Temperature changes from 1880 are profound — now a crisis

From the NASA/NOAA Website “Global Climate Change — Vital Signs of the Planet” as downloaded on February 18, 2020

Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals 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.

AMERICAN SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES

Statement on Climate Change from 18 Scientific Associations — “Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.” (2009)

American Association for the Advancement of Science — “Based on well-established evidence, about 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening.” (2014)

American Chemical Society — “The Earth’s climate is changing in response to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and particulate matter in the atmosphere, largely as the result of human activities.” (2016-2019)

American Geophysical Union — “Based on extensive scientific evidence, it is extremely likely that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, are the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. There is no alterative explanation supported by convincing evidence.” (2019)

American Medical Association — “Our AMA … supports the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment report and concurs with the scientific consensus that the Earth is undergoing adverse global climate change and that anthropogenic contributions are significant.” (2019)

American Meteorological Society — “Research has found a human influence on the climate of the past several decades … The IPCC (2013), USGCRP (2017), and USGCRP (2018) indicate that it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-twentieth century.” (2019)

American Physical Society — “Earth’s changing climate is a critical issue and poses the risk of significant environmental, social and economic disruptions around the globe. While natural sources of climate variability are significant, multiple lines of evidence indicate that human influences have had an increasingly dominant effect on global climate warming observed since the mid-twentieth century.” (2015)

The Geological Society of America — “The Geological Society of America (GSA) concurs with assessments by the National Academies of Science (2005), the National Research Council (2011), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2013) and the U.S. Global Change Research Program (Melillo et al., 2014) that global climate has warmed in response to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases … Human activities (mainly greenhouse-gas emissions) are the dominant cause of the rapid warming since the middle 1900s (IPCC, 2013).” (2015)

SCIENCE ACADEMIES

International Academies: Joint Statement — “Climate change is real. There will always be uncertainty in understanding a system as complex as the world’s climate. However there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring. The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes to many physical and biological systems. It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities (IPCC 2001).” (2005, 11 international science academies)

U.S. National Academy of Sciences — “Scientists have known for some time, from multiple lines of evidence, that humans are changing Earth’s climate, primarily through greenhouse gas emissions.”

U.S. GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

U.S. Global Change Research Program

“Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, primarily as a result of human activities.” (2018, 13 U.S. government departments and agencies)

INTERGOVERNMENTAL BODIES

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen.”

“Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems.”

OTHER RESOURCES OF INFORMATION

List of Worldwide Scientific Organizations

The following page lists the nearly 200 worldwide scientific organizations that hold the position that climate change has been caused by human action:

http://www.opr.ca.gov/facts/list-of-scientific-organizations.html

U.S. Agencies

The following page contains information on what federal agencies are doing to adapt to climate change:

https://www.c2es.org/site/assets/uploads/2012/02/climate-change-adaptation-what-federal-agencies-are-doing.pdf

*Technically, a “consensus” is a general agreement of opinion, but the scientific method steers us away from this to an objective framework. In science, facts or observations are explained by a hypothesis (a statement of a possible explanation for some natural phenomenon), which can then be tested and retested until it is refuted (or disproved).

As scientists gather more observations, they will build off one explanation and add details to complete the picture. Eventually, a group of hypotheses might be integrated and generalized into a scientific theory, a scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena.

References​ for this Article

J. Cook, et al, “Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming,” Environmental Research Letters Vol. 11 No. 4, (13 April 2016); DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002

Quotation from page 6: “The number of papers rejecting AGW [Anthropogenic, or human-caused, Global Warming] is a miniscule proportion of the published research, with the percentage slightly decreasing over time. Among papers expressing a position on AGW, an overwhelming percentage (97.2% based on self-ratings, 97.1% based on abstract ratings) endorses the scientific consensus on AGW.”

J. Cook, et al, “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature,” Environmental Research Letters Vol. 8 No. 2, (15 May 2013); DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

Quotation from page 3: “Among abstracts that expressed a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the scientific consensus. Among scientists who expressed a position on AGW in their abstract, 98.4% endorsed the consensus.”

