Climate Change

Happy Friday!

I've come across a few graphs and maps over the past few days that show that climate change is truly happening, so I wanted to share them with you all.

First, despite the reduction of travel due to COVID-19, CO2 levels are currently at their highest level in recorded history.

Atmospheric CO2 in Parts Per Million (PPM) (NOAA)

Atmospheric CO2 is now at a new high of just above 417 parts per million (PPM), as shown in the above graph based on data recorded at Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii. CO2 levels typically peak in May each year, and what's interesting is that the levels continued to rise this year despite a large-scale reduction of travel because of COVID-19.

The National Weather Service (NWS) uses 30 year climate norms when considering what is "average". So when reporting how far a temperature is compared to average, it will look at a 30 year period of temperatures. Right now, we are still comparing to the period from 1981 to 2010, but that'll change after this calendar year as we begin to compare to climate data from 1991 to 2020.

One of my favorite climatologists, Brian Brettschnieder, created two neat maps to show how these climate normals will change after this calendar year.

Places where climate normals will be warmer or cooler (Brian Brettschnieder)

In the above map, all those places with red dots are places that we can expect climate normals for 1991-2020 to be warmer than 1981-2010, so the only area that will be cooler is central Canada.

Difference between 1991-2020 and 1981-2010 climate normals in °C (Brian Brettschnieder)

This map shows the difference between 1991-2020 and 1981-2010 climate normals in °C, and it is quite clear that Europe has been very hot over the past 10 years (the years that were not included in the 1981-2010 normals). And those places in central Canada that will be cooler in the upcoming new normals will only be slightly cooler than the previous climate normals.

Sadly, this is more evidence that the globe is warming and climate change is happening.