Here are some new Far North Climate tidbits:
November dried out Fairbanks, delivering the 6th lowest precipitation on record, only .11 inches. Four of the six driest Novembers have struck since 2001. Turkey day baked at 43 °F — second warmest Thanksgiving ever.
A bold Chinook scoured the Alaska Range between November 20 to 24 with 66 mph winds at Antler Creek and 50 mph peaks at Otto Lake in Healy. The mercury chipped 51 °F near Fort Greely, far above normal.
Barrow saw the 3rd warmest November of record, with 3 November days Zero or below. If you stood on the Arctic shore and scanned north, you would have seen not a single pan or floe of frozen water. Supposedly that’s never happened before.
All these details and more can be found at a brand-new Alaska Weather & Climate Highlights website, sponsored by the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy in cooperation with the National Weather Service and the Alaska Climate Research Center.
“This website provides a monthly summary of notable weather and climate events in Alaska including temperature, precipitation, sea ice, wildfire, wind, and storms,” writes Sarah Fleisher Trainor, research assistant professor and coordinator of the ACC.
For climate page links, icon key, details, explanations of weather terms, and more, check out the site’s primer page
Source: NCDC
Meanwhile, the National Climate Data Center has issued a preliminary climate report for 2007, to be updated in early 2008.
The year 2007 is on pace to become one of the 10 warmest years for the contiguous U.S., since national records began in 1895, according to preliminary data from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.
The year was marked by exceptional drought in the U.S. Southeast and the West, which helped fuel another extremely active wildfire season. The year also brought outbreaks of cold air, and killer heat waves and floods.
Source: NCDC
Global temperatures will likely end the year significantly above the 20th century average as well, placing 2007 as the fifth warmest year on record, according the NCDC global report. But subtract the influence of the ocean, and that pesky La Nina brewing in the Pacific, and you get more sizzle.
The home planet’s land masses logged the warmest average temperature on record in 2007 — 1.85 °F above the long-term 20th century average of 47.3 °F.
The driver of this heat? Northern hemisphere continents, particularly the boreal zones in North America and Asia. 2007 pushed northern land temps set an all-time average record, 2.16 °F above the average and almost one-third of a degree above the previous record set in 2005.