New Normal: Dispatches and an Explanation

We're breaking daily temperature records around here with some frequency, so I have little doubt that this summer is going to turn out to be one of the hottest on record, following one of the driest winters--not a pretty combination.

But it's nothing compared to the severity and the consequences of the current and surprisingly late heatwave in the Midwest.  

Meanwhile, wildfires continue in California--at least one to our northeast is not expected to be out until October. The biggest one down in Yosemite continues, apparently made worse by congressional failure to approve brush-clearing.  And the Forest Service has already spent its fire-fighting budget for the year, thanks to congressional cuts under sequestration.
 
So much for the New Normal as it evolves.  Last week also brought a scientific explanation, at least generally, for two apparently dissonant facts: the planetary temperature has not been rising much, while record high temperatures have been rife in many places, including entire continents (like North America.)

A new study confirms what others have speculated: that increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have not led to the corresponding global temperature rise because that CO2 is being absorbed by oceans--specifically the Pacific, which goes through a cycle of absorption until a tolerance level is reached, at which point the gases are expelled into the atmosphere.  This cycle is of varying length, but can be as much as 20 or 30 years.

Then why are we getting record heat waves?  It's the difference between winter and summer, the researchers say:

The solution to this contradiction is that temperature has behaved differently between winter and summer seasons," said Prof Xie.
"The influence of the equatorial Pacific ocean is strongest in winter but weakest during the summer, so CO2 can keep working on the temperature and sea ice in the Arctic over the summer." 

The last period of the cold Pacific capturing greenhouse gases was from the 1940s to 1970.  After that we got very noticeable spikes in global temperature.  The same will happen some time in the future.  But given how climate is still being affected--increased droughts in some areas, floods and precip in others, plus temperature extremes and storms--there's no telling what quickly rising global temps will do when they interact with these cumulative effects.