Understanding the Link Between Climate Change and Extreme Weather | Climate Change Science | US EPA On This Page: Changes in Extreme Weather and Climate Events Scientists study many aspects of change in extreme weather and climate events. These include: Frequency: Are events occurring more often than they did in the past? Intensity: Are events getting more severe, with the potential for more damaging effects? Extreme weather is typically rare. Establishing the most likely causes behind an extreme weather event can be challenging, since these events are due to combinations of multiple factors, including natural variability. There have been changes in some types of extreme weather events in the United States over the last several decades, including more intense and frequent heat waves, less frequent and intense cold waves, and regional changes in floods, droughts, and wildfires.[1] This rise in extreme weather events fits a pattern you can expect with a warming planet. Trends in Specific Extreme Weather Events Learn more by clicking on each tab below: Heat Waves Why does it matter? Droughts
RealClimate: Recent global warming trends: significant or paused or what? climateprediction.net | The world's largest climate forecasting experiment for the 21st century. CO2 sinks - Oceans Carbon dioxide readily dissolves in water and the oceans provide a huge reservoir of carbon. Across the world's oceans there is a continual cycle of equilibration of dissolved carbon dioxide in water with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Around 88 thousand million tonnes of carbon is released from the surface of the world's oceans each year, with an annual uptake by the oceans of 90 thousand million tonnes. Consequently, the net uptake of carbon dioxide by oceans is estimated to be approximately 2 thousand million tonnes annually. The carbon dioxide which dissolves in our oceans occurs in three main forms. Human Impact Through increasing global temperatures, via human induced global warming, rising sea temperatures may have significant effects on the oceanic carbon dioxide sink. Potential for control
Two degrees: Will we avoid dangerous climate change? 09 Dec 2014, 11:30Simon Evans Limiting warming to no more than two degrees has become the internationally accepted target for climate policy, as we saw in the first blog of our series of pieces looking at the two degrees limit. Scientists think the risks of climate change increase as temperatures rise. It is a readily understood and useful marker of how we're doing at limiting dangerous climate change that has helped focus minds on the scale of the challenge. So will we manage to limit warming to two degrees above pre-industrial? 1. The world has already warmed by 0.85 degrees celsius above the pre-industrial average and if emissions stay high we're on course for more like three to five degrees by 2100,according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports. Broadly speaking, however, scientists say it is still theoretically possible to limit warming to two degrees as long as we stick within a fixed carbon budget. So how big is the budget? 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Global Climate Change: Research Explorer The earth’s climate has warmed and cooled for millions of years, since long before we appeared on the scene. There’s no doubt that the climate is growing warmer currently; indications of that change are all around us. Though climate change isn’t new, the study of how human activity affects the earth’s climate is. At this Web site, you can explore scientific data relating to the atmosphere, the oceans, the areas covered by ice and snow, and the living organisms in all these domains.
Giant iceberg poised to break off from Antarctic shelf | World news A giant iceberg, with an area equivalent to Trinidad and Tobago, is poised to break off from the Antarctic shelf. A thread of just 20km of ice is now preventing the 5,000 sq km mass from floating away, following the sudden expansion last month of a rift that has been steadily growing for more than a decade. The iceberg, which is positioned on the most northern major ice shelf in Antarctica, known as Larsen C, is predicted to be one of the largest 10 break-offs ever recorded. Professor Adrian Luckman, a scientist at Swansea University and leader of the UK’s Midas project, said in a statement: “After a few months of steady, incremental advance since the last event, the rift grew suddenly by a further 18km during the second half of December 2016. Only a final 20km of ice now connects an iceberg one quarter the size of Wales to its parent ice shelf.” “If it doesn’t go in the next few months, I’ll be amazed,” Luckman told BBC News.
Oil Investors at Brink of Losing Trillions of Dollars in Assets. Gore: It's That Road Runner Moment Climate: Now or Never A major threat to fossil fuel companies has suddenly moved from the fringe to center stage with a dramatic announcement by Germany’s biggest power company and an intriguing letter from the Bank of England. A growing minority of investors and regulators are probing the possibility that untapped deposits of oil, gas and coal -- valued at trillions of dollars globally -- could become stranded assets as governments adopt stricter climate change policies. The concept gaining traction from Wall Street to the City of London is simple. A Global Push to Save the Planet With representatives from more than 190 countries gathered to discuss climate rules in Lima, the argument that burning all the world’s known oil, gas and coal reserves would overwhelm the atmosphere is moving beyond the realm of environmental activists. Selling Out Former U.S. Big Oil Energy majors such as Exxon Mobil Corp. George Shultz Gone Solar. Stronger Resolve ‘Overstated Potential’ The industry disagrees.
