2016 SkS Weekly Digest #37

Story of the Week... SkS Highlights... La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... SkS in the News... SkS Spotlights... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week.. Climate Feedback Reviews... SkS Week in Review... 97 Hours of Consensus...

Story of the Week

Lest we loose sight of the fact that manmade climate change impacts more than just the Earth's atmosphere...

Global warming is making the oceans sicker than ever before, spreading disease among animals and humans and threatening food security across the planet, a major scientific report said.

The findings, based on peer-reviewed research, were compiled by 80 scientists from 12 countries, experts said at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress in Hawaii.

"We all know that the oceans sustain this planet. We all know that the oceans provide every second breath we take," IUCN director general Inger Andersen said at the meeting, which has drawn 9,000 leaders and environmentalists to Honolulu.

"And yet we are making the oceans sick."

The report, Explaining Ocean Warming, is the "most comprehensive, most systematic study we have ever undertaken on the consequence of this warming on the ocean", co-lead author Dan Laffoley said.

Global warming making oceans sick, spreading disease in humans and animals, scientists warn, ABC News (Australia) , Sep 12, 2016

SkS Highlights

Using the metric of comments posted, the most popular of the articles posted on SkS during the past week are:

Toon of the Week

 2016 Toon 37

La Niña Update

Quote of the Week  

MIDWAY ATOLL — Seventy-four years ago, a naval battle off this remote spit of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean changed the course of World War II. Last week, President Obama flew here to swim with Hawaiian monk seals and draw attention to a quieter war — one he has waged against rising seas, freakish storms, deadly droughts and other symptoms of a planet choking on its own fumes.

Bombs may not be falling. The sound of gunfire does not concentrate the mind. What Mr. Obama has seen instead are the charts and graphs of a warming planet. “And they’re terrifying,” he said in a recent interview in Honolulu.

“What makes climate change difficult is that it is not an instantaneous catastrophic event,” he said. “It’s a slow-moving issue that, on a day-to-day basis, people don’t experience and don’t see.”

Obama on Climate Change: The Trends Are ‘Terrifying' by Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Mark Lander, & Coral Davenport, New York Times, Sep 8, 2016

Graphic of the Week

 Global Temp Anomalies 1880-2015

NASA global temperatures, 12-months running average, including the value for July, the hottest month ever recorded. Credit: Stefan Rahmstorf 

Sorry Deniers, Even Satellites Confirm Record Global Warming by Joe Romm, Think Progress, Sep 7, 2016

SkS Spotlights

Climateprediction.net is a volunteer computing, climate modelling project based at the University of Oxford in the Environmental Change Institute, the Oxford e-Research Centre and Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics.  

From the Home page of Climateprediction.net:

We run climate models on people’s home computers to help answer questions about how climate change is affecting our world, now and in the future –

Sign up now and help us predict the climate.

Evidence of how our climate is changing is vital to encourage investment in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as coping with inevitable change.

You can help discover how the climate could look by running our free software on your computer. The data generated is sent back to us and incorporated into the climateprediction.net projects.

Our computer models simulate the climate for the next century, producing predictions of temperature, rainfall and the probability of extreme weather events. The more models that are run, the more evidence we gather on climate change.

Get started and help us predict the climate.

Video of the Week

Seeing the future of climate policy under the next president, PBS NewsHour, Sep 7, 2016

Report of Note

Explaining Ocean Warming published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

IUPC Report: Explaining Ocean Warming

Author(s): 

Organization(s): 

Abstract: 

Ocean warming may well turn out to be the greatest hidden challenge of our generation. This report represents the most comprehensive review to date on ocean warming. To build up the report, leading scientists from around the world were invited to join with colleagues to contribute individual chapters.  It contains many recommendations from the scientists on capability gaps and research issues that need to be resolved if we are to tackle the impacts of ocean warming with greater confidence in the future. The focus of the report is on gathering facts and knowledge and communicating this to show what is now happening in and to the ocean. There is purposefully much less focus on political ramifications. We hope that this report will help stimulate further debate and action on such issues.

Coming Soon on SkS 

Poster of the Week

 2016 Poster 37

Climate Feedback Reviews

12 scientists analyzed the article and estimated its overall scientific credibility to be ‘very high’.

Analysis of Justin Gillis’ “Flooding of Coast, Caused by Global Warming, Has Already Begun”, Climate Feedback, Sep 7, 2016 

SkS Week in Review

 97 Hours of Consensus: Simon Donner

 97 Hours: Simon Donner

 

Simon Donner's bio page

Quote derived with permission from author from:

"The take-home message of my coral reef research is that without serious, near-term efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to increase coral reef resilience, the world’s coral reefs will experience dangerously frequent mass bleaching events within decades. This won’t mean the extinction of all tropical reef corals – some hardy ecosystems and some hardy species will persist. However, the vast majority of the world’s coral reefs could become so physically and biologically degraded that they no longer perform their basic services like providing a home for reef fish and protecting shorelines from erosion." 

High resolution JPEG (1024 pixels wide)

Posted by John Hartz on Sunday, 11 September, 2016


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