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The article presents a study which focuses on the use of polar-focused approach to solar radiation management (SRM) to limit the pace of climatic changes in high latitudes. The study used the CAM3.1 atmospheric model coupled to a slab ocean from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The study shows that green house gas emission is sufficient to limit the warming influence of greenhouse gas concentrations and polar reductions in solar radiation.

Phenology is experiencing dramatic changes over deciduous forests in the US. Estimates of trends in phenology on the continental scale are uncertain, however, with studies failing to agree on both the magnitude and spatial distribution of trends in spring and autumn. This is due to the sparsity of in situ records, uncertainties associated with remote sensing data, and the regional focus of many studies. It has been suggested that reported trends are a result of recent temperature changes, though multiple processes are thought to be involved and the nature of the temperature forcing remains unknown. To date, no study has directly attributed long-term phenological trends to individual forcings across the US through integrating observations with models. Here, we construct an extensive database of ground measurements of phenological events across the US, and use it to calibrate and evaluate a suite of phenology models. The models use variations of the accumulative temperature summation, with additional chilling requirements for spring phenology and photoperiod limitation for autumn. Including a chilling requirement or photoperiod limitation does not improve model performance, suggesting that temperature change, especially in spring and autumn, is the dominant driver of the observed trend during the past 3 decades. Our results show that phenological trends are not uniform over the contiguous US, with a significant advance of 0.34 day yr-1 for the spring budburst in the East, a delay of 0.15 day yr-1 for the autumn dormancy onset in the Northeast and West, but no evidence of change elsewhere. Relative to the 1980s, the growing season in the 2000s is extended by about 1 week (3-4%) in the East, New England, and the upper Rocky Mountains forests. These results help reconcile conflicting reports of phenological trends in the literature, and directly attribute observed trends to long-term changes in temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In March 2001, President G.W. Bush announced that the United States had abandoned the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. This paper describes the historical background as well as the political reasons and mechanisms behind the Bush administration's decision. Moreover, it deals with two alternative policy proposals, which have emerged at the US federal and the state level since then. The paper then highlights some important differences between EU and US climate change policies. The most important difference is that the EU wants global warming mitigation and the US, if necessary at all, is emphasizing the need to adapt to climate change. The paper concludes by suggesting that if a post-Kyoto treaty wants to bring the US back on board it will need to address this difference. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Techniques for testing the null hypothesis of difference stationarity against stationarity around some deterministic function have received much attention. In particular, unit root tests where the alternative is stationarity around a smooth transition in a linear trend have recently been proposed to permit the possibility of non-instantaneous structural change. In this paper we develop tests extending such an approach in order to admit more than one structural change. The analysis is motivated by time series that appear to undergo two smooth transitions in the linear trend, and the application of the new tests to two such series (average global temperature and US consumer prices) highlights the benefits of this double transition extension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urgent emission reduction and community adaptation efforts are necessary to avert catastrophic climate-change harms. To assess our nation's progress toward such efforts, this Article develops a comprehensive structural analysis of U.S. climate policy at the federal, state, and local levels. It observes that current climate policies reflect disparate federal, state, and local strategies around emissions regulation, emission reduction subsidies, adaptation, and liability approaches. The Article then analyzes the dynamics between federal, state, and local strategies in these policy areas. This examination leads to some surprising conclusions. Under current policy alignments, further emission regulation measures do not appear to be realistic policy options. Though such regulatory measures have long been considered the most efficient climate interventions, this analysis suggests they have little near-term prospect for further deployment. Rather, current dynamics among the states and federal government indicate that previously second- and third-choice policies, like subsidies and liability measures, have greater potential for expansion. Thus, these less-favored policy approaches may represent the best hopes for pressing emission reduction efforts. Further, the analysis suggests that while most climate adaptation policy is implemented at the local level, federal adaptation policies require the more immediate attention. Because federal adaptation policies reflect a deferential funding strategy, where the federal