some pretty impressive fires a couple of decades ago because of what we now know were bad fire management practices, which had actually grown out of those earlier decades of logging related fires. In other words, the frequency and distribution of forest and brush fires is complex. During aridification, probably global warming related, in Africa during the 70s and 80s, vast areas started to burn more regularly than usual. In those days, I would fly at night over Libya, Chad and the Sudan a couple of times a year, and could observe the entire region was burning all the time, easily visible from 26,000 feet.

The bottom line: The frequency and extent of fires is variable and chaotic, but anthropogenic global warming seems to have contributed significantly to us having more of them.

Were there more storms in 2015?

Record breaking tropical storms occurred in 2015. All of the tropical cyclone/hurricane basins saw interesting activity, with the Atlantic being the most quiet, and the Eastern Pacific, possibly, being the strangest.

There were 22 Category 4 or 5 storms this year in the Northern Hemisphere, a record number. The last record year was recent, 2004. Studies have shown overall that the total energy that forms up in tropical cyclones has increased with global warming, though the actual total number of storms is highly variable.

It is reasonable to expect an increase in the frequency and severity of tropical storms with global warming, while at the same time, in some areas, smaller storms may become less common. This is partly because smaller storms are more readily abated by some of the global-warming related changes in weather systems such as increased wind shear and increased dust in the tropical atmosphere. At the same time, extremely high sea surface temperatures, and also, high water temperatures as depth (100–200 meters) increase the potential strength of storms that do get past that initial formation.

Hurricane Patricia, in the Eastern Pacific (landfall in Mexico) was an especially important storm. It was a physically small storm, but had more powerful winds than ever seen in a tropical storm. The storm went from nothing to a full hurricane in several hours (instead of several days).

The significance of this can not be underestimated. We have a situation where the conditions that might cause a hurricane to form are extreme, because of global warming (and this year, more so because of El Niño). So, when when these conditions are in place, a hurricane can form faster, and get more powerful, than normal. Consider the prospect of a land falling Category 5+ storm forming offshore from an area with low lying terrain (not like where Patricia struck land) with a high population density (not like where Patricia struck land) and moving on shore immediately. Like for instance, an Atlantic or Gulf of Mexico version of Patricia making landfall near Miami or NOLA.

Most of the really large hurricanes of this year were in the Pacific basin, distributed across the entire region, but Hurricane Joaquin, which was a very large and powerful storm in the Atlantic, did have us on the edge of our seats for a while when some of the better weather predicting models suggested it might make landfall. Also, nearly unprecedented tropical storms formed near the Arabian Pennensula.

This was a hot year

Other than February, which was merely hot rather than really hot, globally, every month so far this year has broken or nearly broken one or more records, depending on which database one uses. The running 12-month average of surface temperatures started to break records before El Niño kicked in, and continued to do so since. This will continue for several more months, even if the El Niño phenomenon itself stops soon, because it takes several months for surface temperatures to show the El Niño effect.

More specifically, there were killer heat waves in the Western Cape of South Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. Australia recorded its hottest day ever. North America experienced numerous record breaking days, in the US and Canada. Cherry trees thought it was spring and bloomed last week in Washington. I saw birds building a nest outside my house in Minnesota two weeks ago, and our lawn was green(ish) through last weekend.

Ocean Oddness and Other Events

Let us not forget the Great Blob of Hot Water in the northern Pacific. This non El Niño phenomenon, which has been going for a couple of years no, has had El Niño like effects in the region, and probably relates to the non normal weather in along the western coast of North America, including record breaking heat in Alaska, major storms in or near Alaska, and of course, the California Drought.

A Haboob-Nado in China involved some of the strongest winds ever seen in the region, and may have, very unusually, contained an embedded tornado. We had a mild tornado season in the US, in Tornado Alley, until a few days ago when a not-very-seasonal tornado season sprung up and killed close to 50 people in just a few days. The American southeast does get winter tornadoes, but Michigan does not. But this year, there was a first ever recorded December tornado in that state.

The Arctic Sea ice has been diminishing in its minimum extent for a few decades now, and this year we saw the third lowest amount. The volume of Arctic sea ice continues to shrink.

