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"There has not been a seasonal forecast of 23 storms put out for this country before," said Holland.  Like forecasters from NOAA and elsewhere (see More pre-season predictions of a very active Atlantic hurricane season, at the WunderBlog for a summary of forecasts), Holland cited high SSTs as a principal factor underlying his assessment. The SSTs during the first month of the hurricane season did nothing to diminish concerns.  As the figure below indicates, high SSTs characterized the tropical Atlantic in June, with many areas again seeing record high temperatures for the month. 

"So what’s happening?" asks Holland.  "Well it’s a combination of global warming and natural variability."

This is consistent with research results published in Geophysical Research Letters on 29 April 2010.  In Is the basin-wide warming in the North Atlantic Ocean related to atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming?, Chunzai Wang and Shenfu Dong of NOAA's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, conclude that "both global warming and AMO [Atlantic multidecadal oscillation] variability make a contribution to the recent basin-wide warming in the North Atlantic and their relative contribution is approximately equal."

"Frankly, I was expecting that we'd see large temperature increases later this century with higher greenhouse gas levels and global warming," Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh, who headed up the research, said in a prepared statement. "I did not expect to see anything this large within the next three decades."

Some early evidence suggests that more acidic water in Hood Canal is brought to the surface during storms, Dewey said. Unlike the ocean hatcheries, where acidity is linked directly to oyster mortality, there may be other factors at play in Hood Canal. “We have some very good scientists working on this,” he said. Oyster hatcheries may be able to adjust their intake water or add chemicals to help the larvae survive, Dewey said, but oysters in the wild are another story. Hood Canal has always been known for its abundant natural production, but that could be changing. Worse, numerous other shelled organisms — including zooplankton at the base of the food web and the many filter feeders that clean the waters — may be affected by the increasing acidity.

According to Beijing Climate Center, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang and Jilin had their warmest June since national records began in 1951.

The worldwide ocean surface temperature was 0.97°F (0.54°C) above the 20th century average of 61.5°F (16.4°C), which was the fourth warmest June on record. The warmth was most pronounced in the Atlantic Ocean.

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for April-June 2010 was 1.26°F (0.70°C) above the 20th century average—the warmest April-June period on record. For the year-to-date, the global combined land and ocean surface temperature of 57.5°F (14.2°C) was the warmest January-June period. This value is 1.22°F (0.68°C) above the 20th century average.

The Southeast, South and Central regions experienced their second, fifth and seventh warmest June on record, respectively.

Record-warm June temperatures were observed in Delaware, New Jersey and North Carolina (tied), where each had average temperatures 5 to 6 degrees F above the long-term mean. Many other states ranked in their top ten based on 116 years of data.

Midway through 2010, four New England states (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Rhode Island) have experienced their warmest January-June period on record. Eight other states in the Northeast and Great Lakes areas had a top-ten warm such period.

Persistent warmth made the year's second quarter (April-June) much warmer than normal for every state east of the Mississippi River, and several to its west. Louisiana and ten Atlantic Seaboard states (Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Delaware, Rhode Island, Connecticut [tied], New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina) had a record-warm second quarter. In all, twenty states had their warmest or second-warmest such period on record. The warmth in these areas contributed to both the Northeast and Southeast climate regions' warmest April-June period.

Much of the U.S. Northeast has been gripped by a heat wave that broke temperature records in New York, Washington and Baltimore and brought 100 degrees or more to Newark four days in a row.

Energy use has risen and utilities have asked customers to curb their use to conserve power

SPC issued a "moderate risk" of severe storms and tornadoes a total of 5 times, in just 30 days. To put that in perspective between 2008 and early 2010 SPC had issued 5 moderate risks. So we endured (in one month) what had previously taken over 2 years to achieve in terms of elevated weather risk.

Soak up today's blue sky and 80-degree highs, because the latest NAM/WRF model (probably the most accurate & reliable simulation of future weather) is printing out nearly 4" of rain for the metro area Thursday. If that verifies it would be nearly a MONTH'S worth of rain in less than 12 hours.