government attempts to match support with state and local policy preferences, altering federal programs to better recognize state and local choices will enhance adaptation efforts at all levels of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Mass media in the U.S. continue to suggest that scientific consensus estimates of global climate disruption, such as those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), are “exaggerated” and overly pessimistic. By contrast, work on the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge (ASC) suggests that such consensus assessments are likely to understate climate disruptions. This paper offers an initial test of the competing expectations, making use of the tendency for science to be self-correcting, over time. Rather than relying in any way on the IPCC process, the paper draws evidence about emerging science from four newspapers that have been found in past work to be biased against reporting IPCC findings, consistently reporting instead that scientific findings are “in dispute.” The analysis considers two time periods — one during the time when the papers were found to be overstating challenges to then-prevailing scientific consensus, and the other focusing on 2008, after the IPCC and former Vice-President Gore shared the Nobel Prize for their work on climate disruption, and before opinion polls showed the U.S. public to be growing more skeptical toward climate science once again. During both periods, new scientific findings were more than twenty times as likely to support the ASC perspective than the usual framing of the issue in the U.S. mass media. The findings indicate that supposed challenges to the scientific consensus on global warming need to be subjected to greater scrutiny, as well as showing that, if reporters wish to discuss “both sides” of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate “other side” is that, if anything, global climate disruption may prove to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uncertainties in observed records of atmospheric temperature aloft remain poorly quantified. This has resulted in considerable controversy regarding signals of climate change over recent decades from temperature records of radiosondes and satellites. This work revisits the problems associated with the removal of inhomogeneities from the historical radiosonde temperature records, and provides a method for quantifying uncertainty in an adjusted radiosonde climate record due to the subjective choices made during the data homogenization. This paper presents an automated homogenization method designed to replicate the decisions made by manual judgment in the generation of an earlier radiosonde dataset [i.e., the Hadley Centre radiosonde temperature dataset (HadAT)]. A number of validation experiments have been conducted to test the system performance and impact on linear trends. Using climate model data to simulate biased radiosonde data, the authors show that limitations in the homogenization method are sufficiently large to explain much of the tropical trend discrepancy between HadAT and estimates from satellite platforms and climate models. This situation arises from the combination of systematic (unknown magnitude) and random uncertainties (of order 0.05 K decade-1) in the radiosonde data. Previous assessment of trends and uncertainty in HadAT is likely to have underestimated the systematic bias in tropical mean temperature trends. This objective assessment of radiosonde homogenization supports the conclusions of the synthesis report of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP), and associated research, regarding potential bias in tropospheric temperature records from radiosondes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – comprised of top climate scientists from around the globe – has reached consensus that human activities have contributed significantly to global climate change. However, over time, the United States has refused to join concerted international efforts – such as the Kyoto Protocol – to curb human activities contributing to climate change. US newspaper and television media constitute key influences among a set of complex dynamics shaping information dissemination in this politicized environment. Mass-media coverage of climate change is not simply a random amalgam of newspaper articles and television segments; rather, it is a social relationship between scientists, policy actors and the public that is mediated by such news packages. This paper demonstrates that consistent adherence to interacting journalistic norms has contributed to impediments in the coverage of anthropogenic climate change science. Through analysis of US newspaper and television coverage of human contributions to climate change from 1988 through 2004, this paper finds that adherence to first-order journalistic norms – personalization, dramatization, and novelty – significantly influence the employment of second-order norms – authority-order and balance – and that this has led to informationally deficient mass-media coverage of this crucial issue. By critically scrutinizing US print and television media as a ‘public arena,’ we improve understanding of how journalistic activities have shaped interactions at the interface with climate science, policy and the public. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The Climate Forecast System (CFS), the fully coupled ocean–land–atmosphere dynamical seasonal prediction system, which became operational at NCEP in August 2004, is described and evaluated in this paper. The CFS provides important advances in operational seasonal prediction on a number of fronts. For the first time in the history of U.S. operational seasonal prediction, a dynamical modeling system has demonstrated a level of skill in forecasting U.S. surface temperature and precipitation that is comparable to the skill of the statistical methods used by the NCEP Climate Prediction Center (CPC). This represents a significant improvement over the previous dynamical modeling system used at NCEP. Furthermore, the skill provided by the CFS spatially and temporally complements the skill provided by the statistical tools. The availability of a dynamical modeling tool with demonstrated skill should result in overall improvement in the operational seasonal forecasts produced by CPC. The atmospheric component of the CFS is a lower-resolution version of the Global Forecast System (GFS) that was the operational global weather prediction model at NCEP during 2003. The ocean component is the GFDL Modular Ocean Model version 3 (MOM3). There are several important improvements inherent in the new CFS relative to the previous dynamical forecast system. These include (i) the atmosphere–ocean coupling spans almost all of the globe (as opposed to the tropical Pacific only); (ii) the CFS is a fully coupled modeling system with no flux correction (as opposed to the previous uncoupled “tier-2” system, which employed multiple bias and flux corrections); and (iii) a set of fully coupled retrospective forecasts covering a 24-yr period (1981–2004), with 15 forecasts per calendar month out to nine months into the future, have been produced with the CFS. These 24 years of fully coupled retrospective forecasts are of paramount importance to the proper calibration (bias correction) of subsequent operational seasonal forecasts. They provide a meaningful a priori estimate of model skill that is critical in determining the utility of the real-time dynamical forecast in the operational framework. The retrospective dataset also provides a wealth of information for researchers to study interactive atmosphere–land–ocean processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change was a federally coordinated nationwide effort that involved thousands of experts and stakeholders. To draw lessons from this effort, the 10 authors of this paper, half of whom were not involved in the Assessment, developed and administered an extensive survey, prepared a series of working papers, and conducted an invitational workshop in Washington, DC, on April 29, 2004. Considering all these sources, the authors conclude that the Assessment was largely successful in implementing its basic design of distributed stakeholder involvement and in achieving its basic objectives. Future assessments could be significantly improved if greater attention were devoted to developing a collective understanding of objectives, preparing guidance materials and providing training for assessment participants, developing a budgeting mechanism which would allow greater freedom in allocating resources across various assessment activities, and creating an environment in which assessments were part of an ongoing process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract As carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases accumulate in the atmosphere and contribute to rising global temperatures, it is important to examine how derivative changes in climate may affect natural and managed ecosystems. In this series of papers, we study the impacts of climate change on agriculture, water resources and natural ecosystems in the conterminous United States using twelve scenarios derived from General Circulation Model (GCM) projections to drive biophysical impact models. These scenarios are described in this paper. The scenarios are first put into the context of recent work on climate-change by the IPCC for the 21st century and span two levels of global-mean temperature change and three sets of spatial patterns of change derived from GCM results. In addition, the effect of either the presence or absence of a CO2 fertilization effect on vegetation is examined by using two levels of atmospheric CO2 concentration as a proxy variable. Results from three GCM experiments were used to produce different regional patterns of climate change. The three regional patterns for the conterminous United States range from: an increase in temperature above the global-mean level along with a significant decline in precipitation; temperature increases in line with the global-mean with an average increase in precipitation; and, with a sulfate aerosol effect added to in the same model, temperature increases that are lower than the global-mean. The resulting set of scenarios span a wide range of potential climate changes and allows examination of the relative importance of global-mean temperature change, regional climate patterns, aerosol cooling, and CO2 fertilization effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Global temperature rise over the long term will be proportional to the total amount of CO2 emitted. Any given probability of exceeding a targeted maximum temperature rise implies a maximum limit on the cumulative total of CO2 that can be emitted: a CO2 “budget”. This paper describes an approach to modelling cumulative emissions from light and heavy duty road transport from the present to 2050, focussing on the USA and Europe, and comparing the potential impacts of a range of technological and behaviourally-based abatement measures with such cumulative emissions budgets. The model shows that abatement measures would have a lower effect on cumulative emissions from 2000 to 2050 than on annual emissions in 2050, so that focussing only on annual emissions could be misleading. It shows that technological developments would be insufficient on their own to enable Europe and the USA to meet CO2 budgets for road transport. Behavioural changes, which potentially can be implemented much sooner, would be essential too. There is potential to keep European light duty emissions very close to CO2 budgets, and US light duty emissions not far above the least restrictive budget, but the model predicts that heavy duty emissions in both regions are likely to exceed their CO2 budgets. Deeper emissions reductions in other regions and sectors will be needed to compensate for this. Timing would be critical: for the greatest impact, behaviour change policies and interventions would need to be applied early and deeply. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

