Note: See the comment thread for an archive of questions and answers related to this event.
Do you have questions about how NASA measures, models, and visualizes our changing climate?
Here’s your chance to ask them directly. Earth Observatory is hosting a climate Q & A with NASA scientists at 2 pm EDT on Wednesday, September 18. Gavin Schmidt and Benjamin Cook—both climate specialists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City—will be answering questions live via the @NASA_EO Twitter feed. Earth Observatory artists and writers will also be available to answer your questions about how we visualize and communicate climate data.
There’s no such thing as a dumb question. Climate change science can be confusing, complex, and controversial. Our goal is to help you cut through the noise and find out what the science actually says. Need inspiration as you think about your questions? Here are some of the more common questions we’ve received over the years. You can also read through some of our stories about key climate change topics including: warming, aerosols, extreme storms, the water cycle, and the carbon cycle.
Start sending your questions now by posting a comment in the thread below or by sending a tweet tagged #askclimate.
[youtube G0KV2MluelY]
Thank you for this opportunity to ask question about climate change. I have few questions to ask
1. What is the role of earth orbital variation in climate change?
2. The sun and the human carbon emission in the atmosphere, which plays a major role in climeate change and global warming?
3. Have there been a climate change and global warming before the era of industrialisation? If yes, then what. Caused it?
4. If the sun refuses to dose out its energy, will the human carbon emission into space be able to cause climate change or global warming?
5. What are the effect of space fly-bys (asteroid, cosmo, spacecraft etc) on our environment?
I look forward to your reply
Thank you and God bless
Henry
Q1. Very important – but mainly on long time scales (10,000s of years and up).
Q2. Over the last two centuries carbon dioxide forcing has been around 2 W/m2, compared to trends in solar forcing of around 0.1 to 0.2 W/m2 – so for the trends carbon dioxide is more important. On the 11 year solar cycle, impacts can be seen clearly in the stratosphere.
Q3. There are many causes of climate change – large volcanoes, impacts, continental drift, evolution(!), orbital forcing, the sun, dust, ice sheet collapses, etc. and the history of Earth has signatures of all of these. The current changes though have the fingerprints of human increases in greenhouse gases.
Q4. If the sun ceased to shine, no amount of greenhouse gases will be sufficient to keep us warm. Thankfully that does not seem imminent.
Q5. On climate, no effect. Though in prehistory very large impacts have clearly lead to dramatic climate changes via smoke, dust, biomass burning, and other effects (i.e. at the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary event that marked the end of the dinosaurs)
How are we sure that the observed global warming is a result of man-made activities and not a random occasion which coincides with the period of industralzation, but could be a result of unexplainable change in weather pattern variability (synoptic-meso and large scale circulation)
The answer is in fingerprints of change – each kind of climate change (driven by orbital change, greenhouse gases, aerosols, volcanoes, ocean variability etc.) has a different fingerprint – the regional and temporal pattern of temperatures/rainfall etc. We look for each of the fingerprints for plausible factors and see which ones fit all the observations best. For trends over the last 50 years, it is clearly the fingerprint of greenhouse gases (particularly carbon dioxide) that fit best.
Related Reading
+Earth Observatory: Is Current Warming Natural?
+Earth Observatory: Climate Forcings and Global Warming
Every input for every climate model has a measurement uncertainty. Those uncertainties are cumulative (and they are different from the calculation uncertainties inherent in any particular model).
If a model has 20 inputs, there are 20 cumulative input measurement uncertainties, which must contribute to the total uncertainty of the model’s output — yet I never see a calculation of the effect of that cumulative INPUT uncertainty — why?
This isn’t how climate models are built and run. Weather models do use updates to the observations on a daily basis and you do get such drift, but the weather models are reinitialised every day and that keeps them close to reality. Climate models do not use current observations at all as an input (for most kinds of experiment), so the issue does not arise.
Related Reading
+Earth Observatory: Introduction to Climate Modeling.
