Tuesday, December 8, 2009

2000-2009 warmest decade on record

Even as an expected 9,000 (or more) people gather in Copenhagen for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, scientists are publishing more evidence on human-made climate change. The World Meteorological Organization announced yesterday that, when the ball drops this New Years Eve, we will just have ended the warmest decade in the instrumented record.

Further, the United States Geological Survey newsroom highlighted a study published in Nature GeoSciences yesterday that discusses the possibility that scientists may have undercalculated the sensitivity of our climate system to carbon dioxide. This is because models are based on long term trends and averages. In the article, scientists looked at a short interval of time with rapid change in relation to carbon dioxide, and saw that climate was more sensitive to the gas than models predicted. Read the release, with a link to the article, here.

PRI scientists will have an ear to the ground today, and all this week, watching for updates from Copenhagen. We'd love to hear your thoughts!

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