Global Warming & Climate Change News: Record Warmth; How Global Warming Makes Central Europe Cold; Texas Drought Threatening Rice Crop..

Some top global warming and climate change news from the past week (other than what we’ve already covered):

record warm winter 2012
Temperature departures from average during January 2012, showing mild conditions (yellow) in the continental U.S. and unusually cold weather (purple) in Alaska. Credit: NOAA.

1. Record warmth sweeping through the Eastern U.S. and Midwest. Who knows why?

2. Drought in Texas continues to have a strong effect on Texas agriculture. “Come March 1, if there is less than 850,000 acre-feet of water in reservoirs along the Lower Colorado River, water managers will be forced to take the unprecedented step of withholding water from agricultural users, which will mean severe cuts to Texas rice production this year.”

3. Lake Mead is shrinking in tremendous Southwest drought. “During the past three years, the level of Lake Mead has followed a boom and bust cycle, dropping to a record low in 2010 during an intense drought, then recovering during 2011 thanks to record mountain snowfall, and now dropping again in the midst of a dry winter.”

4. What do you get when you mix oil and mining company CEOs with climate science? Bad science (aka lies). “David Archibald is a climate ‘skeptic’ who has been CEO of multiple oil and mineral exploration companies operating in Australia, and currently is part of the scientific advisory panel for the Australian Climate Science Coalition (ACSC) – a group of Australian fake skeptics which also includes Bob CarterJohn McLeanDavid Evans, and Ian Plimer,” Skeptical Science writes, before correcting a horrendous “F” paper on the relationship between the solar cycle and global warming (or, in Archibald’s imagination, cooling).

5. New York City cancels “Winter Jam” in Prospect Park due to lack of winter… really.

6. Following up on a repost regarding NASA scientists expecting more rapid global warming from last week, Skeptical Science has Part 2 of that story up now.

7. “[C]limate science is cool,” Ari Jokimäki writes. “Therefore I decided to make a selection of cool climate papers of last year. While I’m browsing through new climate related science and looking at certain research paper, I frequently think that this is cool. Below you can see some of the studies from last year I thought were cool. There is one paper for each week and I have subjectively decided which is the coolest paper of that week. I won’t listen to complaints but you are welcome to show your own selections.” More on AGW Observer.

8. “Is climate change bringing the Arctic to Europe?” That’s the question Joe Romm leads with on a recent post regarding a phenomenon I’ve written about in years past that explains why Europe is so darn cold while the world is so darn warm.

9. Want some more climate science news? Ari Jokimäki (yes, the cool dude from above) has a roundup of cool climate science research just from the past week that’s worth a look! (On both AGW Observer and Skeptical Science.) He posts such roundups weekly—fun for the science or climate science enthusiast (not so much for FOX-loving global warming deniers and oil company CEOs).

10. And, lastly, here’s a fun cartoon to wrap up this piece (via Climate Progress):

Is that hotline related to FOX News in any way?

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