February global temperatures should be a 'wake-up call'

Shepparton-based Slap Tomorrow used
the phrase "a wake-up call" some three
years ago, but still people sleep on, it seems.

Global temperatures for February showed a disturbing and unprecedented upward spike. It was 1.35℃ warmer than the average February during the usual baseline period of 1951-1980, according to NASA data.

This is the largest warm anomaly of any month since records began in 1880. It far exceeds the records set in 2014 and again in 2015 (the first year when the 1℃ mark was breached).

In the same month, Arctic sea ice cover reached its lowest February value ever recorded. And last year carbon dioxide concentration in our atmosphere increased by more than 3 parts per million, another record.

What is going on? Are we facing a climate emergency?

Read the piece on The Conversation by the Director and ARC Laureate Fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre from the UNSW Australia, Steve Sherwood, and the Professor of Physics of the Oceans from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Stefan Rahmstorf - “February’s global temperature spike is a wake-up call.”

(The Shepparton-based Slap Tomorrow’s first public forum in 2013 was sub-titled “A Wake-Up Call” and yet here we are some three years later still, apparently deep asleep – Robert McLean.)