Down to Earth Blog

Getting Perspective From a Blog by Climate Scientists:  Temperatures are cooling down now in the Washington, D.C., area, getting into the 20s Fahrenheit at night and 40s during the day. Three days ago we had daytime temps in the low 70s and I was jogging in shorts and short sleeves.

There's been a lot of talk about the weather around here and on the Web. Two other stories have intensified the focus: "This Year May Be the Warmest Ever" and "Record Warm Year in 2006 for U.S.".

In terms of the warm January, what caused it? Was it El Nino, the jet stream or climate change? The best account I've seen of what might have contributed to the unseasonal weather is this post on RealClimate, a blog published by working climate scientists: "El Nino, Global Warming, and Anamalous U.S. Winter Warmth."

In it they point out that we can't totally attribute the warm weather to climate change, and we can't totally attribute it to El Nino, either. It's probable that climate change is influencing El Nino, according to the post.

To quote the post, "one cannot attribute a specific meteorological event, an anomalous season, or even (as seems may be the case here, depending on the next 2 months) two anomalous seasons in a row, to climate change."

As I understand it, "climate" refers to long term trends in weather conditions (over a period of years); "weather" refers to the day-to-day, hour-to-hour changes in the state of the atmosphere. When reading, listening to or watching the news, keep that in mind.

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