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May 25, 2013

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9:36 AM | The well-qualified amateur who threw the spotlight back on CO2
75 years ago Guy Callendar revealed calculations and temperature measurements linking rising 20th century temperatures to burning fossil fuels, helping to lay the foundations for understanding the global warming that is still ongoing today.

Callendar, G. (1938). The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 64 (275) 223-240. DOI:

Ed Hawkins and Phil D. Jones (2013). On increasing global temperatures: 75 years after Callendar, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Other: Link

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May 18, 2013

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11:08 AM | Ocean heat puts pressure on poorest fisheries
The first evidence that climate change has affected fishing catches, revealed by William Cheung from the University of British Columbia and his team, shows tropical countries are set to be hardest hit.

Cheung, W., Watson, R. & Pauly, D. (2013). Signature of ocean warming in global fisheries catch, Nature, 497 (7449) 365-368. DOI:

Payne, M. (2013). Fisheries: Climate change at the dinner table, Nature, 497 (7449) 320-321. DOI:

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May 09, 2013

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2:00 PM | Arctic mission recovers record of surprising warmth
The longest continuous Arctic land sediment core shows that the last time CO2 levels reached current levels, over 2.6 million years ago, North-East Russia was taken was 8°C warmer.

Melles, M., Brigham-Grette, J., Minyuk, P., Nowaczyk, N., Wennrich, V., DeConto, R., Anderson, P., Andreev, A., Coletti, A., Cook, T. & Haltia-Hovi, E. (2012). 2.8 Million Years of Arctic Climate Change from Lake El'gygytgyn, NE Russia, Science, 337 (6092) 315-320. DOI:

Julie Brigham-Grette, Martin Melles, Pavel Minyuk, Andrei Andreev, Pavel Tarasov, Robert DeConto, Sebastian Koenig, Norbert Nowaczyk, Volker Wennrich, Peter Rosén, Eeva Haltia, Tim Cook, Catalina Gebhardt, Carsten Meyer-Jacob, Jeff Snyder, Ulrike Herzsch (2013). Pliocene Warmth, Polar Amplification, and Stepped Pleistocene Cooling Recorded in NE Arctic Russia, Science, Other: 10.1126/science.1233137

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May 04, 2013

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7:39 AM | Google search basis undermines sunspot-winter coldness link
A recent study linking cold winters in Europe to sunspots has updated bad science reaching back to the 19th century for the internet age, reveal Geert Jan van Oldenborgh from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and his colleagues, helped by an unholy alliance between Roger Pielke Sr and Stefan Rahmstorf.

Sirocko, F., Brunck, H. & Pfahl, S. (2012). Solar influence on winter severity in central Europe, Geophysical Research Letters, 39 (16) DOI:

Pittock, A. B. (1983). Solar variability, weather and climate: An update, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, 109 (459) 23-55. DOI:

van Oldenborgh, G., de Laat, A., Luterbacher, J., Ingram, W. & Osborn, T. (2013). Claim of solar influence is on thin ice: are 11-year cycle solar minima associated with severe winters in Europe?, Environmental Research Letters, 8 (2) 24014. DOI:

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April 27, 2013

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9:34 AM | The climate scientist whose world spun on through war
Milutin Milanković calculated his way through imprisonment and bombings to show how Earth’s movement helped drive ice ages, revealing how far we’ve strayed from the path we should be following into the next global freeze.

Petrović, A. & Marković, S. (2010). Annus mirabilis and the end of the geocentric causality: Why celebrate the 130th anniversary of Milutin Milanković?, Quaternary International, 214 (1-2) 114-118. DOI:

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April 20, 2013

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7:17 AM | Probabilities reveal shape of climate change
David Stainforth from the London School of Economics and his colleagues have developed a new way to analyse weather data and understand whether temperatures have warmed evenly on a local level, showing European trends with less than a 2% chance of happening at random.

Chapman, S., Stainforth, D. & Watkins, N. (2013). On estimating local long-term climate trends, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 371 (1991) 20120287-20120287. DOI:

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April 13, 2013

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11:22 AM | Alternate histories back unique modern warmth claims
Creating and averaging thousands of slightly different historic temperature records shows that Northern hemisphere 21st century temperatures are almost certainly unique in the last 600 years, according to Harvard University’s Martin Tingley.