W. R. L. Anderegg, “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 107 No. 27, 12107-12109 (21 June 2010); DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1003187107.

P. T. Doran & M. K. Zimmerman, “Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Eos Transactions American Geophysical Union Vol. 90 Issue 3 (2009), 22; DOI: 10.1029/2009EO030002.

N. Oreskes, “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Science Vol. 306 no. 5702, p. 1686 (3 December 2004); DOI: 10.1126/science.1103618

National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA)

From an Article of WhoWhatWhy.org, WWW Internet, November 23, 2019

If you are shivering in a freezing, snow-blanketed part of the world, global warming might seem like a fine thing to have. But, believe it or not, you can thank global warming for this cold weather.

The summer of 2019 was the hottest on record in the northern hemisphere, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). And there were other extremes this summer — severe drought in India, rains and record floods in the American Midwest, devastating fires in the American West and in Australia. And now the cold.

It seems as if we’re trading weather with the Arctic. We send up our hot air — and the Arctic sends down its cold air.

But here’s a more scientific explanation: It’s all about the jet stream, a ribbon of fast-moving air that flows west to east over the Northern Hemisphere. NOAA defines it this way: “Jet streams are the major means of transport for weather systems. A jet stream is an area of strong winds ranging from 120–250 mph that can be thousands of miles long, a couple of hundred miles across and a few miles deep… This means most jet streams are about 6–9 miles off the ground.”

But how does it work? And why does it make the summers warmer and the winters colder? Please see the story below for answers.

Recent headlines on climate events should make things difficult for the average global warming/climate change denier:

Last year was the fourth hottest year on record, globally. And, just two days ago, on June 13, Greenland lost two billion tons of ice.

The Arctic is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the world. Because of the warm air above, the Arctic sea ice melts, turning its surface from one that reflects to one that absorbs solar energy, warming up the water even more. Without the ice cover, water evaporates, contributing to greenhouse gases. A vicious circle.

And the levels of carbon dioxide — the greenhouse gas considered most responsible for global warming — have reached 415 PPM (parts per million), the highest they have ever been in human history.

But will all of this disastrous news make global warming and climate change more difficult to deny? Probably not, because when winter comes, it may be colder than ever, and last longer.

And try to explain this to the denier: the winters are colder — because the planet is heating up.

Here is a video that will show you just how that happens, as well as a lot of other amazing things about our planet:

https://youtu.be/yQliow4ghtU

Photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from NASA.

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PRESS RELEASE: “Effects of climate change”
Met Office, UK Government, December 5, 2019

Climate change is already having visible effects on the world. The Earth is warming, rainfall patterns are changing, and sea levels are rising. These changes can increase the risk of heatwaves, floods, droughts, and fires.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/climate-and-climate-change/climate-change/effects-of-climate-change

James Hansen’s main office is EARTH

Essay by Justin Gillis, Contributing Opinion Writer, New York Times, June 23, 2018
·
The night before the day that would make him famous, James E. Hansen listened to a baseball game on the radio. But his mind kept wandering: What would he say to Congress the next day to convey that humans were endangering the planet?

He had long been trying to raise the alarm without success, and so had other scientists. But then, on June 23, 1988 — 30 years ago Saturday — a Colorado senator named Tim Wirth convened yet another hearing on the topic. Dr. Hansen was one of several scientists on the witness list.

Few people had ever heard of him, nor of the obscure NASA unit that he headed. He and a small group of colleagues studied the Earth’s climate, working in a suite of offices above the Manhattan diner that “Seinfeld” would later make famous.

He had conducted rigorous studies of historical temperatures, concluding that the planet was warming sharply. He had helped to pioneer computer modeling of the climate, and the results predicted further warming if people kept pouring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

June 23 turned out be a blistering day in Washington, and much of the nation was suffering through a drought and heat wave. Dr. Hansen took his seat in a Capitol Hill hearing room and laid out the scientific facts as best he understood them.

He had thought up a good line the night before, during the Yankees game, but in the moment he forgot to deliver it. When the hearing ended, though, reporters surrounded him, and he remembered.

