Evidence Of Anthropogenic Climate Change Research Articles

Arctic freshwater impact on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation: status and prospects.

Arguably, the most conspicuous evidence for anthropogenic climate change lies in the Arctic Ocean. For example, the summer-time Arctic sea ice extent has declined over the last 40 years and the Arctic Ocean freshwater storage has increased over the last 30 years. Coupled climate models project that this extra freshwater will pass Greenland to enter the sub-polar North Atlantic Ocean (SPNA) in the coming decades. Coupled climate models also project that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) will weaken in the twenty-first century, associated with SPNA buoyancy increases. Yet, it remains unclear when the Arctic anthropogenic freshening signal will be detected in the SPNA, or what form the signal will take. Therefore, this article reviews and synthesizes the state of knowledge on Arctic Ocean and SPNA salinity variations and their causes. This article focuses on the export processes in data-constrained ocean circulation model hindcasts. One challenge is to quantify and understand the relative importance of different competing processes. This article also discusses the prospects to detect the emergence of Arctic anthropogenic freshening and the likely impacts on the AMOC. For this issue, the challenge is to distinguish anthropogenic signals from natural variability. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Atlantic overturning: new observations and challenges'.

The Impact of Extreme Precipitation Events and Their Variability on Climate Change Beliefs in the American Public

Abstract Although scientists agree that climate change is anthropogenic, differing interpretations of evidence in a highly polarized sociopolitical environment impact how individuals perceive climate change. While prior work suggests that individuals experience climate change through local conditions, there is a lack of consensus on how personal experience with extreme precipitation may alter public opinion on climate change. We combine high-resolution precipitation data at the zip-code level with nationally representative public opinion survey results (n = 4008) that examine beliefs in climate change and the perceived cause. Our findings support relationships between well-established value systems (i.e., partisanship, religion) and socioeconomic status with individual opinions of climate change, showing that these values are influential in opinion formation on climate issues. We also show that experiencing characteristics of atypical precipitation (e.g., more variability than normal, increasing or decreasing trends, or highly recurring extreme events) in a local area are associated with increased belief in anthropogenic climate change. This suggests that individuals in communities that experience greater atypical precipitation may be more accepting of messaging and policy strategies directly aimed at addressing climate change challenges. Thus, communication strategies that leverage individual perception of atypical precipitation at the local level may help tap into certain “experiential” processing methods, making climate change feel less distant. These strategies may help reduce polarization and motivate mitigation and adaptation actions. Significance Statement Public acceptance for anthropogenic climate change is hindered by how related issues are presented, diverse value systems, and information-processing biases. Personal experiences with extreme weather may act as a salient cue that impacts individuals’ perceptions of climate change. We couple a large, nationally representative public opinion dataset with station precipitation data at the zip-code level in the United States. Results are nuanced but suggest that anomalous and variable precipitation in a local area may be interpreted as evidence for anthropogenic climate change. So, relating atypical local precipitation conditions to climate change may help tap into individuals’ experiential processing, sidestep polarization, and tailor communications at the local level.

The impact of climate change on crop mix shift in the Nordic region

Growing evidence of anthropogenic climate change suggests marked changes in agricultural ecosystems and crop suitability across the globe. Northern Europe is primarily predicted to see beneficial impacts through crop shifts towards the North of the region. However, studies that quantify the magnitude of climate induced past shifts and the likely future shifts in the agricultural land use patterns are lacking. We use a rich municipality level longitudinal data set from the Nordic region from 1979 to 2012 to study farmers’ adaptation to climate change in terms of crop mix shift. We model four land use classes, namely, cereal, grass, oil seed, and ‘others’, a category summing the remaining agricultural land uses. On top of climatic variables, we include biophysical and economic variables as controls in the regression. We utilize a multinomial fractional logit regression to estimate changes in the land use mix. The projection results indicate that both the near future (2041–2070) and the far future (2071–2100) projected climate are likely to increase the area share of cereal and at the same time decrease the share of grass in the Nordic region relative to the baseline climate (1981–2010). However, these results vary across the region. The results generally suggest a moderate climate induced impact on the spatial crop distributions. Our projection results show a moderate shift in agricultural crop distributions depending on the climate scenario and the time-horizon. Depending on the climate change scenario, grass and cereal are expected to shift by up to 92.8 and 178.7 km, respectively, towards opposite directions; grass towards the South–West and cereal towards the North–East. Overall, the projected areal expansion of cereal towards the North–East is expected to lead to increased environmental pressure.

