Dr Colin Fenwick explains the scientific evidence that the climate is changing. Then goes on to explain the drivers behind global warming. Understand the scientific evidence and facts for yourself without any political spin. See it on Youtube: https://youtu.be/y-NSlR_UHDE
3. This Evening’s Lecture:-
• The evidence for warming (thermometers, not computer models)
• How remarkable are recent trends?
• Hasn’t climate always changed?
• Why should you care?
4. What is the Evidence for Warming?
• Land temperatures are recorded daily by a global network of fixed
weather stations.
5. What is the Evidence for Warming?
• Ocean temperatures historically collected by ships and buoys but
since 2000 have increasingly been collected by ARGO floats.
• ARGO is a global array of free-drifting floats that measure the
temperature and salinity of the upper 2km of the ocean.
6. What Happens to All the Raw Data?
• Compiled into global temperature records by a number of different
independent scientific bodies.
• The best known are :-
• NASA GISS (Goddard Institute for Space Studies)
• NOAA NCEI (National Centre for Environmental Information)
• HadCRUT (UK Met Office Hadley Centre & The Climate Research Unit at UEA)
7. What Happens to All the Raw Data?
• Corrections made for instance…
• Land stations not evenly spread across the globe. Interpolation required for
areas with poor coverage.
• Station has moved, changed its equipment or environment changed over time
(heat island effect).
• Arctic has poor coverage but is warming rapidly. Each body treats the Arctic
differently leading to subtle differences.
10. Has Any Other Check Been Made?
• In 2012 physicist Richard Muller set up the Berkeley Earth Surface
Temperature to provide an additional temperature series.
• Muller was regarded as something of a sceptic, he was on record
casting doubt on the existing surface temperature reconstructions.
• BEST used the same thermometer dataset but developed their own
processing.
• When the BEST temperature series was published it was essentially
identical to those already in existence.
13. Is There Any Other Useful Thermometer?
• Ocean volume increases due to thermal expansion in a warming
world – raising sea level
• Greenland ice melts in a warming world – raising sea level
• Antarctic ice melts in a warming world – raising sea level
• Glaciers worldwide melt in a warming world – raising sea level
• The reverse of this happens in a cooling world – lowering sea level
• Hence changes in sea level are an excellent indicator of climate
change, just like mercury in a thermometer.
14. Sea Level 1993 – Present (Satellites)
Satellite measurements remove the need to take land movements into account but only go back to 1993.
Flooding in Pakistan
and Australia in 2011
17. • Thermometer records show it
• Accelerating sea level rise shows it
• Rapidly reducing Arctic sea ice
• 90% of mountain glaciers are melting
• Accelerating Greenland melt
• Accelerating melt in Western Antarctic
• Loss of ice shelves which have been stable since the last ice age
• Spring flowers bloom earlier, Species habitat moving poleward…
There is no doubt the planet is warming.
The question is whether this is our doing or is
it just part of the natural background
variation?
The Planet is Warming!
18. How Remarkable are Recent Trends?
• Reliable thermometer records only extend back to ~ 1880.
• But temperature proxies such as :-
• Ice cores
• Tree rings
• Corals
• Speleothems (stalactites & stalagmites)
• Allow temperature reconstructions going back many thousands of
years.
• In 1999 Mann et al published a temperature reconstruction going
back 1000 years.
19. How Remarkable are Recent Trends?
Diagram from the Third IPCC Assessment Report 2001
22. OK but Hasn’t the Climate Always Changed?
Of course, but always in response to something.
So what is driving the recent warming?
23. So What are the Natural Drivers?
• The brightness of the sun
24. Brightness of the Sun
Surface temperature (red) keeps rising.
The Sun’s output (blue) follows a recognised
11 year cycle.
25. So What are the Natural Drivers?
• The brightness of the sun – can’t explain recent warming
• Periodic changes in the Earth's orbit (global wobbling)
29. Periodic Changes in the Earth's Orbit
• Far too slow to explain recent warming, changes occur gradually over
thousand year timescales.
• The planet should currently be cooling.
30. So What are the Natural Drivers?
• The brightness of the sun – can’t explain recent warming
• Periodic changes in the Earth's orbit - can't explain recent warming
• Albedo
31. So What are the Natural Drivers?
• The brightness of the sun – can’t explain recent warming
• Periodic changes in the Earth's orbit - can't explain recent warming
• Albedo (secondary effect)
• Volcanoes
32. So What are the Natural Drivers?
• The brightness of the sun – can’t explain recent warming
• Periodic changes in the Earth's orbit - can't explain recent warming
• Albedo (secondary effect)
• Volcanoes (lowers temperature for a few years after a big eruption)
• Arrangement of the continents
33. So What are the Natural Drivers?
• The brightness of the sun – can’t explain recent warming
• Periodic changes in the Earth's orbit - can't explain recent warming
• Albedo (secondary effect)
• Volcanoes (lowers temperature for a few years after a big eruption)
• Arrangement of the continents (important over very long periods)
• Greenhouse effect
34. The Greenhouse Effect
• The heat trapping effects of water vapour, CO2 and methane in the
atmosphere were demonstrated in the mid-19th century.
