Climate Science Community Research Articles

The Influence of Remote Aerosol Forcing from Industrialized Economies on the Future Evolution of East and West African Rainfall

Abstract Past changes in global industrial aerosol emissions have played a significant role in historical shifts in African rainfall, and yet assessment of the impact on African rainfall of near-term (10–40 yr) potential aerosol emission pathways remains largely unexplored. While existing literature links future aerosol declines to a northward shift of Sahel rainfall, existing climate projections rely on RCP scenarios that do not explore the range of air quality drivers. Here we present projections from two emission scenarios that better envelop the range of potential aerosol emissions. More aggressive emission cuts result in northward shifts of the tropical rainbands whose signal can emerge from expected internal variability on short, 10–20-yr time horizons. We also show for the first time that this northward shift also impacts East Africa, with evidence of delays to both onset and withdrawal of the short rains. However, comparisons of rainfall impacts across models suggest that only certain aspects of both the West and East African model responses may be robust, given model uncertainties. This work motivates the need for wider exploration of air quality scenarios in the climate science community to assess the robustness of these projected changes and to provide evidence to underpin climate adaptation in Africa. In particular, revised estimates of emission impacts of legislated measures every 5–10 years would have a value in providing near-term climate adaptation information for African stakeholders.

Observed trends in daily rainfall variability result in more severe climate change impacts to agriculture

There is increasing evidence that climate change is impacting not just total amounts of precipitation, but its temporal dynamics as well. While previous studies have identified the importance that the temporal distribution of daily rainfall has on crop production, climate models often do not represent these distributions consistently with observed trends. The objectives of this study are to (1) evaluate the relationship between rainfall variability and yields for economically important crops in the upper Southeastern United States and (2) assess the potential impact that incorporating observed trends in rainfall variability has on yield projections under future climate change. This study develops statistical models of historic crop yields for five crops, finding that an explanatory variable related to daily rainfall variability, the wet-day Gini coefficient (GC), has a statistically significant negative relationship with crop yields in all cases. These models are then used to estimate the impacts of climate change using an ensemble of downscaled general circulation model (GCM) projections and scenarios that include a continuation of observed GC trends. Most downscaled GCMs evaluated do not project changes in GC consistent with observed trends, and scenarios that assume a continuation of observed trends result in projected yields that are up to 5.8% lower than those directly based on GCM projections. While additional research is needed in the climate science community to better understand how rainfall variability may change in the future, this should be mirrored in the impacts community so that agricultural impact assessments incorporate these potentially important changes.

Climate change opinions in online debate sites

Debate sites in social media provide a unified platform for citizens to discuss controversial questions and to put forward their ideas and arguments on the issues of common interest. Opinions of citizens may provide useful knowledge to stakeholders but manual analysis of arguments in debate sites is tedious, while computational support to this end has been rather scarce. We focus here on developing a technical instrumentation for making sense of a set of online arguments and aggregating them into usable results for policy making and climate science communication. Our objectives are: (i) to aggregate arguments posted for a certain debate topic, (ii) to consolidate opinions posted under several but related topics either in the same or different debate site, and (iii) to identify possible linguistic characteristics of the argumentative texts. For the first objective, we propose a voting method based on subjective logic [13]. For the second objective, we assess the semantic similarity between two debate topics based on textual entailment [28]. For the third objective, we employ various existing methods for lexical analysis such as frequency analysis or readability indexes. Although we focused here on the climate change, the method can be applied to any domain.

Geophysical Consequences of Tropospheric Particulate Heating: Further Evidence that Anthropogenic Global Warming is Principally Caused by Particulate Pollution

