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From: UCAR/NCAR Press Office <media@...>
Date: Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 5:02 PM
Subject: Record High Temperatures Far Outpace Record Lows Across US
To: local-pr@..., press-release@...


2009-25 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: November 12, 2009

Record High Temperatures Far Outpace Record Lows Across U.S.

Contacts:

David Hosansky, NCAR/UCAR Media Relations
303-497-8611
hosansky@...

Rachael Drummond, NCAR/UCAR Media Relations
303-497-8604
rachaeld@...

For scientific contacts, see below.

BOULDER--Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb.

"Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather in the United States," says NCAR scientist Gerald Meehl, the lead author. "The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting."

The study, by authors at NCAR, Climate Central, The Weather Channel, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), has been accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters. It was funded by the National Science Foundation, NCAR's sponsor, the Department of Energy, and Climate Central.

If temperatures were not warming, the number of record daily highs and lows being set each year would be approximately even. Instead, for the period from January 1, 2000, to September 30, 2009, the continental United States set 291,237 record highs and 142,420 record lows, as the country experienced unusually mild winter weather and intense summer heat waves.

A record daily high means that temperatures were warmer on a given day than on that same date throughout a weather station's history. The authors used a quality control process to ensure the reliability of data from thousands of weather stations across the country, while looking at data over the past six decades to capture longer-term trends.

This decade's warming was more pronounced in the western United States, where the ratio was more than two to one, than in the eastern United States, where the ratio was about one-and-a-half to one.

The study also found that the two-to-one ratio across the country as a whole could be attributed more to a comparatively small number of record lows than to a large number of record highs. This indicates that much of the nation's warming is occurring at night, when temperatures are dipping less often to record lows. This finding is consistent with years of climate model research showing that higher overnight lows should be expected with climate change.

-----More records ahead-----

In addition to surveying actual temperatures in recent decades, Meehl and his co-authors turned to a sophisticated computer model of global climate to determine how record high and low temperatures are likely to change during the course of this century.

The modeling results indicate that if nations continue to increase their emissions of greenhouse gases in a "business as usual" scenario, the U.S. ratio of daily record high to record low temperatures would increase to about 20-to-1 by mid-century and 50-to-1 by 2100. The mid-century ratio could be much higher if emissions rose at an even greater pace, or it could be about 8-to-1 if emissions were reduced significantly, the model showed.

The authors caution that such predictions are, by their nature, inexact. Climate models are not designed to capture record daily highs and lows with precision, and it remains impossible to know future human actions that will determine the level of future greenhouse gas emissions. The model used for the study, the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model, correctly captured the trend toward warmer average temperatures and the greater warming in the West, but overstated the ratio of record highs to record lows in recent years.

However, the model results are important because they show that, in all likely scenarios of future greenhouse gas emissions, record daily highs should increasingly outpace record lows over time.

"If the climate weren't changing, you would expect the number of temperature records to diminish significantly over time," says Claudia Tebaldi, a statistician with Climate Central who is one of the paper's co-authors. "As you measure the high and low daily temperatures each year, it normally becomes more difficult to break a record after a number of years. But as the average temperatures continue to rise this century, we will keep setting more record highs."

-----An expanding ratio-----

The study team focused on weather stations that have been operating since 1950. They found that the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures slightly exceeded one to one in the 1950s, dipped below that level in the 1960s and 1970s, and has risen since the 1980s. The results reflect changes in U.S. average temperatures, which rose in the 1950s, stabilized in the 1960s, and then began a warming trend in the late 1970s.

Even in the first nine months of this year, when the United States cooled somewhat after a string of unusually warm years, the ratio of record daily high to record daily low temperatures was more than three to two.

Despite the increasing number of record highs, there will still be occasional periods of record cold, Meehl notes.

"One of the messages of this study is that you still get cold days," Meehl says. "Winter still comes. Even in a much warmer climate, we're setting record low minimum temperatures on a few days each year. But the odds are shifting so there's a much better chance of daily record highs instead of lows."

-----Millions of readings from weather stations across the country-----

The study team analyzed several million daily high and low temperature readings taken over the span of six decades at about 1,800 weather stations across the country, thereby ensuring ample data for statistically significant results. The readings, collected at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, undergo a quality control process at the data center that looks for such potential problems as missing data as well as inconsistent readings caused by changes in thermometers, station locations, or other factors.

Meehl and his colleagues then used temperature simulations from the Community Climate System Model to compute daily record highs and lows under current and future atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research under sponsorship by the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

-The End-

*****
Note to editors and producers:
A high-resolution graphic of recent temperature trends and video of Gerald Meehl discussing this study can be downloaded from:
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2009/maxmin.jsp
*****

Scientific contacts:

Gerald Meehl, NCAR Scientist
303-497-1331
meehl@...

Claudia Tebaldi, Climate Central Scientist
303-775-5365
ctebaldi@...

About the paper:

Title:
The relative increase of record high maximum temperatures compared to record low minimum temperatures in the U.S.

Authors:
Gerald A. Meehl, Claudia Tebaldi, Guy Walton, David Easterling, and Larry McDaniel

Publication:
Geophysical Research Letters (in press)

On the Web:

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Politicans are not black and white, right or wrong, they are just like us, they
come in different shades......


