Questions tagged [climatology]
The study of weather conditions and patterns as averaged over a given period of time.
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Is there existing technology to make it rain or to dissipate clouds?
I heard (example article) that the Chinese government caused it to rain before and during the Olympics to reduce pollution levels.
Does reliable technology currently exist that could trigger rain ...
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Do McKitrick's criticisms of the IPCC accurately represent their processes?
Whatever your position on climate change the most significant results about the scientific consensus are supposed to emerge from the International Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC). It is an ...
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Is climate close to a "tipping point"?
James Hansen has long used the idea of a climate tipping point in his public arguments for urgent and drastic action to combat climate change (For an extended exposition of his idea, see a pdf of one ...
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Why did the value for "average surface temperature of Earth" change from 15°C to 14°C in some scientific literature concerning climate change?
I recently stumbled across an article from a global warming skeptic stating that the "average surface temperature of Earth" changed from 15°C to 14°C in some scientific literature concerning climate ...
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Did British homes increase greenhouse gas emissions by 4% in 2018?
According to this report from The Times,
Greenhouse gas emissions fell in every sector — including transport, industry and energy — in 2018, but emissions from homes went up 4 per cent, government ...
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Could 5G make weather satellites less effective?
I've seen a few articles pop up in sources stating that 5G signals will run too close to the 23.8 MHz signal that weather satellites need in order to accurately produce weather forecasts.
National ...
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Are the 2019 Amazon rainforest fires only 7% higher than the 10 year average?
This article makes the following claim:
While the number of fires in 2019 is indeed 80% higher than in 2018, it’s just 7% higher than the average over the last 10 years ago, Nepstad said.
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Do human activities contribute to climate change?
There is lots of evidence that I have seen showing correlation between human activities and climate change but what evidence is there to support causation?
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Are global temperatures cooler in 2017 than 2007?
The Global Warming Policy Forum claimed (9-Aug-2017):
An inconvenient truth: Global temps were warmer when Al Gore won the 2007 Nobel Prize than today, even after the 2015/16 super El Nino.
This is ...
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Does this graph show climate-change predictions don't meet observations?
Dr. Roy Spencer, a climate change contrarian, posted this graph on his blog claiming that observed temperature trends are much lower than what climate models predict:
Is Spencer misrepresenting what ...
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Are the IPCC climate change models overestimating sensitivity to carbon dioxide?
A recent report in The Register suggests that we might be currently overestimating the degree to which the world will warm with increasing carbon dioxide.
Climate sensitivity is, crudely, the slope of ...
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Did Willie Soon fail to disclose a conflict of interest with the fossil fuel lobby?
Willie Soon recently co-authored a paper that criticised the big computer models used for many projections of future climate (which in turn have fed the IPCC process that drive consensus climate ...
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Does humanity find it easier to adapt to a warm climate than a cold climate?
In a recent response to some questions from schoolchildren about climate change, well known climate skeptic Ross McKitrick made the following statement:
People can adapt to warming conditions more ...
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Does the logarithmic nature of global warming invalidate climate change claims?
NOTE
It is rather unfortunate that I initially omitted the crucial part of the article I linked below (because the wording was stilted and confusing), and I was rather imprecise in my own claims. ...
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Is global warming impossible because of CO₂'s dilution?
Gary Novak argues (e.g. in his book, Science Errors and on his web site) that climate models are incorrect, because of a missing "dilution" factor.
Climatologists skipped over the dilution factor. ...
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Could global warming lead to an oxygen shortage by 2100? [duplicate]
In this report of a mathematical model (original paper here) about the response of ocean plankton to climate change, its author claims the following:
By 2100, the earth at sea level could have ...
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Does the temperaure anomaly correlate with solar irradiance? [duplicate]
(source)
Just wanted to know of its validity. Would be helpful.
