• December 2014 – How scientists unraveled the El Niño mystery
• December 2014 – New Research on Tree Rings as Indicators of Past Climate
• December 2014 – Global Temperature A Century Ago Vs. Today
• 01–15 Lots of new climate change science stuff
• 01–22 Global warming’s effects are coming on faster than previously thought.
• 01–26 The Great Blizzard of 2015: Fair to say it is AGW amplified.
• 01–28 What happened to the Blizzard of 2015?
• 02–23 Global Warming Changing Weather in the US Northeast
• 02–26New Research Suggests Global Warming Is About To Heat Up
• 03–01 New Research Demonstrates Link Between Greenhouse Gas Pollution and Global Warming
• 03–03 The Hydraulic Hypothesis and the End of Civilization
• 03–12 New Study On How Global Warming Changes The Weather
• 03–23 Drought in California and Climate Change: They are linked
• 03–23 New Research Shows Exceptional Slowdown In Major Atlantic Ocean Currents (UPDATED)
• 03–26 Antarctic Ice Shelves Melting at Accelerating Rate
• 03–30 Pine Beetle-Caused Forest Death, And Climate Change
• 03–31 How Sea Floor Ecosystems Are Damaged By, And Recover From, Abrupt Climate Change
• 03–31 With Global Warming, Will Cold Outbreaks Be Less Common?
• 04–20 An Improved Classification And Explanation For El Nino (New Research)
• 04–24 Comparing models and empirical estimates of noise in the climate system
• 04–29 Comparing models and empirical estimates Part II: interview with Brown
• 05–14 A Global Warming Expectation Confirmed: Upper Troposphere Warming
• 05–15 Seepage: Climate change denial and its effect on the scientific community
• 05–21 New Research: Antarctic Glaciers Destabilized
• 05–21 The risk of hot and cold weather
• 05–22 California Drought Caused By Climate Change
• 05–26 Heat And Death In India: Global Warming’s Direct Effect
• 06–02 Bad Climate Science Debunked
• 06–03 Does global warming destroy your house in a flood?
• 06–04 New Research On Global Warming Hiatus
• 06–07 What does “Global Warming” mean?
• 07–07 Global Warming: Earth, Wind, Fire, and Ice
• 07–27 Catastrophic Sea Level Rise: More and sooner
• 08–04 The alleged hiatus in global warming didn’t happen, new research shows.
• 08–14 Update on climate models and heat waves
• 08–25 Scientific Consensus On Climate Change
• 09–01 Anthropogenic Global Warming Causes Significant Changes in Climate Zones
• 09–02 The outlook for Hawaiian coral is bleak
• 09–18 Once Again, The #FauxPause Is Killed By Actual Research
• 10–05 Arctic Sea Ice in 2015
• 10–08 NOAA declares third ever global coral bleaching event
• 11–1- Rates Of Climate Change Potentially Very High
• 11–03 Evidence of high climate sensitivity
• 11–03 NASA Study of Antarctic Ice Melt Misunderstood
• 11–16 NASA Reports Astonishing Uptick In Surface Temperature
• 11–17 Yet another way climate change will affect birds
• 11–18 New Antarctic Glacial Melt Study Slightly Increases IPCC Rate Estimate
• 11–22 Antarctic Ice Sheet Deterioration Study Left Out Important Factors
• 11–22 Antarctic Ice Sheet Deterioration Study Left Out Important Factors
• 11–25 WMO: 2011–2015 is the warmest five year period on record
• 11–26 Global Warming Did Not Pause
• 11–30 Matt Ridley and Benny Peiser’s Misleading Guide to the Climate Debate
• 12–02 Global Warming Could Make Peat Bogs Less Of A Carbon Sink
• 12–04 Incredibly important finding on renewable energy
• 12–15 Antarctic Ice Melting: Tamsin Edwards Responds to Richard Alley
• 12–15 Antarctic Ice Melting: Tamsin Edwards Responds to Richard Alley

Homo naledi and the Chamber of Secrets ~ Psychology’s Inner Demons ~ Chilesaurus: The One That Went Vegan ~ Neurons Alter DNA All Day, Every Day

Popular science fans may recognize some of these colorful titles from the most recent publication of Discover Magazine’s 100 Top Stories of 2015. We at Atheists Talk enjoy a good science-ing now and then, and this Sunday we’re going to talk about some of the stories shared by Discover. It’s going to be a science smorgasboard extravaganza! Join Brianne Bilyeu, August Berkshire and Maddy Love as they nerd out about the science of 2015.

