Overview-Climate Change

Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach

National Centre for Climate Restoration 5/2019

2030–2050: Emissions peak in 2030, and start to fall consistent with an 80 percent reduction in fossil-fuel energy intensity by 2100 compared to 2010 energy intensity. This leads to warming of 2.4°C by 2050, consistent with the Xu and Ramanathan “baseline-fast” scenario. However, another 0.6°C of warming occurs 19 — taking the total to 3°C by 2050 — due to the activation of a number of carbon-cycle feedbacks and higher levels of ice albedo and cloud feedbacks than current models assume. [It should be noted that this is far from an extreme scenario: the low-probability, high-impact warming (five percent probability) can exceed 3.5–4°C by 2050 in the Xu and Ramanathan scheme.]
While sea levels have risen 0.5 metres by 2050, the increase may be 2–3 metres by 2100, and it is understood from historical analogues that seas may eventually rise by more than 25 metres. Thirty-five percent of the global land area, and 55 percent of the global population, are subject to more than 20 days a year of lethal heat conditions, beyond the threshold of human survivability. The destabilisation of the Jet Stream has very significantly affected the intensity and geographical distribution of the Asian and West African monsoons and, together with the further slowing of the Gulf Stream, is impinging on life support systems in Europe. North America suffers from devastating weather extremes including wildfires, heatwaves, drought and inundation. The summer monsoons in China have failed, and water flows into the great rivers of Asia are severely reduced by the loss of more than one-third of the Himalayan ice sheet. Glacial loss reaches 70 percent in the Andes, and rainfall in Mexico and central America falls by half. Semi-permanent El Nino conditions prevail. Aridification emerges over more than 30 percent of the world’s land surface. Desertification is severe in southern Africa, the southern Mediterranean, west Asia, the Middle East, inland Australia and across the south-western United States.

Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

NY MAG article Climate Change efforts 1979-1989

Editor’s Note:This narrative by Nathaniel Rich is a work of history, addressing the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989: the decisive decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change. Complementing the text is a series of aerial photographs and videos, all shot over the past year by George Steinmetz. With support from the Pulitzer Center, this two-part article is based on 18 months of reporting and well over a hundred interviews. It tracks the efforts of a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm and stave off catastrophe. It will come as a revelation to many readers — an agonizing revelation — to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they came to solving it. Jake Silverstein

Humans held responsible for twists and turns of climate change since 1900

Science Magazine 5/27/2019

While industry and agriculture belched greenhouse gases at an increasing pace through the 20th century, global temperature followed a jagged course, surging for 3 decades starting in 1915, leveling off from the 1950s to the late 1970s, and then resuming its climb. For decades, scientists have chalked up these early swings to the planet’s internal variability—in particular, a climatic pacemaker called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is characterized by long-term shifts in ocean temperatures. But researchers are increasingly questioning whether the AMO played the dominant role once thought. The oceanic pacemaker seems to be fluttering.
It is now possible to explain the record’s twists and turns almost entirely without the AMO, says Karsten Haustein

Climate change impacts worse than expected, global report warns

The Guardian- Hurricane's impact on Puerto Rico 4/26/19

The impacts and costs of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) of global warming will be far greater than expected, according to a comprehensive assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released Sunday in Incheon, South Korea.

National Geo Climate change impacts worse than expected, global report warns

National Geo Climate change impacts worse than expected, global report warns 10 07 2018

The impacts and costs of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) of global warming will be far greater than expected, according to a comprehensive assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released Sunday in Incheon, South Korea.

Country-level social cost of carbon

Nature Climate Change- Research Country-level social cost of carbon 9/18

Here we estimate country-level contributions to the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) using recent  climate model projections, empirical climate-driven economic damage estimations and socio-economic projections.  Central specifications show high global SCC values (median, US$417 per tonne of CO2 (tCO2); 66% confidence intervals, US$177–805 per tCO2) and a country-level SCC that is unequally distributed. However, the relative ranking of countries is robust to different specifications: countries that incur large fractions of the global cost consistently include India, China,  Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Climate disasters cost the world $650 billion over 3 years — Americans are bearing the brunt: Morgan Stanley

CNBC Costs of Climate Change last 3 years

North America absorbed two-thirds of the global cost of climate disasters over the last three years, Morgan Stanley says.

At $415 billion, the price of the disasters is equal to 0.66 percent of North America’s GDP.

2018 takes the podium as one of the hottest years on record. Let’s look deeper.

Mashable- Warming Overview 12/20/2018

NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies keeps track of Earth's changing temperatures with a data bank that reaches back to the 1880s. This year will end up as the 4th-warmest year in recorded history, Gavin Schmidt, the director of the NASA program, said over email.

World 'nowhere near on track' to avoid warming beyond 1.5C target

The Guardian-No Progress on Climate Change 9/2018

A massive, immediate transformation in the way the world’s population generates energy, uses transportation and grows food will be required to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5C and the forthcoming analysis is set to lay bare how remote this possibility is.

California 4th Annual Report Climate Change

California 4th Annual Report Climate Change

Key Findings
California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment provides information to build resilience to climate impacts, including temperature, wildfire, water, sea level rise, and governance. Here you can view a snapshot of the key findings of the Fourth Assessment. For additional information, please download the Key Findings brochure, “California's Changing Climate 2018.”

100 Corporations Responsible For 71% Of Carbon Emissions

Carbon-Majors-Report 100 companies = 71% Climate Change CleanTechnica 100 companies = 71% Climate Change

The Carbon Majors Database stores greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data on the largest company-related sources of all time. CDP’s Carbon Majors Report 2017 is the first in an ongoing series of publications aimed at using this Database – the most comprehensive available – to highlight the role that corporations can play in driving the global energy transition.

The Impacts of Climate Change at 1.5c, 2C and Beyond

Carbon Brief Interactive difference between 1.5c and 2c

Carbon Brief has extracted data from around 70 peer-reviewed climate studies to show how global warming is projected to affect the world and its regions.
Scroll down to see how these impacts vary at different temperature levels, across a range of key metrics. Click on the icons below to skip to specific categories and regions.