??? Measurement uncertainties “do not arise?” Your own link, for example, says “The second type of model uses observed measurements that scientists have collected across the globe to generalize real processes and properties seen in nature.” Are you telling me those “observed measurements” do not have inherent uncertainties? They’re perfect?
My question is: why don’t I ever see an accounting for those uncertainties?
Does The earth’s orbit around the ever growing SUN as a result of the expanding fabric of space time play any factor in the heat increase that the Earth is suffering from?: If so would not the only way to prolong the existence of humanity be for the human race to construct baron worlds into living worlds. Light years into the future this would include adapting worlds that support life in the parts of space that are just now going from supper hot radiation to stars then worlds. Is this the eventuality if we wish prolong life to be?
I think the ice cap is bigger but the volume is not. Which means this lager ice cap need to happen every year for an volume growth. The volume is still shrinking. Would be interesting to know how they know the volume is shrinking though.
The sun is growing very slowly as part of its evolution along the Main sequence. Eventually it will turn into a Red Giant and absorb the Earth completely. Luckily this is not expected to happen before the next 5 billion years.
really?
how do you know it will take 5 billion years?
I have searched newspaper archives & i cant find the last time it happened.
you must have very good records if they date back that far!!!
Why are we only paying attention to the data gathered in the last 50 – 100 years or so, and ignoring all the proxy data that Paleoclimatology provides to us which clearly demonstrates that the Quarternary is by far the cold exception to an otherwise much hotter earth… and that even the worst case predictions of climate change don’t even come close to returning the earth to the temperatures that it has historically been throughout the last 260 million plus years…?
Isn’t it true that by looking at the last 100 years of data and ignoring the last 260 million years of data that it’s like saying that an old man is taking a breath inwards and therefore at this rate his chest is clearly about to explode, because we’re ignoring that his chest has been expanding and contracting for every breath he ever took previous to this one…?
Isn’t it also true that at the beginning of the Cenazoic Era the CO2 content (greenhouse gases) in the atmosphere was basically identical to what it is today and that despite this the Earth got colder and colder until the Quarternary when it began moving in and out of ice-ages due to factors that outweighed atmospheric greenhouse gases? This evidence is inconvenient to the current climate change debate and despite being inarguable is completely ignored for the most part. I find this to be irresponsible and very narrow minded.
For a full write-up of this please visit my article “Climate Change – Putting it into Perspective”
http://www.csgdesign.com.au/CSGf/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=370
All comments welcome!
Bump.
I’m currently of the belief that absolute atmospheric CO2 levels isn’t really the concern… but how rapidly they’ve climbed in the last 100 years, which would appear to be a strong argument for anthropogenic warming trends.
However, I’d really like to see a reply to this argument; not because I necessarily agree with it, but because I want to learn about it.
Paleoclimate isn’t being ignored. Indeed, paleoclimate changes are vitally important as context for the current changes and in providing ‘out-of-sample’ tests of climate models. Paleo is not a high priority for NASA, but colleagues at the National Science Foundation and NOAA are heavily invested in answering these kinds of questions. The chapters on paleoclimate in the IPCC reports (Ch 6, AR4) are a good place to start if you want to learn more.
Related Reading
+Journal of Quaternary Science: Enhancing the relevance of palaeoclimate model/data comparisons for assessments of future climate change
+Earth Observatory: Paleoclimatology
+Goddard Institute for Space Studies: Earth’s Climate History: Implications for Tomorrow.
+Climate of the Past: Using paleo-climate comparisons to constrain future projections in CMIP5
Why are only a few concerned about climate change, do they want to wait and watch?
Climate change is a chronic problem that is developing at a slow rate, but many people naturally focus on acute problems that affect them immediately (finding a job, feeding a family, etc). For many, it is easy to focus only on short-term concerns and to assume that someone else will deal with climate change in the future.
Thank you for the opportunity to ask these questions. I’m sure that may have very interesting ideas and thoughts. My question may be a bit off though. When the large quake it Japan in March, it was said that it hit so hard that the Earth shifted 4″ on it’s axis. I know it doesn’t sound like much in the big picture, but is it at all possible that this quake and the shift it caused may be the reason for the odd weather we’ve experienced since then?
