Difference between revisions of "Climate change"

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[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/07/world/americas/bolivia-climate-change-lake-poopo.html?_r=0 Climate Change Claims a Lake, and an Identity] NICHOLAS CASEY; NY Times; 7 July 2016
 
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/07/07/world/americas/bolivia-climate-change-lake-poopo.html?_r=0 Climate Change Claims a Lake, and an Identity] NICHOLAS CASEY; NY Times; 7 July 2016
 
: LLAPALLAPANI, Bolivia — The water receded and the fish died. They surfaced by the tens of thousands, belly-up, and the stench drifted in the air for weeks. The birds that had fed on the fish had little choice but to abandon Lake Poopó, once Bolivia’s second-largest but now just a dry, salty expanse. Many of the Uru-Murato people, who had lived off its waters for generations, left as well, joining a new global march of refugees fleeing not war or persecution, but climate change.
 
: LLAPALLAPANI, Bolivia — The water receded and the fish died. They surfaced by the tens of thousands, belly-up, and the stench drifted in the air for weeks. The birds that had fed on the fish had little choice but to abandon Lake Poopó, once Bolivia’s second-largest but now just a dry, salty expanse. Many of the Uru-Murato people, who had lived off its waters for generations, left as well, joining a new global march of refugees fleeing not war or persecution, but climate change.
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==== Glacial floods ====
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[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/10/21/the-latest-disaster-risk-from-climate-change-huge-glacial-floods/ The latest disaster risk from climate change — huge glacial floods] Chelsea Harvey; Washington Post; 21 Oct 2016
 +
: In a new study in the journal The Cryosphere, Simon Cook of Manchester Metropolitan University in the U.K. and British and Bolivian colleagues examine the mountain glaciers of the Bolivian Andes in particular ... millions of citizens in Bolivia rely on these glaciers for fresh water as they melt in the spring ... during the dry season, Bolivia’s glaciers are an important water resource
 +
: The scientists have another concern as well. As the glaciers shrink, they tend to leave behind large pools of meltwater, constrained by walls of soil, rock and other debris that built up as the ice eroded the landscape. “Glaciers are the most effective erosional force on the planet,” said Cook. “The fact that they cut deep valleys and leave them behind, it means they’re basically priming the landscape to fail.” The largest of these lakes are believed to hold more than 16 billion gallons of water — that’s equivalent to about 25,000 Olympic swimming pools. Because these piles of debris are essentially the only thing holding the water back, these pools can pose a serious danger to nearby communities. “Those lakes can burst and wash away villages or infrastructure downstream,” Cook said. “And we actually identified 25 such lakes that could prove a risk.”
  
 
=== projections ===
 
=== projections ===

Revision as of 23:44, 21 October 2016


There is an enormous amount of evidence, and agreement amongst scientists working in relevant fields, that the Earth's Climate is getting warmer due to human activities.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a body comprising experts in various relevant fields who continually assess the evidence for climate change and its effects and for strategies to mitigate and adapt to its effects. Periodically the IPCC's working groups present their findings in individual reports and also produce a Synthesis Report, bringing together the Working Groups' report. The latest is 2014's Fifth Assessment Report. These findings are presented together via a new, beta, Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report website (which also has links to the separate reports).

evidence

What's really warming the world? Bloomberg - graphic illustration of how observed temperatures match with models of changes due to earth's orbit, solar variation, volcanic activity, deforestation, ozone pollution, aerosol pollution, greenhouse gases

Climate Lab Book Ed Hawkins' blog

Skeptical Science

Here is a summary of global warming and climate change myths, sorted by recent popularity vs what science says. Click the response for a more detailed response. You can also view them sorted by taxonomy, by popularity, in a print-friendly version, with short URLs or with fixed numbers you can use for permanent references.

Peter Hadfield / potholer54

Peter Hadfield has made a series of videos explaining the evidence for man-made global warming, and examining scientific and non-scientific arguments against it:

