Climate Change

Here are some resources for you to use in investigating climate change:  

The Fifth National Climate Assessment is here https://nca2023.globalchange.gov/ And the previous report, the 4th National Climate Assessment Volume I – Physical Drivers https://science2017.globalchange.gov and Volume II – Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States   https://nca2018.globalchange.gov. 

If you want to go to the horse’s mouth, here is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Website – where you can look at the original reports – this is the official compilation of information concerning global climate change/global warming https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/  All of the reports can be accessed here. That last full synthesis report is the AR6 (2023), starting with AR6 Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis (August 2021), the AR6 Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (February 2022) and AR6 Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change (April 2022).  The final synthesis report is AR6 Synthesis Report: Climate Change 2023 (September 2023).  These reports are huge but you can find pathways to all sorts of interesting research. The Special Report on Climate Change and Cities due March 2027 is the next big things of interest.

If that was a bit overwhelming, try the https://skepticalscience.com/big-picture.html  – some of it is a little dated at this point but covers the main ideas well and also updates you on new research.

Yes, there is natural variation – you can read about Milankovitch Cycles here Milankovitch (Orbital) Cycles and Their Role in Earth’s Climate but think about the key term here “cycle.” What we are looking at now is well outside that cycle. Technically we should be cooling right now. You can also read about this at https://skepticalscience.com/Milankovitch.html

The NASA Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet website is https://climate.nasa.gov/ 

The NOAA Climate Reports can be found here https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/ and some really cool graphs showing temperature data here  https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/   

Here is another source of information on methods of determining paleoclimate https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/climate-data-primer/past-climate 

Climate Reanalyzer Great resource “began in early 2012 as a platform for visualizing climate and weather forecast models”

Copernicus Climate Change Service “The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) supports society by providing authoritative information about the past, present and future climate in Europe and the rest of the World.”

Some additional sources of additional information if you want to read up more on this subject:

• If you have heard/read some of the arguments that “refute” global warming, this is a good resource to use to investigate them  http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
• Another useful resource is http://www.climatecentral.org/ 
• For a deeper dive, it is worth taking a look at the Berkeley Earth Project, which was headed by Richard Muller, a physics professor who was profoundly skeptical of the published data on climate change and decided to ‘correct’ all those confused climate scientists who didn’t understand physics. To see some of this history you have to dive into the Wayback Machine and can see it in their “Skeptics Guide” from 2014 and take in the patronizing tone of project. Turns out that climate scientists were not idiots and already understood physics, so the results they got were pretty much in line with all of the climate findings Muller was initially disbelieving. All the data they have accumulated and their models are downloadable if you are feeling ambitious. They have some interesting visualizations now too. 

Please note that the following websites misrepresent and/or distort climate science – actually some of them just outright lie (if you investigate you will find most of them have a vested (monetary) interested in continued reliance on fossil fuels):

• The -*- symbols are added to break up the names so they aren’t searchable but you can still work out what they are …
  • https://www.friends-*-ofscience.org
  • http://climate-*-sciencenews.com
  • https://www.climate-*-depot.com
  • https://wattsup-*-withthat.com
  • https://www.ca-*- to.org
  • http://www.aei-*- .org
  • https://www.heart-*-land.org
  • http://principia-scien-*- tific.org

These are MISINFORMATION SITES!