Warmest year on record so far.
Don’t worry, it won’t be the warmest for very long at all.
I can hardly even tell that it’s winter right now. Walking around in a t-shirt when most years I would be in a puffy winter coat and gloves and a touque.
Yet here in Belgium I’m walking around in a puffy winter coat hat and gloves, whereas preceding winters would wear less. The point is, isolated observations don’t tell us much about climate. In winter, warm and cold anomalies travel in waves (Rossby waves) around the pole, and mostly offset each other in the hemisphere average. Problem is that human population distribution evolved, over centuries, such that most people live in places with comfortable climates - and when we change the typical wave patterns, such distribution may no longer be a good adaptation to the new climate.
Finally, a climate headline that’s not “oh my god how could it be so hot?! Maybe climate change is a real thing?!”
Written by Gavin Schmidt whose career has been defined by heading one of the long-term temperature measurement projects
Edit: auto-correct gave me something other than “measurement” so fixed it.
Well, we need more realists like him. With data, and the balls to say we aren’t making progress.