Do you believe it?

In the past posts I have mostly talked about the physical side of extreme weather, examining if there is a relationship between climate change and extreme weather. But something that is equally important is finding out what the public believes. When there is a relationship between climate change and extreme weather but the public denies this relationship and elect politicians who don’t undertake any action all the research has been done for nothing. In this post all will take about the question if the public believes that there is a relationship between extreme weather and climate change. I will use a study done by Yale University and the George Mason University. The study is called Extreme Weather, Climate & Preparedness in the American Mind. For this study from  2012 the researchers from both the universities did interviews with 1,008 adults from the USA about how they see the weather and the climate and the relationship between them. They did this with questionnaires. In this post I will talk about some questions they ask that are important for my blog. One important question they ask if (extreme) weather is an important subject for them.

For 60% of the Americans is weather something that matters to them. Only 21% does not have an interest in the subject. There is a lot of interest in the weather and the changes in it. But a more important question is of course if the Americans think that the weather has been worse than before.

A majority of the Americans believe that the weather has been worse in the past years. Only a tiny minority says that the weather has become much better. Most of the Americans agree with the fact that the weather has become worse, extreme weather occurs more frequent and more severe. The Americans say that extreme weather events, especially does associated the a warming climate are occurring more often.

Click on the image for a larger version

But the events are more common in the USA according to the opinion of the American public but not much more common. Only between 14 and 20 percent say that an event is much more common. But the group that says that it is much less common is only between 4 and 7 percent.

There are difference between the different regions in the USA but all the regions have very different climates and weather types  and all the regions. In the Northeast and the Midwest are very heavy rainstorms more common in the perception of the American public and in the South and the West are droughts more common. They also say that these extreme events are having an effect in their local area.

The largest group still says that there is no difference in the  amount of problems that extreme weather events caused. But a large minority says that there has been a change and that extreme weather events now cause more problems than before. There is again some difference between the different regions in the USA.

The percentage of Americans that have personally experienced extreme weather is quite high. 60% of the respondents say that they have experienced extreme high winds, 42% has personally experienced a heat wave and 49% has experienced a extreme rain storm. They also personally know people how were affected by extreme weather events.

But the most important question for my blog is of course if the Americans believe that there a relationship between extreme weather and climate change.    

There is a large majority that says that there is a relationship between the weather and global warming. 69% believes that there is a relationship while only 30% does not see a relationship. This percentage is not 100 in total.

The researchers try to be specific and ask the respondents if there is a relationship between a specific extreme weather event and climate change.

Most Americans see a relationship between specific events and global warming. But most Americans only agree somewhat, only between 16 and 25 percent of the people agree strongly. And still around one third does not agree with the statement. But the people who agree make up around 2/3 of the total number of respondents. Again there are differences between the different USA regions. This research shows that the weather is important in the daily life of Americans and that Americans say that the weather has become worse in the last years. Many Americans have personal experience with extreme weather and know Also other persons personally who were affected by extreme weather events. There is majority in the American society that links extreme weather with climate change but they don´t agree strongly with the statement and there is a group of around 12% that strongly disagrees with any relationship between extreme weather and climate change.

Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., & Hmielowski, J. D. (2012) Extreme Weather,

Climate & Preparedness in the American Mind. Yale University and George Mason University. New Haven, CT: Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.

http://environment.yale.edu/climate/files/Extreme-Weather-Climate-Preparedness.pdf

A short update

In my second post on this blog I was talking about using extreme weather events from the past. But as you perhaps have noticed: I’m only talking about extreme weather events in the present. I did this because extreme weather and their relationship with climate change became very popular after hurricane Sandy and other recent extreme events. People started to debate and publish about the topic, including the mainstream media. There were a lot of interesting opinions and studies with often contradicting opinions and outcomes and that made it extra interesting to talk about. In this blog I have given a number of different views, including my own and a number of studies with sometimes opposite outcomes. I hope that you enjoyed it or learned something from. I’m sorry if you were waiting for the posts about extreme weather in the past that never came. I decided to take advantage of the active debate that was going on. I say thanks to all the readers from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, The Netherlands, Russia, China, Israel , France and last but not least Kazakhstan. I hope you enjoyed it. Perhaps I will post something in the near future but after Christmas  I have to start writing my Bachelor dissertation in Amsterdam. Finally I have the oppertunity to write 20,000 words about my own subject.

Russian heat wave version 3 Published on the 14th

I'm not sure if you can see this post because Google said ''error''when I tried to publish it on the 14th of December.