Tingley, M. & Huybers, P. (2013). Recent temperature extremes at high northern latitudes unprecedented in the past 600 years, Nature, 496 (7444) 201-205. DOI:

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April 03, 2013

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5:00 PM | Temperature patterns produce perplexing Pliocene puzzle
Failure to model a climate fingerprint from 5 million years ago thought to be similar to what we can expect in the warmer future must be resolved, say Lafayette College’s Kira Lawrence and University College London’s Chris Brierley

Fedorov, A., Brierley, C., Lawrence, K., Liu, Z., Dekens, P. & Ravelo, A. (2013). Patterns and mechanisms of early Pliocene warmth, Nature, 496 (7443) 43-49. DOI:

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March 30, 2013

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9:56 AM | Diving deep into ocean data uncovers ‘missing heat’ treasure
Ocean warming is speeding up below 700m, where most previous studies haven’t been able to reach, say Kevin Trenberth from NCAR and his colleagues, which helps explain current surprisingly slow surface warming, and invalidates simple climate models.

Magdalena A. Balmaseda, Kevin E. Trenberth, Erland Källén (2013). Distinctive climate signals in reanalysis of global ocean heat content, Geophysical Research Letters, Other: 10.1002/grl.50382

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March 23, 2013

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11:06 AM | Climate change set to bring Western Europe more hurricanes
Models show that a warmer eastern tropical Atlantic at the end of the 21st century spawns hurricanes that are more likely to head to Europe, with the current western Atlantic origin seemingly becoming less active, with possible consequences for North America.

Haarsma, R., Hazeleger, W., Severijns, C., de Vries, H., Sterl, A., Bintanja, R., van Oldenborgh, G. & van den Brink, H. (2013). More hurricanes to hit Western Europe due to global warming, Geophysical Research Letters, DOI:

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March 16, 2013

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12:48 PM | How cold hearts and ice ages kindled the science of warming
In the 19th century, the newly-divorced Svante Arrhenius threw himself into epic calculations on how CO2 and water vapour could team to control Earth’s temperature, showing the forcing role of CO2 that underlies our understanding of climate change today.

Burgess, E. (1837). "General Remarks on the Temperature of the Terrestrial Globe and the Planetary Spaces; by Baron Fourier." Translation from the French, of Fourier, J. B. J., 1824, "Remarques Générales Sur Les Températures Du Globe Terrestre Et Des Espaces Planétaires., American Journal of Science, 32 1-20. Other: Link

Tyndall, P. (1860). The Bakerian Lecture: On the Absorption and Radiation of Heat by Gases and Vapours, and on the Physical Connexion of Radiation, Absorption, and Conduction., Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 11 100-104. DOI:

Arrhenius, S. (1896). On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground , Philosophical Magazine Series 5, 41 (251) 237-276. DOI:

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March 07, 2013

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7:00 PM | Projected warming set to exceed civilisation’s experience
11,000 years during which human civilisation has emerged have not seen temperatures ‘even close’ to what model forecasts predict, a record built by Shaun Marcott from Oregon State University and his teammates shows.

Shaun A. Marcott, Jeremy D. Shakun, Peter U. Clark, Alan C. Mix (2013). A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years, Science, 339 1198-1201. Other: Link

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February 28, 2013

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7:00 PM | Evidence rethink puts CO2 and ancient warming back in sync
A rise in temperatures that caused the last major global defrost has now been placed in the same 150-year window as an accompanying CO2 increase by Frédéric Parrenin from the French National Centre for Scientific Research and his teammates, rather than happening 800 years before the CO2 change as previously thought.

F. Parrenin, V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Köhler, D. Raynaud, D. Paillard, J. Schwander, C. Barbante, A. Landais, A. Wegner, J. Jouze (2013). Synchronous Change of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature During the Last Deglacial Warming, Science, 339 1060-1063. Other: Link

E. Brook (2012). Leads and Lags at the End of the Last Ice Age, Science, 339 1042-1043. Other: Link

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February 21, 2013

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7:00 PM | Cave deposits reveal permafrost concern
Greenhouse gases currently trapped in the frozen soil risk release past a 1.5°C temperature threshold for melting at the permafrost boundary, found in a 500,000 year record collected by Anton Vaks from the University of Oxford, and his colleagues.

