Last year was a hot year: The fourth hottest on record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or the seventh hottest according to NASA, which uses slightly different calculations.
But how hot is the news?
Not too hot if you read The New York Times, which ran this story by Justin Gillis:
Two government agencies said Tuesday that 2013 was among the warmest years in the global temperature record, though they differed on exactly where it ranked. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ranked it as the fourth-warmest year since 1880, tied with 2003. NASA, which uses slightly different methods to compile global temperatures, ranked 2013 as the seventh-warmest year, tied with both 2006 and 2009. Both agencies say that the 14 warmest years in the historical record have all occurred since 1998. Australia was a global hot spot in 2013, suffering the warmest year on record in 104 years. But the United States, which had set a record in 2012, had only its 37th warmest year on record in 2013.
That's not the lede; that's the whole story–a brief that ran on page A9.
The Los Angeles Times gave the story a better ride, reporting on a press conference held by NASA and NOAA. The reporter, Deborah Netburn, wrote that 2014 is likely to be even warmer. The paper also ran a graphic showing temperatures climbing.
Climate Central's story by Andrew Freedman noted in the lede that 2013 adds to the unbroken streak of 37 consecutive years with above-average global temperatures.
The AP's Seth Borenstein did a good job of combing through the numbers, including some less familiar numbers from the insurance industry, such as these:
Last year, the world had 41 billion-dollar weather disasters, the second highest number behind only 2010, according to insurance firm Aon Benfield, which tracks global disasters. Since 2000, the world has averaged 28 such billion dollar disasters, which are adjusted for inflation.
He also includes comment from a researcher outside NASA and NOAA who says that "the fact that a year with no El Nino ‘'was so hot tells me that the climate really is shifting.'’’
Really? That was at the bottom of the version of Borenstein's story that ran at boston.com.
Sure, it's another hot year, and so it's not especially hot news. We don't write stories when the sun comes up in the East. Still, that comment about El Nino suggests that maybe the latest temperature reports should have drawn a bit more attention–and a lot more analysis.
-Paul Raeburn
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