November 2012 U.S. climate update: word of the month is “dry”
Featured Image December 6, 2012
November precipitation was nearly an inch below the long-term average in the U.S., making this the eighth-driest November on record. Not surprisingly, drought expanded and worsened as a result.
High-latitude growing season getting longer
December 5, 2012 Rebecca Lindsey
Few real-world signs of climate change are easier to read than changes in the growing season of familiar vegetation. Most of the high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere are experiencing longer growing seasons now than they did more than two and half decades ago.
December 5, 2012
By the time the summer melt season came to an end in mid-September, the ice extent had shrunk down to just 1.3 million square miles (3.41 square kilometers), setting a new record low that was 18 percent smaller than the previous record and nearly 50 percent smaller than the long-term (1979-2000) average. For sea ice to have shrunk to half its historic summer extent is as much a transformation of the environment as if half the forests of New England had been replaced by Saguaro cactus.
Record low spring snow cover in Northern Hemisphere 2012
December 5, 2012 Caitlyn Kennedy - NOAA Climate Program Office
In June 2012, snow cover extent over Eurasia and North America hit a new record low. It is the third time in five years that North America has set a new record low, and the fifth year in a row that Eurasia has. The rate of snow cover loss over Northern Hemisphere land areas in June between 1979 and 2012 is -17.6% per decade—a faster decline than September sea ice loss over the same period.
Arctic temperature patterns: 2012 and 2001-2011
December 5, 2012 Michon Scott, Rebecca Lindsey
On a yearly basis, Arctic temperatures are strongly influenced by natural climate patterns, including the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations. Over the span of a decade, though, Arctic amplification of climate change is evident: no part of the Arctic was cooler than the long-term average.
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It’s natural to associate drought with heat and with summer, but drought also impacts us during winter months. Winter wheat yields are declining, and the Mississippi River is approaching an all-time low. Understanding drought conditions and how they are affecting us is part of being “climate smart.”
Resilience and Energy: Coastal Management Ensures Supply
Port Fourchon sits on the very edge of the country, all the better for vessels shuttling supplies to and from deepwater oil platforms across miles and miles of ocean. Keeping it open is a big deal because the port services 90 percent of all deepwater activity in the Gulf of Mexico. Port Director Chett Chiasson tours the harbor while discussing the importance of preparedness, adaptation, and resilience.
Windell’s Levee: Protecting a Coastal Community
Life in Fourchon Parrish, Louisiana is good. Abundant shrimp, crabs, oysters, and access to the Gulf of Mexico make this an attractive place to live and work. But increasingly, life on the coast introduces difficult challenges. Building levees and re-engineering drainage systems are some of the near-term ways people are adapting to a changing landscape. But will they, too, retreat inland, leaving the coast to time and tides?
Talking about the Arctic with NOAA Administrator Lubchenco
December 6, 2012 Brian Kahn
It may seem remote from our everyday lives, but the Arctic exerts a powerful influence on the rest of the planet. From rising sea level, to U.S. and European weather, to bird migrations, NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco describes how Arctic climate change can influence the rest of the planet.
2012 Arctic Report Card
December 5, 2012 NOAA Climate.gov team
The central Arctic was not as unusually warm in 2012 as it has been in many years this decade, and yet new records were set for sea ice extent, terrestrial snow extent, melting at the surface of the Greenland ice sheet, and permafrost temperature. According to the 2012 Arctic Report Card, these converging indicators “provide strong evidence of the momentum that has developed in the Arctic environmental system due to the impacts of a persistent warming trend that began over 30 years ago.”