How Bad Is Global Warming?

[Iamwhomiam]

https://soundcloud.com/guns-and-butter- ... vidson-312

Ben Davidson discusses both "sides" of the climate debate and which issues neither seem to address. He covers recent historical climatic events and the solar influences upon them along with other space weather factors.

Aired: November 5, 2014
http://www.suspicious0bservers.org/

The entire solar system is cooling according to this guy: Therefore, global cooling is much more likely. But we're in for volatile bad weather for next few decades as the sun transitions from a grand maximum to a grand minimum solar phase. Furthermore, the Earth's magnetic poles are overdue to suddenly reverse. These events are predictable. Somebody's gonna make big money!

Leave it to an anti gun control lawyer to tell you all about global warming and the effects of climate change, not just here on Earth, but throughout the solar system.

http://www.corporationwiki.com/Ohio/Pickerington/kahb-llc/134644753.aspx

Click a few links to learn more about the awesome power of this all-knowing entity, Ben Davidson.
http://www.corporationwiki.com/Ohio/Pickerington/ben-r-davidson/101059085.aspx

[Luther Blissett]

MONDAY, MAY 4, 2015 10:55 AM EDT
We’ve driven 60 percent of the Earth’s large herbivores to the brink of extinction — and entire ecosystems may pay the price
Elephants, rhinos and gorillas could all disappear, a new study warns, leaving "empty landscapes" behind

What would Earth be like in the absence of elephants, gorillas and other large, plant-eating species roaming its habitats?

According to a frightening new analysis from a group of 16 international researchers, we’re dismayingly close to finding out. Out of a group of 74 large, terrestrial herbivores — from bison to rhinos to hippopotamuses — about 60 percent are on the fast-track to extinction. The loss, the researchers write, puts us at the cusp of transforming much of the world’s desert, grassland, savanna and forest ecosystems into “empty landscapes.”

The data comes from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which keeps track of threats to species with its Red List. The researchers looked more closely into the challenges facing large herbivores, specially, and what they say are the often understudied impacts of their loss on entire ecosystems. Most of these species, they note, have already disappeared from North America and Europe; those that remain, in a threatened state, can mainly be found in developing countries, including southern Asia, extreme Southeast Asia and across Ethiopia and Somalia in eastern Africa have the highest concentration of at-risk species.

The species face the biggest threat from hunters after their meat, followed by a long, familiar laundry list of human-induced hazards:

Threats faced by each species were categorized using information in the IUCN Red List species fact sheets. The total adds up to more than 100% because each large herbivore species may have more than one existing threat.(Science Advances)

But perhaps the most striking is the researchers’ analysis the cascading impact of these creatures’ loss — the reason why they chose large herbivores as a subset for consideration:


African elephants, in that first example, convert woodland to shrubland, increasing the vegetation available for other herbivores, and clearing the way for large predators, like lions, to more effectively hunt. They damage trees, creating a complex habitat perfect for communities of lizards. They eat seeds, and poop them out later, often far away, allowing for the dispersal of plant life. “Large herbivores shape the structure and function of landscapes and environments in which they occur,” the authors stress, playing critical roles that “cannot be taken over or compensated for by smaller herbivores.”

Those effects extend to humans, as well: an estimated one billion people subsist on wild meat, a nightmare for food security if that meat’s availability declines, as it will in a business-as-usual scenario, by as much as 80 percent by 2050. Many others don’t eat these creatures but instead travel to protected areas to see them — the authors warn that the tourism industries, which play an important role in the economy for many parts of the developing world will falter with the species’ decline. They call for a “concerted effort,” addressing everything from poaching to habitat destruction to climate change — which threatens as many as one-sixth of the world’s total species with extinction — to counter the threats.

“The scale and rate of large herbivore decline suggest that without radical intervention, large herbivores (and many smaller ones) will continue to disappear from numerous regions with enormous ecological, social, and economic costs,” the authors warn. “Now is the time to act boldly, because without radical changes in these trends, the extinctions that eliminated most of the world’s largest herbivores 10,000 to 50,000 years ago will only have been postponed for these last few remaining giants.”

[stillrobertpaulsen]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Thanks, Iamwhoiam, for exposing Ben Davidson for the shill that he is.

Published on Wednesday, May 06, 2015 by Common Dreams
It's Official: Global Carbon Levels Surpassed 400 ppm for Entire Month
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says level sets new record for world's atmosphere
by Sarah Lazare, staff writer



Marking yet another grim milestone for an ever-warming planet, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration revealed on Wednesday that, for the first time in recorded history, global levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere averaged over 400 parts per million (ppm) for an entire month—in March 2015.

"This marks the fact that humans burning fossil fuels have caused global carbon dioxide concentrations to rise more than 120 parts per million since pre-industrial times," said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, in a press statement. "Half of that rise has occurred since 1980."

This is not the first time the benchmark of 400 ppm has been reached.

"We first reported 400 ppm when all of our Arctic sites reached that value in the spring of 2012," explained Tans. "In 2013 the record at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory first crossed the 400 ppm threshold."

However, Tans said that reaching 400 ppm across the planet for an entire month is a "significant milestone."

A tweet released by NOAA on Wednesday shows that this development is consistent with rising levels over recent years.


#CLIMATE NEWS: Global #CO2 concentrations surpass 400 ppm for 1st month since records began http://go.usa.gov/3KdcR

However, zooming to a wider historical lens shows an even more dramatic increase. During pre-industrial times, CO2 levels were at 280 ppm. Scientists have warned that, in order to achieve safe levels, CO2 must be brought down to a maximum of 350ppm—the number from which the environmental organization 350.org derives its name from.

Bill Snape, senior counsel to the Center for Biological Diversity, told Common Dreams, "The fact that we are now firmly over 400 ppm for first time in human history indicates to me that we ought to be moving with much more urgency to fix the underlying problem."

[stillrobertpaulsen]

This Antarctic ice shelf could collapse by 2020, NASA says

By Chris Mooney May 15 at 12:30 PM

It has been a really bad week for the ice shelves of the quickly warming Antarctic peninsula, the part of the vast frozen continent that extends northward toward South America.

Earlier this week, we learned that the gigantic marine-based Larsen C ice shelf, which is almost as big as Scotland, has several worrisome vulnerabilities — including a growing rift across it. Scientists from the British Antarctic Survey and several other research centers say this could pose an “imminent risk” to its stability.

