Questions tagged [climate-change]
Questions about changes of the climate system, including questions about global warming.
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177 views
How to relate RCM/GCM RCP climate projections to observational data for use in a hydrologic model
As a (smaller) part of my research, I want to look at climate projection data and how that might influence the hydrology within a study catchment in Rajasthan, India. For "the present day" climate, I ...
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0answers
59 views
Correlation between temperature and precipitable water in the tropical climate
Air temperature is known to correlate well with precipitable water at higher latitudes. What are the likely factors that degrade the correlation in the tropical monsoon climate?
1
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1answer
75 views
How much warming there was over time for a specific month?
I'm calculating warming trends in specific places and periods of time, that are related to the time a migratory bird spends in a stopover. But using different methods I got different results and I'm ...
6
votes
2answers
374 views
Is global warming a linear process?
Is global warming linear in the sense that doubling the emission of Greenhouse gases will result in a doubling of global warming. Is there a threshold, i.e. is there are certain concentration of GHG ...
3
votes
1answer
129 views
CMIP5 multi-model ensemble, can it be shown as ensemble average?
Let’s say I have got 15 CMIP5 models’ outputs of a given variable e.g. temperature, for RCP6.5 (2020-2100) run.
I want to plot how the temperature will change in the future 2020-2100 (scatter plot, x ...
18
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3answers
5k views
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 ...
4
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0answers
51 views
How well do past climate models stick to current observations? [duplicate]
I'm wondering how good the climate models of the recent past have been at predicting the current climate.
Notably, I've heard quite a few times that the temperature was increasing faster than the ...
3
votes
3answers
535 views
What evidence is backing the claim that the CO₂ we're releasing in the atmosphere is the main cause of climate change?
There's a lot of evidence that:
mankind is putting a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere
CO2 levels are currently rising
CO2 contributes to the green-house effect, which contributes to increase earth ...
3
votes
1answer
143 views
Calculating 30% less solar energy. Provided the math is right, would there have been liquid water on Earth?
The Sun is estimated to have had a solar luminosity about 30% lower when the solar system was formed.
Now if I assumed that Earth's albedo was the same as it is today, what ...
4
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2answers
166 views
Do current general circulation models model climate oscillations?
Ten years ago I studied the third report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change with some friends. I remember a bit of a hedge in the report, to the effect that general circulation models ...
4
votes
1answer
97 views
Status of overdue glaciation hypothesis
What is the status of the Early Anthropocene hypothesis, in the specific meaning that the climate would be projected to be significantly cooler (such as, on the order of by 0.8 degrees in the planet ...
6
votes
3answers
1k views
If there's more water in the atmosphere due to global warming, how are there fewer mountain glaciers?
As I understand it, moisture condenses at mountain tops to form the mountain glaciers that provide water. The mountain topography doesn't change much in the span of a few decades, so if there's more ...
2
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0answers
55 views
What regions of the US will have *improved* climate given current predictions of climate change?
This is really a two part question:
1) Is there a good model for mapping climate conditions in a particular location to pleasantness or livability or something like that?
2) If there is such a model,...
11
votes
2answers
693 views
Relationship between natural disaster and global warming, in the media
Sorry in advance if this is too broad a question. Feel free to let me know if it is off-topic.
I don't know more than the next person around about climate change, but I am really not a climato-...
8
votes
1answer
2k views
What would it be like to live in an ice age?
If you were born in the most recent ice age, how different would your life be compared to how you live it today? Furthermore, if humans currently lived in an ice age, how would it affect life today?
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0answers
52 views
Could we plant enough trees to offset greenhouse gas emissions? [duplicate]
In 2014, the world emitted 10 billion metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. A 50 year old oak tree forest sequesters 30,000 pounds of CO2 per acre. At that rate of sequestration per acre, offsetting all ...
4
votes
1answer
368 views
Effects of global warming on drought in India
Is there an intuitive explanation for non-specialists why India is projected to experience a decrease in drought (= increase in PDSI) due to global warming, unlike most areas at the same latitude(s), ...
3
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0answers
57 views
What will happen to the tropical rainforest when climate increases by 5°C?
