The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released the 2009 State of the Climate report, which concludes the scientific evidence that our world is warming is unmistakable. The past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer over the last 50 years.

Human society has developed for thousands of years under one climatic state, and now a new set of climatic conditions are taking shape. These conditions are consistently warmer, and some areas are likely to see more extreme events like severe drought, torrential rain and violent storms.

Deke Arndt, co-editor of the report and chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, is quoted in NOAA’s press release:

The temperature increase of one degree Fahrenheit over the past 50 years may seem small, but it has already altered our planet. “Glaciers and sea ice are melting, heavy rainfall is intensifying and heat waves are more common. And, as the new report tells us, there is now evidence that over 90 percent of warming over the past 50 years has gone into our ocean.

Regarding warming oceans, the report says warming has been observed as far as 6,000 feet below the surface, but most of the heat is accumulating in the oceans’ near-surface layers. The implications of a warming ocean are considerable. First, because water expands as it warms, ocean heating is responsible for much of the observed sea-level rise (melting of land-based ice is responsible for the rest). Further, the oceans will hold the heat they’ve accumulated because they warm and cool much more slowly than air – meaning the impacts of warming will continue to be felt long after greenhouse gas emissions peak and begin to decline, should humans ever manage to muster the wisdom and the will to make that happen.

June 2010 was the hottest June since widespread weather recording began, according to the National Climatic Data Center.

June 2010 was the fourth consecutive month with reported warmest averaged global land and ocean temperature on record (March, April, and May 2010 were also the warmest on record). June 2010 was the 304^th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20^th century average.

The combined global average land and ocean surface temperature for the January–June period was the warmest such period on record, 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20^th century average.

Jeff Masters at Wonder Blog reports nine countries have smashed all-time temperature records so far in 2010:

]S]ix nations in Asia and Africa set new all-time hottest temperature marks in June. Two nations, Myanmar and Pakistan, set all-time hottest temperature marks in May, including Asia’s hottest temperature ever, the astonishing 53.5°C (128.3°F) mark set on May 26 in Pakistan. Last week’s record in Russia makes nine countries this year that have recorded their hottest temperature in history, making 2010 the year with the most national extreme heat records.

This graph shows how global temperatures have been rising over the past 100 years:

Nobody “official” – no country, no established economic research institute, no international organization (such as the IMF) – appears willing to entertain any notion or to publicly discuss scenarios that don’t plan for a return to stable economic (GDP) growth.

But then there’s the non-establishment Institute for Integrated Economic Research – which is unafraid to think the unthinkable.

The IIER suspects the odds of business-as-usual coming to an end are pretty high.

Nate Hagens at The Oil Drum: Campfire suggests it might be entertaining and perhaps even enlightening to begin asking our politicians, what will you do if growth is over?

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports the global combined land and ocean surface temperature average for May was the warmest on record. The globally averaged temperature for both land and ocean surfaces was 0.69°C (1.24°F) above the 20^th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F).

May 2010 Blended Land and Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies in degrees Celsius

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature during March–May 2010 was 14.4°C (58.0°F) and ranked as the warmest such period on record, 0.73°C (1.31°F) above the 20^th century average of 13.7°C (56.7°F).

March 2010 – May 2010 Blended Land and Sea Surface Temperature Anomalies in degrees Celsius

The warmest anomalies occurred over eastern and northern North America, eastern Brazil, northern Africa, eastern Europe, and southern Asia. See the deep red dots along the land masses of the Arctic and in southern Greenland and the eastern U.S. and Canada. Anomalously cool conditions were present over eastern Asia and the western United States.

Looks to be a long, hot summer.

May Global Hemisphere plot

It’s approaching the end of June, and Arctic sea ice is continuing to melt precipitously.  Arctic sea ice is shrinking at a record pace both in extent . . .

. . . and in volume:

We’ve never seen anything like current conditions in the historical record.

Global temperatures are currently setting records again.  According to NOAA’s monthly state of the climate report, May was the hottest May during the instrumental record, and Jan-May 2010 was the hottest Jan-May period on record.

As you can see, things are really heating up in the Arctic.

Looking back to 1880, the increase in global temperatures is striking.

Despite the worldwide uproar over the IPCC’s recent admission of a “regrettable error” about the rate of melting of Himalayan glaciers, glaciers around the world continue to disappear.