There is a lot of inaccurate nonsense about climate science written in blogs and the media, whether exaggerating the effects of climate change or seeking to undermine the science behind it. This series checks the sources of these claims and shows how they have been misinterpreted or deliberately altered. I have no expertise in climatology, I am a former science journalist, so checking facts is what I do. And I always cite these sources so you can check them for yourselves. Along the way, I explain the real science as relayed by researchers in published papers, in a way that makes it easy to understand.
A basic look at how climate scientists infer that man-made carbon gases are changing the climate, and how this view is contradicted by other climate scientists who are skeptics.
This video... looks at alternative hypotheses explaining global warming. I am only looking at alternative hypotheses put forward by real, professional climate researchers, and the findings of real, professional climate researchers who disagree with them.
I had planned to put several myths in this video, but discovered such an appalling web of deceit and fabrication in this first one that I felt I had no choice but to thoroughly debunk it.
This video, the fourth in my Climate Change series, looks at urban myths spawned by two iconic films -- An Inconvenient Truth and The Great Global Warming Swindle. Whatever you "believe" about climate change, there is no excuse for the kind of exaggerations, fallacies and fabrications we see in films like these.
More urban myths about climate change are busted as I look at the Earth's climate over the last 500 million years. What causes it to change? Since carbon dioxide was much higher in the past, why do climatologists say higher CO2 now poses a problem? And of course there's the familiar myth that CO2 can't influence temperatures because the climate was much colder in the past when carbon dioxide levels were much higher.
... a more sober analysis of those e-mails and what they mean. ... I've taken the two ... Phil Jones's e-mail about "Mike's Nature trick" and Kevin Trenberth's e-mail about a "travesty."
Are climatologists censoring scientific journals and silencing alternative hypotheses on climate change?
This video also looks at whether other planets are also warming, and an Internet myth that NASA is now attributing warming to the sun.
a quote from Professor Phil Jones that there has been no global warming since 1995. But is that what he actually said? Once again, we need to go to the source -- Jones's own words -- rather than Internet gossip based on an interpretation of what he said.
In 2005 the media told us we were on the brink of another ice age. What happened?
Three more myths, misunderstood by both proponents and critics of climate science: Global Warming means more hurricanes, drowned islands and dead coral reefs. It's not that simple.
a paper by researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies led to sensational headlines that the Earth will only warm by as much as 1.64 degrees centigrade -- in a couple of centuries. Sound too good to be true? Of course it does.
This addresses a response to my video "Climate Change -- Hurricanes, atolls and corals," which, on investigation, revealed a major error by a news agency and a TV network. The moral of the story is that sticking the label "Global Warming" onto anything that moves is not going to help public understanding of climate science.
This will have to be the last video in the Monckton Bunkum series, because he's made so many mistakes in his presentations it will take at least three more videos to debunk them all, and I'm getting tired of having to correct him.
This video looks at the scientific research to answer three basic questions: 1) Was the Medieval Warm Period global? 2) Was it warmer than today? 3) And what does this all mean anyway?

CO2 levels

The Last Time CO2 Was This High, Humans Didn’t Exist Andrew Freedman; Climate Central; 3 May 2013

The last time there was this much carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Earth's atmosphere, modern humans didn't exist. Megatoothed sharks prowled the oceans, the world's seas were up to 100 feet higher than they are today, and the global average surface temperature was up to 11°F warmer than it is now. As we near the record for the highest CO2 concentration in human history — 400 parts per million — climate scientists worry about where we were then, and where we're rapidly headed now. According to data gathered at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, the 400 ppm mark may briefly be exceeded this month, when CO2 typically hits a seasonal peak in the Northern Hemisphere, although it is more likely to take a couple more years until it stays above that threshold, according to Ralph Keeling, a researcher at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

methane

temperatures

animated display of temperatures over time

xkcd: Earth Temperature Timeline

consensus

Scientific consensus: Earth's climate is warming NASA

Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals1 show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities. In addition, most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide have issued public statements endorsing this position. The following is a partial list of these organizations, along with links to their published statements and a selection of related resources.

CLIMATE SCIENCE SURVEY - Questions and Responses Bart Strengers, Bart Verheggen, Kees Vringer; PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency; 10 Apr 2015

In the Spring of 2012, PBL, in collaboration with other researchers from the Netherlands and Australia, conducted a detailed survey about climate science. More than 1800 international scientists studying various aspects of climate change, including e.g. climate physics, climate impacts and mitigation, responded to the questionnaire. Certain results were selected from this survey, namely those pertaining to the causes of recent global warming (attribution), and have since been published in Environmental Science and Technology (ES&T).
This document presents the responses to each survey question, both as an absolute number of responses and as a fraction of the total. In some cases, the responses were also divided into seven groups of respondents: co-authors of the Working Group I report of IPCC AR4 (‘AR4 authors’); signatories of public declarations critical of mainstream climate science as embodied by IPCC (‘unconvinced’); and four subgroups divided by their self-declared number of climate-related articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals (0–3; 4–10; 11–30; more than 30). The four subgroups constitute similar numbers of respondents.

The Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming

Consensus is more like 99.9% than 97%

Essentially All Climate Scientists Agree: Man-Made Global Warming is Real Henry Auer; The Energy Collective; 4 May 2016

Virtually Complete Unanimity of Acceptance of Man-Made Global Warming. James Lawrence Powell recently published an article (Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 1–4, 2016; DOI:10.1177/0270467616634958) which found that during 2013 and 2014 only 0.0058% of authors of peer-reviewed journal articles rejected the reality of man-made global warming. Of the almost 70,000 authors of those articles only 4 reached that conclusion, giving a ratio of 1:17,352.

Climate Scientists Virtually Unanimous: Anthropogenic Global Warming Is True James Lawrence Powell; Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society; 2016

The extent of the consensus among scientists on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) has the potential to influence public opinion and the attitude of political leaders and thus matters greatly to society. The history of science demonstrates that if we wish to judge the level of a scientific consensus and whether the consensus position is likely to be correct, the only reliable source is the peer-reviewed literature. During 2013 and 2014, only 4 of 69,406 authors of peer-reviewed articles on global warming, 0.0058% or 1 in 17,352, rejected AGW. Thus, the consensus on AGW among publishing scientists is above 99.99%, verging on unanimity. The U.S. House of Representatives holds 40 times as many global warming rejecters as are found among the authors of scientific articles. The peer-reviewed literature contains no convincing evidence against AGW.

persuaders

The arguments that convinced a libertarian to support aggressive action on climate

Jerry Taylor, policy brief, "The Conservative Case for a Carbon Tax," which argues for a steadily rising "revenue-neutral" fee on fossil fuel producers.

denialism

If climate scientists are in it for the money, they’re doing it wrong John Timmer; Ars Technica; 28 Feb 2011

One of the more unfortunate memes that makes an appearance whenever climate science is discussed is the accusation that, by hyping their results, climate scientists are ensuring themselves steady paychecks, and may even be enriching themselves. So, are there big bucks to be had in climate science?

