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bookmark_borderRealities of Climate Change

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UNITED STATES — Sea level rise is accelerating. The number of large wildfires is growing. Dangerous heat waves are becoming more common. Extreme storm events are increasing in many areas. More severe droughts are occurring in others.

These are just some of the consequences of global warming, which are already having significant and harmful effects on our health, our environment, and our communities.

Unless we take immediate action to address global warming, these consequences will continue to intensify, grow ever more costly, and increasingly affect the entire planet — including you, your community, and your family.

Global warming is happening now.

The planet’s temperature is rising. The trend is clear and unmistakable.

Every one of the past 35 years has been warmer than the 20th century average. The 12 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998. 2012 was the hottest year ever recorded for the contiguous United States.

Globally, the average surface temperature has increased more than one degree Fahrenheit since the late 1800s. Most of that increase has occurred over just the past three decades.
We are the cause.

We are overloading our atmosphere with carbon dioxide, which traps heat and steadily drives up the planet’s temperature. Where does all this carbon come from? The fossil fuels we burn for energy — coal, natural gas, and oil — plus the loss of forests due to deforestation, especially in the tropics.
The scientific evidence is clear.

Within the scientific community, there is no debate: An overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that global warming is happening and that human activity is the primary cause.

This broad consensus — and the extensive scientific evidence that supports it — is often downplayed or distorted by a small but vocal minority of special interests that have a vested interest in delaying action on climate change.
We have a choice.

We can act now to reduce our carbon emissions, slow the pace of global warming, and pass on a safer, healthier world to our children. Or we can choose to do nothing, continue pumping massive amounts of carbon into an already overloaded atmosphere, and suffer the increasingly costly consequences.

At UCS, we believe the choice is clear: We must take steps now to reduce our global warming emissions.
Together we can tackle global warming.

We have the practical solutions and technologies at hand to substantially reduce our emissions, create a clean energy economy, and establish the United States as a global leader in innovation.

To accomplish it, we must:

Demand action from our elected leaders
Take simple, practical steps to reduce our personal carbon emissions
Aggressively fight misinformation about global warming
Prepare our cities and communities for the growing impacts of climate change

Working together, we can do it — and you can help make it happen. Take action today!

bookmark_borderGalaxy Growth Like Watching Paint Dry

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NASA — Watching a tree grow might be more frustrating than waiting for a pot to boil, but luckily for biologists, there are tree rings. Beginning at a tree trunk’s dense core and moving out to the soft bark, the passage of time is marked by concentric rings, revealing chapters of the tree’s history.

Galaxies outlive trees by billions of years, making their growth impossible to see. But like biologists, astronomers can read the rings in a galaxy’s disk to unravel its past. Using data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), scientists have acquired more evidence for the “inside-out” theory of galaxy growth, showing that bursts of star formation in central regions were followed one to two billion years later by star birth in the outer fringes.

“Initially, a rapid star-forming period formed the mass at the center of these galaxies, followed later by a star-forming phase in the outer regions. Eventually, the galaxies stop making stars and become quiescent,” said Sara Petty of Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Va., lead author of a paper appearing in the October 2013 issue of the Astronomical Journal. “This later star-forming phase could have been caused by minor mergers with gas-rich neighbors, which provide the fuel for new stars.”

The discovery may also solve a mystery of elderly galaxies. The galaxies in the study, known as “red and dead” for their red color and lack of new star births, have a surprising amount of ultraviolet light emanating from the outer regions. Often, ultraviolet light is generated by hot, young stars, but these galaxies were considered too old to host such a young population.

The solution to the puzzle is likely hot, old stars. Petty and colleagues used a new multi-wavelength approach to show that the unexplained ultraviolet light appears to be coming from a late phase in the lives of older stars, when they blow off their outer layers and heat up.

GALEX and WISE turned out to be the ideal duo for the study. GALEX was sensitive to the ultraviolet light, whereas WISE sees the infrared light coming from older stars. GALEX is no longer operating, but WISE was recently reactivated to hunt asteroids, a project called NEOWISE (see http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-257 ). Both telescopes have large fields of view, allowing them to easily capture images of entire galaxies.

“The synergy between GALEX and WISE produces a very sensitive measurement of where the hot, older stars reside in these red-and-dead galaxies,” said Don Neill, co-author of the paper from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. “This allows us to map the progress of star formation within each galaxy.”

Ned Wright of UCLA, a co-author of the study and the principal investigator of WISE before it was reactivated, compares the multi-wavelength range of the two telescopes to musical notes, “WISE itself covers the equivalent of a three-octave range, while WISE and GALEX together cover a seven-octave range.”

The technical paper for this study is online at http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.6282 .

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages and operates the recently activated NEOWISE mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. The WISE mission was selected competitively under NASA’s Explorers Program managed by the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory in Logan, Utah. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at Caltech. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/wise and http://wise.astro.ucla.edu and http://jpl.nasa.gov/wise .

