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negative impact of Green energy sources (wind turbines and Solar panels

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In the area of climate research, we have a serious problem of which the public is unaware. No research will be funded by the government unless the research proposes a study intended to prove dire consequences of the continued use of fossil fuels.

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As former Obama chief of staff and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel famously said: " never let a good crisis go to waste. "

On this week's episode of The Gunn Show, Sheila spoke to Jay Lehr, an internationally renowned speaker, scientist, author and Senior Policy Advisor with the International Climate Science Coalition.

Jay joined Sheila to discuss how climate change is the vehicle for socialism, serving as a perfect means for citizens to give up more individual and national liberties in the name of a global climate crisis that can only be solved by an international, one world, socialist government.

As Jay explained to Sheila:

Climate change has always been a vehicle to create socialism throughout the world and a one world government because the evil people that want to control all of our lives recognize that if you can control carbon dioxide output- the very breathe that we exhale - you can control all society.

And if you can get people scared that man has something to do with controlling the thermostat of the Earth, then only government can control it. If we're talking about carbon dioxide it has to be all governments and then really a one world government, the United Nations, that would take over the world because energy is what creates a positive standard of living.

You can measure the standard of living of any family or human being on Earth by how much energy they use that's a determination of whether they have good heating and cooling and automobiles and other advantages in life.

Jay is also the co-author of a new book about this same subject: A Hitchhiker's Journey Through Climate Change: All you need to know about climate change, but were afraid to learn and laugh at.

For the full interview with Jay, and the full episode of The Gunn Show, be sure to SUBSCRIBE to RebelNews+.

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Climate Change and Socialism | Jay Lehr explains how climate change is used for one world socialism

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As former Obama chief of staff and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel famously said: " never let a good crisis go to waste. " On this week's episode of The Gunn Show , Sheila spoke to Jay Lehr, an internationally renowned speaker, scientist, author and Senior Policy Advisor with the International Climate Science Coalition.

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Climate / Energy | Stossel in the Classroom

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This Thursday, Earth Day, politicians and activists will shout more about "the climate crisis." I don't think it's a crisis. COVID-19, malaria, exploding debt, millions of poor children dying from diarrhea - those are genuine crises. But global warming may become a...

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Goal 13 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs

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Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts

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Humanity is “waging a war on nature”, threatening biodiversity loss, climate disruption and escalating pollution, the UN chief said on Friday.

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"We will all be losers if we don't achieve peace with the planet", Secretary-General António Guterres told a webinar ahead of the International Day for Biological Diversity, commemorated annually on 22 May.

"We should all be advocates for nature", he said.

A dismal picture

Nature sustains life and provides opportunities, services and solutions, he explained, noting that "a healthy planet is critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals ( SDGs)".

Yet, biodiversity is declining at an "unprecedented and alarming rate", and the pressures are intensifying, he warned.

"We have failed to meet any of our internationally agreed biodiversity targets", the UN chief said.

He said one million species are at risk of extinction; ecosystems are disappearing "before our eyes"; deserts are spreading, and wetlands are being lost.

Every year, 10 million hectares of forests are lost, oceans are overfished and "choking with plastic waste" as the carbon dioxide they absorb is acidifying the seas, bleaching and killing coral reefs, he added.

And the total annual international public finance for nature is significantly less than the subsidies causing its degradation.

"We are depleting resources faster than nature can replenish them", the UN chief continued.

Zoonic factor

The pandemic has highlighted the intimate relationship between people and nature, he said, while changes in land use and encroachment on wild habitats are the primary paths for emerging infectious diseases, such as the deadly Ebola and COVID-19 viruses.

"Three-quarters of new and emerging human infectious diseases are zoonotic", jumping from animals to humans, and against this backdrop, the UN chief said that tackling the current COVID-19 crisis provides an opportunity to recover better.

Biodiversity dividends

In this landmark year for restoring balance with nature, tackling the climate emergency and getting ahead of the pollution crisis, the UN chief underscored, "our efforts to protect biodiversity will be key".

He said that solutions to the current crisis must expand opportunity, reduce stark inequalities and respect planetary boundaries, with "nature-positive investments and actions" to allow everyone to benefit from the "dividends of biological diversity".

Later this year, governments will meet for 15th Conference of Parties of the Convention on Biodiversity ( COP-15) in Kunming, China, to finalize a new global framework for biodiversity to protect nature, restore ecosystems and reset humanity's relationship with the planet.

"It is essential that they succeed", stressed the Secretary-General. "The rewards will be tremendous".

Movement for change

There are many existing solutions to protect the planet's genetic diversity on land and at sea, but they must be employed.

"Everybody has a part to play. Sustainable lifestyle choices are the key", said the UN chief, calling sustainable production and consumption "the answer".

Better policies that promote government, business and individual accountability are needed to give every person throughout the world the choice to live sustainably and be part of a movement for change.

"Let us all be part of the solution", he said. "Together, we can halt biodiversity loss and ecosystem degradation and build a future where we live in harmony with nature".

'Demand better for nature'

In her Biodiversity Day message, Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme ( UNEP), spelled out that the planet's challenges are "so acute that we don't have the luxury of waiting around for someone else to step up and take action".

She explained that UNEP supports countries in monitoring and managing their biodiversity "as best we can"; sounds the alarm on what science is saying regarding biodiversity loss and how to change course; and works with businesses and finance to help shift towards "nature-positive investments".

The agency also works with decision-makers to factor in assets provided by nature to limit destruction caused by economic activity and mobilizes the entire UN system to support biodiversity through each of their mandates.

"When we demand better for nature, we get better outcomes for all people", stated Ms. Andersen.

Become the solution

Elizabeth Maruma Mrema, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), said that diversity of life on the planet is "declining more than ever before in human history"; plant and animal species face extinction; and "humans are overusing the Earth's capacity by more than half".

Explaining that halting biodiversity loss would create the necessary conditions to achieve the SDGs, improve human health and address the climate emergency, she stressed: "Now is the time to change our relationship with nature".

The CBD chief underscored the importance of a COP-15 compact to protect crucial ecosystems, species and genetic diversity, saying that by acting for nature, "we can create a fairer, healthier and more sustainable world".

"Are you part of the solution to save biodiversity? If not, I invite you. Become part of the solution for nature", she concluded.

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Everyone will lose unless humanity makes 'peace with the planet', declares Guterres

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"We will all be losers if we don't achieve peace with the planet", Secretary-General António Guterres told a webinar ahead of the International Day for Biological Diversity, commemorated annually on 22 May. "We should all be advocates for nature", he said.

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by Bjorn Lomborg

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Carbons emissions are rising-and faster than most scientists predicted.

But many climate-change alarmists seem to claim that all climate change is worse than expected. This ignores that much of the data is actually more encouraging than expected.

Yes, Arctic sea ice is melting faster than the models expected. But models also predicted that Antarctic sea ice would decrease, yet Antarctic sea ice is increasing.

Yes, sea levels are rising, but the rise is not accelerating-if anything, two recent papers, one by Chinese scientists published in January 2014, and the other by U.S. scientists published in May 2013, have shown a small decline in the rate of sea-level increase.

We are often being told that we're seeing more and more droughts, but a study published in March 2014 in the journal Nature actually shows a decrease in the world's surface that has been afflicted by droughts since 1982.

Facts like these are important because a one-sided focus on worst-case stories is a poor foundation for sound policies.

Hurricanes are likewise used as an example of things getting worse. But look at the U.S., where we have the best statistics: if we adjust for population and wealth, hurricane damage during the period of 1900-2013 actually decreased slightly.

At the U.N. climate conference in Lima, Peru in December 2014 attendees were told that their countries should cut carbon emissions to avoid future damage from storms like Typhoon Hagupit, which hit the Philippines during the conference, killing at least 21 people and forcing more than a million into shelters. Yet the trend for strong typhoons around the Philippines have actually declined since 1950, according to a study published in 2012 by the Journal of Climate.

Again, we're told that all things are getting worse, but the facts don't support this.

This does not mean that global warming is not real, or a problem, but the one-sided story of alarmism makes us lose focus. If we want to help the world's poor, who are the most threatened by natural disasters, it's less about cutting carbon emissions than it is about pulling them out of poverty.

The best way to see this is to look at the world's deaths from natural disasters over time. In the Oxford University database for death rates from floods, extreme temperatures, droughts, and storms, the average in the first part of last century, was more than 130 dead every year per million people. Since then, the death rates have dropped 97 percent to a new low in the 2010s of less than 4 per million.

The dramatic decline is mostly due to economic developments that help nations withstand catastrophes. If you're rich like Florida, a major hurricane might cause plenty of damage to expensive buildings, but it kills few people and causes only a temporary dent in economic output.

If a similar hurricane hits a poorer country like the Philippines or Guatemala, it kills many more people and can devastate the economy.

So let's be clear. Climate change is not "worse than we thought." That doesn't mean it's not a reality or not a problem. It is.

But the narrative that the world's climate is changing from bad to worse is unhelpful alarmism that prevents us from focusing on smart solutions.

A well-meaning environmentalist might argue that, because climate change is a reality, why not ramp up the rhetoric and focus on the bad news to make sure the public understands its importance? But that's exactly what we've done for the past 20 years.

Yet despite dramatic headlines, apocalyptic documentaries and annual climate summits, carbon emissions continue to rise, especially in rapidly developing countries like India, China and many African nations.

Alarmism has encouraged the pursuit of a one-sided climate policy of trying to cut carbon emissions by subsidizing wind farms and solar panels. Yet today, according to the International Energy Agency, only about 0.4 percent of global energy consumption comes from solar photovoltaics and windmills. And even with exceptionally optimistic assumptions about future deployment of wind and solar, the International Energy Agency expects that these energy forms will provide a minuscule 2.2 percent of the world's energy by 2040.

In other words, for at least the next two decades, solar and wind energy are simply expensive, feel-good measures that will have an imperceptible climate impact. Instead, we should focus on investing in research and development of green energy to lower its costs, so everyone will want it, including China and India.

We urgently need a more balanced climate conversation if we are to make sensible choices and pick the right climate policy that can actually help fix climate change.

I'm Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center.

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Are droughts, hurricanes, floods and other natural disasters getting stronger and more frequent? Are carbon dioxide emissions, global temperatures and sea levels putting us on a path for climate catastrophe? Bjorn Lomborg, Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, breaks down the facts about the environment and shows why the reality of climate change may be very different from what you hear in the media.

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An Educational video: Travel the globe to examine the pros & cons of our available energy sources, from fossil fuels to wind and solar.

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Recently, we broke down energy production by state and showed you how your state's energy consumption stacks up against the national average. We also looked at how much you spend on energy and how that has changed over the last 20 years.

Next, we want to explore how energy production has changed over the last two decades.

To do that, we created a collection of maps that lets you step through the last 20 years and see how state-by-state production within each energy industry increased or decreased. It also makes it simple to understand the distribution of each energy industry geographically around our country. For instance, we can see that crude oil and natural gas have their largest concentration in the Southern Gulf states, whereas nuclear power appears most in the East and coal appears most in the Appalachian Mountains and in the Plains.

What is perhaps most compelling about this visualization is the way we see energy production growing in nearly every field over the last two decades. Between 1993 and 2012 -- the most recent year of data that we have in full from the State Energy Data System (SEDS) -- total U.S. energy production has increased from 68 quadrillion Btu (also called quads) to 79 quadrillion Btu, a growth of 11 quadrillion Btu or 16 percent. In that same time frame, every energy industry increased its production, except for crude oil.

We don't have total data for the last two years, but we do know that even crude oil has made up that ground and is producing more oil each day than we did in the early 1990s. Nuclear energy has grown steadily, while other types of energy have experienced volatile production year-to-year, such as coal and renewable energy. Biofuels such as ethanol were virtually non-existent in 1993 and have grown from 0.17 quads to 1.8 quads in the last 20 years, a 10-fold increase. Similarly, natural gas has increased by 33 percent in the last seven years alone, and has continued to grow since then in leaps and bounds.

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At the state level, 33 states and the Gulf of Mexico saw an increase in energy production over the last 20 years. Of those that saw an increase, eight of them increased by more than 100 percent -- with South Dakota increasing 518 percent, Iowa increasing 378 percent and North Dakota increasing by 209 percent. Why so much increase in the Great Plains? Explore the map above to find out! Wyoming, Texas and the Gulf of Mexico saw the greatest increase in volume (as opposed to percentage) each, increasing by over 2.5 quadrillion Btu over the last 20 years. Put differently, on average over the last 20 years, Wyoming has added a Missouri-sized chunk of energy (over 200 trillion Btu) to its total production each year.

All of these facts demonstrate a strong and growing energy economy, as all sectors contribute to our all-of-the-above energy strategy. If you are interested in crunching the numbers yourself, you can find the raw data at the SEDS data page here, several of the worked up data sheets here, and a ready-to-go TopoJSON with all of the data here. If you find something interesting, let us know by tweeting at us @ENERGY or commenting on our Facebook page.

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U.S. Energy Production Through the Years

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Recently, we broke down energy production by state and showed you how your state's energy consumption stacks up against the national average. We also looked at how much you spend on energy and how that has changed over the last 20 years. Next, we want to explore how energy production has changed over the last two decades.

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Released: June 26, 2020 | Next release: June 25, 2021

Comprehensive state-level estimates of energy production, consumption, prices, and expenditures by source and sector.

Estimates for 2019 and revisions for previous years by energy source will be released on the SEDS updates page starting in October 2020.

For additional information see:

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Released: June 26, 2020 | Next release: June 25, 2021 Comprehensive state-level estimates of energy production, consumption, prices, and expenditures by source and sector. Estimates for 2019 and revisions for previous years by energy source will be released on the SEDS updates page starting in October 2020.

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see ppt!

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High-Level Political Forum

The establishment of the United Nations High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) was mandated in 2012 by the outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), "The Future We Want". The format and organizational aspects of the Forum are outlined in General Assembly resolution 67/290.

The Forum meets annually under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council for eight days, including a three-day ministerial segment and every four years at the level of Heads of State and Government under the auspices of the General Assembly for two days.

For the positioning of the HLPF in the UN system, please click here.

The Forum's first meeting was held on 24 September 2013. It replaced the Commission on Sustainable Development, which had met annually since 1993.

The HLPF is the main United Nations platform on sustainable development and it has a central role in the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at the global level. General Assembly resolution 70/299 provides further guidance on the follow-up and review of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs.

The Forum adopts intergovernmentally negotiated political declarations.

Please click here to visit the web page of HLPF 2019 under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council.

Click here for information of HLPF 2019 under the auspices of the General Assembly - the SDG Summit, including the Political Declaration and its call on " gearing up for a decade of action and delivery for sustainable development ".

Click here for information of HLPF 2020 under the auspices of the Economic and Social Council.

As part of its follow-up and review mechanisms, the 2030 Agenda encourages member states to "conduct regular and inclusive reviews of progress at the national and sub-national levels, which are country-led and country-driven" (paragraph 79). These national reviews are expected to serve as a basis for the regular reviews by the HLPF. As stipulated in paragraph 84 of the 2030 Agenda, regular reviews by the HLPF are to be voluntary, state-led, undertaken by both developed and developing countries, and shall provide a platform for partnerships, including through the participation of major groups and other relevant stakeholders.

For more information on the Voluntary National Reviews, click here.

General Assembly resolution A/RES/70/299 decided to review the format and organizational aspects of the HLPF at its seventy-fourth session. For more information, click here

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High-level Political Forum .:. Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform

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High-Level Political Forum The establishment of the United Nations High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) was mandated in 2012 by the outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), "The Future We Want". The format and organizational aspects of the Forum are outlined in General Assembly resolution 67/290.

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watch and learn ya bint!

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Scorching temperatures.  Melting ice caps.  Killer hurricanes and tornadoes.  Disappearing polar bears.  The end of civilization as we know it!  Are emissions from our cars, factories, and farms causing catastrophic climate change?  Is there a genuine scientific consensus? Or is man-made “global warming” an overheated environmental con job being used to push for drastic government control and a radical “Green” energy agenda?

“Climate Hustle” will answer these questions, and many more.  Produced in the one-of-a-kind entertaining and informative style that has made CFACT and Marc Morano’s award-winning ClimateDepot.com one of the world’s most sought after sources for reliable, hard-to-find facts about climate issues, this groundbreaking film will tear the cover off of global warming hype, and expose the myths and exaggerations of this multi-billion dollar scam.

