Global Hot November And A Cool Political Change

Climate change continues apace, as new November data
shows. But at least Joe Biden is poised to put us
on the correct team to battle it. 

I was a bit distracted by last week's epic snowstorm in southern Vermont and elsewhere, so I never did get into the monthly check on global temperatures, which came out last week. 

The global analysis was for November, and unfortunately, did not contain any surprises.  Unfortunately, because the heat stayed on. 

Out of past 141 Novembers in the global database, this year's was the second hottest on record on a global basis. Only November, 2015 was marginally warmer. 

The data was compiled by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.

The world's ten warmest Novembers have happened since 2004 and the top five have occurred since 2013, so we are having hot times due to climate change.  

Relative to normal, the warmest places on Earth during November, 2020 were northern Russia, Australia, a good chunk of South America, the eastern two thirds of the United States, the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. 

Even with a warm globe, there's inevitably cool spots. Those were in northwestern Asia, a spot in the North Atlantic and especially the equatorial eastern Pacific Ocean off of South America.

That last spot is especially worth noting. That cool eastern Pacific air and water is a sign that the La Nina weather pattern is in full swing.  La Nina overall tends to suppress global temperatures a bit, so it is alarming we managed to have the second warmest November with a La Nina. 

The opposite, a warming in the Pacific call El Nino, tends to warm the world a bit overall. 

Overall, it looks like 2020 will be the second hottest year on record, after 2016, which I believe had an El Nino.  There's even a chance this year could be THE hottest, depending upon how December goes.

CLIMATE CHANGE TEAM COMING TO WHITE HOUSE

President-Elect Joe Biden certainly has a different approach to climate change than outgoing President Trump. 

Trump has famously called climate change a hoax and pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord. 

Getting back into the Paris agreement will apparently be rather easy.  Biden has pledged to get back into it his first day on the job, January 21.

Biden is also assembling a climate focused team. As NPR reports:

"Biden announced his intention to nominate Rep. Deb Haaland, D-NM to serve as secretary of the interior; former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm to head the Department of Energy; Michael Regan as EPA administrator; Brenda Mallory as chair of the Council on Environmental Quality: Gina McCarthy as national climate advisor and Ali Zaidi as deputy national climate advisory."

Additionally, we know that Biden as nominated Pete Buttigieg a transportation secretary, and it appears he will be active in promoting green technology in our transportation infrastructure. 

While Biden can reverse a number of Trump's anti-climate policies through executive orders, his administration will have a tough time fighting Republican efforts to thwart these policies. That's especially true in the likely event that the January Georgia Senate runoff seats one or two Republicans rather that Democrats. 

The Biden administration also will be unable to stop climate change, or even mitigate it to any huge degree.  But at least with the new administration, the United States will at least be on the right team.