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It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here: ‘How Many Gigatons of CO2?’ (Infographic)

Designed by David McCandless, this infographic… illustrates the amount of carbon dioxide that has been released into the atmosphere, how much can “safely” be released into the atmosphere and how much fossil fuel companies have ready to burn. It also associates the amount of global warming that will occur after different amounts of carbon release. If you read about climate change, you’ll sometimes hear these figures called the “carbon budget” or “the math of climate change.” It is an important and powerful concept to absorb and should change your thinking on how fast we must act.  (Source: Treehugger)

Infographic source: Information is Beautiful

It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here: ‘How to Win a Climate Change Argument’ (Infographic)

Source: ‘This Cheat Sheet Will Make You Win Every Climate Argument’ (Climate Desk via Grist)

*This is a very handy reference for those of us still fighting climate change denial. However, I do have an issue with the infographic’s title, specifically, its use of the word “believe.” Science is not about beliefs, it is about facts. People can choose to accept the facts or they can ignore them, but either way facts remain facts. I think a better (more scientifically robust) title would be ‘Do you accept the facts of climate change?’ 

Related:

• ‘Global temperatures highest in 4,000 Years, Study Says’ (New York Times)

It’s gettin’ hot in here: ‘Rate of arctic summer sea ice loss is 50% higher than predicted’

From The Guardian:

Sea ice in the Arctic is disappearing at a far greater rate than previously expected, according to data from the first purpose-built satellite launched to study the thickness of the Earth’s polar caps.

…

This rate of loss is 50% higher than most scenarios outlined by polar scientists and suggests that global warming, triggered by rising greenhouse gas emissions, is beginning to have a major impact on the region. In a few years the Arctic ocean could be free of ice in summer, triggering a rush to exploit its fish stocks, oil, minerals and sea routes.

…

The consequences of losing the Arctic’s ice coverage, even for only part of the year, could be profound. Without the cap’s white brilliance to reflect sunlight back into space, the region will heat up even more than at present. As a result, ocean temperatures will rise and methane deposits on the ocean floor could melt, evaporate and bubble into the atmosphere. Scientists have recently reported evidence that methane plumes are now appearing in many areas. Methane is a particularly powerful greenhouse gas and rising levels of it in the atmosphere are only likely to accelerate global warming. And with the disappearance of sea ice around the shores of Greenland, its glaciers could melt faster and raise sea levels even more rapidly than at present.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Infographic source: The Guardian)

From Science Daily:

Earth’s oceans, forests and other ecosystems continue to soak up about half the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere by human activities, even as those emissions have increased, according to a study by University of Colorado and NOAA scientists published August 1 in the journal Nature.

…

Carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere mainly by fossil fuel combustion but also by forest fires and some natural processes. The gas can also be pulled out of the atmosphere into the tissues of growing plants or absorbed by the waters of Earth’s oceans. A series of recent studies suggested that natural sinks of carbon dioxide might no longer be keeping up with the increasing rate of emissions. If that were to happen, it would cause a faster-than-expected rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and projected climate change impacts.

Ballantyne, Tans and their colleagues saw no faster-than-expected rise, however. Their estimate showed that overall, oceans and natural ecosystems continue to pull about half of people’s carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere. Since emissions of CO₂ have increased substantially since 1960, Ballantyne said, “Earth is taking up twice as much CO₂ today as it was 50 years ago.”

The rest continues to accumulate in the atmosphere, where it is likely to accelerate global warming.

This new global analysis makes it clear that scientists do not yet understand well enough the processes by which ecosystems of the world are removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, or the relative importance of possible sinks: regrowing forests on different continents, for example, or changing absorption of carbon dioxide by various ocean regions.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related: 

• ‘Study Shows Planet Keeping Pace With CO2 Emissions’ (Climate Central)
• ‘Infographic: The Carbon Bathtub’ (National Geographic)

(Carbon cycle graphic: NOAA)

When we think about global warming at all, the arguments tend to be ideological, theological and economic. But to grasp the seriousness of our predicament, you just need to do a little math. For the past year, an easy and powerful bit of arithmetical analysis first published by financial analysts in the U.K. has been making the rounds of environmental conferences and journals, but it hasn’t yet broken through to the larger public. This analysis upends most of the conventional political thinking about climate change. And it allows us to understand our precarious – our almost-but-not-quite-finally hopeless – position with three simple numbers.

The First Number: 2° Celsius 

The Second Number: 565 Gigatons 

The Third Number: 2,795 Gigatons 

You can read the article here. 

From The Vancouver Sun:

Most of the world’s polar bears are likely to disappear in the next 30 to 50 years if the Arctic continues to heat up as climatologists predict, two University of Alberta scientists say.

They conducted an exhaustive review of the scientific research that has been done on the bears.

