Is it safe to blame global warming? - Washington Post (blog)

We’ve broken plenty of records this year: mildest winter, warmest spring, hottest day in 142 years, and now longest string of days above 95 degrees. Given that trend, you wouldn’t be crazy to ask whether or not this has anything to do with global warming.

And people have. Of course, as The Post reports today, climate experts are hesitant to say that the current temperatures are directly linked to climate change, though they will say that it’s part of a broader trend:

“Trying to wrap an analysis around it in real time is like trying to diagnose a car wreck as the cars are still spinning,” said Deke Arndt, chief of climate monitoring at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. “But we had record heat for the summer season on the Eastern Seaboard in 2010. We had not just record heat, but all-time record heat, in the summer season in 2011. And then you throw that on top of this [mild] winter and spring and the year to date so far, it’s very consistent with what we’d expect in a warming world.”

Yesterday the Capital Weather Gang took on last week’s derecho storm, wondering whether or not it was fueled by global warming. Their conclusion? There’s not enough evidence to say, but it’s certainly worth discussing.

[Continue reading Martin Austermuhle’s post at DCist.com.]

Martin Austermuhle blogs at DCist . The Local Blog Network is a group of bloggers from around the D.C. region who have agreed to make regular contributions to All Opinions Are Local.