And now, NASA scientists are giving an even worse verdict for the remnants of the nearby Larsen B ice shelf, much of which already disintegrated back in 2002. Back then, the shelf lost a region larger than Rhode Island, but there are still 618 square miles left of it — for now.

However, in a new study in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, researchers with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California at Irvine say that this remnant now faces its “approaching demise.” In a news release, NASA adds that “it is likely to disintegrate completely before the end of the decade.”

If these two research teams are right, then the coming years could see major ice calving events off of the Antarctic peninsula.

“What might happen is that for a few years, we will have the detachment of big icebergs from this remaining ice shelf, and then at one point, one very very warm summer, when you have lots of melting of the surface, the whole thing will just give way, and will shatter into thousands of smaller icebergs,” says the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Ala Khazendar, lead author of the new study.

The weaknesses of Larsen B — which the researchers detected using measurements from planes and satellites — include what the study calls its “persistent ice flow acceleration since the year 2002,” as well as a major crack that is growing across the remainder of the ice shelf.

Behind the sea-based ice shelf, meanwhile, are land-based glaciers that have also started to slide faster toward the sea. Both the Leppard and Flask glaciers have increased their rates of flow, the study reports, and their elevation has accordingly dropped by 49 to 65 feet over the period from 2002 to 2011.

“The final phase of the demise of LBIS [Larsen B ice shelf] is most likely in progress,” the researchers conclude. “The weakening of the remnant ice shelf is manifested by its acceleration, front retreat, enhanced fracture including the rapid widening of a large rift close to the grounding line [where the ice shelf is moored on the seafloor] and possibly the detachment of the stagnant part of the ice shelf from neighboring grounded ice.”

The loss of oceanic ice shelves does not directly increase sea level, because these shelves are already immersed in the water. But their collapse speeds the seaward flow of glaciers held behind them. And when ice leaves land and enters water, that’s when seas rise.

The good news here is that while other parts of Antarctica contain ice volumes sufficient to raise global sea levels by many feet, the Antarctic peninsula itself holds much less potential for sea-level rise.

To give some sense of scale, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that the glaciers of the Antarctic peninsula region could conceivably contribute up to 1.5 feet of global sea-level rise. (That’s from all of the region’s glaciers, not just those currently held back by Larsen B — which would be only a fraction of the total — or the much bigger Larsen C.) The number is comparable to the potential contribution of all of the world’s other glaciers and ice caps, combined. But it’s still nothing in comparison to the potential contributions from the great ice sheets of Greenland, West Antarctica and East Antarctica, which contain many feet worth of globally distributed water.

Nonetheless, the rate of global sea-level rise — recently pegged at 2.6 to 2.9 millimeters annually — could increase because of what’s now unfolding on the Antarctic peninsula at both the Larsen B and C ice shelves.

According to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Khazendar, of current sea level rise, roughly a third comes from Antarctica and Greenland, a third from the expansion of seawater as it warms, and a third from glaciers and ice caps around the world. When large parts of the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed in 2002, the glaciers behind these parts accelerated their seaward progress, and that could happen again with the remainder of Larsen B, and the glaciers feeding it.

“Nobody ever says that all of the ice in Antarctica, or the Antarctic peninsula, will be in the ocean, but even 10, 20 centimeters would be a problem for the planet,” he says.

[identity]

New study finds a hot spot in the atmosphere
The temperature in the tropical atmosphere is rising roughly 80% faster than at the Earth’s surface

John Abraham / The Guardian
Friday 15 May 2015 15.35 BST

A new study, just published in Environmental Research Letters by Steven Sherwood and Nidhi Nashant, has answered a number of questions about the rate at which the Earth is warming. Once again, the mainstream science regarding warming of the atmosphere is shown to be correct. This new study also helps to answer a debate amongst a number of scientists about temperature variations throughout different parts of the atmosphere.
Steven Sherwood Steven Sherwood. Photograph: University of New South Wales

When someone says “The Earth is warming”, the first questions to ask are (1) what parts of the Earth? and (2) over what time period? The Earth’s climate system is large; it includes oceans, the atmosphere, land surface, ice areas, etc.

When scientists use the phrase “global warming” they are often talking about increases to the amount of energy stored in oceans or increases to the temperature of the atmosphere closest to the ground. By either of these measures, climate change has led to a progressive increase in temperatures over the past four decades. But what about other parts of the climate system? What is happening to them?

One important area to consider is the troposphere. It is the bottom portion of the atmosphere where most weather occurs. Tropospheric temperatures can be taken by satellites, by weather balloons, or other instruments. In the past, both satellites and weather balloons reported no warming or even a cooling.

However, that original work was shown to be faulty and now even the most strident sceptics admit that the troposphere is warming. But obtaining an accurate estimate of the rate of warming is difficult. Changes to instruments, errors in measurements, short term fluctuations all can conspire to hide the “real” temperature.

This is where the new study comes in. The authors develop a new method to account for natural variability, long-term trends, and instruments in the temperature measurement. They make three conclusions.

First, warming of the atmosphere in the tropical regions of the globe hasn’t changed much since the late 1950s. Temperatures have increased smoothly and follow what is called the moist-adiabatic rate (temperature decrease of humid air with elevation). This result is in very close agreement with climate computer models and it contradicts the view that there is a slowdown in climate change.

Second, the vertical height of the tropics that has warmed is a bit smaller than the models predict. Finally, there is a change in observed cooling in the stratosphere – the layer of the atmosphere above the troposphere.

Taken together, these results show that the tropospheric warming has continued as predicted by scientists years ago.

Embedded in this research is a conclusion about the so-called “tropospheric hot spot”. This “hot spot” refers to expectations that as global warming progresses, the troposphere will warm faster than the Earth surface. The hot spot is really hard to detect; it requires high quality measurements at both the surface and throughout the troposphere. Past studies which could not detect a hot spot were often used by climate contrarians to call into question our simulation models and even our basic understanding of the atmosphere.

But this new study finds a clear signal of the hotspot. In fact, the temperature in the troposphere is rising roughly 80% faster than the temperature at the Earth’s surface (within the tropics region). This finding agrees very well with climate models which predicted a 64% difference.

And this is exactly how models are supposed to work. Models can be used to predict changes that will occur in the future. Once we make measurements, we can compare them with the models. If the two disagree, it either means our models are wrong, our measurements are wrong, or both are wrong. More often than not, the models have been found to be vindicated.

