Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Sunny Skies, Superlative Shortage

Now

Sunny. The superlative supply is running short: Afternoon temperatures are a couple of degrees cooler than yesterday in the Washington metro area, but mainly sunny skies and low humidity have combined to produce exceptionally fine early fall conditions.

Tonight and Tomorrow

Continued fine. After mainly clear skies and low temperatures in the mid 50s downtown to near 50° in the cooler 'burbs, tomorrow will again be sunny with highs around 77°.

For the outlook through the rest of the week and the weekend, scroll down to Jason's post below.

Tropical Topics

The National Hurricane Center continues to report, "There are no tropical cyclones at this time."

Climate Corner

Evidence continues to mount that recent global average temperature changes are unusually extreme and near dangerous levels. A paper, "Global Temperature Change", by NASA climate scientist James Hansen et al. was published yesterday in the online version of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Comparing Pacific Ocean sea-surface temperatures with the paleoclimate record, the authors determined that the global average temperature is now near the peak of the Holocene period (about 10,000 years). Furthermore, the recent rate of increase, 0.2°C per decade, if it continues for the next 50 years, will be enough to reach the maximum of the last million years, around the middle Pliocene. Articles about the study were published by the Beeb, UK Guardian, New Scientist, MSNBC (from LiveScience.com), and Wall Street Journal (subscription required). The WaPo published only the AP report online, as did the NYT.

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Seasonal Outlook

Latest seasonal forecast: Click here.


Latest 3-month temperature outlook from Climate Prediction Center/NWS/NOAA.