Obama allows offshore oil drilling in Alaska
Examiner.com
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&q=http://www.examiner.com/x-5908-Boston-Environme\
ntal-Policy-Examiner~y2009m10d22-Obama-allows-offshore-oil-drilling-in-Alaska&ct\
=ga&cd=1GPVCGLx0oI&usg=AFQjCNEivt_FM-tlRN9I1nrwUNkH0RBMaw


This week the Interior Department gave Shell Oil the right to drill two test
wells in the Beaufort Sea of Alaska. The Obama move indicates a willingness to
...



Oilshale future for US? New rules are in place
msnbc.com
http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&q=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33413729/ns/us_news\
-environment/&ct=ga&cd=Bd6HT02OKpw&usg=AFQjCNGnnIsyGaiY1kT2SplSCQc4R8B6Nw
Ed Andrieski / AP SALT LAKE CITY - The Obama administration's decision to open a
second round of oilshale leasing on federal lands in Colorado, ...

--- In Paleontology_and_Climate@yahoogroups.com, Tim Jones <deforest@...> wrote:
>
> If there was ever a necessity defense, stopping Bush's corporate
> criminals in high office had to head the list of things to do. -T
>
> Legal Cost for Throwing Monkey Wrench Into the System
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/science/earth/10leases.html
>
> Doug Pensinger/Getty Images
>
> "Making that decision - that keeping the oil in the ground was worth
> going to prison - that was the decision I made," said Tim
> DeChristopher.
>
> By KIRK JOHNSON
> Published: October 9, 2009
>
> SALT LAKE CITY - Tim DeChristopher became convinced last year that
> global warming's potential effects were so urgent and dire that
> direct action was needed. The niceties of debate and environmental
> lobbying were not getting the job done, he said.
>
> So in December Mr. DeChristopher went to a federal auction of oil and
> gas leases - offered in the Bush administration's closing days and
> even then the subject of protests and lawsuits - and bid on contracts
> that he had neither the money nor intent to actually fulfill.
>
> "My intention was to cause as much of a disruption to the auction as
> I could," said Mr. DeChristopher, a soft-spoken 27-year-old economics
> student at the University of Utah. "Making that decision - that
> keeping the oil in the ground was worth going to prison - that was
> the decision I made."
>
> Now, as his federal criminal case nears trial - he is charged with
> two felony counts of interfering with an auction and making false
> statements on bidding forms - a broader debate with legal, political
> and environmental threads is unfolding from here to Washington about
> what he did and what it means.
>
> Was Mr. DeChristopher a lone-wolf grandstander whose actions changed
> nothing, just another lawbreaker or the spark for a new protest
> movement? Given Mr. DeChristopher's passionate public admissions -
> though he has entered a plea of not guilty - how will the judge frame
> the discussion of guilt or innocence before a jury? And will federal
> energy policies be in the docket with him, as he hopes, up for
> critique as part of his defense?
>
> "Bush and the B.L.M. should be on trial here," said Mr.
> DeChristopher's lawyer, Ronald J. Yengich, referring to the federal
> Bureau of Land Management, which oversaw the leasing process.
>
> Mr. Yengich, a veteran of civil rights battles in Utah - he defended
> protesters against President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s and
> anti-nuclear activists in the 1990s - has asked Judge Dee Benson of
> Federal District Court to allow a so-called necessity defense at the
> trial. That would enable Mr. DeChristopher to argue that he faced a
> "choice of evils" that justified breaking the law.
>
> Legal scholars say such defenses are rarely allowed by judges and are
> rarely successful with juries. Judge Benson is expected to rule
> within the next month.
>
> What is not in doubt is that most of the specific leases Mr.
> DeChristopher protested - many of them near national parks or
> monuments - have not only been deferred or taken off the table by
> federal land managers in the Obama administration but also scathingly
> disavowed. A federal judge earlier this year ordered the leases
> halted pending further review, citing "deficiencies" in the
> government's pre-auction assessments.
>
> Just this week, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose agency oversees
> a huge swath of the nation's public lands, went even further. "There
> was a headlong rush to leasing in the prior administration that led
> to the kinds of shortcuts we have demonstrated," Mr. Salazar said
> Thursday in releasing a report about the December auction.
>
> In their court filings, federal prosecutors argue that whether Mr.
> DeChristopher was on some level correct in opposing the leases is
> irrelevant. Laws were broken, they say. And unlike cases where
> necessity defenses have been allowed - the classic law-school example
> is the man lost in the mountains who finds a cabin and must break in
> to survive - Mr. DeChristopher had legal means of protest he could
> have chosen, prosecutors say, notably a court challenge that was
> under way by environmental groups even before the auction.
>
> Mr. DeChristopher's supporters say that the logic is faulty - that
> the legal challenges and critical government reviews took the course
> they did in part because of the attention Mr. DeChristopher drew to
> the issue by putting himself on the line.
>
> "It started an avalanche, and the story caught on," said Ashley
> Anderson, a friend of Mr. DeChristopher and co-founder of Peaceful
> Uprising, a group that seeks to expand on Mr. DeChristopher's
> actions. The group is organizing what Mr. Anderson said would be a
> major rally for later this month to support talks to reduce emissions
> of heat-trapping gases.
>
> "Tim woke a lot of people up," Mr. Anderson said.
>
> If convicted, Mr. DeChristopher faces up to five years in prison on
> each of the two counts and up to $750,000 in fines.
> Legal scholars say case law about the necessity defense, especially
> in civil disobedience or protest cases, usually requires that a
> complicated series of hurdles be cleared. Defendants must show that
> they faced a choice of evils: to break a law or to allow some other
> bad result to proceed.
>
> Part of the framework requires a judge, or a jury, to weigh how bad
> the result would have been, and for whom, if the defendant had not
> acted, and how imminent the harm actually was.
>
> "The evil you choose must outweigh the evil you avoid, based on some
> kind of objective judgment about what is the greatest social net
> benefit in the situation," said Marc O. DeGirolami, an assistant
> professor of law at St. John's University in New York.
>
> Even if Judge Benson prohibits a formal necessity defense, it is
> possible a consideration of Mr. DeChristopher's intent, and thus a
> discussion of government impropriety, could seep into the
> proceedings. A witness who blurts out something about government
> failings or the threat of global warming could plant a seed of
> alternative interpretation - or doubt - in the minds of jurors.
>
> "He's not trying to get 12 jurors to agree with him; he only needs
> one," said Paul G. Cassell, a professor of law at the University of
> Utah and a former federal judge. "And on any jury there could be at
> least one avid environmentalist or outdoor enthusiast that could
> prove fertile ground for DeChristopher's arguments."
>
> In a way, Mr. DeChristopher said, the findings about the leases since
> the auction have already vindicated him.
> "I thought of yelling something or throwing a shoe," he said,
> recalling the auction day. "What I did was far more effective than I
> could have been with a shoe."
>
> John M. Broder contributed reporting from Washington.
> --
> <http://www.groundtruthinvestigations.com/>
>