It just seems to me that since that quake, our weather patters have changed. Is this a possibility? Can a minor shift of the Earth’s axis make global weather changes?
I was thinking with India still causing the Himalayas to increase in height, is it possible the change in air currents could effect the climate until the climate reaches a tipping point (my guess is yes, but I don’t know)
Mountain building can affect climate but only over very long times frames. There is no need to worry about any imminent climate tipping points driven by tectonics.
Related Reading
+Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences: Northern Tibet and Hydrological Cycle.
No. Shift in the Earth’s orbit associated even with very large earthquakes are very small compared to the shifts that cause climate change:
Related Reading
NASA: Japan Quake May Have Shortened Earth Days, Moved Axis.
So Hansen can spot tipping points everywhere, but the growth of mountains can never produce a tipping point – seems unlikely
Can you please respond to the claims made by Fox News on September 9, 2013 about arctic sea ice is up 60% and that we are entering a “global cooling” period? The images they show on the website are NASA images.
Thank you!
It is correct that 2013 ice extent increased in comparison to 2012, but remember that 2012 had a record low ice extent. The long term trend—which is what is relevant to climate as opposed to weather—shows that sea ice extent has declined strongly (about 11.5 percent per decade relative to the 1979-2000 average). You can see this clearly if you look at the graphs at http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators#seaIce and https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/.
In addition to its extent, another characteristic of Arctic sea ice that can be monitored is volume. Despite some year-to-year variation, you’ll see that too shows a strong downward trend if you look at http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/schweiger/ice_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.png?%3C?php%20echo%20time%28%29%20?. Note that although 2013 ice volume is 46 percent more than 2012, the 1979-2012 average is 245 percent more than 2012.
Related Reading
+Earth Observatory: Arctic Sea Ice
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/sea_ice.php
+National Snow and Ice Data Center: Arctic Sea Ice Index
https://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/
+Skeptical Science: Arctic sea ice delusions strike the Mail on Sunday and Telegraph
http://www.skepticalscience.com/arctic-sea-ice-delusions-mail-on-sunday-telegraph.html
+National Snow & Ice Data Center: Climate vs. Weather
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/arctic-meteorology/climate_vs_weather.html
I wonder what tools you use for visualizing the results and the data? If it is very general, I am mostly concerned about GeoVisualization. As an specific example, How and with what tools you have created the video in this page?
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/climate-weather/stories/nasa-climate-change-video-this-is-the-us-in-2100
Different groups at NASA use different tools for visualization. The GSFC Scientific Visualization Studio animated the National Climate Assessment: 21st Century Temperature Scenarios using a pipeline that starts with Exelis‘ Interactive Data Language (IDL) to read the raw data. These data are brought into Autodesk Maya 3D and animated, then rendered in Pixar’s Renderman. The combination of tools allows the SVS to set up an automated workflow, so it’s easy to automate the rendering of frequently updated data.
Related Reading
Washington Post: Telling NASA’s Tales With Hollywood’s Tools.
Thank you for this opportunity to ask this question. Has anyone studied the effect of the increase in sea level and it’s added weight/pressure on the sea floor? Especially on faults and subduction zones. Is the door opening for an increase is seismic activity?
This has been studied, but bear in mind this is a very small factor compared to the ongoing plate tectonic movements (around the Pacific for instance) or the residual movement of the crust responding to the retreat of the most recent ice age about 20,000 years ago.
Yes, I also find this peculiar. Models are just assumptions on data it already know. The “pause” indicated that they clearly do not contain nearly enough to be viable.
If I roll a ball down a hill. It would be quite easy to calculate the speed of that ball while it do. If a hump or a up hill came. It would be a lot harder as we would not know when that would happen.
The only thing the models can do is pretty much confirming if it becomes warmer or colder. More than that is just guess work. It might be an scientific guess.. but still only a guess.
