Milestone achieved – Now we put the Paris Agreement into effect

Back in December 2015 as many as 174 nations signed what is now known as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, but that is simply ink on paper and is quite frankly meaningless in that it did not commit anybody to do anything. The far more important aspect is that it marked a beginning of a … Read more

World Passes 400 PPM Threshold permanently

September 2016 now marks the point at which the carbon dioxide levels failed to drop below the 400 parts per million (ppm) measurement for the first time ever. The Mauna Loa Observatory has been the official recorder of the the levels of carbon dioxide because they are located far out in the Pacific on Hawaii far from the … Read more

What Does Climate History reveal about our future?

A new and quite impressive paper has been published in Nature that lays out about two million years of climate history. What has happened in the past is a rather obviously valuable tool because it also enables us to understand the future we face. Prior to this specific paper only small windows of specific periods … Read more

Annual ice loss in Greenland is bigger than previously thought

It has been known for some time that the annual ice loss during the seasonal melt in Greenland was large, but new calculations revel that it is even bigger than previously thought. The challenge of working out just how big that ice loss is has lacked data because nobody is there on the ground at … Read more

Huge leap forward for Paris agreement on Climate Change

Last Wednesday, 21st Sept, the ratification of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change leapt boldly towards coming into force. We are not quite there yet, but it is a lot closer. I was blogging about this a few days ago, and so this was something I did anticipate. At the time the expectation was that another 20 … Read more

#Arctic melt season is probably over, how did it go this year?

The above diagram says it all really, 2016 was the second lowest on record. It was not and is not a typical year by any measure because globally each and every single month has broken all previous records for that month and so it comes as no great surprise to observe that the Arctic ice … Read more