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Climate Change Science

The Science Behind Climate Change – And Cultural Change

Human-caused climate change is real, it’s here, and scientists have been amassing data on its causes, consequences, and solutions for a long time. Here are some of the best resources to provide answers to all of your questions about climate change.

What We Know is a website created by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society, which was founded in 1848 and has members in 91 countries. The website explains the basics of anthropogenic climate change, the dangers if we fail to act, and how we can address the problem.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to review the science of climate change. The IPCC compiles and reviews scientific studies on climate change and creates reports with the findings.
Skeptical Science is a website that aims to “debunk climate misinformation by presenting peer-reviewed science and explaining the techniques of science denial.” The site is written and maintained by a global group of volunteer scientists. All original material published by the site undergoes an internal peer-review process, via shared drafts of blog posts and rebuttals for others to comment on or for collaboration in the writing.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration devotes a section of their website to the science of global warming, including evidence, causes, and effects of man-made climate change, as well as information on the scientific consensus of the problem. NASA’s site also offers a number of articles and blog posts, as well as information on solutions to the problem.

GIF courtesy of http://www.climate-lab-book.ac.uk

Killer Heat in the United States
The Union of Concerned Scientists published a report on the future of dangerously hot days in the United States and created this interactive website that allows you to search by city or county to see how many days of extreme heat your area could experience between now and the year 21oo.

U.S. Climate Resilience Tool Kit

This website is run by the US Global Change Research Program and lets you “explore interactive graphs and compare time-series maps showing climate projections and observations for any county in the contiguous United States.”

Show Your Stripes
These ‘warming stripe’ graphics were created by climate scientist Ed Hawkins to visually represent the change in temperature by state or country over the past 100+ years. Each stripe represents the temperature in that area averaged over a year. For most countries, the stripes start in the year 1901 and finish in 2020.

Climate Impact Lab
Climate Impact Lab, which is run by experts from the U.C. Berkeley, the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago (EPIC), Rhodium Group, and Rutgers University, offers a Climate Impact Map that allows you to see a visual heat map of the United States or world as it could look in the next 20 years, by mid-century, and by the end of the century based on different emissions scenarios. The site also publishes working papers on climate change.

Climate Central
If you live near a coastline, Climate Central’s Surging Seas interactive tool can help you search by city, state, or zip code to track the risk of flooding in your area. The site also offers an amazing library of articles, videos, and graphics on climate change.

Regional Information

  1. https://phys.org/news/2021-03-northern-hemisphere-summers-year.html
  2. www.Showyourstripes.info
  3. https://toolkit.climate.gov/#climate-explorer
  4. www.Climatecentral.org

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Vancouver at 3-foot sea level rise, via Climate Central

And we can do something about it: https://climatesteps.org/2020/01/01/we-have-the-power-now/.

Behavior Change Science

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