by Leah Rose

Created on: December 20, 2008

Despite the consistent and endless parade of dire warnings concerning the rapid acceleration of global warming recent global temperature data indicates the Earth's climate is cooling. In February the four major global temperature tracking organizations the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the University of Alabama, Huntsville and Remote Sensing Systems released their 2007 world temperature data. The compiled data indicates a fall in global average temperatures ranging between 0.65C to 0.75C. This is by far the largest divergence of global temperatures from long-term means on record, and well beyond the measured 0.6C warming that occurred over the course of the 20th century. The mainstream media has for the most part failed to acknowledge this important data. It is possible that the warming that has occurred over the 20th century has now been erased in the year 2007 by an abrupt cooling trend.

We have known about the possibility of abrupt climate change for some time now. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) has been a pioneer in climate change research and as recently as 2003 held discussions with experts at the World Economic Forum regarding the possibility of an abrupt cooling event. Ice cores extracted from the Greenland ice sheet reveal that the Earth's climate has fluctuated dramatically within timeframes as short as one decade. Approximately 12,700 years ago temperatures in the North Atlantic plummeted as much as 5C and remained so for nearly 1,300 years. Climatologists refer to this severe climate disruption as the "Younger Dryas" period, named after the arctic wildflower Dryas octopetala.

The Greenland ice sheet data also reveals that the Earth warmed abruptly approximately 1,000 years ago and then rapidly cooled 700 years ago. It is safe to say that the balance of existing data indicates that dramatic switches in climatic patterns can occur and have already occurred. Therefore we cannot rule out that we are not witnessing such an unfolding event today. It is clear that 2007 global average temperatures have departed significantly from the 20th century mean. Public officials and policy makers would do well to heed the data collected by organizations like the Woods Hold Oceanographic Institute and consider the possibility of an abrupt cooling trend and its potential implications for society.

Experts at WHOI are concerned that a shift in ocean currents

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