Climate Science

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2010/20100527_hurricaneoutlook.html Due to unusually warm Atlantic waters and a decrease in wind shear due to El Nino, NOAA expects an "active to extremely active" hurricane season this year. Their specific predictions are as follows: Across the entire Atlantic Basin for the six-month season, which begins June 1, NOAA is projecting a 70 percent probability of the following ranges: 14 to 23 Named Storms (top winds of 39 mph or higher), including: 8 to 14 Hurricanes (top winds of 74 mph or higher), of which: 3 to 7 could be Major Hurricanes (Category 3, 4 or 5; winds of at least 111 mph)

In the last few days a tropical depression formed just a few miles off shore where I live. Rather early for that to have happened, I live in a place where hurricanes for just off shore often. most time you think of hurricanes forming in the tropics but here in NC they can form just off shore and do so regularly. we get northeasters as bad as cat 1 hurricanes in the winter as well. We usually average a major storm every three years but we haven't had one in 7 years now, only tropical storms and cat one storms since then. I've been through a cat 3 several cat 1 and several cat 2 as well. Does anyone else live where hurricanes are regular occurrences? From a purely …

Over the years, I've been told a great many things. The first was that it was God and the angels bowling. I believed that until I asked my first science teacher, who told me that the lightening 'split' the air, and that thunder was the air 'clapping' back together. She demonstrated the effect by breaking a light bulb, for the "pop". Years later, I'm told that the lightening actually 'expands' the air rapidly, 'popping' it like a piece of popcorn, and that no split actually occurs. Last night a thunderstorm system passed several miles to the North. The system itself was brightly lit, but there were no 'flashes' of lightening making the light. The light was a …

I would like to do some primary research on air pollution and do not know where to start. Can anyone suggest any experiments, ideas etc. thanks for your help:-)

NASA GISS has published their GISTEMP analysis for 2009: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/ 2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880. Although 2008 was the coolest year of the decade, due to strong cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, 2009 saw a return to near-record global temperatures. The past year was only a fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest year on…

Some of you have seen this link with the history of climate science: http://www.aip.org/history/climate/summary.htm It is an epic story: the struggle of thousands of men and women over the course of a century for very high stakes. For some, the work required actual physical courage, a risk to life and limb in icy wastes or on the high seas. The rest needed more subtle forms of courage. They gambled decades of arduous effort on the chance of a useful discovery, and staked their reputations on what they claimed to have found. Even as they stretched their minds to the limit on intellectual problems that often proved insoluble, their attention was diverted into gru…

The problem is that they often argue about some very complex issues that, to an uneducated person, may seem to favor with them since they take a very simplistic view of the debate. Everything is taken on its face without a shred of actual scientific knowledge. And when I get done researching some very complex issue enough to have a good understanding of it, they have already moved on to another extremely complex issue that I don't quite understand myself (they don't either, but again they cherry pick their issues to find things that may look reasonable if you aren't a climatologist). So I find myself in the position of not wanting to let these people run around spre…

Alright, this thread is specifically designed to address all of SkepticLance's, and other global warming "skeptics" claims and/or misunderstandings. Here, they can present their position, and any evidence/data/references that they might have to support their position. While we can go on and either verify or debunk their claims. This is an effort to keep these types of fights all over the place, and more specifically to keep politics out of it. It's time to settle this issue once and for all. Hopefully, this thread will become a comprehensive compendium of why the so-called global warming skeptics are wrong. Well, with that out of the way, begin... So, to sta…

An interesting article in the Times today: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece Now, of course I realize that this does not represent the majority opinion of scientists or any conclusive disproof of global climate change. There are other records, like sea surface temperature readings, that can be checked against. (Also, how do you disprove that various glaciers are melting?) What would unreliable weather station readings mean for climate change? Ordinarily I'd pose a "big" question at the end of this post, but I know how SFN responds to a climate change thread, so I'll just watch and wait.

As far as I see it, I cannot find any reason why humans could have caused significant global warming. According to the data from the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, there has been a steady increase of carbon dioxide levels in the air since about 1920. Then according to the data from 1979 to the present taken by NASA satellites, there is not a corresponding increase in the temperature of the earth. Instead, the average global temperature increased in a very shaky pattern by about 0.5 degrees Celsius. After that, however, the temperature change varies up and down quite a bit, but continues to hover around zero. Could someone please help me to figure this out.

Ok we know that global warming is a fact and it can cause the polar ice caps to melt. But my question is this, isn't the polar ice caps just a giant block of ice that sits on top of the ocean? So even if it melts its shouldn’t cause the sea level to rise a lot. Why? Because if u take a glass of water and put a ice cube in it cause the water level to rise, however after the ice have melted the water level stays the same. So if the polar ice caps is just a giant ice block that set onto of the ocean doesn't that mean even if it melts it shouldn’t cause the sea level to rise? Maybe somebody has mentioned this before but i can't find it anywhere. So am i right???

One of the predictions of GW is that the polar ice caps will melt and cause sea levels to rise. Have they been rising?

A recent speech has made me wonder about the data from the Antarctic about global warming. There does not seem to be much evidence for an overall temperature rise when I have examined two sources. The first is a research article: http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/anttemps.htm and the other is a paper from 1998: http://journals.cambridge.org/download.php?file=/ANS/ANS10_02/S095410209800025Xa.pdf&code=3f4f6e8220d6be5c3e3ad43a422129d3 Can someone clarify some of the difficulties involved in the temperature data.

Dear all, it is said that once nuclear fusion is invented, all of our energy problems would disappear, but will it solve global warming? The problem with global warming upto this date has two sides: -> We produce heat -> We produce carbon dioxide If only heat would cause global warming then for sure nuclear fusion wouldn't solve the problem. The fact is that when burning fossil energy sources we reintroduce heat (and carbon dioxide) that once already _was_ present on the planet. If we would consume as much energy from nuclear fusion as we do today from fossil energy sources we introduce heat into the atmosphere _that_ _didn't_ _ever_ was presen…

A recently released study in Science shows that the Arctic is the warmest it's been in 2000+ years. Please note that the data only goes back that far, not that temperatures were just as warm back then. Link to the actual article, PM me if you want the full article.

Let me know if you're out there and whether I've come to the wrong place. Hope you can help.

The weather on average over the last months / years where you live: Warmer or colder than the past (that part of the past that you remember yourself)? If we gather enough data, we might submit this to the Internationan Panel on SFN Forum Member Climate Change Opinions (IPSFNFMCCO).

All right, I think I'm able to group people by their underlying motivations finally. Why do you doubt global warming? I'm really curious how many people will vote #6 then link some crackpot web site. I'm assuming we'll see some Lindzen papers here, but then again he's never been able to advance an alternative model.

The attribution of various radiative forcings to overall changes in the global mean surface temperature is the meat of the debate in regard to climate change. A new study has recently posted their findings: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2009GL038932.shtml Here are their plots for the attribution of climate change: I know in the past many have asked for a more updated plot than the one I usually use: So there you go, plots from a more recent modeling effort.