Without the greenhouse effect the Earth’s
surface temperature would be approximately
30° C cooler than it actually is.
A powerful greenhouse effect makes Venus the
hottest planet in the solar system despite being
farther from the Sun than Mercury.
36. Atmospheric CO2 last 1000 years…another
hockey stick!
Pre-industrial ~ 280ppm
2015 – 401 ppm and rising
2016 – 404 ppm and rising
37. Why Should We Care?
Weather extremes will occur more frequently, floods, droughts, storms.
Sea level rise will continue to accelerate, displacing millions of people.
Landscape and ocean chemistry changes will alter what we can grow,
catch and eat. Displacing populations.
Humanity has lived through climate
shifts before but not with the fixed
infrastructure and intensive food
production we have today.
38. What was Decided in Paris?
• Countries aim to limit temp rise to well below 2° C whilst pursuing
efforts to stay within 1.5° C.
• But, pledges imply a rise this century of ~3.0 - 3.5° C above pre-
industrial.
• Nothing legally binding, will rely on 5 year reviews and peer pressure
to ramp up action.
39. Reality
• 2015 saw the temperature rise reach ~1° C over pre-industrial. In late
2016 it looks more like 1.3° C.
• Staying below 1.5° C is not realistically possible.
• Even with an extremely aggressive shift to renewables it is highly
unlikely we will keep temperature rise to within 2° C over pre-
industrial.
• Can we go back 25 years?
40. What Can We Do?
• Become knowledgeable about the issue and the solutions.
• Actively push politicians to make the right choices.
• Move out of any investments that include fossil fuels.
• Save yourself money by…
• Get free smart meters fitted by your power company
• Have at least one meat free day a week (healthy)
• Get your home better insulated (warmer)
• Walk or cycle short distances (healthy)
• Try to live more sustainably (cheaper)
• Support the green economy (worth £128 billion and 270,000 jobs, DECC)
41.
42. Carbon Budgets
• Since the mid-18th-century, humanity has pumped around 2,100
billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.
• This has increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere from
280 PPM to 404 PPM and raise the temperature ~1.3° C.
• Mankind currently emits around 40 billion tonnes of CO2 into the
atmosphere each year.
• To have a 66% chance of keeping rise to <1.5°C we can emit no more
than a further 200 billion tonnes CO2.
• To have a 66% chance of keeping rise to <2° C we can emit no more
than 800 billion tonnes CO2.
Ian to introduce himself and explain that the lecture was put together by Colin but Is really a collaborative work given that Colin isn't in a position to present the lecture. Colin will however endeavour to answer any questions at the end.
This evenings lecture will be divided into four parts.
First of all we'll present the evidence that the planet is indeed warming, this will be real data from real thermometers. We're aware that some people discount global warming as the product of computer models but this couldn't be further from the truth.
Secondly we'll look at how remarkable the recent warming is compared to long-term records of the Earth's climate to see if anything significant is indeed happening.
Thirdly, we'll address question "hasn't the climate always changed" to see if any natural variations are causing the climate system to warm.
Finally, we'll ask the question "why should you care? "Pictures are worth 1000 words and whether you care about habitat loss here shown graphically in the last few weeks of polar bears life: or this image of a drowned Syrian child trying to escape a war-torn country. The Syrian civil war cannot be blamed wholly upon climate change but the unprecedented drought between 2006 and 2009 that displaced 1.5 million people prior to the start of the war was surely a factor. Finally sea level rise will be the one aspect of climate change that will impact all of us whether we live near the sea or not. 400 million people live within a few metres of the high watermark and within 1 to 200 years they won't be able to live where they are currently.
So much for the consequences, let's look at the evidence.
As the main provider of heat for the planet the sun obviously plays a major part in our climate system. When the sun was young, 4.6 billion years ago, it was only around 70% as bright as it is today yet liquid water existed on the Earth's surface throughout most of its history. This points strongly to the existence of other controls on the climate system.
Whilst the sun clearly can change its output significantly, such large changes are very slow taking many millions of years. More familiar is the 11 year sunspot cycle but these faster changes are quite minor and can't reasonably explain large changes in the planet's climate.
The diagram shows the sun's output over the last four sunspot cycles, together with its intrinsic brightness as measured by satellites. It's evident that the sun's output has actually diminished over the last four cycles with a widely speculated minimum fast approaching.
This diagram shows unequivocally that increasing solar output is not the reason for the recent warming trend. In fact the planet should have cooled very slightly over the period.
