Met Office: What is climate change? 23 November 2020
The Met Office has a very good explanation of what climate change is. This includes evidence from UK and global sources; as well as causes and impacts, and statistics on extreme events.
IPCC Special Report 15 – Global warming of 1.5degC 16 October 2018
Prompted by calls from the Paris climate summit, the IPCC commissioned this report to look at the challenge of limiting climate change to 1.5 degC compared with 2 degC. The consequences for the world of just that half-a-degree difference are stark. And it is a real call to arms for the global race to zero carbon emissions.
Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) 1 January 2014
The greatest source of uncertainty for anyone trying to predict how the climate will change is us. How will we behave in the future? Will we take the issue seriously and rapidly cut our emissions of greenhouse gases? Or will it be business as usual? There are a number of Emission Scenarios, which have been modelled to try and understand this. This section has been updated to include the new AR5 scenarios.
IPCC – Fifth assessment report (AR5) 1 October 2013
The IPCC fifth assessment report (AR5) was released on the 30 September 2013. There have been improvements in the science since the last report, with 6 years of more data to analyse and more powerful climate models. It is the same story of global warming. Notably: there has been an increase in confidence that human activities are the principal cause; air temperatures a rising more slowly; but sea levels are rising faster than in the previous report.
UK Climate Projections 2009 for Reading 1 January 2011
When the UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) were released, I was really keen to understand them and work out what changes they predicted for my home town of Reading. Following this through in detail, I dig into the spatial and seasonal differences we can expect. As well what is underneath these big shifts in long term average temperature, rainfall, etc. The projections were updated in 2018 with the results of more powerful models and improved science. However the broad findings are similar, as is the way to access the data.
How will global temperatures change? 1 December 2010
Atmospheric scientists use the emission scenarios to predict how much greenhouse gas concentrations will increase in the atmosphere. They can then run Global Climate Models to predict how the temperatures will change in the future, alongside changes in other aspects of the weather like rainfall. Even medium emission scenarios predict increases in average global temperatures by 3ºC, by the end of the century.
Beware climate change sceptics 1 March 2010
There are still people out there in denial, for example those who argue that there is “…some doubt from some scientists that climate change is really happening…or that it is caused by human activities…”. This is wrong. It may have been a fair point 15 to 20+ years ago, but the science has moved on and the evidence is now indisputable. Unfortunately, parts of the media and other organisations keep this denial alive with spurious stories like the “climategate scandal”.
The Freezing Winter 2009-10 does not mean that Global Warming is not happening
During December 2009 and January 2010 we experienced some harsh winter weather across the UK, Northern Europe, China and central USA. However, this is not evidence that there is now some doubt in the global warming trend. It is important to notice that during this winter, other parts of the world were a lot warmer than normal (for example in Greece and Alaska).
Temperature changes in March 1 January 2010
This is an in-depth look at how the UK climate projections (2009) can be used to understand how climate change will effect temperatures, for me, in the month of March. I introduce you to some real temperature data from the University of Reading Atmospheric Observatory, to help visualise what day-to-day temperatures might be like. And it seems likely that, even by the 2050s, and even under lower emission scenarios, we will see March temperatures that are more like the averages that we are used to seeing for April.
Even by 2050 we could experience heat waves, with hottest day temperatures that reach 40ºC in the shade. By the 2080s there is a big difference in the temperatures that we are likely to see by following the high, rather than the low scenario. It looks like it could get uncomfortably hot compared to what we’ve been used to.
Temperature changes in August