Other variables that affect global sea level: extreme rains in Australia!

Hi all,
It turns out that melting ice and thermal expansion are not the only important factors for sea level change; the amount of rain over land vs. ocean also can be.

In this case, extreme rains over Australia during 2010-2011 pooled at the center of the continent and caused global sea level to drop (temporarily). For more info on this, check out the story on NPR:

http://www.npr.org/2013/08/20/213577129/how-extreme-australian-rains-made-global-sea-levels-drop?ft=1&f=1025

Here's a link to the original article by Fasullo et al. in Geophysical Research Letters (subscription required - access this from a computer logged onto the Arizona library system and you should be able to get it):

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50834/abstract

Enjoy!
Sarah

IPCC leak: manmade climate change really real

IPCC report leaked....

One of the stories we will be following right away is the upcoming release of the report on climate science by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This group painstakingly summarizes the latest in climate science every 5-6 years, and provides a summary for governments, policymakers, and other interested parties. It's the gold standard of climate science - a synthesis of peer-reviewed science, prepared and reviewed by a cast of hundreds (thousands?) of experts.

A near-final version of this report was leaked last week and many of its major conclusions have been spread across the web. These stories provide a summary:

The New York Times: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/20/science/earth/extremely-likely-that-human-activity-is-driving-climate-change-panel-finds.html?pagewanted=all

See also The Week, Mother Jones, and the Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang page. 

If any of these reports strikes you as overly alarmist, then check out a recent paper by Naomi Oreskes and colleagues (Brysse et al. 2012) which details how the IPCC errs on the "side of least drama"  - i.e., it is a conservative interpretation, because scientists are cautious people. Things will likely be worse.

Another paper (Rahmstorf et al. 2012) compared IPCC projections of future temperature and sea level with observations - they find that the IPCC consensus underestimated future sea level change dramatically, but was reasonably accurate in their temperature projections.

Welcome to Global Change!

Welcome to Global Change!

We'll use this space to highlight global change topics in the news, or new scientific results that we think are especially interesting for class. 

Everyone in class is welcome to post and comment - we will work out the mechanics of this during the first week. The blog will be publicly visible, but comments and posting are limited to class members. 

Welcome!