“Climate Hustle” will reveal the history of climate scares including global cooling; 
debunk outrageous claims about temperatures, extreme weather, and the so-called “consensus;” expose the increasingly shrill calls to “act immediately before it's too late," and in perhaps the film’s most important section, profile key scientists who used to believe in climate alarm but have since converted to skepticism.

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Are they trying to control the climate, or you?

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U. S. Senate Report

Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed

Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

Scientists Debunk “Consensus

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senate report

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This will be where a summary of annotations will be, you don't have any annotations yet.

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by Judith Curry
A British academic wants an international court to declare climate skeptics wrong, once and for all.
From Donna LaFramboise [ link]:
Last week, a three-day conference took place in the UK attended by a "key group of the world's leading judges, lawyers and legal academics." Pompously titled Adjudicating the Future: Climate Change and the Rule of Law, its Twitter hashtag was #ClimateCourts. Some of its events were held in the very room in which UK Supreme Court decisions are delivered. The Supreme Court has a YouTube channel where you can watch law professor Philippe Sands argue, at that conference, that the International Court of Justice (which he describes as "the principal judicial organ of the United Nations") has two choices: "consign itself to irrelevance" or join the fight against climate change.
A 21 page text version of Sand's speech is found here.
Bemoaning "legislative inertia" (p. 18), he seems intent on achieving, via court fiat, what political leaders accountable to the electorate have so far declined to do. On five occasions, he talks about the immense authority with which an international court decision would be imbued. Facts are one thing, he says, but facts that "have the special authority of the law to back them" are uniquely legitimate (pages 12, 14, 15, 19). Much like the 20 American academics who want to silence climate skeptics by threatening them with criminal investigations, this British academic wants to silence dissent via an international court ruling that says skeptics are wrong. The text version of Sands' speech doesn't adequately capture what he actually said. Starting at the 39:30-minute point on the video, here's what you'll hear:

It is one thing for the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] to come to such conclusions as a matter of its opinion. It's quite another for an International Court of Justice to give them the authority of a judicial determination as to what the facts are and what the scientific evidence is.

...As I noted at the outset, there is a broad emerging consensus on many of these factual matters, but they do remain subject to challenge in some quarters, including by scientifically qualified, knowledgeable and influential individuals. And the courts could play a role here in finally scotching those claims.

One of the most important things an international court could do - in my view it's probably the single most important thing - is to settle the scientific dispute. A finding of fact on one or more of these matters...would be significant and authoritative and could well be dispositive on a range of future actions that are needed, including in the conduct of negotiations. A finding of fact by the [International Court of Justice] would be of great authority in proceedings before other international courts and tribunals, and before national courts also.

Did we catch that? Sands wants a court to settle the scientific dispute. Fully aware that qualified individuals hold contrary climate opinions, he - a non-scientist - wants a court to finally scotch those claims. As he reads the tea leaves, the verdict is predictable in advance. At this moment in its history, he believes, the International Court of Justice will deliver the sort of climate change ruling he considers "helpful." What chance will a science teacher with a non-mainstream view of climate change have at an employment hearing once the world's highest court has declared her views to be non-facts? How many more young journalists will avoid thinking for themselves after a court has ruled that X is climate gospel and Y is climate heresy? Science academies need to inform lawyers such as Philippe Sands that the courts are not - and can never be - adjudicators of scientific truth. Going down this path will bring both science and the law into disrepute. Robin Guenier's response
Robin Guenier's notes and response to this have been posted at Paul Matthews blog [ link]. Well worth reading (he uses my recent congressional testimony in his arguments). His conclusion:
Professor Sands believes that climate change is "one of the greatest and most vital challenges of our age" and asserts that in view of its "real and imminent challenges ... the international courts shall not be silent". These are honourable sentiments. However, he also believes the way for the courts to make a contribution - the "single most important thing [they] could do" - would be "to settle the scientific dispute". And to do so by "finally scotching claims" that he thinks are not based on established fact. But, for the courts to purport to settle a legitimate scientific disagreement, would strike at the essence of the Scientific Method - the basis of scientific practice for over 150 years. It would risk bringing international law into disrepute. Professor Sands may consider that a risk worth taking. However he might perhaps note that it's not disputes about science that are making it so difficult to reach a global agreement to reduce GHG emissions. The problem derives from the understandable wish of the developing countries - responsible for about 70% of global GHG emissions and comprising 82% of the world's population (including virtually all the world's poorest people) - to develop their economies and to eradicate poverty. Following China's example, they believe that the provision of reliable, affordable energy, derived largely from fossil fuels, is the best way of achieving these goals. And the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change specifically entitles them to give such action overriding priority. JC reflections
Attempts or desires to use the courts to enforce consensus climate science has recently been seen in:

The Minnesota case is fighting back against the consensus.

This whole notion of a climate 'consensus', 97% and all that, has been very cleverly, and arguably dishonestly, marketed. These people are still thinking that 'speaking scientific consensus to power' is actually going to work in terms of radically reducing global carbon emissions. At this point the science is almost irrelevant; the big issues in play are that India, Africa, etc. want electricity for its population and for economic development, and coal is the most economical way to accomplish that.

Trying to destroy science in the process of denying that radical near term emissions reductions aren't going to work is just plain stupid, not to mention dangerous and a few other adjectives that one can think of.

This entry was posted in Consensus, Policy. Bookmark the permalink.

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Adjudicating the future: silencing climate dissent via the courts

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by Judith Curry A British academic wants an international court to declare climate skeptics wrong, once and for all. From Donna LaFramboise [link]: Last week, a three-day conference took place in the UK attended by a "key group of the world's leading judges, lawyers and legal academics."

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Lord Christopher Monckton | The Economics Behind Windmills

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RTÉ - IRELAND’S NATIONAL PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA

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The Late Late Show - Jim Corr & Lord Christopher Monckton

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by Judith Curry

But when I queried them on various sources of funding - private, industry, government - they deemed all of the sources as suspect. - Dave Verardo

In the past several months, we have had several posts on scientists' conflicts of interest, and possible biases from funding sources:

Industry funding has been the big 'villain'; notably oil companies and Monsanto.

In recent weeks, several new perspectives on this issue has come to my attention.
College students
On Steve McIntyre's post Shukla's Gold, Dave Verardo made several comments. If you don't know who Dave Verardo is, he is Program Manager for NSF's Paleoclimate Program. Besides a Ph.D. in Earth and Environmental Sciences, he also has a J.D. He also teaches a course at George Mason University. I responded to Verardo's comment at ClimateAudit suggesting that he contact me, to continue a dialogue we started at last years Workshop on the Ethics of Communicating Scientific Uncertainty. We spoke on the phone, discussing the Shukla issue as well as some broader ethical challenges faced by the climate community.

I was particularly struck by a comment he made regarding the perspectives from the undergraduates that he teaches at GMU. I asked him to elaborate via email:
About two years ago, I stumbled onto a surprising and disturbing perspective among some college students. In a class that I teach on science and policy to senior undergraduate science students, we were discussing a topical issue in science and policy. We were discussing the pros and cons of an issue when one student casually mentioned that she did not trust the science research because of the source of the funding. I asked the class if they agreed that the source makes a difference and they all replied that it did. But when I queried them on various sources of funding - private, industry, government - they deemed all of the sources as suspect. Not just some students but all the students. I have repeated this line of inquiry to successive classes (now about 80 students over two years) and the results are the same. This lack of confidence in our science infrastructure, to the extent that it exists, seems largely self-inflicted. If some people are pushing others to follow a predetermined scripts in support of some larger perceived good, this is counter to the foundation of scientific inquiry which is all about pushing knowledge beyond societal comfort zones. There are many historical examples of such behavior and its damage to understanding and to people. The way to reverse course and to restore trust seems to be to shine a light on bad conduct when it occurs, follow through with substantive corrective action, and for individuals to just say no to going along as part of their own personal integrity. Sure, there are serious pressures at play in science such as funding and the ubiquitous prestige issue but if people cave on an individual basis then institutions are doomed. If this is the case, then where does this leave us? Scientist X - NASA
As an example of the serious pressures in play, also last week I received this email from a NASA scientist:
About 7 years ago, I was at a small meeting of NASA-affiliated scientists and was told by our top manager that he was told by his NASA boss that we should not try to publish papers contrary to the current global warming claims, because he (the NASA boss) would then have a headache countering the "undesirable" publicity. I inferred from this that the real problem was the large amount of funds NASA obtains from claims of dire climate change, and that suggestions to the contrary threatened those. I witnessed similar reluctance for scientists at other organizations to publicly criticize modeling they deemed sloppy because even if they themselves were not at the forefront, they also benefited from the great amount of funds made available. So, it is not just those funded by environmentalists or dirty energy companies who have conflicts, but indeed all receiving government funds based on the great societal consequences of dire warming. It is still dangerous for me to say such things since I am still funded entirely through NASA.
In a follow up email, he identified the two NASA administrators - both people whom I know and like.

Recall 2007 - the year of the IPCC AR4, the Nobel Peace Prize goes to Al Gore and the IPCC, and the final years of George W. Bush's administration. Perhaps this is all so institutionalized under the Obama administration, the issue of trying to publish a contrary paper doesn't even come up?

Note, over the past five years I have received a number of emails from government scientists who will not pursue certain lines of research for fear of losing their jobs. I can only wonder how many others are out there who are afraid to speak up about this issue.
JC reflections
I don't think the main problem is with the individual scientists (for the most part anyways); rather it is the institutions themselves (e.g. the administrators) that are a major part of the problem.

Program managers are trying to build the research budget $$ for their programs; some high profile research with favorable press helps. At higher levels, Divisional administrators are competing for budget dollars against the other Divisions; tying their research to a national policy priority helps in this competition. And on and on, up the institutional food chain.

We can't fix the biases of individual researchers, although institutions can steer their research areas with funding carrots. I have no idea what it would take to fix any such problems at the major funding institutions; at NSF it would be relatively easy. NASA and especially NOAA are much bigger challenges.

Somewhere, sometime there needs to be a serious conversation about scientific bias caused by government research funding. I regard Dave Verardo as an important ally in seeking to improve the ethics and reduce bias in climate research.

Is contrary science to be relegated to the 'gentlemen/women' scientists that can afford to finance their own research? More and more we are seeing retired professors and wealthy individuals taking on contrary research. And of course, this raises the issue that industry funding of contrary research could actually be healthy for climate science.

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Conflicts of interest in climate science. Part II

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by Judith Curry But when I queried them on various sources of funding - private, industry, government - they deemed all of the sources as suspect. - Dave Verardo In the past several months, we have had several posts on scientists' conflicts of interest, and possible biases from funding sources: Conflicts of interest in climate...

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Climate Etc. provides a forum for climate researchers, academics and technical experts from other fields, citizen scientists, and the interested public to engage in a discussion on topics related to climate science and the science-policy interface.

You are free to share or remix anything from Climate Etc., following the guidelines of Creative Commons.

Climate Etc. is hosted by Judith Curry.

I am President (co-owner) of Climate Forecast Applications Network (CFAN). Previously, I was Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Here is a [ link] to my c.v.

You can contact me via email at: curry.judith (at) yahoo.com
Congressional testimony
My views on climate change are best summarized by my recent Congressional Testimony:
Interviews
Funding disclosure: Funding sources for my research have included NSF, NASA, NOAA, DOD and DOE. Recent government contracts for CFAN include a DOE contract to develop extended range regional wind power forecasts, a DOD contract to predict extreme events associated with climate variability/change having implications for regional stability, and a NOAA contract to improve sub seasonal forecasting. CFAN contracts with private sector and other non-governmental organizations include energy and power companies, reinsurance companies, financial companies, other weather service providers, NGOs, development banks and government agencies.

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Climate Etc. provides a forum for climate researchers, academics and technical experts from other fields, citizen scientists, and the interested public to engage in a discussion on topics related to climate science and the science-policy interface. You are free to share or remix anything from Climate Etc., following the guidelines of Creative Commons.

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Usage Notice: All the Air Quality data are unvalidated at the time of publication, and due to quality assurance these data may be amended, without notice, at any time. The World Air Quality Index project has exercised all reasonable skill and care in compiling the contents of this information and under no circumstances will the World Air Quality Index project team or its agents be liable in contract, tort or otherwise for any loss, injury or damage arising directly or indirectly from the supply of this data.

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Top 10 countries with the worst air pollution index

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Usage Notice: All the Air Quality data are unvalidated at the time of publication, and due to quality assurance these data may be amended, without notice, at any time.

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Topics Covered: Pollution and conservation related issues.

The 'World Air Quality Report 2020':
Context:
It is a report on air quality released by Swiss organisation, IQAir.

The global cities ranking report is based on PM2.5 data from 106 countries, which is measured by ground-based monitoring stations, most of which are operated by government agencies.
Air Pollution in Indian cities:

1. Delhi is the world's most polluted capital: Although Delhi's air quality improved by nearly 15 per cent from 2019 to 2020, the city still ranked as the 10th most polluted city in the world and the most polluted capital.

2. 22 of the world's 30 most polluted cities including Delhi are in India.

3. Ghaziabad is the second most polluted city in the world after Xinjiang in China.

4. The eight Indian cities in the top 10 list are - Bulandshahar, Bisrakh Jalalpur, Noida, Greater Noida, Kanpur, Lucknow (all in UP), Bhiwari in Rajasthan and Delhi.

5. Major sources of India's air pollution include transportation, biomass burning for cooking, electricity generation, industry, construction, waste burning and episodic agricultural burning.

Global Scenario:

India is the third most polluted country in 2020, unlike in 2019, when its air was the fifth most noxious.

Bangladesh and Pakistan were the countries in 2020 with worse average PM2.5 levels than India, said the report.

China ranked 11th in the latest report.

of the 106 monitored countries, only 24 met the World Health Organization annual guidelines for PM 2.5.

Way ahead:
While many cities, including Delhi, have recorded marginal improvements in air quality due to lockdowns, the health and economic cost of air pollution remain severe.

Therefore, it is pertinent that governments prioritise sustainable and clean energy sources, as well as the cities, need to encourage low cost, active and carbon-neutral mobility choices such as walking, cycling, and accessible public transport.

Speeding up the transition to clean energy and clean transport not only saves lives but also dramatically reduces healthcare-related costs.

1. About the report- released by, criteria for ranking.

2. Performance of India and its cities.

3. Performance of countries worldwide.

4. Relative performance of India.

Why despite efforts at various levels, Delhi is ranked as the most polluted capital in world? Comment.

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The 'World Air Quality Report 2020' - INSIGHTSIAS

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Topics Covered: Pollution and conservation related issues. The 'World Air Quality Report 2020': Context: It is a report on air quality released by Swiss organisation, IQAir. The global cities ranking report is based on PM2.5 data from 106 countries, which is measured by ground-based monitoring stations, most of which are operated by government agencies.

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The website is brought to you by the World Air Quality Index project

The above map shows the real-time air quality for more than 10,000 stations in the world.

Share: How polluted is the air today? Check out the real-time air pollution map, for more than 80 countries.

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let us locate the nearest station

Latest sharing:

Want your own air quality monitoring station?

The GAIA air quality monitoring stations are using high-tech laser particle sensors to measure in real-time PM2.5 pollution, which is one of the most harmful air pollutants.

Very easy to set up, they only require a WIFI access point and a USB power supply. Once connected, air pollution levels are reported instantaneously and in real-time on our maps

How to use this web application

To get more information about a specific city, move your move over any of the the flags in the above map, then click to get the full air pollution historical data.

Air Quality Index (AQI) Calculation

The Air Quality Index is based on measurement of particulate matter (PM 2.5 and PM ₁₀), Ozone (O ₃), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO ₂), Sulfur Dioxide (SO ₂) and Carbon Monoxide (CO) emissions. Most of the stations on the map are monitoring both PM 2.5 and PM ₁₀ data, but there are few exceptions where only PM ₁₀ is available.

All measurements are based on hourly readings: For instance, an AQI reported at 8AM means that the measurement was done from 7AM to 8AM.

Further information and links

Air Quality Scale

The AQI scale used for indexing the real-time pollution in the above map is based on the latest US EPA standard, using the Instant Cast reporting formula.

AQI

Air Pollution Level

Health Implications

Cautionary Statement (for PM2.5)

Credits

All the credits must go to the worlwide EPA (Enviromental Protection Agencies), as all this work is only made possible thanks to their work. Check the full worldwide EPA list page.