What’s the role of climate change in the #BoulderFlood? Any?
https://twitter.com/JPMajor/status/378596221310754816
Attribution of extreme events is hard, and scientists should restrain themselves from speculating before the analysis is in. Obviously, the Boulder rainfall (and subsequent flooding) was very unusual, but getting a good estimate of how (or if) the odds have changed in recent decades compared to previous periods will be difficult. In general, we have seen an increase in intense rainfall across the US and elsewhere which is predicted to continue, but it is difficult to apply this specifically to the situation last week.
Related Reading
UCAR: Inside the Colorado deluge
http://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/opinion/10250/inside-colorado-deluge
Climate Central: Colorado’s ‘Biblical’ Flood in Line with Climate Trends
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/biblical-1000-year-deluge-strikes-colorado-did-global-warming-play-a-role-16474
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society: Monitoring and Understanding Trends in Extreme Storms
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00262.1
Thank you for your answer and corresponding links.
I would like to know about the accuracy of paleoclimate proxies and if they represent local anomalies or global trends. #askclimate
https://twitter.com/naolmstead/status/378775186146725888
Different paleoclimate proxies provide different information at different spatial scales. For instance, tree rings are good indicators of local and regional temperature and moisture availability (i.e., drought) over the last 2000 years. Ice cores can provide much longer records of temperature (greater than 100,000 years), and also greenhouse gas concentrations.
Related Reading
+Earth Observatory: Paleoclimatology Introduction.
Thank you for answering my question. That site has a lot of really great information. However I didn’t notice anything that spoke to how scientists know the accuracy of these proxies. It did point me in some new directions of research for my personal education.
Without man made CO2, when would the next Pleistocene glaciation occur?
https://twitter.com/rjemmons/status/377076770672898049
A number of papers have tackled that. Berger, Loutre and Crucifix (2003), for instance. See this New York Times blog post for more commentary and links.
Favourite question I’ve been asked at a public climate talk: “Why does the extra heat not escape through the ozone hole?” #askclimate
https://twitter.com/ed_hawkins/status/377857661812744192
This isn’t as silly as it might sound at first glance. The ozone layer plays a role in the radiative balance of the Earth and is a greenhouse gas (~ a few percent of the natural greenhouse effect). Losses in stratospheric ozone (not just in the polar ozone hole) are a negative forcing (cooling the Earth) but just at a much smaller level than the changes due to CO2 (about 10 times too small).
Related Reading
+Earth Observatory: Are the Ozone Hole and Global Warming Related?
Is it possible that the Japan quake in March could shift the Earth enough to cause weather changes?
https://twitter.com/JimButCallMeJim/status/379607579887800320
No. Shifts in the Earth’s orbit associated even with very large earthquakes are very small compared to the shifts that cause climate change.
Hey dude. Where is that warming, bro?
https://twitter.com/mrtvi46/status/379593901692035073
In the ocean, dude. Details here and here and here.
I understood the rise in sea temps was in the 700-2000m zone and is not detected in the 0-700m zone, how does the warming skip the first 700m?
Does buying CFLs here, made in a Chinese factory powered by coal, actually help matters? #askclimate
https://twitter.com/HiFiGuy197/status/379599973232291840
Yes. Manufacturing emissions are small compared to emissions saved over incandescent bulbs (most of which are also probably made in China). However, while a useful contribution, this is not sufficient to significantly bring down emissions.
Is there a way to STOP climate change?
https://twitter.com/jkls39/status/379599582809710595
No. Human-caused climate change will continue because of the inertia of the climate system and human infrastucture over this century. Choices made by society will be able to make a difference between a climate change slow enough for us to adapt to, or changes that will be likely much faster than we can adapt to. Note the difference between highest and lowest lines on this graph of NASA GISS model results at https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/57898304/cmip5_res.pdf
Will all the methane from fracking have as much impact as it seems it will?
https://twitter.com/DavehanlonDavid/status/379599059281260544
There are multiple issues to consider. There are local ones associated with water pollution and resources. And there are climate related issues associated with replacement of coal and fugitive emissions of methane (CH4). The balance is likely to be positive. In other words, fugitive emissions are not large enough (and can be controlled with effective technologies), but long term CH4 is still a fossil fuel and contributor to the problem, just not as much as coal does.