This is the third and last post about the Russian heat wave. It is written by four researchers who saw the two studies with conflicting results and decided to do their own study. The study is done by  Otto,  Massey,  van Oldenborgh,  Jones, and  Allen.  They published the results in Geophysical Research Letters. Their aim is to show: ‘’ that there is no substantive contradiction between these two papers, in that the same event can be both mostly internally-generated interms of magnitude and mostly externally-driven in terms of occurrence-probability’’. (Otto et al 2011)

They do this by examining the same area as Dole et al (2011), one of the other studies on the Russian heat wave. See also my post about that study. This an area between 50°–60°N, 35°–55° E.  The way that the researchers such to find out if man made global warming has anything to do with the Russian heat wave they need to find out if the frequency of such events  is higher in today’s climate compared with climate from the past. This is the same approach as Opperheimer et al (2011) used in their study about storm surges near New York City. They also used a dataset with mean temperatures to examine is there was any existing  trend. But as both the other studies already had shown: There is no long warming trend in West Russia.  So they base their study on Climate models. 

First they use a stationary climate to find out how often an event such as the Russian heat wave without climate would occur, that is only once every 1,000 years  with once every 250 years for the with a lower bound of the 95% confidence interval. Without warming the Russian heat wave would be very, very rare. In the study of Dole et al (2011) Then they analyse the mean temperature as a non-linear trend from 1950 and onwards  with the dataset GISTEMP-1200  which suggests that between 1950 and 2009 rises with 1.9 degree Celsius. This is 0.8 times the global rise, West Russia warms slower and average. But it is significant. This is the graph of the used dataset: 

There is a rise in temperature of 1.9 degree Celsius but this is less than the global average. But is trend was not only visible in the month July, the month of the heat wave but also in June and August. Although this rise in mean temperature is small it has an direct effect. Were in a stationary climate an event like the Russian heat wave only happens once per 1,000 years that number is now shrunken to 250 years with only once every 90 years  by the lower bound of the 95% confidence interval.

They continue their study with trying to assess the fraction of risk of the heat wave which is attributable to external forcing (global warming). To do this they use the global circulation

model HadAM3P. This method is similar to the one used by Dole at al (2011) in their heat wave study. Their main goal with this model is to compare the 2010 Russian heat wave return levels in a climate based on the 60’s and one based on the climate in the 2000’s. To compare these climates they use regression analysis to make them better comparable. After they also removed all the bias they end up with this graph. 

 

 In the sixties climate a heat wave the size of the 2010 heat wave occurred only once every 99 years according to the authors but in the 2000’s climate it happen once every 33 years, much more often. 

The authors say the following about why this graph should support the notion that the two other studies don’t contradict: The graph shows return times of the heat wave conditions for the 1960s (green) and 2000s (blue). The threshold exceeded in 2010 is shown by the solid horizontal line, which is more than 5°C above 1960s mean July temperatures, shown by the dashed line. The difference between the green and the blue lines could be characterized as a 1°C increase in the magnitude of a 33-year event as shown by the vertical red arrow. This arrow is substantially smaller than the size of the anomaly itself, supporting the assertion that the event was “mainly natural” in terms of magnitude which is consistent with Dole et al (2011) Alternatively it could be characterized

as a three-fold increase in the risk of the 2010 threshold being exceeded, supporting the assertion that the risk of the event occurring was mainly attributable to the external trend as also stated by Rahmstorf and Coumou

 Cited from Otto et al (2011)

That authors this article say is that both the studies are right. Dole et al is right because the heat waves in the sixties are almost as extreme as those in the 2000’s. The magnitude is still the same. Global warming does not make heat waves more extreme than they were before. From is point of view there is no reason to assume that global warming has an influence.  But Rahmstorf and Coumou are also right because although the heat waves are not increasing in magnitude they occur more often in the 2000’s than in the sixties which is in line with the findings of their study. 

But was the Russian heat wave more warming driven or nature driven? There will always be a lot debate about what can be attributed to global warming and what is caused by nature. Weather, climate and global warming are not easy to predict and will remain a source of debate and research. There are many more studies about scientists who are trying to find out if a specific extreme weather event was influenced by global warming or not. Examples are: 

Floods in England and Wales 2000 Here

The 2010 cold winter in Europe Here

The cold year of 2008 in the USA Here

Otto, Massey,  van Oldenborgh,  Jones,  Allen (2012), Reconciling two approaches to attribution of the 2010 Russian heat wave, Geophys. Res. Lett., 39, L04702, Here

Dole et al (2011) Was there a basis for anticipating the 2010 Russian heat wave.  Geophysical Research Letters VOL. 38,Here

Rahmstorf, Coumou ( 2011) Increase of extreme events in a warming world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 108, issue 44, pp. 17905-17909 Here

 

Critical Scientists

This post is about an open letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in the Financial Times. The Open letter was written after a speech he gave at the UN General Assembly and another one which he gave at Yale University and a last one during a webcast presented by Al Gore. In these speeches the talked about climate change and extreme weather. Here is a citation from what he said at the UN General Assembly: 

“Extreme weather due to climate change is the new normal … Our challenge remains, clear and urgent: to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to strengthen adaptation to … even larger climate shocks … and to reach a legally binding climate agreement by 2015 … This should be one of the main lessons of Hurricane Sandy.”

