Climatology
Scientific study of climate
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We include updates on Köppen climate classification, Taiga, El Niño–Southern Oscillation, Oceanic climate, Tundra, Humid subtropical climate, Humid continental climate, Gulf Stream, Mediterranean climate, Temperate climate, Nuclear winter, Climate, Albedo, Desert climate, Tropical savanna climate, Semi-arid climate ... and more.
| 2025 |
Nuclear winter
Toon et al. simulated a nuclear scenario involving a potential nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan, modeling atmospheric effects from nuclear weapon detonations ranging from 15 kt to 100 kt on urban areas.
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| 2024 |
Nuclear winter
The Independent Study is scheduled to release its final report, providing a comprehensive assessment of nuclear winter research findings.
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| 2024 |
El Niño–Southern Oscillation
A paleoclimate study suggested El Niños had a strong influence on Earth's climate during the Permian-Triassic extinction event, associated with active volcanism.
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| May 2024 |
Warming stripes
Ed Hawkins received the Royal Geographical Society's Geographical Engagement Award for developing warming stripes.
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| 2023 |
Nuclear winter
The U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine initiated an Independent Study on Potential Environmental Effects of Nuclear War, aimed at comprehensively evaluating existing research on nuclear winter.
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| 2023 |
El Niño–Southern Oscillation
A CSIRO study found that climate change may have increased the likelihood of strong El Niño events by two times and strong La Niña events by nine times, finding consensus across different models and experiments.
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| 2023 |
El Niño–Southern Oscillation
Recent El Niño event identified, continuing the long-standing pattern of irregular climate oscillations between 1900 and 2024.
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| 2023 |
Earth's energy budget
Most recent EEI measurement period from 1976 to 2023 indicates continued planetary heating, with an imbalance of 0.65 W/m2 and a 90% confidence interval of 0.48 to 0.82.
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| 2022 |
Urban heat island
IPCC Sixth Assessment Report published, highlighting how climate change amplifies the urban heat island effect, particularly in Asian cities at 1.5°C and 2°C warming levels.
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| October 2022 |
El Niño–Southern Oscillation
Research published revealing that El Niño increases seedling mortality even in seasonally dry tropical forests in Chiang Mai, Thailand, potentially impacting long-term forest ecosystems.
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| August 2022 |
Nuclear winter
A peer-reviewed study published in Nature Food revealed that a full-scale nuclear war between the United States and Russia would result in direct deaths of 360 million people and indirect starvation deaths of over 5 billion people during a nuclear winter.
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| April 2022 |
El Niño–Southern Oscillation
In the spring of 2022, La Niña caused above-average precipitation and below-average temperatures in Oregon, with April being one of the wettest months on record.
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| April 2022 |
Warming stripes
Textiles from fashion designer Lucy Tammam featuring warming stripes won the Best Customer Engagement Campaign title in the Sustainable Fashion 2022 awards.
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| 2021 |
Nuclear winter
Researchers Coupe et al. conducted a simulation using the CESM-WACCM4 model to study the potential El Niño-like effects following nuclear conflict scenarios. They modeled six different nuclear scenarios producing between 5 to 150 Tg of soot, coining the term 'Nuclear Niño' to describe the resulting long-lasting changes in ocean currents.
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| 2021 |
El Niño–Southern Oscillation
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report summarized scientific understanding of ENSO, stating it is very likely that precipitation variance related to El Niño–Southern Oscillation will increase in the long term.
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| 2021 |
Scientific consensus on climate change
Krista Myers led a comprehensive survey of 2780 Earth scientists, finding that between 91% and 100% of climate scientists agreed that human activity is causing climate change, with 98.7% consensus among climate scientists.
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| 2021 |
Scientific consensus on climate change
A scientific study concluded that over 99% of scientific papers agree on the human cause of climate change, with the small percentage of dissenting papers containing errors or being non-replicable.
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| 2021 |
Urban heat island
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funded Climate Adaptation Planning Analysis (CAPA) to conduct a Heat Mapping campaign across ten areas in Virginia, involving 213 volunteers who made 490,423 heat measurements across 70 routes.
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| 2021 | Klaus Hasselmann was awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on climate modeling and understanding climate variability, specifically for explaining the connection between weather and climate through the concept of stochastic processes. |
| 2021 | Giorgio Parisi was awarded the other half of the Nobel Prize in Physics, primarily for work in theoretical physics, but also for contributing to the concept of stochastic resonance in climate systems. |
| January 2021 |
UAH satellite temperature dataset
UAH changed the baseline period for temperature anomalies from 1981-2010 to 1991-2020, updating their long-term temperature measurement methodology.
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| 2020 |
El Niño–Southern Oscillation
La Niña event occurred, continuing the observed pattern of periodic climate oscillations in the early 21st century.
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| 2020 |
Urban heat island
Bill S.4280 was introduced to the U.S. Senate to address urban heat issues, proposing a $100 million grant program through the National Integrated Heat Health Information System Interagency Committee (NIHHIS) to fund urban heat reduction projects such as cool roofs, pavements, and HVAC system improvements.
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| 2020 |
Earth's energy budget
Comprehensive energy inventory assessment reveals temperatures have increased almost everywhere for over 50 years, with oceans absorbing over 90% of excess energy.