All the Air Quality data are unvalidated at the time of publication, and due to quality assurance these data may be amended, without notice, at any time. The World Air Quality Index project has exercised all reasonable skill and care in compiling the contents of this information and under no circumstances will the World Air Quality Index project team or its agents be liable in contract, tort or otherwise for any loss, injury or damage arising directly or indirectly from the supply of this data.

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World's Air Pollution: Real-time Air Quality Index

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The website is brought to you by the World Air Quality Index project The above map shows the real-time air quality for more than 10,000 stations in the world. Share: How polluted is the air today? Check out the real-time air pollution map, for more than 80 countries.

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Regional effects of climate change are long-term significant changes in the expected patterns of average weather of a specific region due to climate change. The world average temperature is rising due to the greenhouse effect caused by increasing levels of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. When the global temperature changes, the changes in climate are not expected to be uniform across the Earth. In particular, land areas change more quickly than oceans, and northern high latitudes change more quickly than the tropics, and the margins of biome regions change faster than do their cores.

Regional effects of climate change vary in nature. Some are the result of a generalised global change, such as rising temperature, resulting in local effects, such as melting ice. In other cases, a change may be related to a change in a particular ocean current or weather system. In such cases, the regional effect may be disproportionate and will not necessarily follow the global trend. The increasing temperatures from greenhouse gases have been causing sea levels to rise for many years.

There are three major ways in which global warming will make changes to regional climate: melting or forming ice, changing the hydrological cycle (of evaporation and precipitation) and changing currents in the oceans and air flows in the atmosphere. The coast can also be considered a region, and will suffer severe impacts from sea level rise.

The Arctic, Africa, small islands and Asian megadeltas are regions that are likely to be especially affected by future climate change. Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate variability and change because of multiple existing stresses and low adaptive capacity. Climate change is projected to decrease freshwater availability in central, south, east and southeast Asia, particularly in large river basins. With population growth and increasing demand from higher standards of living, this decrease could adversely affect more than a billion people by the 2050s. Small islands, whether located in the tropics or higher latitudes, are already exposed to extreme weather events and changes in sea level. This existing exposure will likely make these areas sensitive to the effects of climate change.

With very high confidence, scientists have concluded that physical and biological systems on all continents and in most oceans had been affected by recent climate changes, particularly regional temperature increases. Impacts include changes in regional rainfall patterns, earlier leafing of trees and plants over many regions; movements of species to higher latitudes and altitudes in the Northern Hemisphere; changes in bird migrations in Europe, North America and Australia; and shifting of the oceans' plankton and fish from cold- to warm-adapted communities.

The human influence on the climate can be seen in the geographical pattern of observed warming, with greater temperature increases over land and in polar regions rather than over the oceans. Using models, it is possible to identify the human "signal" of global warming over both land and ocean areas.

The Arctic, Africa, small islands and Asian megadeltas are regions that are likely to be especially affected by future climate change.

Within other areas, some people are particularly at risk from future climate change, such as the poor, young children and the elderly.

The Arctic is likely to be especially affected by climate change because of the high projected rate of regional warming and associated impacts. Temperature projections for the Arctic region were assessed by Anisimov et al. (2007). These suggested areally averaged warming of about 2 °C to 9 °C by the year 2100. The range reflects different projections made by different climate models, run with different forcing scenarios. Radiative forcing is a measure of the effect of natural and human activities on the climate. Different forcing scenarios reflect, for example, different projections of future human greenhouse gas emissions.

Africa is likely to be the continent most vulnerable to climate change. With high confidence, Boko et al. (2007) projected that in many African countries and regions, agricultural production and food security would probably be severely compromised by climate change and climate variability.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP, 2007) produced a post- conflict environmental assessment of Sudan. According to UNEP (2007), environmental stresses in Sudan are interlinked with other social, economic and political issues, such as population displacement and competition over natural resources. Regional climate change, through decreased precipitation, was thought to have been one of the factors which contributed to the conflict in Darfur. Along with other environmental issues, climate change could negatively affect future development in Sudan. One of the recommendations made by UNEP (2007) was for the international community to assist Sudan in adapting to climate change.

Located in the Greater Horn of Africa region, Kenya also experiences high vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. The main climate hazards include droughts and floods with current projects forecasting more intense and less predictable rainfall. In addition, other projections anticipate temperatures rising by 0.5 to 2 °C. In crowded, urban settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, the conditions of informal settlements or "slums" may exacerbate the impacts of climate change and disaster-related risk. In particular, the living conditions of large informal settlements often create a warmer "micro-climate" due to home construction materials, lack of ventilation, sparse green space, and poor access to electrical power and other services. To mitigate climate change-related risks in these informal neighborhood settlements, it will be important to upgrade these settlements through urban development interventions that are built for climate resilience. Such interventions include upgrades for waste.

Small islands developing states are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Harsh and extreme weather conditions is a part of everyday life however as the climate changes these small islands find it difficult to adapt to the rising scale and intensity of storm surges, salt water intrusion and coastal destruction.

The projected damage to small islands and atoll communities will be a consequence of climate change caused by developing countries that will disproportionately affect these developing nations. Sea-level rise and increased tropical cyclones are expected to place low-lying small islands in the Pacific, Indian, and Caribbean regions at risk of inundation and population displacement.

According to a on the vulnerability of island countries in the South Pacific to sea level rise and climate change, financially burdened island populations living in the lowest-lying regions are most vulnerable to risks of inundation and displacement. On the islands of Fiji, Tonga and western Samoa for example, high concentrations of migrants that have moved from outer islands inhabit low and unsafe areas along the coasts.

Atoll nations, which include countries that are composed entirely of the smallest form of islands, called motus, are at risk of entire population displacement. These nations include Kiribati, Maldives, the Marshall Islands, Tokelau, and Tuvalu. According to a study on climate dangers to atoll countries, characteristics of atoll islands that make them vulnerable to sea level rise and other climate change impacts include their small size, their isolation from other land, their low income resources, and their lack of protective infrastructure.

A study that engaged the experiences of residents in atoll communities found that the cultural identities of these populations are strongly tied to these lands. The risk of losing these lands therefore threatens the national sovereignty, or right to self-determination, of Atoll nations. Human rights activists argue that the potential loss of entire atoll countries, and consequently the loss of cultures and indigenous lifeways cannot be compensated with financial means. Some researchers suggest that the focus of international dialogues on these issues should shift from ways to relocate entire communities to strategies that instead allow for these communities to remain on their lands.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world. The archipelago of 7,109 islands is situated along the Pacific Ocean's typhoon belt, leaving the country vulnerable to an average of 20 typhoons every year, five of which are destructive. In addition, the Philippines is also located within the " Pacific Ring of Fire" which makes the country prone to frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Compounding these issues, the impacts of climate change, such as accelerated sea level rise, exacerbate the state's high susceptibility to natural disasters, which also flooding and landslides.

Recognizing the Philippines' considerable disaster risk, there is considerable need for disaster risk reduction and preparedness as well as humanitarian relief efforts. The Philippines institutionalizes the humanitarian cluster approach, and it plans and administers disaster relief through its National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC). NDRRMC also oversees the 18 regional Disaster Risk Reduction Management Councils (LDRRMCs), which in turn supervise disaster risk reduction and management operations at the provincial, city, and barangay levels (barangay is the lowest level of government, similar to the "village" level.

The region of Middle East is one of the most vulnerable to climate change. The impacts include increase in drought conditions, aridity, heatwaves, sea level rise. If greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, the region can become uninhabitable before the year 2100.

The ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the world, however, the region's climate mitigation efforts are not commensurate with the threats and risks it faces.

Climate change impacts in Afghanistan culminate from overlapping interactions of natural disasters (due to changes in the climate system), conflict, agricultural dependency, and severe socio-economic hardship. Combined with infrequent earthquakes, climate-related disasters such as floods, flash floods, avalanches and heavy snowfalls on average affect 200,000 people every year, causing massive losses of lives, livelihoods and properties. Unfortunately, these interacting factors, particularly protracted conflicts which erode and challenge the ability to handle, adapt to and plan for climate change at individual and national levels, often turn climate change risks and hazards into disasters.

Permanent ice cover on land is a result of a combination of low peak temperatures and sufficient precipitation. Some of the coldest places on Earth, such as the dry valleys of Antarctica, lack significant ice or snow coverage due to a lack of snow. Sea ice however maybe formed simply by low temperature, although precipitation may influence its stability by changing albedo, providing an insulating covering of snow and affecting heat transfer. Global warming has the capacity to alter both precipitation and temperature, resulting in significant changes to ice cover. Furthermore, the behaviour of ice sheets, ice caps and glaciers is altered by changes in temperature and precipitation, particularly as regards the behaviour of water flowing into and through the ice.

Models showing decreasing sea ice also show a corresponding decrease in polar bear habitat. Some scientists see the polar bear as a species which will be affected first and most severely by global warming because it is a top-level predator in the Arctic, which is projected to warm more than the global average. Recent reports show polar bears resorting to cannibalism, and scientists state that these are the only instances that they have observed of polar bears stalking and killing one another for food.

The Antarctic peninsula has lost a number of ice shelves recently. These are large areas of floating ice which are fed by glaciers. Many are the size of a small country. The sudden collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf in 2002 took 5 weeks or less and may have been due to global warming. Larsen B had previously been stable for up to 12,000 years.

Concern has been expressed about the stability of the West Antarctic ice sheet. A collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet could occur "within 300 years [as] a worst-case scenario. Rapid sea-level rise (>1 m per century) is more likely to come from the WAIS than from the [Greenland ice sheet]."

As the Greenland ice sheet loses mass from calving of icebergs as well as by melting of ice, any such processes tend to accelerate the loss of the ice sheet.

The IPCC suggest that Greenland will become ice free at around 5 Celsius degrees over pre-industrial levels,[citation needed ] but subsequent research comparing data from the Eemian period suggests that the ice sheet will remain at least in part at these temperatures. The volume of ice in the Greenland sheet is sufficient to cause a global sea level rise of 7 meters. It would take 3,000 years to completely melt the Greenland ice sheet. This figure was derived from the assumed levels of greenhouse gases over the duration of the experiment. In reality, these greenhouse gas levels are of course affected by future emissions and may differ from the assumptions made in the model.

Glacier retreat does not only affect the communities and ecosystems around the actual glacier but the entire downstream region. The most notable example of this is in India, where river systems such as the Indus and Ganges are ultimately fed by glacial meltwater from the Himalayas. Loss of these glaciers will have dramatic effects on the downstream region, increasing the risk of drought as lower flows of meltwater reduce summer river flows unless summer precipitation increases. Altered patterns of flooding can also affect soil fertility.

The Tibetan Plateau contains the world's third-largest store of ice. Qin Dahe, the former head of the China Meteorological Administration, said that the recent fast pace of melting and warmer temperatures will be good for agriculture and tourism in the short term; but issued a strong warning:

"Temperatures are rising four times faster than elsewhere in China, and the Tibetan glaciers are retreating at a higher speed than in any other part of the world.... In the short term, this will cause lakes to expand and bring floods and mudflows.... In the long run, the glaciers are vital lifelines for Asian rivers, including the Indus and the Ganges. Once they vanish, water supplies in those regions will be in peril."

Regions of permafrost cover much of the Arctic. In many areas, permafrost is melting, leading to the formation of a boggy, undulating landscape filled with thermokarst lakes and distinctive patterns of drunken trees. The process of permafrost melting is complex and poorly understood since existing models do not include feedback effects such as the heat generated by decomposition.[citation needed ]

Arctic permafrost soils are estimated to store twice as much carbon as is currently present in the atmosphere in the form of CO2. Warming in the Arctic is causing increased emissions of CO2 and Methane (CH ₄).

Much of the effect of global warming is felt through its influence on rain and snow. Regions may become wetter, drier, or may experience changes in the intensity of precipitation - such as moving from a damp climate to one defined by a mixture of floods and droughts. These changes may have a very severe impact on both the natural world and human civilisation, as both naturally occurring and farmed plants experience regional climate change that is beyond their ability to tolerate.

A U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) analysis published in the Journal of Climate October 2011, and cited on Joseph J. Romm's, climateprogress.org, found that increasing droughts in the Middle East during the wintertime when the region traditionally receives most of its rainfall to replenish aquifers, and anthropogenic climate change is partly responsible. Per Earth System Research Laboratory's Martin Hoerling "The magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone," and "This is not encouraging news for a region that already experiences water stress, because it implies natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region's climate to normal." the lead author of the paper. Twelve of the world's fifteen most water-scarce countries - Bahrain, Qatar, Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Israel and Palestine - are in the Middle East.

Polar and alpine ecosystems are assumed to be particularly vulnerable to climate change as their organisms dwell at temperatures just above the zero degree threshold for a very short summer growing season. Predicted changes in climate over the next 100 years are expected to be substantial in arctic and sub-arctic regions. Already there is evidence of upward shifts of plants in mountains and in arctic shrubs are predicted to increase substantially to warming.

One modeling study suggested that the extent of the Amazon rainforest may be reduced by 70% if global warming continues unchecked, due to regional precipitation changes that result from weakening of large-scale tropical circulation.

By the year 2100, severe storms that used to happen on average once every 20, 50, or 100 years ("twenty-year," "fifty-year," and "hundred-year storms") may happen every couple of years, according to a study published in June 2020 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Some studies suggest that the Sahara desert may have been more vegetated during the warmer Mid-Holocene period, and that future warming may result in similar patterns.

Some studies have found a greening of the Sahel due to global warming. Other climate models predict "a doubling of the number of anomalously dry years [in the Sahel] by the end of the century".

Global sea level is currently rising due to the thermal expansion of water in the oceans and the addition of water from ice sheets. Because of this, there low-lying coastal areas, many of which are heavily populated, are at risk of flooding.

Areas threatened by current sea level rise include Tuvalu and the Maldives. Regions that are prone to storm surges, such as London, are also threatened.

With very high confidence, IPCC (2007) projected that by the 2080s, many millions more people would experience floods every year due to sea level rise. The numbers affected were projected to be largest in the densely populated and low-lying megadeltas of Asia and Africa. Small islands were judged to be especially vulnerable.

It has been suggested that a shutdown of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation may result in relative cooling of the North Atlantic region by up to 8C in certain locations. Recent research suggests that this process is not currently underway.

Highlights of recent and projected regional impacts are shown below:

African countries are more affected by climate change because of the dependence on agriculture as well as their poor financial, technical and institutional capacity to adapt.[citation needed ]

Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate variability and change because of multiple existing stresses and low adaptive capacity. Existing stresses include poverty, political conflicts, and ecosystem degradation.

By 2050, between 350 million and 601 million people are projected to experience increased water stress due to climate change.

Climate change is likely to lead to the increasing frequency and severity of Intense rainfall events across Africa. Since the 1980s climate change has resulted in the tripling in the frequency of extreme storms in the Sahel region of West Africa.

Climate variability and change is projected to severely compromise agricultural production, including access to food, across Africa, which means there will be high food insecurity.

Climate change can influence pest infestation and spread of animal disease because of increase in temperature and rainfall variability

Toward the end of the 21st century, projected sea level rise will likely affect low-lying coastal areas with large populations

Climate variability and change can negatively impact human health. In many African countries, other factors already threaten human health. For example, malaria threatens health in southern Africa and the Eastern Highlands.

Expected impacts on the Arctic and Antarctic include:

Climate change in the Arctic will likely reduce the thickness and extent of glaciers and ice sheets.

Changes in natural ecosystems will likely have detrimental effects on many organisms including migratory birds, mammals, and higher predators. Climate change will likely cause changes in dominance structures in plant communities, with shrubs expanding.

In the Arctic, climate changes will likely reduce the extent of sea ice and permafrost, which can have mixed effects on human settlements. Negative impacts could include damage to infrastructure and changes to winter activities such as ice fishing and ice road transportation. Positive impacts could include more navigable northern sea routes.

Continued permafrost degradation will likely result in unstable infrastructure in Arctic regions, or Alaska before 2100. Thus, impacting roads, pipelines and buildings, as well as water distribution, and cause slope failures.

The reduction and melting of permafrost, sea level rise, and stronger storms may worsen coastal erosion.

Terrestrial and marine ecosystems and habitats are projected to be at risk to invasive species, as climatic barriers are lowered in both polar regions.

Expected impacts on Asia include:

Glaciers in Asia are melting at a faster rate than ever documented in historical records. Melting glaciers increase the risks of flooding and rock avalanches from destabilized slopes.

