Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate

[Roadrunner]

I've been thinking about contacting my local weather guys and talk to them about it.

[FAADAN]

Originally Posted by Roadrunner

I've been thinking about contacting my local weather guys and talk to them about it.

The FAA has quite a few weather service meteorologists on staff at their Air Traffic Control Centers around the country. I was working on a weather radar system that went to each of these facilities. I talked with many of these men and women and to a person they all said Global Warming was a myth. They had data at their fingertips that they could map and graph and all of them were very amused at the "Climate Scientists."

[roberte]

Originally Posted by FAADAN

to a person they all said Global Warming was a myth.

FYI: AMS Position Statement:

Climate Change

An Information Statement of the American Meteorological Society


The following is an Information Statement intended to provide a trustworthy, objective, and scientifically up-to-date explanation of scientific issues of concern to the public at large.

Background
This statement is consistent with the vast weight of current scientific understanding as expressed in assessments and reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U. S. National Academy of Sciences, and the U. S. Climate Change Science Program. All these reports recognize the uncertainties in climate projections, and identify the scientific work needed to reduce those uncertainties. Although the statement has been drafted in the context of concerns in the United States, the underlying issues are inherently global in nature.

This summary of the current state of scientific understanding is based on the peer-reviewed scientific literature. We are grateful to our members who contributed considerable scientific help in its preparation. A few members offered alternative views on climate change or put quite different emphases on the uncertainties of climate projections. In the last fifteen years, scientific debates of this kind have stimulated much new research which deepened considerably our understanding of climate, and reduced the uncertainties in our projections. The scientific process of debate and investigation is the lifeblood of science; this essential process must continue.

How is climate changing?
Climate is changing in many ways. Global mean temperatures have been rising steadily over the last 40 years, with the six warmest years since 1860 occurring in the last decade.

....

Human activity also affects climate through changes in the number and physical properties of tiny particles (aerosols) suspended in the atmosphere, and through changes in the land surface. Aerosols arise from dust, sea salt, and air pollution. They absorb and redirect radiation emitted by the sun and Earth. They also modify the ability of clouds to reflect sunlight and to form precipitation. Most aerosols originating from human activity act to cool the planet and so partly counteract greenhouse gas effects; this effect will diminish as clean-air legislation leads to reduced emissions of fine aerosols. Stratospheric aerosols emitted by occasional large sulfur-rich volcanic eruptions can cause temporary (1–3 years) reductions in surface temperature. By contrast, carbon soot from wildfires and biomass burning warms the planet, so that decreases in soot would reduce warming. Aerosols have much shorter lifetimes in the atmosphere than most greenhouse gases and exhibit large regional variations in concentration and properties. A deeper understanding of their global and regional roles is a high priority for climate science.

Changes in the land surface also change the surface water and energy budgetsand act to redirect the incoming solar energy. Humans alter land surface characteristics through irrigation practices, removal and reintroduction of forests, agricultural changes to vegetative cover, reduction of soil water recharge by soil compaction, and modification of heat storage by cities and reservoirs. Many of these lead to changes in the reflectivity of the surface. Although net global effects are not expected to be large, such changes can have significant effects on regional and local climate patterns.

The interaction of all these effects on climate is complex. For example, decreases of stratospheric ozone have likely contributed to the recent contraction and intensification of the polar vortex around Antarctica, producing warming in the Antarctic Peninsula, the northern most peninsula that points toward South America, and cooling over Antarctica. As a further example, the east–west difference in U.S. temperature trends may be tied to the spatial patterns of global ocean warming, or to differences in aerosol distribution and effects, or to natural climate variations that affect atmospheric circulation, cloudiness, and precipitation within the nation. Accurate characterization of the influence of each of the greenhouse gases, of aerosols, of oceans and natural climate variability, and of land-surface influences, along with their combined effects, is a high priority for the climate science research community.

How can climate change be projected in the future?
Climate will continue to change due to natural and human causes.


....

How will climate change in the future?
There will be inevitable climate changes from the greenhouse gases already added to the Earth system. Their effect is delayed several decades because the thermal inertia of the oceans ensures that the warming lags behind the driving forcing. For the next several decades there is a clear consensus on projected warming rates from human influences among different models and different emission scenarios.

Many of the trends observed in recent decades are projected to continue. The model projections all show greater warming in northern polar regions, over land areas, and in the winter season, consistent with observed trends. However, considerable uncertainty still exists in the degree to which the land will warm more than the oceans, and this contributes significantly to uncertainties in future projections of global sea level rise. Nevertheless, where coastal elevations are low, small rises lead to large inland intrusions of sea water. In the coming century, these rises are expected to accelerate as the oceans absorb more heat and the melting of land ice-sheets increases. With its large mass and high capacity for heat storage, the ocean will continue to slowly warm to great depths and thus expand for several centuries. Moreover, paleoclimatic observations and ice-sheet modeling indicate that the melting of the Greenland and possibly the West Antarctic ice sheets will eventually cause global sea level to rise on the order of meters if warming continues at its present rate beyond the 21st century.

Confidence in projections is higher for temperature than other elements, such as rainfall. The atmospheric water content is likely to increase globally in line with warmer temperatures and consequently the global hydrological cycle will accelerate. However, changes in precipitation patterns will differ considerably by region and by season. In some regions, the accelerated hydrological cycle will act to reinforce existing patterns of rainfall, leading to persistent droughts and floods. In other regions, the greater warming at high latitudes and over land will change the large-scale atmospheric circulation, leading to significant regional shifts in the patterns of rainfall. For example, annual precipitation for the U.S. is projected to rise across the northern states, and decrease across the southern states.
....

Final remarks
Despite the uncertainties noted above, there is adequate evidence from observations and interpretations of climate simulations to conclude that the atmosphere, ocean, and land surface are warming; that humans have significantly contributed to this change; and that further climate change will continue to have important impacts on human societies, on economies, on ecosystems, and on wildlife through the 21st century and beyond. Focusing on the next 30 years, convergence among emission scenarios and model results suggest strongly that increasing air temperatures will reduce snowpack, shift snowmelt timing, reduce crop production and rangeland fertility, and cause continued melting of the ice caps and sea level rise. Important goals for future work include the need to understand the relation of climate at the state and regional level to the patterns of global climate and to reverse the decline in observational networks that are so critical to accurate climate monitoring and prediction.

Policy choices in the near future will determine the extent of the impacts of climate change. Policy decisions are seldom made in a context of absolute certainty. Some continued climate change is inevitable, and the policy debate should also consider the best ways to adapt to climate change. Prudence dictates extreme care in managing our relationship with the only planet known to be capable of sustaining human life.

[This statement is considered in force until September 2012 unless superseded by a new statement issued by the AMS Council before this date.]
http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html

Fits to every statement by every scientific organization in the world.

[older than dirt]

Originally Posted by Roadrunner

I've been thinking about contacting my local weather guys and talk to them about it.

Saw the stats on how many believed this drivel . About 30 % if memory serves.
About 60% were of a position of don't know to early to tell, or thought it was a
Bull carp.
Ill let the robot look up the numbers & a source on that.

[Roadrunner]

Originally Posted by older than dirt

Saw the stats on how many believed this drivel . About 30 % if memory serves.
About 60% were of a position of don't know to early to tell, or thought it was a
Bull carp.
Ill let the robot look up the numbers & a source on that.

Not sure what you're saying

[roberte]

Originally Posted by Roadrunner

Not sure what you're saying

He was letting "memory serves" be the support for an assertion.

And then, ironically enough, wanting someone else to do his research.