Work of prominent climate change denier was funded by energy industry Suzanne Goldenberg; Guardian; 21 Feb 2015

A prominent academic and climate change denier’s work was funded almost entirely by the energy industry, receiving more than $1.2m from companies, lobby groups and oil billionaires over more than a decade, newly released documents show. Over the last 14 years Willie Soon, a researcher at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, received a total of $1.25m from Exxon Mobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute (API) and a foundation run by the ultra-conservative Koch brothers, the documents obtained by Greenpeace through freedom of information filings show.

legal harassment

Climate scientists are under attack from frivolous lawsuits Lauren Kurtz; Guardian; 7 Jul 2016

Climate Science Legal Defense Fund is forced to defend climate scientists against constant frivolous lawsuits. On June 14th, an Arizona court ruled that thousands of emails from two prominent climate scientists must be turned over to the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E), a group that disputes the 97% expert consensus on human-caused climate change and argues against action to confront it. E&E and its attorneys are funded by Peabody Coal, Arch Coal, and Alpha Natural Resources, coal corporations with billions of dollars in revenue.

effects

observed

Cold weather kills far more people than hot weather Science Daily; 20 May 2015

Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. The findings also reveal that deaths due to moderately hot or cold weather substantially exceed those resulting from extreme heat waves or cold spells.

Journal Reference:

Antonio Gasparrini, Yuming Guo, Masahiro Hashizume, Eric Lavigne, Antonella Zanobetti, Joel Schwartz, Aurelio Tobias, Shilu Tong, Joacim Rocklöv, Bertil Forsberg, Michela Leone, Manuela De Sario, Michelle L Bell, Yue-Liang Leon Guo, Chang-fu Wu, Haidong Kan, Seung-Muk Yi, Micheline de Sousa Zanotti Stagliorio Coelho, Paulo Hilario Nascimento Saldiva, Yasushi Honda, Ho Kim, Ben Armstrong. Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study. The Lancet, May 2015 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)62114-0



Attributing human mortality during extreme heat waves to anthropogenic climate change Daniel Mitchell, Clare Heaviside, Sotiris Vardoulakis, Chris Huntingford, Giacomo Masato, Benoit P Guillod, Peter Frumhoff, Andy Bowery, David Wallom, Myles Allen; IOP Environmental Research Letters; 8 Jul 2016

It has been argued that climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century. The extreme high temperatures of the summer of 2003 were associated with up to seventy thousand excess deaths across Europe. Previous studies have attributed the meteorological event to the human influence on climate, or examined the role of heat waves on human health. Here, for the first time, we explicitly quantify the role of human activity on climate and heat-related mortality in an event attribution framework, analysing both the Europe-wide temperature response in 2003, and localised responses over London and Paris. Using publicly-donated computing, we perform many thousands of climate simulations of a high-resolution regional climate model. This allows generation of a comprehensive statistical description of the 2003 event and the role of human influence within it, using the results as input to a health impact assessment model of human mortality. We find large-scale dynamical modes of atmospheric variability remain largely unchanged under anthropogenic climate change, and hence the direct thermodynamical response is mainly responsible for the increased mortality. In summer 2003, anthropogenic climate change increased the risk of heat-related mortality in Central Paris by ~70% and by ~20% in London, which experienced lower extreme heat. Out of the estimated ~315 and ~735 summer deaths attributed to the heatwave event in Greater London and Central Paris, respectively, 64 (±3) deaths were attributable to anthropogenic climate change in London, and 506 (±51) in Paris. Such an ability to robustly attribute specific damages to anthropogenic drivers of increased extreme heat can inform societal responses to, and responsibilities for, climate change.

HUNDREDS OF DEATHS IN 2003 HEAT WAVE LINKED TO CLIMATE CHANGE Yale environment 360; 8 Jul 2016

A new study suggests that human-caused climate change could be responsible for a significant portion of the 70,000 deaths that occurred during the record-breaking 2003 European heat wave. The research, published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, combined climate modeling with health data for hundreds of fatalities that summer. Climate change, the study found, increased the likelihood of heat-related losses by nearly 70 percent in Paris and 20 percent in London. Out of 735 heat-related deaths in Paris, 506 were attributable to global warming, as were 64 out of 315 deaths in London. "Until recently, whenever we talked about climate change we talked about the globally averaged increase in temperature of 1 degree and people just don't really know or frankly care about that," lead study author and Oxford University scientist Daniel Mitchell told InsideClimate News. "But now… people can really start to understand that these are impacts we're seeing now, not in the future."

floods

Why the Deadly Louisiana Flood Occurred Gayathri Vaidyanathan; Scientific American; 16 Aug 2016

The Louisiana storm was a freak event driven by the atmosphere and the ocean. At present, scientists do not know enough to attribute dynamic storms of this sort to climate change. But broaden the focus a little, and some links appear. The frequency and intensity of heavy rainfall events have increased globally, said Kenneth Kunkel, a climate scientist at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. “Each decade, it has been higher than the previous decade, for about the last 30 to 40 years,” he said. Both the land and the oceans have been warming up, which has increased the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, he said. The oceanic moisture feeds into the storms that form over land. It is likely that the storm in Baton Rouge last week produced more rainfall than it would have 40 years ago, Kunkel said. But whether global warming made Louisiana storm more likely to occur is difficult to answer. Dynamic weather systems are governed by an element of randomness that has not yet been overwhelmed by climate change.