Climate change is projected to decrease freshwater availability in central, south, east and southeast Asia, particularly in large river basins. With population growth and increasing demand from higher standards of living, this decrease could adversely affect more than a billion people by the 2050s.

Increased flooding from the sea and, in some cases, from rivers, threatens coastal areas, especially heavily populated delta regions in south, east, and southeast Asia.

By the mid-21st century, crop yields could increase up to 20% in east and southeast Asia. In the same period, yields could decrease up to 30% in central and south Asia.

Sickness and death due to diarrhoeal disease are projected to increase in east, south, and southeast Asia due to projected changes in the hydrological cycle associated with climate change.

Agricultural demand from China's crops lead to land degradation and land modifications which in turn leads to increased greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental factor#Socioeconomic Drivers

Expected impacts on Europe include:

Wide-ranging impacts of climate change have already been documented in Europe. These impacts include retreating glaciers, longer growing seasons, species range shifts, and heat wave-related health impacts.

Future impacts of climate change are projected to negatively affect nearly all European regions. Many economic sectors, such as agriculture and energy, could face challenges.

In southern Europe, higher temperatures and drought may reduce water availability, hydropower potential, summer tourism, and crop productivity.

In central and eastern Europe, summer precipitation is projected to decrease, causing higher water stress. Forest productivity is projected to decline. The frequency of peatland fires is projected to increase.

In northern Europe, climate change is initially projected to bring mixed effects, including some benefits such as reduced demand for heating, increased crop yields, and increased forest growth. However, as climate change continues, negative impacts are likely to outweigh benefits. These include more frequent winter floods, endangered ecosystems, and increasing ground instability.

Impacts on South America

Expected impacts on South America include:

By mid-century, increases in temperature and decreases in soil moisture are projected to cause savanna to gradually replace tropical forest in the eastern Amazon basin.

In drier areas, climate change will likely worsen drought, leading to salinization (increased salt content) and desertification (land degradation) of agricultural land. The productivity of livestock and some important crops such as maize and coffee are projected to decrease, with adverse consequences for food security. In temperate zones, soybean yields are projected to increase.

Sea level rise is projected to increase risk of flooding, displacement of people, salinization of drinking water resources, and coastal erosion in low-lying areas.

Changes in precipitation patterns and the melting of glaciers are projected to significantly affect water availability for human consumption, agriculture, and energy generation.

Impacts on North America

Expected impacts on North America include:

Warming in western mountains is projected to decrease snowpack, increase winter flooding, and reduce summer flows, exacerbating competition for over-allocated water resources.

Disturbances from pests, diseases, and fire are projected to increasingly affect forests, with extended periods of high fire risk and large increases in area burned.

Moderate climate change in the early decades of the century is projected to increase aggregate yields of rain-fed agriculture by 5-20%, but with important variability among regions. Crops that are near the warm end of their suitable range or that depend on highly utilized water resources will likely face major challenges.

Increases in the number, intensity, and duration of heat waves during the course of the century are projected to further challenge cities that currently experience heat waves, with potential for adverse health impacts. Older populations are most at risk.

Climate change will likely increasingly stress coastal communities and habitats, worsening the existing stresses of development and pollution.

Expected impacts on Oceania include:

Expected impacts on small islands include:

Small islands, whether located in the tropics or higher latitudes, are already exposed to extreme weather events and changes in sea level. This existing exposure will likely make these areas sensitive to the effects of climate change.

Deterioration in coastal conditions, such as beach erosion and coral bleaching, will likely affect local resources such as fisheries, as well as the value of tourism destinations.

Sea level rise is projected to worsen inundation, storm surge, erosion, and other coastal hazards. These impacts would threaten vital infrastructure, settlements, and facilities that support the livelihood of island communities.

By mid-century, on many small islands (such as the Caribbean and Pacific), climate change is projected to reduce already limited water resources to the point that they become insufficient to meet demand during low-rainfall periods.

Invasion by non-native species is projected to increase with higher temperatures, particularly in mid- and high-latitude islands.

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2. ^ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007). "3.3.3 Especially affected systems, sectors and regions". Synthesis report. Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. A Contribution of Working Groups I, II, and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Integovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC.

3. ^ Rosenzweig; et al., "Chapter 1: Assessment of Observed Changes and Responses in Natural and Managed Systems", IPCC Fourth Assessment Report: Climate Change 2007, Executive summary, archived from the original on 2011-01-24

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Regional effects of climate change - Wikipedia

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Regional effects of climate change are long-term significant changes in the expected patterns of average weather of a specific region due to climate change. The world average temperature is rising due to the greenhouse effect caused by increasing levels of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide.

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Lead, Air, contaminated sites, death

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Pollution.org

It is time to put pollution on the map.

Pollution.org is envisioned as a site for policymakers and the public alike to find, understand, and interpret data about the pollution crisis affecting us all. Most importantly, the site seeks to start conversations about solutions and to collect data on what is working. Following the publication of The Lancet Commission on Pollution + Health, this website was developed to collect and present credible, up-to-date datasets on exposures related to modern pollution.

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About

Pollution.org

It is time to put pollution on the map.

Pollution.org is envisioned as a site for policymakers and the public alike to find, understand, and interpret data about the pollution crisis affecting us all. Most importantly, the site seeks to start conversations about solutions and to collect data on what is working. Following the publication of The Lancet Commission on Pollution + Health, this website was developed to collect and present credible, up-to-date datasets on exposures related to modern pollution. More

Air Pollution Data is a combination of Weather Data, Government and Private Air Quality Data, along with Satellite Data. The data source is Air Visual which compiles data on daily basis.

Pollution data source:

Site location

Contaminated Sites Data shows sites investigated by trained investigators as part of Pure Earth's Toxic Sites Investigation Program. This program is limited by budget and geographic focus of the funders and therefore only shows a small percentage of the toxic sites in Low and Middle-Income Countries. The data source is ContaminatedSites.org, updates show on this map automatically when sites are approved in that database.
Blacksmith Index:

Pure Earth as Secretariat of GAHP is responsible for the production of this map with input from partner organizations:

Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN)

Google Earth Outreach

Arnhold Institute for Global Health, Mt. Sinai

World Resources Institute - Aqueduct Water Risk Analysis

National Geographic, Your Shot

Air Visual

Axis Maps

Environmental Performance Index at Yale University

Dalhousie

UN Environment Live

UN Environment GEMS Water

USAID

European Commission

UNIDO

Only a part of the pollution problem can be visualized here, as data is incomplete. For example, air pollution is reasonably well measured in the US and Europe. But in the developing world, only a few countries, and sometimes only a few cities measure their air quality adequately. You may think, as a result, that the US and Europe look more polluted, as they have many monitors. But this is not the case! In fact, countries with more monitors will probably have more programs to reduce pollution. Many countries do not have any monitors at all and could easily be highly polluted.

Similarly, contaminated site data (usually soil and heavy metals pollution) is available for only some low and middle-income countries. (Please also note that we have not listed any contaminated sites in the developed world intentionally). If you see few or zero contaminated sites in one country or city, this does not mean the place is free of them. Instead, it merely means that there has not been enough study done to find them.

In an effort to fill in the many gaps in the available data, citizens can add their own data, utilizing the ReportPollution.org website where citizen reports are uploaded and then reviewed by Pure Earth for potential investigation as part of its Toxic Sites Investigation Program. These nominations of pollution will be integrated, after validation, and scientific verification, into the Contaminated Sites feature of this site.

Air pollution data set provided by AirVisual, spanning 9000+ cities globally, a list which is growing every day. The data set gets updated once daily.

WQI - UNEP/GEMS water and EEA Waterbase
The Global Environment Monitoring System for freshwater (GEMS/Water) provides the world community with sound data on fresh water quality to support scientific assessments and decision-making on the subject. Surface and ground water quality monitoring data collected from the global GEMS/Water monitoring network is shared through the GEMStat information system. Learn more at https://www.unep.org/gemswater/who-we-are/overview

A ranking system, the Blacksmith Index, ranks the severity of the site using a logarithmic scale. See these publications for detailed methodology.
A Simplified Risk-Ranking System for Prioritizing Toxic Pollution Sites in Low-and Middle-Income Countries

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It is time to put pollution on the map. Pollution.org is envisioned as a site for policymakers and the public alike to find, understand, and interpret data about the pollution crisis affecting us all. Most importantly, the site seeks to start conversations about solutions and to collect data on what is working.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ambient and household air pollution and health

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2 May 2018, Geneva - WHO estimates that around 7 million people die every year from exposure to fine particles in polluted air that lead to diseases such as stroke, heart disease, lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases and respiratory infections, including pneumonia.

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Climate change in South Asia is having significant impacts already which are expected to intensify as global temperatures rise due to climate change. The South Asia region consists of the eight countries Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. In the 2017 edition of Germanwatch's Climate Risk Index, two countries in South Asia - Bangladesh and Pakistan - ranked sixth and seventh respectively as the countries most affected by climate change in the period from 1996 to 2015, while another - India - ranked fourth among the list of countries most affected by climate change in 2015. South Asia is one of the most vulnerable regions globally to a number of direct and indirect effects of climate change, including sea level rise, cyclonic activity, and changes in ambient temperature and precipitation patterns. Ongoing sea level rise has already submerged several low-lying islands in the Sundarbans region, displacing thousands of people.

Among the countries of South Asia, Bangladesh is likely to be the worst affected by climate change. This is owing to a combination of geographical factors, such as its flat, low-lying, and delta-exposed topography, and socio-economic factors, including its high population density, levels of poverty, and dependence on agriculture. Its sea level, temperature, and evaporation are increasing, and the changes in precipitation and cross-boundary river flows are already beginning to cause drainage congestion. There is a reduction in freshwater availability, disturbance of morphological processes,[clarification needed ] and a higher intensity of flooding.

Bangladesh only contributes 0.21%[unreliable source? ] of the world's emissions yet it has 2.11% of the world's population.[unreliable source? ] In contrast, the United States makes up about 4.25 percent[unreliable source? ] of the world's population, yet they produce approximately 15 percent of the pollution that causes global warming.

According to data from 2020, China, the United States, India, and Russia are the world's biggest emitters of CO2.

Regarding local temperature rises, the IPCC figure shows that mean annual value of temperature rise by the end of the century in South Asia is 3.3 °C with the min-max range as 2.7 - 4.7 °C. The mean value for Tibet would be higher with mean increase of 3.8 °C and min-max figures of 2.6 and 6.1 °C respectively, which implies harsher warming conditions for the Himalayan watersheds.

Extreme weather events

Increased landslides and flooding are projected to have an impact upon states such as Assam. Ecological disasters, such as a 1998 coral bleaching event that killed off more than 70% of corals in the reef ecosystems off Lakshadweep and the Andamans, and was brought on by elevated ocean temperatures tied to global warming, are also projected to become increasingly common.

The global average sea level rose by 3.1 mm per year from 1993 to 2003. More recent analysis of a number of semi empirical models predict a sea level rise of about 1 metre by the year 2100. Ongoing sea level rises have already submerged several low-lying islands in the Sundarbans, displacing thousands of people. Temperature rises on the Tibetan Plateau are causing Himalayan glaciers to retreat. It has been predicted that the historical city of Thatta and Badin, in Sindh, Pakistan would have been swallowed by the sea by 2025, as the sea is already encroaching 80 acres of land here, every day.

In October 2019, a study was published in the Nature Communications journal. The journal claims that the number of people who will be impacted from sea level rise during 21st century is 3 times higher than the previous expected number. By the year 2050, 150 million will be under the water line during high tide and 300 million will live in zones with flooding every year. By the year 2100, those numbers differ sharply depending on the emission scenario. In a low emission scenario, 140 million will be under water during high tide and 280 million will have flooding each year. In high emission scenario, the numbers reach up to 540 million and 640 million, respectively. 70% of these people will live in 8 countries in Asia: China, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, and the Philippines. Large parts of Ho Chi Minh City, Mumbai, Shanghai, Bangkok and Basra could be inundated.

Population that will live in a zone of annual flooding by the year 2050 in millions, in 6 countries in Asia, according to old and new estimates:

India has the world's highest social cost of carbon. The Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research has reported that, if the predictions relating to global warming made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change come to fruition, climate-related factors could cause India's GDP to decline by up to 9%; contributing to this would be shifting growing seasons for major crops such as rice, production of which could fall by 40%. Around seven million people are projected to be displaced due to, among other factors, submersion of parts of Mumbai and Chennai, if global temperatures were to rise by a mere 2 °C (3.6 °F).

If severe climate changes occur, Bangladesh will lose land along the coast line. This will be highly damaging to Bangladeshis especially because about 50% population of Bangladeshis are employed in the agriculture sector, with rice as the largest production. If no further steps are taken to improve the current conditions global warming will affect the economy severely worsening the present issues further. The climate change would increase expenditure towards health care, cool drinks, alcoholic beverages, air conditioners, ice cream, cosmetics, agricultural chemicals, and other products.

Agriculture

Climate Change in India and Pakistan will have a disproportionate impact on the more than 400 million that make up India's poor. This is because so many depend on natural resources for their food, shelter and income. More than 56% of people in India work in agriculture, while in Pakistan 43℅ of its population work in agriculture while many others earn their living in coastal areas.

Heat waves' frequency and power are increasing in India because of climate change. The number of heat wave days has increased - not just day temperature, night temperatures increased also. 2018 was the country's sixth hottest year on record, and 11 of its 15 warmest years have occurred since 2004. The capital New Delhi broke its all-time record with a high of 48 degrees Celsius. The government is being advised by the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology in predicting and mitigating heat waves. The government of Andhra Pradesh, for instance, is creating a Heat Wave Action Plan.

Villagers in India's North Eastern state of Meghalaya are also concerned that rising sea levels will submerge neighboring low-lying Bangladesh, resulting in an influx of refugees into Meghalaya which has few resources to handle such a situation.

There are many concrete steps which can be taken to address the threat of climate change. Incentives can be provided for electric vehicles or public transport and this curb the impact of the transportation sector. However, though these suggestions have been made, there is no political will to carry them out. Households can be given electricity and slowly phasing out LPG (the current trend is to increase the usage of the latter). Rainwater can be harvested and the rivers could be restored to their original flow so that they can bring back the wetlands and the natural ways of silt, nutrient and wildlife flow. All of these use technologies and can be implemented by the 11-year period the IPCC has stipulated before which any change must be made if we are to evade the adverse effects of climate change. So far, though the initiatives by the Delhi Metro to switch to solar power- or similar efforts by Kochi airport-are a step in the right direction, such moves are few and far between. These models should be taken up by other agents as well.

The latest accord, the 2015 Paris Agreement, takes a different approach. The 197 signatory countries have promised to limit global temperature increase to just 1.5 °C over pre-industrialization levels, but each country has set its own targets. India, for instance, has promised to cut its emissions intensity (emissions per unit of GDP) by 33-35% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels (Chart 1a/ 1b).

The Asia-Pacific climate change adaptation information platform (AP-PLAT) was launched in 2019. It aims to provide Asia and Pacific countries with data on climate change and convert it to adaptation and resilience measures.

To learn more about the climate change by country, see the following articles:

1. ^ Kreft, Sönke; David Eckstein, David; Melchior, Inga (November 2016). Global Climate Risk Index 2017 (PDF). Bonn: Germanwatch e.V. ISBN 978-3-943704-49-5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 September 2017.

2. ^ Ayers, Jessica; Huq, Saleemul; Wright, Helena; Faisal, Arif M.; Hussain, Syed Tanveer (2014-10-02). "Mainstreaming climate change adaptation into development in Bangladesh". Climate and Development. 6 (4): 293-305. doi:10.1080/17565529.2014.977761. ISSN 1756-5529. S2CID 54721256.

3. ^ Thomas TS, Mainuddin K, Chiang C, Rahman A, Haque A, Islam N, Quasem S, Sun Y (2013). Agriculture and Adaptation in Bangladesh: Current and Projected Impacts of Climate Change (PDF) (Report). IFPRI.

4. Christensen, J.H., B. Hewitson, A. Busuioc, A. Chen, X. Gao, I. Held, R. Jones, R.K. Kolli, W.-T. Kwon, R. Laprise, V. Magaña Rueda, L. Mearns, C.G. Menéndez, J. Räisänen, A. Rinke, A. Sarr and P. Whetton, 2007: Regional Climate Projections. In: ^ Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Archived 2007-12-15 at the Wayback Machine [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. (Hereafter abbreviated to IPCC AR4 - WG1 - chapter11) Table 11.1, page 855.