UK weather: Stunning images of snow-capped British landscapes Department of Health issue 'Level 2' cold-weather alert as freeze poses significant health risks Warning of ice forming on untreated surfaces By Daily Mail Reporter Updated: 11:31 GMT, 29 January 2012 For those enjoying the unseasonably warm weather, the blast of freezing Arctic cold sweeping across Britain is in unwelcome reminder of what winter's normally like. But anyone with an eye for a stunning photograph is sure to welcome the dusting of snow which helps create a picturesque winter scene. The scene below was the view earlier today across Carr Shields in Northumberland, as a icy weather front swept south across the country from Siberia. Winter arrives: The unseasonably mild winter gave way to cold and snow which turned Carr Shields, Northumberland, pictured, into a picturesque snowy scene Freezing: Weather forecasters saying the cold weather could last into February as homes in Allendale, Northumberland, stoke up their fires to keep warm So could there be a sting in the tail this year?
Earth warming to climate tipping point, warns study Image copyright AP A warmer world will release vast volumes of carbon into the atmosphere, potentially triggering dangerous climate change, scientists warn. Writing in journal Nature, they project that an increase of 1C (1.8F) will release an additional 55 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere by 2050. This could trigger a "positive feedback" and push the planet's climate system past the point of no-return. Previous assessments have not taken carbon released by soil into account. In their Nature paper, an international team of scientists said that the majority of the Earth's terrestrial store of carbon was in the soil. They warned that as the world warmed, organisms living in the planet's soils would become more active, resulting in more carbon being released into the atmosphere - exacerbating warming. "Using this approach we can get a robust idea of the whole picture. "It is very similar to the way we respire and produce carbon dioxide.
Wissenschaftsgeschichte des Klimawandels Die Forschungsgeschichte des Klimawandels begann im frühen 19. Jahrhundert mit der Feststellung der Eiszeiten und anderer natürlicher Veränderungen im Rahmen der Paläoklimatologie und der Entdeckung des natürlichen Treibhauseffekts im Jahr 1824. Bereits Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts wurden menschliche Einflüsse über Treibhausgase vermutet, entsprechende Berechnungen wurden aber bis in die 1960er Jahre hinein verworfen. Eine Beschreibung der Geschichte der Wissenschaft über insbesondere anthropogene Klimaveränderungen findet sich beispielsweise im 1. Die Betrachtung des Klimawandels, insbesondere die Erkenntnisse zur globalen Erwärmung, sind eng verknüpft mit der Untersuchung der Eiszeiten, und auf der Suche nach den Ursachen für das Kommen und Gehen der Eiszeiten fand man die wahrscheinlichen Ursachen und Mechanismen der menschengemachten globalen Erwärmung. Die Entdeckung der Grundlagen[Bearbeiten] Wissenschaftler, die gegen Ende des 19. und Anfang des 20. Jean Baptiste Fourier[Bearbeiten]
Fossil fuel firms are still bankrolling climate denial lobby groups | Environment The oil giant BP has announced that they will no longer fund the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), a lobbying group that routinely misrepresents climate science to US state legislators. It is the latest sign that some of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies appear to be warming to the overwhelming evidence that the unabated use of their products poses severe risks of disrupting the climate. Last month, BP and Royal Dutch Shell announced their support for shareholder resolutions calling on them to commit to reduce heat-trapping emissions, invest in renewable energy, and show how their current business model would hold up against the strict limits on future emissions needed to limit the risk of major climate disruption. Shell chief executive Ben van Buerden recently stated that “climate change is real and a threat we want to act upon. But appearances can be deceiving. Who will pay these and other costs of preparing for now inevitable changes?
Two degrees? Sounds nice. The reality will be rather different If we continue to emit ever-greater quantities of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, then average global temperatures will rise by 2°C over the next three decades compared to pre-industrial times. Most scientists agree that anything higher is dangerous, though many argue that even this is too much. As the battles to reach an agreement in Paris begin, and with so much at stake, it is perhaps curious that few people really understand what a 2°C rise in average temperatures will mean. Rather than thinking about how much nicer it will be to have summers that are 2°C warmer, we should think about the planet more like we think about our bodies. The average temperature of the planet today is around 15°C, one degree more than it was in 1750. Over the next three decades, if we do not stop polluting the atmosphere at an ever increasing rate, ecosystems will move 60 miles towards the poles, and a 100 yards up hillsides. The warming of the world may also change our values.
Trump's likely science adviser calls climate scientists 'glassy-eyed cult' | US news The man tipped as frontrunner for the role of science adviser to Donald Trump has described climate scientists as “a glassy-eyed cult” in the throes of a form of collective madness. William Happer, an eminent physicist at Princeton University, met Trump last month to discuss the post and says that if he were offered the job he would take it. Happer is highly regarded in the academic community, but many would view his appointment as a further blow to the prospects of concerted international action on climate change. “There’s a whole area of climate so-called science that is really more like a cult,” Happer told the Guardian. “It’s like Hare Krishna or something like that. Trump has previously described global warming as “very expensive … bullshit” and has signalled a continued hardline stance since taking power. “Every national academy of science agrees that the science is solid, that climate change is real,” he said. “His comments were that of a technically literate person,” he said.