In the recent issue of the journal Global Change Biology, Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher suggest that the bears of Hudson Bay and the Beaufort Sea in Canada and Alaska are likely to go first. And while they believe a small population of bears in northern Greenland and the Canadian Arctic islands could persist in the foreseeable future, they warn that the long-term well-being of those animals is in doubt as well.

“I have been concerned about the longer term future, not just for polar bears, but for the whole of the arctic marine system for quite a while,” says Stirling, who has been studying polar bears longer than anyone else in the world.

“When I see the trends and projections for the future for warming and sea ice loss for the long term, I think the outlook is not good for ice-breeding species … It may be possible for a remnant population to survive for quite a while but that will also depend on what survives for them to eat.”

…

“The threat to polar bears is driven simply by habitat loss,” Derocher says. “It is no different than the situation in the Amazon. If you cut down the forest that an Amazon parrot relies on, most people grasp that the species is at risk. Unfortunately, sea ice is a much more foreign habitat for most people and its dynamic nature means that most fail to see it as a habitat.

“We can no more have polar bears with too little sea ice than we can have a forest without soil. Nobody expects a specialized parrot to suddenly adapt to a deforested habitat, yet some confer special adaptation abilities on polar bears. It’s wishful thinking for some but more often, it’s ignorance; it’s a malicious strategy intended to confuse people to create an illusion that everything’s fine.”

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: ENS - News Service)

Connecting the Science Dots: Extreme Weather & Climate Change (Infographic)

Details here. 

Related:

• ‘Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation’ (IPCC, 2011)

(Infographic source: UCS)

A quote from the Washington Post article, ‘Northern hemisphere warmest on record, Arctic ice has biggest melt in June’.

Related:

• Report: ‘State of the Climate: Global Analysis June 2012’ (NOAA)
• ‘Scientists attribute extreme weather to man-made climate change’ (The Guardian)
• ‘Spurred by record heat, drought stretches across U.S. (Climate Central)
• ‘Drought in Central, Eastern Canada baking crops’ (CBC) (H/T Climate Adaptation)
• ‘Drought Worst In A Century For North And South Korea’ (Huffington Post)
• ‘Merkel warns of global warming if no climate accord’ (Reuters)

(Map source: NOAA)

It’s Gettin’ Hot in Here: ‘State of the Climate: 2011 Global Surface Temperature’

From ClimateWatch Magazine:

Earth’s average annual surface temperature is higher today than it was when record-keeping began in the late 1800s, an indicator of long-term, global-scale climate warming. The red line shows how far above or below the 1981-2010 average (dashed line at zero) the combined land and ocean temperature has been each year since 1880. The data shown are one of several temperature analyses included in the State of the Climate in 2011, all of which show a warming trend.

The 2011 average global surface temperature was between 0.07 and 0.16 degrees Celsius warmer (0.13 and 0.29 degrees Fahrenheit), than the 1981–2010 average, based on a range of analyses. Including the 2011 temperature, the rate of warming since 1971 is now between 0.14° and 0.17° Celsius per decade (0.25°-0.31° Fahrenheit), and 0.71-0.77° Celsius per century (1.28°-1.39° F) since 1901.

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related:

• Presentation Slides: ‘State of the Climate 2011’ (NOAA)
• ‘Cool Pacific Pattern Shaped 2011 Weather Extremes; Heat Dominates U.S. in 2012’ (New York Times)

(Graphic sources: NOAA) 

From Reuters:

Scorching temperatures in June’s second half helped the continental United States break its record for the hottest first six months in a calendar year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Monday.

The last 12 months also have been the warmest since modern record-keeping began in 1895, narrowly beating the previous 12-month period that ended in May 2012.

Every state except Washington in the contiguous United States had warmer-than-average temperatures for the June 2011-June 2012 period.

The recent blistering heat wave broke records across much of the United States, threatening the Midwest’s corn crop and helping to fan destructive wildfires.

June was 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) warmer in the lower 48 states than the 20th-century average, but still just the 14th hottest June in the record books, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center said in a statement.

…

Such record-high temperatures are in line with a long-term warming trend in the 48 contiguous states, said Jake Crouch, a scientist at the National Climatic Data Center.

Climate change spurred by carbon dioxide emissions may not be the primary cause, but these extreme conditions are consistent with what scientists see as a “new normal,” Crouch said by telephone.

“It’s hard to pinpoint climate change as the driving factor, but it appears that it is playing a role,” he said. “What’s going on for 2012 is exactly what we would expect from climate change.”

Check out the rest of the article here.

Related:

• ‘Society not ready for heat waves coming with climate change’ (USA Today)
• ‘Corn growers in hell as Midwest heat spreads’ (Business Week)
• ‘Past 12 months warmest ever recorded in United States’ (CNN)

(Map credit: NOAA)