Himalayas

Crisis on high Matthew Carney; ABC.au; 25 Jul 2016

At the top of the world a climate disaster is unfolding that will impact the lives of more than 1 billion people.

sea levels

Can New York Be Saved in the Era of Global Warming? Jeff Goodell; Rolling Stone; 5 Jul 2016

Five Pacific islands lost to rising seas as climate change hits Reuters; Guardian; 10 May 2016

Six more islands have large swaths of land, and villages, washed into sea as coastline of Solomon Islands eroded and overwhelmed

Syria / middle-east drought

Human-Induced Climate Change Triggered The Middle East’s Worst Drought In 900 Years, NASA Says

a new report from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies further bolsters the claim that anthropogenic climate change-induced drought may be one of the root causes of the conflict in the region.

NASA Finds Drought in Eastern Mediterranean Worst of Past 900 Years NASA; 1 Mar 2016

A new NASA study finds that the recent drought that began in 1998 in the eastern Mediterranean Levant region, which comprises Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and Turkey, is likely the worst drought of the past nine centuries.
Scientists reconstructed the Mediterranean’s drought history by studying tree rings as part of an effort to understand the region’s climate and what shifts water to or from the area. Thin rings indicate dry years while thick rings show years when water was plentiful.
In addition to identifying the driest years, the science team discovered patterns in the geographic distribution of droughts that provides a "fingerprint" for identifying the underlying causes. Together, these data show the range of natural variation in Mediterranean drought occurrence, which will allow scientists to differentiate droughts made worse by human-induced global warming. The research is part of NASA's ongoing work to improve the computer models that simulate climate now and in the future.

Syrian Drought, Triggered By Man-Made Climate Change, Spurred Civil War: Study Spatiotemporal drought variability in the Mediterranean over the last 900 years Benjamin I. Cook, Kevin J. Anchukaitis, Ramzi Touchan, David M. Meko, Edward R. Cook; Journal of Geophysical Research; 4 Mar 2016

Recent Mediterranean droughts have highlighted concerns that climate change may be contributing to observed drying trends, but natural climate variability in the region is still poorly understood. We analyze 900 years (1100–2012) of Mediterranean drought variability in the Old World Drought Atlas (OWDA), a spatiotemporal tree ring reconstruction of the June-July-August self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index. In the Mediterranean, the OWDA is highly correlated with spring precipitation (April–June), the North Atlantic Oscillation (January–April), the Scandinavian Pattern (January–March), and the East Atlantic Pattern (April–June). Drought variability displays significant east-west coherence across the basin on multidecadal to centennial timescales and north-south antiphasing in the eastern Mediterranean, with a tendency for wet anomalies in the Black Sea region (e.g., Greece, Anatolia, and the Balkans) when coastal Libya, the southern Levant, and the Middle East are dry, possibly related to the North Atlantic Oscillation. Recent droughts are centered in the western Mediterranean, Greece, and the Levant. Events of similar magnitude in the western Mediterranean and Greece occur in the OWDA, but the recent 15 year drought in the Levant (1998–2012) is the driest in the record. Estimating uncertainties using a resampling approach, we conclude that there is an 89% likelihood that this drought is drier than any comparable period of the last 900 years and a 98% likelihood that it is drier than the last 500 years. These results confirm the exceptional nature of this drought relative to natural variability in recent centuries, consistent with studies that have found evidence for anthropogenically forced drying in the region.

What is the role of climate change in the conflict in Syria? comic

Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought Colin P. Kelley, Shahrzad Mohtadi, Mark A. Cane, Richard Seager, and Yochanan Kushnir; PNAS; 16 Nov 2014

There is evidence that the 2007−2010 drought contributed to the conflict in Syria. It was the worst drought in the instrumental record, causing widespread crop failure and a mass migration of farming families to urban centers. Century-long observed trends in precipitation, temperature, and sea-level pressure, supported by climate model results, strongly suggest that anthropogenic forcing has increased the probability of severe and persistent droughts in this region, and made the occurrence of a 3-year drought as severe as that of 2007−2010 2 to 3 times more likely than by natural variability alone. We conclude that human influences on the climate system are implicated in the current Syrian conflict.

Climate Change Helped Spark Syrian War, Study Says Craig Welch; National Geographic; 2 Mar 2015

A severe drought, worsened by a warming climate, drove Syrian farmers to abandon their crops and flock to cities, helping trigger a civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, according to a new study published Monday.
(based on PNAS paper)

wildfires

Did climate change contribute to the Fort McMurray fire? Zane Schwartz; MacLean's; 4 May 2016

Experts say forest fires are more frequent, and more intense, due to climate change

Bolivia - Lake Poopo

Climate Change Claims a Lake, and an Identity NICHOLAS CASEY; NY Times; 7 July 2016

LLAPALLAPANI, Bolivia — The water receded and the fish died. They surfaced by the tens of thousands, belly-up, and the stench drifted in the air for weeks. The birds that had fed on the fish had little choice but to abandon Lake Poopó, once Bolivia’s second-largest but now just a dry, salty expanse. Many of the Uru-Murato people, who had lived off its waters for generations, left as well, joining a new global march of refugees fleeing not war or persecution, but climate change.

