You are browsing the archive for Climate Archives - Page 5 of 7 - The Bridge: Connecting Science and Policy.
June 12, 2014
New research questions emerge from Arctic melting
By Alexandra Branscombe Originally posted on AGU GeoSpace WASHINGTON, DC – What is hidden within and beneath Arctic ice? Why does winter matter? What is being irretrievably lost as the Arctic changes? These are just some of the emerging questions that scientists are being challenged to answer about the rapidly changing Arctic in a new report, “The Arctic in the Anthropocene: Emerging Research Questions,” released last month by the National …
June 9, 2014
WICCI and the Science / Policy Conversation
By Dan Vimont, co-chair, Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICC) I am a climate scientist who has spent my career understanding the physics of the climate system, and the impacts of climate variability and climate change. I am a co-chair of the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts (WICCI), an effort to understand and prepare for the impacts of climate change that now includes over 200 individuals around Wisconsin. …
June 4, 2014
Risky Business Brings New Message—and Messengers—to Climate Debate
By Kate Gordon, Executive Director, Risky Business Despite massive scientific evidence that climate change will have significant effects on the American economy, the business and finance world is still largely turning a blind eye to climate risk. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, and Farallon Capital founder Tom Steyer started the Risky Business initiative to change this dynamic and create a new shared understanding …
May 14, 2014
4 maps on America’s climate and energy outlook: 2 that will worry you, 2 that will give you hope
Originally posted on the Opower blog On Tuesday, the White House released the most authoritative scientific report ever written about the current and future consequences of climate change in the United States. The findings of the report, known as the National Climate Assessment (NCA), are striking. Average temperatures in the United States have increased by 1.3 to 1.9°F since 1895, and most of that warming has occurred in the last …
May 12, 2014
As West Antarctica melts, the urgency for climate change adaptation rises
By Lexi Shultz, Director of Public Affairs at the American Geophysical Union and Kat Compton, Public Affairs Intern As if the recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the National Climate Assessment (NCA) weren’t enough of a reminder of the ways in which human actions are changing our planet, new research published in the current edition of Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) presents evidence that part of …
May 9, 2014
Tornadoes and Climate Change: Challenges in Interpreting the Record and Looking Forward
By Harold E. Brooks, Senior Research Scientist, NOAA/National Severe Storms Laboratory With the release of the new National Climate Assessment, the scientific community has put forward our best understanding of the changes that have occurred and are expected to occur as the planet continues to warm. Noticeably, little is said about tornadoes in this document. There’s good reason for this absence. Despite a wide variety of speculation in the online …
May 8, 2014
Science Confirms (Again) What Cities Already Know: Climate Change is Happening Now
By Carolyn Berndt, Program Director for Sustainability, National League of Cities Originally posted on CitiesSpeak.org The continuing drought in the west and wildfires burning in the plains are real world examples—happening right now—of what scientists say is evidence of climate change. Remember the floods in Colorado last year and Hurricane Sandy the year before? Those too are indicative of the kinds of extreme weather events the U.S. will face in …
May 6, 2014
The Climate Conversation Needs Your Voice
By Lexi Shultz, Director of Public Affairs at the American Geophysical Union Today, the White House released the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s (USGCRP) third National Climate Assessment (NCA). This report, coming in at 1,300 pages and written by more than 300 authors (many of whom are American Geophysical Union members) is an impressive accounting of the many current and future effects of climate change across the country. The NCA …
April 4, 2014
Cutting back on refrigerants could drop greenhouse gas emissions
By Alexandra Branscombe Originally posted on AGU GeoSpace WASHINGTON, DC – Phasing down powerful climate-damaging greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air conditioners could prevent the equivalent of up to three years of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions from being released into the atmosphere, according to a new study. Research accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, calculates the environmental impact of phasing down …
February 10, 2014
Citizen-Scientists Find a Receptive Climate in Congress
Residing in a state that is about as blue as they come, I had reservations that participating in AGU’s Climate Science Day to visit offices of my Massachusetts congressional delegation would involve little more than preaching to the choir. Although that was mostly true, the staffers we met did sincerely seem to appreciate the visit. Still more rewarding for me, I was paired with a New Hampshire scientist and got to tag along on his visits to a mixed delegation. Well, it is mixed in terms of political parties, but, curiously, all four of NH’s senators and representatives are women. What’s that got to do with climate change science?