The climate science community and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have misinformed world governments by failing to acknowledge tropospheric particulate geoengineering that has been ongoing with ever-increasing duration and intensity for decades, and by treating global warming solely as a radiation-balance issue, which has resulted in a seriously incomplete understanding of the fundamental factors that affect Earth’s surface temperature. Here we review the consequences of tropospheric particulate heating by absorption of short- and long-wave solar radiation and long-wave radiation from Earth’s surface. Generally, black carbon absorbs light over the entire solar spectrum; brown carbon absorbs near-UV wavelengths and, to a lesser extent, visible light; iron oxides are good absorbers, the most efficient being magnetite. Pyrogenic coal fly ash, both from coal burning and from tropospheric jet-spraying geoengineering (for military purposes and/or climate engineering), contains carbon and iron oxides, hematite and magnetite. The recently published climate-science paradigm shift discloses that the main cause of global warming is not carbon dioxide heat retention, but particulate pollution that absorbs radiation, heats the troposphere, and reduces the efficiency of atmospheric-convective heat removal from Earth’s surface. In addition to the World War II data, three other independent lines of supporting evidence are reviewed: (1) Passage overhead of the Mt. St. Helens volcanic plume; (2) Radiosonde and aethalometer investigations of Talukdar et al.; and, (3) convection suppression over the tropical North Atlantic caused by the Saharan-blown dust. The risks associated with the placement of aerosol particulates into the stratosphere, whether lofted naturally, inadvertently, or deliberately as proposed for solar radiation management, poses grave risks, including the destruction of atmospheric ozone. To solve global warming humanity must: (1) Abruptly halt tropospheric particulate geoengineering; (2) Trap particulate emissions from coal-fired industrial furnaces (especially in India and China) and from vehicle exhaust; and, (3) Reduce particulate-forming fuel additives.

The role of mass media in communicating climate science: An empirical evidence

Abstract World leaders signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 to keep global temperatures well below 2 °C. This Paris Agreement will facilitate achieving Sustainable Development Goal-13 (Climate Action) by 2030. However, without collective action, it is quite impossible to achieve the terms of this agreement. In this regard, the mass media can contribute to making people aware of the subsequent effect of climate change at all levels. The mass media, as a source of information, might play a significant role in raising public awareness and understanding of climate sciences. This paper examines the influence of the mass media on awareness, attitudes and knowledge of climate change, which may lead to environmentally friendly behaviour. This paper employs structural equation modelling to examine the relationship among the studied variables. The results reveal that the mass media influences awareness, attitudes and knowledge of climate change. This study also finds mediating effects of awareness, attitudes and knowledge of climate change between the mass media and environmentally friendly behaviour. The results imply that the mass media contributes to creating awareness, enhancing understating and shaping favourable attitudes towards climate change. The findings could guide policymakers to take appropriate steps to promote a greater awareness of climate change using the mass media.

Motivated Attention in Climate Change Perception and Action

Despite the scientific consensus, some people still remain skeptical about climate change. In fact, there is a growing partisan divide over the last decade within the United States in the support for climate policies. Given the same climate evidence, why do some people become concerned while others remain unconvinced? Here we propose a motivated attention framework where socio-political motivations shape visual attention to climate evidence, altering perceptions of the evidence and subsequent actions to mitigate climate change. To seek support for this framework, we conducted three experiments. Participants viewed a graph of annual global temperature change while they were eyetracked and estimated the average change. We found that political orientation may bias attention to climate change evidence, altering the perception of the same evidence (Experiment 1). We further examined how attentional biases influence subsequent actions to mitigate climate change. We found that liberals were more likely to sign a climate petition or more willing to donate to an environmental organization than conservatives, and attention guides climate actions in different ways for liberals and conservatives (Experiment 2). To seek causal evidence, we biased attention to different parts of the temperature curve by coloring stronger climate evidence in red or weak climate evidence in red. We found that liberals were more likely to sign the petition or more willing to donate when stronger evidence was in red, but conservatives were less likely to act when stronger evidence was in red (Experiment 3). This suggests that drawing attention to motivationally consistent information increases actions in liberals, but discouraged conservatives. The findings provide initial preliminary evidence for the motivated attention framework, suggesting an attentional divide between liberals and conservatives in the perception of climate evidence. This divide might further reinforce prior beliefs about climate change, creating further polarization. The current study raises a possible attentional mechanism for ideologically motivated reasoning and its impact on basic perceptual processes. It also provides implications for the communication of climate science to different socio-political groups with the goal of mobilizing actions on climate change.