You all know about the Syrian Refugee crisis. This is the latest chapter in the collapse of the Syrian state, which in turn happened because of long term drought in that country killing off the agricultural system and forcing farmers into the cities, where many became involved in the Syrian Civil War, which opened up the opportunity for the Islamic State to take a large amount of territory in the region. And so on. The Syrian refugee crisis is likely to be an early version of more of the same to come over future decades. And, I quickly point out, this is not likely to have been the first climate refugee situation, just much worse than prior events related to the spread of deserts in North Africa and drying out in West Asia.

Research on Climate Change

This year saw some interesting research in climate change.

One team studies major oscillations in climate that relate to oceans (of which El Niño is a shorter-term smaller part). This research suggests that the last couple of decades have seen less warming than we might expect over the long term, and further suggests that an uptick in the rate of warming is in our medium term future.

Related research also shows that accelerated melting of northern glaciers, especially Greenland, could alter Atlantic currents, so while the Earth generally warms due to increased greenhouse gasses, weather may change to a colder regime in Europe, some time over the next few dedades.

We are seeing an increased rate at which climate and weather experts are attributing bad weather to global warming. This is partly a shift in thinking and methods among the experts, and partly because of an actual increase in such events.

There has been interesting research in the Antarctic. We are seeing increased concern about, and evidence for, destabilization of huge inland glaciers that could start to fall apart and contribute to sea level rise at any time in the next several years. At the same time we saw one study that seemed to suggest that Antarctic is gaining ice, rather than losing it. If that is true, than recent decades of sea level rise are partly unexplained. Alternatively, the research, which has some known flaws, may simply be wrong. Look for some interesting results related to Antarctic glacier during 2016.

The famous #FauxPause in global warming, claimed by many climate change deniers to be a real thing (no warming in X years, etc.) was already known to be Faux, but this year saw several independent nails being driven into that coffin. Rather than a pause that disproves global warming, we have a better understood series of changed in the long term warming in the planet’s surface temperature.

See: In a blind test, economists reject the notion of a global warming pause

Sea floor biotic diversity was shown to be threatened by warming, coral bleaching is more likely and in fact happening at a higher rate, and probably mostly due to El Niño, there has been some odd ocean animal migrations.

The planting zones, the gardening and agricultural zones we use to decide which crops to plant and when, have over the last several years shifted in most places in North America by one or two zones. This year, the people who make the zone maps came out with a new one.

Sea levels continue to rise, and the rate of rise is rising. Rare nuisance flooding in coastal areas, most famously but not only Miami, have become regular events. Sales in waterproof shoes are expected to increase.

Communication and Politics

Across meteorology we see the graph and chart makers scrambling to find new colors for their maps showing heat. Y-axes are being stretched everywhere. We seem to be stuck with a five level category system for tropical cyclones/hurricanes, but we are seeing so many storms that are way stronger, bigger, more destructive than earlier Category 5 storms that talk of adding a category is no longer being responded to with angry mobs of pitchfork wielding weather forecasters who came of age with the older system.

See: How to not look like an idiot

There has been a great deal of significant climate change related activism, and COP happened, with a strong message to address the human causes of climate change sooner than later. Climate change has actually become an issue in US elections. For the first time a major world leader, President Obama, has faced off with the deniers and told them to STFU. Major news outlets such as the Washington Post and the Guardian have started to take climate change seriously. The idea that reporters must give equal weight to the “two sides of the story” (science is real, vs. science is not real) is disappearing.

Denial of climate change and climate change science reached its high water mark over the last 12 months. It will now fade away.

And that is a short and incomplete summary of weather and climate in 2015.

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A note for my regular readers: Yes, I chose the burning Earth graphic to annoy the denialist. Check the comments below to see if that annoyed anyone.

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Hi Greg.

It would be really useful for the casual lay person if you could link your references to particular papers to the DOIs/abstracts, for those who might want to follow up. Some of us have the exposure and/or institutional access to find them easily, but Joe and Jane Public might have a little more trouble.

Just a thought. :-)

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Dec 2015 #permalink

Bernard, I usually do. This was not that kind of post, partly because of scheduling constraints and partly because to give even treatment to all that I refer to would require hundreds of references.

My point here is to provide perspective and context on a series of widely talked about ongoing or recent events or development.