Farmers adapt to climate change irrespective of stated belief in climate change: a California case study

Farmers are front-line workers managing climatic change. As in many parts of the world, climate change in northern California is threatening natural resource-dependent communities by exacerbating droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires. This article draws on ethnographic methods, including 108 interviews with crop and livestock farmers and key informants, to query climate change experience, belief, and response in rural northeastern California. I find that farmers recognize and describe climate changes that match the meteorologic evidence of anthropogenic climate change, but attribute these changes to weather cycles and harsh geographies. However, irrespective of their belief in anthropogenic climate change, farmers implement climate adaptations—many of these practices with mitigation co-benefits, bolstering growing evidence that climate change belief and action are not tightly coupled. To accelerate farmer adaptation, this work suggests that policy and programming focus on actions and outcomes, rather than reshaping belief.

Synoptic circulation changes over Central Europe from 1900 to 2100: Reanalyses and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6

AbstractWhile the evidence for anthropogenic climate change continues to strengthen, and concerns about severe weather events are increasing, global projections of regional climate change are still uncertain due to model‐dependent changes in large‐scale atmospheric circulation, including over North Atlantic and Europe. Here, the Jenkinson–Collison classification of daily circulation patterns is used to evaluate past and future changes in their seasonal frequencies over Central Europe for the 1900–2100 period. Three reanalyses and eight global climate models from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6, were used based on daily mean sea‐level pressure data. Best agreement in deriving relative frequencies of the synoptic types was found between the reanalyses. Global models can generally capture the interannual variability of circulation patterns and their climatological state, especially for the less frequent synoptic types. Based on historical data and the shared socioeconomic pathway 5 scenario, the evaluated trends show more robust signals during summer, given their lesser internal variability. Increasing frequencies were found for circulation types characterized by weak pressure gradients, mainly at the expense of decreasing frequencies of westerlies. Our findings indicate that given a high‐emission scenario, these signals will likely emerge from past climate variability towards the mid‐21st century for most altered circulation patterns.

Recent vegetation browning and its drivers on Tianshan Mountain, Central Asia

The strong signal of vegetation increases since the 1980s is considered as reliable evidence of anthropogenic climate change. However, some studies have alerted us to the recent stalling or even reversal of vegetation greening. To determine whether vegetation browning exists on Tianshan Mountain, we investigated the changes in the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) based on long-term satellite-derived NDVI data series from 1982 to 2015. Although the trend of growing season NDVI was statistically significant throughout the study period (0.0006a−1, p < 0.01), two different periods with opposite trends were evident around 1998. The NDVI showed a significant increase before 1998 but a reversal after 1998, when vegetation browning began to appear. The strong correlation between the interannual variability of vegetation and growing season temperature only existed in wet years, indicating that vegetation on Tianshan Mountain is extremely vulnerable and sensitive to water deficits. Our results also suggest that relative to high vapor pressure deficit, soil moisture deficit played a greater role in the recent browning of vegetation on Tianshan Mountain. This study is of scientific value in understanding the response of vegetation growth and carbon cycling to environmental changes and predicting future developments.

Impact of climate change on human health: adaptation challenges in Queensland, Australia

The purpose of this article was to explore the impacts of climate change on human health in Australia in general, and the state of Queensland in particular. We evaluated health-related services and adaptation challenges in the health sector and indicate possible remedies. The scientific consensus on the evidence for anthropogenic climate change is convincing. Climate change will have potentially devastating human health effects including increased morbidity, mortality and injury in the near future. Its impacts will be unevenly distributed among geographical regions and population groups. The elderly, children and people who are chronically ill and economically disadvantaged will be more vulnerable than others. Adaptation is a valuable tool for minimizing the effects of climate change on human health, but the mechanisms involve various societal, cultural, economic, political, environmental, information and technological challenges that need to be addressed rigorously and cautiously. Developing and designing appropriate healthcare systems to meet the challenges involved with adaptation is equally important in reducing the health effects of climate variability. There is an increased need for information about climatic impacts on human health and a need to increase institutional capacity, social and human capital, leadership, communication and partnerships as well as promoting stakeholders’ engagement in the adaptation processes in order to ensure success.