Emotional responses to climate change map framing using facial emotion recognition technology

Emotional responses to climate change map framing using facial emotion recognition technology

적응경로 기반 지자체 기후변화 적응계획 강화를 위한 의사결정 지원 전략

Planning for adaptation is difficult without tools for communicating climate science and methods that measure the local climate impacts and solutions. The purpose of this study is to review recent decision-support tools that assist the planning process to enhance the effectiveness of climate adaptation plans. First, a review of recent developments in adaptation planning literature is conducted to identify the prerequisites, procedure, and methods of decision support systems. Second, “Implementation Plans for Climate Change Adaptation” from Korea’s local municipalities were analyzed to assess execution of the decision-making processes in Korea. Lastly, strategic directions for decision-support tools that can enhance the efficiency and quality of climate adaptation planning were suggested. Korea’s local adaptation planning has been mainly concerned with completing the list of required plan components. While the plan outcomes have yet to be evaluated and monitored, the process of creating plans is inadequate to promote actual adaptation due to lack of climate information, quantitative assessment, and methodologies for long-term planning. Adaptation planning based on a pathway has been proposed as an effective approach to allow decision-makers to flexibly adjust long-term plans according to uncertain future conditions while considering path dependency. This study finds that the most effective format of a decision support tool is in an online, web-based portal that includes general to context-specific information and methods.

Game Developers' Approaches to Communicating Climate Change

Educational games are potential tools for communicating climate science to the public and thus improving public understanding of climate change. In this article we explore the use of co-design methodologies, a participatory open design process, to communicate climate change to a wider audience. To this end, we hosted Climate Jam 2018, a game jam with the objective of creating games to communicate climate change science and to gain insight into how developers approach educational game design. The inclusive event attracted professional game developers and hobbyists from four continents. Participants received a science pack with scientific information about climate change and completed a pre- and post-game-jam survey containing questions relating to climate change, motivations, and game design principles. We present a description of select games that highlight different approaches to communicating climate change to a general audience. Additional results from the surveys showed that few game developers engaged with the science pack and other resources in depth, that communicating climate science was of medium interest to game developers, and that the games’ potential learning effects relate mostly to memorizing and recalling the information communicated in the games. The results are discussed with respect to improving communication between scientists and game developers in the co-creation process.

Capturing the dance of the earth: PolarGlobe: Real-time scientific visualization of vector field data to support climate science

This paper introduces a streamline visualization technique that empowers PolarGlobe, an interactive, virtual globe-based, multi-dimensional scientific visualization tool to facilitate the observation and visual inspection of changes in the climate in real time. Specifically, this technique achieves effective visualization of vector-based earth science data through an automated data processing pipeline which integrates novel strategies including random seeding, finer-granularity parallelization and real-time rendering. The random seeding strategy allows for a vivid visual effect and an interactive framerate regardless of the spatial resolution in the raw dataset. The visualization algorithm is designed to be naturally parallelizable by partitioning the rendering tasks of unsteady vector field into multiple subtasks such that high-performance rendering can be realized. The platform is capable of taking either irregular or regular gridded data as input, and through the proposed data (re)projection pipeline, an automatic transformation of spatially enabled scientific data from the original data projection to the 3D globe-based virtual space is achieved. A series of experiments was conducted to identify the best configuration of rendering parameters to achieve the optimal rendering performance and visual effect. The results demonstrated the scalability and capability of the proposed PolarGlobe system to visualize big and unsteady vector flow data across different spatial and temporal scales. PolarGlobe implements former Vice President Al Gore's vision of a digital earth that enables scientists and citizens across the world to interactively study our planet. We expect the methods and techniques presented in this work to contribute significantly to both the scientific visualization and climate science communities.

Climate change communicators’ carbon footprints affect their audience’s policy support

Global warming is caused mainly by CO2 emission from burning fossil fuels and is beginning to have large negative impacts on human well-being and ecosystems (IPCC 2014; IPCC 2018). Policies that mitigate CO2 emissions will require public support. Here, we examine how support for several possible decarbonization policies varies as a function of the personal carbon footprint of a researcher who advocates the policy. We find that people are more likely to support policies if the advocate for these policies has a low carbon footprint. Replicating our prior work, we find that the communicators’ carbon footprint massively affect their credibility and intentions of their audience to conserve energy (Attari, Krantz and Weber 2016). Our new finding is that their carbon footprint also affects audience support for public policies advocated by the communicator. In a second study, we show that the negative effects of a large carbon footprint on credibility are greatly reduced if the communicator reforms their behavior by reducing their personal carbon footprints. The implications of these results are stark: effective communication of climate science and advocacy of both individual behavior change and public policy interventions are greatly helped when advocates lead the way by reducing their own carbon footprint.

