related disasters:
tropical cyclones, tornados, floods, droughts, winter storms, extreme heat, extreme cold, lightning, El Nino, global
warming Atmospheric sciences at a glance (cont) The modern climatology (meteorology) was born in the
1940s (a very young science!)
«He [Steig] noted that sea - surface temperatures in the
tropical Pacific last showed significant
warming in the
1940s, and the impact in the Amundsen Sea area then was probably comparable to what has been observed recently.
The models heavily relied upon by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had not projected this multidecadal stasis in «global
warming»; nor (until trained ex post facto) the fall in TS from
1940 - 1975; nor 50 years» cooling in Antarctica (Doran et al., 2002) and the Arctic (Soon, 2005); nor the absence of ocean
warming since 2003 (Lyman et al., 2006; Gouretski & Koltermann, 2007); nor the onset, duration, or intensity of the Madden - Julian intraseasonal oscillation, the Quasi-Biennial Oscillation in the
tropical stratosphere, El Nino / La Nina oscillations, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, or the Pacific Decadal Oscillation that has recently transited from its
warming to its cooling phase (oceanic oscillations which, on their own, may account for all of the observed
warmings and coolings over the past half - century: Tsoniset al., 2007); nor the magnitude nor duration of multi-century events such as the Mediaeval
Warm Period or the Little Ice Age; nor the cessation since 2000 of the previously - observed growth in atmospheric methane concentration (IPCC, 2007); nor the active 2004 hurricane season; nor the inactive subsequent seasons; nor the UK flooding of 2007 (the Met Office had forecast a summer of prolonged droughts only six weeks previously); nor the solar Grand Maximum of the past 70 years, during which the Sun was more active, for longer, than at almost any similar period in the past 11,400 years (Hathaway, 2004; Solankiet al., 2005); nor the consequent surface «global
warming» on Mars, Jupiter, Neptune's largest moon, and even distant Pluto; nor the eerily - continuing 2006 solar minimum; nor the consequent, precipitate decline of ~ 0.8 °C in TS from January 2007 to May 2008 that has canceled out almost all of the observed
warming of the 20th century.