Courtesy of the U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the news media has been full of reports in the last few days about last month being the “hottest June” yet recorded and 2010 being on track likewise to be the hottest year. Such reports concern the “global temperature”: a theoretical value, which has, of course, to be derived from local temperature readings and which consequently depends on the methods employed by researchers in calculating it.
When, however, actual temperature readings reveal record cold, this apparently is not news. So it was in May, when much of Europe was experiencing unseasonably cold weather. Germany, for instance, was hit with major snowstorms in May. In the middle of the month, the German Weather Service quietly acknowledged that the country was experiencing record cold: some 3-5 degrees Celsius below the long-term averages.
