Earth’s Northern Hemisphere over the past 30 years has seen more “hot” (orange), “very hot” (red) and “extremely hot” (brown) summers, compared to a base period defined in this study from 1951 to 1980. This visualization shows how the area experiencing “extremely hot” summers grows from nearly nonexistent during the base period to cover 12 percent of land in the Northern Hemisphere by 2011. Watch for the 2011 heat waves in Texas, Oklahoma and Mexico, or the 2010 heat waves the Middle East, Western Asia and Eastern Europe. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

By James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy, via NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies

The greatest barrier to public recognition of human-made climate change is probably the natural variability of local climate. How can a person discern long-term climate change, given the notorious variability of local weather and climate from day to day and year to year?

The question is important because actions to stem emissions of gases that cause global warming are unlikely until the public appreciates the significance of global warming and perceives that it will have unacceptable consequences. Thus when nature seemingly provides evidence of climate change it needs to be examined objectively by the public, as well as by scientists.

Therefore it was disappointing that most early media reports on the heat wave, widespread drought, and intense forest fires in the United States in 2012 did not mention or examine the potential connection between these climate events and global warming. Is this reticence justified?

In a new paper (Hansen et al., 2012a), we conclude that such reticence is not justified. The paper attempts to illustrate the data in ways that properly account for climate variability yet are understandable to the public.

We show how the probability of unusually warm seasons is changing, emphasizing summer when the changes have large practical effects. We calculate seasonal-mean temperature anomalies relative to average temperature in the base period 1951-1980. This is an appropriate base period because global temperature was relatively stable and still within the Holocene range to which humanity and other planetary life are adapted (note 1).

We illustrate variability of seasonal temperature in units of standard deviation (σ), including comparison with the normal distribution (“bell curve”) that the lay public may appreciate. The probability distribution (frequency of occurrence) of local summer-mean temperature anomalies was close to the normal distribution in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s in both hemispheres (Fig. 2). However, in each subsequent decade the distribution shifted toward more positive anomalies, with the positive tail (hot outliers) of the distribution shifting the most.

Figure 2. Temperature anomaly distribution: The frequency of occurrence (vertical axis) of local temperature anomalies (relative to 1951-1980 mean) in units of local standard deviation (horizontal axis). Area under each curve is unity. Image credit: NASA/GISS.

An important change is the emergence of a subset of the hot category, extremely hot outliers, defined as anomalies exceeding +3σ. The frequency of these extreme anomalies is about 0.13% in the normal distribution, and thus in a typical summer in the base period only 0.1-0.2% of the globe is covered by such hot extremes. However, we show that during the past several years the global land area covered by summer temperature anomalies exceeding +3σ has averaged about 10%, an increase by more than an order of magnitude compared to the base period. Recent examples of summer temperature anomalies exceeding +3σ include the heat wave and drought in Oklahoma, Texas and Mexico in 2011 and a larger region encompassing much of the Middle East, Western Asia and Eastern Europe, including Moscow, in 2010.

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Climate Envoy Todd Stern says the U.S. hasn't abandoned the 2C target. Photo: Naturvernforbundet via Flickr

by Andrew Light and Adam James

This past Tuesday, Todd Stern, America’s top climate diplomat at the Department of State, was compelled to clarify comments he made last week at Dartmouth College on the global goal of limiting temperature increase caused by climate change to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F).  Several commentators, including our former CAP colleague Brad Johnson on this blog, raised concerns that it signaled a reversal of a commitment the U.S. has had since 2009 to the 2C goal.  Stern denied this assertion in no uncertain terms:  “Of course, the U.S. continues to support this goal; we have not changed our policy.”

While it’s heartening to have the 2C goal reaffirmed by our chief climate envoy, it’s unfortunate that he had to do so.  Only a very selective and skewed reading of this speech should set off any alarms.  What Stern actually said at Dartmouth doesn’t even register as a gaffe.

Stern’s comments in the Dartmouth speech on the 2C target are relatively minor.  They comprise a very small portion of a much more broad-ranging speech which includes, among other topics: current evidence of the disastrous impacts of rising temperatures around the world, the ideological divide over concern about climate change in the U.S., the Obama administration’s efforts to lower domestic emissions without comprehensive energy legislation, the nuances and challenges of climate diplomacy in a forum where consensus must be reached by 194 countries, and options for reducing emissions among smaller coalitions of the willing.

On the 2C target, Stern only challenges the likelihood that building a top-down international treaty, which divided up the allocation of emissions reductions country by country to stabilize temperature at 2C, would actually work. For various reasons, mostly concerning national self-interest, he favors a “more flexible approach” which would start with bottom-up nationally derived policies and then instead take the challenge to be to “increase the overall ambition” to stabilize at 2C with a hoped-for boost by future innovations in clean energy technology.

If this part of Stern’s speech is minor, the U.S. commitment to the 2C target is quite important even if progress toward that goal is lagging.  The endorsement of this target was the first major shift in international climate policy that the Obama administration embraced, signaling a complete break with the approach taken by the Bush administration which had isolated us in the international climate negotiations.

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