http://www.pterodactylfossilsforsale.com/
Here is the webpage I made with photo's of my best Discoveries:
California Pterodactyl and Rhamphor! Nest, eggs and hatchlings!
Have A look .

Dear all,

Who can help me find these old papers(PDF or word):

Albert Wright and P. W. K. Sweet
The Jurassic as a source of oil in western Cuba
Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (July 1924),
8(4):516-519

Vaclav Housa
Neocomian rhyncholites from Cuba
Journal of Paleontology (1969), 43(1):119-124

Wendell Phillips Woodring
A Nerinea from southwestern Oriente Province, Cuba
Journal of Paleontology (January 1952), 26(1):60-62

Noel King Brown and Paul Bronnimann
Some Upper Cretaceous rotaliids from the Caribbean region [Cuba and Jamaica]
Micropaleontology (January 1957), 3(1):29-38

William Storrs Cole and Donald Winchester Gravell
Middle Eocene Foraminifera from Penon Seep, Matanzas Province, Cuba
Journal of Paleontology (September 1952), 26(5):708-727

William Storrs Cole
Lockhartia in Cuba
Journal of Paleontology (September 1942), 16(5):640-642

Jesus Francisco de Albear y Franquiz
Stratigraphic paleontology of Camagueey District, Cuba
Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (January 1947),
31(1):71-91

Paul Bartsch
Two new giant Scalas from Cuba
Journal of Paleontology (May 1941), 15(3):307-308

Horace Gardiner Richards
Pleistocene mollusks from western Cuba
Journal of Paleontology (April 1935), 9(3):253-258

Orville L. Bandy
Foraminiferal biofacies in sediments of Gulf of Batabano, Cuba, and their
geologic significance
Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (1964),
48(10):1666-1679

Cortez W. Hoskins
Molluscan biofacies in calcareous sediments, Gulf of Batabano, Cuba
Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (1964),
48(10):1690-1704

Louis Wilhelm Joseph Vermunt
Cretaceous rudistids of Pinar del Rio Province, Cuba
Journal of Paleontology (June 1937), 11(4):261-275

J. Whitney Lewis
Occurrence of oil in igneous rocks of Cuba
Bulletin of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (August 1932),
16(8):809-818

Cecil Gordon Lalicker and Pedro Joaquin Bermudez y Hernandez
Some Foraminifera of the family Textulariidae from the Eocene of Cuba
Journal of Paleontology (March 1938), 12(2):170-172

Paul Bronnimann
Microfossils incertae sedis from the Upper Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous of Cuba
Micropaleontology (January 1955), 1(1):28-51

Frances L. Parker and Pedro Joaquin Bermudez y Hernandez
Eocene species of the genera Bulimina and Buliminella from Cuba
Journal of Paleontology (September 1937), 11(6):513-516

Martin Gerard Rutten
Rudistids from the Cretaceous of northern Santa Clara Province, Cuba
Journal of Paleontology (March 1936), 10(2):134-142

Donald Winchester Gravell
The genus Orbitoides in America, with description of a new species from Cuba
Journal of Paleontology (September 1930), 4(3):268-270

Thanks in advance.