Over the course of the last year a number of studies have been published on climate change. Here are six of the top climate studies from 2014.
A study published on January 1, 2014 titled, “Spread in model climate sensitivity traced to atmospheric convective mixing” found that the climate is much more sensitive to atmospheric carbon than previously thought. The paper was written by Steven Sherwood from the University of New South Wales’ Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science. His research revealed that we are headed toward a “most-likely warming of roughly 5°C [9°F] above modern temperatures or 6°C [11°F] above preindustrial” temperatures this century.
On March 9 a paper was published in the journal Nature Climate Change titled “Inhomogeneous forcing and transient climate sensitivity,” found that carbon induced global warming is likely to destroy a livable climate. The paper was penned by Drew Shindell, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. It found that the climate is highly sensitive to Co2 pollution. According to Shindell’s research, the Earth is likely to experience roughly 20 percent more warming than most previous estimates that were largely based on surface temperatures.
On March 18th, the world’s largest scientific society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), published a paper called “What we Know.” It concluded that we are at risk of pushing the earth’s climate system toward, “abrupt, unpredictable, and potentially irreversible changes.”
On May 6, the federal government published the “Third National Climate Assessment.” The report warns that climate change will cause more frequent and intense extreme weather events, (heat, downpours, floods, droughts), wildfires, melting ice, rising sea levels, ocean acidification and water scarcity. It further states that these impacts are already happening and will get far worse in the future.
On June 17 there was the Risky Business report which investigated climate change through an economic lens. The report written by business heavyweights like Hank Paulson and Michael Bloomberg, concluded that climate change already costs billions each year and it will costs hundreds of billions more if we fail to act. Anything short of immediate action on climate change presents what they describe as, “risky business.”
On November 2, the UN’s IPCC AR5 synthesis report makes an is irrefutable case for anthropogenic climate change and states emphatically that immediate policy action is needed. We are already seeing the impacts of climate change and if we do not reign-in greenhouse gases we will see profound impacts
that will fundamentally alter the natural world and human society.
Out of 13,950 peer-reviewed scientific journals, only 24 reject global warming, 97 percent of scientists agree about the veracity of anthropogenic climate change.
