* Apple users running MacOSX 10.4 or later must install Microsoft's Silverlight software in order to view the streaming videos marked with *. Once installed, restart your browser before viewing. Silverlight 4.0 intel (14MB) | Silverlight 1.0 ppc (5MB) WATCH AND LISTEN shorter A Look at Past and Future Climate Change in Less than a Minute Antti Lipponen, Yale Environment 360, February 2019 Fast, clear, and breathtaking. (1 minute, February 2019) Why Reducing Our Carbon Emissions Matters Ben Henley and Nerilie Abram, The Conversation Accompanied by a short text and key graphs, this little video explains how current CO2 levels (and the temperatures they point to) fit into the last 800,000 years of natural climate change. Good for answering that perennial question, "Hasn't climate always changed?" Yes, but . . . (4 minutes, June 2017) Simulated Global Temperature Change (1850-2100) Beginning with a spiral graph of temperature changes to the present created by scientist Ed Hawkins, and adding information from simulations of future changes under the IPCC's business-as-usual scenario (RCP 8.5), the U.S. Geological Survey produced this dramatic visualization. Of course it is also critical to remember that our future need not look like this! CO2 and Climate Calculator with Emission Controls Model by Scott Denning; video produced by the Fort Collins Sustainability Group This is an excellent site for anyone who wants to see (in a simple model) how various dates and rates of decreasing greenhouse gas emissions will affect the atmospheric concentration of these gases and the ensuing planetary temperature changes. Easy to use and understand, with help from the embedded video, good explanations, some real data for those who want to see it, and clear graphics. The model allows you to set different dates and rates for richer and poorer countries, as defined by the UN. (5 minutes) Time History of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide from 800,000 Years Ago until January, 2016 NOAA Lots of information packed into these striking short animated graphs that track CO2 over a range of time scales. (3 minutes) Carbon Map An excellent interactive squishy world map with video showing such things as population, wealth, historical emissions, reserves, consumption, people at risk, and poverty‒with techniques for combining factors into a single image. From KILN, a company that turns raw data into maps, interactives, and other visualizations. KILN also has a map of "unburnable" fossil carbon reserves (made for the Carbon Tracker Initiative)‒fuels that must stay unburned if we are to limit climate change. Projections of Future Global Warming low-res stream | med-res stream | QuickTime movie Scott Denning, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University What are the scenarios for future global warming and how are they determined? If global warming predictions indicate the global average temperature, how will the climate where you live change in the next century? This short clip shows where, why, and how much more some areas are likely to warm than others. (10 minutes, February 2010) Hunting for Methane Katey Walter Anthony, University of Alaska Fairbanks A startling short video of methane bubbles becoming pillars of flame-illustrating how permafrost thaws, trees fall into lakes, and methane forms underwater, then escapes into the air, where it works as a potent greenhouse gas. (2 minutes, January 2010) No, Global Warming Didn't Stop in 1998 Richard Alley A clear, entertaining, and memorable explanation by a leading climate scientist, who matches his own life story to the graph of rising 20th century temperatures. (3 minutes) To What Degree? What Science Is Telling Us About Climate Change National Science Foundation, Science 360 Lots of videos of leading scientists talking about how we know the climate is changing, the IPCC, the carbon and water cycles, the planet's heat balance, climate modeling, what Americans believe about this subject, and the history of climate research, with the promise of more to come. The videos are broken into very short bites, each a lively, pithy response to a single question. (various lengths) longer What if Climate Change is Real? Katharine Hayhoe, TEDxTexasTechUniversity With her characteristic clarity and down-to-earth style, Hayhoe talks to a West Texas audience about the basics of climate change: how Earth is indeed warming and why; how we know these things; and what we need to do about it. (18 minutes, May 2015) Global Warming, Coming Ready or Not Kevin Trenberth, NCAR This talk from the 2013 Seattle Science Festival offers a clear and up-to-date summary of what's happening to our climate, including the warming of oceans; the ties among heat, evaporation, and rainfall; and increases in extreme events. (23 minutes, June 2013) READ books Field Notes from a Catastrophe Elizabeth Kolbert, Bloomsbury, 2006, 192pp. Perhaps THE best single place to start learning about climate change, this book-first published as a series of articles for The New Yorker magazine-offers lucid, compelling stories about the science of and scientists working on climate change, its current and likely effects on landscapes and ecosystems, and its impacts on human individuals and cultures. It has justly been called the Silent Spring for this topic, and for our times.       