As in many parts of the world, climate variability has a strong impact on infectious diseases within the southwestern USA. Moisture and temperature conditions can either indirectly impact disease by providing an environment conducive to the growth of an animal host or reservoir, or directly through the survival and dispersal of an infectious agent. It is also expected that climate change will affect the number of cases and/or the spatial distribution of infectious diseases. Before the effects of climate change on diseases can be determined, an understanding of the basic relationship between incidence and climate variability should be established. A review of climate impacts on four infectious diseases (hantavirus, plague, dengue and coccidioidomycosis) currently found in southwestern USA (or potentially found in the southwest in the case of dengue) is followed by suggested future research to further understand the relationship between climate variability/change and disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate how the mortality effects of temperature vary across U.S. climate regions to assess local and national damages from projected climate change. Using 22 years of Medicare data, we find that both cold and hot days increase mortality. However, hot days are less deadly in warm places while cold days are less deadly in cool places. Incorporating this heterogeneity into end-of-century climate change assessments reverses the conventional wisdom on climate damage incidence: cold places bear more, not less, of the mortality burden. Allowing places to adapt to their future climate substantially reduces the estimated mortality effects of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars and journalists alike interpreted “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change”, a document released in 2008 by a group of American Southern Baptists, as evidence that American evangelicals were becoming increasingly concerned about the environment. Using the tools of textual analysis, I show that this was not the only interpretation of the document at play. While journalists and scholars understood the Declaration as addressing the need to halt climate change, for a group of key Southern Baptist signatories, the document expressed a need for Southern Baptists to engage more actively in the public environmental discourse, lest they relinquish this domain to secular and liberal voices. Critically, the latter group viewed the Declaration as compatible with climate scepticism. My analysis shows how cultural context informs climate change attitudes, while also suggesting socio-historical factors—particularly evangelicals’ embattled mentality—that may support climate change scepticism in Southern Baptist circles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Changes in extreme temperatures, heat waves, and heavy rainfall events have adverse effects on human health, air quality, and water resources. With aerosol-only (AER) and greenhouse gas-only (GHG) simulations from 1860 to 2005 in the GFDL CM3 chemistry-climate model, aerosol-induced versus greenhouse gas-induced changes in temperature (summer) and precipitation (all seasons) extremes over the United States are investigated. Small changes in these extremes in the all forcing simulations reflect cancellations between the effects of increasing anthropogenic aerosols and greenhouse gases. In AER, extreme high temperatures and the number of days with temperatures above the 90th percentile decline over most of the United States. The strongest response occurs in the western United States (−2.0°C and −14 days, regionally averaged) and the weakest response occurs in the southeastern United States (−0.6°C and −4.8 days). An opposite-signed response pattern occurs in GHG (+2.3°C and +11.5 days over the western United States and +1.6°C and +7.2 days over the southeastern United States). The similar spatial response patterns in AER versus GHG suggest a preferred regional mode of response that is largely independent of the type of forcing. Extreme precipitation over the eastern United States decreases in AER, particularly in winter, and increases over the eastern and central United States in GHG, particularly in spring. Over the twenty-first century under the representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) emissions scenario, the patterns of extreme temperature and precipitation associated with greenhouse gas forcing dominate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the effect of urban air pollution on global temperature. Conduction of the research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Expectation of significant increase in urban air pollution; Use of global climate models to predict possible conditions; Information on the publication of the report.

