Thread: Any doubts about Climate Change?

massive global warming hits southern California.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Traffic is flowing again on a major Southern California traffic artery that was severed for the second time in three days because of ice and snow from a winter storm that brought freezing temperatures to much of the state.
The California Highway Patrol says the Grapevine segment of Interstate 5 was reopened at 7:25 a.m. Saturday, about four hours after icy conditions forced the closure.

Californians are bundling up with sweaters and gloves as they deal with morning temperatures that fell into the 20s and 30s in many areas, and much lower in the mountains.

The National Weather Service says records could fall as the cold snap stretches into early Sunday.

Citrus growers broke out wind machines and took other steps to protect crops from freezing.

Guess Al Gore Was Right All Along!

End Climate Silence Now: Draft Climate Assessment Warns Of Devastating 9°-15°F Warming Over Most Of U.S.

Projected rise in average U.S. surface air temperature 2071-2099 relative to 1971-2000. This is RCP 8.5, “a scenario that assumes continued increases in emissions,” with CO2 levels hitting about 940 parts per million. It is close to the emissions path we are currently on — but not the worst-case scenario and not where still-rising temperatures would end up post-2100.

The Assessment, put together by dozens of the country’s top climate experts, makes clear that if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path, we are headed towards a devastating 9°F to 15°F warming over most of the United States (this century), with ever-worsening extreme weather, heat waves, deluges and droughts. As the report notes “generally, wet [areas] get wetter and dry get drier.” Future generations will be wishing for the boring “moist” and “cool” days of 2012 (when they aren’t cursing our names).

Here are the key points from the Assessment’s Executive Summary:

Global climate is changing now and this change is apparent across a wide range of observations. Much of the climate change of the past 50 years is primarily due to human activities.

Global climate is projected to continue to change over this century and beyond. The magnitude of climate change beyond the next few decades depends primarily on the amount of heat-trapping gases emitted globally, and how sensitive the climate is to those emissions.

U.S. average temperature has increased by about 1.5°F since record keeping began in 1895; more than 80% of this increase has occurred since 1980. The most recent decade was the nation’s warmest on record. U.S. temperatures are expected to continue to rise. Because human-induced warming is superimposed on a naturally varying climate, the temperature rise has not been, and will not be, smooth across the country or over time.

The length of the frost-free season (and the corresponding growing season) has been increasing nationally since the 1980s, with the largest increases occurring in the western U.S., affecting ecosystems and agriculture. Continued lengthening of the growing season across the U.S. is projected.

Precipitation averaged over the entire U.S. has increased during the period since 1900, but regionally some areas have had increases greater than the national average, and some areas have had decreases. The largest increases have been in the Midwest, southern Great Plains, and Northeast. Portions of the Southeast, the Southwest, and the Rocky Mountain states have experienced decreases. More winter and spring precipitation is projected for the northern U.S., and less for the Southwest, over this century.

Heavy downpours are increasing in most regions of the U.S., especially over the last three to five decades. Largest increases are in the Midwest and Northeast. Further increases in the frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation events are projected for most U.S. areas.

Certain types of extreme weather events have become more frequent and intense, including heat waves, floods, and droughts in some regions. The increased intensity of heat waves has been most prevalent in the western parts of the country, while the intensity of flooding events has been more prevalent over the eastern parts. Droughts in the Southwest and heat waves everywhere are projected to become more intense in the future.

There has been an increase in the overall strength of hurricanes and in the number of strong (Category 4 and 5) hurricanes in the North Atlantic since the early 1980s. The intensity of the strongest hurricanes is projected to continue to increase as the oceans continue to warm; ocean cycles will also affect the amount of warming at any given time. With regard to other types of storms that affect the U.S., winter storms have increased slightly in frequency and intensity, and their tracks have shifted northward over the U.S. Other trends in severe storms, including the numbers of hurricanes and the intensity and frequency of tornadoes, hail, and damaging thunderstorm winds are uncertain and are being studied intensively.

Global sea level has risen by about 8 inches since reliable record keeping began in 1880. It is projected to rise another 1 to 4 feet by 2100.

Rising temperatures are reducing ice volume and extent on land, lakes, and sea. This loss of ice is expected to continue.

The oceans are currently absorbing about a quarter of the carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere annually and are becoming more acidic as a 36 result, leading to concerns about potential impacts on marine ecosystems.

Here is the full statement by Carol Browner:

The draft climate assessment released today confirms what the science says and what our eyes are telling us: It’s getting hotter, and that carbon pollution is driving climate change, fueling more violent and frequent weather events and threatening public health. Climate alarms continued to blare in 2012, which was the hottest year on record in the United States. And destructive superstorm Sandy was one of 11 storms, floods, droughts, and heat waves last year that each caused at least $1 billion in damages. The draft assessment warns us that the loss of lives and livelihoods will only get worse, and no part of the nation is safe.

Senior citizens, children, and middle- and lower-income Americans will experience increasing vulnerability to more frequent and ferocious extreme weather events. Residents and businesses in coastal towns will face more damaging storm surges and sea-level rise. Our aging roads, water plants, electricity generation, and other infrastructure will also face more climate-related threats.

We made some progress in reducing climate pollution since 2009 but the draft assessment is a reminder that we must make significantly steeper reductions in industrial carbon pollution. We all need the courage to stand up to the special interests and instead support immediate action to address carbon pollution and climate change. We can start with strict carbon pollution standards for power plants and we must significantly expand investments in community resiliency to protect people and the economy from the gathering storms—and floods, droughts, wildfires, and heat waves. The time to act is now.

