Editors, Reporters and Commentators,
To add to the article below: NASA says that so far, 2016 is at least temporarily right at the level – 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures – that many climate experts warn we must stay below to avoid the climate tipping point.
Cornell experts and others say that reducing methane leakage and venting throughout the US natural gas industry is the quickest – and only – way to slow global warming in time. As Dr. Robert Howarth emphasizes, “The climate responds very quickly to methane”, a super-potent heat-trapping gas. So curbing methane is all-important.
The natural gas industry and its methane emissions are now the dominant driver of US greenhouse gases. The methane emissions have soared due to fracking, which is being driven by the mad rush by Duke Energy and other utilities to burn shale gas.
Please foster public debate on the power industry’s role in this emergency.
Jim Warren, NC WARN
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July was ‘absolutely’ Earth’s hottest month ever recorded
By Jason Samenow
The Washington Post
August 17, 2016
NOAA and NASA data reveal the Earth’s temperature reached its highest point in 136 years of record-keeping during July.
“July 2016 was absolutely the hottest month since the instrumental records began,” tweeted Gavin Schmidt, who directs NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is responsible for temperature measurements.
It was the 15th straight month of recording-breaking temperatures in NOAA’s analysis and 10th-straight in NASA’s, passing the previous hottest Julys by substantial margins.
“It’s a little alarming to me that we’re going through these records like nothing this year,” said Jason Furtado, a professor of meteorology at the University of Oklahoma.
“Each month just gives another data point that makes the evidence stronger that we’re changing the climate,” added Simon Donner, professor of climatology at the University of British Columbia.
July is usually the hottest month of the year, as it coincides with the peak of summer in the Northern Hemisphere. But this July was more than 1.5 degrees above average in both NOAA and NASA’s analyses.
“July 2016 was the 379th consecutive month with temperatures at least nominally above the 20th century average,” NOAA said.
