Mild weather redefines winter landscape [View all]

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/mild-weather-redefines-winter-landscape/2011/12/29/gIQAPV8vQP_story.html

[font face=Times,Times New Roman,Serif][font size=5]Mild weather redefines winter landscape[/font]

By Juliet Eilperin and Darryl Fears,

[font size=3]At the National Arboretum, the white petals of snowdrops — normally an early spring flower — have unfurled. In Maine’s Acadia National Park, lakes still have patches of open water instead of being frozen solid. And in Donna Izlar’s back yard in downtown Atlanta, the apricot tree has started blooming.

It’s not in your imagination. The unusually mild temperatures across several regions of the country in the past few months are disrupting the natural cycles that define the winter landscape.

What began as elevated temperatures at the start of fall in parts of the United States have become “dramatically” warmer around the Great Lakes and New England, according to Deke Arndt, chief of the Climate Monitoring Branch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center. And in the Washington area, the region is on track for its fourth-warmest year on record, along with its seventh-warmest December.

…

The decreasing frequency of cold snaps should not lead anyone to conclude that there is dramatic warming across the globe, said Patrick J. Michaels, a senior fellow in environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. Climate change is happening, he said, but not at the “magnitude” that some suggest.[/font][/font]

“Climate change is happening…” well, now, that’s a start!