Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume I (2017)
https://science2017.globalchange.gov
Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume II (2018)
https://nca2018.globalchange.gov
The National Climate Assessment (NCA) assesses the science
of climate change and variability and its impacts across the
United States, now and throughout this century.
Summary Findings
These Summary Findings represent a high-level synthesis of
the material in the underlying report. The findings
consolidate Key Messages and supporting evidence from 16
national-level topic chapters, 10 regional chapters, and 2
chapters that focus on societal response strategies
(mitigation and adaptation). Unless otherwise noted,
qualitative statements regarding future conditions in these
Summary Findings are broadly applicable across the range of
different levels of future climate change and associated
impacts considered in this report.
Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), Volume II (2018)
https://nca2018.globalchange.gov
The National Climate Assessment (NCA) assesses the science
of climate change and variability and its impacts across the
United States, now and throughout this century.
About This Report
Guide To This Report
Chapter 1: Overview
Chapter 2: Our Changing Climate
Chapter 3: Water
Chapter 4: Energy Supply, Delivery, and Demand
Chapter 5: Land Cover and Land-Use Change
Chapter 6: Forests
Chapter 7: Ecosystems, Ecosystem Services, and Biodiversity
Chapter 8: Coastal Effects
Chapter 9: Oceans and Marine Resources
Chapter 10: Agriculture and Rural Communities
Chapter 11: Built Environment, Urban Systems, and Cities
Chapter 12: Transportation
Chapter 13: Air Quality
Chapter 14: Human Health
Chapter 15: Tribes and Indigenous Peoples
Chapter 16: Climate Effects on U.S. International Interests
Chapter 17: Sector Interactions, Multiple Stressors, and Complex Systems
Chapter 18: Northeast
Chapter 19: Southeast
Chapter 20: U.S. Caribbean
Chapter 21: Midwest
Chapter 22: Northern Great Plains
Chapter 23: Southern Great Plains
Chapter 24: Northwest
Chapter 25: Southwest
Chapter 26: Alaska
Chapter 27: Hawaii and U.S.-Affiliated Pacific Islands
Chapter 28: Reducing Risks Through Adaptation Actions
Chapter 29: Reducing Risks Through Emissions Mitigation
Appendix 1: Report Development Process
Appendix 2: Information in the Fourth National Climate Assessment
Appendix 3: Data Tools and Scenarios Products
Appendix 4: Looking Abroad: How Other Nations Approach a National Climate Assessment
Appendix 5: Frequently Asked Questions
ISU professor of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences
Bill Gutowski - Global Climate Change 101
https://isualumblog.wordpress.com/2015/08/20/global-climate-change-101/
ISU professor of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences
Eugene S. Takle (ISU) | Outreach Presentations
http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/faculty/takle/outreach.html
NOAA | Global Climate Change Indicators
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-references/faq/indicators.php
NASA | Global Climate Change (Vital Signs of the Planet)
http://climate.nasa.gov
Halfway to boiling: the city at 50C
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/aug/13/halfway-boiling-city-50c
At 50C - halfway to water's boiling point and more than 10C
above a healthy body temperature - heat becomes toxic. Human
cells start to cook, blood thickens, muscles lock around the
lungs and the brain is choked of oxygen. In dry conditions,
sweat - the body's in-built cooling system - can lessen the
impact. But this protection weakens if there is already
moisture in the air.
A so-called "wet-bulb temperature" (which factors in
humidity) of just 35C can be fatal after a few hours to even
the fittest person, and scientists warn climate change will
make such conditions increasingly common in India, Pakistan,
south-east Asia and parts of China. Even under the most
optimistic predictions for emissions reductions, experts say
almost half the world's population will be exposed to
potentially deadly heat for 20 days a year by 2100.
IPCC
http://www.ipcc.ch
It's probably too late to save the West Antarctic glaciers.
And East Antarctica's situation is unexpectedly precarious.
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/10.1063/PT.5.7074
Researchers have long recognized that the glaciers of West
Antarctica are losing mass: Ice is oozing off the continent
and into the sea faster than it's being replaced from above.