5. ^ Dasgupta, Saibal (3 February 2007). "Warmer Tibet can see Brahmaputra flood Assam". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 23 October 2012.

6. ^ Aggarwal D, Lal M. "Vulnerability of the Indian coastline to sea level rise" (PDF). SURVAS (Flood Hazard Research Centre). Middlesex University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-07-01.

7. IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policymakers. In: ^ Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M.Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA. (Hereafter abbreviated to IPCC AR4 - WG1 - SPM) Table SPM-3, page 13.

8. ^ Rahmstorf, Perrette, Vermeer (2012). "Testing the robustness of semi-empirical sea level projections". Climate Dynamics. 39 (3-4): 861-875. Bibcode:2012ClDy...39..861R. doi:10.1007/s00382-011-1226-7. S2CID 55493326.

9. ^ Kulp, Scott A.; Strauss, Benjamin H. (29 October 2019). "New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding". Nature Communications. 10 (1): 4844. Bibcode:2019NatCo..10.4844K. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12808-z. PMC . PMID 31664024.

10. ^ Rosane, Olivia (October 30, 2019). "300 Million People Worldwide Could Suffer Yearly Flooding by 2050". Ecowatch.

11. ^ Amos, Jonathan (30 October 2019). "Climate change: Sea level rise to affect 'three times more people'". BBC.

12. ^ "New study finds incredibly high carbon pollution costs - especially for the US and India". The Guardian. 1 October 2018.

13. ^ Sethi, Nitin (3 February 2007). "Global warming: Mumbai to face the heat". The Times of India. Archived from the original on 23 October 2012.

14. ^ Ahmed, Ahsan; Koudstall, Rob; Werners, Saskia (2006-10-08). "'Key Risks.' Considering Adaptation to Climate Change Towards a Sustainable Development of Bangladesh".[unreliable source? ]

15. ^ Ramesha Chandrappa, Sushil Gupta, Umesh Chandra Kulshrestha, Climate Change: Principles and Asian Context, Springer-Verlag, 2011

16. ^ Islam, Md. Nazrul; van Amstel, André, eds. (2018). "Bangladesh I: Climate Change Impacts, Mitigation and Adaptation in Developing Countries". Springer Climate. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-26357-1. ISBN 978-3-319-26355-7. ISSN 2352-0698. S2CID 199493022.

17. ^ "Launch of the Asia-Pacific Climate Change Adaptation Information Platform".

18. ^ Kulp, Scott A.; Strauss, Benjamin H. (2019-10-29). "New elevation data triple estimates of global vulnerability to sea-level rise and coastal flooding". Nature Communications. 10 (1): 4844. Bibcode:2019NatCo..10.4844K. doi:10.1038/s41467-019-12808-z. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC . PMID 31664024.

19. ^ Kreft, Sönke; David Eckstein, David; Melchior, Inga (December 2019). Global Climate Risk Index 2020 (PDF). Bonn: Germanwatch e.V. ISBN 978-3-943704-77-8. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 December 2019.

20. ^ Ayers, Jessica; Huq, Saleemul; Wright, Helena; Faisal, Arif M.; Hussain, Syed Tanveer (2014-10-02). "Mainstreaming climate change adaptation into development in Bangladesh". Climate and Development. 6 (4): 293-305. doi:10.1080/17565529.2014.977761. ISSN 1756-5529.

21. ^ Thomas TS, Mainuddin K, Chiang C, Rahman A, Haque A, Islam N, Quasem S, Sun Y (2013). Agriculture and Adaptation in Bangladesh: Current and Projected Impacts of Climate Change (PDF) (Report). IFPRI.

22. ^ Kreft, Sönke; David Eckstein, David; Melchior, Inga (November 2016). Global Climate Risk Index 2017 (PDF). Bonn: Germanwatch e.V. ISBN 978-3-943704-49-5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 25 September 2017.

23. ^ "Nepal Multidimensional Poverty Index 2018". National Planning Commission.

24. ^ Karki, Ramchandra; Hasson, Shabeh ul; Schickhoff, Udo; Scholten, Thomas; Böhner, Jürgen (2017). "Rising Precipitation Extremes across Nepal". Climate. 5 (1): 4. doi:10.3390/cli5010004.

25. ^ Shrestha, Uttam Babu; Shrestha, Asheshwor Man; Aryal, Suman; Shrestha, Sujata; Gautam, Madhu Sudan; Ojha, Hemant (1 June 2019). "Climate change in Nepal: a comprehensive analysis of instrumental data and people's perceptions". Climatic Change. 154 (3): 315-334. Bibcode:2019ClCh..154..315S. doi:10.1007/s10584-019-02418-5. S2CID 159233373.

26. Eckstein, David, et al. ^ "Global climate risk index 2020." (PDF) Germanwatch (2019).

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Climate change in South Asia - Wikipedia

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Climate change in South Asia is having significant impacts already which are expected to intensify as global temperatures rise due to climate change. The South Asia region consists of the eight countries Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, the Maldives and Sri Lanka.

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1. permafrost thawing: caused an oilspill

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Climate change in the is causing major environmental issues. These range from the well known, such as the loss of sea ice or melting of the Greenland ice sheet, to more obscure, but deeply significant issues, such as permafrost thaw, social consequences for locals and the geopolitical ramifications of these changes.

These effects are wide-ranging and can be seen in many Arctic systems, from fauna and flora to territorial claims. Temperatures in the region are rising twice as fast as elsewhere on Earth, leading to these effects worsening year on year and causing significant concern. The changing Arctic has global repercussions, perhaps via ocean circulation changes or arctic amplification.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, "surface air temperatures (SATs) in the Arctic have warmed at approximately twice the global rate". The period of 1995-2005 was the warmest decade in the Arctic since at least the 17th century, with temperatures 2 °C (3.6 °F) above the 1951-1990 average. In addition, since 2013, Arctic annual mean SAT has been at least 1 °C (1.8 °F) warmer than the 1981-2010 mean. With 2020 having the second warmest SAT anomaly after 2016, being 1.9 °C (3.4 °F) warmer than the 1981-2010 average.

Some regions within the Arctic have warmed even more rapidly, with Alaska and western Canada's temperature rising by 3 to 4 °C (5.40 to 7.20 °F). This warming has been caused not only by the rise in greenhouse gas concentration, but also the deposition of soot on Arctic ice. A 2013 article published in Geophysical Research Letters has shown that temperatures in the region haven't been as high as they currently are since at least 44,000 years ago and perhaps as long as 120,000 years ago. The authors conclude that "anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases have led to unprecedented regional warmth."

On 20 June 2020, for the first time, a temperature measurement was made inside the Arctic Circle of 38 °C, more than 100 °F. This kind of weather was expected in the region only by 2100. In March, April and May the average temperature in the Arctic was 10 °C higher than normal. This heat wave, without human - induced warming, could happen only one time in 80,000 years, according to an attribution study published in July 2020. It is the strongest link of a weather event to anthropogenic climate change that had been ever found, for now. Such heat waves are generally a result of an unusual state of the jet stream. Some scientists suggest that climate change will slow the jet stream by reducing the difference in temperature between the Arctic and more southern territories, because the Arctic is warming faster. This can facilitate the occurring of such heat waves. The scientists do not know if the 2020 heat wave is the result of such change.

The poles of the Earth are more sensitive to any change in the planet's climate than the rest of the planet. In the face of ongoing global warming, the poles are warming faster than lower latitudes. The Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the global average, process known as Arctic amplification (AA). The primary cause of this phenomenon is ice-albedo feedback where, by melting, ice uncovers darker land or ocean beneath, which then absorbs more sunlight, causing more heating. A study from 2019 identified sea-ice loss under increasing CO2 as a main driver for large AA. Thus, large AA only occurs from October to April in areas suffering from important sea-ice loss, because of the "Increased outgoing longwave radiation and heat fluxes from the newly opened waters".

Black carbon deposits (from the combustion of heavy fuel oil (HFO) of Arctic shipping) absorbe solar radiation in the atmosphere and strongly reduce the albedo when deposited on snow and ice, thus accelerating the effect of the melting of snow and sea ice. A 2013 study quantified that gas flaring at petroleum extraction sites contributed over 40% of the black carbon deposited in the Arctic. Recent studies attributed the majority (56%) of Arctic surface black carbon to emissions from Russia, followed by European emissions, and Asia also being a large source.

Sea ice in the arctic is currently in decline in area, extent, and volume, and has been accelerating during the early twenty‐first century, with a decline rate of −4.7% per decade (it has declined over 50% since the first satellite records). It is also thought that summertime sea ice may cease to exist sometime during the 21st century. This sea ice loss constitutes one of the main drivers for surface-based Arctic amplification. Sea ice area refers to the total area covered by ice, whereas sea ice extent is the area of ocean with at least 15% sea ice, while the volume is the total amount of ice in the Arctic.

Reliable measurement of sea ice edges began with the satellite era in the late 1970s. Before this time, sea ice area and extent were monitored less precisely by a combination of ships, buoys and aircraft. The data show a long-term negative trend in recent years, attributed to global warming, although there is also a considerable amount of variation from year to year. Some of this variation may be related to effects such as the Arctic oscillation, which may itself be related to global warming.

The rate of the decline in entire Arctic ice coverage is accelerating. From 1979 to 1996, the average per decade decline in entire ice coverage was a 2.2% decline in ice extent and a 3% decline in ice area. For the decade ending 2008, these values have risen to 10.1% and 10.7%, respectively. These are comparable to the September to September loss rates in year-round ice (i.e., perennial ice, which survives throughout the year), which averaged a retreat of 10.2% and 11.4% per decade, respectively, for the period 1979-2007.

The Arctic sea ice September minimum extent (SIE) (i.e., area with at least 15% sea ice coverage) reached new record lows in 2002, 2005, 2007, 2012 (5.32 million km2), 2016 and 2019 (5.65 million km2). The 2007 melt season let to a minimum 39% below the 1979-2000 average, and for the first time in human memory, the fabled Northwest Passage opened completely. During July 2019 the warmest month in the Arctic was recorded, reaching the lowest SIE (7.5 million km2) and sea ice volume (8900 km3). Setting a decadal trend of SIE decline of -13%. As for now, the SIE has shrink by 50% since the 1970s.

From 2008 to 2011, Arctic sea ice minimum extent was higher than 2007, but it did not return to the levels of previous years. In 2012 however, the 2007 record low was broken in late August with three weeks still left in the melt season. It continued to fall, bottoming out on 16 September 2012 at 3.42 million square kilometers (1.32 million square miles), or 760,000 square kilometers (293,000 square miles) below the previous low set on 18 September 2007 and 50% below the 1979-2000 average.

An end to summer sea ice?

The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 summarized the current state of sea ice projections: "the projected reduction [in global sea ice cover] is accelerated in the Arctic, where some models project summer sea ice cover to disappear entirely in the high-emission A2 scenario in the latter part of the 21st century.″ However, current climate models frequently underestimate the rate of sea ice retreat. A summertime ice-free Arctic would be unprecedented in recent geologic history, as currently scientific evidence does not indicate an ice-free polar sea anytime in the last 700,000 years.

The Arctic ocean will likely be free of summer sea ice before the year 2100, but many different dates have been projected, with models showing near-complete to complete loss in September from 2035 to some time around 2067.

Permafrost is an important component of hydrological systems and ecosystems within the Arctic landscape. In the Northern Hemisphere the terrestrial permafrost domain comprises around 18 million km2. Whitin this permafrost region, the total soil organic carbon (SOC) stock is estimated to be 1,460-1,600 Pg (where 1 Pg = 1 billion tons), which constitutes double the amount of carbon currently contained in the amosphere.

Human caused climate change leads to higher temperatures that cause permafrost thawing in the Arctic. The thawing of the various types of Arctic permafrost could release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

The 2019 Arctic report card estimated that Arctic permafrost releases 0.3 Pg C per year. However, a recent study increased this estimate to 0.6 Pg, since the carbon emited across the northern permafrost domain during the Arctic winter offsets the average carbon uptake during the growing season in that amount. Under a business-as-usual emissions scenario RCP 8.5, winter CO2 emissions from the norther permafrost domain is predicted to increase 41% by 2100, and 17% under the moderate scenario RCP 4.5.

Until now Permafrost carbon feedback (PCF) modeling had mainly focussed on gradual permafrost thaw, rather than taking abrupt thaw also into consideration, and therefore greatly underestimating thawing permafrost carbon release. Nevertheless, a study from 2018, by using field observations, radiocarbon dating, and remote sensing to account for thermokarst lakes, determined that abrupt thaw will more than double permafrost carbon emissions by 2100. And a second study from 2020, showed that under a high RCP 8.5 scenario, abrupt thaw carbon emissions across 2.5 million km2 are projected to provide the same feedback as gradual thaw of near-surface permafrost across the whole 18 million km2 it occupies.

Thawing permafrost represents a threat to industrial infrastructure. In May 2020, permafrost melting due to climate change caused the worst oil spill to date in the Arctic. The melting of permafrost caused a collapse of a fuel tank, spilling 6,000 tonnes of diesel into the land, 15,000 into the water. The rivers Ambarnaya, Daldykan and many smaller rivers were polluted. The pollution reached the lake Pyasino that is important to the water supply of the entire Taimyr Peninsula. State of emergency at the federal level was declared. Many buildings and infrastructure are built on permafrost, which cover 65% of Russian territory, and all those can be damaged as it melts. The thawing can also cause leakage of toxic elements from sites of buried toxic waste.

Subsea permafrost occurs beneath the seabed and exists in the continental shelves of the polar regions. Thus, it can be defined as "the unglaciated continental shelf areas exposed during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, ~26 500 BP) that are currently inundated". Large stocks of organic matter (OM) and methane (CH4) are accumulated below and within the subsea permafrost deposits.This source of methane is different from methane clathrates, but contributes to the overall outcome and feedbacks in the Earth's climate system.

Sea ice serves to stabilise methane deposits on and near the shoreline, preventing the clathrate breaking down and venting into the water column and eventually reaching the atmosphere. Methane is released through bubbles from the subsea permafrost into the Ocean (a process called ebullition). During storms, methane levels in the water column drop dramatically, when wind-driven air-sea gas exchange accelerates the ebullition process into the atmosphere. This observed pathway suggests that methane from seabed permafrost will progress rather slowly, instead of abrupt changes. However, Arctic cyclones, fueled by global warming and further accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could contribute to more release from this methane cache, which is really important for the Arctic. An update to the mechanisms of this permafrost degradation was published in 2017.

The size of today's subsea permafrost has been estimated on around 2 million km2 (~1/5 of the terrestrial permafrost domain size), which constitutes a 30-50% reduction since the LGM. Containing around 560 GtC in OM and 45 GtC in CH4, with a current release of 18 and 38 MtC per year respectively. Which is due to the warming and thawing that the subsea permafrost domain has been experiencing since after the LGM (~14000 years ago). In fact, because the subsea permafrost systems responds at millenial timescales to climate warming, the current carbon fluxes it is emitting to the water are in response to climatic changes ocurring after the LGM. Therefore, human-driven climate change effects on subsea permafrost will only be seen hundreds or thousands of years from today. According to predictions under a business-as-usual emissions scenario RCP 8.5, by 2100, 43 GtC could be released from the subsea permafrost domain, and 190 GtC by the year 2300. Whereas for the low emissions scenario RCP 2.6, 30% less emissions are estimated. This constitutes an alarming antropogenic-driven acceleration of C release in the upcoming centuries.

Climate change is expected to have a strong effect on the Arctic's flora, some of which is already being seen. These changes in vegetation are associated with the increases in landscape scale methane emissions, as well as increases in CO2, Tº and the disruption of ecological cycles which affect patterns in nutrient cycling, humidity and other key ecological factors that help shape plant communities.

These indicies can be used as proxies for vegetation productivity, and their shifts over time can provide information on how vegetation changes over time. One of the two most used ways to define shifts in vegetation in the Arctic are the concepts of Arctic greening and Arctic browning. The former refers to a positive trend in the aforementioned greenness indices, indicating increases in plant cover or biomass whereas browning can be broadly understood as a negative trend, with decreases in those variables.