“It is time to stop waffling so much,” he said, “and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.”

His near certainty that human emissions were already altering the climate caught the attention of a sweltering nation, catapulting Dr. Hansen to overnight fame. That year, 1988, would go on to be the hottest in a global temperature record stretching back to the 19th century.

With the perspective of three decades, it is fair to ask: How right was his forecast?

The question defies a simple answer. In 1988, Dr. Hansen had to offer a prognostication not just about how the Earth would respond to greenhouse gases, but also about how much of those gases humans would choose to inject into the air.

He did what any cautious forecaster would do: He offered low, medium and high scenarios. The warming over the past 30 years has indeed fallen well within his upper and lower bounds.

One of Dr. Hansen’s scenarios, Scenario B, has turned out to be a reasonably close match for fossil-fuel emissions as they actually occurred. Yet we now know Scenario B predicted too much global warming, by something like 30 percent.

Two reasons for that stand out. One is that Dr. Hansen had assumed a continued increase in certain refrigerant gases that warm the climate. Those gases were ultimately brought under control by a global treaty, the Montreal Protocol — proof that scientific warnings, if taken seriously, can be acted upon at a worldwide scale.

The bigger problem was that the computers he was using in the 1980s could not operate fast enough to give a realistic picture of the upper atmosphere; as a result, his model was most likely overestimating the Earth’s sensitivity to emissions. In the years since, computer modeling of the climate, though hardly perfect, has improved.

So while his temperature forecast was not flawless, in a larger sense, Dr. Hansen’s 1988 warning has turned out to be entirely on target. As emissions have soared, the planet has warmed relentlessly, just as he said it would; 1988 is not even in the top 20 warmest years now. Every year of this century has been hotter.

The ocean is rising, as Dr. Hansen predicted, and the pace seems to be accelerating. The great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarcticaare dumping ever-rising volumes of water into the sea. Coastal flooding is increasing rapidly in the United States. The Arctic Oceanice cap has shrunk drastically.

If his warning in 1988 had been met with a national policy to reduce emissions, other countries might have followed, and the world would be in much better shape.

But within a few years after he raised the alarm, fossil-fuel interests and libertarian ideologues began financing a campaign of lies about climate research. The issue bogged down in Congress, and to this day that body has taken no action remotely commensurate with the threat.

Dr. Hansen retired from NASA in 2013, but at age 77, he feels his work is not done. Today, from an office at Columbia University, he spends his time fighting the government he once served. He is an expert witness for a lawsuit that young people have filed in Oregonagainst the federal government, contending that its failure to tackle climate change is a threat to their constitutional rights of life and liberty.

His granddaughter, Sophie Kivlehan, is one of the plaintiffs in the case, which has gotten much farther than many legal experts thought it would. The case may go to trial later this year.

Prophets of impending calamity are rarely thanked for their efforts, especially when they turn out to be right. But Dr. Hansen did receive a form of thanks recently, sharing half a of a $1.3 million prize for his attempts to warn the public about the risks of climate change.

The congressional failure to respond to his warning might be seen now as a harbinger of the political crisis that has since engulfed the United States. How can Congress tackle global warming if it lacks the capacity to solve far smaller problems?

Lately, Dr. Hansen has been thinking about the connection between the political crisis and the climate crisis. He is a strong proponent of a new system of voting, called ranked choice, that has been adopted in many other countries and a few parts of the United States, with the goal of recreating a political center.

“It’s very hard to see us fixing the climate,” Dr. Hansen said, “until we fix our democracy.”

>>> Mr. Gillis is a former New York Times environmental reporter and a contributing opinion writer. A version of this article appears in print on June 24, 2018, on Page SR11 of the New York edition with the headline: “He Was Right About The Climate.”

NASA conducts global studies of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere

By Ted Barrett and Daniella Diaz, CNN Report, April 18, 2018

(CNN) — The Senate deadlocked 49-49 for about an hour Wednesday on a vote to break a filibuster of Rep. James Bridenstine, R-Oklahoma, to be the next NASA administrator until Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, returned to the floor and switched his vote to yes.