This study aims to examine how future climate, temperature and precipitation specifically, are expected to change under the A2, A1B, and B1 emission scenarios over the six states that make up the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program (SCIPP): Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Mississippi. SCIPP is a member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments network, a program which aims to better connect climate-related scientific research with in-the-field decision-making processes. The results of the study found that the average temperature over the study area is anticipated to increase by 1.7°C to 2.4°C in the twenty-first century based on the different emission scenarios with a rate of change that is more pronounced during the second half of the century. Summer and fall seasons are projected to have more significant temperature increases, while the northwestern portions of the region are projected to experience more significant increases than the Gulf coast region. Precipitation projections, conversely, do not exhibit a discernible upward or downward trend. Late twenty-first century exhibits slightly more precipitation than the early century, based on the A1B and B1 scenario, and fall and winter are projected to become wetter than the late twentieth century as a whole. Climate changes on the city level show that greater warming will happened in inland cities such as Oklahoma City and El Paso, and heavier precipitation in Nashville. These changes have profound implications for local water resources management as well as broader regional decision making. These results represent an initial phase of a broader study that is being undertaken to assist SCIPP regional and local water planning efforts in an effort to more closely link climate modeling to longer-term water resources management and to continue assessing climate change impacts on regional hazards management in the South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present new sea-level reconstructions for the past 2100 y based on salt-marsh sedimentary sequences from the US Atlantic coast. The data from North Carolina reveal four phases of persistent sea-level change after correction for glacial isostatic adjustment. Sea level was stable from at least BC 100 until AD 950. Sea level then increased for 400 y at a rate of 0.6 mm/y, followed by a further period of stable, or slightly falling, sea level that persisted until the late 19th century. Since then, sea level has risen at an average rate of 2.1 mm/y, representing the steepest century-scale increase of the past two millennia. This rate was initiated between AD 1865 and 1892. Using an extended semiempirical modeling approach, we show that these sea-level changes are consistent with global temperature for at least the past millennium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A survey of 3,200 U.S. residents focused on two issues associated with the use of nuclear and coal fuels to produce electrical energy. The first was the association between risk beliefs and preferences for coal and nuclear energy. As expected, concern about nuclear power plant accidents led to decreased support for nuclear power, and those who believed that coal causes global warming preferred less coal use. Yet other risk beliefs about the coal and nuclear energy fuel cycles were stronger or equal correlates of public preferences. The second issue is the existence of what we call acknowledged risk takers, respondents who favored increased reliance on nuclear energy, although also noting that there could be a serious nuclear plant accident, and those who favored greater coal use, despite acknowledging a link to global warming. The pro-nuclear group disproportionately was affluent educated white males, and the pro-coal group was relatively poor less educated African-American and Latino females. Yet both shared four similarities: older age, trust in management, belief that the energy facilities help the local economy, and individualistic personal values. These findings show that there is no single public with regard to energy preferences and risk beliefs. Rather, there are multiple populations with different viewpoints that surely would benefit by hearing a clear and comprehensive national energy life cycle policy from the national government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many practical applications snow depth is known, but snow water equivalent (SWE) is needed as well. Measuring SWE takes ∼∼20 times as long as measuring depth, which in part is why depth measurements outnumber SWE measurements worldwide. Here a method of estimating snow bulk density is presented and then used to convert snow depth to SWE. The method is grounded in the fact that depth varies over a range that is many times greater than that of bulk density. Consequently, estimates derived from measured depths and modeled densities generally fall close to measured values of SWE. Knowledge of snow climate classes is used to improve the accuracy of the estimation procedure. A statistical model based on a Bayesian analysis of a set of 25 688 depth--density--SWE data collected in the United States, Canada, and Switzerland takes snow depth, day of the year, and the climate class of snow at a selected location from which it produces a local bulk density estimate. When converted to SWE and tested against two continental-scale datasets, 90%% of the computed SWE values fell within ±±8 cm of the measured values, with most estimates falling much closer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional climate model (RCM) simulations, driven by low and high climate-sensitivity