Is climate modelling software developing like other technology is improving. If so, how has this effected results?
https://twitter.com/666Ge0n/status/379595211112194048
Yes. And no. Technology is improving – more elements of the climate are being added, and at finer detail and many aspects of the climate that were not modeled well are now more realistic. But in terms of the model sensitivity, or what they project for the future, the answers are very similar to previous generations of models.
Can you link to a graph showing measured atmospheric water vapour anomaly over time increasing with CO2?
https://twitter.com/Magico07/status/377935874585288704
Sure. NOAA Climate Indicators has that graph here.
What is something we can all do to help out of global warming?
https://twitter.com/Jello_Whut/status/378156175717830656
Global warming is dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Actions like improving energy efficiency, switching suppliers to use more renewable forms of energy, and keeping the topic on the minds of policy-makers are all useful.
Weather is an obvious consequence to climate change. What are the not so obvious consequences?
https://twitter.com/SherryBayhouse/status/379104693378494465
Climate feeds in to almost everything – ecosystems, agriculture, city planning, disease vectors, etc. and changes in climate will have impacts – mostly unquantified – on all of it. It is some of the least obvious changes that might in the end have the most impact. Think about mountain pine bark beetles in the Rockies, for instance.
Related Reading
+Earth Observatory Pine Beetle Infestation in British Columbia.
+NASA NASA Satellites Reveal Surprising Connection Between Beetle Attacks, Wildfire.
+Earth Observatory Tiny Beetles Take a Large Bite Out of the Forest.
Could ENSO have a relationship with climate change?
https://twitter.com/comunicacionoel/status/378182253878071297
Yes. El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) patterns are the biggest kind of natural variability and they strongly impact changes from year to year. As climate changes it is conceivable that the patterns of variability will shift perhaps in frequency or spatial pattern or magnitude – but as yet we do not have a good enough understanding of the long term ENSO behavior to be able to predict how this might play out.
Related Reading
+Earth Observatory: El Niño, La Niña, and Rainfall
+NOAA: NOAA’s El Niño Page.
Deniers are abusing the current cold spell; is this cold being balanced with tropical warming?
https://twitter.com/DouglasAnders10/status/378162753900249088
Patterns of warming in any particular season or year are very noisy and there is always somewhere colder than normal. But in the long term the trends are almost uniformly warming. Compare these two pictures:
1. Winter (Dec 2012-Feb 2013)
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2013&month_last=8&sat=4&sst=3&type=anoms&mean_gen=1203&year1=2013&year2=2013&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
2. Annual trends from
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/nmaps.cgi?year_last=2013&month_last=8&sat=4&sst=3&type=trends&mean_gen=0112&year1=1970&year2=2012&base1=1951&base2=1980&radius=1200&pol=reg
How many inches of snow equal one inch of rain?
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151886420022139&set=a.10150660751157139.441503.57242657138&type=1&comment_id=12903262&offset=0&total_comments=15
The density of snow is around 100 to 300 kg/m^3; water is 1000 kg/m^3, so the ratio is between 1:3 and 1:10. Thus, 1 inch of rain would be equivalent to 3 to 10 inches of snow, depending on the temperature and ‘fluffiness’ of the snow.
Related Reading
NOAA: Approximate snowfall amounts at specified temperature ranges.
What caused dinosaurs to disappear, is it that they preferred primordial fluctuations which later could not recur?
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151886420022139&set=a.10150660751157139.441503.57242657138&type=1&comment_id=12899418&offset=0&total_comments=15
Most likely environmental changes associated with the Chicxulub meteor impact.
Related Reading
+Earth Observatory: Relief Map, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico.
+Impact Effects: Chixculub.
Why is the clear pattern between solar activity and the warming of the planet being ignored by the media?
https://twitter.com/JonKnight0/status/379663182669021185
NASA spends a lot of time exploring the impacts of solar activity on climate. However, while impacts are very clear in the stratosphere and on ozone levels, impacts near the surface are much smaller and harder to detect. This review paper has a good summary of current research: http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/gr08900n.html
Related Reading
+Earth Observatory: Incoming Sunlight
+Skeptical Science: Solar Activity & Climate
+Earth Observatory: Solar Activity.