Today's most likely outcome regarding climate change is between +3°C and +6°C. My guess is at least +5°C. Has anybody found some papers indicating the average increase at the equator and a prognosis ...
7
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1answer
105 views
Is the Arctic ice dissapearing faster than IPCC models say?
Are observations of Arctic sea ice in accord with what the IPCC forecasts says they should be? And as such is the ice reducing in an exponential or linear way?
For instance, from https://www....
6
votes
2answers
774 views
Why is runaway global warming a possibility despite all current fossil fuel deposits once having been in the atmosphere?
Disclaimer: this question is not about climate change or global warming in general, and does not try to dismiss general human-caused global warming.
The concept of runaway global warming depicts a ...
1
vote
1answer
100 views
Building massive seawall around endangered Islands like Mauritius to save from climate change [closed]
Would it be possible to build a massive seawall, say maybe even made from metal that could rise as the sea level rises to prevent being erased?
I am not considering costs here, nor beauty, only if ...
8
votes
1answer
1k views
Why is carbon pollution given more importance than Sulfur pollution or Nitrogen pollution?
Nitrous oxide ($N_2O$) - primary greenhouse gas
Carbon dioxide ($CO_2$) - primary greenhouse gas
Methane ($CH_4$) - primary greenhouse gas, explosive
Nitrogen monoxide ($NO$) - secondary greenhouse ...
4
votes
1answer
87 views
Which CMIP5 models give the highest and lowest warming for RCP8.5?
Question is in the title. I'm doing impacts research and need to pick a couple of scenarios before downloading GCM runs. Want to pick a low one and a high one and one in the middle of the road. I'm ...
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vote
3answers
526 views
Do solar panels reduce the amount of suns rays reflected back into the atmosphere ? Therefore reducing global warming
The way I understand the basics of global warming is we are putting to much Co2 into the atmosphere which increases the size / density of atmosphere shell, sun rays enter the atmosphere then there is ...
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2answers
693 views
Polar Ice caps are melting? Questions on enviromental impact
The polar ice caps are melting at a significant rate partly due to the albedo effect, releasing greenhouse gas-methane into earth’s atmosphere. At the same time we are logging our forests for ...
4
votes
1answer
157 views
What caused the Carbon Dioxide Variations observed in the 800,000-year polar ice record?
I have seen several graphs showing the prehistoric temperatures and CO2 concentrations derived from ice-core data. My understanding is that CO2 and temperature correlate. I assume that Milankovich ...
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0answers
38 views
In which ways is soot the perfect absober of infrared and the absorber of ultraviolet?
In other question we've been discussing factors of the nuclear winter effect, soot among them.
In this one I'd like to narrow the list down to soot, more precisely to ask about its ability to absorb ...
22
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7answers
10k views
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?
3
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1answer
71 views
Were there any plans or proposals for “unilateral geoengineering deployments” before this paper was publsihed?
I saw the catchy Phys.org news title Artificially cooling planet 'risky strategy,' new research shows and then looked at the open access article, in Nature Communications (14-Nov-2017 online) Impacts ...
2
votes
1answer
142 views
Can Volcanic Eruptions Help Combat Global Warming in the Long Run?
I've been reading about volcanic eruptions on wikipedia, and I've found that very big eruptions cause the earth's temperature to drop by a small fraction of a degrees Celsius due to the ash it ...
2
votes
2answers
757 views
Estimated volume, daily or annually, of sea level rise due to melting ice?
Its a big number, difficult to estimate I assume. But is there a peer reviewed estimation (at current conditions) of the volume of daily or annual increase of water?
3
votes
5answers
261 views
How Can Smog in Metropolitan Cities like Delhi & Beijing Be Reduced?
These two cities are facing the worst smog in Asia and I think in the world and people of these cities have no choice other than to wear masks when going outside. ...
8
votes
1answer
879 views
What is the consensus among geologists about climate change being caused by humans?
I'm terribly frustrated with the way that climate change has been debated in Europe. I live in the Netherlands and members of one of the biggest parties here, the Party for Freedom (PVV), frequently ...
3
votes
1answer
104 views
Is evapotransporation accounted for in climate models?
