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30 years after Hansen’s testimony

Filed under: — gavin @ 21 June 2018

“The greenhouse effect is here.”
– Jim Hansen, 23rd June 1988, Senate Testimony

The first transient climate projections using GCMs are 30 years old this year, and they have stood up remarkably well.

We’ve looked at the skill in the Hansen et al (1988) (pdf) simulations before (back in 2008), and we said at the time that the simulations were skillful and that differences from observations would be clearer with a decade or two’s more data. Well, another decade has passed!

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References

  1. J. Hansen, I. Fung, A. Lacis, D. Rind, S. Lebedeff, R. Ruedy, G. Russell, and P. Stone, "Global climate changes as forecast by Goddard Institute for Space Studies three-dimensional model", Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 93, pp. 9341, 1988. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/JD093iD08p09341

Will climate change bring benefits from reduced cold-related mortality? Insights from the latest epidemiological research

Filed under: — stefan @ 11 June 2018

Guest post by Veronika Huber

Climate skeptics sometimes like to claim that although global warming will lead to more deaths from heat, it will overall save lives due to fewer deaths from cold. But is this true? Epidemiological studies suggest the opposite.

Mortality statistics generally show a distinct seasonality. More people die in the colder winter months than in the warmer summer months. In European countries, for example, the difference between the average number of deaths in winter (December – March) and in the remaining months of the year is 10% to 30%. Only a proportion of these winter excess deaths are directly related to low ambient temperatures (rather than other seasonal factors). Yet, it is reasonable to suspect that fewer people will die from cold as winters are getting milder with climate change. On the other hand, excess mortality from heat may also be high, with, for example, up to 70,000 additional deaths attributed to the 2003 summer heat wave in Europe. So, will the expected reduction in cold-related mortality be large enough to compensate for the equally anticipated increase in heat-related mortality under climate change? More »

Unforced variations: June 2018

Filed under: — group @ 2 June 2018

This month’s open thread. We know people like to go off on tangents, but last month’s thread went too far. There aren’t many places to discuss climate science topics intelligently, so please stay focused on those.