In the case of the tropospheric temperatures, initially the models and experiments disagreed. Both were rechecked and scientists found the experiments were misinterpreted. When improved experiments were obtained, we see atmosphere temperature studies in agreement.

This study also helps us see that the troposphere is warming as we expected. Furthermore, this is yet another study that calls into question the significance of the so-called “hiatus.” I am hopeful that more studies on this important topic will be completed in the near future. Measurements of the Earth’s climate system and their comparison against climate models provide excellent test cases for scientists to improve their understanding of the processes that drive today’s and tomorrow’s climate.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Climate change could be a threat to electricity supply in Western US

By James Vincent
on May 19, 2015 04:28 pm

Droughts and high temperatures caused by climate change could play havoc with the electricity supply of the Western United States, say engineers in a study published in Nature Climate Change. As of 2010, more than 90 percent of America's electricity is generated by thermoelectric power stations — facilities that use heat to create electricity, from burning coal to nuclear power. Many plant like this, however, rely on water for cooling, with these facilities accounting for 45 percent of water withdrawals in 2010 (these figures are calculated every five years) — more than agriculture. If there's less water in the nation's rivers or even if that water is just hotter than normal then power stations won't be able operate at full capacity. And as the recent drought in California shows, this is more than just a speculative scenario.

Based on simulations covering 14 states and 978 power stations in the Western US, engineers from Arizona State University suggest that in half a century, vulnerable facilities could lose anywhere between 1.1 to 3 percent of their summertime capacity. Power stations classed as "vulnerable" make up 46 percent of total capacity in the West and include not only thermoelectric plants, but also renewable sources such as hydroelectricity, wind turbines, and solar plants. The scientists note that in the case of a 10-year drought event, capacity could drop by as much as 8.8 percent.

These may sound like small figures, but power providers work within fairly slim margins of error, calculating how much electricity is left over after meeting peak expected demand. "In the West, this margin is typically between 10 to 20 percent, although in some areas it may be in the single digits." Matthew Bartos, one of the paper's two authors, tells The Verge. "In this context, a capacity reduction of a few percentage points could mean the difference between meeting demand and having to buy electricity from a neighboring power provider."

Severe drops in capacity beyond the grid's capacity could lead to outages but could also inflict economic damage. In 2001, for example, when severe droughts in California and the Pacific Northwest throttled hydroelectric power generation, electricity prices rose steeply and the region sustained somewhere between $2.5 and $6 billion in economic losses. The researchers add that the threat to the West's electricity supply is compounded by the fact that when the weather is extremely hot, people use more electricity — mostly to power air conditioning — but that the study's findings can't be applied to the rest of the US, as not only does the climate differ, but also the underlying power infrastructure.

Currently, power companies aren't doing enough to factor in the affect of climate change on electricity supply, say the paper's authors. While they do note that upgrades to existing plants and new technology may offset the "penalties imposed by climate change," this is far from certain. They add that while renewable energy sources are far from immune to the effects of climate change, they fare better than traditional methods such as steam and combustion turbines. "Renewables are more resilient to the effects of climate change," they write, and their increased use would contribute to "a more climate-resistant power infrastructure."

[Luther Blissett]

Fracking Chemicals Detected in Pennsylvania Drinking Water
By NICHOLAS ST. FLEURMAY 4, 2015

An analysis of drinking water sampled from three homes in Bradford County, Pa., revealed traces of a compound commonly found in Marcellus Shale drilling fluids, according to a study published on Monday.

The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, addresses a longstanding question about potential risks to underground drinking water from the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. The authors suggested a chain of events by which the drilling chemical ended up in a homeowner’s water supply.

“This is the first case published with a complete story showing organic compounds attributed to shale gas development found in a homeowner’s well,” said Susan Brantley, one of the study’s authors and a geoscientist from Pennsylvania State University.

The industry has long maintained that because fracking occurs thousands of feet below drinking-water aquifers, the drilling chemicals that are injected to break up rocks and release the gas trapped there pose no risk. In this study, the researchers note that the contamination may have stemmed from a lack of integrity in the drill wells and not from the actual fracking process far below. The industry criticized the new study, saying that it provided no proof that the chemical came from a nearby well.

In 2012, a team of environmental scientists collected drinking water samples from the households’ outdoor spigots. An analysis showed that the water in one household contained 2-Butoxyethanol or 2BE, a common drilling chemical. The chemical, which is also commonly used in paint and cosmetics, is known to have caused tumors in rodents, though scientists have not determined if those carcinogenic properties translate to humans. The authors said the amount found, which was measured in parts per trillion, was within safety regulations and did not pose a health risk.

Dr. Brantley said her team believed that the well contaminants came from either a documented surface tank leak in 2009 or, more likely, as a result of poor drilling well integrity.

The nearby gas wells, which were established in 2009, were constructed with a protective intermediate casing of steel and cement from the surface down to almost 1,000 feet. But the wells below that depth lacked the protective casing, and were potentially at greater risk of leaking their contents into the surrounding rock layers, according to Dr. Brantley.

In April 2011 the three homeowners in Bradford County sued the drilling company, Chesapeake Energy Corporation, over reports of finding natural gas and sediment in their drinking well water. In May of that year, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection cited the oil and gas company for violating the Pennsylvania Oil and Gas Act and Clean Streams Law by letting natural gas enter the drinking wells, though the company admitted no fault. In 2012, the homeowners settled the lawsuit and the company bought the three households.

As a result of that suit, the state environmental protection agency recommended that the drilling company require that their wells extend what are known as intermediate casings beyond 1,000 feet.

Dr. Brantley described the geology in northern Pennsylvania as being similar to a layer cake with numerous layers that extend down thousands of feet to the Marcellus Shale. The vertical fractures are like knife cuts through the layers. They can extend deep underground, and can act like superhighways for escaped gas and liquids from drill wells to travel along, for distances greater than a mile away, she said.

Katie Brown, an energy consultant with Energy in Depth, an advocacy group for the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said the authors had no evidence that the small traces they found of 2BE, which is also used in many household items, came from a drilling site.

“The entire case is based around the detection of an exceedingly small amount of a compound that’s commonly used in hundreds of household products,” Ms. Brown wrote in an email. “The researchers suggest the compound is also found in a specific drilling fluid, but then tell us they have no evidence that this fluid was used at the well site.”

