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Chilly Change
Tue Apr 01, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
If you live in the eastern U.S., you don't need me to tell you what the winter was like. All
you need is your heating bill. Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook's weekly segment
on global climate change.
This winter, a parade of cold waves marched in from the Midwest and saluted the East. New
York City stayed sub-freezing for more than a week. It even snowed on Daytona Beach. Does
this mean the end of global warming?
Unfortunately, not. What this winter really showed us is the perspective between one region
and the whole planet. The U.S. takes up less than two percent of the globe's surface. It can
be extremely cold here and still hotter than usual elsewhere. In fact globally, last January
was the third warmest ever measured. But the U.S. must have been colder than usual, right?
Well, actually, not. Boston, Buffalo, and Boca Raton were chillier than usual, but not even
close to the coldest on record. And out west, it felt like perpetual spring. Utah and Nevada
saw their warmest January on record. It even got up to 93 degrees in Long Beach, CA.
Pocatello, Idaho set a record high one night, just after midnight.
When you average the temperatures of the frigid east and the balmy west, January was the 31st
warmest out of the past 107 years. Average would have been around 53rd -- so it was still
warmer than normal. That probably doesn't make your snow-shoveling back any less sore, and it
doesn't do much for the planet, either.
The Weather Notebook is funded generously by Subaru of America and the National Science
Foundation. Our series on global climate change is supported by the New England Science
Center Collaborative and the Roy A. Hunt Foundation. Thanks today to Executive Engineer Sean
Doucette.
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