Glacial floods

The latest disaster risk from climate change — huge glacial floods Chelsea Harvey; Washington Post; 21 Oct 2016

In a new study in the journal The Cryosphere, Simon Cook of Manchester Metropolitan University in the U.K. and British and Bolivian colleagues examine the mountain glaciers of the Bolivian Andes in particular ... millions of citizens in Bolivia rely on these glaciers for fresh water as they melt in the spring ... during the dry season, Bolivia’s glaciers are an important water resource
The scientists have another concern as well. As the glaciers shrink, they tend to leave behind large pools of meltwater, constrained by walls of soil, rock and other debris that built up as the ice eroded the landscape. “Glaciers are the most effective erosional force on the planet,” said Cook. “The fact that they cut deep valleys and leave them behind, it means they’re basically priming the landscape to fail.” The largest of these lakes are believed to hold more than 16 billion gallons of water — that’s equivalent to about 25,000 Olympic swimming pools. Because these piles of debris are essentially the only thing holding the water back, these pools can pose a serious danger to nearby communities. “Those lakes can burst and wash away villages or infrastructure downstream,” Cook said. “And we actually identified 25 such lakes that could prove a risk.”

projections

US Global Change Research Program

Climate and Health Assessment US Global Change Research Program

  • Climate Change and Human Health
  • Temperature-Related Death and Illness
  • Air Quality Impacts
  • Extreme Events
  • Vector-Borne Diseases
  • Water-Related Illness
  • Food Safety, Nutrition, and Distribution
  • Mental Health and Well-Being
  • Populations of Concern
References
  • Brown, M. E., and others, 2015: Climate Change, Global Food Security and the U.S. Food System. 146 pp., U.S. Global Change Research Program. URL | Detail
  • CDC, cited 2015: Lyme Disease: Data and Statistics: Maps- Reported Cases of Lyme Disease – United States, 2001-2014. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. URL | Detail
  • Clayton, S., C. M. Manning, and C. Hodge, 2014: Beyond Storms & Droughts: The Psychological Impacts of Climate Change. 51 pp., American Psychological Association and ecoAmerica, Washington, D.C. URL | Detail
  • Fann, N., C. G. Nolte, P. Dolwick, T. L. Spero, A. Curry Brown, S. Phillips, and S. Anenberg, 2015: The geographic distribution and economic value of climate change-related ozone health impacts in the United States in 2030. Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, 65, 570-580. doi:10.1080/10962247.2014.996270 | Detail
  • Melillo, J. M., T. (T. C. ) Richmond, and G. W. Yohe, eds., 2014: Climate Change Impacts in the United States: The Third National Climate Assessment. U.S. Global Change Research Program, 841 pp. doi:10.7930/J0Z31WJ2 | Detail
  • NOAA, cited 2010: Weather Fatalities. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. URL | Detail
  • Schwartz, J. D., and others, 2015: Projections of temperature-attributable premature deaths in 209 U.S. cities using a cluster-based Poisson approach. Environmental Health, 14. doi:10.1186/s12940-015-0071-2 | Detail
  • Smith, A. B., and R. W. Katz, 2013: US billion-dollar weather and climate disasters: Data sources, trends, accuracy and biases. Natural Hazards, 67, 387-410. [doi:10.1007/s11069-013-0566-5 doi:10.1007/s11069-013-0566-5] | Detail
  • Turner, B. L., and others, 2003: A framework for vulnerability analysis in sustainability science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 100, 8074-8079. [doi:10.1073/pnas.1231335100 doi:10.1073/pnas.1231335100] | Detail

Ault et al Megadrought study

NASA: Megadrought Lasting Decades Is 99% Certain in American Southwest Dan Zukowski; EcoWatch; 6 Oct 2016

A megadrought lasting decades is 99 percent certain to hit the region this century, said scientists from Cornell University, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Relative impacts of mitigation, temperature, and precipitation on 21st-century megadrought risk in the American Southwest Toby R. Ault, Justin S. Mankin, Benjamin I. Cook, Jason E. Smerdon; AAAS Science Advances; 5 Oct 2016

Megadroughts are comparable in severity to the worst droughts of the 20th century but are of much longer duration. A megadrought in the American Southwest would impose unprecedented stress on the limited water resources of the area, making it critical to evaluate future risks not only under different climate change mitigation scenarios but also for different aspects of regional hydroclimate. We find that changes in the mean hydroclimate state, rather than its variability, determine megadrought risk in the American Southwest. Estimates of megadrought probabilities based on precipitation alone tend to underestimate risk. Furthermore, business-as-usual emissions of greenhouse gases will drive regional warming and drying, regardless of large precipitation uncertainties. We find that regional temperature increases alone push megadrought risk above 70, 90, or 99% by the end of the century, even if precipitation increases moderately, does not change, or decreases, respectively. Although each possibility is supported by some climate model simulations, the latter is the most common outcome for the American Southwest in Coupled Model Intercomparison 5 generation models. An aggressive reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions cuts megadrought risks nearly in half.


