Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Oh yeah, I'm sure this is just a perfectly normal cyclical variation:

July hottest month in Netherlands in 300 years

July 2006 is on track to be the hottest month in the Netherlands since temperatures were first measured in 1706, the Dutch meteorological institute KNMI said on Tuesday.

Average daily temperatures in the first 24 days of July were a record of 22.3 degrees Celsius (72.14F) compared with the previous record of 21.4 degrees in July 1994 and normal average temperatures of 17.4, the KNMI said....

Temperatures in the Netherlands rose as high as 36-37 degrees last week, when two people died during a walking event which was later canceled.


For the Celsius-challenged, that normal average temperature of 17.4C is 63.32F; this is nearly 9 degrees hotter. This month's high of 37C is 98.6F-- in a country that's latitudinally north of Montreal.

...Oh, sorry -- Peggy Noonan assures us that scientists can't agree on whether global warming really exists. Whoops! She's the expert, right? Never mind then!

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UPDATE: In comments, Paige points out, correctly, that this isn't the right way to gauge climate change -- it's more important to show trends over time:

Maybe you could show how the last ten years average temperature in Netherlands (if this is true, and I don't know if it is, because I don't have those statistics) are hotter than any previous set of 10 year averages. Now that's a trend!

In fact, a 2003 report from KNMI said that

all the warmest years fall within the last 14 years.... The warming climate, which the KNMI confirmed in its previous climate report (1999), is continuing unabated.

This year's heat seems to be just more evidence of a previously noted trend.

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