Georgia Tech climate scientist Kim Cobb said she normally doesn't concern herself much with the new high temperature records that are broken regularly.
"However," she added in a Thursday email," when I look at the new February 2016 temperatures, I feel like I'm looking at something out of a sci-fi movie. In a way we are: it's like someone plucked a value off a graph from 2030 and stuck it on a graph of present temperatures. It is a portent of things to come, and it is sobering that such temperature extremes are already on our doorstep."
Scientists at NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina, were astonished by the "staggering" numbers, said Deke Arndt, the centers' global monitoring chief.
"Usually these are monthly reminders that things are changing," Arndt said. "The last six months have been more than a reminder, it's been like a punch in the nose."
NASA's chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt usually discounts the importance of individual record hot months, but said this month was different, calling it "obviously strange."
This was due to the long-term warming from heat-trapping gases and the powerful El Nino, so these types of records will continue for a few more months, but probably will not be a permanent situation, Schmidt said in an email.
But other were not so sure, including Arndt, who compared it to moving into a new hotter neighborhood.
"We are in a new era," Arndt said.
"We have started a new piece of modern history for this climate."
http://news.yahoo.com/beyond-record-hot-february-astronomical-140020152.html
It's the end of the world, as we know it.
