Global Warming Issues, an Overview

Global warming has been a huge issue here on ATS lately we have the basic stand points:
1. Those who believe that Global Warming is due to Nature
2. Those who think that Global Warming is Man Made
3. Those who think there is No Global Warming
4. And those who are undecided.

Global warming -- a gradual increase in planet-wide temperatures -- is now well documented and accepted by scientists as fact. A panel convened by the U.S National Research Council, the nation's premier science policy body, in June 2006 voiced a "high level of confidence" that Earth is the hottest it has been in at least 400 years, and possibly even the last 2,000 years. Studies indicate that the average global surface temperature has increased by approximately 0.5-1.0°F (0.3-0.6°C) over the last century. This is the largest increase in surface temperature in the last 1,000 years and scientists are predicting an even greater increase over this century. This warming is largely attributed to the increase of greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide and methane) in the Earth's upper atmosphere caused by human burning of fossil fuels, industrial, farming, and deforestation activities.

Source

Now it has been mentioned many times about The greenhouse gas effect and how it is the major contributing factor of Global warming today, I suppose the main questions that arise by some is that is this accurate? Here are a few links for those that want to know about greenhouse gases

What Are Greenhouse Gases?
Many chemical compounds found in the Earth’s atmosphere act as “greenhouse gases.” These gases allow sunlight to enter the atmosphere freely. When sunlight strikes the Earth’s surface, some of it is reflected back towards space as infrared radiation (heat). Greenhouse gases absorb this infrared radiation and trap the heat in the atmosphere. Over time, the amount of energy sent from the sun to the Earth’s surface should be about the same as the amount of energy radiated back into space, leaving the temperature of the Earth’s surface roughly constant.
Many gases exhibit these “greenhouse” properties. Some of them occur in nature (water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide), while others are exclusively human-made (like gases used for aerosols).

A pretty decent article on climate change due to the green house gas effects.

Now another interesting article I came across suggests something to do with Solar Variability and that this could indeed effect climate change

It is my belief that global climate cooling is possible in the future, or has already begun, due to solar variability. Although some of the material I base my conclusions upon comes from books and periodicals (such as Nature, Science, and the Astrophysical Journal of the AAS), I am here providing a list of Internet links I have personally reviewed.

"The reader should be forewarned that not all Internet sites contain unbiased (or even factual) information. Wherever possible, I have tried to restrict my own investigations to material released by official agencies and researchers at major universities. In other words, I try to avoid information provided by persons who simply wish to bash environmentalists and prove the global warming theories wrong.

Source
Now he has posted a few links in there that appear to be interesting.

A few other factors in Global warming Taken fromThis Site
Aerosols. Sulfate aerosols cool the surface, troposphere, and stratosphere alike. At the surface, the temporal pattern is exactly the opposite that of greenhouse gases: cooling is greater at day than during the night, during the summer than during the winter, and at low latitudes than at high latitudes. Black carbon (soot) warms whichever layer of the atmosphere it is found in. Aerosols exert their strongest effect over the regions where they are emitted, which are mostly in the Northern Hemisphere. The sulfate forcing grew more rapidly than the greenhouse one from 1945 to 1980 and has since been declining.
Ozone. The depletion of ozone from the ozone layer cools the stratosphere; the cooling is greatest at high latitudes, where the layer has suffered the most. The depletion also causes a small amount of cooling at the surface and in the lower troposphere. As the phase-out of ozone-destroying chemicals allows the layer to rebuild itself, the stratosphere should rewarm. Ozone near the ground (a component of smog) warms the surface and lower troposphere.

Volcanic eruptions. By hurling dust to high altitudes, explosive volcanoes cool the troposphere and warm the stratosphere. The stratospheric warming lasts one to two years, and the surface and troposphere cooling three to five years. Volcanoes also reduce the global average precipitation.

Generic effects. Some fingerprints are not specific to one forcing or another; they occur when the temperature changes for whatever reason. These fingerprints are useful for crosschecking the data. For instance, any temperature changes should be greater for land than for sea, and because the Northern Hemisphere has more land than the Southern, any trends should be more pronounced there. In the tropics, temperature changes should be greater in the troposphere than at the surface, because moist air releases heat as it rises and condenses. Also, if the trends are short-term (driven mainly by, say, volcanic eruptions or the 11-year solar cycle), they should have little effect on temperatures in the ocean depths or in boreholes. It takes a while for heat to penetrate down, so a subsurface temperature profile provides a measure of cumulative changes, whereas the surface and atmosphere mark the present moment, with its entire vicissitudes.