A. Vaks, O. S. Gutareva, S. F. M. Breitenbach, E. Avirmed, A. J. Mason, A. L. Thomas, A. V. Osinzev,5 A. M. Kononov, G. M. Henderson (2013). Speleothems Reveal 500,000-Year History of Siberian Permafrost, Science,

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February 16, 2013

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12:02 PM | Extra stations bolster warming-extreme rainfall link
A study calling on 8326 weather stations has confirmed that annual precipitation highs are intensifying by around 7% per 1°C warming, explains University of Adelaide’s Seth West

Westra, S., Alexander, L. & Zwiers, F. (2012). Global increasing trends in annual maximum daily precipitation, Journal of Climate, 2147483647. DOI:

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February 09, 2013

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11:07 AM | Altered pressure patterns bring Eurasia intense iciness
Even as the world warms, stronger high pressures have driven extreme cold events happening since the 1990s in Europe and Asia, says Xiangdong Zhang at University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

Zhang, X., Lu, C. & Guan, Z. (2012). Weakened cyclones, intensified anticyclones and recent extreme cold winter weather events in Eurasia, Environmental Research Letters, 7 (4) 44044. DOI:

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February 02, 2013

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12:46 PM | Mild winters raise risk of flu epidemics
Warm years limit flu transmission, but that makes us more susceptible to the virus the following season, explains Sherry Towers at Arizona State University, meaning health authorities have to watch for severe epidemics as climate changes.

Towers, S., Chowell, G., Hameed, R., Jastrebski, M., Khan, M., Meeks, J., Mubayi, A. & Harris, G. (2013). Climate change and influenza: the likelihood of early and severe influenza seasons following warmer than average winters, PLoS Currents, DOI:

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January 26, 2013

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3:29 PM | Iconic authors help reveal record early flowering
150 years since Henry David Thoreau observed them, plants flower three weeks earlier thanks to climate change, find Boston University’s Libby Ellwood and her teammates.

Ellwood, E., Temple, S., Primack, R., Bradley, N. & Davis, C. (2013). Record-Breaking Early Flowering in the Eastern United States, PLoS ONE, 8 (1) DOI:

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January 18, 2013

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3:19 PM | Temperature cuts swathe through Australian seaweed
A record heatwave in 2011 completely killed off a seaweed species in one bay and over 1/20 of the area it covers worldwide, finds Dan Smale of the University of Western Australia

Smale, D. & Wernberg, T. (2013). Extreme climatic event drives range contraction of a habitat-forming species, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 280 (1754) 20122829-20122829. DOI:

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January 12, 2013

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2:36 PM | Delays raise emission halt urgency
Staying under the 2°C warming target demands a serious action rethink, find Steve Davis at University of California, Irvine and team-mates, after updating a method that breaks down the steps needed into “wedges”.

Davis, S., Cao, L., Caldeira, K. & Hoffert, M. (2013). Rethinking wedges, Environmental Research Letters, 8 (1) 11001. DOI:

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January 05, 2013

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12:42 PM | Climate limits room at the global dinner table
With farming producing up to one-third of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, and more people wanting more meat, agricultural research faces big challenges to avoid us having to make more difficult choices about what we eat.

Ziska, L., Bunce, J., Shimono, H., Gealy, D., Baker, J., Newton, P., Reynolds, M., Jagadish, K., Zhu, C., Howden, M. & Wilson, L. (2012). Food security and climate change: on the potential to adapt global crop production by active selection to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 279 (1745) 4097-4105. DOI:

Carlton, R., West, J., Smith, P. & Fitt, B. (2012). A comparison of GHG emissions from UK field crop production under selected arable systems with reference to disease control, European Journal of Plant Pathology, 133 (1) 333-351. DOI:

Powell, T. & Lenton, T. (2012). Future carbon dioxide removal via biomass energy constrained by agricultural efficiency and dietary trends, Energy & Environmental Science, 5 (8) 8116. DOI:

Davidson, E. (2012). Representative concentration pathways and mitigation scenarios for nitrous oxide, Environmental Research Letters, 7 (2) 24005. DOI:

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December 29, 2012

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11:58 AM | Warming brings home the value of a meal
Research into how climate change affects agriculture, and therefore the food we eat, shows the challenges farmers face and the knock-on costs to the rest of us.