Originally Posted by Rainfall

It's official, 2012 was the warmest year in the US since record keeping began. Beats the previous record by a full degree.

It's Official: 2012 Warmest Year on Record | LiveScience

^A good book for beginners: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet: Mark Lynas: Amazon.com: Books


Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet

The first chapter describes the expected effects of climate change with one degree (°C) increase in average global temperature sincepre-industrial times. The second chapter describes the effects of two degrees average temperature and so forth until Chapter 6 which shows the expected effects of six degrees (°) average global temperature. The effects are also compare to paleoclimatic studies, with six degrees of warming compared back to the Cretaceous.

Special coverage is given to the positive feedback mechanisms that could dramatically accelerate climate change. The book explains how the release of methane hydrate and the release of methane from melting permafrost could unleash a major extinction event.Carbon cycle feedbacks, the demise of coral, the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest, and extreme desertification are also described, with five or six degrees of warming potentially leading to the complete uninhabitability of the tropics and subtropics, as well as extremewater and food shortages, possibly leading to mass migration of billions of people.


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NOAA And NASA: 2012 Warmest 'La Niña Year' On Record, Sustaining Long-Term Climate Warming Trend

NOAA: La Niña, which is defined by cooler-than-normal waters in the eastern and central equatorial Pacific Ocean that affect weather patterns around the globe, was present during the first three months of 2012…. It was also the warmest year on record among all La Niña years. The three warmest annual ocean surface temperatures occurred in 2003, 1998, and 2010—all warm phase El Niño years.

NASA Finds 2012 Sustained Long-Term Climate Warming Trend

NASA scientists say 2012 was the ninth warmest of any year since 1880, continuing a long-term trend of rising global temperatures. With the exception of 1998, the nine warmest years in the 132-year record all have occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the hottest years on record.

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, which monitors global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, released an updated analysis Tuesday that compares temperatures around the globe in 2012 to the average global temperature from the mid-20th century. The comparison shows how Earth continues to experience warmer temperatures than several decades ago.

The average temperature in 2012 was about 58.3 degrees Fahrenheit (14.6 Celsius), which is 1.0 F (0.6 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline. The average global temperature has risen about 1.4 degrees F (0.8 C) since 1880, according to the new analysis.

Scientists emphasize that weather patterns always will cause fluctuations in average temperature from year to year, but the continued increase in greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere assures a long-term rise in global temperatures. Each successive year will not necessarily be warmer than the year before, but on the current course of greenhouse gas increases, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous decade.

“One more year of numbers isn’t in itself significant,” GISS climatologist Gavin Schmidt said. “What matters is this decade is warmer than the last decade, and that decade was warmer than the decade before. The planet is warming. The reason it’s warming is because we are pumping increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.”

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that traps heat and largely controls Earth’s climate. It occurs naturally and also is emitted by the burning of fossil fuels for energy. Driven by increasing man-made emissions, the level of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has been rising consistently for decades.

The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was about 285 parts per million in 1880, the first year in the GISS temperature record. By 1960, the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory, was about 315 parts per million. Today, that measurement exceeds 390 parts per million.

Read a great interview with David Attenborough (as anything involving David Attenborough is ipso facto great) in which he makes the following case: http://www.newstatesman.com/sci-tech...red-heartbeats

In the early days of dealing with climate change, I wouldn’t go out on a limb one way or another, because I don’t have the qualifications there. But I do have the qualifications to measure the scientific community and see what the consensus is about climate change.

I remember the moment when I suddenly thought it was incontrovertible. There was a lecture given by a distinguished American expert in atmospheric science and he showed a series of graphs about the temperature changes in the upper atmosphere. He plotted time against population growth and industrialisation. It was incontrovertible, and once you think it’s really totally incontrovertible, then you have a responsibility to say so.

Originally Posted by hazz

A couple of centuries ago this almost happened when a large ice dam broke in northern Canada flooding the north Atlantic with fresh water causing the gulf stream to almost shut down, resulting in a mini ice age in Europe for a few years. The locals noticed this and decided it was gods message to have a good old wihch hunt, with brings all over Europe.

Aren't you referring to the Laurentide event of 8,200 years ago?

The Laurentide ice field did in fact break up then, releasing billions of cubic metres of water into the North Atlantic, thus diluting the thermo-haline conveyor of the North Atlantic current (Gulf Stream) which warms Britain.

There was a cool period also about 200 years ago, but not on that scale. That has been linked to low sun spot activity.

The Gulf Stream has slowed down considerably already, and that cooling of the North Artlantic is suggested to be the cause of increasedwater precipitation evidenced as increased flooding in UK.

Paradoxically, although we are undergoing global warming, the climate changes induced by that warming is causing a colder area to arise in the North Atlantic, but not in the Arctic Ocean, which is warming, as evinced by melting Arctic ice causing shrinkage of the Arctic winter ice field.



Diagram of the thermo-haline "conveyor belt".

It is a shallow to deep ocean conveyor of salty water and CO2 and moves separately to and independently of surface oceanic currents which move and corelate with low atmosphere gyres. or cycles which manifest our weather patterns.

The El Nino and La Nina phenomena are part of this system and interact with the thermo-haline system. Changes in any one of these systems cause a reaction in the others.

So none of these circulatory systems are in fact truly independent and separate, but co-relative.

Originally Posted by pseudolus

Sorry if this has been mentioned somewhere before

Dig through the MET offices pages and pages of climate change is going to kill us all shite and then you have a quietly released report saying;

Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it
The figures reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures
This means that the ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996

It was debunked a long time ago: https://teakdoor.com/issues/95678-any...ml#post2321187

Again, for the slow learners,…….