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Internal (unforced) climate variability. By definition, a forcing adds energy to the climate system, whereas natural variability merely redistributes it. So if the recent string of hot years is just a wiggle, then the total heat content of the climate system -- all the oceans plus the ice caps plus the atmosphere -- should be constant. Another difference is that a forcing shifts the range of climate events, whereas variability is the range. If historical data indicate that heat waves have become more common and cold snaps less so, the range itself must have shifted, indicating a forcing rather than variability.

There is also been a point raised by some that humans not nature are manipulating the extreme weather. So I will also provide a few links for this theory to be checked out as well.
WEATHER MANIPULATION and THE RESULTS
Climate Control & Manipulation Washington's New World Order Weapons
HARNESSING WEATHER

For more info on this if there is interest just Google Weather control or manipulation.
No-one here can deny the rise in temperatures that are happening all around the world lately, the freak weather, the tsunamis in Indonesia, the rise in typhoon’s and hurricanes and the rise in overall general heat, examples these on the news today:
www.usatoday.com...
www.nydailynews.com...
www.cnn.com...

And that’s only a little bit of it. Over the years we have seen a slow rise in cold winters etc but this years this appear to be on the rise in connection to the over all heat of the planet. Whilst searching around I came upon a weather place that deals with sever weather warnings, are they on the rise or unusual?

The U.S
www.spc.noaa.gov... Strom prediction center
iwin.nws.noaa.gov... Flash Floods
iwin.nws.noaa.gov... Marine warnings
iwin.nws.noaa.gov... full set
Canada warnings map
www.weatheroffice.ec.gc.ca... Weather office
Australia
www.bom.gov.au...
The world
severe.worldweather.org... Very good up to date info on sever weather typhoons etc
Now looking up the early warning signs for Global warming for those who don’t know
www.climatehotmap.org... Pretty good map of climate change just click on it to enlarge an area.

If applicable please provide a link to your answer to the following questions, this is merely so others can check out the theories as well. So I guess my questions are:
1. Are greenhouse gases increasing?
2. Is the climate warming?
3. Are El ninos related to Global Warming?
4. Is the hydrological cycle (evaporation and precipitation) changing?
5. Is the atmospheric/oceanic circulation changing?
6. Is the climate becoming more variable or extreme?
7. How important are these changes in a longer-term context?
8. Is sea level rising?
9. Can the observed changes be explained by natural variability?
10. What about the future?
11.Do you think the weather is being manipulated by people and thus causing the extreme weather?

There are quite a few threads here on AT/PTS/BTS just do a search on the site for them

i realize this is a very old thread of mine but instead of creating a completely new thread on the topic asking pretty much the same things i decided just to post this here as alot of the information is very much current today.Especially in regards to all the freaky weather we have been having over the last year or so.

Over the years its been pretty apparent that the weather has been more severe, for what the *norms* are. and what i mean by norms is basically what we are used to. its no secret that the climate is definatly changing scientists say that since 1900 the earth has warmed up about 1 degree F. but regionally these effects vary greatly

These days, when global climate is mentioned, conversations usually segue immediately to climate change. Global climate change, whether it involves more heat or more cold, more precipitation or more drought, is mainly the result of planetary warming. Since 1900, the Earth has warmed about 1°F (0.7°C). Regionally, the effects of this warming vary. For instance, scientists contributing to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predict changing precipitation patterns and retreating glaciers in Latin America, higher crop productivity in high-latitude regions, and sea level rise along coastal regions.

climate change

another good site for looking up this stuff is source , this discusses green house gases, and the ozone repairing itself over the ant arctic

A new study in Geophysical Research Letters looks at how the anticipated recovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica and simultaneous increase in greenhouse gas concentrations will combine to affect weather and climate in the Southern Hemisphere. It concludes that over the coming half century, ozone recovery will result in a nearly complete cancellation of the effects of increased greenhouse gases on atmospheric circulation.

The Southern Hemisphere’s prevailing atmospheric circulation pattern is the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), also known as the Antarctic Oscillation. In the mode's positive phase, a stronger and more southerly vortex encircles the pole, leading to fewer intrusions of Antarctic air into the southern oceans. The negative phase features a weaker, more variable vortex and a greater risk of Antarctic outbreaks of cold air heading north.

source

a recent article i read actually says that climate change is not fully responsible for global warming, saying that its some sort of phenomena making the weather act crazy

Meteorologist Jeff Masters says that while it might not be climate change, the tornadoes are just one of many weird weather phenomena this year that may be signaling major shifts in the climate.