Ban Ki-Moon at UN General Assembly on 9 November 2012 

At the other locations he said similar things about the weather and climate. But there is a group of people who disagree with the things he said in these speeches and is why they wrote an open letter to the Financial Times. In that letter they state with bold letters after citation the opinion of Ban Ki-Moon: 

We the undersigned, qualified in climate-related matters, wish to state that current scientific knowledge does not substantiate your assertions. 

To strengthen their statement they say that according to data released by the MET office there is no significant warming in the last 16 years and that at the same time the CO2 levels have risen 9%, which contradicts. They say: 

Global warming that has not occurred cannot have caused the extreme weather of the past few years. Whether, when and how atmospheric warming will resume is unknown. The science is unclear. Some scientists point out that near-term natural cooling, linked to variations in solar output, is also a distinct possibility.  

Financial times 29 November 2012 

The hypothesis that CO2 causes substantial warming and danger is not supported by evidence according to them. They also say that his own IPCC does not support the claims he makes about extreme weather. After that they cite the NOAA report ‘’State of the Climate 2008 in which the NOAA says that: ‘’ that 15 years or more without any statistically-significant warming would indicate a discrepancy between observation and prediction’’ With 16 years of no significant warming this has happened which proves that according to the writers that the climate models are wrong. Than they switch their approach and ask Ban Ki-Moon to change his approach: 

Based upon these considerations, we ask that you desist from exploiting the misery of the families of those who lost their lives or properties in tropical storm Sandy by making unsupportable claims that human influences caused that storm. They did not. We also ask that you acknowledge that policy actions by the U.N., or by the signatory nations to the UNFCCC, that aim to reduce CO2 emissions are unlikely to exercise any significant influence on future climate. Climate policies therefore need to focus on preparation for, and adaptation to, all dangerous climatic events however caused.

Financial times 29 November 2012  

Than follows a list with the names of people who support this letter. In total 134 persons. 

This open letter is not so much a criticism towards Ban Ki-Moon about his statements on extreme weather, they criticise the whole concept of Global warming caused by humans. Many of the people who sighted this letter are well known climate sceptics and often deniers. One of the persons who signed the open letter is Edwin X. Berry who compares the position of climate change deniers with the position of Copernicus who found out that the earth was round and not flat but was faced with prosecution by the Catholic Church, see Here. Also Joe Bastardi signed this letter. I have talked about him in my post about extreme weather in American newspapers. I’m not saying that everyone that signed this letter is stupid and ignorant. Many work at highly respected universities and have PhD’s in all sorts of climate related matter but there are some questions. 

The main point that made in the letter is that there is no evidence to support man made climate change on which the whole notion of more extreme weather events is based. CO2 has no connection with a warming earth. As evidence for their stance they use a very controversial study done by Judith Curry that claimed that the warming of the earth has stopped 16 years ago. The study was made famous by the Mail on Sunday. There is much criticism about this study from many other scientists, for example the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature institute. A institute where Curry also does research herself. Only the oceans did not show warming during the last decade, land temperatures did rise.  See This post in the Guardian for some more criticism. Judith Curry herself did not sign this letter. Many scientists still say that Global warming is happening and is caused by humans. Which makes the claim about raising CO2 levels without warming not undisputed. Another weird thing is that they use the NOAA 2008 report instead of the later and updated 2011. Why, did NOAA changed its opinion in the 2011 version and did no longer make their claim about 15 year without  statistically-significant warming?. In the second part of their letter they focus more on the ‘’global warming policies’’ and why they are unnecessary. They ask Ban Ki-Moon to stop using victims from natural disasters such as hurricane Sandy for his own agenda and policies. But while saying that they don’t say that a number of individual extreme weather events have been linked to climate change. In the letter they suggest that Ban-Ki Moon does not have any ground to claim but that is certainly not true. And again this letter says that it speaks about extreme weather and climate change but it does not, it questions the whole concept not just the extreme weather part.  

The open letter in the Financial Times, 29 November 2012. Written by 134 scientists Here

Speech that Ban Ki-Moon gave for the UN General Assembly Here

Speech that Ban Ki-Moon gave at Yale University Here

The study by Judith Curry has not yet been published in a journal

Article made by the Mail on Sunday about the 16 years without warming ( 13 October 2012) Here

Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Here