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39.95
Tue May 07, 2002
Listen in RealAudio 
39.95
Does this number mean anything to you?
39.95.
Well, that's the averaged temperature in the U.S. between November, 2001 and
January, 2002. It's the warmest recorded average in those three months since surface
records began in 1895. Since 1976, the average temp during those months has
increased 1.2 degrees each decade.
Is it because of global climate change?
The short answer? Maybe.
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. Today, we begin a special weekly
series on global climate change. It is one of the most passionately debated issues on
our planet.
Let’s start with this question: is there really global climate change?
Cameron Wake, an assistant research professor at the Institute for the Study of Earth
Oceans and Space at the University of New Hampshire, responds this way:
CW: One thing you need to understand is that climate is changing, climate has always
change and it will always be changing. So global climate change is something that
has been with us since the beginning of time and will always be with us.
So what's all this fuss about global climate change if it's always changing?
CW: Over the last several thousand years we have lots of data that tell us that the
Earth's average global temperature was relatively constant.
George Hurtt, an assistant professor at the Institute for the Study of Earth Oceans and
Space.
GH: And now we have lots of data from different methods that indicates that the
average global temperature is increasing. some based on satellites and ground
measurements, some from proxy measures like glacial ice extent which is decreasing
in most places in the world.
But why is this happening? Many scientists believe that it's due to the growing
concentration of greenhouse gases which trap heat in the atmosphere. More on that
next week.
The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. Our
global climate change series is underwritten by the New England Science Center
Collaborative and Roy A. Hunt Foundation.
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