Garth T. Llewellyn, a hydrogeologist with Appalachia Hydrogeologic and Environmental Consulting and the lead author of the report, said that when his team sampled water wells that were farther away from the drilling sites, they did not find any of the compounds found in the three households. “When you include all of the lines of evidence, it concludes that that’s the most probable source,” he said. Mr. Llewellyn had previously provided the families with environmental consulting during their civil case with Chesapeake Energy.

Victor Heilweil, a hydrogeologist from the University of Utah who was not involved with the study but reviewed its details, said it was noteworthy for showing “the detailed geologic fabric explaining how these contaminants can move relatively long distances from the depth to the drinking well.”

An environmental scientist from Stanford University, Rob Jackson, who also reviewed the paper, said it “clearly shows an impact of oil and gas drilling on water quality.” But he emphasized that this instance was an exception.

The dates of the incident were not surprising to Scott Anderson, a senior policy analyst with the environmental advocacy group Environmental Defense Fund, who said that well integrity was generally poor around 2008 and 2009. He said that using casings of steel and cement at depths below 1,000 feet was a good idea in this region. But he also noted that the industry has strengthened its practices since then, including increased use of intermediate casings.

“Industry knows how to construct wells properly, but the fact is that they don’t always do so,” Mr. Anderson said. “My hope would be that papers like this will encourage industry and its regulators to do a better job of doing what they already know they are supposed to do.”

Editors’ Note: May 13, 2015
An article on May 5 about fracking chemicals detected in drinking water in Pennsylvania omitted background information about one author of the study on which the article was based. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences had provided journalists with an early version of the study that stated that the authors “declared no conflict of interest.” However, a later version of the study noted that one author, Garth T. Llewellyn, had provided litigation support and environmental consulting services to the households that said that their drinking water had been contaminated. That information would have been included if The Times had known about it before publication.

[Luther Blissett]

Alaska sets new record for earliest day with temperatures in the 90s

May 28, 2015

It’s been a warm, dry spring for much of interior Alaska. On the afternoon of May 23, a new statewide record was set for the earliest day in the year with a temperature in the 90s. A daytime high of 91°F was noted by a cooperative observer in Eagle, where temperatures have been recorded (with some breaks) since the 1890s.


Temperature in Alaska on the afternoon of May 23, 2015, based on data from NOAA's Real-time Mesoscale Analysis.

This temperature map of Alaska shows the unusual warmth on May 23, 2015, at 2 p.m. local time in Fairbanks. Based on NOAA’s Real-time Mesoscale Analysis data, it shows air temperatures at 2 meters (6.6 feet) above the ground. Temperatures below 45° are shades of blue, and temperatures above 45° are shades of orange and red.

The warmest temperatures are located inland—away from the moderating influence of the ocean—at the foot of mountain ranges and along rivers. Fairbanks, for example, is on the banks of the Tanana River in a low-lying area between the Alaska Range to the south and the White Mountains to the north-northeast.

The 91° temperature at Eagle smashed that location’s all-time record for May. It was 30.1° hotter than the average daily high temperature in May (59.5°F), and 18.1° warmer than the average high temperature in July, Eagle’s warmest month of the year. So far this month, Eagle has set or tied ten daily high temperature records.


Each month's average daytime high temperature (red), average (gray), and overnight low (blue) in Eagle, Alaska, for 1981-2010. On average, the daytime high temperature in May is just shy of 60°F. On May 23, 2015, it was 91°F. Graph by NOAA Climate.gov, based on U.S. Climate Normals data.

The new record edged out the previous “earliest day in the 90s” record, set on May 24, 1960, when Fort Wainwright (near Fairbanks) had a high of 92°F and Circle Hot Springs (northwest of Eagle) had a high of 90°F. The high temperature at Eagle during that heatwave was 83°F.

The stretch of the year between when the snow melts and when vegetation fully leafs out can be especially dangerous for fires in years like this, when early heat is accompanied by extremely low relative humidity. Leaf litter and other dead vegetation dries out rapidly, producing a large supply of fuel for any lightning or human-triggered fires.

According to the May 23 Fuels and Fire Behavior Advisory from the Alaska Interagency Coordination Center, the eastern interior of Alaska had very high fire risk. The same high-pressure system producing the heat and dryness was also likely to produce gusty Chinook (warm, downslope) winds. “With that combination,” the advisory warned, “very rapid spread rates and intense burning of surface fuels will cause torching and crown fire.”

Conditions were predicted to remain especially dangerous for at least the rest of the month.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Just a random observation from someone living in LA: we're dealing with the remnants of Hurricane Blanca coming up from Baja California bringing rain and muggy weather. I seem to recall this also happened last year around August or September, but I don't remember a hurricane ever coming up from Baja to bring tropical conditions in LA before. Never happened when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s and I don't recall it happening from 2000-2012 either. Or does anyone else here have different memories than I do? My concern is that if this trend continues, we could see southern California getting hit by hurricane force conditions in about 20-30 years.

Anyway, just wondering. Here's something else:

You're About to See an Incredibly Rare Cloud, and It's Proof the Climate Is Changing

by Brian K Sullivan



In a few weeks, you may get to see evidence the atmosphere is changing -- if you’re lucky.

That’s when noctilucent clouds, the world’s highest, peak in number and show up in the night sky just after sunset as electric-blue swirls in the mesosphere, the coldest place on the planet.

Usually visible only in the polar regions, the clouds now sometimes appear as far south as 40 degrees latitude in the Northern Hemisphere, according to Cora Randall, a professor at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder. That’s because the mesosphere, which nears the edge of space, is changing, possibly “due to a change in climate,” he said. “We believe that these clouds are a really sensitive indicator.”

The clouds first appeared in 1885 after the Krakatoa volcano erupted in Indonesia, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The initial theory was that they were related to volcanic dust, but they kept showing up.

Now there are more of them, and they aren’t confined to the ends of the globe anymore. Viewers in New York, Rome and Sapporo, Japan, may see them as they drift more than 50 miles (83 kilometers) above the earth.
Satellite Tracking

NASA’s Aeronomy of the Ice in the Mesophere, or AIM, satellite mission has been looking at them from space since 2007. Changes in the clouds reflect “how we affect the atmosphere down here,” Elsayed Talaat, AIM’s program scientist, said by telephone from Washington. “If you increase the methane down below, you are going to increase the water vapor up above.”

Carbon dioxide also may play a role, Randall said. The gas, which warms the lower atmosphere, “can actually cause the upper atmosphere to cool,” she said.