But the long-term implications have been uncertain. Is the
mass loss a short-lived response to the thermal forcing of
warmer-than-usual ocean waters? Or will the collapse
continue unchecked even if the forcing is removed? Two
papers widely reported last week [May 2014] conclude that
the West Antarctic's unstoppable collapse has probably
begun.
Discovery of recent Antarctic ice sheet collapse raises fears
of a new global flood
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/12/discovery-recent-antarctic-ice-sheet-collapse-raises-fears-new-global-flood
Climate MADness (It is NOT A GIVEN that we will survive)
http://thebulletin.org/climate-madness
Climate Armageddon: How the World's Weather Could Quickly Run Amok [Excerpt]
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-worlds-weather-could-quickly-run-amok/
Have We Passed the Point of No Return on Climate Change?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/have-we-passed-the-point-of-no-return-on-climate-change/
Humans may be reversing the climate clock, by 50 million years
https://phys.org/news/2018-12-humans-reversing-climate-clock-million.html
All of the species on Earth today had an ancestor that
survived the Eocene and the Pliocene, but whether humans and
the flora and fauna we are familiar with can adapt to these
rapid changes remains to be seen. The accelerated rate of
change appears to be faster than anything life on the planet
has experienced before.
Book Review: The Uninhabitable Earth
https://slate.com/culture/2019/02/uninhabitable-earth-review-david-wallace-wells-climate-change.html
The Uninhabitable Earth, Annotated Edition
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans-annotated.html
Over the past few decades, the term "Anthropocene" has
climbed out of academic discourse and into the popular
imagination - a name given to the geologic era we live in
now, and a way to signal that it is a new era, defined on
the wall chart of deep history by human intervention. One
problem with the term is that it implies a conquest of
nature (and even echoes the biblical "dominion"). And
however sanguine you might be about the proposition that we
have already ravaged the natural world, which we surely
have, it is another thing entirely to consider the
possibility that we have only provoked it, engineering first
in ignorance and then in denial a climate system that will
now go to war with us for many centuries, perhaps until it
destroys us. That is what Wallace Smith Broecker, the
avuncular oceanographer who coined the term "global
warming," means when he calls the planet an "angry
beast." "The climate system is an angry beast and we are
poking it with sticks."
You could also go with "war machine."" Each day we arm it
more.
The exorbitant cost of climate procrastination
https://phys.org/news/2019-02-exorbitant-climate-procrastination.html
The current pace of CO2 emissions and national commitments
outlined in the wake of the Paris Agreement still put the
world on track toward 3°C of warming above preindustrial
temperatures by the end of this century. This lies far
beyond the +1.5°C target considered as the most acceptable
for all participant countries during the 21st Conference of
the Parties which took place in Paris in 2015. Even the +2°C
target, although less binding, still remains out of reach
under current trends and policies.
A 3°C warming would wreak havoc on the planet, justifying
the absolute necessity of the +1.5°C limit. However, even a
+1.5°C change would incur heavy consequences. The adaptation
cost would undoubtedly be high both for current and future
generations: loss of agricultural yields, sea-level rise,
whole regions rendered uninhabitable, leading to massive
flows of climate migrants, collapse of the ecosystems and
impoverished biodiversity, extreme meteorological events,
seashore and topsoil erosion… All these effects will grow
even more dire as global warming proceeds."
How climate change can make catastrophic weather systems linger for longer
https://phys.org/news/2019-02-climate-catastrophic-weather-linger-longer.html
There does seem to be a plausible link between human-induced
warming, slowing of jet streams, blocking highs, and extreme
weather around the world. The recent Tasman Sea blocking
high can be added to that list, along with other blocking
highs that caused unprecedented wildfires in California and
an extreme heatwave in Europe last year.
There is also a trend for the slowing of the forward speed
(as opposed to wind speed) of tropical cyclones around the
world. One recent study showed the average forward speeds of
tropical cyclones fell by 10% worldwide between 1949 and
2016. Meanwhile, over the same period, the forward speed of
tropical cyclones dropped by 22% over land in the Australian
region.
Climate change is expected to weaken the world's circulatory
winds due to greater warming in high latitudes compared with
the tropics, causing a slowing of the speed at which
tropical cyclones move forward."
sam.wormley@gmail.com