The direct impact on mosses and lichens is unclear as there exist very few studies at species level, but climate change is more likely to cause increased fluctuation and more frequent extreme events. The expansion of shrubs could affect permafrost dynamics, but the picture is quite unclear at the moment. In the winter, shrubs trap more snow, which insulates the permafrost from extreme cold spells, but in the summer they shade the ground from direct sunlight, how these two effects counter and balance each other is not yet well understood. Warming is likely to cause changes in plant communities overall, contributing to the rapid changes tundra ecosystems are facing. While shrubs may increase in range and biomass, warming may also cause a decline in cushion plants such as moss campion, and since cushion plants act as facilitator species across trophic levels and fill important ecological niches in several environments, this could cause cascading effects in these ecosystems that could severely affect the way in which they function and are structured.

The expansion of these shrubs can also have strong effects on other important ecological dynamics, such as the albedo effect. These shrubs change the winter surface of the tundra from undisturbed, uniform snow to mixed surface with protruding branches disrupting the snow cover, this type of snow cover has a lower albedo effect, with reductions of up to 55%, which contributes to a positive feedback loop on regional and global climate warming. This reduction of the albedo effect means that more radiation is absorbed by plants, and thus, surface temperatures increase, which could disrupt current surface-atmosphere energy exchanges and affect thermal regimes of permafrost. Carbon cycling is also being affected by these changes in vegetation, as parts of the tundra increase their shrub cover, they behave more like boreal forests in terms of carbon cycling. This is speeding up the carbon cycle, as warmer temperatures lead to increased permafrost thawing and carbon release, but also carbon capturing from plants that have increased growth. It is not certain whether this balance will go in one direction or the other, but studies have found that it is more likely that this will eventually lead to increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

For a more graphic and geographically focused overview of the situation, maps above show the Arctic Vegetation Index Trend between July 1982 and December 2011 in the Arctic Circle. Shades of green depict areas where plant productivity and abundance increased; shades of brown show where photosynthetic activity declined, both according to the NDVI index. The maps show a ring of greening in the treeless tundra ecosystems of the circumpolar Arctic-the northernmost parts of Canada, Russia, and Scandinavia. Tall shrubs and trees started to grow in areas that were previously dominated by tundra grasses, as part of the previously mentioned "shrubification" of the tundra. Researchers concluded that plant growth had increased by 7% to 10% overall.

In terms of aquatic vegetation, reduction of sea ice has boosted the productivity of phytoplankton by about twenty percent over the past thirty years. However, the effect on marine ecosystems is unclear, since the larger types of phytoplankton, which are the preferred food source of most zooplankton, do not appear to have increased as much as the smaller types. So far, Arctic phytoplankton have not had a significant impact on the global carbon cycle. In summer, the melt ponds on young and thin ice have allowed sunlight to penetrate the ice, in turn allowing phytoplankton to bloom in unexpected concentrations, although it is unknown just how long this phenomenon has been occurring, or what its effect on broader ecological cycles is.

The northward shift of the subarctic climate zone is allowing animals that are adapted to that climate to move into the far north, where they are replacing species that are more adapted to a pure Arctic climate. Where the Arctic species are not being replaced outright, they are often interbreeding with their southern relations. Among slow-breeding vertebrate species, this usually has the effect of reducing the genetic diversity of the genus. Another concern is the spread of infectious diseases, such as brucellosis or phocine distemper virus, to previously untouched populations. This is a particular danger among marine mammals who were previously segregated by sea ice.

3 April 2007, the National Wildlife Federation urged the United States Congress to place polar bears under the Endangered Species Act. Four months later, the United States Geological Survey completed a year-long study which concluded in part that the floating Arctic sea ice will continue its rapid shrinkage over the next 50 years, consequently wiping out much of the polar bear habitat. The bears would disappear from Alaska, but would continue to exist in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and areas off the northern Greenland coast. Secondary ecological effects are also resultant from the shrinkage of sea ice; for example, polar bears are denied their historic length of seal hunting season due to late formation and early thaw of pack ice.

Similarly, Arctic warming negatively affects the foraging and breeding ecology many other species of arctic marine mammals, such as walruses, seals, foxes or reindeers. In July 2019, 200 Svalbard reindeer were found starved to death apparently due to low precipitation related to climate change.

In the short-term, climate warming may have neutral or positive effects on the nesting cycle of many Arctic-breeding shorebirds.

Models predict a sea-level contribution of about 5 centimetres (2 in) from melting of the Greenland ice sheet during the 21st century. It is also predicted that Greenland will become warm enough by 2100 to begin an almost complete melt during the next 1,000 years or more. In early July 2012, 97% percent of the ice sheet experienced some form of surface melt, including the summits.

Ice thickness measurements from the GRACE satellite indicate that ice mass loss is accelerating. For the period 2002-2009, the rate of loss increased from 137 Gt/yr to 286 Gt/yr, with every year seeing on average 30 gigatonnes more mass lost than in the preceding year. The rate of melting was 4 times higher in 2019 than in 2003. In the year 2019 the melting contributed 2.2 millimeters to sea level rise in just 2 months. Overall, the signs are overwhelming that melting is not only occurring, but accelerating year on year.

In September 2020, satellite imagery showed that a big chunk of ice shattered into many small pieces from the last remaining ice shelf in Nioghalvfjerdsfjorden, Greenland. This ice sheet is connected to the interior ice sheet, and could prove a hotspot for degalciation in coming years.

Another unexpected effect of this melting relates to activities by the United States military in the area. Specifically, Camp Century, a nuclear powered base which has been producing nuclear waste over the years In 2016, a group of scientists evaluated the environmental impact and estimated that due to changing weather patterns over the next few decades, melt water could release the nuclear waste, 20,000 liters of chemical waste and 24 million liters of untreated sewage into the environment. However, so far neither US or Denmark has taken responsibility for the clean-up.

Although this is now thought unlikely in the near future, it has also been suggested that there could be a shutdown of thermohaline circulation, similar to that which is believed to have driven the Younger Dryas, an abrupt climate change event. Even if a full shutdown is unlikely, a slowing down of this current and a weakening of its effects on climate has already been seen, with a 2015 study finding that the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) has weakened by 15% to 20% over the last 100 years. This slowing could lead to cooling in the North Atlantic, although this could be mitigated by global warming, but it is not clear up to what extent. Additional effects of this would be felt around the globe, with changes in tropical patterns, stronger storms in the North Atlantic and reduced European crop productivity among the potential repercussions.

There is also potentially a possibility of a more general disruption of ocean circulation, which may lead to an ocean anoxic event; these are believed to be much more common in the distant past. It is unclear whether the appropriate pre-conditions for such an event exist today, but these ocean anoxic events are thought to have been mainly caused by nutrient run-off, which was driven by increased CO2 emissions in the distant past. This draws an unsettling parallel with current climate change, but the amount of CO2 that's thought to have caused these events is far higher than the levels we're currently facing, so effects of this magnitude are considered unlikely on a short time scale.

Growing evidence that global warming is shrinking polar ice has added to the urgency of several nations' Arctic territorial claims in hopes of establishing resource development and new shipping lanes, in addition to protecting sovereign rights.

As ice sea coverage decreases more and more, year on year, Arctic countries (Russia, Canada, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the United States and Denmark representing Greenland) are making moves on the geopolitical stage to ensure access to potential new shipping lanes, oil and gas reserves, leading to overlapping claims across the region. However, there is only one single land border dispute in the Arctic, with all others relating to the sea, that is Hans Island. This small uninhabited island lies in the Nares strait, between Canada's Ellesmere Island and the northern coast of Greenland. Its status comes from its geographical position, right between the equidistant boundaries determined in a 1973 treaty between Canada and Denmark. Even though both countries have acknowledged the possibility of splitting the island, no agreement on the island has been reached, with both nations still claiming it for themselves.

There is more activity in terms of maritime boundaries between countries, where overlapping claims for internal waters, territorial seas and particularly Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) can cause frictions between nations. Currently, official maritime borders have an unclaimed triangle of international waters lying between them, that is at the centerpoint of international disputes.

This unclaimed land can be obtainable by submitting a claim to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, these claims can be based on geological evidence that continental shelves extend beyond their current maritime borders and into international waters.

Some overlapping claims are still pending resolution by international bodies, such as a large portion containing the north pole that is both claimed by Denmark and Russia, with some parts of it also contested by Canada. Another example is that of the Northwest Passage, globally recognized as international waters, but technically in Canadian waters. This has led to Canada wanting to limit the amount of ships that can go through for environmental reasons, but the United States disputes that they have the authority to do so, favouring unlimited passage of vessels.

As climate change speeds up, it is having more and more of a direct impact on societies around the world. This is particularly true of people that live in the Arctic, where increases in temperature are ocurring at faster rates than at other latitudes in the world, and where traditional ways of living, deeply connected with the natural arctic environment are at particular risk of environmental disruption caused by these changes.

The warming of the atmosphere and ecological changes that come alongside it presents challenges to local communities such as the Inuit. Hunting, which is a major way of survival for some small communities, will be changed with increasing temperatures. The reduction of sea ice will cause certain species populations to decline or even become extinct. Inuit communities are deeply reliant on seal hunting, which is dependent on sea ice flats, where seals are hunted.

Unsuspected changes in river and snow conditions will cause herds of animals, including reindeer, to change migration patterns, calving grounds, and forage availability. In good years, some communities are fully employed by the commercial harvest of certain animals. The harvest of different animals fluctuates each year and with the rise of temperatures it is likely to continue changing and creating issues for Inuit hunters, as unpredictability and disruption of ecological cycles further complicate life in these communities, which already face significant problems, such as Inuit communities being the poorest and most unemployed of North America.

Other forms of transportation in the Arctic have seen negative impacts from the current warming, with some transportation routes and pipelines on land being disrupted by the melting of ice. Many Arctic communities rely on frozen roadways to transport supplies and travel from area to area. The changing landscape and unpredictability of weather is creating new challenges in the Arctic. Researchers have documented historical and current trails created by the Inuit in the Pan Inuit Trails Atlas, finding that the change in sea ice formation and breakup has resulted in changes to the routes of trails created by the Inuit.

The Transpolar Sea Route is a future Arctic shipping lane running from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean across the center of the Arctic Ocean. The route is also sometimes called Trans-Arctic Route. In contrast to the Northeast Passage (including the Northern Sea Route) and the North-West Passage it largely avoids the territorial waters of Arctic states and lies in international high seas.

Governments and private industry have shown a growing interest in the Arctic. Major new shipping lanes are opening up: the northern sea route had 34 passages in 2011 while the Northwest Passage had 22 traverses, more than any time in history. Shipping companies may benefit from the shortened distance of these northern routes. Access to natural resources will increase, including valuable minerals and offshore oil and gas. Finding and controlling these resources will be difficult with the continually moving ice. Tourism may also increase as less sea ice will improve safety and accessibility to the Arctic.

The melting of Arctic ice caps is likely to increase traffic in and the commercial viability of the Northern Sea Route. One study, for instance, projects, "remarkable shifts in trade flows between Asia and Europe, diversion of trade within Europe, heavy shipping traffic in the Arctic and a substantial drop in Suez traffic. Projected shifts in trade also imply substantial pressure on an already threatened Arctic ecosystem."

Individual countries within the Arctic zone, Canada, Denmark ( Greenland), Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States ( Alaska) conduct independent research through a variety of organizations and agencies, public and private, such as Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute. Countries who do not have Arctic claims, but are close neighbors, conduct Arctic research as well, such as the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration (CAA). The United States's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) produces an Arctic Report Card annually, containing peer-reviewed information on recent observations of environmental conditions in the Arctic relative to historical records.

International cooperative research between nations has become increasingly important:

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25. ^ Shakhova, Natalia; Semiletov, Igor; Leifer, Ira; Sergienko, Valentin; Salyuk, Anatoly; Kosmach, Denis; Chernykh, Denis; Stubbs, Chris; Nicolsky, Dmitry; Tumskoy, Vladimir; Gustafsson, Örjan (24 November 2013). "Ebullition and storm-induced methane release from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf" (PDF). Nature. 7 (1): 64-70. Bibcode:2014NatGe...7...64S. doi:10.1038/ngeo2007.

26. ^ Shakhova, Natalia; Semiletov, Igor; Gustafsson, Orjan; Sergienko, Valentin; Lobkovsky, Leopold; Dudarev, Oleg; Tumskoy, Vladimir; Grigoriev, Michael; Mazurov, Alexey; Salyuk, Anatoly; Ananiev, Roman; Koshurnikov, Andrey; Kosmach, Denis; Charkin, Alexander; Dmitrevsky, Nicolay; Karnaukh, Victor; Gunar, Alexey; Meluzov, Alexander; Chernykh, Denis (2017). "Current rates and mechanisms of subsea permafrost degradation in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf". Nature Communications. 8: 15872. Bibcode:2017NatCo...815872S. doi:10.1038/ncomms15872. PMC . PMID 28639616.

27. ^ Bjorkman, Anne D.; García Criado, Mariana; Myers-Smith, Isla H.; Ravolainen, Virve; Jónsdóttir, Ingibjörg Svala; Westergaard, Kristine Bakke; Lawler, James P.; Aronsson, Mora; Bennett, Bruce; Gardfjell, Hans; Heiðmarsson, Starri (30 March 2019). "Status and trends in Arctic vegetation: Evidence from experimental warming and long-term monitoring". Ambio. 49 (3): 678-692. doi:10.1007/s13280-019-01161-6. ISSN 0044-7447. PMC . PMID 30929249.

28. ^ Alatalo, Juha M; Little, Chelsea J (22 March 2014). "Simulated global change: contrasting short and medium term growth and reproductive responses of a common alpine/Arctic cushion plant to experimental warming and nutrient enhancement". SpringerPlus. 3 (1): 157. doi:10.1186/2193-1801-3-157. ISSN 2193-1801. PMC . PMID 24790813.

29. ^ Martin, Andrew C.; Jeffers, Elizabeth S.; Petrokofsky, Gillian; Myers-Smith, Isla; Macias-Fauria, Marc (August 2017). "ShieldSquare Captcha". Environmental Research Letters. 12 (8): 085007. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa7989.

30. ^ Wu, Qiang (24 December 2019). "Satellite observations of unprecedented phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean". dx.doi.org. doi:10.5194/tc-2019-282-sc1.

31. ^ Struzik, Ed (14 February 2011). "Arctic Roamers: The Move of Southern Species into Far North". Environment360. Yale University. Grizzly bears mating with polar bears. Red foxes out-competing Arctic foxes. Exotic diseases making their way into once-isolated polar realms. These are just some of the worrisome phenomena now occurring as Arctic temperatures soar and the Arctic Ocean, a once-impermeable barrier, melts.

32. ^ DeWeaver, Eric; U.S. Geological Survey (2007). "Uncertainty in Climate Model Projections of Arctic Sea Ice Decline: An Evaluation Relevant to Polar Bears" (PDF). United States Department of the Interior. OCLC 183412441. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 May 2009.

33. ^ More Than 200 Reindeer Found Dead in Norway, Starved by Climate Change By Mindy Weisberger. Live Science, July 29, 2019

34. ^ Weiser, E.L.; Brown, S.C.; Lanctot, R.B.; River Gates, H.; Abraham, K.F.; et al. (2018). "Effects of environmental conditions on reproductive effort and nest success of Arctic‐breeding shorebirds". Ibis. 160 (3): 608-623. doi:10.1111/ibi.12571. hdl:10919/99313. S2CID 53514207.

35. ^ Velicogna, I. (2009). "Increasing rates of ice mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets revealed by GRACE". Geophysical Research Letters. 36 (19): L19503. Bibcode:2009GeoRL..3619503V. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.170.8753. doi:10.1029/2009GL040222.

36. "Ohio State University. "Warming Greenland ice sheet passes point of no return: Even if the climate cools, study finds, glaciers will continue to shrink."". ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily.

37. ^ Hill, Christopher (15 June 2015). "Abrupt Climate Change and the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation: sensitivity and non-linear response to Arctic/sub-Arctic freshwater pulses. Collaborative research. Final report". doi:10.2172/1184378. OSTI 1184378.

38. ^ Chen, Xi; al., et (12 November 2020). "Supplemental Material: Zinc isotope evidence for paleoenvironmental changes during Cretaceous Oceanic Anoxic Event 2". dx.doi.org. doi:10.1130/geol.s.13232360.v1.

39. ^ Hassol, Susan Joy (2004). Impacts of a warming Arctic (Reprinted ed.). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-61778-9.