coupled general circulation models (CGCMs) under various future emissions scenarios, were compared to projected changes in heat wave characteristics. The RCM downscaling reduces the CGCM biases in heat wave threshold temperature by a factor of 2, suggesting a higher credibility in the future projections. All of the RCM simulations suggest that there is a high probability of heat waves of unprecedented severity by the end of the twenty-first century if a high emissions path is followed. In particular, the annual 3-day heat wave temperature increases generally by 3°–8°C; the number of heat wave days increases by 30–60 day yr−1 over much of the western and southern United States with slightly smaller increases elsewhere; the variance spectra for intermediate, 3–7 days (prolonged, 7–14 days), temperature extremes increase (decrease) in the central (western) United States. If a lower emissions path is followed, then the outcomes range from quite small changes to substantial increases. In all cases, the mean temperature climatological shift is the dominant change in heat wave characteristics, suggesting that adaptation and acclimatization could reduce effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The climate response to increased CO2 concentration is generally studied using climate models that have finite spatial and temporal resolutions. Different parameterizations of the effect of unresolved processes can result in different representations of small-scale fluctuations in the climate model. The representation of small-scale fluctuations can, on the other hand, affect the modeled climate response. In this study the mechanisms by which enhanced small-scale fluctuations alter the climate response to CO2 doubling are investigated. Climate experiments with preindustrial and doubled CO2 concentrations obtained from a comprehensive climate model [ECHAM5/Max Planck Institute Ocean Model (MPI-OM)] are analyzed both with and without enhanced small-scale fluctuations. By applying a stochastic model to the experimental results, two different mechanisms are found. First, the small-scale fluctuations can change the statistical behavior of the global mean temperature as measured by its statistical damping. The statistical damping acts as a restoring force that determines, according to the fluctuation–dissipation theory, the amplitude of the climate response to a change in external forcing (here, CO2 doubling). Second, the small-scale fluctuations can affect processes that occur only in response to the CO2 increase, thereby altering the change of the effective forcing on the global mean temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lake level elevation of the Great Salt Lake (GSL), a large closed basin lake in the arid western United States, is characterized by a pronounced quasi-decadal oscillation (QDO). The variation of the GSL elevation is very coherent with the QDO of sea surface temperature anomalies in the tropical central Pacific (also known as the Pacific QDO). However, such coherence denies any direct association between the precipitation in the GSL watershed and the Pacific QDO because, in a given frequency, the precipitation variation always leads the GSL elevation variation. Therefore, the precipitation variation is phase shifted from the Pacific QDO. This study investigates the physical mechanism forming the coherence between the GSL elevation and the Pacific QDO. Pronounced and coherent quasi-decadal signals in precipitation, streamflow, water vapor flux, and drought conditions are found throughout the Great Basin. Recurrent atmospheric circulation patterns develop over the Gulf of Alaska during the warm-to-cool and cool-to-warm transition phases of the Pacific QDO. These circulation patterns modulate the water vapor flux associated with synoptic transient activities over the western United States and, in turn, lead to the QDO in the hydrological cycle of the Great Basin. As the GSL integrates the hydrological responses in the Great Basin, the hydrological QDO is then transferred to the GSL elevation. Because the GSL elevation consistently lags the precipitation by a quarter-phase (about 3 yr in the quasi-decadal time scale), these processes take an average of 6 yr for the GSL elevation to eventually respond to the Pacific QDO. This creates a half-phase delay of the GSL elevation from the Pacific QDO, thereby forming the inverse, yet coherent, relationship between them. Tree-ring reconstructed precipitation records confirm that the quasi-decadal signal in precipitation is a prominent feature in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. membership in the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP) constituted an important element in the Bush administration’s voluntary and non-committing ‘soft-law’ approach to climate change. With the inauguration of President Barack Obama, the U.S. has embarked on a shift in its climate policy towards a legislative, ‘hard-law’ strategy. Obama’s approach implies that the distribution of interests in Congress becomes more significant. In this article, we assess the rules and procedures governing the relationship between the president and the Congress embedded in the U.S. Constitution and explore implications of a stronger congressional involvement in U.S. climate policies for President Obama’s ability to realise his climate policy ambitions at both the domestic and the international levels. We argue that the strong relationship between natural resource dependence (coal and oil) and opposition to climate policies is a constant feature of the U.S. climate policy debate. In order to succeed, Obama must break the enduring