From April 25 to 28, 2011, a fierce and deadly storm system produced a total of 327 confirmed tornadoes in 21 states from Texas to New York, and even isolated tornadoes in Canada. Alabama was struck particularly hard. These April 2011 tornadoes killed at least 344 people people in the Southeast, Midwest, and Northeast. Then--on May 22, 2011--the deadliest single tornado since 1953 struck Joplin, Missouri, with at least 124 people now confirmed dead and more than 1,000 people reportedly injured. Shortly before the tornado struck Joplin, EarthSky spoke to meteorologist Jeff Masters of Weather Underground. He explained some of the science that has caused these fierce 2011 tornadoes in the U.S.

In particular, he said, the location and strength of the jet stream played a role.

"The jet stream, which is that powerful river of air aloft over the country, turned out to be very strong this year. It had very high wind speeds in it. And it was moving over tornado alley, where we tend to get cold, dry air from Canada colliding with warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico. The combination of those contrasting air masses, and then the very powerful jet stream, was just the perfect storm of conditions to make a lot of tornadoes."

'Is climate change making tornadoes more deadly? That's less clear: "On the one hand, we would expect that a warmer climate would bring warmer temperatures and potentially warm moisture in the atmosphere, enhancing instability."

going on to say

"Climate change is expected to weaken the jet stream. And that's a key ingredient for making tornadoes. You need to have a really strong jet stream that changes velocity and speed with altitude in order to put a shearing force on those updrafts, to get them spinning, so that they become tornadoes. So it's unclear what's going to happen in the end."

In other words, the verdict is still out on whether climate change will create more deadly tornadoes, and, at this time, there is no evidence that it will.

If climate change isn't causing these deadly tornadoes, what is happening?

"Every 30 or so years, you do see a violent tornado outbreak like this one, where you get 10 or more of these strong, or even violent tornadoes that have wind speeds of over 150 miles per hour.

source for full article

so really it seems that the strange weather may not be completely strange at all, however it seems that whatever is going on in our atmosphere could be contributing to it, maybe our earth is just going through its normal cycle, but i do personally believe that global warming effect (whatever they are) are still a sorely contributing factor

a few more interesting titbits this article from 2010

NOAA measurements show that the combined global surface temperatures for June 2010 are the warmest on record, and Wagner said there are larger conclusions to be drawn from the definite global warming trend. “We are seeing things that haven’t really happened before on the planet, like warming at this specific rate. We think it is very well tied to increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the late 1800′s caused by humans.”

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Source: NOAA)

Graphs on NASA’s climate website show an undeniable rise in global temperatures, sea levels, and carbon dioxide levels. See more of these graphs here.

“Not just over 10 years, but we have satellites images, weather station records and other good records going back to the late 1800′s that tells us all about how the planet is warming up,” Wagner said. “Not only that but we have evidence from geologic records, ice cores, and sediment cores from ocean cores. All of this feeds together to show us how the planet is changing.”

What is Causing Weather Extremes in 2010?

another interesting article i found was about how earthquakes could contribute to global warming? (and yes its originally a blog but plz read.

People who are ridiculed for saying that earthquakes are a result of global warming could actually be right, scientists claim.

Long-term climate change has the potential to spin Earth's tectonic plates, according to a news study from the Australian National University.

Is climate change causing earthquakes? Extreme weather is moving tectonic plates, scientists claim - 15th Apr 2011

a news article from the daily mail paper about the above topic just to show that im not relying soly on a blog.
Is climate change causing earthquakes? Extreme weather is moving tectonic plates, scientists claim


here is another i found to be interesting is a faq guide of sorts
WEATHER AND CLIMATE

obviously there are still skeptics out there that dont believe in climate change, and to be honest thats fair enough but i do personally think that it has contributed alot to the weather we are seeing now.

Global Warming was proven as a hoax by the same "scientists" trying to prove its existence.

Manipulation, distortion, and deletion of data regarding Global Warming by these "scientists" was the last straw.

reply to post by Carseller4


so do you have links to this *proven* fact that global warming and climate change are a huge hoax? and of course everyone is entitled to their own opinions on the matter but i am curious though what do YOU think is causing the sever and unusual weather around the world today if global warming/climate change have nothing to do with it?