Gov’t Scientists: Higher West Coast Temps Due to Natural Causes, not ‘Climate Change’

A study conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Washington has concluded that warmer sea and land temperatures along the Pacific coast in North America over the past 100 years are due to weak winds–and not due to human activities or “climate change.” The study was published Monday on the eve of the UN Climate Summit by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study, published as “Atmospheric controls on northeast Pacific temperature variability and change, 1900–2012,” reports that while “Northeast Pacific coastal warming since 1900 is often ascribed to anthropogenic greenhouse forcing…century-long warming around the northeast Pacific margins, like multidecadal variability, can be primarily attributed to changes in atmospheric circulation,” and not to human burning of fossil fuels.

 

The Los Angeles Times quotes study leader James Johnstone: “Changing winds appear to explain a very large fraction of the warming from year to year, decade to decade and the long-term.” The Times adds: “This latest research shows that similar changes in atmospheric and ocean circulation can drive trends that last a century or longer, overshadowing the effects of human-generated increase in greenhouse gases, the study’s authors said.

 

Read More: Gov’t Scientists: Higher West Coast Temps Due to Natural Causes, not ‘Climate Change’.