An op-ed in today’s New York Times, How We Know It Was Climate Change, is well worth reading. The author of the op-ed, N.S. Diffenbaugh, lays out the rationale for a link between climate change and extreme weather events. Diffenbaugh’s op-ed is based on a journal article written by himself and others that was published…
Tag: climate change
A Second Warning – Forcing Earth’s Ecosystems Beyond Their Breaking Point
Twenty-five years after the Union of Concerned Scientists and over 1700 independent scientists published their “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity”, a new group of scientists (bolstered by 15,364 scientist signatories from 184 countries) have again issued a warning that humanity has not made significant progress in mitigating environmental challenges. The recently published viewpoint of these…
Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise, and Superstorms
Dr. James Hansen (Director of Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions Program Earth Institute, Columbia University) and 18 co-authors just published an article – Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming could be dangerous – in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics. Their article is…
Iceberg Lake Glacier, Glacier National Park – Hiking Through A Changing Landscape
Iceberg Lake is situated in the Many Glacier area of Glacier National Park. The hike is about a 10 mile round trip and gains about 1275 feet in elevation. The trail winds through prime grizzly bear habitat, so be sure to hike with a group, make lots of noise, and carry bear spray. It would…
IPCC Hones Its Language on Climate Change
Yesterday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest Synthesis Report (SYR5) – a summary of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) on the state of knowledge on climate change. The big news with the SYR5’s release is the change in language used within the report – words like “unequivocable” and “clear” now…
Natural Gas and Climate Change
The rise in natural gas production, particularly in the U.S., has unquestionably impacted the global energy equation. Fueled by the unconventional-natural-gas revolution, natural gas is now a significant factor in the U.S. and global energy mix. As Sonal Patel summarized from the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) 2013 World Energy Outlook (WEO-2013): By 2035, natural gas…
Whose Land Is It Anyways?
The development of energy resources is typically dependent upon the availability of infrastructure such as hydrocarbon pipelines and transmission lines. Many of the issues concerning energy development and consequently infrastructure construction focus on the impact of climate change generated by a particular energy resource. The continuing controversy over the permitting of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline…
Human Influence On The Climate System Is Unmistakable
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change‘s (IPCC) much awaited report, the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), concludes that scientists are 95% certain that humans are the “dominant cause” of global warming since the 1950s. A policy makers’ summary for AR5, IPCC’s latest report on physical evidence for climate change, was released today. The full report will be released…
Climate Change News
In reading through the torrent of recent news on climate change, I’ve come across a few events that stand out. Following is a brief summary of each taken from the original source: Nicholas Stern: ‘I got it wrong on climate change – it’s far, far worse’ by Heather Stewart and Larry Elliott, The Observer, guardian.co.uk…
Climate Change Impact on Earth Surface Systems
As Congress continues to stonewall on climate change legislation, I think that a recent article published in the Perspectives section of Nature Climate Change, The impacts of climate change on terrestrial Earth surface systems, is worth contemplating. The authors, Jasper Knight and Stephan Harrison, argue that “… at present, governments’ attempts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions…
2012 – Warmest Year on Record
NOAA’s National Climate Data Center (NCDC) announced today that 2012 was the warmest year on record for the contiguous U.S in over a century of record keeping. The average temperature for 2012 was 55.3°F. This is 3.2°F above the 20th century average and is 1.0°F above the previous 1998 record. Other temperature notables for 2012…
Largest Ice Calving Event Caught on Video
As part of the filming for the documentary,Chasing Ice, two filmmakers caught a massive calving event of a Greenland glacier (see the accompanying YouTube video, via The Guardian, inserted below). One of the filmmakers, James Balog, said the event is like seeing “Manhattan breaking apart in front of your eyes”. Chasing Ice chronicles climate change’s impact on Arctic…
Ocean Acidification and Climate Change
A news item caught my interest recently – a National Public Radio (NPR) news segment of 11/23/2012 on whether shellfish can adapt to increasingly acidic oceans (NPR shellfish link). Because UN Climate Talks opened in Doha, Qatar today, I thought it would be an appropriate time to talk about ocean acidification trends. As noted by…
Hurricane Sandy – A Predicted Event of Climate Change
Earlier this year, a peer-reviewed paper, Physically based assessment of hurricane surge threat under climate change, (PDF bypasses Nature’s paywall) was published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The authors predicted more frequent storm surges for New York City due to the changing climate. The abstract from the paper follows: Storm surges are responsible for…
Anthropocene: Is there a new human-based geological age?
Geologists are well known for separating the geologic time scale into many time units. The most recent time division, the Holocene, has now lasted about 11,700 years, during which time the climate has been fairly stable. However, at several recent geological meetings, geologists have discussed the premise that because human activity has so irrevocably changed…