Every ten years NOAA recalculates their average temperature. the average temperature is what we hear every night on television when the weathergirl says “the normal low temperature today was fourtysomething (or whatever).” NOAA, the parent organization of the National Weather Service, supplies these “normal temperatures. They are based on the average temperature for the high or low, day, month or year based on the last 30 years of actual temperatures.
So now the new average temperatures reflect ten more years of global warming and these last ten years have really seen those temperatures warm. So every night on weather, when we hear what the normal temperature for the day is, that normal temperature has been influenced by global warming, yet it is presented as “normal.” How fair is this? How much does this confuse the issue?
How much, it could not be that much, could it? the image from NOAA below shows exactly how much warmer the minimum January temperature is across the nation in the thirty years averaged 1981 to 2010 vs. 1971 to 2000. In the Northern tier of states the average “normal” temperature is now about 3 degrees warmer. In Austin, when I heard about this news on the second of August, the television weatherman told us that the old normal high temperature for August second was 95 and the new normal temperature for August 2 was 98. How fair is that? We are having one hellofa time trying to convince the public how significant just a few degrees of warming is and the national Weather Service goes and changes the goal post by three degrees! What the hell are they thinking? This is NOT normal, this is outrageous! Just because we have been doing this for a hundred however many years does not mean that we should continue to do so. NOAA and the National Weather Service should change to meet the demands of the 21st century.