Earlier this month, we reported on a new study by Marcott et al. in Science: Recent Warming Is ‘Amazing And Atypical’ And Poised To Destroy Stable Climate That Enabled Civilization. It was the source of most of the data in this popular, jaw-dropping graph:

Temperature change over past 11,300 years (in blue, via Science, 2013) plus projected warming this century on humanity’s current emissions path (in red, via recent literature).

Now Real Climate has posted a summary and FAQ by Shaun Marcott and colleagues, which I’ll excerpt below. As the real climate scientists at RC note:

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.

The main, stunning conclusion we can draw from the paper is that the rate of warming since 1900 is 50 times greater than the rate of cooling in the previous 5000 years, which undermines the whole notion of adaptation.

But the study also means the famous “Hockey Stick” graph is correct (and indeed too optimistic — even by mid-century, the hockey stick actually looks more like a brick wall for humanity, as the figure shows).

Of course, the deniers can’t stomach any independent support for the hockey stick, even though countless studies have now backed it up. So the lemming-like disinformer blogs continue to press the most inane attack on Marcott et al., arguing that the warming of the past century the authors found in their proxy records is in error.

What makes this so anti-scientific is that the uptick just happens to match the uptick in the heavily documented and independently verified instrumental record. So the disinformers are spending most of their time attacking the one part of the paper that we know unequivocally matches reality — see, for instance, Koch-Funded Study Finds ‘Global Warming Is Real’, ‘On The High End’ And ‘Essentially All’ Due To Carbon Pollution. See also Tamino, who has some good posts on the paper. And see NOAA (2013): ‘Robust, Unambiguous’ Independent Evidence Confirms The Recent Global Warming Measured By Thermometers.

And speaking of inane, there is a manufactured dust-up on twitter that somehow posting a blog piece on Easter Sunday is like making an unpopular political announcement on a Friday. But in fact, unlike Friday afternoon, Sunday is a great day to post a piece if you want high readership and traffic, as anyone who blogs regularly should know. If someone didn’t want a blog article to be read, they simply wouldn’t post it!

Here is an excerpt of the RealClimate post by Sean Marcott and his coauthors about their paper:

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One week after the Senate held a symbolic vote in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline, the U.S. saw two different oil spills involving Canadian tar sands crude oil.

An ExxonMobil pipeline ruptured Friday, leaking approximately 10,000 barrels of tar sands crude in an Arkansas town. As a result, 22 homes have been evacuated as officials clean up of the world’s dirtiest oil:

Exxon shut the Pegasus pipeline, which can carry more than 90,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil from Pakota, Illinois, to Nederland, Texas, after the leak was discovered on Friday afternoon, the company said in a statement.

The Keystone XL pipeline would carry almost nine times the barrels of oil as the Pegasus pipeline.

The first oil spill came Wednesday, when a train reportedly carrying tar sands oil spilled 15,000 gallons in Minnesota. Also this week, Exxon was hit by a $1.7 million fine for a pipeline that dumped 42,000 gallons of oil in the Yellowstone River in 2011 (the fine itself is a small hinderance for a company that earned $45 billion profit last year).

As one of the companies to profit from Canadian tar sands, Exxon often takes to its blog to defend its so-called safety. Big Oil lawmakers then repeat those myths despite evidence to the contrary. On Friday, the same day as Exxon’s oil spill, Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE) claimed the pipeline is a “no-brainer” and passes environmental “muster.” The State Department recently issued a draft report claiming the pipeline will have no environmental impact, authored by a contractor with extensive ties to oil companies.

The media are debating if the decrease in  Arctic ice  is related to this winter’s cold weather in Germany. This post discusses the most recent current research about this including the most important figures from relevant studies.

Translated from an article by Stefan Rahmstorf [] are translation notes via Rabett Run

First, what does the unusual temperature distribution observed this March actually look like? Here is a map showing the data (up to and including March 25, NCEP / NCAR data plotted with KNMI Climate Explorer):

There was unusually high air pressure between Scandinavia and Greenland. Since circulation around a high is clockwise [anticyclone], this explains the influx of arctic cold air in Europe and the warm Labrador Sea.