Science Poetry Promotes Public Perception: A Case of 21st-Century Environmental Communication

Bridging the gap between cutting-edge scientific discovery and public understanding is critical in translating innovation into action. This is especially true of climate and environmental science communication, as climate change has become one of if not the most pressing issues of our modern era. Though the effect of traditional media outlets has previously been investigated, the effect of social media on influencing public perception of climate change has only recently been investigated. These initial results suggest a promising positive impact of social media use on climate change opinion and action. Here, I report ongoing efforts to lend a public voice to cutting-edge scientific research. I studied hundreds of recent peer-reviewed scientific articles, as well as older seminal publications, in both the field of climate and environmental science and in the field of space and planetary science.

Revisiting the Linkages between the Variability of Atmospheric Circulations and Arctic Melt-Season Sea Ice Cover at Multiple Time Scales

Abstract The sharp decline of Arctic sea ice in recent decades has captured the attention of the climate science community. A majority of climate analyses performed to date have used monthly or seasonal data. Here, however, we analyze daily sea ice data for 1979–2016 using the self-organizing map (SOM) method to further examine and quantify the contributions of atmospheric circulation changes to the melt-season Arctic sea ice variability. Our results reveal two main variability modes: the Pacific sector mode and the Barents and Kara Seas mode, which together explain about two-thirds of the melt-season Arctic sea ice variability and more than 40% of its trend for the study period. The change in the frequencies of the two modes appears to be associated with the phase shift of the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation (AMO). The PDO and AMO trigger anomalous atmospheric circulations, in particular, the Greenland high and the North Atlantic Oscillation and anomalous warm and cold air advections into the Arctic Ocean. The changes in surface air temperature, lower-atmosphere moisture, and downwelling longwave radiation associated with the advection are consistent with the melt-season sea ice anomalies observed in various regions of the Arctic Ocean. These results help better understand the predictability of Arctic sea ice on multiple (synoptic, intraseasonal, and interannual) time scales.

Mann Receives 2018 Climate Communication Prize

Michael E. Mann received the Climate Communication Prize at the 2018 AGU Fall Meeting Honors Ceremony, held 12 December 2018 in Washington, D. C. The prize recognizes an individual “for the communication of climate science.”

Using Geo‐detector to attribute spatio‐temporal variation of pan evaporation across China in 1961–2001

Declining pan evaporation (Epan) across many continents in the past decades despite global warming is gaining attention of hydrology and climate science communities. While Geo‐detector is considered useful for attributing the spatio‐temporal variation of a certain geography‐related element, it has not been applied for Epan attribution. Based on the Geo‐detector, we first attribute the spatio‐temporal variation of Epan across China in 1961–2001. The results show that relative humidity is the primary factor influencing the temporal dynamics of Epan, followed by sunshine duration, maximum air temperature and wind speed. In the northwest China (south China and east China), wind speed, air temperature and relative humidity (relative humidity, sunshine duration, wind speed and air temperature) are the dominant factors of Epan variations. The results obtained are comparable to the previous studies using other statistical methods (i.e., the partial differential method, Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression), which reveal the usefulness of Geo‐detector for attributing and diagnosing the spatio‐temporal variations of Epan. Moreover, more detailed spatial information and interactions among meteorological elements can be obtained using Geo‐detector. These findings should provide helpful references for understanding the mass and energy budgets at different spatial–temporal scales under global warming.

