My Cartoon Is Up On "97 Hours of Consensus"!

+John Cook of Skeptical Science is running "97 Hours of Consensus", in which each hour John posts a cartoon and quote of a climate scientist. I am number 40. I'm not sure which photo inspired the cartoon, but John has me wearing the purple shirt that my mother recommends.

The quote is from the +Stanford University news story describing Diffenbaugh and Field, Science, 2013:

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/august/climate-change-speed-080113.html

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6145/486
Abstract: "_Terrestrial ecosystems have encountered substantial warming over the past century, with temperatures increasing about twice as rapidly over land as over the oceans. Here, we review the likelihood of continued changes in terrestrial climate, including analyses of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project global climate model ensemble. Inertia toward continued emissions creates potential 21st-century global warming that is comparable in magnitude to that of the largest global changes in the past 65 million years but is orders of magnitude more rapid. The rate of warming implies a velocity of climate change and required range shifts of up to several kilometers per year, raising the prospect of daunting challenges for ecosystems, especially in the context of extensive land use and degradation, changes in frequency and severity of extreme events, and interactions with other stresses._"

#97hours   #climatechange   #globalwarming   #science   #sciencecommunication  

"Ozone Pollution in India Kills Enough Crops to Feed 94 Million in Poverty"

A research group at +Scripps Oceanography  led by V. Ramanathan, has quantified the damage that ground-level ozone - the chief component of smog - exacted on wheat, rice, soybeans and cotton in India during the first decade of the 21st century. The researchers calculate that the yield loss of 6 million metric tons is approximately 9% of the annual cereals requirement of India, and "is sufficient to feed about 94 million people living below poverty line in India."

The peer-reviewed paper was published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, and is available here:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL060930/abstract

The news story from +Scripps Oceanography (including the photo) is here:
https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/ozone-pollution-india-kills-enough-crops-feed-94-million-poverty

#climatechange   #globalwarming   #foodsecurity   #pollution   #science   #sciencecommunication  

Video of the Swirling of Earth's Atmosphere

Here is a beautiful video of the swirling of Earth's atmosphere from  +TED : http://vimeo.com/93164060

One of the most striking features of the video is the transport of dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa across the Atlantic Ocean. My +Stanford University  graduate student Chris Skinner had a paper about the storm systems responsible for this transport (called "African Easterly Waves") published this spring. Here are links to the peer-reviewed paper and the Stanford news story:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/04/23/1319597111

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/april/african-easterly-waves-042814.html

#climatechange   #globalwarming   #visualization   #science   #sciencecommunication  

Potential Impact of California Drought on Global Food Markets

Here is an interesting article from +Bloomberg News exploring how farmers in California are already responding to the ongoing California drought, and how those responses could impact food markets around the globe.

The article argues that the drought could create long-term structural changes in the California agricultural system that reduces the number and type of crops grown in California, and also potentially re-purposes land for other uses such as solar energy generation.

"You can’t pay $1,000 an acre-foot to grow cotton"  (farmer Fred Starrh, quoted in the article).

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-11/california-drought-transforms-global-food-market.html

#climatechange   #globalwarming   #californiadrought   #drought2014   #science   #sciencecommunication  

Arctic Sea Ice Extremely Low Again This Summer

The extent of sea ice in the Arctic is once again retreating along a near-record trajectory. The image shows that, although not as low as 2012's record pace, the current extent has been close to 2 standard deviations below the long-term average.

You can overlay the data from different individual years using the National Snow and Ice Data Center's very instructive interactive visualization tool:

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/

#climatechange   #globalwarming   #visualization   #seaiceloss   #science   #sciencecommunication  

97 Hours of Climate Consensus Begins

To highlight the overwhelming scientific agreement that global warming is occurring and human activities are the primary cause, the website Skeptical Science is hosting "97 Hours of Consensus". Starting this morning, each hour the website will add a cartoon and quote from a climate expert. The online event will run for 97 hours.

The interactive "97 Hours" website is here:
http://skepticalscience.com/nsh/

The Skeptical Science description of the event is here:
http://skepticalscience.com/97-hours-of-consensus-caricatures-quotes-from-97-scientists.html

A write-up from +The Guardian is here:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/sep/07/social-media-event-97-hours-of-climate-experts

#97Hours   #sciencesunday    #globalwarming   #climatechange   #science   #sciencecommunication  

China Plans National Carbon Market for 2016

China plans to introduce a national carbon trading market in 2016. According to +The New York Times and +Reuters  , "China has pledged to reduce the amount of carbon it emits per unit of its gross domestic product to 40 to 45 percent below its 2005 levels by 2020." The market is expected to be far larger than the EU trading system, which is currently the largest carbon trading market in the world. [1] 

The emissions per unit of economic activity is known as the "carbon intensity" of the economy. Reductions in the carbon intensity of the economy can be achieved through a variety changes, for example changes in the carbon intensity of the energy source (e.g., increasing the share of solar and decreasing the share of coal), or changes in the mix of economic activity (e.g., increasing the share of financial services and decreasing the share of manufacturing). The philosophy behind an emissions trading program is that rather than the government deciding how emissions reductions will be achieved, the government mandates the total emissions reductions, and economic markets determine how the reductions are achieved.

