Climate Change

Hurricane Harvey is a clarion call to climate deniers like Donald Trump. Extreme weather is one of the hallmarks of a world ravaged by climate change. Severe storms and catastrophic flooding illustrate the dangers of global warming more graphically than any research ever could.  Hurricane Harvey now ranks as the worst rainstorm in US history. The storm saw winds as strong as 132 mph and some of the largest downpours ever recorded. It should be noted that this extreme rainfall is clearly consistent with climate models. One of the cities hit hardest was Houston, where heavy downpours have increased 167...

Storms are complex phenomena but we can say with a good degree of certainty that Hurricane Harvey and other extreme weather events are exacerbated by global warming. Hurricane Harvey is the most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in more than half a century. It smashed into the coast of Texas on Friday as a Category 4 hurricane. It then dumped over a meter of rain submerging streets, homes and vehicles. Thousands of people were stranded on rooftops in scenes reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina. In addition to widespread property damage Harvey is known to have killed at least 14 people and...

Australia continues its warming trend and scientists know that this is due to anthropogenic climate change. Even though carbon emissions were flat for the third straight year, 2016 was still the hottest year on record. Sixteen of the 17 hottest years on record have occurred since the dawn of the new millennium. According to the World Meteorological Association, 2016 was 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer on average than temperatures for the preindustrial Earth. That is only .3 degrees Celsius below the upper threshold limit of 1.5-degree-Celsius. Extreme heat is not just a source of discomfort it can be deadly. The Australian...

It is widely accepted that warmer seas contribute to hurricanes but there are also a number of other factors that contribute to extreme weather events. Here is a review of the evidence linking climate change and Hurricane Matthew. Matthew has already wreaked havoc in Cuba and the Bahamas and it has killed almost one thousand people in Haiti. Four Americans are known to have died due to the storm. There are currently states of emergency in effect in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. Although Matthew has been downgraded from a level 5 to a level 1 hurricane it...

Republicans ignore unprecedented heat and record breaking precipitation while boldly revealing policy platforms that will exacerbate the situation. The GOP's love of fossil fuels and disdain for climate action is equaled only by their hatred for science. Climate change is driving a succession of increasingly severe extreme weather events. Warmer seas are causing more precipitation. In the span of six months two once in 500 year storms have devastated Louisiana. Similar catastrophic flooding has gripped many pats of the world including China, India, Macedonia,Pakistan and Sudan. July was the hottest month in recorded history the latest in a string of...

Wildfires fueled by record heat have ravaged areas across North America and Russia this year. This year is very much like last year. However, the western fires of 2015, were not as widespread and they came later than they did this year.  There is strong evidence that global warming has lengthened wildfire seasons. This research is corroborated by recent observations in North America and Russia. Across the continent warm temperatures are melting snowpacks, exacerbating droughts and contributing to the number and size of wildfires. Heat is an important catalyst for forest fires and temperatures continue to soar. Even before the...

Every month we are breaking new heat records. It is not just the consistent regularity of new temperature records it is also the speed at which the planet is warming as evidenced by the growing deviations from the norm. Historically, climate changes usually take place over centuries and these changes are measured by variations in fractions of a degree. In a relatively short span of time, we are seeing consistent temperature increases exceeding 1 degree Celsius above the mean. Meteorologist Eric Holthaus points to NASA data which indicates that April was a record hot month. This follows the hottest March...

Forest are a critical part of our efforts to protect biodiversity and manage global warming. In fact we cannot talk about addressing climate change without also talking about protecting forests. On March 21st 2016 we celebrated the sixth International Day of Forests. On this day efforts are made to make people aware of the immense importance of forests. A New York Times article titled, "With Deaths of Forests, a Loss of Key Climate Protectors," makes this point emphatically. Some scientists have said that the extent to which our planet is habitable is related to the number of trees on Earth....

Record breaking heat and the absence of snow will make this a Christmas to remember in the eastern portion of North America. Cities from Florida all the way up to Canada are expected to shatter heat records on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In many places temperatures will exceed 70 - 80 degrees Fahrenheit which is 30-40 degrees above normal. The unseasonable warmth is cause by a bulge in the jet stream due to a combination of a strong El Niño event, the North Atlantic Oscillation and sustained climate warming from greenhouse gas emissions. The Washington Post called the heat,...

It just keeps getting hotter, almost every month this year has been the warmest in recorded history and October is no exception. Within this trend is an even more alarming concern. The steady increase in recorded departures from the norm.suggests that the warming may be accelerating. October 2015 was by far the warmest October on record. This is confirmed by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA), NOAA and NASA. Until last month we had never recorded a monthly average temperature increase that was more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above average. October was 1.04 degrees Celsius above average for...