Talaat said it’s too early to identify a single culprit. To make such a link would require removing other possible causes such as the solar cycle. Changing irradiance through the 11-year period affects the upper atmosphere, so Talaat said he would want to see what occurs during an entire cycle.

The AIM satellite itself, or at least the means for getting it into space, also may contribute.

“Rockets can put a lot of water vapor in the atmosphere; they inject it very high in altitude,” Randall said. “It is actually above where the clouds are.”
Atmospheric Waves

The noctilucent clouds show up in the late Northern Hemisphere spring. As the sun starts to illuminate the polar region, atmospheric waves push up into the higher altitudes “like waves on a beach,” Talaat said. Scientists say this push helps the mesosphere reach its coldest points in the Northern Hemisphere summer.

This year, the clouds appeared May 19 and will peak just after the solstice on June 21.

Last year, there was a double peak, which “was a little weird,” Talaat said. “We don’t really know why.”

So look up in the sky in the next few weeks. Those electric-blue swirls you see may be a piece of a puzzle that has enthralled scientists for more than a century.

[Luther Blissett]

Just a random observation from someone living in LA: we're dealing with the remnants of Hurricane Blanca coming up from Baja California bringing rain and muggy weather. I seem to recall this also happened last year around August or September, but I don't remember a hurricane ever coming up from Baja to bring tropical conditions in LA before. Never happened when I was a kid in the 70s and 80s and I don't recall it happening from 2000-2012 either. Or does anyone else here have different memories than I do? My concern is that if this trend continues, we could see southern California getting hit by hurricane force conditions in about 20-30 years.

As a weather-obsessed child throughout the 80s I'm pretty sure that I never heard of a hurricane coming up through Baja California. There were walla wallas in Oceania, typhoons blowing east off of the Pacific, and hurricanes in the Atlantic. I remember even asking about hurricanes in the Pacific and being told it was extremely rare.

[Luther Blissett]

How Climate Change Is Destroying Historical Sites Around the World
by Shelby Kinney-Lang

In the hot middle of August 1996, lightning struck a dense piñon-juniper range in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado. Then flames licked up, burning northward through Soda Canyon, Little Soda Canyon, and Park Mesa’s research area. The blaze ran its course for seven days. Aircrafts doused the park in water, and fire retardants known as “slurry” were used to snub out flames in the nooks of tough-to-reach craggy topography. Slurry stains are still visible, almost 20 years later, on the impressionable sandstone trail to Spruce Tree House, a collection of cliff dwellings. The national park contains an estimated 600 buildings fashioned into cliff alcoves, and over 5,000 other archeological sites produced by the Ancestral Puebloans. Although the fire quit just before reaching the Visitors’ Center, burning through a small (but important) 4,781 acres in the end, it accelerated a natural process known as spalling. When water evaporates in sandstone, layers of rock flake off. Because of this accelerated spalling, the fire claimed an important victim—the famous Battleship Rock Panel, which was degraded and destroyed. This petroglyph panel portrayed humans and animals, dated roughly back to 1100 AD, was chiseled into the sandstone, and helped archaeologists contextualize life of the Ancestral Puebloans.

The tremendous loss of a pivotal archaeological site as a result of the fire not only substantially changed how park archaeologists treat post-fire sites, but also offered a revealing glimpse of what’s to come as the effects of climate change take hold over the next century. A 2014 report by the Union of Concerned Scientists featured Mesa Verde alongside 29 other national landmarks that are now at risk because of the effects of climate change. Researchers say climate change will make longer and hotter fire seasons, and the resultant fires could potentially devastate archaeological preserves like the one at Mesa Verde. The report notes that over the last 600 years in that region, the last 50 have been the hottest. But it’s not just Mesa Verde, or even the United States. Climate change threatens to erase archaeological sites across the world.

Examples are abundant. In Peru, the intricate designs of the 600-year-old city of Chan Chan are suffering from increased torrential downpours due to overly abundant El Nino patterns. UNESCO described the erosion as “rapid and seemingly unstoppable.” Ironically, many of the same processes that put these sites at risk also turn up new artifacts. By 2007, over half of the acres in Mesa Verde had burned since the fire, revealing 676 new sites previously hidden beneath vegetation. The same ecological complications that are turning frozen Chilean mummies into black ooze are also causing artifacts and bodies to emerge from receding glaciers.

Maria Caffrey, a paleo-climatologist and research associate at the University of Colorado, Boulder was hired by the National Parks Service (NPS) to study how climate change will affect sea-level rises and storm surges along 118 costal park sites. Many archaeological sites occur along coastlines, where humans settled near the water. “As the climate gets warmer, we’re estimating storms will get more intense,” Caffrey tells me.

Along the northwest coast of Alaska, for example, these bigger storms, along with erosion and rising tides, threaten to sweep away 1,000-year-old artifacts and sites of the first people to live in that area. One site along the Bering Sea contains a Yup’ik village frozen in thick layers of permafrost. It now faces the threat of melting, exposing the delicately preserved village to the elements—a 30-foot area at the edge of the site has already been washed into the sea. And it’s not just the ancient past that’s under threat. Jamestown, Virginia, part of Colonial National Historical Park, faces a massive threat from rising tides and rising water levels that might flood buried artifacts.

“Do we take them out and risk exposing them to the air, and potentially see more damage that way, or do we leave them in place?” Caffrey asks.

These questions—whether and how to save which sites—will become increasingly important as climate patterns shift, and archaeological sites begin to take the blunt of the climate blow. Even if we could figure out the exact impact of change for every important site, the nature of choosing what to protect—and how to do it—might be more of an engineering and economic problem than a scientific one. In 1999, the NPS decided to move the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse 1500 feet from the shoreline, at a cost of $11.8 million. “The decision to relocate the Cape Hatteras Light Station was a sound public policy decision based on the best science and engineering information available,” the NPS writes. It’s not clear how many lighthouses will fall into a rising sea, but it’s unlikely we can move every single structure, let alone every broader archaeological site, that is at risk.

“This is the legacy we’re leaving for future generations,” Caffrey said. “We’re going to have to ask the tricky questions, of what ones do we try to save, or if we don’t save any at all, or whether or not some of these things eventually become monuments to climate change. Instead of having a lighthouse you can walk up to, maybe it becomes a submerged site that you can take a snorkel tour around and learn about climate change that way.”