+NASA: Why NASA Keeps a Close Eye on the Sun’s Irradiance
+Earth Observatory:The Glory Mission’s Judith Lean Discusses Solar Variability.
+LASP/GSFC: Sun-Climate Research Center
Why does water molecules in different states come together to form cloud instead of being distributed across the sky?
Water vapor is distributed across the sky but is invisible to the naked eye. The water vapor condensates to liquid or ice if the air is cooled and you get clouds forming. Clouds are collections of tiny water drops and/or ice crystals. They occur in little discrete “parcels” of air with properties that make them independent from the surrounding atmosphere.
Related Links
http://glossary.ametsoc.org/wiki/Cloud
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/what-are-clouds-k4.html#.UjnmG5Xq3Vs
What are the best resources for high school #science students? Is this the best link http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/200402_tango/ for that info? (2/2)
Ozone/Climate links are multi-faceted and complex. Ozone depleting substances are often greenhouse gases too, and climate changes can affect ozone distributions as well. Some good resources:
https://www2.ucar.edu/climate/faq/what-does-ozone-hole-have-do-climate-change
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch7s7-4-6.html
http://www.epa.gov/ozone/climate.html
I’m trying to simplify this conundrum for everybody so why has the weather become so controversial @NASA_EO is it interests?
Weather is how people experience the climate & we are changing background. Better comp. tech allows for some extreme event attribution and so connections are becoming clearer. But attribution is hard and instant answers are not always available. More details at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/02/going-to-extremes/
How pleased am I to find this resource – brilliant.
I chair a community group in NW Wales, UK which is trying to encourage our community to be more sustainable in many ways.
We are also looking to work with a suitable enregy generataing company to develop and install a tidal turbine based electriciy generating facility; this will probably take up to 5 years to be fully operational.
We are already getting tremendous support from our local University at Bangor N.Wales.
We need all the help that we can get to educate the deniers and to make people aware of what they can do to improve the situation and hopefuly put the changes brought about into reverse.
Real question – how can we convince our myopic government to take this issue seriously?
Is data from antarctic expedition taken into account for #IPCC’s 5th assesment report ? http://t.co/khAMEh0ypn #askclimate
https://twitter.com/rikwes66/status/380393657146163201
IPCC assessment papers appeared before Mar 2013, so can’t include brand new results. Topic is, of course, included.
What are the best ozone and climate change resources for high school science students?
Ozone/climate links are multi-faceted and complex. Ozone depleting substances are often greenhouse gases too, and climate changes can affect ozone distributions as well. Some good resources:
https://www2.ucar.edu/climate/faq/what-does-ozone-hole-have-do-climate-change
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch7s7-4-6.html
http://www.epa.gov/ozone/climate.html
if models are so good, Y do we need more than 1, Y do they produce different results and Y didn’t 1 predict the pause?
https://twitter.com/MangoChutneyUK/status/378401390076248065
In fact, a recent model was able to reproduce the surface warming pause, suggesting it was due (at least in part) to internal ocean variability that is difficult to predict a priori.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature12534.html
The paper you link to, Kosaka et al, confirms much more than half the observed warming over the period is down to natural variability
What climate model includes weakly-bound complexes in calculation of radiative capacity?
https://twitter.com/chemphys_e/status/380402287879127040
For atmospheric radiative transfer, climate models use broad-band approximations to do line-by-line calculations. If it is in there, it will be included.
Does the government have any recommendations for combating weather change or will we just have to adapt?
https://twitter.com/TroughtonC/status/380401008297267200
The National Academy of Sciences has excellent resources on America’s climate choices:
http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/
The National Climate Assessment draft is also good
http://www.globalchange.gov/what-we-do/assessment
Hi! How can I help to make our world get cooler, please? – Pedro Lima, 10 – Montreal,Canada.