Laurie T. Johnson and Chris Hope (2012). The social cost of carbon in U.S. regulatory impact analyses: an introduction and critique, Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, DOI:

Schewe, J. & Levermann, A. (2012). A statistically predictive model for future monsoon failure in India, Environmental Research Letters, 7 (4) 44023. DOI:

Schwalm, C., Williams, C., Schaefer, K., Baldocchi, D., Black, T., Goldstein, A., Law, B., Oechel, W., Paw U, K. & Scott, R. & (2012). Reduction in carbon uptake during turn of the century drought in western North America, Nature Geoscience, 5 (8) 551-556. DOI:

Qian, C., Yan, Z. & Fu, C. (2011). Climatic changes in the Twenty-four Solar Terms during 1960–2008, Chinese Science Bulletin, 57 (2-3) 276-286. DOI:

Diffenbaugh, N., Hertel, T., Scherer, M. & Verma, M. (2012). Response of corn markets to climate volatility under alternative energy futures, Nature Climate Change, DOI:

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December 22, 2012

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12:32 PM | 2012’s record events put climate in mind
Wet summers and droughts, deadly storms, Arctic melting and Antarctic freezing. How do climate records in 2012 fit in with the broader picture of climate change?

Villarini, G. & Vecchi, G. (2012). Multi-Season Lead Forecast of the North Atlantic Power Dissipation Index (PDI) and Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE), Journal of Climate, 2147483647. DOI:

Peduzzi, P., Chatenoux, B., Dao, H., De Bono, A., Herold, C., Kossin, J., Mouton, F. & Nordbeck, O. (2012). Global trends in tropical cyclone risk, Nature Climate Change, 2 (4) 289-294. DOI:

Newell, B. & Pitman, A. (2010). The Psychology of Global Warming, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 91 (8) 1003-1014. DOI:

Rahmstorf, S. & Coumou, D. (2011). Increase of extreme events in a warming world, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (44) 17905-17909. DOI:

Liu, J., Curry, J., Wang, H., Song, M. & Horton, R. (2012). Impact of declining Arctic sea ice on winter snowfall, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI:

Durack, P., Wijffels, S. & Matear, R. (2012). Ocean Salinities Reveal Strong Global Water Cycle Intensification During 1950 to 2000, Science, 336 (6080) 455-458. DOI:

Schwalm, C., Williams, C., Schaefer, K., Baldocchi, D., Black, T., Goldstein, A., Law, B., Oechel, W., Paw U, K. & Scott, R. & (2012). Reduction in carbon uptake during turn of the century drought in western North America, Nature Geoscience, 5 (8) 551-556. DOI:

Pall, P., Aina, T., Stone, D., Stott, P., Nozawa, T., Hilberts, A., Lohmann, D. & Allen, M. (2011). Anthropogenic greenhouse gas contribution to flood risk in England and Wales in autumn 2000, Nature, 470 (7334) 382-385. DOI:

Min, S., Zhang, X., Zwiers, F. & Hegerl, G. (2011). Human contribution to more-intense precipitation extremes, Nature, 470 (7334) 378-381. DOI:

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December 15, 2012

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11:21 AM | Can we trust climate models?
I’ve asked scientists I’ve spoken to for blog entries and articles published this year why we use models, how we know they’re accurate, and how to understand their projections.

Muyin Wang and James E. Overland (2012). A sea ice free summer Arctic within 30 years: An update from CMIP5 models, Geophys. Res. Lett., DOI:

Deser, C., Knutti, R., Solomon, S. & Phillips, A. (2012). Communication of the role of natural variability in future North American climate, Nature Climate Change, 2 (11) 775-779. DOI:

Higgins, P. & Harte, J. (2012). Carbon Cycle Uncertainty Increases Climate Change Risks and Mitigation Challenges, Journal of Climate, 25 (21) 7660-7668. DOI:

Peduzzi, P., Chatenoux, B., Dao, H., De Bono, A., Herold, C., Kossin, J., Mouton, F. & Nordbeck, O. (2012). Global trends in tropical cyclone risk, Nature Climate Change, 2 (4) 289-294. DOI:

Wei, T., Yang, S., Moore, J., Shi, P., Cui, X., Duan, Q., Xu, B., Dai, Y., Yuan, W., Wei, X. & Yang, Z. (2012). Developed and developing world responsibilities for historical climate change and CO2 mitigation, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 109 (32) 12911-12915. DOI:

Rowlands, D., Frame, D., Ackerley, D., Aina, T., Booth, B., Christensen, C., Collins, M., Faull, N., Forest, C., Grandey, B. & Gryspeerdt, E. (2012). Broad range of 2050 warming from an observationally constrained large climate model ensemble, Nature Geoscience, 5 (4) 256-260. DOI:

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December 06, 2012

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2:35 PM | CO2 casts off shackles to power up Atlantic hurricanes
Reductions in particulate pollution and increases in greenhouse gases are going to co-operate to give us more intense hurricanes in the Atlantic, finds NOAA’s Gabriel Vecchi

Villarini, G. & Vecchi, G. (2012). Multi-Season Lead Forecast of the North Atlantic Power Dissipation Index (PDI) and Accumulated Cyclone Energy (ACE), Journal of Climate, 2147483647. DOI:

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November 29, 2012

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7:01 PM | Space agencies pinpoint polar ice sheet damage
Greenland & Antarctica lost over 4 trillion tonnes of ice from 1992-2011 - equivalent to 11 mm of sea level rise, the giant Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-Comparison Exercise (IMBIE) has shown by bringing together over 50 years’ worth of satellite data .

Andrew Shepherd, Erik R. Ivins, Geruo A, Valentina R. Barletta, Mike J. Bentley, Srinivas Bettadpur, Kate H. Briggs, David H. Bromwich, René Forsberg, Natalia Galin, Martin Horwath, Stan Jacobs, Ian Joughin, Matt A. King, Jan T. M. Lenaerts, Jilu Li, Antony J. Payne, Hamish Pritchard, Eric Rignot, Helmut Rott, Louise Sandberg Sørensen, Ted A. Scambos, Bernd Scheuchl, Ernst J.O. Schrama, Ben Smith, Aud V. Sundal, Jan H. van Angelen, Willem J. van de Berg, Michiel R. van den Broeke, David G. Vaughan, I (2012). A Reconciled Estimate of Ice-Sheet Mass Balance, Science, Other: 10.1126/science.1228102

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November 24, 2012

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10:43 AM | Carbon conundrum could push firmer emission action
Climate models might be wrong in assuming plants and soil will absorb more CO2 as the world warms, meaning that more aggressive action might be needed to keep climate change at ‘safe levels’, finds Paul Higgins from the American Meteorological Society

Higgins, P. & Harte, J. (2012). Carbon Cycle Uncertainty Increases Climate Change Risks and Mitigation Challenges, Journal of Climate, 25 (21) 7660-7668. DOI:

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Climate Science
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November 17, 2012

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12:10 PM | Australians overestimate climate change rejection
Actual opinions on climate change are very different from estimates, thanks partly to our tendency to think more people agree with us than really do, but possibly also to how the issue has been debated, shows a survey run by Zoe Leviston from CSIRO in Australia.

Leviston, Z., Walker, I. & Morwinski, S. (2012). Your opinion on climate change might not be as common as you think, Nature Climate Change, DOI:

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November 08, 2012

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2:17 PM | Monsoon instability raises food questions for India
An unstable balance between dry and wet monsoon rain seasons could become important for farming in South Asia as the world warms into the 22nd century, find Jacob Schewe and Anders Levermann from Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

Schewe, J. & Levermann, A. (2012). A statistically predictive model for future monsoon failure in India, Environmental Research Letters, 7 (4) 44023. DOI:

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November 03, 2012

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1:09 PM | Butterfly effect limits climate models
Tiny changes in climate simulations otherwise held constant can lead to a wide range of outcomes, Clara Deser from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research and her team find, showing uncertainty we can’t eliminate.

Deser, C., Knutti, R., Solomon, S. & Phillips, A. (2012). Communication of the role of natural variability in future North American climate, Nature Climate Change, 2 (11) 775-779. DOI:

Simple Climate
Climate Science
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