Climate Science Denial as Willful Hermeneutical Ignorance

ABSTRACT Climate science denial results from ignorance and perpetuates ignorance about scientific facts and methods of inquiry. In this paper, I explore climate science denial as a type of active ignorance called willful hermeneutical ignorance, where ignorance is actively maintained by a gap in a person’s conceptual resources. This kind of ignorance is active in the sense that it resists correction. For instance, climate science denial may be motivated by ideological reasoning and other biases, it is often not responsive to the introduction of more evidence, and it can be maintained as consequence of conceptual gaps, or hermeneutical lacunas, that make possible a certain degree of blindness to evidence. I then identify three hermeneutical lacunas in the epistemology of science that prevent the uptake of evidence for anthropogenic climate change – one from Lawrence Torcello and two from the work of Dale Jamieson. Finally, while climate science denial’s resistance to correction poses significant challenges for effective education about climate science, this framework also suggests a way forward: education that emphasizes building basic concepts required for understanding and interpreting scientific research.

Economic Inequality, Corruption, and Personal Environmental Responsibility in Europe

Climate change represents a serious challenge to all societies, not least in Europe. For so long the elephant in the room, the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change is now accepted by an overwhelming majority of Europeans. So, how should Europeans address the issue? It is argued that personal environmental responsibility (PER)—a sense of personal obligation toward the environment and individual accountability for environmental outcomes—is an important factor in facilitating the collective action required to address climate change. Using data from the European Social Survey, a cross-country multilevel regression analysis and structural equation modelling were performed to explore various factors that influence PER. The results indicate that economic inequality and corruption are significant predictors of PER in Europe and that social trust plays a significant mediating role in these relationships. These findings are a useful addition to the body of empirical evidence that should be utilised by European policy makers to help formulate effective pro-environmental approaches at all levels. In addition, they provoke further discussion of the importance of personal responsibility within large-scale collective action problems.

Characteristics, drivers and feedbacks of global greening

Vegetation greenness has been increasing globally since at least 1981, when satellite technology enabled large-scale vegetation monitoring. The greening phenomenon, together with warming, sea-level rise and sea-ice decline, represents highly credible evidence of anthropogenic climate change. In this Review, we examine the detection of the greening signal, its causes and its consequences. Greening is pronounced over intensively farmed or afforested areas, such as in China and India, reflecting human activities. However, strong greening also occurs in biomes with low human footprint, such as the Arctic, where global change drivers play a dominant role. Vegetation models suggest that CO2 fertilization is the main driver of greening on the global scale, with other factors being notable at the regional scale. Modelling indicates that greening could mitigate global warming by increasing the carbon sink on land and altering biogeophysical processes, mainly evaporative cooling. Coupling high temporal and fine spatial resolution remote-sensing observations with ground measurements, increasing sampling in the tropics and Arctic, and modelling Earth systems in more detail will further our insights into the greening of Earth. Vegetation on Earth is increasing, potentially leading to a larger terrestrial carbon sink. In this Review, we discuss the occurrence of this global greening phenomenon, its drivers and how it might impact carbon cycling and land-atmosphere heat and water fluxes.

Uncovering the Forced Climate Response from a Single Ensemble Member Using Statistical Learning

