Lest we forget about global warming, average temperatures in the United States this year will fall somewhere between the 7th and 12th warmest year on record based on recorded temperatures going back 106 years, Thomas R. Karl, director of the U.S. National Climatic Data Centre, reported recently.
“Of the natural factors influencing climate,” explains the New York Times, “the energy output of the sun has increased, which would tend to lift temperatures, but a larger effect in recent years has been volcanic activity, which spews out gases that change into droplets in the upper atmosphere that reflect sunlight back into space.”
Speaking of the cold weather, Karl said “I think this goes to illustrate that even in a warming trend, one can and should expect an individual month with some very anomalously cold weather.”
Source: Kenneth Chang, U.S. Weather Follows Global Warming Trend, New York Times, December 20, 2000.
For text http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/20/science/20WARM.html
For NCPA’s Global Warming Hotline go to
http://www.ncpa.org/hotlines/global/gwhot.html