This year, almost every week saw a temp related, a precip related, a separate storm related, a research related, and a political/activism related story. I probably wrote 200+ posts addressing a fraction of those issues this year (see the subject indes on the side bar).

Maybe I should implement a system of tracking.

The Global Warming Fact Of The day site is an archive of many climate stories.

If there is a particular issue or event you would like to know more about, post it and someone will likely have more info.

Oops... GWFOTD is no longer updated. But the Facebook page for that group has a link for everything.

“Denial of climate change and climate change science reached its high water mark over the last 12 months. It will now fade away.”

I tend to think that you are correct. But how fast will the rate of fade be? Since we are dealing with human nature here, and with weather nature, I'm expecting that this is going to be a long slow slog. One good polar blast and Inhofe and the other idiots will be out throwing snow balls again.

Well, here's to planning ahead for the time when the population of denialist whack-a-moles finally does collapse,

#2 Bernard J

This has the makings of a good game ;-) Crowd-source those references, kids!

Here's my best guess for the Research on Climate Change section. GL quite possibly thinking of more recent research than the last two studies listed:

England et al. (2015) Robust warming projections despite the recent hiatus.
Nature Climate Change 5, 394–396 (2015) doi:10.1038/nclimate2575

Hansen et al. (2015) Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms
Atmos. Chem. Phys., submitted, doi:10.5194/acpd-15-20059-2015

Zwally et al. (2015) Mass gains of the Antarctic ice sheet exceed losses
Journal of Glaciology, doi:10.3189/2015JoG15J071

Rignot et al. (2014) Widespread, rapid grounding line retreat of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith, and Kohler glaciers, West Antarctica, from 1992 to 2011
Geophys. Res. Lett., 41, 3502–3509, doi:10.1002/2014GL060140

Joughin et al. (2014) Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica
Science Vol. 344 no. 6185 pp. 735-738 doi: 10.1126/science.1249055

Harmless fun that keeps us off the streets...

Thanks for the detailed reply Greg.

There's nothing that I was particularly thinking about personally, as I am familiar with most of it and could find anything I hadn't come across, but I read the piece just after a(nother) discussion with a colleague about the frustration of media news items that mention a new paper or finding but don't give the primary reference, and which in follow-up entails some searching for scientific folk such as us, and probably a much more arduous search for lay people.

I once discussed this matter with an (Australian) ABC journalist, whose response was that they don't usually get a DOI or URL or journal metadata and so they have no concrete policy for including them. I guess that it's just a thing that I raise when I come across similar issues, but in this case I take your point!

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Dec 2015 #permalink

BBD, you are taking to the game with gusto!

Unfortuantely it's 3:30 am here, and so I will have to enter the fray at a later time...

:-)

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Dec 2015 #permalink

#3
Although I appreciate your financial advice:
"Sales in waterproof shoes are expected to increase,"
and certainly intend to act on it, I agree with #2 concerning links. More work, yes, but they would have been very helpful here. I hope you'll consider adding them later.

By cosmicomics (not verified) on 29 Dec 2015 #permalink

I did just post a list of selected posts on research this year (back through last December) and added a link to that at the beginning of this post.

The reason why current news on research often does not link is partly what your friend said, but not exactly. Here's how it works:

You get a press release with no link, so there is no link. OR,..

You get a press release with an embargoed copy of the paper that does not have a link but you could find it later, but by then you have moved on to other things and don't want to spend the time. OR...

You get a link that is not live yet. But you don't use it because, since it is not live, your web people or editors don't want to use an incorrect link and you don't add it later because you have moved on to other things. OR..

You are simply afraid of accidentally breaking an embargo and losing privileges so you don't provide the link.

Personally I like to ad the links to the research (the posts I link to in that summary I just mentioned generally do). But I also often don't write something up before it comes out. I get embargoed material all the time, but I often wait to see what more colleagues, etc., say about the research. I don't feel my role is usually to report the research first or exclusively, but rather, to say more about it. Also, I don't like simply repeating what press releases say. (I do break all of these guidelines arbitrarily as I feel a need to, of course!)

It is very annoying when a specific piece of research is talked about without even a mention of the journal. In fact, I often get press releases where that happens and if I dig in farther I find out there is no journal article, just a moment when a university press office decides to blurt.

