April, 2010 was the warmest April ever. Global warming?

So, residents of London (aka Deforest City), my home for the last 42 years, now have something in common with our largest neighbouring city - almost.

(That is, besides having fewer electric trolley cars per capita because diesel-fuel consuming and diesel-fume spewing buses came along and squeezed them out. Not that I’m bitter. Hack! I’m bigger - cough, cough - than that. Surely.

Sorry, I digress.)

According to recent news reports, London had no snow in the month of March. And according to those who have recorded such things, we previously received an average of 10 days of snow annually since the mid- to late-1800s.

And according to yesterday’s news, Toronto just recorded the warmest April (some residents, far from The Beaches district, said ‘hottest’) since the late 1800s.

Will this be the warmest summer on record in our area, and be due to global warming?

For climate change information I usually visit the Goddard Institute for Space Studies website and peek at some of their summaries, charts and graphs.

What can we learn from the line graph ‘Global Temperature,’ compiled from temperature readings taken at meteorological stations around the world? Thermometers are fairly reliable and yearly averaging of results is fairly up-to-date, i.e., up to 2009.


I see the annual mean (the middle temperature reading from hundreds of stations) has gone up and down, up and down, since 1880, and up, up, down, down, up, down, up, down and up from 2000 - 2009.

So, will 2010 be the warmest year ever? It’s hard to say. I predict it will be close to the warmest because in the last 20 years, 14 years have been the warmest on record.

If 2010 is among the warmest in recorded history, will it be the result of global warming?

I would say yes.

Since 1965 the 5 year running mean (approx. an average of 5 years of averages) has had a very strong upward trend, consistent with heavy, global industrial and agricultural development and the trend in many countries and people to add more cars to the highway, more miles on the cars, more miles of tarmac on the highways, more rooms in the house, more furniture in each room, and so on. (The big lifestyle has a big carbon footprint, does it not?)

That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if the upward trend slows somewhat in the next five years due to a variety of factors, including the rising price of oil, cooling caused by atmospheric ash from Iceland and a trend toward smaller lifestyles.

No, I’m not joking about the smaller lifestyles. A couple I know wants to sell their big house in the burbs and downsize.

It’s a tiny blip, but I look for good results nonetheless.

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