A key factor is reducing CO2 emissions (mainly fossil fuel); Renewables, efficiency, and awareness are the 3 key things. You can find plenty of details here http://climatekids.nasa.gov/how-to-help/
I am worried about the parks and rivers in Canada. Could you tell me about them looking from the satellites?
https://twitter.com/katiaepedro/status/380396098952495105
Thanks for the question. You might want to check out the imagery of Canadian rivers here http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Search/index.php?q=rivers+canada
Also, this site has some information you may find interesting.
http://climatekids.nasa.gov/menu/fresh-water/
How do you communicate the complexity of climate disruption without undermining the need for action?
https://twitter.com/jbacon/status/380403130225025024
Climate change is complex. But we can embrace that and come up with solutions.
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/sh01600h.html
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/2009/oct/01/wrong-but-useful
What is the main argument people have when they refute climate change?
https://twitter.com/GailxP93/status/380403051355324416
Two (contradictory) favorites are 1) we don’t know anything and 2) it’s just natural. Neither are true. More at
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Do you think linking to a website (SkepticalScience), which habitually deletes on-topic comments disagreeing with the articles, resorts to censorship and rewrites articles to make it seem the website was correct is good for climate debate?
http://www.populartechnology.net/2012/09/skeptical-science-censorship-of-poptech.html
http://nigguraths.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/skepticalscience-rewriting-history/
Can you explain the difference in CO2 effects in the thermosphere vs troposphere? How does CO2 move up in atmosphere?
https://twitter.com/naolmstead/status/380410923053096960
CO2 is well-mixed by turbulence all the way up. Impact is warming near ground, cooling in stratosphere and above.
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/20c.html
Se puede restaurar la capa de ozono de forma artificial,fabricando y liberando este gas por el hombre?
https://twitter.com/JAINER782/status/379794798749974528
La capa de ozono está en equilibrio con las condiciones ambientales de la estratosfera. Sólo podemos alterarla con una reducción de las sustancias químicas que destruyen el ozono, como los CFCs.
Existe una tasa de renovacion de la capa de ozono?
https://twitter.com/FabioCannondale/status/379794025521627136
Esperamos que la capa de ozono se recuperará antes de 2030-2040 si el Protocolo de Montreal funciona como proyectado.
With higher volumes and intensity of hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, how important is it to make safer buildings and structures?
https://twitter.com/dubephnx/status/380408569117425664
Building up resiliency is very important; some cities area already developing plans to this effect.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/planyc2030/html/theplan/climate-change.shtml
What potential feedback factors are we facing in the near term (increasing/decreasing climate disruption).
https://twitter.com/jbacon/status/380395144450539520
In the next decades-century positive feedbacks include albedo and water vapor. Uncertain (positive or negative) include carbon cycle, clouds. Read more at
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-change/guide/science/explained/feedbacks
New reports indicate arctic ice very low again this summer. What impact will the complete meting have?
https://twitter.com/EcoEastleigh/status/380343193063014400
Ice is more reflective than ocean water; if the ice disappears, more energy from the sun will be absorbed and temperatures will increase even more.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/
http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/seaice/environment/global_climate.htm
Shouldn’t you have pointed out there has been a significant increase in ice extent this summer (2013)?
When working to reduce emissions, which GHG has the most impact on climate? Methane is powerful, but CO2 persists.
https://twitter.com/jbacon/status/380379090672291840
CO2 is most important for long term climate impacts because of its persistence in the atmosphere. More details at
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/01/much-ado-about-methane/
I have seen a couple of (supposedly legit) news articles with two NASA photos of the Artic icecap….and the story that it has increased 60% over the last year…… eg http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/Global-cooling-Arctic-ice-caps-grows-60-global-warming-predictions.html
Are the pictures and the dates bona fide? If so…..is there now starting to be scientific debate over whether there really is human induced warming?
Gai, please see this response.
thanks a lot for opportunity, my question is:
whats the difference between Climate Variability and Climate Change?
What are the important Indices of climate change? Could we tell that rising sea levels and shrinking arctic sea ice are of these Indices?