Anomaly Ashmomaly!

You guys, check out this visualization of mean summer temperatures since 1951, from our rocket scientist friends at NASA. It shows how HOT things have been getting here on earth lately:

Explanation from the mouth of NASA itself [Bold and Italics are mine, because - !!]:

NASA climatologists have long collected data on global temperature anomalies, which describe how much warming or cooling regions of the world have experienced when compared with the 1951 to 1980 base period. In this study...[lead researcher] Hansen and [his] colleagues found that a bell curve was a good fit to summertime temperature anomalies for the base period of relatively stable climate from 1951 to 1980. ...Plotting bell curves for the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, the team noticed the entire curve shifted to the right, meaning that more hot events are the new normal. The curve also flattened and widened, indicating a wider range of variability. Specifically, an average of 75 percent of land area across Earth experienced summers in the "hot" category during the past decade, compared to only 33 percent during the 1951 to 1980 base period. Widening of the curve also led to the designation of the new category of outlier events labeled "extremely hot," which were almost nonexistent in the base period.

We are all going to boil up and die!!

Supporting this overdramatic and wildly inaccurate conclusion is some other recent data that's recently been released from NASA, this time in partnership with the National Snow and Ice Data Center, data which show that Arctic sea ice is melting, and FAST:

Figure explanation: The monthly averaged ice extent for August was 4.72 million square kilometers (1.82 square miles). This is 2.94 million square kilometers (1.14 million square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average extent, and 640,000 square kilometers (247,000 square miles) below the previous record low for August set in 2007. Including 2012, the August trend is -78,100 square kilometers (-30,200 square miles) per year, or -10.2 % per decade relative to the 1979 to 2000 average.

Figure caption: The graph above shows Arctic sea ice extent as of September 3, 2012, along with daily ice extent data for the previous five years. 2012 is shown in blue, 2011 in orange, 2010 in pink, 2009 in navy, 2008 in purple, and 2007 in green. The 1979 to 2000 average is in dark gray. The gray area around this average line shows the two standard deviation range of the data. 

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. Unfortunately, fire seems to be winning at the moment.

However, it's not the end of the world! Don't believe me? Go on this cruise and find out for yourself.