Listen to the Atheist Talk Radio podcast here:

Atheist Talk Radio is a great weekly radio show that covers a wide range of topics, and often, science. However, it costs money to put the podcast on. Consider donating.

South Carolina Floods

I haven’t said much about this partly because there is so much good coverage, but South Carolina’s floods, still ongoing, are going to get on the list of worst weather events of 2015. Since these floods are amounting to a one in 1,000 year event, they are actually on the list of worst weather events since Vladimir the Great died, Cnut the Great invaded Enlgand (unrelated event), Eric Haakonsson outlaws berzerkers in Norway, and Olaf Haraldson declared himself King of Norway.

And yes, that event was climate change enhanced in at least two ways, maybe three. With global warming there is more moisture in the atmosphere and in large parts of North America it seems that this moisture is often clumped up into longer term slow moving rain systems. That was going on in the region for days. Then, the strength, size, and wetness of hurricane Joaquin, which indirectly fed moisture into the system, was enhanced by very high sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic. Also, those sea surface temperatures have generally increased the punch from Atlantic based storms. All in all, it is likely that South Carolina, the neighbor of the state that is famous for making climate change illegal, and who’s congressional delegation refused to help the victims of Super Storm Sandy, got walloped by climate change.

Fortunately for the good people of South Carolina, our federal government does not act cynically and help is on the way. But next time we are called to help a storm impacted region, we expect South Carolina to put their big kid pants on and step up to the plate.

Oh No, Oho!

The storm formerly known as Oho, a Category 2 eastern Pacific hurricane, is in the process of doing something that does not happen very often: Slamming into British Columbia and Alaska. I’m told this is only the second time a tropical storm, in a post-tropical state, has followed a track like this.

Probably not a big deal for a region where serious windy and wet storms are common. But this is yet another case of the tropics breaking out of their usual pattern as a result, likely, of climate change combined with this year’s ongoing El Nino. Certainly, warm sea surface temperatures (which are everywhere there is sea) have helped this system maintain strength as it has moved north.

Here in Minnesota, famous for winters that start in October, we will be experiencing a summer like weekend. Global warming plus El Nino has exacerbated an ongoing trend of warming falls. Too bad some of our garden plants respond more to changes in sunlight than to changes in temperature, or we might not be eating fried green tomatoes for dinner tonight.

More hurricanes to come?

Meanwhile keep an eye on the Eastern Pacific. Two more disturbances are developing with reasonable (though not certain) chances of becoming tropical storms. 18-E is very likely to become a hurricane by early Sunday morning, and if so it will be called Pali. Disturbance Number 1, just getting going, has about a 50% chance of becoming a tropical storm over the next five days. All quiet in the Atlantic, the rest of the Pacific, or the Indian Ocean.

In case you were wondering about the climate change – hurricane link, this might be of interest to you:

Regardless of what El Nino (ENSO) does, 2015 will be a warm year. Why? Because everything is warm and getting warmer and even if 2015 is less warm than 2014, it will be warm. There is no other possibility.

Even without the effects of El Nino, though, it is possible that 2015 will be warmer than 2014 because we see a lot of heat out there. If the present, relatively weak El Nino continues for a while, it will likely increase the chance that 2015 will be warmer than 2014. But current predictions suggest that 2014 will not only continue to have a strengthening El Nino, but El Nino conditions may either continue or repeat over 2015 and beyond. If that happens, not only is 2015 likely to be the warmest year in the instrumental record (since 1880) but 2016 may be in the running to be even warmer.

So far each month of 2015 has been very warm (see graph above) overall (the “zero” on the Y-axis of that graph represents the 20th century mean surface temperature). This month, April, is not excessively warm. Likely when April is plotted for 2015 on this graph, it will be either cooler then or around the same as last April.

Obviously we won’t know until the year is over, and given that climate change is a medium term phenomenon best measured in decades, we shouldn’t be in such a hurry to know these numbers. But, given that climate change is the existential issue of our day and the data become available month by month, we are not going to ignore the march of surface temperatures. We are going to, rather justifiably, be interested in what happens, month by month, as it happens.

At the end of the month, climate scientists such as my friend John Abraham, who is tracking global temperatures daily, will be able to produce a very good estimate of what the major data bases (such as NASA GISS, used here) will say, but those data bases won’t be officially updated until around the middle of the following month or so. So stay tuned.

Added: For those keeping track, I made a new version of the above graph. The red line represent the monthly anomaly values required (on average) for the rest of the year for 2015 to equal 2014. I also extended the Y-axis to 100 because the warmest month in the GISS database is in the 90s, just in case such a very warm month occurs. It is likely that April 2015 will not e as warm as April 2014 but it will likely be above the red line.