[1]http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/01/business/international/china-plans-a-market-for-carbon-permits.html

The image is from The Telegraph :
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02128/solar-panels_2128569b.jpg

#climatechange   #globalwarming   #science   #sciencecommunication  

Drought Causing California's Mountains to Rise

Thanks to +Daniel Swain for pointing out this really cool new paper by Borsa et al. in Science. The research group used GPS to measure changes in the height of different areas over the western United States over recent years. They found that the current drought in California has caused the mountains in California to rise by up to 15 mm. From these measurements, they were also able to calculate the mass of water that has been lost from the ground during the drought, which they find to be the equivalent a year's worth of mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet.

Here is the abstract of the paper:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/08/20/science.1260279
"_The western United States has been experiencing severe drought since 2013. The solid earth response to the accompanying loss of surface and near-surface water mass should be a broad region of uplift. We use seasonally-adjusted time series from continuously operating GPS stations to measure this uplift, which we invert to estimate mass loss. The median uplift is 4 mm, with values up to 15 mm in California’s mountains. The associated pattern of mass loss, which ranges up to 50 cm of water equivalent, is consistent with observed decreases in precipitation and streamflow. We estimate the total deficit to be about 240 Gt, equivalent to a 10 cm layer of water over the entire region, or the annual mass loss from the Greenland Ice Sheet. _"

The photo is from +NPR , and shows Horsetail Falls in Yosemite National Park:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/02/21/147206195/from-waterfall-to-lavafall-yosemites-fleeting-phenomenon

#climatechange   #globalwarming   #drought2014   #science   #sciencecommunication  

More Than 2/3 of Recent Global Glacial Loss Attributable to Human Causes

A new paper in Science (published by +AAAS ) is reporting the fraction of observed global glacier loss attributable to human causes over the past one-and-a-half centuries. The authors report that 25% of the loss since 1850 is attributable to human causes, but that more than two thirds of the loss in the past two decades is attributable to human causes.

Here is the abstract of the paper:

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/08/13/science.1254702
The ongoing global glacier retreat is affecting human societies by causing sea-level rise, changing seasonal water availability, and increasing geohazards. Melting glaciers are an icon of anthropogenic climate change. However, glacier response times are typically decades or longer, which implies that the present-day glacier retreat is a mixed response to past and current natural climate variability and current anthropogenic forcing. Here, we show that only 25 ± 35% of the global glacier mass loss during the period from 1851 to 2010 is attributable to anthropogenic causes. Nevertheless, the anthropogenic signal is detectable with high confidence in glacier mass balance observations during 1991 to 2010, and the anthropogenic fraction of global glacier mass loss during that period has increased to 69 ± 24%.


The photo was taken by David Breashears, and is available from this 2012 article in +The Atlantic :

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/06/can-this-photograph-of-a-himalayan-glacier-persuade-people-that-climate-change-is-happening/259080/

#climatechange   #globalwarming   #glaciers   #science   #sciencecommunication  

In Midst of Drought, California Experiencing Warmest Year on Record

+Daniel Swain has a blog post summarizing the California drought, including an excellent discussion of how record-low precipitation and record-high temperatures are interacting to increase the likelihood of drought impacts.

One such impact is wildfires. As Daniel notes:

"California’s wildfire season has gotten off to a rather ominous start, beginning with the off-season Northern California fires in January, followed by the destructive San Diego-area fires driven by unusually strong Santa Ana winds in May, and has recently continued with unusually intensely-burning fires in Northern and Central California despite the relative lack of extreme weather conditions usually required to sustain such extreme fire behavior." 

The photo shows a long-exposure image of a fire burning near Yosemite National Park. The photo from European Pressphoto Agency is available from +Wall Street Journal here:

http://online.wsj.com/articles/photos-of-the-day-july-28-1406576574?mod=e2tw#9

#climatechange   #globalwarming   #drought2014   #science   #sciencecommunication  

California Drought Predicted to Cost More Than $2 Billion

The ongoing extreme drought in California is impacting agriculture, ecosystems, recreation, and urban water supplies. A new study from experts at +UC Davis reports that the drought will result in:

- loss of more than 6 million acre-feet of surface water available for agriculture (leading to increased pumping of ground water
- $1.5 billion in direct costs in the agriculture sector
- $2.2 billion in state-wide economic costs
- loss of more than 17,000 "seasonal and part-time" jobs

The full report is available here:
https://watershed.ucdavis.edu/files/biblio/Economic_Impact_of_the_2014_California_Water_Drought_1.pdf

The image is from the +Los Angeles Times : "Severe drought conditions are evident as hundreds of house boats are dwarfed by steep banks that show the water level down 160 feet from the high water mark at Bidwell Canyon Marina on Lake Oroville on June 21."
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-california-reservoirs-below-capacity-20140723-story.html

#climatechange   #globalwarming   #drought2014   #californiadrought   #science   #sciencecommunication