Tag Archives: climate change

2 degrees warmer climate in late Pliocene meant 12-32 meters higher sea levels

That would likely mean that also the official UN climate goal of limiting the average world temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees Celsius – a target linked to 450 ppm CO2 equivalent stabilisation scenarios (practically ambitious, theoretically weak) … Continue reading →

New Insights Into Cloud Formation

Clouds have a profound effect on the climate, but we know surprisingly little about how they form. Erika Sundén has studied how extremely small cloud particles can dispose of excess energy. This knowledge is necessary to understand processes in the atmosphere that affect global climate change.

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Sharing the Blame for the Mammoth’s Extinction

Wooly mammoths

The wooly mammoths may have succumbed to a combination of rapid climate change and human depredation, possibly by overhunting. Credit: Creative Commons/Wikimedia

The past few tens of millennia were hard times for the megafauna of the world. Hundreds of big-bodied species—from the mammoths of North America to the 3-meter-tall kangaroos of Australia to the 200-kilogram-plus flightless birds of New Zealand—just disappeared from the fossil record. A new, broad analysis continues the century-long debate over the loss of the big animals, coming down on the middle ground between blaming migrating humans for wiping them all out and climate change alone for doing them in.

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Arctic warming cold winter hypothesis loses one year

And it also loses a study, but then it gains two… We’ll just admit a small prejudice. Are gut feelings allowed in science?

Not recession but gas prices responsible for reduction in US carbon emissions

When the economic recession hit the US in 2009, at least one good thing seemed to have come from it: a reduction in carbon emissions to levels not seen since 1996. But as it turns out, the recession wasn’t the … Continue reading →

Some weather extremes simply lie beyond Gaussian distribution

When assessing the climate system it doesn’t hurt to include some geography to your statistical assumptions. After all, without mountains, oceans and coastlines there would be no weather, just one boring climatic average – and therefore no ground to create … Continue reading →

Hellmann development Dutch winters shows cold declining

In climatology development of the average may differ substantially from the extremes – both as a characteristic of the normal distribution – and the possibility of skewness increases. On average the Dutch climate shows a clear warming trend – but … Continue reading →