to support Skeptical Science
iPhone app Download	Android app Download
Nokia app Download

	It's the sun
	Climate's changed before
	There is no consensus
	It's cooling
	Models are unreliable
	Temp record is unreliable
	It hasn't warmed since 1998
	Ice age predicted in the 70s
	We're heading into an ice age
	Antarctica is gaining ice
	View All Arguments...

Latest Posts

• Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argument
• Carbon dioxide equivalents
• How we know an ice age isn't just around the corner
• Urban Heat Islands: serious problem or holiday destination for skeptics?
• The surprising result when you compare bad weather stations to good stations
• The empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming
• Sea level rise: the broader picture
• Human CO2: Peddling Myths About The Carbon Cycle
• Why we can trust the surface temperature record
• Ocean acidification threatens entire marine food chains
• Comparing volcanic CO2 to human CO2
• Can humans affect global climate?
• Climate Models: Learning From History Rather Than Repeating It
• Arctic sea ice... take 2
• Hansen etal hit a Climate Home Run -- in 1981
• Station drop-off: How many thermometers do you need to take a temperature?
• Arctic Sea Ice: Why Do Skeptics Think in Only Two Dimensions?
• Pakistan flood: many more will die unless more aid is delivered quickly
• Medieval Warm Period: rhetoric vs science
• Weather vs Climate: Watch the waves, miss the turning of the tides
• University of Western Australia Open Day 2010
• The main culprit in mid-century cooling
• Dust-Up On Mars: Should Martians Be Sceptical of Global Warming?
• What caused early 20th Century warming?
• The Oregon Petition: How Many Scientists Does It Take To Change A Consensus?
• How climate skeptics misunderstand past climate change
• 1934: the 47th hottest year on record
• The Strange Case of Albert Gore, Inconvenient Truths and a Man in a Powdered Wig
• What were climate scientists predicting in the 1970s?
• Can't We At Least Agree That There Is No Consensus?

Archives

Evidence for global warming

What the science says...

The evidence for global warming is being meticulously accumulated by scientists all over the world. This evidence includes the following independent observations that paint a consistent picture of global warming:

• Our planet is suffering an energy imbalance and is steadily accumulating heat (Hansen 2005, Murphy 2009, von Schuckmann 2009, Trenberth 2009)
• The height of the tropopause is increasing (Santer 2003, press release)
• Jet streams are moving poleward (Archer 2008, Seidel 2007, Fu 2006)
• The tropical belt is widening (Seidel 2007, Fu 2006)
• There is an increasing trend in record hot days versus record cold temperatures with currently twice as many record hot days than record cold temperatures (Meehle 2009, see press release).
• A shift towards earlier seasons (Stine 2009)
• Cooling and contraction of the upper atmosphere consistent with predicted effects of increasing greenhouse gases (Lastovicka 2008)

Ice Melt

• Arctic permafrost is warming at greater depths (Walsh 2009) and degrading (IPCC AR4, section 4.7.2.3)
• Global sea level rise is accelerating (Church 2006)
• Antarctic ice loss is accelerating (Velicogna 2009), even from East Antarctica which was previously thought to be too stable to lose ice mass (Chen 2009)
• Greenland ice loss is accelerating (Velicogna 2009, van den Broeke et al 2009)
• Glaciers are shrinking globally at an accelerating rate (WGMS 2008)
• Arctic sea-ice loss is accelerating with the loss rate exceeding model forecasts by around a factor of 3 (Stroeve 2007).
• Lake and river ice cover throughout the Northern Hemisphere are freezing later and breaking up earlier (Magnuson 2000, Hodgkins 2005)

Biological changes

• Animal and plant species are responding to earlier springs. Eg - earlier frog breeding, bird nesting, earlier flowering, earlier migration of birds and butterflies (Parmesan 2003)
• The distribution of tree lines, plants, birds, mammals, insects, fish, reptiles, marine invertebrates are shifting towards the poles (Parmesan 2003)
• Earlier emergence of Melbourne butterflies (Kearney 2010)
• Changes to physical and biological systems across the globe are consistent with warming temperatures (Rosenzweig 2008)
• Distribution of plants are shifting to higher elevations (Lenoir 2008)
• UK Flowers blooming earlier now than any time in last 250 years  (Amano 2010)
• Earlier emergence of Melbourne butterfly: 1.6 days per decade (Kearney 2010).
• Decline in lizard populations (Sinervo 2010)
• Drop in primary productivity due to unprecedented warming at Lake Tanganyika (Tierney 2010)
  

Printable Version  |  Link to this page

Link to this page