Page 28 - Aruba Today

John Grunsfeld, head of ence instrument itself. astronaut Scott Kelly com- teeming with active space- from Kazakhstan — an or-
NASA’s science mission di- “The quest to understand pleted a 340-day mission craft, including NASA’s biter for measuring atmo-
rectorate, said the scien- the interior of Mars has at the International Space Opportunity and Curiosity spheric gases and a lander
Station that’s considered a rovers on the surface, and collectively known as Exo-
A28tific goals are compelling been a long-standing goal scientific steppingstone for Odyssey, Mars Reconnais- Mars 2016.q

SCIENCEand Stahteurredpaayir 1p9laMnasracrhe 201o6f planetary scientists for

Beyond record hot, February was ‘astronomical’ and ‘strange’

SETH BORENSTEIN Georgia Tech climate sci-
entist Kim Cobb said she
AP Science Writer normally doesn’t concern
herself much with the new
WASHINGTON (AP) — Earth high temperature records
that are broken regularly.
got so hot last month that “However,” she added in
a Thursday email,” when I
federal scientists struggled look at the new February
2016 temperatures, I feel
to find words, describ- like I’m looking at some-
thing out of a sci-fi movie.
ing temperatures as “as- In a way we are: it’s like
someone plucked a value
tronomical,” ‘’stagger- off a graph from 2030 and
stuck it on a graph of pres-
ing” and “strange.” They ent temperatures.
It is a portent of things to
warned that the climate come, and it is sobering
that such temperature ex-
may have moved into a tremes are already on our
doorstep.”
new and hotter neighbor- NASA’s chief climate scien-
tist Gavin Schmidt usually
hood. discounts the importance
of individual record hot
This was not just another of months, but said this month
was different, calling it “ob-
the drumbeat of 10 straight viously strange.”
This was due to the long-
broken monthly global term warming from heat-
trapping gases and the
heat records, triggered by powerful El Nino,
so these types of records
a super El Nino and man- will continue for a few more
months, but probably will
made global warming. not be a permanent situ-
ation, Schmidt said in an
February 2016 obliterated email.
But others were not so sure.
old marks by such a margin Jason Furtado, a meteorol-
ogy professor at the Uni-
that it was the most above- versity of Oklahoma who
wasn’t part of any of the
normal month since mete- government teams, simply
wrote in an email: “Wel-
orologists started keeping come to the new normal.”

track in 1880, according to

the National Oceanic and

Atmospheric Administra-

tion.

NOAA said Earth averaged

56.08 degrees Fahrenheit In this Feb. 9, 2016 file photo, Lebanese men play cards and smoke water pipe, as they sunbath

(13.38 degrees Celsius) during unusually warm weather at the Mediterranean Sea off the Corniche, or waterfront
in February, 2.18 degrees promenade, in Beirut, Lebanon.
(1.21 degrees Celsius) Associated Press

above average, beating tistical techniques, as well nomical,” Blunden said. above normal (4.5 degrees
the old record for Febru- as a University of Alabama “It’s on land. It’s in the Celsius), Blunden said.
ary set in 2015 by nearly six- Huntsville team and the pri- oceans. It’s in the upper at- That’s after January, when
tenths of a degree (one- vate Remote Sensing Sys- mosphere. It’s in the lower Arctic land temperatures
third of a degree Celsius). tem team, which measure atmosphere. The Arctic were 10.4 degrees above
The old record was set just using satellites, also said had record low sea ice.” normal (5.8 degrees Cel-
last December and the February 2016 had the big- “Everything everywhere is a sius).
last three months have gest departure from nor- record this month, except It was also the warmest win-
been the most above- mal on record. Antarctica,” Blunden said. ter — December through

normal months on record, These were figures that had “It’s insane.” February — on record,

said NOAA climate scien- federal scientists grasping In the Arctic, where sea ice beating the previous year’s
tist Jessica Blunden. And for superlatives. reached a record low for record by more than half a

it’s not just NOAA. NASA, “The departures are what February, land tempera- degree (0.29 degrees Cel-
A28 SCIENCEwhich uses different sta- we would consider astro- tures averaged 8 degrees sius).
Thursday 10 March 2016

NASA salvages Mars mission that should have launched by now

MARCIA DUNN