Today is Normal

In case anyone has forgotten what fall temperatures are supposed to be, today is your reminder. Today's high and low temperatures will be a degree or two below the November 11th normals of 54 and 42 degrees. Tomorrow will start off chilly, but we'll be back above normal in the afternoon. By Sunday we'll be back into the 60s, nearly ten degrees warmer than normal.

Gothamist did a quick calculation at lunch and saw that the first ten months of this year are the eleventh warmest on record for Central Park. Many of New York's warmest years have occurred in the past two decades. Research done at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is affiliated with Columbia University and located above Tom's Diner, shows that the Earth's surface temperature is rising. How much of that temperature increase can be attributed to human activities and what can or should be done to moderate those changes is a matter of intense scientific and political debate. Some of that debate will take place next Tuesday when the New York Academy of Sciences hosts a discussion entitled "New York Tackles Climate Change: Promoting Renewable Energy and Capping Greenhouse Gas Emissions". You can follow the scientific discussions of climate change on the Real Climate and Climate Science blogs.

It's not really weather, but the Earth Observatory has several International Space Station photographs of Earth, including Manhattan above. Be sure to see the high-resolution image of the city taken last March.