Is evapotransporation accounted for in climate models, or is it considered so insignificant that it's not considered?
Could additional crops being planted within the last 100 to 50 years account ...
2
votes
0answers
92 views
What are the arguments FOR Climate Change influenced by the drifting of Geomagnetic Poles? [duplicate]
*Over some years I was hovering over the developments of the ESA SWARM mission and probing random magnetometers from the Russian-Ukrainian observatories as a private researcher and a non-scientist.
I'...
5
votes
2answers
2k views
When is the next glaciation due?
Let's say we invented a whizzy technology that took CO2 back to pre-industrial levels, say 280ppm, how long would it take for glaciation to resume ?
(I'm not angling for a denialist perspective here, ...
2
votes
1answer
46 views
'Forcing' in PDSI Calculation
I'm new to climate science - starting to get familiar with the field by reading some published articles. Terminology is always hard when starting into a new domain.
In this paper, Dai - Increasing ...
2
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0answers
15 views
Do surface temperatures at lower latitudes continue to correlate with frequency of noctilucent clouds in the arctic stratosphere?
I saw this image in this answer to the question Noctilucent clouds and anthropogenic climate change which was listed as related to the question “New” cloud types: Can they be used as markers for ...
10
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1answer
376 views
What makes a nuclear winter so extreme and destructive?
This may be a sort of, pertinent to the times, and disturbing question, inspired by the difficulties surrounding North Korea and the situation with it and nuclear weapons.
I've heard of this idea of "...
8
votes
2answers
713 views
Will global warming lead to agriculture in the Arctic?
From what I understand, global warming will make growing food a lot harder in areas like the American Midwest because temperatures will become too high for most crops. At the same time, Arctic (and ...
10
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3answers
677 views
Does this paper, using neural nets, prove industrialization is irrelevant to global warming?
Recently, a paper was published by Abbot and Morahasy (2017) - see specifically Fig. 2. The thesis of the paper is to train an artificial neural network (ANN) on the temperature time series for pre-...
4
votes
1answer
109 views
Cooling film area to undo global warming
It is estimated that only 100 square miles of solar panels could completely satisfy the United States demand for energy.
This got me thinking: A cooling film developed at UC Boulder claims it can ...
8
votes
2answers
96 views
Is the impact of carbon emision dependent on the location on the earth?
While I was reading how the EU taxes aviation companies based on carbon emissions it occurred to me that the effect of carbon emissions on global temperature etc. may depend on where the carbon is ...
0
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1answer
142 views
Is the Mauna Loa CO$_\mathsf{2}$ record affected by the nearby mantle plume?
How is it possible that Mauna Loa Observatory is the International Reference Observatory for CO2 Global Measurements if it is placed above the most important earth thermal plume that is heating the ...
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vote
1answer
79 views
Are Earth´s interannual global climate variations affected by other bodies in the solar system and their evolution?
Are fluctuations like El Niño and La Niña entirely independent of outside influences such as the gravitational effects from other planets, variation in solar output, etc?
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1answer
75 views
Why has the average low for the hottest months in Clearwater Florida about 5 degrees higher than the historical average?
Look up Clearwater Florida on Wikipedia and it gives you the average low for the Months of July and August as being 74.2F. About 3-4 years ago I picked up running as a main hobby and the temperature ...
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0answers
43 views
How is OLR power of the atmosphere distributed with altitude?
The OLR (outgoing longwave radiation) from the top of the atmosphere to space is composed of radiative energy emitted by the atmosphere at all altitudes, as well as the surface.
How is the radiative ...
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3answers
5k views
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 ...
3
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1answer
224 views
Making sense of the math of climate change
Let me state upfront, I'm not arguing the existence of climate change, just trying to clarify my own understanding of something that doesn't make sense to me yet. With apologies for the layman's ...
0
votes
1answer
684 views
Hypothetically, would digging a big trench from the ocean and flooding desert areas be a bad solution to combatting sea level rise? [duplicate]
My question is basically the title. Ignoring most of the feasibility of the enormous engineering and earthmoving requirements (I guess I mean to say, given an unlimited budget) in very hot areas, ...