[Nordic]

I've always figured that people in general have had such an odd reaction to climate change due to the catastrophic way in which it has been presented to them. Like someone screaming "you're all gonna die!" Here is a very interesting article which basically agrees and talks about the psychological aspects to people's views on climate change.

http://www.vice.com/read/a-psychologist ... etwitterus

A Psychologist Explains Why People Don't Give a Shit About Climate Change
June 9, 2015
by Bill Kilby
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Surprise Glacier, Harriman Fiord, western Prince William Sound, Alaska. Photo by the US Geological Survey.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last month that the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere surpassed 400ppm for the first time in recorded history. The agency added that the average rate of emissions is increasing, and that we can expect to reach the "point of no return" of 450ppm more quickly than previous milestones unless emissions are drastically reduced.

What? Have your eyes glazed over already? You don't feel empowered to start leading a low-carbon lifestyle? Do you not get what "point of no return" means?

You're not alone, especially if you reside in a Western country, and Per Espen Stoknes isn't surprised you feel that way. Stoknes is the author of What We Think About When We Try Not to Think About Global Warming, which begins by exploring the "climate paradox"—the depressing phenomenon observed in wealthy countries like the US, Canada, and Australia, where public concern about climate change has steadily decreased, despite broad consensus among climate scientists and more frightening journalism about climate change than ever before. A psychologist and economist, Stoknes draws on the findings of social, evolutionary, and cognitive behavioral psychology to explain why English-speaking people just can't be bothered to care about climate change. Thankfully, he also offers strategies for how to talk about the environment if you really want to get the point across. We discussed these recommendations, which have strong implications, particularly for journalists and activists.



Photo courtesy of Per Espen Stoknes

VICE: Why do you think journalism on climate change has been ineffective in convincing the public about the urgency of the problem?
Per Espen Stoknes: Studies have shown that over 80 percent of newspaper articles on IPCC climate change reports have used the catastrophe framing. Also, many journalists have extensively quoted active deniers to give "both" sides a voice, a practice which creates a "false balance."

Thus, today, global warming is the biggest story that has never been told. Recently I think we've seen a change in coverage, for instance in The Guardian. The main shift is to telling stories about the people making the change happen; focusing on opportunities, solutions, and true green growth. From psychology, we know that the best mix to create engagement and creativity is a [ratio] of one to three in negative to positive stories. My own research has resulted in four main groups of narratives that are and need to be told: a) green growth opportunities, b) better quality of life, i.e. what does a low-carbon society look like? c) the ethical stewardship story, and finally, d) stories on re-wilding and the resilience of nature. The more people start believing we can create a better society with lower emissions, the sooner they can start taking action.

Continued below.

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How is dissonance explained psychologically, and how can climate change action be organized to cut through it?
Say you were influenced by peers to bully someone, verbally or physically. After doing so—to keep our positive self-image—you'll tend to reduce the dissonance ("I'm bullying someone, but I'm a nice person") by making up self-justifications such as "he's bad/nuts/stupid" or "he really deserved it." Or the opposite: Let's say you're kind to someone, or give money to the homeless, or donate blood. If you think that these causes are pointless, then dissonance hits: "I'm a caring person, but I'm wasting my resources." Therefore, we tend to avoid this by propping up the belief that these causes that [we] act for are great. "I'm doing this; therefore the cause must be important."

We're really fucking up the planet. VICE News reports that humans are destroying the environment at a rate unprecedented in over 10,000 years.

Thus, the more we drive, eat beef, fly, or live in high-energy use buildings, the more dissonance we experience when we hear about awful global warming effects that results from our actions. Opposite: The more we drive electric cars, e-bikes, eat no-till foods, and put solar panels on our roofs, the more we believe in the importance of climate change. Therefore, by applying "nudging"—making it simpler or the default option to take action for the climate—the more we can build consistent attitudes that actually support climate policy.

Speaking of beef, multiple studies have concluded that animal agriculture contributes the most emissions to climate change—more than energy and transportation. Do you think a mass collective shift to a plant-based diet is possible, and what socio-psychological barriers stand in the way?
If you tell people "You can't have your meat!" you'll mostly increase the resistance. You may be ecologically "right," but the psychological barriers will kick in big time. What's needed is to build support among the public to push for structural solutions; cutting food-waste, less deforestation, more no-till farming, meat reduction, organic farming, etc. Fundamentally, agriculture should become carbon-negative; storing more carbon in the soil than it emits. And on the end-user side it must be fun, easy, and inspiring to make and enjoy tasty plant-based foods. I think we've just seen the start of culinary explorations that go way beyond. In Oslo, we did a study that looked at [designating] the vegetarian option as the "the chef's special" or the default dish of the day. It contributed to substantially to meat reduction.

We [should] tell new stories of the dream, not the nightmares. We must describe where we want to go, such as smarter green growth, happier lives, and better cities.

In the book, you say that because individuals want to defend their identities and behavior in the face of warnings about climate change, the issue has become politically polarized. Can climate change as a policy issue ever become de-polarized enough for people to act without feeling attacked?
We need to apply a mix of strategies that hold the potential to dissolve the polarization: use social networks, supportive framings, simple actions, stories, and signals. We start by changing the messengers to people that are inside non-polarized social networks such as sport teams, churches, neighborhoods, towns, and cities. Second, we avoid doom, cost, and sacrifice framings, and talk about the issue in terms of opportunity, insurance, risk management, health, and resilience. Third, we make behaviors such as purchasing solar panels, energy-efficient appliances, homes, getting around in cities, simpler and more convenient. Fourth, and most important, we tell new stories of the dream, not the nightmares. We must describe where we want to go, such as smarter green growth, happier lives, and better cities, stewardship rather than dominion, and re-wilding nature by allowing its resilience to flourish again.

Last July, a hiker was mauled by a polar bear in the Arctic. We went back with him to the scene of the attack to investigate why climate change is causing polar bears to target humans.