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| 2020 |
Warming stripes
Hawkins was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the New Year Honours 'For services to Climate Science and to Science Communication'.
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| January 18 2020 |
Warming stripes
A 20-metre-wide artistic light-show installation of warming stripes was opened at the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin, with the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences building illuminated with the graphics.
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| 2019 |
Nuclear winter
Coupe et al. published a study modeling a scenario of 150 Tg of black carbon release into the atmosphere following a hypothetical nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia, using the advanced WACCM4 climate model.
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| 2019 |
Nuclear winter
Two significant studies on nuclear winter were published, building on previous modeling and describing new scenarios of nuclear winter from smaller nuclear weapon exchanges.
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| 2019 |
El Niño–Southern Oscillation
Recent scholarship began finding that climate change is increasing the frequency of extreme El Niño events.
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| 2019 |
Earth's energy budget
Human energy production reached an estimated 18 terawatts, corresponding to approximately 160,000 terawatt-hours for the entire year.
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| December 2019 |
UAH satellite temperature dataset
UAH linear temperature trend analysis concludes, showing a warming of +0.13 °C/decade from 1979 to this date, providing a comprehensive 40-year atmospheric temperature record.
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| December 31 2019 |
Earth's energy budget
Conclusion of the documented period of significant Earth energy imbalance, with sustained human-induced atmospheric changes driving unprecedented rates of planetary heating.
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| November 2019 |
Scientific consensus on climate change
James L. Powell conducted a survey of over 11,600 peer-reviewed articles published in the first seven months of 2019, revealing a 100% consensus on anthropogenic climate change.
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| September 2019 |
Warming stripes
The Economist published an editorial analyzing the warming stripes visualization, discussing its representation of global temperature changes from 1850-2018 and connecting the graphic to broader historical contexts of technological innovation and fossil fuel combustion.
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| September 27 2019 |
Warming stripes
Warming stripes graphics won the science category in an international competition for innovative climate change visualization at Fachhochschule Potsdam.
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| June 24 2019 |
Warming stripes
Hawkins tweeted that nearly a million stripe graphics had been downloaded from over 180 countries in the first week of the campaign.
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| June 17 2019 |
Warming stripes
Hawkins initiated the #ShowYourStripes social media campaign, encouraging people to download and share regional warming stripe graphics, backed by U.N. Climate Change, World Meteorological Organization, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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| June 17 2019 |
Warming stripes
Hawkins collaborated with Berkeley Earth scientist Robert Rohde to publish warming stripes graphics on ShowYourStripes.info, creating individualized graphics for the globe, most countries, and smaller regions like US states and UK areas.
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| 2018 |
Nuclear winter
Research published in the peer-reviewed journal Safety recommended that no nation should possess more than 100 nuclear warheads due to potential 'nuclear autumn' blowback effects on the aggressor nation's own population.
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| 2018 |
Nuclear winter
Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers published a multi-scale study on the climate impact of a regional nuclear exchange, finding that black carbon would loft minimally into the stratosphere, challenging previous nuclear winter predictions and concluding that significant global cooling was highly unlikely.
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| 2018 |
Urban heat island
U.S. Forest Service discovers that cities in the United States are losing 36 million trees annually, significantly impacting urban vegetation and contributing to the urban heat island effect.
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| 2018 |
Urban heat island
Oscar Brousse from University College London conducted a study simulating the impact of cooling measures during a heatwave in London. The study found that cool roofs could reduce average outdoor temperatures by 1.2°C, and up to 2°C in certain areas, outperforming other cooling strategies like tree cover and solar panels.
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| 2018 |
Earth's energy budget
Researchers analyzed radiative forcing trends using data from CERES, AIRS, CloudSat, and other EOS instruments, finding an increase primarily associated with rising greenhouse gas concentrations.
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| 2018 |
Earth's energy budget
Cumulative EEI measurement period from 1971 to 2018 shows an increased imbalance of 0.57 W/m2 with a 90% confidence interval of 0.43 to 0.72.
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| May 22 2018 |
Warming stripes
Ed Hawkins published the warming stripes graphics, a chronologically ordered series of blue and red vertical stripes representing temperature changes. He was also awarded the Royal Society's Kavli Medal for communicating climate science to broad audiences.
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| 2017 |
Scientific consensus on climate change
James L. Powell analyzed five surveys of peer-reviewed literature from 1991 to 2015, finding that out of 54,195 articles, only a tiny fraction rejected anthropogenic climate change, resulting in an average consensus of 99.94%.
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| 2017 |
Scientific consensus on climate change
Fourth National Climate Assessment is released, involving thirteen federal agencies and around 1,000 people, including 300 leading scientists.
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| June 10 2017 |
Warming stripes
Ellie Highwood, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, completed a crocheted 'global warming blanket' inspired by temperature blankets, with color guidance from Ed Hawkins to improve color differentiation.
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| 2016 |
El Niño–Southern Oscillation
La Niña event started, marked by cooler sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific Ocean.
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This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia articles El Niño–Southern Oscillation, Warming stripes, Urban heat island, Climate variability and change, Nuclear winter, UAH satellite temperature dataset, Scientific consensus on climate change & Earth's energy budget, which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.