40. ^ Timonin, Andrey (2021). "Climate Change in the Arctic and Future Directions for Adaptation: Views From Non-Arctic States". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.3802303. ISSN 1556-5068.

41. ^ Humpert, Malte; Raspotnik, Andreas (2012). "The Future of Shipping Along the Transpolar Sea Route" (PDF). The Arctic Yearbook. 1 (1): 281-307. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 January 2016.

42. ^ "As The Earth Warms, The Lure Of The Arctic's Natural Resources Grows". 18 March 2019.

43. ^ Bekkers, Eddy; Francois, Joseph F.; Rojas-Romagosa, Hugo (1 December 2016). "Melting Ice Caps and the Economic Impact of Opening the Northern Sea Route" (PDF). The Economic Journal. 128 (610): 1095-1127. doi:10.1111/ecoj.12460. ISSN 1468-0297. S2CID 55162828.

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Climate change in the Arctic - Wikipedia

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Climate change in the is causing major environmental issues. These range from the well known, such as the loss of sea ice or melting of the Greenland ice sheet, to more obscure, but deeply significant issues, such as permafrost thaw, social consequences for locals and the geopolitical ramifications of these changes.

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Timeline (Milestones)

Here are gathered in chronological sequence the most important events in the history of climate change science. (For a narrative see the Introduction and Summary.) This list of milestones includes some of the major influences external to the science itself. Following it is alist of other external influences.

1800-1870
Level of carbon dioxide gas (CO2) in the atmosphere, as later measured in ancient ice, is about 290 ppm (parts per million).

Mean global temperature (1850-1890) is roughly 13.6°C.

First Industrial Revolution. Coal, railroads, and land clearing speed up greenhouse gas emission, while better agriculture and sanitation speed up population growth.

1859
Tyndall demonstrates that some gases block infrared radiation, and notes that changes in the concentration of the gases could bring climate change. => Other gases

International Meteorological Organization begins to compile and standardize global weather data, including temperature. => International

1896
Arrhenius publishes first calculation of global warming from human emissions of CO2. Simple models

1897
Chamberlin produces a model for global carbon exchange including feedbacks. => Simple models

1870-1910
Second Industrial Revolution. Fertilizers and other chemicals, electricity, and public health further accelerate growth.

1914-1918
World War I; governments learn to mobilize and control industrial societies.

1920-1925
Opening of Texas and Persian Gulf oil fields inaugurates era of cheap energy.

1938
Callendar argues that CO2 greenhouse global warming is underway, reviving interest in the question. => CO2 greenhouse

1939-1945
World War II. Military grand strategy is largely driven by a struggle to control oil fields.

1955
Phillips produces a convincing computer model of the global atmosphere. => Models (GCMs)

1956
Ewing and Donn offer a feedback model for abrupt climate change. => Simple models

Plass calculates that adding CO2 to the atmosphere will have a significant effect on the radiation balance. => Radiation math

1957
Launch of Soviet Sputnik satellite. Cold War concerns support 1957-58 International Geophysical Year, bringing new funding and coordination to climate studies. => International

Revelle finds that CO2 produced by humans will not be readily absorbed by the oceans. => CO2 greenhouse

1960
Mitchell reports downturn of global temperatures since the early 1940s.=> Modern temp's

Keeling accurately measures CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere and detects an annual rise.
=> CO2 greenhouse

The CO2 level is 315 ppm. Mean global temperature (five-year average) is 13.9°C.

1962
Cuban Missile Crisis, peak of the Cold War.

1963
Calculations suggest that feedback with water vapor could make the climate acutely sensitive to changes in CO2 level. => Radiation math

First meeting of experts concerned with global warming warns that a rise in sea level is likely, with "immense flooding" of shorelines. => Impacts

1965
Boulder, Colorado meeting on causes of climate change: Lorenz and others point out the chaotic nature of the climate system and the possibility of sudden shifts. => Chaos theory

1966
Emiliani's analysis of deep-sea cores and Broecker's analysis of ancient corals show that the timing of ice ages was set by small orbital shifts, suggesting that the climate system is sensitive to small perturbations. => Climate cycles

Manabe and Wetherald make a convincing calculation that doubling CO2 would raise world temperatures a couple of degrees. => Radiation math

1968
Studies suggest a possibility of collapse of Antarctic ice sheets, which would raise sea levels catastrophically. => Sea rise, ice, floods

Nimbus III satellite begins to provide comprehensive global atmospheric temperature measurements. => Government

1970
First Earth Day. Environmental movement attains strong influence, spreads concern about global degradation. => Public opinion

Aerosols from human activity are shown to be increasing swiftly. Bryson claims they counteract global warming and may bring serious cooling. => Aerosols

1971
SMIC conference of leading scientists reports a danger of rapid and serious global change caused by humans, calls for an organized research effort. => International

Mariner 9 spacecraft finds a great dust storm warming the atmosphere of Mars, plus indications of a radically different climate in the past.=> Venus & Mars

Droughts in Africa, Ukraine, India cause world food crisis, spreading fears about climate change. => Public opinion

1973
Oil embargo and price rise bring first "energy crisis". => Government

1974
Cooling from aerosols suspected to be as likely as warming; some journalists talk of a new ice age but scientists doubt all theories, call for more research. => Public opinion

1975
Warnings about environmental effects of airplanes lead to investigations of trace gases in the stratosphere and discovery of danger to ozone layer. => Other gases

Manabe and collaborators produce complex but plausible computer models which show a temperature rise of a few degrees for doubled CO2. => Models (GCMs)

1976
Studies show that CFCs (1975) and also methane and ozone (1976) can make a serious contribution to the greenhouse effect. => Other gases
Deep-sea cores show a dominating influence from 100,000-year Milankovitch orbital changes, emphasizing the role of feedbacks. => Climate cycles

Deforestation and other ecosystem changes are recognized as major factors in the future of the climate. => Biosphere
1979
Second oil "energy crisis." Strengthened environmental movement encourages renewable energy sources, inhibits nuclear energy growth. => Public opinion

US National Academy of Sciences report finds it highly credible that doubling CO2 will bring 1.5-4.5°C global warming. => Models (GCMs)

World Climate Research Programme launched to coordinate international research. => International

1981
Election of Reagan brings backlash against environmental movement to power. Political conservatism is linked to skepticism about global warming. => Government

IBM Personal Computer introduced. Advanced economies are increasingly delinked from energy production.

Some scientists predict greenhouse warming "signal" should become visible around the year 2000. => Modern temp's

Strong global warming since mid-1970s is reported, with 1981 the warmest year on record. => Modern temp's

Speculation over catastrophic climate change following a nuclear war, or a dinosaur-killing asteroid strike, promote realization of the atmosphere's fragility. => World winter

Antarctic ice cores show that CO2 and temperature went up and down together through past ice ages, pointing to powerful feedbacks. =>

Broecker speculates that a reorganization of North Atlantic Ocean circulation can bring swift and radical climate change. => The oceans

1986
Meltdown of reactor at Chernobyl (Soviet Union) cripples plans to replace fossil fuels with nuclear power.

1987
Montreal Protocol of the Vienna Convention imposes international restrictions on emission of ozone-destroying gases. => International

1988
News media coverage of global warming leaps upward following record heat and droughts plus statements by Hansen. => Public opinion

Ice-core and biology studies confirm living ecosystems give climate feedback by way of methane, which could accelerate global warming. => Other gases

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is established. => International

Fossil-fuel and other U.S. industries form Global Climate Coalition to persuade politicians and the public that climate science is too uncertain to justify action. => Public opinion

1990
First IPCC report says world has been warming and future warming seems likely. => International

Global warming skeptics claim that 20th-century temperature changes followed from solar influences. (The solar-climate correlation would fail in the following decade.) => Solar variation

Geologists discover massive extinction event 55 million years ago, associated with tremendous global heating caused by increase in greenhouse gases. => Rapid change

Study of ancient climates reveals climate sensitivity to CO2 in same range as predicted independently by computer models. => Models (GCMs)

Greenland ice cores suggest that great climate changes (at least on a regional scale) can occur in the space of a single decade. => Rapid change

Reports of the breaking up of Antarctic ice shelves and other signs of actual current warming in polar regions begin affecting public opinion. => Public opinion

1997
Toyota introduces Prius in Japan, first mass-market electric hybrid car; swift progress in large wind turbines, solar electricity, and other energy alternatives.

International conference produces Kyoto Protocol, setting targets for industrialized nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if enough nations sign onto a treaty (rejected by U.S. Senate in advance). => International

1998
A "Super El Niño" makes this an exceptionally warm year, equaled in later years but not clearly exceeded until 2014. Borehole data confirm extraordinary warming trend. => Modern temp's

Qualms about arbitrariness in computer models diminish as teams model ice-age climate and dispense with special adjustments to reproduce current climate. => Models (GCMs)

Criticism that satellite measurements show no warming are dismissed by National Academy of Sciences panel. => Modern temp's

Mann's "hockey stick" data indicates current warming is historically unprecedented.
=> Modern temp's

Variety of studies emphasize variability and importance of biological feedbacks in carbon cycle, liable to accelerate warming. => Biosphere

2001
Warming observed in ocean basins; match with computer models gives a clear signature of greenhouse effect warming. => Models (GCMs)

Third IPCC report states baldly that global warming, unprecedented since the end of the last ice age, is "very likely," with highly damaging future impacts => Impacts and possible severe surprises. Effective end of debate among all but a few scientists. => International

Deadly summer heat wave in Europe accelerates divergence between European and US public opinion. => Public opinion

First major books, movie, and art work featuring global warming appear. => Public opinion

Kyoto treaty goes into effect, signed by major industrial nations except US. Work to retard emissions accelerates in Japan, Western Europe, US regional governments and corporations.
=> International

European Union initiates "cap and trade" market to reduce emissions.

Hurricane Katrina and other major tropical storms spur debate over impact of global warming on storm intensity. => Sea rise, ice, floods

In longstanding "hockey stick" controversy, scientists conclude that post-1980 global warming was unprecedented for centuries or more. => Modern temp's The rise could not be attributed to changes in solar energy. => Solar variation

"An Inconvenient Truth" documentary persuades many but sharpens political polarization.
=> Public opinion

China overtakes the United States as the world's biggest emitter of CO2.

Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and Arctic Ocean sea-ice cover found to be shrinking faster than expected. => Sea rise, ice, floods

Climate scientists point out that even if all greenhouse gas emissions could be halted immediately, global temperature will remain elevated for millennia. =>

Many experts warn that damage from climate change is arriving at a faster pace than was anticipated just a few years earlier. => International

Excerpts from stolen e-mails of climate scientists fuel public skepticism. => Public opinion

Studies find total carbon emitted determines global temperature; the "budget" for avoiding dangerous heating is mostly used up.=> International

2011
Reaction to nuclear reactor disaster at Fukushima (Japan) ends hopes for a renaissance of nuclear power.

2013
An apparent pause or "hiatus" in global warming of the atmosphere since 1998, publicized by skeptics, is explained; the world is still warming (as following years would confirm). Modern temp's

2015
Researchers find collapse of West Antarctic ice sheet may be irreversible, bringing meters of sea-level rise over future centuries. => Sea rise, ice, floods

Rise of methane in atmosphere accelerates, threatening dangerous feedbacks. => Other gases

Paris Agreement: nearly all nations pledge to set their own targets for greenhouse gas cuts and to report their progress. => International

2016
Solar electricity and wind power become economically competitive with fossil fuels in some regions.

2018
IPCC report on 1.5°C warming says that to avoid dangerous climate change, the world's greenhouse gas emissions must be in sharp decline by 2030. => International.

2019
Increasing disasters (tropical cyclones, wildfires, etc.) join scientists' warnings to spur public demonstrations and civil disobedience.=> Impacts => Public opinion

Sixth IPCC report warns that catastrophic outcomes cannot be ruled out. => Impacts

Glasgow conference spurs pledges to restrict emissions - not enough to avoid dangerous climate change, but risk of catastrophic change is reduced. => International.

2022
Democrats in U.S. Congress pass legislation providing subsidies to reduce the nation's greenhouse gas emissions. => Government
Mean global temperature is 14.8°C, the warmest in tens of thousands of years. Level of CO2 in the atmosphere is 421 ppm, the highest in millions of years.

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A hypertext history of how scientists came to (partly) understand what people are doing to cause climate change. An abridged web version of Spencer R. Weart’s book presented by the American Institute of Physics.

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"How did it get so late so soon?" ― Dr. Seuss

Is there such a thing as a climate deadline? Do we have 11 years to solve or limit the climate crisis, or just 18 months? Where do these numbers come from, and what do they mean? Below we break down the story behind the 11 years/18 months figures that have been cited by media outlets, experts and politicians alike over the last few months.

Where does "11 years" come from?

This was taken from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report "on the impacts of global warming of 1.5C degrees above pre-industrial and related greenhouse gas emissions pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty."

What is the IPCC?

The IPCC is a United Nations body founded in 1988 which evaluates climate change science and synthesises it into major assessment reports every 5-7 years. The report published in October 2018 is the latest climate assessment-the result of an invitation contained in the Decision of the 21st Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (also known as COP21) to adopt the Paris Agreement.

In other words: After the COP21 in Paris (December 2015), the IPCC experts had about 2 years to prepare a special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

The 11 years had been extracted from this paragraph in the summary for policymakers:

"Human activities are estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming 5 above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C. Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate."

Because the report was made public in October 2018, some estimated that we have 12 years to 2030. Others realised that with 2018 almost over, it was more like 11 years. Media outlets picked up the 11 years ("11 years to save the planet" or "11 years to limit climate change catastrophe") and used it for almost a year. Most of them still do, although it's of course less than 11 years now.

Wait, what happened at COP21?

COP (Conference of Parties) are UN conferences that attract tens of thousands of participants from all over the world-official delegates from governments, intergovernmental organisations, UN agencies, NGOs and civil society-and discuss global issues with a global participation.

On December 12, 2015, at the end of COP21 (the 21st Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), 195 nations signed an agreement to combat climate change and to strengthen their ability to deal with the impacts of climate change. The main aim of the agreement was to keep global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius and to limit temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

This was the first time in over 20 years of UN climate negotiations (all those COP conferences and summits and other similar international gatherings) that so many countries achieved a legally binding and universal agreement on climate action.

Quick note 👉 "The Paris agreement is legally binding in forcing governments to accept and cater for the 2C limit. But the commitments on curbing greenhouse gas emissions in line with that goal are not legally binding." ( The Guardian)

Overall it was considered an ambitious agreement, a step forward, but for many activists and experts it remained controversial for not aiming high enough given the gravity of the situation.

Further reading 👉 This graphic explaining why 2 degrees of global warming will be way worse than 1.5

What's going to happen in 11 years?

In 11 years (for accuracy: 10 years and 4 months from August 2019) "we should be halfway to global net-zero GHG emissions" in order to avoid increasingly dire impacts of the climate and ecological crises. Climate scientist Peter Kalmus points out that "today's impacts are effectively due to emissions from ~ decades ago," but emissions keep rising exponentially.

In other words, we spotted the problem but failed to act fast enough to fix it, and the window of opportunity is closing: which brings us to the "18 months."

What's with the 18 months then?

The conversation about the 18 months became mainstream earlier this summer when an article with an ominous title ("Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months") was published on the BBC. Startling for many, this was far from breaking news-the source for the 18 months comes from the same IPCC Special Report referenced above.

The report also mentioned that " global emissions of carbon dioxide must peak by 2020 to keep the planet below 1.5C," and would have to be cut by 45% by 2030. But as the BBC states: "current plans are nowhere near strong enough to keep temperatures below the so-called safe limit." Signatory countries have promised to improve their carbon-cutting plans by the end of next year, but "right now, we are heading towards 3C of heating by 2100 not 1.5." Overall emissions haven't gone down.

Back in 2017, climate scientist Hans Joachim Schellnhuber said: "The climate math is brutally clear: While the world can't be healed within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 2020."

The next 18 months are considered critical, most likely the make-or-break months in dealing with the climate crisis and other environmental challenges exacerbated by it. To meet the climate targets, the policies meant to enable the 45% cuts in carbon will have to be ready by the end of 2020. Some say that ever since the global climate agreement was signed in Paris, negotiators have been consumed with arguing about the rulebook for the pact instead of focusing on the task at hand.

