On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on, among other things, NOAA's fiscal year 2013 budget proposal. Of a possible $1.4 billion dollars in proposed spending cuts in the Departments of Commerce and Justice, the only thing the House of Representatives cut was a drop in the bucket: $542,000 for NOAA's climate portal website.
As it stands in my mind today, the variability in the North Atlantic temperature behavior is strongly influenced by aerosols in the atmosphere and a trend due to increasing carbon dioxide. If there is oscillatory behavior in the temperature, it is due to increases and decreases in atmospheric aerosols, perhaps on top of a smaller atmospheric-oceanic dynamic variation that still requires explanation. A good step forward, I think.
On Saturday, May 5, the activist group 350.org, founded by Bill McKibben, launched a new effort to "connect the dots between climate change and extreme weather." They declared May 5 Climate Impacts Day, and coordinated an impressive global effort of nearly 1,000 events in 100 countries to draw attention to the links between climate change and extreme weather.