SteveP: "I tend to think that you are correct. But how fast will the rate of fade be? Since we are dealing with human nature here, and with weather nature, I’m expecting that this is going to be a long slow slog. One good polar blast and Inhofe and the other idiots will be out throwing snow balls again."

Social change like this seems to take forever then suddenly happens all at once.

What I think is really going to happen is this: Denialists will not diminish in number, but what they say will be increasingly ignored. When? If the US elects a Dem president and at least one house in Congress goes DEM, then by mid-november 2016. A bold prediction but I really think that is likely. Otherwise, we wait longer.

Anyway, after they become irrelevant (meaning the mainstream press stops taking them seriously) then the next phase is for it to become normal for deniers to keep their mouths shut. Like racists after various civil rights advances. They are still there but their comments are no longer appropriate at the Thanksgiving dinner. Usually.

That may happen very quickly, but in a heterogeneous manner, depending, frankly, on the weather. After it becomes normal to associate weather disasters with AGW, it will then become more common for people to find themselves denying AGW in the company of people who have lost relatives, homes, pets, jobs, etc. because of weather disasters. That will put a kibash on the conversation.

More on the consequences of CC:

Flooding, also Britain:
LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron walked the flooded streets of York on Monday as Britain’s Environment Agency warned that the country needed “a complete rethink” of its flood defenses.
Thousands of people in the north of England spent another day dealing with what they called unprecedented flooding, with roads in York and in nearby Leeds still underwater and some electricity cut off. David Rooke, the deputy chief executive of the Environment Agency, said that “we are moving from known extremes to unknown extremes.”
Some scientists speculated that the effects of climate change could be evident in a year of record flooding. “We are having more severe floods in the U.K. than 10 years ago,” said Reza Ahmadian, a lecturer on water management at Cardiff University. “This is not something just happening in the U.K. — and we will see more and more of this.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/29/world/europe/david-cameron-defends-fl…
(My emphasis.)

Recently, Cumbria was also hit by “unprecedented flooding.”

More on flooding and climate change:
http://www.carbonbrief.org/category/science/extreme-weather/floods

Drought
Iran:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/19/world/middleeast/scarred-riverbeds-an…
http://beforeitsnews.com/environment/2015/05/iran-drought-the-empty-riv…

Ethiopia:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/11/ethiopia-hit-worst-drought-decade…

Fire:
From the Australian Climate Council:
THE BURNING ISSUE:
CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE AUSTRALIAN BUSHFIRE THREAT
https://www.climatecouncil.org.au/.../df9df4b05bc1673ace5142c3445149a4…

An interesting detail: As both the Australian and North American fire seasons grow longer, they will increasingly overlap, and the ability to collaborate will become increasingly stressed.

El Niño and recorded warming:
“The running 12-month average of surface temperatures started to break records before El Niño kicked in, and continued to do so since. This will continue for several more months, even if the El Niño phenomenon itself stops soon, because it takes several months for surface temperatures to show the El Niño effect.”

If I'm not mistaken, it takes even longer for them to show in the troposphere, but eventually they do. Not good for Ted Cruz.

By cosmicomics (not verified) on 29 Dec 2015 #permalink

It is very annoying when a specific piece of research is talked about without even a mention of the journal. In fact, I often get press releases where that happens and if I dig in farther I find out there is no journal article, just a moment when a university press office decides to blurt.

No reference to even a journal is indeed a supreme frustration, especially if it doesn't go beyond a generic "researchers at..." phrasing. This type of waffle is what first drew my attention to the issue.

And yes indeed to your comment about institutional media releases not backed by published work. Head, meet wall...

By the way, nice summation of the issues with media inclusions of references. I think that you covered almost everything in the list that my journalist acquaintance relayed to me! I'm well familiar with the irks of a non-live DOI, and I do appreciate the fiddling required to go back and insert them into historical piece when they eventually materialise.

By Bernard J. (not verified) on 29 Dec 2015 #permalink

#5, 11

COP21, the fact that so many nations succeeded in reaching an agreement despite years of denialist disinformation, must be a demotivating factor.

By cosmicomics (not verified) on 29 Dec 2015 #permalink

"my colleague Paul Douglas refers to as flash droughts.”