AbstractInternal atmospheric variability fundamentally limits predictability of climate and obscures evidence of anthropogenic climate change regionally and on time scales of up to a few decades. Dynamical adjustment techniques estimate and subsequently remove the influence of atmospheric circulation variability on temperature or precipitation. The residual component is expected to contain the thermodynamical signal of the externally forced response but with less circulation-induced noise. Existing techniques have led to important insights into recent trends in regional (hydro-) climate and their drivers, but the variance explained by circulation is often low. Here, we develop a novel dynamical adjustment technique by implementing principles from statistical learning. We demonstrate in an ensemble of Community Earth System Model (CESM) simulations that statistical learning methods, such as regularized linear models, establish a clearer relationship between circulation variability and atmospheric target variables, and need relatively short periods of record for training (around 30 years). The method accounts for, on average, 83% and 78% of European monthly winter temperature and precipitation variability at gridcell level, and around 80% of global mean temperature and hemispheric precipitation variability. We show that the residuals retain forced thermodynamical contributions to temperature and precipitation variability. Accurate estimates of the total forced response can thus be recovered assuming that forced circulation changes are gradual over time. Overall, forced climate response estimates can be extracted at regional or global scales from approximately 3–5 times fewer ensemble members, or even a single realization, using statistical learning techniques. We anticipate the technique will contribute to reducing uncertainties around internal variability and facilitating climate change detection and attribution.

Rapidly declining remarkability of temperature anomalies may obscure public perception of climate change

The changing global climate is producing increasingly unusual weather relative to preindustrial conditions. In an absolute sense, these changing conditions constitute direct evidence of anthropogenic climate change. However, human evaluation of weather as either normal or abnormal will also be influenced by a range of factors including expectations, memory limitations, and cognitive biases. Here we show that experience of weather in recent years-rather than longer historical periods-determines the climatic baseline against which current weather is evaluated, potentially obscuring public recognition of anthropogenic climate change. We employ variation in decadal trends in temperature at weekly and county resolution over the continental United States, combined with discussion of the weather drawn from over 2 billion social media posts. These data indicate that the remarkability of particular temperatures changes rapidly with repeated exposure. Using sentiment analysis tools, we provide evidence for a "boiling frog" effect: The declining noteworthiness of historically extreme temperatures is not accompanied by a decline in the negative sentiment that they induce, indicating that social normalization of extreme conditions rather than adaptation is driving these results. Using climate model projections we show that, despite large increases in absolute temperature, anomalies relative to our empirically estimated shifting baseline are small and not clearly distinguishable from zero throughout the 21st century.

Anti-catastrophic time

One of the dominant features of post-apocalyptic or Anthropocene culture is a ‘this changes everything’ sentiment regarding time. Whatever cultural differences the world may have been able to harbour up until the present, the current feeling of end-times focuses attention on the future. The overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic climate change seems to demand either that we think about humans as a historical agent at the level of the species or that we devalue the human to recognise a temporality beyond that of human concern. This essay questions that exclusive disjunction: it is possible to recognise both the thoroughly ‘human’ nature of the sense ‘we’ make of the world, while also striving to think beyond what has (up until now) counted as human temporality.

Climate change education and literacy at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile

Considering the role that higher education institutions (HEIs) play in terms of catalysing change within societies, over the past years, sustainability initiatives within HEIs have flourished worldwide. Likewise, the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change has been on the political and academic agenda for decades, thus, the importance of ameliorating climate change education and literacy both at the society and university training levels. Accordingly, certain questions arise: What are the most effective current climate change educational methodologies? Which road map would be the most appropriate to be suggested to HEIs to promote climate change literacy for future professionals? In order to begin addressing these questions, the Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences of the University of Chile (FCFM) approach to climate change teaching and literacy is herein described. The later contemplates the history of the institutionalisation of sustainability at the FCFM, collection of courses and minors for students which incorporate climate change related-topics, as well as climate change related research centres.

Climate change education and literacy at the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the University of Chile

Considering the role that higher education institutions (HEIs) play in terms of catalysing change within societies, over the past years, sustainability initiatives within HEIs have flourished worldwide. Likewise, the scientific evidence of anthropogenic climate change has been on the political and academic agenda for decades, thus, the importance of ameliorating climate change education and literacy both at the society and university training levels. Accordingly, certain questions arise: What are the most effective current climate change educational methodologies? Which road map would be the most appropriate to be suggested to HEIs to promote climate change literacy for future professionals? In order to begin addressing these questions, the Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences of the University of Chile (FCFM) approach to climate change teaching and literacy is herein described. The later contemplates the history of the institutionalisation of sustainability at the FCFM, collection of courses and minors for students which incorporate climate change related-topics, as well as climate change related research centres.

