Apr
1
by Eva Chang (8)
The debate over global warming or global cooling is not actually new. Reports of global warming and global cooling emerged during the 1970s with conflicting reports on the earth’s temperature. Eventually, global cooling reports did not lead to the forecasted apocalyptic effect while other events buried global warming until its emergence in the late 1990s with 1998 declared as the hottest year.
Global cooling re-emerged with weather reports in January this year stating that the earth’s temperature has significantly dropped. Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research and NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies both reported a drop in the earth’s temperature in January when compared to the average temperature in 1998, which was reported as the hottest year. This found support in global reports on extreme cold winters in different part of the world from the United States to China and Afghanistan.
Various news reports carried allusions to a possible global cooling. Fox News carried a news report citing evidence of global cooling. Daily Express questioned the occurence of global warming with the decline temperatures. The Boston Globe also questioned where global warming has gone. Other major international news networks also carried a similar content. The publicity that the drop in global temperature received, led to a degree of consolidation of the overall claims of global cooling advocates that global temperatures do not support global warming.
The months following the drop in temperature in January led to a rise in temperature relative to January. Current temperature reports of Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research showed that temperatures have risen but at a lower level when compared to 1998 and an even level when compared to 2002, which was also another warm year. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies continued to report gradual increases in temperature even amidst the drop in January.
These led to different perspectives. On one extreme end of the spectrum, skeptics used the information from Hadley to prove that there is global cooling and even if global cooling will not persist, even comparative temperatures cannot support global warming. On the other extreme end, advocates of global warming consider the reports from NASA GISS to claim that even with periodical temperature drops; the earth’s temperature is gradually increasing and so there is global warming.
However, a closer look at the reports of Hadley and GISS shows that the interpretation of changes in temperature was in the context of annual temperature variability. Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction Research reported that the rise and fall in the earth’s temperature is due to weather conditions such as La Nina and and El Nino. As such, amidst the gradual rise in the earth’s temperature, the world would experience variations such as a sudden drop or rise in temperature. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies included the accumulation of greenhouse gases as a contributing factor to anomalous temperatures. The debate would take a different turn with the consideration of annual temperature variability, which simply means that we will experience annual temperature highs and lows, warming and cooling. Nevertheless, the earth has become hotter over the past decades.
