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[Phys-l] An interesting fact about global warming.



Maybe everyone else knows this, but I just came upon it in the last month.

From:

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html#Q1

There has been a general, but not global, tendency toward reduced diurnal
temperature range (DTR), (the difference between high and low daily
temperatures) over about 50% of the global land mass since the middle of the
20th century. Cloud cover has increased in many of the areas with reduced
diurnal temperature range. The overall positive trend for maximum daily
temperature over the period of study (1950-93) is 0.1°C/decade, whereas the
trend for daily minimum temperatures is 0.2°C/decade. This results in a
negative trend in the DTR of -0.1°C/decade.


In other words, about 2/3 of the observed warming is due to higher night-time temps with only 1/3 due to higher daytime temps. While, I think, this actually supports 'greenhouse' warming, it might also factor into some of the more extreme 'doomsday' scenarios--to lessen them perhaps? Not sure....but I find it interesting that seemingly (I may have missed it) this is not the kind of information fed to the public.

Rick

***************************
Richard W. Tarara
Professor of Physics
Saint Mary's College
Notre Dame, IN
rtarara@saintmarys.edu
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Free Physics Software
PC & Mac
www.saintmarys.edu/~rtarara/software.html
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