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New report: Climate change not slowing down
While negotiations on a congressional clean energy and climate bill have stalled, climate change is continuing to heat up.
Scientists from around the world have found even more evidence that point to global warming as an undeniable fact. The annual State of the Climate report, prepared by more than 300 scientists in 48 countries, has found that the past decade has been the warmest on record.
While the report does not specify a cause for global warming, it demonstrates a trend, beginning in the 1980s, of amplifying temperatures. When the 1980s were analyzed, the period was the warmest decade on record, but each year in the 1990s was warmer than the ’80s average. And now, each year in the 2000s has been warmer than the ’90s average.
The report, prepared by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, measured 10 factors and found 7 to be increasing, while three are declining. Average air temperature, the ratio of water vapor to air, ocean heat content, sea surface temperature, sea level, air temperature over the ocean and air temperature over land were found to be rising over the past decade, while snow cover, glaciers and sea ice were discovered to be declining.
Peter Thorn of the Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites, who helped develop the list, told the Associated Press the factors were chosen "because they were the most obviously related indicators of global temperature."
Furthermore, the data is not surprising, nor revolutionary. Instead, Thorne explained it is bolstering previous knowledge. "It is screaming that the world is warming," he told the source.
Scientists in Greenland are hoping that ice core samples from the Eemian period, 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, could help them better predict the impacts of global warming, the Associated Press reports. Specifically, they will help scientists forecast the speed and final height of sea level rise.
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