From research to end-users, tracing the path of ocean observations in Australia

The mission of Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), established under the Federal Government’s national collaborative research infrastructure program, is to deliver ocean observations to the marine and climate science community. However, the observations have many uses, ranging from real-time operational forecasting to understanding of processes and policy decision making. Observations need to be provided in a format that fits the purpose of the intended application. Turning observations into usable data, time series, gridded products and analyses broadens the use of such observations. Value adding by developing products that are relevant to end-user needs and easily accessible to non-scientists is also required as a strategic response to new and emerging socioeconomic, legal and policy priorities. This paper describes some of the pathways on which IMOS observations are being delivered and used in Australia, demonstrating the value that ocean observations have for society.

Climate science can’t be trumped: a look at how to translate empirical data into political action

Although over 97 % of scientists are in agreement regarding the occurrence, cause and consequences of climate change, studies have found that less than 50 % of Americans believe that climate change is caused by human activities and that Americans remain greatly divided regarding the causes, urgency and solutions to the climate crisis. The gravity of the situation only appears to be growing as recent reports have shown that climate change denial is not limited to the United States and that other global citizens also appear to be confused regarding the legitimacy of climate change science data. The prevalence of confusion highlights the dire need for better educational programs and grassroots actions by the scientific and academic communities. However, the path from ‘data’ to citizen action is hardly a direct one, and thus the engagement of the climate science community (ENGOs and other boundary organizations, academia, governments) in education will not be simply one of ‘getting the word out’. That community will need to grapple with the complex socio-epstemic space that lies between scientific knowledge production and citizens’ participatory engagement with climate change policies. This paper outlines some aspects of that complexity and suggests ways how certain types of knowledge dissemination as such, which lead to increased scientific literacy, can contribute to increased citizen action.

El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Health: An Overview for Climate and Health Researchers

The El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is an important mode of climatic variability that exerts a discernible impact on ecosystems and society through alterations in climate patterns. For this reason, ENSO has attracted much interest in the climate and health science community, with many analysts investigating ENSO health links through considering the degree of dependency of the incidence of a range of climate diseases on the occurrence of El Niño events. Because of the mounting interest in the relationship between ENSO as a major mode of climatic variability and health, this paper presents an overview of the basic characteristics of the ENSO phenomenon and its climate impacts, discusses the use of ENSO indices in climate and health research, and outlines the present understanding of ENSO health associations. Also touched upon are ENSO-based seasonal health forecasting and the possible impacts of climate change on ENSO and the implications this holds for future assessments of ENSO health associations. The review concludes that there is still some way to go before a thorough understanding of the association between ENSO and health is achieved, with a need to move beyond analyses undertaken through a purely statistical lens, with due acknowledgement that ENSO is a complex non-canonical phenomenon, and that simple ENSO health associations should not be expected.

Global mean temperature indicators linked to warming levels avoiding climate risks

International climate policy uses global mean temperature rise limits as proxies for societally acceptable levels of climate change. These limits are informed by risk assessments which draw upon projections of climate impacts under various levels of warming. Here we illustrate that indicators used to define limits of warming and those used to track the evolution of the Earth System under climate change are not directly comparable. Depending on the methodological approach, differences can be time-variant and up to 0.2 °C for a warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. This might lead to carbon budget overestimates of about 10 years of continued year-2015 emissions, and about a 10% increase in estimated 2100 sea-level rise. Awareness of this definitional mismatch is needed for a more effective communication between scientists and decision makers, as well as between the impact and physical climate science communities.

Providing future climate projections using multiple models and methods: insights from the Philippines

To meet the growing demand for climate change information to guide national and local adaptation decision-making in the Philippines, the climate science and services community is producing an increasing volume of future climate data using a range of modelling approaches. However, there is a significant methodological challenge in how to best compare and combine information produced using different models and methods. In this paper, we present the landscape of climate model data available in the Philippines and show how multi-model, multi-method climate projections are being used and communicated to inform climate change policy and planning, focusing on the agriculture sector. We highlight the importance of examining and communicating methodological strengths and weaknesses as well as understanding the needs and capabilities of different user communities. We discuss the assessment of projections from different methods, including global and regional downscaled simulations, and discuss ways to summarise and communicate this information to stakeholders using co-production approaches. The paper concludes with perspectives on how to best use an “ensemble of opportunity” to construct defensible, plausible and usable climate projections.