Arctic sea ice

Let us now discuss the Arctic sea ice.  The summer minimum in September set a new record low, but also at the recent winter maximum there was unusually little ice (ranking 6th lowest – the ten years with the lowest ice extent were all in the last decade). The ice cover in the Barents sea was particularly low this winter.  All in all until March the deficit was  about the size of Germany compared  to the long-term average.

Is there a connection with the winter weather?  Does the shrinking ice cover influence the atmospheric circulation, because the open ocean strongly heats the Arctic atmosphere from below?  (The water is much warmer than the overlying cold polar air.) Did the resulting evaporation of sea water moisten the air and thus lead to more snow? These questions have been investigated by several studies in recent years.
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On Tuesday, the Obama administration released the National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Adaptation Strategy, a document that provides recommendations for the country to address the threats climate change poses to wildlife and natural resources.

The strategy, which was developed by federal, state and tribal leaders and is meant to be implemented over the next five years, highlights the observed impacts that increased atmospheric CO2 and a changing climate have had on the environment, including ocean acidification, changes in phenology, the spread of invasive species and the shifting of the geographic range of native species. It also lists seven non-binding goals that would help wildlife adapt to climate change. Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said the list should serve as an “urgent call to action” for government officials.

Here are the priorities the strategy outlines:

• Conserve habitat to support healthy fish, wildlife, and plant populations and ecosystem functions. Since many endangered and threatened species don’t occur naturally in already protected areas, the strategy aims to identify new areas to protect, keeping the effects climate change will have on species’ ranges in mind. Recommendations include: mapping and conserving high-priority conservation areas that are most likely to withstand the effects of climate change; developing natural corridors, such as tunnels and natural bridges, to allow species to move safely between key habitats; developing market-based incentives to encourage habitat restoration and conservation.
• Update or develop species, habitat, and land and water management plans, programs and practices to consider climate change. Many agencies don’t take climate change into account when managing their natural resources, and the strategy aims to remedy that. Recommendations include: incorporating climate change effects into species and area management plans; protecting native seed sources by collecting and banking seeds.
• Enhance capacity for effective management in a changing climate. Natural resource managers often lack a clear understanding of climate change, and most existing conservation laws and regulations weren’t developed to include possible effects of climate change. Recommendations include: identifying gaps in climate change knowledge among natural resource professionals; prioritizing funding for protection programs that incorporate climate change considerations; working with agricultural and business interests to identify impacts of climate change on crop production.
• Support adaptive management through integrated observation and monitoring and use of decision support tools. The strategy aims to increase the knowledge of the impacts of climate change on natural resources and the effectiveness of mitigation actions. Recommendations include: Collaborating with the National Phenology Network to facilitate monitoring of seasonal plant and animal cycles; conducting risk assessments for priority species and habitats.
• Increase knowledge and information on impacts and responses of fish, wildlife, and plants to a changing climate. Recommendations include: bringing managers and scientists together  to prioritize research needs; conducting research on establishing the value of ecosystem services and how climate change will impact communities; improving modeling of climate change impacts on vulnerable species.
• Increase awareness and motivate action to safeguard fish, wildlife, and plants in a changing climate. The strategy aims to gain public interest and awareness of the effects climate change has on wildlife. Recommendations include: developing educational materials and teacher training for k-12 classrooms on impacts and responses to climate change; developing outreach efforts aimed at local, state, tribal, and federal government authorities, as well as business and cultural leaders.
• Reduce non-climate stressors to help fish, wildlife, plants, and ecosystems adapt to a changing climate. Recommendations include: working with farmers to develop and implementing livestock management practices to reduce habitat degradation; implementing the 2011 National Bycatch Report recommendations to increase information of bycatch levels; determining and implementing sustainable harvest levels in a changing climate.

Climate change is already altering ecosystems throughout the world: warmer summers, for instance, mean crops like strawberries and tomatoes can now be grown on the Arctic Circle. It’s also threatening species’ survival, especially migratory species that depend on the cycles of bud burst and insect arrival to feed themselves and their young. A rare possum in Australia could soon be the continent’s first climate change-induced extinction, and one study found dozens of species of lizards could be extinct within the next 50 years due to climate change. But the adaptation strategy may present a chance to lessen these extinction risks; as the LA Times notes, efforts to protect wildlife and natural resources from climate change’s effects have not yet spurred the political backlash that other proposed actions have.