Known as a keen conservationist, Prince Charles, quoted in the same BBC article, said: "I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival." He's steering the conversation into other ecological crises (depletion of species, ocean pollution, etc.) which must not be overlooked.

Warming Stripes for GLOBE from 1850-2018 by Ed Hawkins

What's going to happen next?

In the coming months the public will find out more about the state of the climate, national carbon targets, and (new?) plans to limit climate breakdown, during several planned climate summits and conferences. How much have countries worked towards meeting the Paris agreement targets? Will climate leadership finally fully manifest itself next year?

Since we seem to like timelines, here are some important dates for global climate decisions:

2019, September 23 | Climate Action Summit (New York, USA) aiming to "inject momentum in 'race to the top' among countries, companies, cities and civil society that is needed to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals." Countries coming to the summit should present their national carbon cutting plans.

2019, December | COP 25 (Conference of the Parties - UN Conference) in Santiago, Chile

End of 2020 | COP 26 Glasgow, UK

Is time on our side?

During a talk earlier this year, Bill McKibben made a good a point about bad timing. If we had started acting on climate 30-40 years ago-when scientists first presented decision makers with evidence of the anthropogenic rapid changes in the climate of the planet-small steps to help humanity adapt to changes and tackle the crisis would have been enough. But because of the premeditated stalling of action on climate, we now have to take giant leaps in a matter of years (or months!) to deal with it.

Are we taking giant leaps? Not according to the global carbon emissions from energy, which last year hit a record high.

2019: A record-breaking year

July 2019 was the hottest month in human history, with record temperatures all over the world. Greenland lost 12.5 billion tons of ice in just one day. California experienced its deadliest wildfires ever. High-latitude wildfires had an 'unprecedented' season, while parts of Alaska had no sea ice for the first time ever. Permafrost is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted. Let's not forget increasingly severe floods, droughts, hurricanes, typhoons. And this May, for the first time since humans have existed on Earth, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere exceeded 415 parts per million, reaching 415.26 parts per million.

The latest report from the IPCC released this August-on climate change and land-is yet another " blueprint for action ". But will decision makers pay attention?

Further reading 👉 Here are seven ways of understanding the IPCC's newest climate warning.

The worsening climatic impacts and dire scientific warnings are making the crisis less of a distant occurrence, and more of a visible, daily reality. Public mobilisation is growing, more people are taking individual action, and climate denialism is slowly falling apart- but compelling political leadership on climate is essential in all climate action scenarios. It needs to be front and centre of a transformational change in all aspects of society.

An article that says we shouldn't have deadlines - as it might people off. 🙄

Let us be serious - we are in a #ClimateCrisis 🌡the world has to get to #ZeroCarbonEmissions by 2050. Deadlines and Targets are essential - even if we miss them at least we are trying to hit them💡 https://t.co/2llCmXv199
- Professor Mark Maslin (@ProfMarkMaslin) July 26, 2019

The scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming is likely to have passed 99%, according to studies quoted in The Guardian. We can still debate the dangers of " deadline rhetoric," but the sooner we act towards system change, lowering emissions, and speeding up the healing process, the better.

The best time to act on climate was decades ago. The second best time is now.

What can I do?

There's a lot we can do as individuals. Here are just some of the things we've already discussed on our blog:

Further reading on the climate crisis timeline:

Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich
Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben (especially the chapter about the Exxon files)
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells (an exploration of how the world could look if we fail to curb carbon emissions)

What do you think?

If you have a different understanding of the climate timelines and the debates around them, share with us in the comments!

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How long do we have to limit the climate crisis: 18 months or 11 years? - ethical.net

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"How did it get so late so soon?" ― Dr. Seuss Is there such a thing as a climate deadline? Do we have 11 years to solve or limit the climate crisis, or just 18 months? Where do these numbers come from, and what do they mean?

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Find out how climate change has unfolded with our timeline

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Extreme weather left its mark across the planet in 2016, the hottest year in recorded history. Record heat baked Asia and the Arctic. Droughts gripped Brazil and southern Africa. The Great Barrier Reef suffered its worst bleaching event in memory, killing large swaths of coral.

Now climate scientists are starting to tease out which of last year's calamities can, and can't, be linked to global warming.

In a new collection of papers published Wednesday in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, researchers around the world analyzed 27 extreme weather events from 2016 and found that human-caused climate change was a "significant driver" for 21 of them. The effort is part of the growing field of climate change attribution, which explores connections between warming and weather events that have already happened.

To judge whether global warming made a particular extreme weather event more likely to occur, scientists typically compare data from the real world, where rising greenhouse gases have heated the planet over the past century, against a modeled counterfactual world without those rising emissions. This technique has gained broader acceptance among climate scientists in the last decade.

Here are five extreme weather events from 2016 that scientists now think were made more likely by global warming:

1. Record temperatures around the world

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A researcher near Utqiagvik, Alaska. Two studies have found that unusually high temperatures in the Arctic "would not have been possible without human-caused climate change." Credit David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe, via Getty Images

Last year, Earth reached its highest temperature on record, beating marks set in 2015 and 2014. While that partly reflected the influence of El Niño, a cyclical event in the Pacific Ocean that can raise global surface temperatures, a new study led by Thomas R. Knutson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that the record warmth worldwide "was only possible due to substantial centennial-scale human-caused warming."

Two separate studies also found that unusually high temperatures across Asia and the Arctic in 2016 "would not have been possible without human-caused climate change." Such forceful assertions are rare: Typically, scientists will only go so far as to say that global warming made an extreme weather event more likely to occur. In these cases, they went further, finding that such extreme warmth could not have happened in a world without rising emissions.

2. Coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef

Over the past two years, unusually warm waters in the Pacific have caused bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, a phenomenon in which coral expel vital algae from their tissue and take on a ghastly white appearance. If the warm water temperatures persist, many corals can die off, with dire consequences for the marine ecosystems that depend on them.

Here, scientists were more measured in putting all the blame on global warming, in part because the impact of El Niño was tough to disentangle: A study led by Sophie C. Lewis of Australian National University concluded that human greenhouse gas emissions "likely increased the risk of the extreme Great Barrier Reef event" by increasing thermal stress in the ocean. The study also warned that bleaching risks were likely to increase in the future.

3. Drought in Africa

While such "flash droughts" are often associated with El Niño, scientists now say climate change plays an important role, too. A study led by Xing Yuan of the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that flash droughts had tripled in the region over the past 60 years, with global warming "mainly responsible" for the trend.

Climate change can't be blamed for all recent dry spells, however. In a separate study, researchers looked at a five-year drought in Northeast Brazil but "could not find sufficient evidence that human-caused climate change increased drought risk."

4. Wildfires in North America

In 2016, wildfires burned about 8.9 million acres of western Canada and the United States, including a particularly destructive fire in Alberta that forced mass evacuations and destroyed 2,400 homes. Here, climate change most likely played a supporting role.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh found that global warming had made "extreme vapor pressure deficits" five times more likely across the region during the summer months - a measure of changes in atmospheric moisture that is associated with the drying of vegetation and wildfire risk. But this finding came with a caveat: The increased fire risk linked to climate change did not hold for the month of May, when the Alberta fire broke out.

5. The warm "blob" in the Pacific Ocean

Over the past few years, a large patch of unusually warm water has appeared off the coast of Alaska, popularly known as "the blob." These warm waters have allowed toxic algae blooms to spread across the region, killing seabirds by the thousands and forcing local fisheries to close.

A new study, led by John E. Walsh of the University of Alaska, called the blob "unprecedented" and argued that it "cannot be explained without anthropogenic climate warming," although natural factors such as El Niño and atmospheric variability also played an important role. The study also concluded that more such blobs were likely to occur with further warming, which "will result in a profound shift for people, systems, and species."

But climate attribution remains complex

Climate attribution remains easier for some weather events than others. Temperature records are the simplest to link to climate change. But droughts - which are influenced by a complex interplay of temperature, precipitation and soil moisture - can be trickier to connect to warming trends. And hurricanes are more difficult still, because they occur so rarely.

Overall, however, attribution science has improved significantly since the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society began publishing its annual investigations into weather extremes six years ago, said Heidi Cullen, chief scientist at Climate Central, a news organization that focuses on climate science.

"In 2011, people were still of the mind-set that you couldn't attribute any individual event to climate change," Dr. Cullen said. "But with each subsequent issue, people are able to say that climate change really is increasing the risk" of certain extremes occurring.

Crucially, however, the journal does not explicitly set out to prove links between specific weather extremes and global warming. Instead, the editors accept proposals to investigate certain weather events before the results are known, in order to minimize publication bias.

In some cases, scientists either ruled out or could not find a significant role for climate change, effectively arguing that a given weather extreme could just as likely have occurred in a world without global warming. That was true of Brazil's brutal drought, which was largely influenced by El Niño, as well as a major snowstorm in the Mid-Atlantic United States.

"A few events from this past year were judged to have been of such a magnitude that they would not have been possible in the climate of a few hundred years ago," said Martin P. Hoerling, a meteorologist at NOAA who edited the collection. But, he added, "not everything is being made demonstrably more severe because of climate change."

In the future, scientists are hoping to refine and standardize their attribution methods, so that a community hit by a storm, wildfire or other extreme event can learn much more quickly how that event might have been swayed by global warming - and take steps to adapt.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Drought, Wildfires and an Ocean 'Blob,' Linked by Warming. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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How Global Warming Fueled Five Extreme Weather Events

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Extreme weather left its mark across the planet in 2016, the hottest year in recorded history. Record heat baked Asia and the Arctic. Droughts gripped Brazil and southern Africa. The Great Barrier Reef suffered its worst bleaching event in memory, killing large swaths of coral.

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Summary: Scientists and journalists play a vital role in the public policy debate about climate change, explaining the reports of the major climate agencies. Here Roger Pielke Jr. describes an example of how they too often misrepresent those findings, distorting the debate and feeding the public's loss of confidence in science as an institution.

About those exaggerations in the media about climate.

About the misreporting of experts' reports.

By Roger Pielke Jr. at The Climate Fix.

Posted with his generous permission.
Lightly edited.

Introduction.

Welcome to issue #7 of my occasional newsletter on climate and energy issues. As a reminder, my day-to-day research or writing is focused on sports governance and various issues of science policy. But I've written a fair bit on the topics of climate and energy over the past 25 years, including two recent books and a boatload of academic papers, and I'm paying attention. So caveat lector {reader beware}! ...

The US National Climate Assessment and Weather Extremes.

The 4th US National Climate Assessment {NCA} was published a few weeks ago, and it is worth reviewing what it says about trends in extreme weather events. In short, the NCA supports arguments I've been making for many years.

"Cold extremes have become less severe over the past century."

"Changes in warm extremes are more nuanced than changes in cold extremes." (Yes, you read that correctly.)

Here are trends in cold spells, warm spells and heat waves 1900 to present from the report.

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC's) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) concluded that it is very likely that human influence has contributed to the observed changes in frequency and intensity of temperature extremes on the global scale since the mid-20th century. ...In general, however, results for the contiguous United States are not as compelling as for global land areas , in part because detection of changes in U.S. regional temperature extremes is affected by extreme temperature in the 1930s."

Emphasis added, and yes, that means weak attribution. {Ed. - See the graphs!}

"Figure 6.4. Observed changes in cold and heat waves in the contiguous United States. The top panel depicts changes in the frequency of cold waves; the middle panel depicts changes in the frequency of heat waves; and the bottom panel depicts changes in the intensity of heat waves. ..."

"...there is still low confidence that any reported long-term (multidecadal to centennial) increases in TC {tropical cyclone} activity are robust, after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities ...

"A particular challenge in quantifying the existence and intensity of {tornado} events arises from the data source ...

"Analysis of {winter} storm tracks indicates that there has been an increase in winter storm frequency and intensity since 1950. ...

"drought statistics over the entire CONUS have declined ...

"no detectable change in meteorological drought at the global scale. ...

"Western North America ...where determining if observed recent droughts were unusual compared to natural variability was particularly difficult ...

"IPCC AR5 did not attribute changes in flooding to anthropogenic influence nor report detectable changes in flooding magnitude, duration, or frequency ...

"{In the US| increasing & decreasing flooding magnitude but does not provide robust evidence that these trends are attributable to human influences... no formal attribution of observed flooding changes to anthropogenic forcing has been claimed ...

"a number of precipitation metrics over the continental United States has been examined; however trends identified for the U.S. regions have not been clearly attributed to anthropogenic forcing ..."

The data says what it says. There is precious little evidence that extremes have become worse in the US since at least 1900, with the exception of more winter storms since 1950 and overall fewer cold spells. Attribution {for these trends} is weak to nonexistent.

Despite the evidence there is a drumbeat of news stories and various claims that weather disasters are getting worse. For instance, the New York Times article on the release of the report contained this statement...

"In the United States, the report finds that every part of the country has been touched by warming, from droughts in the Southeast to flooding in the Midwest ..."

{In it} Michael Mann, the same professor suing his critics for being wrong about scientific claims says this:

"Whether we're talking about unprecedented heat waves, increasingly destructive hurricanes, epic drought and inundation of our coastal cities, the impacts of climate change are no longer subtle"

Both the NYT characterization of the report and Mann's claims are irrefutably incorrect according to the report. These are just a few of many similar examples of claims that are contrary to the NCA related to extreme weather.

Claiming that the weather has gotten worse is today an important cultural shibboleth related to climate science. It's not supported by the evidence but it serves an important role in the political debate over climate. Another weakened norm, I suppose.

----- Tune in tomorrow for the concluding chapter of this article. -----

The posts in this series

1. Institutional decay in climate science.

2. More misreporting of experts' reports.

3. The Politics of Inconceivable Scenarios.

About the author

Roger Pielke, Jr. is a Professor of Environmental Studies at the U of CO-Boulder. He was Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. He is now Director of the Sports Governance Center in the Dept of Athletics. Before joining the faculty of the U of CO, from 1993-2001 he was a Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

His research focuses on science, innovation and politics. He holds degrees in mathematics, public policy and political science from the University of Colorado. In 2006 he received the Eduard Brückner Prize in Munich for outstanding achievement in interdisciplinary climate research. In 2012 Roger was awarded an honorary doctorate from Linköping University in Sweden and the Public Service Award of the Geological Society of America.

His page at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research has his bio, CV, and links to some of his publications. His website has links to his works, and essays about the many subjects on which he works.

He is also author, co-author or co-editor of seven books, including The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics

(2007), The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming

(2010), The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change

(2014), and The Edge: The War against Cheating and Corruption in the Cutthroat World of Elite Sports

(2016).

Some of his recent publications.

For More Information

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information see The keys to understanding climate change, all posts about Roger Pielke Jr., and My posts about climate change, and especially these ...

1. Important: climate scientists can restart the climate change debate - & win.

2. How we broke the climate change debates. Lessons learned for the future.

3. A status report on global warming. Much depends on the next few years.

4. Good news for the New Year! Salon explains that the global climate emergency is over.

5. A story of the climate change debate. How it ran; why it failed.

6. News misreporting a big GAO report about climate change.

To learn more about the state of climate change...

... see Pielke's book The Rightful Place of Science: Disasters and Climate Change

. See my review. Here is the publisher's summary...

"In recent years the media, politicians, and activists have popularized the notion that climate change has made disasters worse. But what does the science actually say? Roger Pielke, Jr. takes a close look at the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the underlying scientific research, and the data to give you the latest science on disasters and climate change. What he finds may surprise you and raise questions about the role of science in political debates."

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Roger Pielke Jr. describes the distorting of climate science - Fabius Maximus website

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Summary: Scientists and journalists play a vital role in the public policy debate about climate change, explaining the reports of the major climate agencies. Here Roger Pielke Jr. describes an example of how they too often misrepresent those findings, distorting the debate and feeding the public's loss of confidence in science as an institution.

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REACTION TO SKEPTICS THAT SHOW THE SCIENCE DOESN'T AGREE WITH CLIMATE ALARMISTS..

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REACTION TO SKEPTICS THAT SHOW THE SCIENCE DOESN'T AGREE WITH CLIMATE ALARMISTS..

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1. IGNORE
2. RIDICULE
3. SILENCE
....THIS IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC METHOD, IS IT?

WIKIPEDIA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Hustle#External_links

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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/dont-accept-100-climate-change-story-and-you-get-labeled-racist

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Commentary On Jan. 8, 2014, at New York University in Brooklyn, there occurred a unique event in the annals of global warming: nearly eight hours of structured debate between three ...