Questions tagged [climate-change]
Questions about changes of the climate system, including questions about global warming.
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How many trees would I have to plant to solve Global Warming?
According to NASA, causes of the Earth's greenhouse effect include water vapor, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and CFCs. Carbon dioxide gets the most press, and NASA's page says:
Carbon ...
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How do 'greenhouse gases' let heat in, but not let it out?
That honestly doesn't make any sense to me. How could heat pass through a gas one way but not the other? Its not like our upper atmostphere has a bunch of doors that can only open one way. To me, that ...
user13471
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CO₂ level is high enough that it reduces cognitive ability. Isn't that a reason to worry?
I think the level of carbon dioxide in the air is high enough to reduce the intelligence of humans. This has nothing to do with climate change.
Except that both mean we should reduce CO₂.
I never ...
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Is the sea level rise unusual?
I'm discussing climate change with a friend who is a climate change denier, basically the argument is that looking at this graph, is not clear that something unusual is going on, so the sea level rise ...
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Is climate change a vicious circle?
My question refers to the current process of climate change. CO2 is rising, which leads to the greenhouse effect, which raises temperatures. This leads to more wildfires, which reduces number of trees,...
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How does anthropogenic heating affect global warming?
Anthropogenic-sourced greenhouse gases are commonly cited as the main source for human-caused climate change. However, something that I never see discussed is the actual heat produced by human ...
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How much of the current global warming is due to human influence?
Approximately what proportion of the global warming seen over the the last century is attributed to anthropogenic sources?
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Global warming - why doesn´t mankind collect heat (thermal energy) and turn it into electricity or send it to space?
Why doesnt mankind "collect" thermal energy (there has to be some way: thermal couplings, detour over chemical energy, whatever) and after it has been concentrated at one point, turn it to electrical ...
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Is this XKCD comic an accurate timeline of the earth's average temperature?
Apologies for the length of the image, which I found at http://xkcd.com/1732/.
I'm mostly interested in the temperature line itself, both the historical data and the forward projections.
The reason I ...
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How much will sea level rise if all the polar ice melts?
There are many movies about global warming, which say that melting of all polar ice would cause the whole world to suffer a huge flood. According my research (teachers, TV, Internet) people hold one ...
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Could the extraction of energy by wind turbines be harmful to the environment?
Wind turbines work by converting some of the energy from wind to electrical energy. Is it possible to have too many turbines, leading to them removing too much energy from the wind? I'm not an ...
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Why is the temperature *still* rising?
2015 is the hottest year on record, and the average temperature continues to rise.
I don't understand why this continues, as (over the past twenty years) so much work was put into reducing Global ...
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Does human body temperature impact climate change?
The human body temperature is about 37 °C (99 °F), so as the population increases does this cause the Earth's temperature to rise?
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Why is there a seasonal cycle to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere?
I'm doing some homework on the increase of $\mathrm{CO}_2$ in the atmosphere. On one of the graphs it shows the amount of $\mathrm{CO}_2$ peaks in May and has a low in November. Why is this? Shouldn't ...
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How good were climate models of the 1990s at predicting the global temperature trends of the 2000s/2010s?
Was there a significant bias between the ensemble of climate models and the long-term temperature trends?
What about spatial patterns?
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Why is the Arctic melting, but the Antarctic doing great?
Why is the Arctic melting, but the Antarctic doing great? That's what the latest IPCC report says (p. 2-192 of the Physical Science Basis provides a time series), but it says nothing, unless I missed ...
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How does global-warming-triggered ice melting cause global sea levels to rise?
Apologies for asking a silly question like this. But I want to offer some points which I could not counter, as follows:
Ice is less dense than water, that is why it floats. For the same unit mass, if ...
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"Five of the Solomon Islands disappeared" due to sea level rise, how is this possible so quickly?
The text of the introduction to the BBC Podcast Sea Levels Rise; The Compass, Living on the Edge Episode 1 of 4 says:
Five of the Solomon Islands have disappeared, many more are becoming ...
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What would be the effect of bringing seawater pipes to the Sahara desert?
This is a childhood dream.
What would happen if pipes were installed (similar in principle to the Great Man-Made River, but for seawater) to continuously pump seawater into the Sahara desert.
Let'...
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What caused the Younger Dryas cold event?
During the termination of the latest ice age the warming climate leading from glacial to interglacial conditions was abruptly reverted by a distinct but short (about 1300 years in duration) cold event,...
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Do fossil fuels insulate the crust from the Earth's interior?
I was doing a project for my English class, and I came upon the article Energy conservation in the earth's crust and climate change. I can't view the full text of the article, but the abstract piqued ...
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Academic but accessible defense of the scientific understanding of anthropogenic climate change?
I'm an intelligent and well-educated guy, but all of my schooling has been in economics, statistics, and public policy. I'm interested in reading a thorough explanation/defense of the scientific ...
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Was Judea as desertified 2000 years ago as it is now?
The ancient fortress of Masada is currently so dry and forbidding that is hard to imagine anyone living there. Was the climate in the surrounding area more wet 2000 years ago, or was it as much a ...
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What is the 'natural variation' in global temperature that climate-change skeptics mention?
I was wondering if there really was some natural variation that keeps getting cited by climate-change skeptics that predicts a warming? The only such variation I can think of would be the milankovitch ...
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How do we know that we are NOT in an "Ice Age?"