gridlock characterising congressional debate in this policy area by designing policies that, through compromise and compensation, can mobilise the support of oil- and coal-state representatives in Congress. The acceptability of an international climate treaty in Congress, moreover, depends inter alia on the resolution of the difficult issue of developing country participation. Success may be enhanced by using the APP and the Major Economies Initiative as informal arenas for negotiation and sector-based cooperation, thus providing a much-needed supplement to the UN-based negotiation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A practical approach is recommended for identifying and archiving tornado events, based on the use of definitions that label all vortices as either type I, II, or III tornadoes. This methodology will provide a more meaningful tornado climatology in Storm Data, which separates and classifies all vortices associated in any manner with cumuliform clouds. Tornadoes produced within the mesocyclone of discrete supercell storms, with strong local updrafts (SLUs), will be classified as type I tornadoes. Frequently, these type I tornadoes result from the interaction of the SLU with strong rear-flank downdrafts (RFDs), or with shear vortices in the PBL. Tornadoes produced in association with quasi-linear convective systems (QLCS) will be classified as type II tornadoes (including cold pool, rear-inflow jets, bookend, and mesovortex events along the line). All other vortex types (including landspouts, waterspouts, gustnadoes, cold air vortices, and tornadoes not associated with mesocyclones or QLCS) will be labeled as type III tornadoes. A general discussion is provided that further clarifies the differences and categorization of these three classifications (which encompass 15 tornado species), along with a recommendation that NOAA adopt this taxonomy in operational and data archiving practices. Radar analysis and field observations, combined with storm-scale meteorological expertise, should allow for the official “typing” of tornado reports by NOAA personnel. Establishment of such a climatological database in Storm Data may be of value in assessing the effects (if any) of twenty-first-century global warming on U.S. tornado trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on a group of just nine climate scientists, who are trying to change the media coverage of their discipline. These nine researchers, six in the United States, three in Europe, launched the RealClimate website earlier this month. Ever since global warming became an issue of media interest, these groups have sought to play down its dangers. RealClimate, say the blog's founders, will provide rapid rebuttals of some of their more egregious statements. Some argues that a rapid-rebuttal service, run with minimal peer review,can never hope to combat industry propaganda and properly represent diversity of views. However, Their goal is to provide solid scientific comment to journalists and other interested parties--and there is no reason to doubt that this can be achieved in this fashion.

Global climate change is one of the most serious challenges humans currently face. The US courts have been called upon to adjudicate disputes concerning the proper way to confront this challenge. Most recently, the US Supreme Court faced one such dispute in Massachusetts v. E.P.A. Faced with a question of what to do, and the legal mandate of a federal agency, with a question of natural background rates of warming, the Court decided the issue upon narrow constitutional grounds. In so doing, the authors contend that the Court sidestepped a significant issue of how the US Courts understand and handle important questions of statistical evidence. Repeatedly, disputes are brought to court that are questions to be resolved by determining nothing more that the difference between a base rate and another rate. Yet, the authors' research has shown this simple principle is addressed rarely, and sometimes not appropriately. The authors call for more education in math and statistics for the legal profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The public choice model of rent-seeking economics is used to analyze the behaviour of firms, interest groups and scientists participating in efforts to impose climate change cap-and-trade regulations of greenhouse gasses in the USA. This may serve as a case study for the entire world. Yandle's "Bootleggers and Baptists" model and McChesney's model "money for nothing" are used to explain the formation, motives and interests of the groups lobbying for or against this type of regulation. The eco-industrial complex includes firms seeking favorable treatment under cap-and-trade regime, scientists relying on the global warming panic to keep research funds flowing and environmentalist NGOs interested in setting the public agenda and attracting grants and donations. According to our analysis nuclear and renewable energy firms are acting as bootleggers (who profit from legally restricted energy market), while the oil firms are behaving as agents paying protection money) to politicians and NGOs for not demanding harmful public regulation (legal extortion, i.e. "money for nothing"). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing trend in global streamflow has been variously attributed to global warming, land use, and a reduction in plant transpiration under higher CO2 levels. To separate these influences for the coterminous United States, we use a set of over 1000 United States Geological Survey stream gauges primarily from small, minimally disturbed watersheds to estimate annual streamflow per unit area since 1920 on a uniform grid. We find that changing precipitation, which is not clearly correlated with greenhouse gas concentrations or global warming, explains most of the interannual and longer term variability in streamflow. While streamflow has indeed increased since 1920, this increase has not been steady but rather concentrated in the late 1960s, when precipitation increased. Since the early 1990s, both precipitation and streamflow show nonsignificant declining trends. Multiple regression of streamflow against precipitation, temperature and CO2 suggests that higher CO2 levels may increase streamflow, presumably from lower transpiration due to the physiological plant response to CO2, but that this positive response is offset by concomitant increasing evaporation due to global warming. The net impact of the opposing climate and physiological effects of CO2 emissions for streamflow is close to zero for the coterminous United States taken as a whole, but shows regional variation. Streamflow at a given amount of annual precipitation has decreased in the Pacific west, where most precipitation occurs in winter. Suppression of plant transpiration through higher CO2 levels may be particularly important for sustaining high streamflow in recent decades in the Great Plains, where precipitation is concentrated during the growing season. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Could the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930s have been predicted in advance if the SST anomalies of the 1930s had been foreknown? Ensembles of model simulations forced with historical observed SSTs in the global ocean, and also separately in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, are compared with an ensemble begun in January 1929 with modeled atmosphere and land initial conditions and integrated through the 1930s with climatological SSTs. The ensemble with climatological SSTs produces values for the precipitation averaged over 1932–39 that are not statistically different from model climatology. In contrast, the ensembles with global SST forcing produce a drought centered in the central plains and southwestern North America that is clearly separated from the model climatology. Both the tropical Pacific and northern tropical Atlantic SST anomalies produce a statistically significant model drought in this region. The modeled drought has a spatial pattern that is different from the observed drought, which was instead centered in the central and northern plains and also impacted the northern Rocky Mountain states but not northeastern Mexico. The model error in extending the Dust Bowl drought too far south is attributed to an incorrect response of the model to warm subtropical North Atlantic SST anomalies. The model error in the northern states cannot be attributed to an incorrect response to tropical SST anomalies. The model also fails to reproduce the strong surface air warming across most of the continent during the 1930s. In contrast, the modeled patterns of precipitation reduction and surface air temperature warming during the 1950s drought are more realistic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the "major questions" exception to Chevron deference. In accordance to the Supreme Court's recent foray into the global warming debate involving Massachusetts v. EPA, the court holds that the Chevron framework was not applicable in Massachusetts because the question involved is a major one. The substantive logic in Massachusetts is said to be fundamentally incompatible for a substantive justification for a major questions exception.

The journalistic norm of ‘balanced’ reporting (giving roughly equal coverage to both sides in any significant dispute) is recognised as both useful and problematic in communicating emerging scientific consensus on human attribution for global climate change. Analysis of the practice of this norm in United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) newspaper coverage of climate science between 2003 and 2006 shows a significant divergence from scientific consensus in the US in 2003–4, followed by a decline in 2005–6, but no major divergence in UK reporting. These findings inform ongoing considerations about the spatially-differentiated media terms and conditions through which current and future climate policy is negotiated and implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the possible implications of climate change for the nations' national security and for global security. It provides an overview on the possible political, economic, and social implications effected by global climatic changes in South Asia, Africa, Europe, Middle east, and the U.S. Moreover, it analyzes the negative implication of climate change for global health and geopolitical landscape of the world, particularly in the developing countries. Further, it discusses the various challenges and opportunities facing the international community in addressing issues of climate change, citing the United Nations, the European Union, and the U.S.

This article presents information about a U.S. Supreme Court case entitled Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The case was expected to be the Court's first decision with regard to the global warming debate. The decision dealt more with procedural and administrative law issues than substantive environmental law concerning greenhouse gases. The case concerned the refusal of the EPA to regulate motor-vehicle emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The EPA argued that greenhouse gases were not air pollutants under the act and that the plaintiff states had no standing to bring the suit.