The IPCC’s 2007 report that “glaciers in the Himalayas are receding faster than in any other part of the world and, if the present rate continues,the likelihood of them “disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high.”

Glaciologist Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University says Himalayan glaciers are thinning and retreating at a rapid pace, just not at a demonstrably faster rate than in many other parts of the world. But it’s hard to know for sure. Only about 600 of some 46,000 glaciers in that region are being monitored. Of those, 95% are in retreat. You can’t tell how much mass the glaciers are losing without first knowing the depth of affected glaciers so as to calculate their volume. Currently, such data are largely nonexistent.

A new study by a team from the Netherlands estimated the changes in the thickness of Himalayan glaciers and found that by 2050 the upstream flow of the Brahmaputra and Indus rivers could shrink 19.6% and 8.4%, respectively, despite 25% more rain.

The Brahmaputra and Indus basins are most susceptible to reductions of flow, threatening the food security of an estimated 60 million people.

The Ganges and Yangtze rivers could see declines of 17.6% and 5.2%, respectively.The Yellow River fares best, because melt water accounts for just 8% of its flow. With rainfall predicted to rise by 14%, the river is projected to be able to feed an extra 3 million people by 2050.

Glaciers continue to melt in South America. Glacier Number 15 of Antisana, one of the Ecuadorian capitals’ main sources of potable water, lost at least 36% of its original mass in the last 50 years. The Antisana is a snow-capped peak of the eastern branch of the Andes, 50 kilometers to the east. Cotopaxi, one of the world’s highest active volcanoes whose snow-covered cone can also be seen from Quito, lost 40% of its glacial mass between 1976 and 2006. The same is happening to glaciers in the Real (Royal) 888 branch of the Andes in Bolivia and the Blanca range in Peru and Colombia, which have lost 30% of their mass on average.

In North America, the U.S. Geological Survey says Glacier National Park’s glaciers will be gone by 2020 – about ten years ahead of schedule. The park will soon need a new name.

In Africa, The Furtwängler Glacier near the summit of Kilimanjaro shrunk by almost half between 1976 and 2000 – and has since shrunk by an additional 26%. To the north of Kilimanjaro lies Mount Kenya, the second tallest mountain on the African continent. Mount Kenya has a number of small glaciers that have lost at least 45% of their mass since the middle of the 20th century. There were eighteen glaciers atop Mount Kenya in 1900. Now, only eleven remain – and four of those, as mere ghosts. The “Mountains of the Moon” glaciers of the Ruwenzori Mountains, which span the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, have shrunk by 50% over the past 50 years. The glacier on Uganda’s Mount Stanley – Africa’s third-highest mountain – has split due to excessive melting caused by climate change and has shrunk in size from about 2.3 square miles in the 1950s to its current coverage of less than one-half of a square mile. It is melting so rapidly it is expected to disappear entirely within 40 years.

An all-time record high temperature record for Asia was set on June 1 in Pakistan’s Indus Valley, the cradle of an ancient civilization: 53.7C (129F).

Only Al ‘Aziziyah, in Libya (57.8C in 1922), Death Valley in California (56.7 in 1913) and Tirat Zvi in Israel (53.9 in 1942) are thought to have been hotter.

Jeff Master reports at Wunderblog:

Last week’s heat wave killed at least 18 Pakistanis, and temperatures in excess of 50°C (122°F) were recorded at nine Pakistani cities on May 26, including 53°C (127.4°F) at Sibi.

Record heat also hit Southeast Asia in May. According to the Myanmar Department of Meteorology and Hydrology, Myanmar (Burma) had its hottest temperature in its recorded history on May 12, when the mercury hit 47°C (116.6°F) in Myinmu. Myanmar’s previous hottest temperature was 45.8°C (114.4°F) at Minbu, Magwe division on May 9, 1998. According to Mr. Burt, the 47°C (116.6°F) measured on May 12 this year is the hottest temperature measured in Southeast Asia in recorded history.

As seen in this map posted by Paul Kadrosky, the record-smashing heat wave is widespread throughout Asia:

James Hansen reports the global temperature this year reached its warmest on record based on a 12-month-rolling average:

Record high global temperature during the period with instrumental data was reached in 2010. As for the calendar year, it is likely that the 2010 global surface temperature in the GISS analysis also will be a record.

NOAA says the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for both April and for the period from January-April.