Yet some powerful individuals, like ExxonMobil's CEO, still see climate change adaptation as a net loss. Do you think bottom-up social organization can really accumulate enough support to influence the behavior of economic behemoths that want to maintain the status quo?
No. Bottom-up social organization alone can't win a direct fight with the oil dinosaurs. But other behemoths can and will do so. Of the four largest companies in the world, only one is an oil company. The other three are Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Why should these companies let ExxonMobil ruin the growth of their consumer markets, as global warming will? Global corporations understand and recognize the future value of a benign climate for a stable business market. Extreme weather, with floods in Asia and droughts in Silicon Valley, hits both supply chains and disrupts their best workers' quality of life. There's little business on a broken planet. Further, other fossil players are changing: Big Coal is dying—down 70 percent in value in a few years—and now CEOs from other global oil and gas behemoths have signaled that they're ready for a price on carbon. Smart investors will discover early enough what the new trends are, and find that profit margins in the fossil sector are declining relative to other rapid growth sectors. So whatever ExxonMobil dinosaurs say, the other companies are moving, as well as increasing numbers of their customers. It's now business-to-business competition, no longer idealists versus business. The direction is inevitable. Only the timing remains uncertain.

You seem optimistic about the capacity of technology to facilitate sustainable human lifestyles, but a lot of technological optimism as expressed in media is still focused on technology that promises to allow us to defy ecological limits, such as interplanetary colonization. Does that type of idea affect people's will to act on climate change, if they believe our ecosystem will inevitably expand beyond Earth's limits?
Technology won't fix it. There are a lot of savior delusions as part of our Christian culture. Neither technology by itself, escaping to other planets in Star Trek mode, nor waiting for Jesus to return will quite cut it. Along with the economists' dream of one global carbon price, these fictions belong to what psychologists would call "wishful thinking." The uptake of technology is shaped by the social system it becomes part of, and it shapes society in turn. Any type of transformation will result of messy drawn-out interactions between the public, government, and commercial technologies. There is no silver bullet. And yet there is a grounded hope that our engagement, across public, governmental, and business reforms, will make the swerve in time.

There are too many good reasons why we humans resist the many sad facts of climate disruption, the "global weirding." It finally boils down to the question,Why bother? That one question reveals a simple fact: The most fundamental obstacles to averting dangerous climate disruption are not mainly physical or technological or even institutional—they have to do with how we align our thinking and doing with our being. This missing alignment shows clearly in the current lack of courage, determination, and imagination to carry through the necessary actions to combat climate disruption. But these human capacities are, luckily, as renewable as the wind and the sunshine. Humans will act for the long-term when conducive conditions are in place. Therefore, all climate communicators need to assist building the necessary social norms, supportive frames, simple actions, new stories, and better signals.

Update: This article originally incorrectly stated that the lead image was a photo of Denali National Park. We have since corrected the caption.

Bill Kilby is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles

[Luther Blissett]

Have I asked this question here yet? Won't some poor communities up in the Central Valley go to turn their water on one day to find that nothing comes out?

Rich Californians balk at limits: ‘We’re not all equal when it comes to water’

RANCHO SANTA FE, CALIF. — Drought or no drought, Steve Yuhas resents the idea that it is somehow shameful to be a water hog. If you can pay for it, he argues, you should get your water.

People “should not be forced to live on property with brown lawns, golf on brown courses or apologize for wanting their gardens to be beautiful,” Yuhas fumed recently on social media. “We pay significant property taxes based on where we live,” he added in an interview. “And, no, we’re not all equal when it comes to water.”

Yuhas lives in the ultra-wealthy enclave of Rancho Santa Fe, a bucolic Southern California hamlet of ranches, gated communities and country clubs that guzzles five times more water per capita than the statewide average. In April, after Gov. Jerry Brown (D) called for a 25 percent reduction in water use, consumption in Rancho Santa Fe went up by 9 percent.

But a moment of truth is at hand for Yuhas and his neighbors, and all of California will be watching: On July 1, for the first time in its 92-year history, Rancho Santa Fe will be subject to water rationing.

“It’s no longer a ‘You can only water on these days’ ” situation, said Jessica Parks, spokeswoman for the Santa Fe Irrigation District, which provides water service to Rancho Santa Fe and other parts of San Diego County. “It’s now more of a ‘This is the amount of water you get within this billing period. And if you go over that, there will be high penalties.’ ”

So far, the community’s 3,100 residents have not felt the wrath of the water police. Authorities have issued only three citations for violations of a first round of rather mild water restrictions announced last fall. In a place where the median income is $189,000, where PGA legend Phil Mickelson once requested a separate water meter for his chipping greens, where financier Ralph Whitworth last month paid the Rolling Stones $2 million to play at a local bar, the fine, at $100, was less than intimidating.

All that is about to change, however. Under the new rules, each household will be assigned an essential allotment for basic indoor needs. Any additional usage — sprinklers, fountains, swimming pools — must be slashed by nearly half for the district to meet state-mandated targets.

Residents who exceed their allotment could see their already sky-high water bills triple. And for ultra-wealthy customers undeterred by financial penalties, the district reserves the right to install flow restrictors — quarter-size disks that make it difficult to, say, shower and do a load of laundry at the same time.

In extreme cases, the district could shut off the tap altogether.

The restrictions are among the toughest in the state, and residents of Rancho Santa Fe are feeling aggrieved.

“I think we’re being overly penalized, and we’re certainly being overly scrutinized by the world,” said Gay Butler, an interior designer out for a trail ride on her show horse, Bear. She said her water bill averages about $800 a month.

“It angers me because people aren’t looking at the overall picture,” Butler said. “What are we supposed to do, just have dirt around our house on four acres?”

Rancho Santa Fe residents are hardly the only Californians facing a water crackdown. On Friday, the state said it would impose sharp cutbacks on senior water rights dating back to the Gold Rush for the first time in four decades, a move that primarily hits farmers. And starting this month, all of California’s 400-plus water districts are under orders to reduce flow by at least 8 percent from 2013 levels.

Top water users such as Rancho Santa Fe are required to cut consumption by 36 percent. Other areas in the 36-percent crosshairs include much of the Central Valley, a farming region that runs up the middle of the state, and Orange County, a ritzy Republican stronghold between San Diego and Los Angeles.

“I call it the war on suburbia,” said Brett Barbre, who lives in the Orange County community of Yorba City, another exceptionally wealthy Zip code.

Barbre sits on the 37-member board of directors of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a huge water wholesaler serving 17 million customers. He is fond of referring to his watering hose with Charlton Heston’s famous quote about guns: “They’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.”

“California used to be the land of opportunity and freedom,” Barbre said. “It’s slowly becoming the land of one group telling everybody else how they think everybody should live their lives.”

Jurgen Gramckow, a sod farmer north of Los Angeles in Ventura County, agrees. He likens the freedom to buy water to the freedom to buy gasoline.

“Some people have a Prius; others have a Suburban,” Gramckow said. “Once the water goes through the meter, it’s yours.”

