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It’s Official for the Umpteenth Time – We Got Climate Change!

November 3, 2014

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November 3, 2014 – A new report entitled Climate Change 2014 Synthesis Report, written and presented by scientists in 29 countries from Argentina, to the United States was released on November 1st. The data synthesized in the 116-page document includes contributions from IPCC assessment publications, and a number of working group papers covering the physical science of climate change, impacts, adaptation, vulnerability, mitigation, renewable energy alternatives, and risk from extreme events and disasters.

Divided into four parts the first section describes the correlation of observational evidence of climate change with human activity on the planet. The second section projects future climate change and risks. The third includes adaptation and mitigation strategies focusing on sustainable development. And the fourth describes policy approaches to mitigation and adaptation.

For those who state “I am not a scientist” this is a report by scientists. It lays out observations that non-scientists dare not ignore. These include:

The last 3 decades on Earth have been successively warmer than any preceding decade since 1850. Why 1850, because that’s when comprehensive common record keeping appeared globally. Blame the British. They started collecting all this data.
The Northern Hemisphere in those 3 decades is likely, with high probability, warmer than any time in the last 800 years.
From 1880 to 2012 average combined land and ocean surface temperatures have increased 0.85 Celsius (1.53 Fahrenheit) degrees.
Variability such as colder winters or hotter summers does not preclude the above temperature trends. So scientists and non-scientists cannot point to an El Nino or La Nina or even a Polar Vortex event and use it to negate the total data evidence.
The troposphere, the part of the atmosphere in which we live and breathe, is absorbing the warming. The stratosphere, the layer above the habitable atmosphere, is cooling since the mid-20th century.
Despite prolonged droughts observed in places like Australia, Southern Amazonia, and Southern and Southwest United States, precipitation since 1951 in the Northern Hemisphere is increasing, and that’s where the bulk of humanity lives.
Of the total warming of the planet, 90% is occurring in the ocean, most of it near the surface in the upper 75 meters (approximately 250 feet) of the water column. Ocean warming from 1971 to 2010 has averaged 0.11 Celsius (about 0.2 Fahrenheit) degrees per decade.
Ocean uptake of carbon dioxide since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, that’s when we began using engines fueled by fossil energy, has decreased pH levels in ocean surface water by 0.1 making it more acidic.
In the last 2 decades Greenland and Antarctica’s land ice have lost mass. Similar observations are seen in alpine glaciers with few exceptions.
In the last 3 decades mean Arctic Ocean sea ice coverage has decreased at a rate between 3.5 and 4.1% per decade.
Antarctic Ocean sea ice has exhibited increases recently and scientists now know why – continental glaciers and snow pack melt is introducing less dense freshwater which then lies over top of the saltier ocean water and freezes more quickly.
Since the mid-20th century Northern Hemisphere winter snow cover has decreased by 1.6% per decade with reductions in the thickness of those areas where permafrost is present.
Since 1900 global mean sea levels have risen 0.19 meters (7.5 inches), a greater rate of change than historical and observed data collected over the last two-thousand years.
Combining ocean uptake of carbon dioxide and glacial and sea ice melt, 25% of rising sea levels is attributed to the former while 75% to the latter.
Rising sea level is not evenly distributed around the world based on ocean currents and atmospheric circulation. For example the Western Pacific mean sea level rise since 1993 is three times greater than the global mean while the Eastern Pacific is near zero or even showing a decline.
Since 1750, the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, samplings of the atmosphere both historic and present indicate that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous dioxide, have increased by 40%, 150% and 20% respectively. All three gases are products of human industrial activity.
The radiative force (RF), that is the ability of the Earth and atmosphere to absorb or reflect heat from the Sun has risen by a factor of 2.3 since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is considered to be the single largest contributor to this change in RF.
Half of the cumulative emissions of carbon dioxide between 1750 and the present have come in the last 40 years.
Since 1750 approximately 40% of carbon dioxide from the Industrial Revolution has remained in the atmosphere. The rest has been removed by natural carbon sinks, namely the ocean, plants and soil.
Since 1970 carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous dioxide emissions have increased with the largest increase occurring in the decade between 2000 and 2010. Of that increase 78% comes from the burning of fossil fuels for energy and industrial processes.

In the information above please note there are no predictions about the future, just observations about the past and present. For the non-scientists these are the facts based on planet-wide data record keeping. The data when plotted on graphs shows trends. We will examine those trend scenarios in subsequent postings. But for now I would suggest on evidence of the past and present alone one can ascertain both the near and further future.

So I ask the following to those “I am not a scientist” readers:

For those contemplating the building of another oil or natural gas pipeline, do you now have a better picture of the observable, accumulated data on climate change?

For those energy company executives who believe that the fossil fuel assets they currently have in the ground can be extracted and burned at some point in the near future, does this not give you a clear picture why those may become stranded possibly for centuries or forever?

For national leaders, who find the science inconvenient, because they feel beholden to energy and business interests, or because they believe that technology will at some time come up with a magic elixir to solve anthropogenic climate change, is this not the time to finally end the willful ignorance and act on behalf of those you represent and theirs and your children’s future?