By Jim Gregorich
If November and December temperatures continue to straddle the averages for those months, 2010 could be the “averagest” weather year on record in Boulder, Colorado. To date the average temperature has been within a tenth of a degree of the mean temperature. The mean temperature for the year is actually lower than the long term average due to the relatively cold winter in the early part of the year.
But the tail end of the year has shown some signs of fully recovering those temperatures to hit the average.
Susie Salmon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration commented, “The latter half of 2010 has shown some of the expected warming trend. We fully expect that the year end temperatures will exceed the long term average, in which case we will call it a continuation of global warming. If the temperatures fail to exceed the average but come up short, we will label it as an effect of climate change.
“The most difficult situation is if the temperature precisely hits the average. In that case we may publish the numbers to an extra decimal point. If that fails to yield a case for warming or climate change we may have to roll out our newest communications on this subject, “catastrophic climate change.” The reasoning there, would be that, never before has there been an instance where an annual average temperature came in at precisely the long term average. This obviously points to climate change and catastrophe at that. What would happen if every year came in at the average. Not a pretty picture.”
Not quite completely discredited climatologist, Phillip Jaws at East Anglican Climate Church felt that a different approach would be more useful, “It seems to me that the best solution to the situation would be to employ Mike’s Nature trick … to hide the decline, in the event that the average falls short or comes in at the average. Things were better for all of us in the days when global warming reigned. I mean, we were relevant.”
Temperature is not the only issue facing the climatologists. Boulder’s preciptiation for the year looks like it could also hit the average for the year. To date, Boulder has experienced 17.29 inches of precipitation. A slightly above average 2 months would put us right on the average in precipitation.
Michael Womann at Penn State had this to say, “The double whammy of Boulder hitting the average temperature and average precipitation would really hurt the recovery of our climate change campaign. Boulder is a town where we have really sold our story well. It really helps to have the folks at NOAA on our side. If Boulder’s numbers really come in at the averages, we have a lot of explaining to do. Hopefully the snow and rain hold off this year. It will really help our case to sell the public a drought. The recent fires will help a potential drought campaign.” Salmon concurred, “I believe that the folks in Boulder have forgotten how green the spring and early summer were. I am really routing for the drought scenario.”
Keep tuned. We will follow this one closely for the remainder of the year.
Filed under: Funny, Global Warming