Historically, the earth has had five "Ice Ages" Each of them lasted millions, tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of years.
The last ice age reportedly ended perhaps 10,000 years ago. That ...
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Debunking scientific paper "Has global warming already arrived?"
I read the IPCC reports, I know global warming is happening and is man-made.
But as any skeptic should do periodically, I went to a few climate deniers websites and stumbled upon this peer-reviewed ...
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Simple Climate Models that Predict Climate Change
I have a physics/maths background, and to me the most convincing evidence of a scientific fact is often a very simple model that gives reasonable results. A simplified model, which you can fully ...
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Will tropical cyclones form and be sustained in areas they previously were not due to global climate change?
With global climate change, is it possible that tropical cyclones (as seen in the Atlantic basin for example) are going to form and be sustained in regions where they previously did not, for example ...
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What happens to global temperature when we stop all the vehicles for a year?
I know this is a very simple or naive question but am just being curious.
How would the global temperature change if all vehicles stopped for a whole year?
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Can climate models reliably predict meteorological extremes?
This question is related to and extension of my previous question which was about the methodology used to predict future climatic extremes:
What is the methodology to analyze future climatic extremes ...
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Could the Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum have been caused by intelligent life forms?
I was intrigued to learn recently of the Paleocene–Eocene thermal maximum from this blog of John Baez. For those who haven't seen, it's the sharp spike labelled "PETM" in this graph (from ...
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Is 2015's record average temperature evidence that we are now experiencing runaway climate change?
2015 had the highest global temperatures on record, as discussed in this question, beating the last record ... in 2014.
Are we now in a runaway climate change regime, where zero further human ...
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Why is the energy transition start not reflected in the CO2 concentration graphs?
This is a graph from a reputable source of CO2 concentrations in atmosphere the last decades:
I would expect that, as we have been using clean energy for some years now, the graph would start to ...
user20559
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To what extent is hydroelectric power really renewable?
One of the more widespread "renewable" ways of generating power is by harnessing hydropower, i.e. by exploiting the movement of falling or flowing water. Some of the most commonly seen implementations ...
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Is global warming being moderated by latent heat of melting polar ice?
I've only had a secondary education in physics, so bear with me, but with the greenhouse effect and all, wouldn't we be much hotter already if the ice melt-rate wasn't increasing, since more (heat) ...
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Is there any evidence for higher air pressures in the geological past?
I was curious about how the Earth's overall air pressure has varied over time, and tried to take a look around the internet. However, Google pops up a lot of sites with questionable science proposing ...
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What is the methodology to analyze future climatic extremes using the results of climate models?
What is the accepted methodology to predict future climatic extremes using the results of climate models?
I have recently read a report about climatic extremes considering climate change (MICE, 2002)....
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Which places on Earth would be affected the least by severe climate change?
If I had the choice to move to an arbitrary region on the planet, which regions should I favour and which should I avoid in terms of habitability in face of the possibility of an extreme climate ...
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How will climate change affect the entropy budget of the atmosphere?
The entropy per unit mass of moist air can be defined as
$$s=(1-q_t)(C_{pd} \ln{T}-R_d\ln{p_d})+q_tC_l\ln{T} + \frac{q_vL_v}{T}-q_vR_v\ln{\mathcal{H}}$$
And in statistical equilibrium, the entropy ...
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How to reduce the atmospheric temperature artificially?
Is there any gas/substance which absorbs/reduces atmospheric temperature?
Ozone filters UV rays from the sun light and allows in infrared rays. In my knowledge these infrared rays are the cause of ...
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How do the known abrupt climate change events fit into the xkcd Earth temperature timeline?
The xkcd "Earth Temperature Timeline" depicts the global average temperature during the past 20,000 years, based on the known data. We already have a question about the chart's general accuracy, but I ...
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How much would the Greenland landmass isostatic rebound contribute to long term climate change?
In reading the question What would the geology and climate of a supposed landmass near the pole be like, assuming a thoroughly warmer planet?, it came to mind that another factor may cause a shift in ...
user889
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How will climate change affect the 3D distribution of lapse rate in the atmosphere?
The lapse rate is the rate at which temperature decreases with height. By "3D" distribution, I mean distribution across all latitudes, longitudes, and heights.
Would climate change change the lapse ...
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Why was there a negative temperature anomaly between 1950 to 1980?
If I understand the information from this link correctly,
Instrumental temperature record
between 1950 to 1980 there were negative temperature anomalies in the years of those decades.
decade
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How will sea level rise be distributed across the globe?
Sea level rise from melting glaciers will not be uniformly distributed across the globe. However, it isn't clear to me what places will have the most and least extreme changes in sea level rise. I ...
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CO2 emissions per calorie (food)
I have seen several lists with CO2 emissions by weight for producing several different food products. I think this is an interesting consideration, and possible argument for vegetarianism/veganism.
I ...
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What is a reasonable forecast of sea level in 2100?
The IPCC 2013 Physical Science Basis Report says 0.4m - 0.6m. That is somewhat dated and now http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/15/20059/2015/acpd-15-20059-2015.html seem to have contested it. ...
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Could the Dead Sea dry up? and if so, when?
According to recent findings, during the last interglacial period, about 120,000 years ago, the precursor of the Dead Sea (Lake Lisan) dried up perhaps entirely. Today, the Dead Sea level is dropping ...
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