Climate News and Views
Hot Year, Cool Response -- A view of the year in climate
July 2011
Getting in Over Our Heads:
Global Warming Theory is Coming True, Recent Reports Show
A storm of recent reports, studies and measurements from scientists and trusted agencies worldwide is making it clear that the Earth is beginning to have the climate that greenhouse gas theory predicts will develop as we pump more and more heat-trapping CO2 into the air. It is not a pretty picture, as millions caught in heatwaves, record floods, searing drought, raging wildfires and stronger rainstorms will attest (and that is just in the American South!).
Here are some of the recent observations and long-term measurements published in the past month.
Only half-way through the year and "2011 represents the highest damage cost-to-date in the U.S. for any year since 1980 when we began tracking Billion-dollar disasters." --- NOAA.
"Tornadoes, flooding, drought, and wildfires ravaged many parts of the country during the period, and each of these extremes broke long-standing records and have been compared to the 'worst such cases' in history." -- NOAA
It's not just in the continental U.S.:
"The largest and most permanent bodies of ice in the Arctic – multiyear sea ice, mountain glaciers, ice caps and the Greenland Ice Sheet – have all been declining faster since 2000 than they did in the previous decade." -- Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, 2011
"Arctic summer temperatures have been higher in the past few decades than at any time in the past 2000 years. Greenland's main outlet glaciers have more than doubled their contribution to global sea level rise over the last decade." --- The Arctic as a Messenger for Global Processes, 2011
David Lobell and colleagues report that in many nations crop losses and declines in growth from climate change effects outpaced increases from added CO2 (Science, 5 May 2011).
The World Meteorological Organization says there is a "fit between the facts observed about extreme events over the past decade, and the IPCC projections regarding the consequences of climate variability and change." -- Weather Extremes in a Changing Climate, WMO-1075, 2011
And the State of the Climate report from NOAA and the American Meteorological Society, provides a graphic view of how many measurements of the planetary climate, ocean and ice are moving as global warming theory predicted. This year's report for 2010 was published in late June.
For more information about World View of Global Warming' achievements, please see the Project Background page.
Greenhouse gases increase at record rate in 2010 to highest ever recorded -- Report from Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii
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