Global Weirdness Climate Central, Vintage, 2012, 224pp. With their characteristic clarity and high quality, the writers from Climate Central address these big topics: "What the science says," "What's actually happening," "What's likely to happen in the future," and "Can we avoid the risks of climate change?" Each of the 60 "chapters" deals with one part of the puzzle in a succinct 1-3 pages.       The Long Thaw: How Humans are Changing the Next 100,000 Years of Earth's Climate David Archer. Princeton University Press, 2009, 178 pp. A lucid account of the current situation and of past and future climates. Professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago and frequent contributor to RealClimate.org, Archer talks about such things as ocean acidification and carbon-cycle feedbacks, but he focuses especially on explaining how the time scales of natural climate change compare to those of the human-caused changes now underway. "Global warming," he says, "could be one of humankind's longest lasting legacies"‒lasting "longer than nuclear waste, far longer than the age of human civilization so far."     Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet Mark Lynas. National Geographic, 2008. In clear, vivid, compelling narratives (and working with many peer-reviewed scientific papers and the 2007 IPCC report), Lynas explores some of the consequences the world may see as the global average surface temperature rises in coming decades, one degree Celsius at a time, particularly if we do reach some dangerous tipping points. (National Geographic made a television documentary of this book.) Readers who want to linger in a smaller number of places where climate change is already obvious can read Lynas's earlier book High Tide (Picador, 2004), a chronicle of his travels in England, Alaska, Tuvalu, Inner Mongolia, the Atlantic Coast of the U.S., and the Peruvian Andes. articles & essays 'A Kind of Dark Realism': Why the Climate Change Problem Is Starting to Look Too Big to Solve Steven Mufson, Washington Post, December 2018 In the lead-up to the 24th UN climate conference in Poland, a grim picture is emerging, as this very good, important, but chilling article illustrates. For two other strong articles along the same lines, see Climate Change Is More Extensive and Worse than Once Thought, by AP's Seth Borenstein (November 2018), and Robin McKie's Portrait of a Planet on the Verge of Climate Catastrophe in The Guardian (December 2018). IPCC: Why It Matters that We Aim for 1.5° C October 2018 This is probably the biggest climate change news of the year, the IPCC's report on the importance of aiming for a 1.5° rather than a 2° warmer world. This piece by Coral Davenport offers an excellent overview (NYT), and this even shorter illustrated summary (Brad Plumer, Nadja Popovich, Iris Gottlieb, NYT) is especially easy to grasp. Other worthwhile pieces: this (The Guardian) on the one key takeaway (stop burning carbon and cutting trees); this (Carbon Brief) deeper dive Q&A on the report's contents; and, on scientists who believe the report understates the threat, this (Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists) and this (Science). Humans Didn't Exist the Last Time There Was this Much CO2 in the Air Eric Holthaus, May 2018 A short, efficient summary that puts our current position into deep-time context. What Genuine, No-Bullshit Ambition on Climate Change Would Look Like David Roberts, Vox, May 2018 A thorough, informative discussion of this topic‒as the subtitle says, "new scenarios show how to hit the most stringent targets, with no loopholes." An important reality check. U.S. Global Change Research Program Climate Science Special Report, 2017 Created by an A-list of federal agencies (including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, and the Department of Energy), national laboratories, universities, and the private sector, this authoritative report on the "state of science relating to climate change and its physical impacts" presents the established science that will underlie the 2018 National Climate Assessment. While the bulk of the report can be pretty technical, the executive summary (linked here) is very readable and comprehensive. It presents the science that will underlie the 2018 National Climate Assessment. Was That Climate Change, Too? Short Answer: Yes KerrRoston, Bloomberg.com, April 2017 A clear explanation of the complex but increasingly powerful ways scientists use to estimate how much individual extreme weather events owe to climate change‒and how much simply comes from the fact that the whole atmosphere is now different. Good short video, too. Climate Change and Hurricane Katrina: What Have We Learned? Kerry Emanuel, The Conversation, August 2015 A leading hurricane researcher explains what scientists know now that was uncertain or unknown in 2005 about the likely effects of a warmer globe on hurricanes and typhoons. A good, brief, clear science lesson on something that will matter