A refreshing new phrase. Drought is a long term event so it is a bit difficult to imagine, say, a 10 minute drought.

By Michael 2 (not verified) on 29 Dec 2015 #permalink

Yes, you can thank ATTP for suggesting I come here. I was overwhelmed by extreme this and extreme that wondering if we share the same planet but probably not.

I'm glad that you reserve "extreme" for something that might actually be noticeable.

By Michael 2 (not verified) on 29 Dec 2015 #permalink

#17

Yes, you can thank ATTP for suggesting I come here. I was overwhelmed by extreme this and extreme that wondering if we share the same planet but probably not.

I’m glad that you reserve “extreme” for something that might actually be noticeable.

The sodden ruin going on the the UK is noticeable, M2, as are all the other extreme weather events listed above. Please check your denialism at the door.

Clumpiness in the hydrological cycle leading to "flash droughts" in addition to floods was worth a mention, but the issue of actual droughts was more or less elided. Floods are more photogenic, but it's the droughts that do the most damage.

That said, I'm not sure where the science stands in terms of drought trends. It would be interesting to look into those details.

Note that even if average drought, however calculated, doesn't show a trend (and I'm not sure if such is even expected), there's the matter of drought becoming more persistent in areas where that was formerly not the case, as in California and the surrounding region.

By Steve Bloom (not verified) on 31 Dec 2015 #permalink

Steve, you are right of course. The trend problem is real, but I think that has something to do with the way effects are measured, and the fact that these changes may be regional ... with one region being hit more than all others at a decadal scale. I have no reason to say that systemically, but observationally it may be true. If so, then Africa may be left out of the good data sets to our peril, and the ME and Australia may show some real changing of the results over the next year or two... most drought data globally are not up to date.

But also, as important as drought is, and current, some of the drought stories are longer term and don't fit as well into a year's summary ... something we should caution ourselves against letting happen, and it may have happened here somewhat!

Michael 2

I’m glad that you reserve “extreme” for something that might actually be noticeable.

Heh. The News for Parrots comes immediately to mind.
Michael 2 will only notice extremes if they happen to him.

By Mal Adapted (not verified) on 31 Dec 2015 #permalink

Latest news from the north pole :

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-31/freak-heatwave-pushes-winter-nort…

In the northern hemisphere winter - Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's not natural or how its "meant" to be.

Meanwhile here in Adelaide, SA we had 40.6 degree (105 Fahrenheit) heat and bushfires again on New Year's Eve in what's already seemingly an awfully long hot summer but with many months of this still to go.

@11. Greg Laden : Hope you are right and really hope the Democratic Party - Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders wins the current Presidential race for everyone's sake. I expect and sure hope they will - I've got a lot of respect and admiration and sympathy for Hillary Clinton and think she'd make a great pro-science POTUS but Sanders would be a fine choice too.

I really hope we don't get a Denialist Republican as POTUS but - if we did - how long then do you think it would take for reality to finally sink in even for them?

PS. Not sure if I shared this earlier on another thread or not but since this is the one for collecting these sort of items :

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-19/sa-heatwave-weather-bureau-warns-…

That was at the start of this month. As I noted in #23 yesterday was another day over forty and just horrrible weather to work in or do much more than hide from.

Stepping outside at sunset last night, after having to get up extra early to finish work before it got unbearably hot - for an even hotter than usual value of unbearably hot - the concrete was hot enough to fry the proverbial egg on and there as the strong smell of smoke from a bushfire in my nostrils.

This bushfire :

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-31/buildings-destroyed-in-mosquito-h…

Which is the latest in a series of major ones thretaening us last summer and already this one. Hundreds of volunteer firefighters spent their NYE fighting the blaze in hot, uncomfortable conditions.

Over the state border, another major bushfires claimed well over hundred homes in Victoria the other day and closed a major (& famously scenic) highway :

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-01/part-of-great-ocean-road-to-reope…

just in the last few days.

This is our new reality and the ominous trends here make me almost just despair.

Final results : Last month here was hotter by 5 degrees than average, we had thirteen days over 35 degrees and seven over 40 Celsius. Dryer than usual too. (Weather report TV news) Global Overheating and El Nino have definitely combined for a worse, hotter, dryer summer here in South Oz.