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Have climate models in the 80's and 90's accurately predicted today's climate? [closed]
Climate models seem to pretty useful tools for predicting future climate. Considering constant refinement of the models and Moore's law, it is conceivable that today's climate models are far more ...
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Can mountains surrounding a certain region protect it from rain/wind/cold?
It's 'common knowledge' that certain cities/regions have mild weather because they're surrounded by mountains. E.g. this page Sitges Tourist Guide claims that:
Ask any Sitges resident about the ...
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Does the Mount Washington wind speed record have scientific validity?
A record wind gust of 231 miles/hour was recorded in 1934, according to http://www.mountwashington.org/about/visitor/recordwind.php
Wind speeds of this magnitude are commonly known to damage or ...
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Did Exxon suppress its own scientific results on climate change?
Some environmentalists have recently claimed that Exxon did research on global warming and then suppressed the results. For example, Bill Mckibben writes this in the Guardian:
Exxon knew all that ...
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Is the optimal temperature for human productivity 13°C? [closed]
A recent study attempting to quantify some of the economic costs of a warming climate argues that the optimal temperature for human productivity seems to be 13°C. As the Washington Post reports:
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Are current climate models too vague to be physically or scientifically meaningful? [closed]
In a recent article on the climate skeptic site Watts Up With That backed up with a published paper in Energy and Environment, Pat Frank argues that current climate simulation models are ...
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How are airplane contrails linked to climate change?
There are a wide range of opinions and articles on this question, and here are some excerpts from a blog on the point Artificial Weather Revealed by Post 9-11 Flight Groundings:
In the August 2002 ...
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Are Easterbrook's oxygen-isotope paleo-temperature reconstructions credible?
In this video of a presentation given at a climate-skeptic Heartland Institute conference, Don Easterbrook presents his view of recent climate history. He compares his own projections of future ...
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Is global temperature significantly affected by time of galactic year?
There is a claim that different patches of the galaxy have different climate effects due to variations in cosmic ray strength. I've occasionally heard this used to explain global warming but more ...
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Is it accurate to say that 97% of experts agree that global warming is anthropogenic?
A recent spate of newspaper headlines reported that 97% of scientists agreed with the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). The UK's Daily telegraph reported:
A review of 12,000 scientific ...
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Does Carbon Dioxide mix well in the atmosphere?
At Skeptical Science, they explain:
Mauna Loa is often used as an example of rising carbon dioxide levels because its the longest, continuous series of directly measured atmospheric CO₂. The reason ...
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Did the Earth have so little oxygen that dinosaurs couldn't exist?
Noted Young-Earth Creationist Kent Hovind made a claim in a 2007 video that suggested that the idea of dinosaurs living on Earth millions of years ago was implauseable if the oxygen levels were the at ...
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Have global surface temperatures not shown significant warming since the late 1990s?
Those skeptical about the science of global warming have frequently alleged that the surface temperature record has "paused" since about 1998 and showed no significant warming trend (see this recent ...
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Could Global Warming be good for life?
A paper from Nature Geoscience (reported by the BBC here) claims that the carbon dioxide humanity has pumped into the atmosphere is holding off a new Ice Age.
This has revived an old idea best ...
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What are the greatest successes of long term climate prediction?
Seth Roberts claims that the field of climate modelling hasn't produced models that have effectively predicted future climate events. According to him the models are only validated on past data.
Is ...
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Will reducing atmospheric CO₂ reverse the effects of climate change over a few decades?
There are many calls to help bring down Carbon Dioxide levels. But what are the effects of such an action?
My intuition of the earth as a slow-moving complex system tells me that it will settle into ...
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Did we have a "global cooling" 40 years ago?
I was reading Superfreakanomics and the book argues that we had a global cooling period 40 years ago? Is that claim accurate?
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Does low solar activity cause cold weather?
I'm in Ireland where a few papers have recently parrotted an independent body's assertion that we're heading for low solar activity and, accordingly, a very cold winter. The statement has been ...
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