The motion then passed on a partisan 50-48 vote. Flake, a vocal critic of the President’s, had been the only Republican to vote against Bridenstine.

Typically, when a vote like this is tied, Vice President Mike Pence would come to the chamber and break it. But he was in Mar-a-Lago with the president making that an impractical alternative.

Both Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, who is ill, and Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who just had a baby, were absent.

The party-line vote against Bridenstine reflects the steep opposition from Democrats about President Donald Trump’s nominee to head the space agency, who they believe is not a “space professional” in the words of Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat. One Republican, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, had previously expressed concerns about Bridenstine but voted for him in the end.

Democrats also complained about his views on climate change.

“NASA is one of the few remaining areas that has largely avoided the bitter partisanship that has invaded far too many areas of government and our society today,” Nelson said in a floor speech.

When he was nominated, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called Bridenstine a “strong, principled and effective leader” who will “work hard to advance our national space policy goals, expand human space exploration and secure America’s leadership in space.”

A final confirmation vote for Bridenstine is expected Thursday.

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NASA-led Study Solves a Methane Puzzle

From an Article by Carol Rasmussen, NASA’s Earth Science News Team, January 3, 2018

A new NASA-led study has solved a puzzle involving the recent rise in atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas, with a new calculation of emissions from global fires. The new study resolves what looked like irreconcilable differences in explanations for the increase.

Methane emissions have been rising sharply since 2006. Different research teams have produced viable estimates for two known sources of the increase: emissions from the oil and gas industry, and microbial production in wet tropical environments like marshes and rice paddies. But when these estimates were added to estimates of other sources, the sum was considerably more than the observed increase. In fact, each new estimate was large enough to explain the whole increase by itself.

Scientist John Worden of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and colleagues focused on fires because they’re also changing globally. The area burned each year decreased about 12 percent between the early 2000s and the more recent period of 2007 to 2014, according to a new study using observations by NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer satellite instrument. The logical assumption would be that methane emissions from fires have decreased by about the same percentage. Using satellite measurements of methane and carbon monoxide, Worden’s team found the real decrease in methane emissions was almost twice as much as that assumption would suggest.

When the research team subtracted this large decrease from the sum of all emissions, the methane budget balanced correctly, with room for both fossil fuel and wetland increases. The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.

>>> Atmospheric methane concentrations are given by their weight in teragrams.
>>> One teragram equals about 1.1 million U.S. tons — more than the weight of 200,000 elephants.
>>> Methane emissions are increasing by about 25 teragrams a year, with total emissions currently around 550 teragrams a year.

Most methane molecules in the atmosphere don’t have identifying features that reveal their origin. Tracking down their sources is a detective job involving multiple lines of evidence: measurements of other gases, chemical analyses, isotopic signatures, observations of land use, and more. “A fun thing about this study was combining all this different evidence to piece this puzzle together,” Worden said.

Carbon isotopes in the methane molecules are one clue. Of the three methane sources examined in the new study, emissions from fires contain the largest percentage of heavy carbon isotopes, microbial emissions have the smallest, and fossil fuel emissions are in between.

Another clue is ethane, which (like methane) is a component of natural gas. An increase in atmospheric ethane indicates increasing fossil fuel sources. Fires emit carbon monoxide as well as methane, and measurements of that gas are a final clue.

Worden’s team used carbon monoxide and methane data from the Measurements of Pollutants in the Troposphere instrument on NASA’s Terra satellite and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer instrument on NASA’s Aura to quantify fire emissions of methane. The results show these emissions have been decreasing much more rapidly than expected.

Combining isotopic evidence from ground surface measurements with the newly calculated fire emissions, the team showed that about 17 teragrams per year of the increase is due to fossil fuels, another 12 is from wetlands or rice farming, while fires are decreasing by about 4 teragrams per year. The three numbers combine to 25 teragrams a year — the same as the observed increase.

Worden’s coauthors are at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado; and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research and University of Utrecht, both in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Science Matters to come closer to truth!

