Climate Change: The Move to Action (AOSS 480 // NRE 480) Kevin Reed 2133 Space Research Building (North Campus) Winter 2012 February 21, 2012

Class News Ctools site: AOSS_SNRE_480_001_W12AOSS_SNRE_480_001_W and 2010 Class On Line:2008 and 2010 Class – p/Climate_Change:_The_Move_to_Actionhttp://climateknowledge.org/classes/index.ph p/Climate_Change:_The_Move_to_Action

Today What Are Extreme Events? Are They Changing? Will Extremes Differ With ‘Climate Change’? Communication

Extreme Weather Events

What is an Extreme? Categorizing an event as “extreme” is a somewhat arbitrary procedure. –What is extreme at one space and time may be typical at another. –Extremes are at the tails of the distribution. How is “tail” defined? –Does extreme mean “rare” or simply high impact? Generalized Extreme Value Theory US CCSP Report

Extremes are a natural component of a stable climate. However, there are costs! What is an Extreme? US CCSP Report

Trends Temperature Precipitation NCDC/NOAA – State of the Climate

Trends – Tornadoes? NCDC/NOAA – State of the Climate

Trends – Snow? NCDC/NOAA – State of the Climate

Trends – Tropical Cyclones? NCDC/NOAA – State of the Climate

Trends – Tropical Cyclones? NCDC/NOAA – State of the Climate

Trends - Issues Data reliability –Technology, Coverage Natural Variability Regional Distributions Is there an anthropogenic signature?

Trends 2011 was a record-breaking year for Climate Extremes

2011 Extremes 14 Events of >$1 Billion in Damage Effective Communication? NOAA News

2011 Extremes NCDC/NOAA – State of the Climate

2011 Extremes - Ranks NCDC/NOAA – State of the Climate

U.S. Climate Extreme Index NCDC/NOAA – State of the Climate CEI

Communication This is one agency’s (NOAA) at communicating extreme events and trends to the public? Is one of the figures particularly effective? As a whole? Other sources: –NOAA – Extreme Weather 2011NOAA – Extreme Weather 2011 –Natural Resources Defense CouncilNatural Resources Defense Council –Wunderground – Expert BlogsWunderground

How Might Extremes Change? US CCSP Report

How Might Extremes Change? Changes may be more complex! IPCC SREX

Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate US CCSP Report

Projected Precipitation Changes US CCSP Report

Possible Changes in Hurricanes Emanuel (2007)Holland and Webster (2007) Can be basin specific!

Weather and Climate Extremes in a Changing Climate In general, similar to IPCC AR4 and IPCC SREX results. Specific to North America. US CCSP Report

Importance? For U.S. Cost are increasing for many reasons: –Population growth –Where people live –Changes in extremes (as shown) –Vulnerability (building codes) US CCSP Report

IPCC Special Report on Extremes

Are These Reports Effective? There are differences in the presentation of information. Is one more effective than another? What are the strengths? Room for improvement? How is it different when compared to IPCC AR4?

Example: Hurricanes Strong storms, but less globally. Zhao et al. (2009) Fractional Change

Example: Hurricanes This is important because: Meyer et al. (1997)

Example: Hurricanes Also… adaptation… US CCSP Report

Example: Heat Waves Barriopedro et al., Russian Heat Wave, Science, 2011Barriopedro et al., Russian Heat Wave, Science, 2011 Dole et al., Russian Heat Wave, GRL, 2011Dole et al., Russian Heat Wave, GRL, 2011 Rahmstorf, Increase of Extreme Events, PNAS, 2011Rahmstorf, Increase of Extreme Events, PNAS, 2011 Shearer and Rood, Earthzine, 2011

Example: Heat Waves Dole et al They see no signal of the role anthropogenic sources 2010 Russian Heat Wave

Example: Heat Waves Potential for Future Russian Heat Waves Dole et al Scientific Debates

Example: Heat Waves Barriopedro et al European Heat Waves ( ) year events in last decade!

Example: Heat Waves

More Communication These case studies demonstrate that there is an attempt to ‘simplify’, or communicate the science to the public, in the reports that we have read in class. NCAR – AtmosNews – on/steroids-baseball-climate-changehttp://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/attributi on/steroids-baseball-climate-change –Deliberate attempt to increase communication with public.

“It’s not the right question to ask if this storm or that storm is due to global warming, or is it natural variability. Nowadays, there’s always an element of both.” Kevin Trenberth – NCAR

Shearer and Rood (2011) Scientist are part of the conversation… should help frame better questions. Two different realities, natural and the anthropogenically changed… this does not exist. “The result is that scientific debates that were historically carried out in the slow deliberations of peer-reviewed journals are now on public display and can be misrepresented.”