Science

Introduction:

This addition to the YPCC web site is my effort to provide a resource for those interested in climate change who do not read the scientific literature on climate change. Each month I will summarize my picks of the highlights of climate change science news. I believe it is critical to keep up with the exploding field of climate science to work toward solutions. While this effort innevitably cannot cover all the new scientific evidence coming out, I hope it will still be a useful resource. I welcome feedback.

Background

Three decades of intensive scientific study, hundreds of peer-reviewed journal articles, countless studies, scores of devoted scientists, and untold hours of work have been expended quantifying and understanding global climate change. The vast majority of climatologists now agree that global climate change is underway, and that human activities are the largest contributor. As scientists have learned more, the seriousness and urgency of the threat of global warming has deepened, and current impacts have been measured worldwide. Many scientists and others argue that the time for responding to “climate skeptics” is over. I agree.

It is well known that human activities have caused the more than 30% rise in atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the past few centuries, and that this rise is the largest contributor to the climate warming over the past century. There is still debate about the amount and speed that the temperature will rise in the future, due to the complexity of understanding and modeling all the elements that affect climate, but it in no way undermines the validity of the general conclusions.

Those of us working on climate change need to understand current science and be able to communicate about the essential elements of scientific knowledge on climate change. The difficulty is that climate researchers are constantly expanding and refining their understanding of human impacts on global climate.

Climate Science News Highlights - November, 2006

How fast are the ice sheets melting?
Scientists have been discussing and measuring ice sheet melting, particularly at the poles, in recent years. It has far-reaching implications for polar species, and global implications for large and rapid sea level rise. Greenland contains about 10% of global ice mass, and complete melting would raise global sea level by about 6.5 meters. Several recent studies have suggested that Greenland ice melting has accelerated dramatically since 2003. In November, in a study using new analysis techniques, Lutchke et al. confirmed that Greenland ice is melting at an accelerating rate, but suggested the rate may not be as fast as recently suggested in a September paper by Chen et al.. Cazenave (Perspective) discusses some of the reasons for the discrepancies, and calls for more research to improve estimates of ice loss in Greenland and Antarctica.

The take home message is that global warming is melting polar ice sheets, and Greenland ice is now melting at an alarming rate. Remote-sensing data and models have been employed in different ways in each of the studies, resulting in differing results. The Lutchke team found that the Greenland ice sheet has lost about 100 gigatons of ice per year between 2003 and 2005, as compared to the average ice loss rate of about 12 Gt of ice per year for the decade between 1992 and 2002. However, this estimate is much less than other recent rate calculations, which are closer to 240 Gt of ice per year for the same period. Uncertainty remains about the speed of Greenland ice loss.

Species are moving, adapting, and dying due to global warming.
As a conservation biologist, I have been aware for some time of research measuring signals from plants and animals reacting to a warming climate. Entire ecosystems have started to shift, and biologists have been out there quietly, painstakingly documenting the changes. A second major scientific story about global climate change came out in the Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics in November. In her paper, “Ecological and Evolutionary Responses to Recent Climate Change,” Camille Parmesan reviews the recent scientific literature quantifying the effects of global warming on living things. She reviews 866 studies, and finds evidence that climate change has affected species worldwide, in all taxonomic groups and all ecosystems. Other studies have described specific problems faced by species, populations, or areas affected by climate change, but this is the first comprehensive analysis of the planet-wide impacts of global warming on living things.

It is hard to overstate the scope of the impacts she documents. This review describes ecological changes in phenology and distribution of plants and animals in all well-studied marine, freshwater, and terrestrial groups. These observed changes are heavily biased in the directions predicted from global warming and have been linked to local or regional climate change through correlations between climate and biological variation, field and laboratory experiments, and physiological research. The most negatively affected groups include range-restricted species, particularly polar and mountaintop species, tropical coral reef organisms, and amphibians. Impacts include changes in predator-prey and plant-insect interactions, evolutionary adaptations to warmer conditions, observed genetic shifts, and extinction of entire species.

For a pdf of the full article, go to:
http://cns.utexas.edu/communications/File/AnnRev_CCimpacts2006.pdf

On November 9, 2006, the YPCC convened a meeting of experts from around the US to discuss the recommendation for a “Bridging Institution” to convey the most important findings of climate change science to the public.

Read Bill Blakemore’s article about the meeting on the ABC News website.

Read the rest of this entry »

Eileen Claussen, President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change talks about the need for America to show leadership on the climate issue, and offers a comprehensive energy plan to reduce carbon emmissions. Video - 45 minutes

See the action recommendation to design a new vision for energy

Using visual images to communicate the impacts of climate change can be extremely effective.

“The National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology, Boulder (NSIDC/WDC) houses many photographic prints of glaciers, taken both from the air and from the ground. These photographs constitute an important historical record, as well as a data collection of interest to those studying the response of glaciers to climate change. NSIDC is partnering with the NOAA Climate Database Modernization Program (CDMP) and the National Geophysical Data Center (NGDC) to scan selected photographs and to make them available through a searchable interface.”

Go to http://nsidc.org/data/glacier_photo/index.html to find out more.

Please comment on this post and provide links to other high-impact visual resources that communicate the impacts of climate change.

It would be interesting to know what exactly about the subject of climate change makes non-scientists have such strong opinions about the facts.

There are many other areas that have less scientific consensus and greater short-term impacts on the average American, yet are not so hotly debated and the facts not so widely questioned in the mass media and general public. Read the rest of this entry »

Two new studies suggest that trees can do less to mitigate climate change than previously thought.

It would be interesting to hear what people have to say about the implications of this for the growing movement in support of carbon trading as one of the solutions to the climate change problem.

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The Yale F&ES Project on Climate Change is pleased to offer this website as a virtual meeting place where actors from different sectors of society can engage in open dialogue and find solutions for bridging the gap between climate science and action. We hope that this site enables stronger collaboration among individuals and institutions in order to begin implementation of the recommendations for action that came out of our 2005 Conference, and to spotlight or augment other actions already underway.

Since the Conference, there has been an increase in media coverage of climate change (e.g. the April 3 Time Magazine, the 60 Minutes segments on the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment and rewriting the science, increased New York Times coverage and the HBO documentary Too Hot Not to Handle airing this month).

Momentum for translating the documented increase in public concern about the issue into action is growing. But attention has spiked before, and there remains a real risk that climate change will be treated as the news story of the week if we do not take steps to sustain and build civic awareness and engagement on the issue. What needs to be done to service the demand for information on climate change science, as well as on adaptation and mitigation efforts? These are the kinds of questions that we are hoping to answer in our dialogues on this site. Additional questions are listed on each domain page as a starting point for discussion.

I encourage you to become involved in one or more of the Action Items. Of the 39 action items generated at the Conference, which do you believe will have the greatest impact? Which should be given greatest priority? What challenges and obstacles will impede an action item from proceeding forward effectively? What can you do specifically, both alone and collectively, to advance its implementation?

I look forward to reading your comments.

How is it possible that there is so much perception of uncertainty about the fact of climate change when agreement among scientists is near-universal with respect to the broad facts, though not necessarily agreement over every detail? Read the rest of this entry »

How concerned are visitors to this site about this issue, given the recent publicity surrounding James Hansen, the prominent NASA climate scientist ? Read the rest of this entry »