http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/science/heat-wave-predictions-weather.html Source:   By Henry Fountain, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Deadly summer heat waves in the eastern United States may be predictable nearly two months before they occur, giving emergency planners and farmers more time to prepare, scientists reported on Monday. The key to such an advance forecast, scientists said, is the occurrence of a distinctive pattern of water temperatures across a wide stretch of the North Pacific Ocean. While the existence of the pattern does not guarantee that a heat wave will occur, it significantly increases the odds of one happening as much as 50 days later. ...From 1999 to 2010, about 620 people died each year, on average, from heat-related illness in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ...In a study published on Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers first identified extremely hot summer days

https://eos.org/articles/current-carbon-emissions-unprecedented-in-66-million-years Source:   By JoAnna Wendel, EoS Earth and Space Science News (AGU) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: As scientists attempt to understand how anthropogenic climate change will affect the Earth’s future, they often study a period in the Earth’s deep past, called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when a period of natural climate change significantly heated the Earth. In a Nature Geoscience paper published Monday, scientists established that this warming, which began 56 million years ago, was the result of a 4000-year period in which carbon was released into the atmosphere at a rate of 1.1 petagrams (or 1.1 trillion kilograms) per year. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) “is the biggest, most massive carbon release event since dinosaurs disappeared,” said Richard Zeebe, a biogeochemist and paleoceanographer at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa in Honolulu and lead author on the paper. ..

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/u-s-methane-emissions-on-the-rise Source:   By Shannon Kelleher, EoS Earth and Space Science News (AGU) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt:  Data suggest that the United States may be responsible for half of global methane increase in the past decade. Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, second only to carbon dioxide in its ability to absorb thermal radiation. It is naturally produced by wetlands, and humans emit methane in large quantities through the use of oil and gas for energy, livestock farming, coal mining, and landfills. ...Global atmospheric levels rose 1%–2% in the 1970s and 1980s, leveled out in the 1990s, and then continued to rise in the 2000s. ...U.S. EPA inventory data showed that emissions from oil and gas and from livestock each accounted for about a third of the methane produced by the United States, while landfill waste accounted for 21%–22% and coal was responsible for 10%–13% of methane emissions. The researche

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/21852/attribution-of-extreme-weather-events-in-the-context-of-climate-change Source:   Authors:  Committee on Extreme Weather Events and Climate Change Attribution; Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate; Division on Earth and Life Studies; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: As climate has warmed over recent years, a new pattern of more frequent and more intense weather events has unfolded across the globe. Climate models simulate such changes in extreme events, and some of the reasons for the changes are well understood. Warming increases the likelihood of extremely hot days and nights, favors increased atmospheric moisture that may result in more frequent heavy rainfall and snowfall, and leads to evaporation that can exacerbate droughts....   See also U. S. News article " National scientific panel said science has progressed enough they we can see global warming's fingerprints on ce

http://www.noaa.gov/record-annual-increase-carbon-dioxide-observed-mauna-loa-2015 Source:   NOAA For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: The annual growth rate of atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii jumped by 3.05 parts per million during 2015, the largest year-to-year increase in 56 years of research. In another first, 2015 was the fourth consecutive year that CO2 grew more than 2 ppm, said Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA's Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network. “Carbon dioxide levels are increasing faster than they have in hundreds of thousands of years,” Tans said. “It’s explosive compared to natural processes.”...

http://grist.org/climate-energy/surprise-a-third-of-congress-members-are-climate-change-deniers/ Source:   By Katie Herzog, Grist For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...The Center for American Progress Action Fund found that there are 182 climate deniers in the current Congress: 144 in the House and 38 in the Senate. That means more than six in 10 Americans are represented by people who think that climate change is a big ‘ol liberal hoax — including some leaders at the highest levels of government... And those are just the members of Congress who are out-and-out deniers, so it doesn’t include the many more who kinda sorta admit that something might be going on with the climate but still don’t want to do anything about it. ...Not surprisingly, many of these same climate deniers have been handsomely rewarded by the fossil fuel industry....

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/03/08/too-soon-gone-gary-braasch-visual-chronicler-of-climate-change/ Source:   By Andrew Revkin, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Gary Braasch was a gifted photographer passionately devoted to chronicling climate change. ...He was there, of course, to continue building the globe-spanning photographic record http://braaschphotography.com/ he had been creating since he latched onto global warming as his prime subject in the late 1990s. (Watch a 2008 presentation by Braasch and the climate scientist Stephen H. Schneider to get a feel for his work and views.) ... Lynne Cherry, an author, illustrator and filmmaker who collaborated many times with Braasch, particularly notably in my favorite book on climate change for younger readers, “ How We Know What We Know About Our Changing Climate .”  ...Gary aggregated the scientific research, accompanied by his rich photographs, into one of the first photographic books on climate cha

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/characterizing-interglacial-periods-over-the-past-800000-years Source:   Earth & Space Science News (EoS, AGU) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Researchers identified 11 different interglacial periods over the past 800,000 years, but the interglacial period we are experiencing now may last an exceptionally long time. ...glacial cycles, consisting of cold ice ages and milder interludes, typically lasted about 40,000 years—but those weaker cycles gave way to longer-lasting icy eras with cycles lasting roughly 100,000 years. In between the cold ice ages are periods of thawing and warming known as interglacial periods, during which sea levels rise and ice retreats. ...Although most interglacials typically last about 10,000 to 30,000 years, the researchers suggest that the current epoch—the Holocene—may last much longer because of the increased levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases resulting from human activity. The authors predict that this c

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/02/business/does-a-carbon-tax-work-ask-british-columbia.html Source:   By Eduardo Porter, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...a right-leaning party that shares many of the antitax, pro-business beliefs of Republicans in the United States did exactly what its unbelieving candidates so fear. ...In 2008, the British Columbia Liberal Party, which confoundingly leans right, introduced a tax on the carbon emissions of businesses and families, cars and trucks, factories and homes across the province. The party stuck to the tax even as the left-leaning New Democratic Party challenged it in provincial elections the next year under the slogan Axe the Tax. The conservatives won soundly at the polls. Their experience shows that cutting carbon emissions enough to make a difference in preventing global warming remains a difficult challenge. But the most important takeaway for American skeptics is that the policy basically worked as advertised.