Media Now Reporting 2014 as Hottest Year

Happy new year, such as it is..
I’m taking it slow for a few days, and binge watching Game of Thrones (again, this time with my wife, who finally relented and is now addicted).

Now officially being reported in mainstream media, 2014 will be listed as the hottest year in the instrumental record.

UPDATE:

Now watch the item below, as newscasters from a small station in the southern US grapple with reporting the news to what is, one suspects, a conservative and scientifically challenged audience.  First, you’ll see them introduce the NBC network piece above, which plays, then the local broadcasters try to parse the news, starting at 1:52,  where one of them notes that “..everyone that believes in global warming can take this and run with it if they want..”

LiveScience:

Here is a look at five places that will help push 2014 into the global warming record books.

• Australia: For the second year in a row, Australians saw heat records topple from the Gold Coast to the Coral Coast. The country kicked off January with an extreme heat wave; temperatures soared higher than 120 F (49 C). Heat waves in the autumn (March to May) and spring (September to November) also drove temperatures into the record books.
• Eastern Pacific Ocean: Toasty temperatures developed in the eastern Pacific Ocean, despite an El Niño that never appeared. The heat was especially notable off the western coast of the United States. Fishing boats spotted species well north of their range, such as a giant ocean sunfish offshore of Alaska. For the global ocean, the September to November sea surface temperature was 1.13 F (0.63 C) above the 20th century average of 60.7 F (16.0 C), surpassing the previous record by 0.11 F (0.06 C), according to NOAA.
• Siberia: Central Siberia defrosted in spring and early summer under temperatures more than 9 F (5 C) above its 1981 to 2010 average. Ice on the Ob River began to break up two weeks earlier than normal. The heat may have unleashed methane gas trapped in previously frozen permafrost, triggering underground explosions that formed spectacularly deep holes.
• California: The long-running drought in California was made worse in 2014 by record heat. The first 10 months of 2014 were the warmest in California’s history since 1895, further burdening the state’s water demands.
• Northern Europe: The same weather pattern that froze North America in early 2014 brought an unusually warm spring to countries including Denmark, Norway and Turkey. The sultry spring was the warmest in a century or more in these countries. In addition, January to October was the warmest 10-month period on record for Central England since 1659, and the warmest such period for the Netherlands since 1706.