Arguments
2014 SkS Weekly Digest #49
Posted on 7 December 2014 by John Hartz
SkS Highlights
Dana's Volcanoes may be responsible for most of the global surface warming slowdown attracted the highest number of comments of the articles posted on SkS during the past week. Tied for second place were Drought and Deforestation in Brazil by Alexandre Lacerda and Even climate change experts and activists might be in denial by Steffen Böhm and Aanka Batta.
El Niño Watch
The first Thursday of every month is when we do the CPC/IRI ENSO status update, when NOAA officially answers the question “Are we there yet?” This month, the answer is...close, but no cigar.
Sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Niño3.4 region of the Pacific were quite warm during November, with the most recent weekly Niño3.4 index value at +1.0°C above average. The threshold for El Niño conditions is +0.5° above average for one month, and most of the climate models are forecasting that SSTs will stay above average for at least a few more months. Then why haven’t we changed from an “El Niño Watch” (favorable for development of El Niño conditions) to an “El Niño Advisory” (El Niño conditions are present)?
December's ENSO Update: Close, but no cigar. by Emily Becker, NOAA Climate.gov, Dec 4. 2014
Toon of the Week
h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists
Quote of the Week
In the more than two decades since world leaders first got together to try to solve global warming, life on Earth has changed, not just the climate. It's gotten hotter, more polluted with heat-trapping gases, more crowded and just downright wilder.
The numbers are stark. Carbon dioxide emissions: up 60 percent. Global temperature: up six-tenths of a degree. Population: up 1.7 billion people. Sea level: up 3 inches. U.S. extreme weather: up 30 percent. Ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica: down 4.9 trillion tons of ice.
"Simply put, we are rapidly remaking the planet and beginning to suffer the consequences," says Michael Oppenheimer, professor of geosciences and international affairs at Princeton University.
In Decades Since Leaders First Got Together On Climate, World Has Gotten Hotter, Weirder by Seth Borenstein, AP/The Huffington Post, Dec 1, 2014
SkS in the News
In his Boing Boing blog post, Handbook for fighting climate-denialism, Cory Doctorow recommends the Debunking Handbook.
SkS Spotlights
Coming Soon on SkS
- California just had its worst drought in over 1200 years, as temperatures and risks rise (Dana)
- Just when did humans first start affecting the climate (howardlee)
- 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #50A (John Hartz)
- Global warming continues despite continuous denial (John Abraham)
- Record-Breaking Sea & Surface Temperatures in 2014: Has the Climate Shifted? (Rob Painting)
- High renewables ambition, but fossil fuels still dominate: UK and Germany electricity systems compared (Robin Webster)
- 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #50B (John Hartz)
- 2014 SkS Weekly Digest #50 (John Hartz)
Poster of the Week
SkS Week in Review
- 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #49B by John Hartz
- Even climate change experts and activists might be in denial by Steffen Böhm and Aanka Batta
- Cutting carbon pollution is the key to curbing global warming by John Abraham
- Drought and Deforestation in Brazil by Alexandre Lacerda
- Volcanoes may be responsible for most of the global surface warming slowdown by Dana
- 97 Hours - the Turkish edition by Baerbel Winkler
- 2014 SkS Weekly News Roundup #49A by John Hartz
- Our short film on the One-Two Punch of Climate Change by John Cook
- 2014 SkS Weekly Digest #48 by John Hartz
Real Climate has an excellent post debunking Watts "World Climate Widget" graph here (currently top post). Skeptical Science may want to post a similar OP, or just repost the Real Climate one. They link a widget that could be linked at SkS also.