July global temperature (+1.16°C relative to 1880-1920 mean) was within a hair (0.02°C) of being the warmest July in the era of instrumental measurements (Fig. 1, left). That’s remarkable because we are still under the influence of a fairly strong La Nina (Fig. 1, right). Global cooling associated with La Ninas peaks five months after the […]
Humans are unequivocally warming the planet, and that’s triggering rapid changes in the atmosphere, oceans and polar regions, and increasing extreme weather around the world, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns in a new report. Robert Kopp, Rutgers University The Conversation The IPCC released the first part of its much anticipated Sixth Assessment Report […]
The very short version: After years of warnings that climate change is coming, we can now say that climate change is HERE. But if we act NOW (not by 2030 or by 2050, but NOW) we can avoid the worst of it. More of our IPCC Report coverage: ‘Code Red for humanity’: IPCC Report warns […]
Any climate policy worth fighting for must do two things well: reduce carbon emissions and protect the poor. These are CCL’s so-called “bottom lines.” So how do we know if a steadily rising price on carbon will measure up? By Rick Knight Research Coordinator, Citizens’ Climate Lobby With neither a crystal ball nor a time […]
Global temperature in June was +1.13°C (relative to the 1880-1920 base period, which is our best estimate of preindustrial temperature); it was +0.85°C relative to the 1951-1980 base period. High temperature anomalies were notable in northwest North America, northeast Siberia, and a horseshoe-shaped area covering much of Europe and western Asia (Fig. 1). The Pacific […]
Reality differs from what you read in the “news.” The single graph that captures reality best is the 50 years of “progress” in reducing carbon intensity of our energy use, as shown in Fig. 1, which is discussed in my foreword to a forthcoming book on conservation by Dominick DellaSala. By Dr James Hansen Then […]
Global temperature in May was +1.07°C (relative to the 1880-1920 base period, which is a best estimate of preindustrial temperature). The temperature was well below a year earlier (Fig. 1), as expected due to the La Nina that peaked in November 2020. Global temperature anomalies are correlated with ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation), with global […]
Global temperature in April continues to be much less than a year ago (Fig. 1: left side). ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation) is the principal cause of year-to-year global temperature change. We are in a moderately strong La Nina (Fig. 1: right side) and NCEP (NOAA’s National Center for Environmental Prediction) current forecast (Fig. 1: […]
Anyone who listens to weather reports has heard meteorologists comment that yesterday’s temperature was 3 degrees above normal, or last month was much drier than normal. But what does “normal” mean in this context – and in a world in which the climate is changing? The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released updated “climate […]
From warmer ocean temperatures to longer and more intense droughts and heat waves, climate change is affecting our entire planet. Scientists at NOAA have long worked to track, understand and predict how climate change is progressing and impacting ecosystems, communities and economies. Take a look at five ways scientists are studying this far-reaching global trend. […]
As soon as the 2021 New Year’s celebrations were over, the calls and questions started coming in from weather watchers: When will NOAA release the new U.S. Climate Normals? The Normals are 30-year averages of key climate observations made at weather stations and corrected for bad or missing values and station changes over time. From […]
The letter below was submitted to the New York Times on 3/26 in response to their 3/25 article on the recent National Academy of Sciences “Solar Geoengineering” report (I commented on the report here last week). The Times has evidently declined to run the letter, so I am publishing it myself here. The article in question originally ran with the highly […]
Two decades ago, in an interview with science journalist Richard Kerr for the journal Science, I coined the term the “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation” (the “AMO” for short) to describe an internal oscillation in the climate system resulting from interactions between North Atlantic ocean currents and wind patterns. These interactions were thought to lead to alternating decades-long intervals of […]
Editor’s note: This post from last winter is getting a lot of fresh attention thanks to its appearance somewhere in the Google news feed last week. Although the details of the state of the tropospheric and stratospheric vortexes in this post are from last year, the explanation of the basic science of these atmospheric features […]
At the start of February 2021, a major snowstorm hit the northeast United States, with some areas receiving well over two feet of snow. Just a few weeks earlier, Spain experienced a historic and deadly snowstorm and dangerously low temperatures. Northern Siberia is no stranger to cold, but in mid-January 2021, some Siberian cities reported […]