Food production

Global and regional health effects of future food production under climate change: a modelling study Marco Springmann, Daniel Mason-D'Croz, Sherman Robinson, Tara Garnett, Prof H Charles J Godfray, Prof Douglas Gollin, Prof Mike Rayner, Paola Ballon, Peter Scarborough; The Lancet; 2 Mar 2016

One of the most important consequences of climate change could be its effects on agriculture. Although much research has focused on questions of food security, less has been devoted to assessing the wider health impacts of future changes in agricultural production. In this modelling study, we estimate excess mortality attributable to agriculturally mediated changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors by cause of death for 155 world regions in the year 2050.
The health effects of climate change from changes in dietary and weight-related risk factors could be substantial, and exceed other climate-related health impacts that have been estimated. Climate change mitigation could prevent many climate-related deaths. Strengthening of public health programmes aimed at preventing and treating diet and weight-related risk factors could be a suitable climate change adaptation strategy.

Increasing CO2 threatens human nutrition Samuel S. Myers & others; Nature (letter);7 May 2014

Dietary deficiencies of zinc and iron are a substantial global public health problem. An estimated two billion people suffer these deficiencies, causing a loss of 63 million life-years annually. Most of these people depend on C3 grains and legumes as their primary dietary source of zinc and iron. Here we report that C3 grains and legumes have lower concentrations of zinc and iron when grown under field conditions at the elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration predicted for the middle of this century. C3 crops other than legumes also have lower concentrations of protein, whereas C4 crops seem to be less affected. Differences between cultivars of a single crop suggest that breeding for decreased sensitivity to atmospheric CO2 concentration could partly address these new challenges to global health.

Southern Europe

Climate change will kill more Italians and Greeks than Syrians

UK

Climate change threat must be taken as seriously as nuclear war – UK minister

Baroness Joyce Anelay, minister of state at the Commonwealth and Foreign Office, said the indirect impacts of global warming, such as deteriorating international security, could be far greater than the direct effects, such as flooding. She issued the warning in a foreword to a new report on the risks of climate change led by the UK’s climate change envoy, Prof Sir David King. The report, commissioned by the Foreign Office, and written by experts from the UK, US, China and India, is stark in its assessment of the wide-ranging dangers posed by unchecked global warming, including:
  • very large risks to global food security, including a tripling of food prices
  • unprecedented migration overwhelming international assistance
  • increased risk of terrorism as states fail
  • lethal heat even for people resting in shade

Report warns of severe future effects of climate change on the U.K. Joe Paxton; Phys.org; 15 Jul 2016

Two experts from Manchester have contributed to a new Government report on climate change, which predicts that global warming will hit our shores with severe heatwaves, flooding and water shortages. The contributors, who include Environment and Climate Change Lecturer Dr Ruth Wood and Professor of Ecology Richard Bardgett, say that action to tackle urgent threats including widespread flooding and new diseases must be taken promptly. The report also warns that wars and migration around the world caused by climate change could have significant consequences for the UK through disrupted trade and more overseas military intervention. The worst-case scenarios - which will become reality if action to tackle climate change fails - foresees searing heatwaves reaching temperatures of 48°C in London, and the high 30s across the rest of England. The wide-ranging assessment of the dangers of climate change to the UK has been produced over three years by a team of 80 experts, and reviewed by many more. The main analysis is based on the projected temperature rise if the last year's Paris global climate agreement is fully delivered, and takes account of plans already in place to cope with impacts.

Middle-East & North Africa

Climate-exodus expected in the Middle East and North Africa Prof. Dr. Johannes Lelieveld

Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz; 2 May 2016
Part of the Middle East and North Africa may become uninhabitable due to climate change
The number of climate refugees could increase dramatically in future. Researchers of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Cyprus Institute in Nicosia have calculated that the Middle East and North Africa could become so hot that human habitability is compromised. The goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius, agreed at the recent UN climate summit in Paris, will not be sufficient to prevent this scenario. The temperature during summer in the already very hot Middle East and North Africa will increase more than two times faster compared to the average global warming. This means that during hot days temperatures south of the Mediterranean will reach around 46 degrees Celsius (approximately 114 degrees Fahrenheit) by mid-century. Such extremely hot days will occur five times more often than was the case at the turn of the millennium. In combination with increasing air pollution by windblown desert dust, the environmental conditions could become intolerable and may force people to migrate.

India

India Will Be One Of The Worst Hit Countries By Climate Change, Claims Oxford University Study

India will be among the worst hit countries and face a large number of deaths due to reduced crop productivity, according to a new study on climate change by the University of Oxford. A modelling study estimates climate change could kill more than 500,000 adults worldwide in 2050. The study from the university’s Martin Future of Food programme was published on Thursday in the medical journal 'The Lancet'.

Hansen et al

Analysis: Dramatic climate predictions in James Hansen's paper drew heavy criticism DAN GARISTO; Columbia SPECTATOR; 21 Apr 2016

In March, a paper that was authored by an all-star cast of scientists and predicted dangerous superstorms and accelerated rises in sea level was published in the European journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. But for many observers, the paper was old news—an earlier version of the article had been released to the web in July 2015. This was more than simply unusual. Unpublished papers are essentially never publicized and picked up by the media because they haven’t been peer-reviewed. The lack of initial peer review, combined with the paper’s extreme claims, has made the paper a source of contention among scientists, journalists, and just about anyone interested in the state of global warming.

drought

World Bank: The way climate change is really going to hurt us is through water Chris Mooney; Washington Post; 3 May 2016

As India, the world’s second-most populous country, reels from an intense drought, the World Bank has released a new report finding that perhaps the most severe impact of a changing climate could be the effect on water supplies.

