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.
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
h/t to I Heart Climate Scientists
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
In his Boing Boing blog post, Handbook for fighting climate-denialism, Cory Doctorow recommends the Debunking Handbook.
Posted by John Hartz on Sunday, 7 December, 2014
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