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer & Retired Chemistry Professor, Jane Lew, Lewis County, WV

The U. S. has experienced four hurricane disasters just this past year: Harvey in Texas and Louisiana in August; Irma, a particularly intense hurricane with winds of 185 miles an hour in the Caribbean reached south Florida in early September. Jose hit the East Coast of the U. S in late September. Maria, the most damaging on record in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands occurred in late September. Combined they cost $200B. The Atlantic had 17 named storms in 2017. See storm tracks here.

What is a hurricane? It is a violent storm the size of a tropical cyclone having sustained winds of over 74 miles per hour. There are five categories, defined by wind speed. When they move over land devastation is proportional to wind speed.

What causes a hurricane? The best answer requires a little bit of science. Water vapor is formed when water evaporates. It takes heat to overcome the attraction between water molecules that causes them to stick together to be a liquid. When enough energy is supplied, they can separate and each molecule goes it’s own way, up into the air. That moist air is lighter and tends to rise. As the reader knows, higher in the atmosphere the temperature goes down. When a mass of humid air reaches an altitude where it is cold enough, the heat is transferred to the air. The warmed air continues to rise, and the water condenses and falls out as rain. This is the source of rain and snow.

A tremendous amount of heat is needed to evaporate water, over five times as much as is needed to warm the water from the freezing point to the boiling point. This is released when it condenses back to water (rain). If a smaller mass of air hits a really cold layer, a thunderstorm results. If a moist area goes up to a cool, but not very cold air mass, rain occurs.

When very humid air over the ocean in a wide area rises to a cold level, it continues to rise as it drops rain. This rising draws up more humid air from below. The warm air spreads out in the upper atmosphere, forming a whirling cloud cover. More and more heat is drawn from the ocean’s top layer as the system spreads out. Winds rising in the interior of the system go faster and faster. Up, up, up, driven by rain condensing out. When they reach 74 mph it is a hurricane.

This happens only over the ocean. Evaporation from land does not provide enough heat and moisture. The ocean absorbs 90 to 95% of the heat causing the earth’s temperature rise. More on ocean temperatures here. Of course evaporation occurs over any body of water and wet land, but only the warm ocean holds enough heat to form a hurricane.

The warmer the ocean surface, the more heat is available to supply humidity for the air. Extra heat is provided to the ocean by global warming. The air over it has more water content, and there is more reserve heat to keep on evaporating more water. The heat removed from the ocean surface may cool it enough to cause the storm to weaken it. If the hurricane moves over land, it dies out because heat is not available to continue to drive it.

The effects of global warming are not understood just as a warming of the earth. Many of the phenomena damaging our environment and our economic situation must be interpreted in terms of heat moving from one place to another.

See also: NASA: Climate Change and Global Warming

Where do we go from here?

MISSION — The mission of “Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet” is to provide the public with accurate and timely news and information about Earth’s changing climate, along with current data and visualizations, presented from the unique perspective of NASA, one of the world’s leading climate research agencies.

Global Climate Change Web-Site: https://climate.nasa.gov/about-us/

SCIENCE ADVISORS — Listed from Internet web site:

Dr. Carmen Boening, Climate Scientist and Oceanographer — Dr. Carmen Boening has a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of Bremen, Germany. She is involved in JPL’s Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) and its follow-on mission, GRACE FO, to be launched in early 2018. Her research interests include the complex processes behind sea level rise, involving interactions between the ocean, atmosphere, land hydrology and land ice.

Dr. Erik Conway, Historian — Dr. Erik Conway is the historian at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, holding a Ph.D. in History of Science and Technology from the University of Minnesota. He writes on the history of Earth, planetary and space sciences in the 20th century, his most recent work entitled Exploration and Engineering: The Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Quest for Mars.

Dr. Michael Gunson, Atmospheric Scientist – With a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Bristol University, Dr. Michael Gunson is the Global Change and Energy program manager and an Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) project scientist. His research interests lie in atmospheric remote sensing, atmospheric composition and chemistry, and climate change. Prior to his present JPL roles, Dr. Gunson worked as a lead scientist for building the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument aboard NASA’s AQUA satellite and the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) aboard the AURAsatellite.

