Who Can Deny the World is Warming?

Yesterday, April 14, 2010, Joe Romm at ClimateProgress.org published a definitive answer to this question for climate skeptics everywhere:

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO MODERN DAY CLIMATE CHANGE

All the data you need to show that the world is warming
By Scott A. Mandia

This post is by ClimateProgress guest blogger Scott A. Mandia and  is a compendium of the latest evidence of dangerous climate change, complete with excellent graphics, some of them new to me and many very striking. Mandia is Professor of Physical Sciences at Suffolk County Community College, Long Island, NY.  He holds an M.S. Meteorology from Penn State University and a B.S. Meteorology from University of Lowell (now called UMass – Lowell), and has been teaching introductory meteorology and paleoclimatology courses for 23 years.

Here’s just one of the many graphics he uses, not at all hard to understand:

Ocean Heating - Figure 7.15 (IPCC 2007): Total Earth Heat Content from 1950

The oceans are taking in almost all of the excess heat since the 1970s which underscores the point that ocean heat content is a better indicator of global warming than atmospheric temperatures. Much of this ocean heat will be vented to the atmosphere in the future thus accelerating global warming.

A superb discussion on this topic can be found at Skeptical Science’s How we know global warming is still happening.

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Don’t miss taking a look at all the other graphics. There are some excellent ones on Arctic sea ice thickness, as well as the ice mass loss in Greenland and Antarctica. The one showing glacial extent is stunning.

In the comment section at ClimateProgress  rewarding, Mandia adds:

“The general public is much smarter than you think and the language presented in this post is not going to be a burden to them. The images are also fairly easy to understand. Both the language and the images show that the world is warming and there are multiple lines of evidence.

For those of you interested, I also have a Summary of Key Points for my entire Website that is just a series of bulleted factoids. For this (Joe Romm’s) post one would use:

* 20 of the warmest years on record have occurred in the past 25 years. The warmest year globally was 2005 with the years 2009, 2007, 2006, 2003, 2002, and 1998 all tied for 2nd within statistical certainty. The warmest decade has been the 2000s, and each of the past three decades has been warmer than the decade before and each set records at their end. The odds of this being a natural occurrence are estimated to be one in a billion!

* Temperature data from 1850 to present shows that there has been an increasing trend and the rate of warming has increased rapidly in the past few decades.

* Surface temperatures north of latitude 60o are warming at an accelerated rate in the past few decades.

* The Arctic was experiencing long-term cooling in the past 2000 years according to Milankovitch cycles until very recently. The cooling trend was reversed during the 20th century, with four of the five warmest decades of the 2000-year-long reconstruction occurring between 1950 and 2000.

* Sea ice extent has been dramatically reduced since the 1950s.

* Since measurements began in 1953, there has been a dramatic decrease in sea ice thickness.

* Greenland is losing ice mass and the rate is accelerating.

* Antarctica is losing ice mass and the rate is accelerating.

* The average mass balance of the glaciers with available long-term observation series around the world continues to decrease.

* 90% of worldwide glaciers are retreating.

* Much of the heat that is delivered by the sun is stored in the Earth’s oceans while only a fraction of this heat is stored in the atmosphere. Therefore, a change in the heat stored in the ocean is a better indicator of climate change than changes in atmospheric heat.

* The heat content of the oceans is increasing.

* The oceans are taking in almost all of the excess heat since the 1970s which underscores the point that ocean heat content is a better indicator of global warming than atmospheric temperatures.

* Much of this ocean heat will be vented to the atmosphere in the future thus accelerating global warming.

* The Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) curve reveals widespread increasing African drought, especially in the Sahel.

* Global warming due to human activities is increasing the severity of drought in areas that already have drought and causing more rainfall in areas that are already wet.

* According to the US Climate Extremes Index (CEI), extremes in climate are on the increase since 1970.

* The concentration of CO2 has reached a record high relative to more than the past 500,000 years and has done so at an exceptionally fast rate.

* Most of the warming in the past 50 years is attributable to human activities.

* Although large climate changes have occurred in the past, there is no evidence that they took place at a faster rate than the present warming.

* If projections of a 5 oC warming in this century are realized, Earth will have experienced the same amount of global warming as it did at the end of the last ice age.

* There is no evidence that this rate is matched to a comparable global temperature increase over the last 50 million years!

* Sea level gradually rose in the 20th century and is currently rising at an increased rate, after a period of little change between AD 0 and AD 1900. The trend is 50% greater than that reported by the IPCC in 2007.

* Sea level is predicted to rise at an even greater rate in this century, with 20th century estimates of 1.7 mm per year. When climate warms, ice on land melts and flows back into the oceans raising sea levels.

* When the oceans warm, the water expands (thermal expansion) which raises sea levels.

* IPCC 1990 projected sea level increases were too conservative. The latest observations show that sea levels have risen faster than previous projections.

* Greenhouse warming will cause the globally averaged intensity of tropical cyclones to shift towards stronger storms, with intensity increases of 2–11% by 2100.

* Substantial increases in the frequency of the most intense cyclones are expected with increases of the order of 20% in the precipitation rate within 100 km of the storm centre.

* Rising sea-levels will result in more damage from hurricanes even if hurricane strength remains unchanged.”

http://climateprogress.org/2010/04/14/the-complete-guide-to-modern-day-climate-change/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+climateprogress%2FlCrX+%28Climate+Progress%29