to many, many people. Climate Change Evidence and Causes: An Overview from the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences February 2014 This is an excellent overview of the subject, covering important and up-to-date information (mostly through Q&A), written with admirable clarity, well-illustrated with readable graphs, and from top-notch sources. A good place to start. For more information, or to watch a webcast of a discussion accompanying the release of the report, click here. The End of Snow? Porter Fox, New York Times, February 2014 A fact-filled and compelling essay about why anyone who likes snow should care‒and do something‒about climate change. Fox is a writer and editor at Powder magazine and author of Deep: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow (2013), and while this piece focuses on that sport, as Fox says, it's really "about snow, a vital component of earth's climate system and water cycle." Global Warming's Terrifying New Math Bill McKibben, Rolling Stone, July 2012 How much more carbon can we put into the air, if we want to keep the planet's warming to 2° Celsius? Not nearly as much as our stocks of fossil fuels will provide. For a very clear explanation of this key information, see McKibben's story (the background to his recent "Do the Math" tour and the divestment movement) or Katherine Bagley's excellent summary of the underlying scientific study (published in Nature) in Inside Climate News, "The Most Influential Climate Science Paper Today Remains Unknown to Most People." Both articles also consider what we can do. websites The Climate Explorer NOAA This useful tool will allow you to look at your local area and see what the climate was, is, and may be. There are several variables you can use to organize your search, including temperatures and precipitation, ecosystems, tribal nations, and more. Global Climate Dashboard NOAA, Climate.gov This is an excellent one-stop shopping source of key climate data in easy-to-understand graphs and charts. Includes temperature records for individual states, a data primer on methods, and more. An award-winning website. Climate Change Indicators in the United States U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2016 This page has been taken down by the EPA under the Trump administration. The link here is to a snapshot of this page as of January 19, 2017. This report explains major indicators that mark "trends related to the causes and effects of climate change," mostly for the US but sometimes in a global context, indicators that range from greenhouse gas emissions through drought and snow cover to heat-related deaths. An excellent source of very clear information and graphics on issues with obvious practical relevance; useful notes about the sources of this information for those who want to work with the data themselves. National Climate Assessment May 2014 This is now THE place to start‒and also to update your understanding of what is already happening to the U.S. climate, what we might expect to see happen, how these changes affect things that matter to our daily lives, and (not least!) what we can do. This very clearly written and user-friendly website is highly informative and up-to-date, with features spanning a range from interactive graphs to footnoted primary sources; it conveys the results of four years of work by some 300 American scientists. State of the Climate National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Climatic Data Center Excellent source of current information about the climate, available by month and year, including national and global overviews, drought, wildfires, tropical storms and hurricanes, snow and ice, and more, with lucid summaries. A Daily Record of Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide: The Keeling Curve Operated by Scripps Institution of Oceanography, this website offers easy-to read graphs of data over a range of time scales from hourly to 800,000 years, along with other relevant information. You can sign up here for daily updates of the CO2 value via Twitter, too. Weather Underground: Climate Change An excellent and very user-friendly source of information including climate change evidence at a glance; news; blogs; short videos; links; and a map of local climate change that allows you to click on a weather station near you to see a hundred years of records in a clear graph. Climate Hot Map: Global Warming Effects Around the World Union of Concerned Scientists This easy-to-use interactive website about the impacts of climate change on people, fresh water, oceans, ecosystems, and temperature is a good starting point. (Can also be used on Google Earth.) Extreme Ice Survey In his Extreme Ice Survey, photographer James Balog is creating a stunning array of still, time-lapse, and video images of glaciers around the world. Enacting the motto "Seeing is Believing," Balog and his team invite visitors to the project's excellent website to see for themselves both what is happening to glaciers today and what kinds of beauty they give to our world. This work brings together the powers of art and of science to illuminate our situation and urge action.