Climate Change Indicators suggest a warming world

The annual State of the Climate Report has just been released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for the year 2009. Over 300 scientists from 48 countries were involved. The report examines data for ten indicators of a warming world (as seen below).

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Of these ten indicators, seven are expected to increase in a warming world (Air Temperature Near Surface (Troposphere), Humidity, Temperature Over Oceans, Sea Surface Temperature, Sea Level, Ocean Heat Content, and Temperature Over Land). The data for each of these indicators does trend up, suggesting we are living in a warming world.

Finally, three indicators are expected to decrease in a warming world (Snow Cover, Glaciers and Sea-Ice). The data for each of these indicators does trend down, suggesting we are living in a warming world.

Conclusion: Climate change is "unequivocal".

Both the full report and an easy to read 10 page summary of the report is available here.

Reference:

Arndt, D. S., M. O. Baringer, and M. R. Johnson, Eds., 2010: State of the Climate in 2009. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 91 (6), S1-S224.

The 2007 IPPC report was released in April 2007 in Paris. It is available at:

IPCC (WG2) Climate Change Report 2007

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Reframing climate change into a public health issue

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New research carried out by Maibach et al (2010) from George Mason University suggests that framing climate change in terms of a public health issue - rather than an environmental issue - helps a wider spectrum of people to see climate change as personally relevant, understandable, and significant.

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"Re-defining climate change in public health terms should help people make connection to already familiar problems such as asthma, allergies and infectious diseases, while shifting the visualisation of the issue away from remote Arctic regions and distant peoples and animals."

A better healthier future for everyone is a positive framing that may help to better engage the public with climate change.

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"Many leading experts have suggested that a positive vision for the future, rather than a dire one is precisely what has been missing from the public dialogue on climate change so far."

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For the press release for this research see here

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Or for the full paper see here

For more on this, please check out:

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Six Americas - which one are you?

Americians and climate change

Splitting jobs versus the environment

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