Joe Witte, Climate Communicator — Joe Witte started his career as a glaciologist for the USGS, working on the ice of South Cascade Glacier, Wash. He has worked for network affiliate news stations in New York City, Seattle, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, and was NBC’s morning weatherman for 20 years. He currently advises NASA communications teams about how to adapt NASA science content for use by TV meteorologists.

Dr. Charles MIller, Atmospheric Scientist — Dr. Charles Miller received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. As a research scientist at JPL, his interests include atmospheric chemistry and carbon cycle science. He is the principal investigator of NASA’s Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE), which looks at atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane in the Arctic. He is also the JPL lead for the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS)’s Monitoring Megacity CO2 Emissions from Space project, and a member of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) science team.

Dr. William Patzert, Oceanographer — NASA scientist Dr. William “Bill” Patzert has a Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of Hawaii. His research interests center on understanding and forecasting global and local climate change. He is a science communication expert and often appears in the print and social media and on local and national television and radio. He lectures widely and works with students from around the world.

Dr. Duane Waliser, Oceanographer – Dr. Duane Waliser has a Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from the University of California, San Diego. In addition to being JPL’s Earth Science and Technology Directorate’s chief scientist, he is an adjunct professor in the University of California, Los Angeles’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences and a visiting associate in Caltech’s Geological and Planetary Sciences Division. His research includes focus on climate dynamics and variability, ocean-atmosphere interactions, water cycle and weather/climate predictability.

Dr. Josh Willis, Oceanographer — A project scientist for NASA’s Jason-3 satellite and principal investigator of the Oceans Melting Greenland campaign, Dr. Josh Willis received his Ph.D. in Oceanography from the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Willis’ research interests lie in estimating both regional and global sea level rise and ocean circulation using NASA satellite data, among others. Because these are connected to global climate change, he also participates in public outreach efforts to communicate their significance.

Earth' Global Temperature vs. Time (years)

LATEST ANNUAL AVERAGE: 2016
0.99 °C

This graph illustrates the change in global surface temperature relative to 1951-1980 average temperatures. Sixteen of the 17 warmest years in the 136-year record all have occurred since 2001, with the exception of 1998. The year 2016 ranks as the warmest on record. (Source: NASA/GISS). This research is broadly consistent with similar constructions prepared by the Climatic Research Unit and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The time series below shows the five-year average variation of global surface temperatures. Dark blue indicates areas cooler than average. Dark red indicates areas warmer than average.

Global Temperature Display for 1884

Global Temperature Display for 2016

Prof. James Hansen speaks clearly

Climate scientist James Hansen: We aren’t doing nearly enough to slow climate change

From an Article by Natasha Geilin, ThinkProgress, October 4, 2016

James Hansen, former NASA director and well-known climate scientist, is out with another dire climate warning: The last time that the Earth was this hot, the oceans were about 20 feet higher than they are right now.

And while that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re in for an unstoppable, 20-foot rise in sea level (although it ostensibly could get that bad), it does mean that the world is leaving a dangerous, and expensive, climate change problem for future generations.

“There’s a misconception that we’ve begun to address the climate problem,” Hansen told reporters on a press call Monday. “The misapprehension is based on the Paris climate summit where all the government leaders clapped each other on the back as if some great progress has been made, but you look at the science and it doesn’t compute. We are not doing what is needed.”

Hansen’s warning is based off a new, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper — submitted Tuesday to the Earth Systems Dynamics Journal — that he authored with 11 other climate scientists. In the paper, the authors argue that the Earth has warmed by about 1.3°C relative to pre-industrial levels, and that the atmospheric concentration of the most potent greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — has been accelerating in recent years. The last time the Earth was this hot was during the last inter-glacial period, known as the Eemian, when sea level was about 20 to 30 feet higher than it is today.