Computer models and the evidence of anthropogenic climate change: An epistemology of variety-of-evidence inferences and robustness analysis

To study climate change, scientists employ computer models, which approximate target systems with various levels of skill. Given the imperfection of climate models, how do scientists use simulations to generate knowledge about the causes of observed climate change? Addressing a similar question in the context of biological modelling, Levins (1966) proposed an account grounded in robustness analysis. Recent philosophical discussions dispute the confirmatory power of robustness, raising the question of how the results of computer modelling studies contribute to the body of evidence supporting hypotheses about climate change. Expanding on Staley’s (2004) distinction between evidential strength and security, and Lloyd’s (2015) argument connecting variety-of-evidence inferences and robustness analysis, I address this question with respect to recent challenges to the epistemology robustness analysis. Applying this epistemology to case studies of climate change, I argue that, despite imperfections in climate models, and epistemic constraints on variety-of-evidence reasoning and robustness analysis, this framework accounts for the strength and security of evidence supporting climatological inferences, including the finding that global warming is occurring and its primary causes are anthropogenic.

Global climate change attitudes and perceptions among south American zoo visitors.

There is a substantial gap between the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change and the human response to this evidence. Perceptions of and responses to climate change can differ among regions of the world, as well as within countries. Therefore, information about the public's attitudes and perceptions related to climate change is essential to the development of relevant educational resources. In the present study, zoo visitors in four South American countries responded to a questionnaire regarding their attitudes and perceptions toward global climate change. Results indicated that most respondents are already highly concerned about global climate change and are interested in greater engagement in pro-environmental behaviors. Visitors also perceive various obstacles to engagement in climate change mitigation behaviors. We discuss the results of our study in terms of addressing visitors' climate change attitudes and perceptions within the social and emotional context of zoo settings.

Déjà Vu All Over Again

What is accepted by the scientific community on the basis of overwhelming evidence, yet opposed by a vocal minority on ideological grounds, and therefore the target of attempts to undermine its presentation in the science classrooms of the public schools? If your answer was evolution , help yourself to a gold star. After all, in the 90 years since the Scopes Trial, the teaching of evolution has been the leading source of controversy in American science education. But if your answer was anthropogenic climate change , you, too, can give yourself a gold star. Like evolution, anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change offers challenges – but also opportunities – to biology teachers. The facts are clear. Global temperature has increased rapidly and significantly over the past 150 years, and human activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels, has been, and is, a major cause of the rise in temperature. The resulting changes to the climate will have (indeed are already having) disruptive – potentially disastrous – effects on human societies and the natural world. The multiple, independent, and converging lines of evidence for anthropogenic climate change have been acknowledged as convincing by the scientific community, including the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society (2014) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, 2014). Owing to the disruptive, widespread, and interconnected effects of the rise in …

The health effects of climate change: What does a nurse need to know?

The scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change has been established with increasing precision and there are widespread concerns about its potential to undermine the public health gains of the past century. There is also a growing consensus across private and public sector organisations at national and international level that carbon reduction should be a policy aim. Various international nursing organisations have made strong position statements on the issue, arguing that nurses should be actively engaged as part of their roles in both health promotion and clinical practice. We point to education for sustainability initiatives in other health professions and share resources for curriculum development in nursing. The nurses of tomorrow will make a unique and significant contribution to protecting population health in an unstable climate, if today's nursing educators can help prepare them for this role.

TALKING POINTS AMMO

The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is an Australian neoliberal think tank and high-profile news source that rejects the evidence of anthropogenic climate change and opposes mitigation strategies such as an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). This paper uses Ernest Bormann's Symbolic Convergence Theory firstly to identify the anti-climate science fantasy themes developed by the IPA and then to trace the chaining out of these fantasy themes from the IPA into the news media. The data analysed include: (1) magazine articles published in The IPA Review during 1989–2009; (2) op-eds published by IPA senior staff in Australian newspapers during 1989–2009; and (3) editorials and opinion columns that praised IPA associate Ian Plimer and his climate “sceptic” book during April to June 2009 in the lead-up to the first Australian parliamentary debates on introducing an ETS.