High and Dry: Climate Change, Water, and the Economy The World Bank

A new World Bank reports finds that water scarcity, exacerbated by climate change, could hinder economic growth, spur migration, and spark conflict. However, most countries can neutralize the adverse impacts of water scarcity by taking action to allocate and use water resources more efficiently.

psychological

This Is Your Brain On Climate Change

Ocean acidification

Applying organized scepticism to ocean acidification research Howard I. Browman; ICES Journal of Marine Science; Jan 2016

“Ocean acidification” (OA), a change in seawater chemistry driven by increased uptake of atmospheric CO2 by the oceans, has probably been the most-studied single topic in marine science in recent times. The majority of the literature on OA report negative effects of CO2 on organisms and conclude that OA will be detrimental to marine ecosystems. As is true across all of science, studies that report no effect of OA are typically more difficult to publish. Further, the mechanisms underlying the biological and ecological effects of OA have received little attention in most organismal groups, and some of the key mechanisms (e.g. calcification) are still incompletely understood. For these reasons, the ICES Journal of Marine Science solicited contributions to this special issue. In this introduction, I present a brief overview of the history of research on OA, call for a heightened level of organized (academic) scepticism to be applied to the body of work on OA, and briefly present the 44 contributions that appear in this theme issue. OA research has clearly matured, and is continuing to do so. We hope that our readership will find that, when taken together, the articles that appear herein do indeed move us “Towards a broader perspective on ocean acidification research”.

Nighttime dissolution in a temperate coastal ocean ecosystem increases under acidification Lester Kwiatkowski, Brian Gaylord, Tessa Hill, Jessica Hosfelt, Kristy J. Kroeker, Yana Nebuchina, Aaron Ninokawa, Ann D. Russell, Emily B. Rivest, Marine Sesboüé & Ken Caldeira; Nature; 18 Mar 2016

Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are causing ocean acidification, lowering seawater aragonite (CaCO3) saturation state (Ωarag), with potentially substantial impacts on marine ecosystems over the 21st Century. Calcifying organisms have exhibited reduced calcification under lower saturation state conditions in aquaria. However, the in situ sensitivity of calcifying ecosystems to future ocean acidification remains unknown. Here we assess the community level sensitivity of calcification to local CO2-induced acidification caused by natural respiration in an unperturbed, biodiverse, temperate intertidal ecosystem. We find that on hourly timescales nighttime community calcification is strongly influenced by Ωarag, with greater net calcium carbonate dissolution under more acidic conditions. Daytime calcification however, is not detectably affected by Ωarag. If the short-term sensitivity of community calcification to Ωarag is representative of the long-term sensitivity to ocean acidification, nighttime dissolution in these intertidal ecosystems could more than double by 2050, with significant ecological and economic consequences.

mitigation

Adaptation and Mitigation IPCC synthesis report: Topic 4

Many adaptation and mitigation options can help address climate change, but no single option is sufficient by itself. Effective implementation depends on policies and cooperation at all scales and can be enhanced through integrated responses that link mitigation and adaptation with other societal objectives.

IPCC: rapid carbon emission cuts vital to stop severe impact of climate change Damian Carrington; The Guardian; 2 Nov 2014

Most important assessment of global warming yet warns carbon emissions must be cut sharply and soon, but UN’s IPCC says solutions are available and affordable
The report, released in Copenhagen on Sunday by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is the work of thousands of scientists and was agreed after negotiations by the world’s governments. It is the first IPCC report since 2007 to bring together all aspects of tackling climate change and for the first time states: that it is economically affordable; that carbon emissions will ultimately have to fall to zero; and that global poverty can only be reduced by halting global warming. The report also makes clear that carbon emissions, mainly from burning coal, oil and gas, are currently rising to record levels, not falling.
The report calculates that to prevent dangerous climate change, investment in low-carbon electricity and energy efficiency will have to rise by several hundred billion dollars a year before 2030. But it also found that delaying significant emission cuts to 2030 puts up the cost of reducing carbon dioxide by almost 50%, partly because dirty power stations would have to be closed early.
Tackling climate change need only trim economic growth rates by a tiny fraction, the IPCC states, and may actually improve growth by providing other benefits, such as cutting health-damaging air pollution.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) – the nascent technology which aims to bury CO2 underground – is deemed extremely important by the IPPC. It estimates that the cost of the big emissions cuts required would more than double without CCS.
Linking CCS to the burning of wood and other plant fuels would reduce atmospheric CO2 levels because the carbon they contain is sucked from the air as they grow. But van Ypersele said the IPCC report also states “very honestly and fairly” that there are risks to this approach, such as conflicts with food security.
In contrast to the importance the IPCC gives to CCS, abandoning nuclear power or deploying only limited wind or solar power increases the cost of emission cuts by just 6-7%. The report also states that behavioural changes, such as dietary changes that could involve eating less meat, can have a role in cutting emissions.
  • As part of setting out how the world’s nations can cut emissions effectively, the IPCC report gives prominence to ethical considerations. “[Carbon emission cuts] and adaptation raise issues of equity, justice, and fairness,” says the report. “The evidence suggests that outcomes seen as equitable can lead to more effective [international] cooperation.”
These issues are central to the global climate change negotiations and their inclusion in the report was welcomed by campaigners, as was the statement that adapting countries and coastlines to cope with global warming cannot by itself avert serious impacts.


economic action

Leading insurers tell G20 to stop funding fossil fuels by 2020 Karl Mathiesen; The Guardian; 30 Aug 2016

Three of the world’s biggest insurers have called on G20 leaders to implement a timeframe for ending fossil fuel subsidies when they meet in China this week.
G20 members contribute $160-$200bn each year to the production of coal, oil and gas, according to the OECD.

