FOX44 - Burlington / Plattsburgh News, Weather & Sports10.13.11 Warm September on Earth

10.13.11 Warm September on Earth

Earth continues to be warm.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, referred to as NOAA, released data from September from across the globe.  This is part of a monthly occurrence which helps people plan their lives and businesses around what is happening on this planet.

I stumbled upon the article thanks to NOAA on Twitter.  Everyone's on Twitter and Facebook, right?! You can find several Twitter handles of NOAA employees and the administration itself.  They do tweet some useful information.

Anyway, I attribute all of the information in this blog to NOAA and the NCDC (National Climatic Data Center).

Here is the map of temperature anomalies in September 2011.  An anomaly is the departure from average.  So if our average high is 65 degrees, and our actual high temperature ended up being 67, the anomaly would be +2.  Vice versa, it would be -2 for 63.

The red dots show where it was warmer-than-average in September across the globe.  Here in the United States, most of the lower 48 stayed warmer than average last month.  An area in the southeastern CONUS remained slightly cooler than average.  Closer to home our temperatures were about 5 degrees warmer at night, and about 1-2 F warmer during the day.  You can refer to the wonderful blog written earlier this month from Meteorologist Kerrin Jeromin.

The larger the dot on the image above, the warmer it was.  There are more red dots on the map than blue, showing most of the Earth was warmer-than-average.

I pulled a few statistics from the article to explain how warm it was.

• The combined temperature across land and surface ocean water was 8th-warmest on record.  It was 59.95 F which was 0.95 F above the 20th century average.  There is a margin of error with the September temperature of +/- 0.20 F.
• Global land surface temperature = 53.6 F (+1.57 F) and 4th-warmest September on record.  That number had a MOE of +/- 0.43F
• Global ocean surface temperature was 61.1 F (+0.72F) and 14th-warmest September on record.  MOE = +/- 0.07 F
• From January to September 2011, Earth has had the 11th-warmest period on record (since 1880).  The combined temperature of land and ocean was 58.4 F, or 0.94 F warmer than the 20th century average.
• Over land, the January - September worldwide land surface temperature has been 1.44 F warmer than the 20th century average.  That's the 7th-warmest period on record!
• La Niña conditions strengthened during September, according to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center.  It's forecast to gradually strengthen further and continue into the Northern Hemisphere during winter 2011-2012. 
• For us in northern New England that would mean a snowy winter is likely.

Below is a map of the global weather events in September 2011:

The text may be hard to read so here's a link to the actual picture:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/images/extremes-201109.png

Of note, the Arctic ice extent was the second-smallest in September history.  That month is usually the smallest the ice extent gets on an annual basis, and it was second-smallest.  On the flip side, the Antarctic ice extent grew to its 14th-largest in September.

For the full article, click here.

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