In order to stay below the aspirational target of limiting the planet to 1.5°C of warming set in Paris, the paper argues that negative carbon dioxide emissions — that is, sucking carbon dioxide from the air — will be necessary. In a blog post accompanying the paper, Hansen warns that proposed techniques for carbon sequestration, like carbon capture and storage or air capture of carbon dioxide, could cost anywhere from $104 to $507 trillion this century, with “large risks and uncertain feasibility.”

Speaking to reporters, Hansen suggested a better method for achieving negative carbon emissions could be through sequestering carbon dioxide in the Earth’s soil. Soil currently stores three times as much carbon as is contained in the atmosphere, and some studies suggest that through better management and restoration practices, the soil could sequester the majority of fossil fuel emissions generated by humans.

Hansen’s paper was written in part to support litigation brought against the U.S. government by Our Children’s Trust, which argues that the government is violating young peoples’ constitutional rights by failing to act on climate change. The lawsuits, filed in every state as well as against the federal government, are based on a legal theory known as atmospheric trust litigation, developed by University of Oregon law professor Mary Wood. The theory argues that the atmosphere is a crucial natural resource that the government must hold in trust for future citizens. By failing to pass policies that stop climate change, the reasoning goes, the government is failing to preserve the natural environment for future generations.

Hansen, along with his granddaughter, is a party in the Our Children’s Trust litigation in Oregon. That case is currently awaiting a decision from a federal judge as to whether the litigation will be allowed to move forward. Earlier this year, a group of fossil fuel companies, including representatives of ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and Koch Industries, filed a motion to intervene, arguing that a decision in favor of the children would force an “unprecedented restructuring of the economy.”

In discussing how the paper relates to his involvement with the legal case, Hansen said he hoped the paper would help spur courts to action.

“I think it is essential that the third branch of government, the courts, get involved in the climate story,” he said. “We need to quantify what is needed in an understandable way so that the judicial system can make an evaluation and step in and have some effect where the other branches of government have failed us.”

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Extremely high clouds of dust & ice crystals

Noctilucent Clouds, Methane & Climate Change

From an Article by Damond Benningfield, StarDate Today, July 26, 2015

If you live at high northern latitudes, you might see some eerie clouds at this time of year. They show up for a little while in deep twilight, and shine electric blue. And they appear to have a connection to both meteors and our planet’s changing climate.

Noctilucent clouds were first reported in 1885. That sighting may have been related to the eruption of Krakatoa, a powerful volcano in Indonesia. Tiny grains of ash from the explosion may have drifted to the top of the atmosphere — altitudes of 45 to 50 miles. Molecules of water then latched on to the ash particles, forming ice crystals.

But recent research suggests that most noctilucent clouds are seeded by tiny grains of space dust. These particles bombard our planet all the time. Many of them are so small that they don’t fall to the ground, but linger in the upper atmosphere. They form the kernels around which cloud particles grow.

Sightings of noctilucent clouds have become more common in recent years, and the clouds have been seen farther south than ever before — as far down as Utah and Colorado.

Research says that could be a result of the extra methane we release into the air every year. Some of the methane climbs to high altitudes. Sunlight triggers a series of reactions that breaks the methane apart, leaving two water molecules. That provides more water to freeze around the nuggets of space dust — creating more of these electric-blue clouds in the twilight.

@ For more skywatching tips, astronomy news, and much more, read StarDate magazine.

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Excerpt on Noctilucent Clouds from Wikipedia.org

Most recently in 2012 Lonnie Cumberland’s physics PhD work supported viewing noctilucent clouds as a possible Miner’s Canary for climate change as her third conclusion as a sign of increasing the presence of water in the high atmosphere.^[1] NASA scientists speculate that methane may be driven higher into the mesophere where noctilucent clouds form by climate change and through reactions end up producing water at such altitudes.^[55]

Climate models predict that increased greenhouse gas emissions cause a cooling of the mesosphere, which would lead to more frequent and widespread occurrences of noctilucent clouds.^[50] A competing theory is that larger methane emissions from intensive farming activities {and other sources} produce more water vapor in the upper atmosphere.^[14] Methane concentrations have more than doubled in the past 100 years.^[3]

^{See also:  www.InsideClimateNews.org}