Climate change: causes, impacts, and mitigation strategies

¶ … Climate Extremes: Observations, Modeling and Impacts by Easterling et al. (2000) has the central thesis that modeling shows extreme weather events will increase for future weather events. The authors predict "increases in extreme high temperatures, decreases in extreme low temperatures and increases in intense precipitation events."

The argument for the thesis is that multiple studies have been conducted, noting a number of different changes to the climate. Models have been created, and these models show further changes in the future. Other studies conducted have noted changes to wild plants, animals and other biological changes as the result of these changes in weather patterns. Human society will also be changed. The data comes from other studies, as this is something of a meta-analysis of the issue of climate change. The authors note observed temperature changes and trends, and an increase in extreme precipitation events, along with flooding. The authors also looked at studies showing an increase in droughts, no change in Atlantic hurricanes and but an increase in Pacific typhoons. The authors also note that most climate models have outputs consistent with what can intuitively be inferred about climate events going forward, based on the current trends. The authors take this aggregated information and then discuss some of the impacts it will have, including societal impacts and impacts on natural systems.

This article is not a study in itself, but an aggregation of information from dozens of other studies. The authors are seeking to put climate change in context both for humans and for natural systems, by explaining the preponderance of data that supports not only climate change, but the result of modeling about the future effects of climate change as well. I do not have any questions about this article in particular, other than to note that it is from 2000, which leads to the question of why nothing has been done, and whether these findings continue to hold true today (my suspicion is that they will).

The second article is Recent rapid regional climate warming on the Antarctic Peninsula, by Vaughan et al. (2003). The author notes that aggregate numbers on global warming conceal the reality that warming is not evenly distributed -- there is abnormal warming at the poles, including the Antarctica Peninsula. The authors note that "climate proxies appear to show that RRR warming on the Antarctica Peninsula is unprecedented over the last two millennia." The authors note two things -- one, that they are using a proxy because they do not have data spanning 2000 years in this region, anecdotal or otherwise, and that they cannot pinpoint a cause for this warming.

The thesis, therefore, is actually quite simple: The Antarctic Peninsula is experiencing warming faster than other parts of Antarctica and faster than the global mean. They present their proxy evidence in support of this hypothesis. They also are cautious about drawing conclusions as to the cause of the warming that they found -- they do not have a mechanism by which they can attribute causation.