Finally, the latest from NOAA: June was the warmest month, worldwide, since accurate records were first started in 1880. It was the 4th consecutive month of record warmth around the world, the 304 month in a row where global temperatures were above the 20th century average. 2010 is still on track to be the warmest year (globally) on record, even warmer than 2005. More coincidences? Possibly, but at some point you look at all these trends, scratch your head, and wonder if maybe those climate scientists aren't right (a recent poll of published, active PhD climate scientists showed that 97% of them believe the earth's atmosphere is warming, and man has at least some role in this warming trend). That's good enough for me - should be good enough for all of us mere mortals (who don't study the earth's climate 18 hours/day). The professional (paid) deniers and their "institutes" will come up with more excuses and refutations, citing a global conspiracy among climate scientists. Don't believe them, any more than you'd believe a tobacco lobbyist denying the ill effects of smoking and the link between tobacco and cancer. The trends are apparent to anyone taking the time to really look at the science. No one heat wave, month or year proves anything, but what we have here is a steady trickle of evidence, a gradual accumulation of coincidences that can no longer be denied. Melting glaciers, thinning arctic ice, rising sea levels, an uptick in drought and 1-in-500 year floods are all symptoms. The earth's atmosphere is running a mild fever. The question: do we believe the doctors and treat the patient now, or wait for those symptoms to worsen? It's not ideology, it's not a political litmus test, it's not a "new religion." It's basic science.

Large-scale storm systems are the dominant weather phenomenon during the cold season in the United States. Although the analysis of these storms is complicated by a relatively short length of most observational records and by the highly variable nature of strong storms, some clear patterns have emerged.112 [Kunkel et al., 2008] Storm tracks have shifted northward over the last 50 years as evidenced by a decrease in the frequency of storms in mid-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, while high-latitude activity has increased. There is also evidence of an increase in the intensity of storms in both the mid- and high-latitude areas of the Northern Hemisphere, with greater confidence in the increases occurring in high latitudes.112 [Kunkel et al., 2008] The northward shift is projected to continue, and strong cold season storms are likely to become stronger and more frequent, with greater wind speeds and more extreme wave heights.68 [Gutowski et al, 2008]

The northward shift in storm tracks is reflected in regional changes in the frequency of snowstorms. The South and lower Midwest saw reduced snowstorm frequency during the last century. In contrast, the Northeast and upper Midwest saw increases in snowstorms, although considerable decade-to-decade variations were present in all regions, influenced, for example, by the frequency of El Niño events.112 [Kunkel et al., 2008]

Then we have this apparently as yet unpublished research presented by Dr James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory at the recent International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference (IPY-OSC) where he was chairing “a session on polar climate feedbacks, amplification and teleconnections, including impacts on mid-latitudes.” “Cold and snowy winters will be the rule, rather than the exception,” says Dr James Overland…. Continued rapid loss of sea ice will be an important driver of major change in the world’s climate system in the years to come…. “While the emerging impact of greenhouse gases is an important factor in the changing Arctic, what was not fully recognised until now is that a combination of an unusual warm period due to natural variability, loss of sea ice reflectivity, ocean heat storage and changing wind patterns working together has disrupted the memory and stability of the Arctic climate system, resulting in greater ice loss than earlier climate models predicted,” says Dr Overland. “The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic,” he says.

Even though these storms occurred during warmest winter on record, I think the best way to talk about it until Overland publishes his work is the way NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth did on NPR (audio here): RENEE MONTAGNE, host:  With snow blanketing much of the country, the topic of global warming has become the butt of jokes. Climate skeptics built an igloo in Washington, D.C. during last weeks storm and dedicated it to former Vice President Al Gore, who’s become the public face of climate change. There was also a YouTube video called “12 Inches of Global Warming” that showed snowplows driving through a blizzard.For scientists who study the climate, it’s all a bit much. As NPRs Christopher Joyce reports, they’re trying to dig out. CHRISTOPHER JOYCE: Snowed-in Washington is where much of the political debate over climate change happens. So it did not go unnoticed when a Washington think-tank that advocates climate action had to postpone a climate meeting last week because of inclement weather. That kind of irony isnt lost on climate scientists. Most don’t see a contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. Heres Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. Mr. KEVIN TRENBERTH (Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research): The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago, means there’s about, on average, 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was, say, in the 1970s. JOYCE: Warmer water means more water vapor rises up into the air. And what goes up, must come down. Mr. TRENBERTH: So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, D.C., for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow, partly as a consequence of global warming. JOYCE: And Trenberth notes that you don’t need very cold temperatures to get big snow. In fact, when the mercury drops too low, it may be too cold to snow. There’s something else fiddling with the weather this year: a strong El Nino. That’s the weather pattern that, every few years, raises itself up out of the western Pacific Ocean and blows east to the Americas. It brings heavy rains and storms to California and the South and Southeast. It also pushes high-altitude jet streams farther south, which brings colder air with them. Trenberth also says El Nino can lock in weather patterns like a meteorological highway, so that storms keep coming down the same track. True, those storms have been big ones – record breakers. But meteorologist Jeff Masters, with the Web site Weather Underground, says it’s average temperatures — not snowfall — that really measure climate change. There’s more water vapor lurking around the oceans, and whatever the proximate cause of any one snow storm, there is little doubt that global warming means the overwhelming majority of East Coast storms will be sweeping in more moisture and dumping it on the ground.