Additionally, last month’s average ocean surface temperature was the warmest on record for any April, and the global land surface temperature was the third warmest on record.

April 2010 was the 302nd consecutive month with average global surface (land + ocean) temperature above the 20th century average.  The last month with an average global surface (land + ocean) temperature below the 20th century average was February 1985 -  over 25 years ago.

Rising temperatures are being felt in the Arctic. While Antarctic sea ice extent in April was near average, just 0.3 percent below the 1979-2000 average, Arctic sea ice extent has been plunging in May. The pace of ice extent decline is now catching up to the record-setting pace set in 2007. The record low minimum extent occurred September 16, 2007.

While Arctic ice extent in 2008 and 2009 failed to reach the record low of 2007, Arctic ice volume continues to decline year over year.

The record low for Arctic ice volume set in September 2009 at 5,800 km^3 or 67% below its 1979 maximum (for the period 1979-2009).

Things are warming up in the incubator of hurricanes, too.

Jeff Masters explains the significance at WunderBlog:

When SSTs [sea surface temperatures] in the MDR are much above average during hurricane season, a very active season typically results (if there is no El Niño event present.) SSTs in the Main Development Region (10°N to 20°N and 20°W to 85°W) were an eye-opening 1.46°C above average during April. This is the third straight record warm month, and the warmest anomaly measured for any month–by a remarkable 0.2°C. The previous record warmest anomalies for the Atlantic MDR were set in June 2005 and March 2010, at 1.26°C.

The high April SST anomaly does not bode well for the coming hurricane season. The three past seasons with record warm April SST anomalies all had abnormally high numbers of intense hurricanes. Past hurricane seasons that had high March SST anomalies include 1969 (0.90°C anomaly), 2005 (1.19°C anomaly), and 1958 (0.97°C anomaly). These three years had 5, 7, and 5 intense hurricanes, respectively. Just two intense hurricanes occur in an average year. The total averaged activity for the three seasons was 15 named storms, 11 hurricanes, and 6 intense hurricanes (an average hurricane season has 10, 6, and 2.) Both 1958 and 2005 saw neutral El Niño conditions, while 1969 had a weak El Niño.

The SSTs are already as warm as we normally see in July between Africa and the Caribbean[.]

The current El Niño is fading fast – a transition to ENSO-neutral conditions is expected by June 2010. Hurricanes may soon be piling on to the Gulf’s oil woes.

Here’s the good news: a study by Kjell Aleklett et al titled Validity of the fossil fuel production outlooks in the IPCC Emission Scenarios concludes that cumulative energy production and CO2 emissions from coal, oil and gas will be less than any of the IPCC emission scenarios. The study is published in the June 2010 issue of the journal Natural Resources Research.

Over 80% of all the primary energy in the world is produced from fossil fuels. Oil accounts for over 35%, coal for 26% and natural gas for 21%. For over a century, fossil fuels have powered the industrialized world and the economic growth.

The IPCC Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES, 2000) projects an increase of global GHG emissions by 25 to 90% (CO2-eq) between 2000 and 2030 (Figure SPM.5), with fossil fuels maintaining their dominant position in the global energy mix to 2030 and beyond. More recent scenarios without additional emissions mitigation are comparable in range.

The study found that the SRES takes an “overoptimistic” stance and that future production expectations are leaning towards spectacular increases from present output levels. That’s a strange notion of “optimistic” – that fossil fuel resources will be abundant enough to ensure global ecocide.

One important thing to note is that the IPCC projections rely on exploitation of methane hydrates. Over 95% of the unconventional gas is assumed to be methane hydrates.

We don’t have a clear picture of how sensitive our climate is to increases in greenhouse gases.  The IPCC says it’s likely to be anywhere between 2° and 4.5°C, with 3°C as the most likely possibility. If climate sensitivity is high, we’ve already hit the point where the 2°C increase will be inevitable  – as of about 35 years ago.

Methane hydrates are the wild card. If warming of the Arctic sets off a release of the methane gas frozen in the tundra, previous estimates of Earth’s climate sensitivity could prove to be ‘way too conservative. Releasing methanes deliberately would be foolhardy in the extreme.

If optimism requires that Earth’s fossil fuel energy supplies begin to run low sooner rather than later, what does an optimistic economic scenario look like? We’d better begin to think that one through.