Carbon Pricing *

legal action

Netherlands

Netherlands loses landmark global warming case, ordered to cut emissions Sebastian Anthony; ars technica; 24 Jun 2015

In a landmark case that may set a very important precedent for other countries around the world, especially within Europe, the Dutch government has been ordered by the courts to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent.

Phillipines

World's largest carbon producers face landmark human rights case John Vidal; Guardian; 27 Jul 2016

The world’s largest oil, coal, cement and mining companies have been given 45 days to respond to a complaint that their greenhouse gas emissions have violated the human rights of millions of people living in the Phillippines. In a potential landmark legal case, the Commission on Human Rights of the Philippines (CHR), a constitutional body with the power to investigate human rights violations, has sent 47 “carbon majors” including Shell, BP, Chevron, BHP Billiton and Anglo American, a 60-page document accusing them of breaching people’s fundamental rights to “life, food, water, sanitation, adequate housing, and to self determination”.

USA

Judge Denies Motions by Fossil Fuel Industry and Federal Government in Landmark Climate Change Case EcoWatch; 9 Apr 2016

U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin of the Federal District Court in Eugene, Oregon, decided in favor of 21 young plaintiffs in their landmark constitutional climate change case against the federal government. Judge Coffin ruled Friday against the motion to dismiss brought by the fossil fuel industry and federal government.

Climate Change Litigation - The Children Win In Court James Conca; Forbes; 1 Mar 2016

Against all odds, the 21 children, ages 8 to 19, who are suing the government to protect the environment against the harm of global warming in their future, have won in court. Again. In a surprise ruling on Friday from the bench in the ongoing climate case brought by these youths against the State of Washington’s Department of Ecology, King County Superior Court Judge Hollis Hill ordered the Department of Ecology to promulgate a carbon emissions reduction rule by the end of 2016 and make recommendations to the state legislature on science-based greenhouse gas reductions in the 2017 legislative session. Judge Hill also ordered the Department of Ecology to consult with the young plaintiffs in advance of that recommendation.

Children Win Another Climate Change Legal Case In Mass Supreme Court James Conca; Forbes; 19 May 2016

In another surprising victory for children suing the government over climate change, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court last Friday found in favor of four youth plaintiffs against the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. The Court found that the DEP was not complying with its legal obligation to reduce the State’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and ordered the agency to “promulgate regulations that address…greenhouse gas emissions, impose a limit on emissions that may be released…and set limits that decline on an annual basis.” This case is one of several similar cases in federal district courts in Oregon and Washington, and in the state courts of North Carolina, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Colorado. All of these legal cases are supported by Our Children’s Trust, that seeks the legal right of our youth to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate in the future.

political action

China’s climate actions turn the tables on American deniers Reuters; 26 Sep 2015

How a selfish world can still avoid catastrophic climate change New Scientist; 26 Oct 2015

Each country generally defines “fair” according to what will mean the least effort for them, says Malte Meinshausen at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Getting them all to agree on that point seems utopian, he says. “Every country agreed to a 2°C or lower climate target, and they all make up their own story about why their own target is fair,” says Meinshausen. But the voluntary pledges to cut national greenhouse gas emissions made ahead of December’s climate summit in Paris aren’t enough to keep warming below 2°C. So Meinshausen and colleagues looked at what is needed to reach the target and how to get nations to agree to them, allowing for every country to define “fair” the way that burdens them the least. The team’s imagined scenario involves one country or group of countries leading with ambitious emissions cuts, and every other country following. But each follower country interprets its fair contribution according to what costs it the least. “If any country wants to claim to be a leader – and they all say that they’re a leader – this is now the first litmus test,” says Meinshausen.

National post-2020 greenhouse gas targets and diversity-aware leadership Malte Meinshausen, Louise Jeffery, Johannes Guetschow, Yann Robiou du Pont, Joeri Rogelj, Michiel Schaeffer, Niklas Höhne, Michel den Elzen, Sebastian Oberthür & Nicolai Meinshausen; Nature Climate Change; 26 Oct 2015

Earth Hour: Turning out the lights plays into the hands of our critics George Marshall; The Guardian; 27 Mar 2009

In my 25 years of environmental campaigning I have seen lots of inspired protests and lots of daft or pointless ones. But the WWF Earth Hour campaign has to be one of the most misguided and counterproductive actions I have ever seen.

What Do the Presidential Candidates Know about Science? Christine Gorman; Scientific American; 13 Sep 2016

Clinton, Trump and Stein answer 20 top questions about science, engineering, technology, health and environmental issues


HFCs - Montreal Protocol