Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Will 2014 be the Hottest Year Ever?

Lots of people have claimed it will be and they could be correct, but there are two obvious problems:

1. The year is not over yet.

2. "Hottest year ever" is not well defined. There are a number of different published temperature series, calculated in different ways. "Hottest year" looks a lot less striking if it turns out to be true by only one measure out of five or six.

The series I mostly use in climate arguments is one from NASA, not because I have any reason to think it better than others but because it is one that I found conveniently webbed as numbers, not just as a graph. It shows 2010 as the hottest year so far. Just for fun, I added up the temperatures for the first eleven months of 2010 and 2014. Currently, 2010 is ahead by about  .01 degree C. 

But December of 2010 was relatively cool, so it would not be surprising if 2014 inched past the record in its final month. Or not.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm pretty sure most years in the Pliocene were hotter than 2014.

Fred Mangels said...

I'll give the [climate change] Believers one point: Here in Humboldt County I'd be more than willing to agree the last couple summers, at least in Eureka, have been warmer than average. Perhaps even the year overall.

We don't often get high 60 and low 70 degree temps in Eureka, but we've had a fair number of them in the summer the last two years. I love it!

Josiah Neeley said...

A single year doesn't tell you much anyway.

Anonymous said...

You must admit, it got pretty hot for left-collectivist Democrats, especially in early November.
Michael Morrison