So Much for Global Cooling: 2010 Temperatures Flirt With Records

This winter, environmental advocates cringed at every falling snowflake, knowing full well that climate change skeptics would point to them as a refutation of global warming, or even evidence of “global cooling.” (Donald Trump went so far as to call for the Nobel Committee to rescind Al Gore’s Peace Prize amid heavy snow last month.)

But now the Northeast’s snowy January and February have given way to a balmy March — and, more meaningfully, global temperatures have been setting records in 2010. Check out this graphic from the University of Alabama:

The yellow line represents average temperatures over the past 20 years. The purple line indicates record highs over the same period. And that green line — the highest of all? That’s global temperatures so far this year.

Of course, it’s just as silly to point to a few warm months as evidence of global warming as it is to point to a few cold ones as evidence of global cooling. But add to these data points the fact that the 2000s were the hottest decade on record, and you start to see a trend that a few flurries can’t call into question.

(Via Joe Romm, who also points out that the slightly different NASA data show January and February to be tied for the second-hottest on record.)