In the middle of prepping for IFTF's 2012 Ten-Year Forecast event at the end of April, then traveling to Kazakhstan in late May. In the meantime...

US Experienced warmest March ever. Average temperature in the lower 48 states was 8.6 degrees above normal (although apparently not in California).

Or, in video form:

Unsurprisingly, permafrost in Siberia and northern Canada appears to be melting.

This is all something we've understood for quite awhile. A paper in Science in 1981 offered up a projection of temperatures, and the last 30 years has tracked closely (and slightly exceeded) the worst-case projection from that research.

Fortunately, there's something that can be done relatively quickly, relatively cheaply, and with relatively quick results: cut black carbon (mostly soot) and methane. It's not enough in and of itself, but would knock down temperature increases by 0.5°C, and give us more time to deal with the harder issues.

Of course, if the methane trapped under the permafrost is released, that plan gets a bit harder to accomplish.

None of this is news, in the sense of being an out-of-the-blue surprise. It's all stuff we've been talking about being a possibility for awhile. And it's now starting to happen.