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Thin Ice — the movie

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ThinIceStills
Some of my friends have made a film, Thin Ice, which tells the story of CO2 and climate from the standpoint of the climate scientists who are out there in the trenches trying to figure out what is going on. I have a small role in the film myself, and I am sure RealClimate readers will recognize many more familiar faces. One of the many things I like about this film is that it puts a human face on climate science. It’s harder to demonize people when you feel you know them, and realize that in the end they’re not that different from you and your neighbors (except maybe they know more about CO2 and climate than some others you might meet).

A description of the project, including trailers and clips can be found here . The film will be available during Earth Week for free streaming. Or even better, you can arrange a free screening for your group (details for obtaining a free Earth Week download for screening are available here ). Read below the fold for more information

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Should regional climate models take the blame?

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Kerr (2013) recently provided a critical review of regional climate models (“RCMs”). I think his views have caused a stir in the regional climate model community. So what’s the buzz all about?

RCMs provide important input to many climate services, for which there is a great deal of vested interest on all levels. On the international stage, high-level talks lead to the establishment of a Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) during the World Climate Conference 3 (WCC3) in Geneva 2009.

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References

  1. R.A. Kerr, "Forecasting Regional Climate Change Flunks Its First Test", Science, vol. 339, pp. 638-638, 2013. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.339.6120.638

Movie review: SWITCH

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This year, the Geological Society of America is rolling out their SWITCH Energy Awareness campaign . The centerpiece of the campaign is a documentary film, SWITCH, which purports to be about the need for a transformation in the world’s energy systems. Recently, I attended the Chicago premier of the film, presented as part of the Environmental Film Series of the Lutheran School of Theology. I had high hopes for this film. They were disappointed. Given the mismatch between what the movie promises and what it delivers, it would be more aptly titled, “BAIT AND SWITCH.”
Switch Still
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Response by Marcott et al.

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Readers will be aware of the paper by Shaun Marcott and colleagues, that they published a couple weeks ago in the journal Science. That paper sought to extend the global temperature record back over the entire Holocene period, i.e. just over 11 kyr back time, something that had not really been attempted before. The paper got a fair amount of media coverage (see e.g. this article by Justin Gillis in the New York Times). Since then, a number of accusations from the usual suspects have been leveled against the authors and their study, and most of it is characteristically misleading. We are pleased to provide the authors’ response, below. Our view is that the results of the paper will stand the test of time, particularly regarding the small global temperature variations in the Holocene. If anything, early Holocene warmth might be overestimated in this study.

Update: Tamino has three excellent posts in which he shows why the Holocene reconstruction is very unlikely to be affected by possible discrepancies in the most recent (20th century) part of the record. The figure showing Holocene changes by latitude is particularly informative.

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Climate change and consequences on the ground

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The link between extreme weather events, climate change, and national security is discussed in Extreme Realities, a new episode in PBS’ series Journey To Planet Earth hosted by Matt Damon.

The video features a number of extreme weather phenomena: hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wild fires, and flooding. The discussion is about climate change and the consequences on the ground – or, how climate change may affect you.

It is important to ask what is the story behind the assertions made in the video. What scientific support is there for the link between such extremes and climate change?

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Urban Heat Islands and U.S. Temperature Trends

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Guest Commentary by Zeke Hausfather and Matthew Menne (NOAA)

The impact of urban heat islands (UHI) on temperature trends has long been a contentious area, with some studies finding no effect of urbanization on large-scale temperature trend and others finding large effects in certain regions. The issue has reached particular prominence on the blogs, with some claiming that the majority of the warming in the U.S. (or even the world) over the past century can be attributed to urbanization. We therefore set out to undertake a thorough examination of UHI in the Conterminous United States (CONUS), examining multiple ‘urban’ proxies, different methods of analysis, and temperature series with differing degrees of homogenization and urban-specific corrections (e.g. the GISTEMP nightlight method; Hansen et al, 2010). The paper reporting our results has just been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
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References

  1. D.E. Parker, "Large-scale warming is not urban", Nature, vol. 432, pp. 290-290, 2004. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/432290a
  2. X. Yang, Y. Hou, and B. Chen, "Observed surface warming induced by urbanization in east China", Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 116, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010JD015452
  3. J. Hansen, R. Ruedy, M. Sato, and K. Lo, "GLOBAL SURFACE TEMPERATURE CHANGE", Reviews of Geophysics, vol. 48, 2010. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010RG000345

2012 Updates to model-observation comparisons

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Time for the 2012 updates!

As has become a habit (2009, 2010, 2011), here is a brief overview and update of some of the most discussed model/observation comparisons, updated to include 2012. I include comparisons of surface temperatures, sea ice and ocean heat content to the CMIP3 and Hansen et al (1988) simulations.
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