Yuhas, who hosts a conservative talk-radio show, abhors the culture of “drought-shaming” that has developed here since the drought began four years ago, especially the aerial shots of lavish lawns targeted for derision on the local TV news.

“I’m a conservative, so this is strange, but I defend Barbra Streisand’s right to have a green lawn,” said Yuhas, who splits his time between Rancho Santa Fe and Los Angeles. “When we bought, we didn’t plan on getting a place that looks like we’re living in an African savanna.”

Others are embarrassed by such defiance. Parks of the Sante Fe Irrigation District said she was mortified when the report came out earlier this month showing that Rancho Santa Fe had increased its water use — the only community in the region to do so.

“I kind of take it personally,” she said last week as she toured the community in an SUV bearing the water district’s logo.

Parks said she doesn’t know exactly what happened, but she has heard rumors that some people jacked up their water use in a misguided attempt to increase their baseline before rationing kicks in. With sprinkler restrictions already in place, she said the dynamic between local gardeners and her small team of enforcers is getting interesting.

“Everyone seems now to know what our cars look like,” she said. In Fairbanks Ranch, a gated community, “whenever one of our trucks go in, the gardeners all seem to call each other — text-message each other — to let them know that we’ve arrived. So then all of a sudden we see water kind of draining off the property but no sprinklers on.”

Because the restrictions that took effect in September didn’t register, the district further tightened the screws this month. Sprinkler days were reduced from three a week to two, while car-washing and garden fountains were banned altogether.

Holly Manion, a real estate agent who has lived on the Ranch, as it’s often called, for most of her 62 years, supports the restrictions. Although Manion cherishes the landscape of manicured lawns and burbling fountains that has long defined the Ranch, she thinks the drought requires a new way of life that emphasizes water conservation.

“Just take a drive around the area. You’ll see lakes low, rivers dry and hillsides parched,” Manion said, adding that she is appalled by people who tolerate leaking sprinklers and the resulting cascades of wasted water.

“There are people, they aren’t being responsible,” she said. “They’re just thinking of their own lives.”

Ann Boon, president of the Rancho Santa Fe Association, insists that most residents are taking the drought seriously. She said she was shocked by the reported 9 percent increase, arguing that it “must be some anomaly.”

“Everybody has been trying to cut back,” she said.

For example, many Rancho Santa Fe residents have enthusiastically embraced drought-tolerant landscaping. Manion took advantage of a rebate to rip out much of the turf on her three-acre property and replace it with succulents and decomposed-granite pathways. She left only a small patch of grass for her two dogs to play on.

“It makes me happy when I look at it, because it’s thriving,” she said.

Butler said she, too, is replacing grass with drought-friendly native landscaping on her four acres, at a cost of nearly $80,000. (She’ll get a rebate for about $12,000.) But she came to the decision grudgingly, she said. And she defends the amount of water she and her neighbors need for their vast estates.

“You could put 20 houses on my property, and they’d have families of at least four. In my house, there is only two of us,” Butler said. So “they’d be using a hell of a lot more water than we’re using.”

Rancho Santa Fe resident Randy Woods was feeling burdened by his lush landscape and opted to downsize. The 60-something chief executive of a biotech company moved a year ago from a two-acre estate — replete with two waterfalls, two Jacuzzis, a swimming pool and an orchard — to a condo in the tiny core of town known as “the Village.”

Woods said some of his friends would like to do the same, largely to cut down on their bloated water bills. But they have encountered an unforeseen obstacle, he said: The drought has dampened demand for large estates in San Diego County.

Woods said his girlfriend is among those struggling to sell. Her home boasts a yard designed by Kate Sessions, a well-known landscape architect and botanist who died in 1940. But now, the rare palm tree specimens, the secret garden and the turret-shaped hedges are a liability rather than a selling point.

Another friend, Woods said, has seen the value of his nine-acre plot plummet from $30 million to $22 million.

As for Woods, his monthly water bill has shriveled from $500 to around $50.

“My friends,” he said, “are all jealous.”

[Luther Blissett]

First Five Months Of 2015 Were The Hottest Ever Recorded

The year 2015 is set to be a record-breaker, according to NASA’s latest global temperature data. This year’s temperature is 0.71°C (1.3°F) above the long-term average, and the first five months have been the hottest ever recorded.

NASA’s annual temperatures show a slight variation, where some years are cooler than others, but as John Abraham for The Guardian reports, “2015 is so far this year, simply off the chart.” Abraham suggests that the recent record-breaking temperatures put global warming critics in a difficult position—the evidence is simply not on their side. Temperatures for the last 12 months are at record levels. The idea that the rate of global warming is slowing down or ‘paused’ has been thoroughly refuted. Abraham points out that when surface temperatures and ocean heat content are combined, there is a clear pattern of warming increasing.

This is best demonstrated with the heat wave in India, which has been making the rounds in the media as the sweltering temperatures have caused 2,500 deaths so far. According to a report from Slate’s Eric Holthaus, the temperatures were so hot they melted roads—reaching 45°C (113°F) in New Delhi. Jason Samenow, from The Washington Post, explained that these record-breaking temperatures cannot be divorced from global warming. He noted that greenhouse gases likely contributed to the dire situation and “the climate literature predicts more frequent, intense and longer-duration heat waves in future decades.”

What will future temperatures look like and are these breaking temperatures the new norm? NASA's New Big Dataset, released last week, gives us a glimpse. Using climate modeling simulation results, NASA produced high-resolution details of temperature and precipitation patterns around the world from the years between 1950 and 2100. In July 2099, CO2 concentrations are predicted to reach an all time high at 900 parts per million. We reached 400 parts per million in the first few days of 2015, and average global temperatures are scorching.

The models consist of two possible situations: a ‘business as usual’ scenario based on current trends and an extreme case scenario in which a significant increase in emissions occurs. The datasets are meant to help developing countries—who will bear the brunt of global warming—to prepare for the local effects. They should also help earth scientists to explore what temperatures could be like on a global scale by the end of the century.

“NASA is in the business of taking what we’ve learned about our planet from space and creating new products that help us all safeguard our future,” said Ellen Stofan, a NASA chief scientist. “With this new global dataset, people around the world have a valuable new tool to use in planning how to cope with a warming planet.”

[stillrobertpaulsen]

First Five Months Of 2015 Were The Hottest Ever Recorded

Thanks Luther. The predictability of this year after year is mind numbingly scary.