WASHINGTON - A new overview of climate indicators and impacts on America and the world show an increasingly unstable and unpredictable worldwide weather system that includes hotter weather, more precipitation that falls in increasingly extreme amounts, and continued disturbing levels of ice melt at the poles and major glacial areas. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the co-author of the only climate bill to pass a body of Congress, today echoed the concerns of scientists and defended the agency that issued the report - the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - from attacks by Republican climate deniers.
"This report makes one thing very clear. Global warming isn't coming. It's already here," said Rep. Markey, the Ranking Member of the Natural Resources Committee. "The slow boil of the Earth is now rolling, and we need to find ways to turn down the heat, and fast."
The peer-reviewed 2010 State of the Climate report issued today by NOAA confirms that 2010 was tied as one of the hottest two years on record globally. Other highlights include:
* Arctic sea ice shrank to the third smallest area on record, and the Greenland ice sheet melted at the highest rate since at least 1958. Alpine glaciers shrank for the 20th consecutive year.
* Even with a moderate-to-strong La Niña in place during the latter half of the year, which is associated with cooler equatorial waters in the tropical Pacific, the 2010 average global sea surface temperature was third warmest on record and sea level continued to rise.
NOAA has also said that 2011 portends more extreme weather conditions here in America, noting that an unprecedented eight weather disasters costing more than $1 billion each have occurred on U.S. soil this year, totaling $32 billion overall, and there hasn't yet been one hurricane.
Despite NOAA's efforts to monitor the weather and climate, and provide valuable research and timely warnings in the event of potential extreme weather events, the agency has come under fire by Congressional Republicans looking to dismantle efforts to study the climate. The Republican budget cuts funding to science agencies, including NOAA, by 13 percent from the president's 2012 budget request. If this level of cut is carried through to the NOAA budget, it would decrease by $700 million.
"It's not enough for the climate deniers in the Republican party to ignore the answers which exist to the threat of climate change, they don't even want the questions asked at all," said Rep. Markey. "For the millions of people who have been affected by extreme weather here in America and around the world who are asking ‘Why?' the Republican answer is ‘Don't ask.'"