Caltech led the Galaxy Evolution Explorer mission and was responsible for science operations and data analysis. JPL managed the mission and built the science instrument. The mission was developed under NASA’s Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Researchers sponsored by Yonsei University in South Korea and the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) in France collaborated on this mission. Graphics and additional information about the Galaxy Evolution Explorer are online at http://www.nasa.gov/galex and http://www.galex.caltech.edu.

bookmark_borderSea Serpents Washing Ashore

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Oarfish / Sea Serpent
Oarfish / Sea Serpent

CALIFORNIA — Two rare oarfish have washed up on California beaches. A dead 18-foot-long oarfish was found off Catalina Island on October. 13. A 14-foot-long oarfish carcass was found on Oct. 18 in Oceanside, CA.

Oarfish can grow to more than 50 feet in length and are considered the longest fish. Their appearance has led to many theories of sea serpents.

Japanese folklore believes the beaching of oarfish predicts earthquakes — “a notion that some scientists have speculated could be supported by the bottom-dwelling fish being more sensitive to seismic shifts.”

“It’s probably just a coincidence,” said Rick Feeney of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. “We think that they come inshore to die actually because they’re in distress for some reason, but we don’t know what the reason is,” said Feeney, adding that the fish could have been starving or disoriented.

However, the one found off Catalina Island has been dissected and found to be healthy. “It looks good enough to eat – if you have a 13ft pan,” biologist Ruff Zetter said.

 

Oarfish Found In California
Oarfish Found In California

bookmark_borderUSA Drone Strike War Crimes

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Amnesty International has released a statement:

New evidence indicates that the USA has carried out unlawful killings in Pakistan through drone attacks, some of which could even amount to war crimes, Amnesty International said in a major new report released today.

The report, “’Will I be next?’ US drone strikes in Pakistan”, is one of the most comprehensive studies to date of the US drone program from a human rights perspective.

It documents recent killings in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal areas and the almost complete absence of transparency around the US drone program.

“Secrecy surrounding the drones program gives the US administration a license to kill beyond the reach of the courts or basic standards of international law. It’s time for the USA to come clean about the drones program and hold those responsible for these violations to account,” said Mustafa Qadri, Amnesty International’s Pakistan Researcher.

“What hope for redress can there be for victims of drone attacks and their families when the USA won’t even acknowledge its responsibility for particular strikes?”

The report was released in a joint news conference with Human Rights Watch, which issued its own report on drone and other air strikes in Yemen.

Amnesty International reviewed all 45 known drone strikes that took place in North Waziristan in northwestern Pakistan between January 2012 and August 2013. The region that has seen more strikes than any other part of the country.

The organization conducted detailed field research into nine of these strikes, with the report documenting killings, which raise serious questions about violations of international law that could amount to war crimes or extrajudicial executions.

In October 2012, 68-year-old grandmother Mamana Bibi was killed in a double strike, apparently by a Hellfire missile, as she picked vegetables in the family’s fields while surrounded by a handful of her grandchildren.

In July 2012, 18 laborers, including a 14-year-old boy, were killed in multiple strikes on a impoverished village close to the border with Afghanistan as they were about to enjoy an evening meal at the end of a long day of work.

Contrary to official claims that those killed were “terrorists”, Amnesty International’s research indicates that the victims of these attacks were not involved in fighting and posed no threat to life.

“We cannot find any justification for these killings. There are genuine threats to the USA and its allies in the region, and drone strikes may be lawful in some circumstances. But it is hard to believe that a group of labourers, or an elderly woman surrounded by her grandchildren, were endangering anyone at all, let alone posing an imminent threat to the United States,” said Qadri.

International law prohibits arbitrary killing and limits the lawful use of intentional lethal force to exceptional situations. In armed conflict, only combatants and people directly participating in hostilities may be directly targeted. Outside armed conflict, intentional lethal force is lawful only when strictly unavoidable to protect against an imminent threat to life . In some circumstances arbitrary killing can amount to a war crime or extrajudicial execution, which are crimes under international law.

Amnesty International also documented cases of so-called “rescuer attacks” in which those who ran to the aid of the victims of an initial drone strike were themselves targeted in a rapid follow-on attack. While there may have been a presumption that the rescuers were members of the group being targeted, it is difficult to see how such distinctions could be made in the immediate and chaotic aftermath of a missile strike.

The USA continues to rely on a “global war” doctrine to attempt to justify a borderless war with al-Qa’ida, the Taliban and those perceived to be their allies.

The USA’s promise to increase transparency around drone strikes, underscored by a major policy speech by President Barack Obama in May 2013, has yet to become a reality, and the USA still refuses to divulge even basic factual and legal information.

This secrecy has enabled the USA to act with impunity and block victims from receiving justice or compensation. As far as Amnesty International is aware, no US official has ever been held to account for unlawful killings by drones in Pakistan.

In addition to the threat of US drone strikes, people in North Waziristan are frequently caught between attacks by armed groups and Pakistan’s armed forces. The local population lives under constant fear of inescapable violence by all sides.

The US drone program has added to local suffering, with people in the region now also living in terror of death from US drones hovering in the skies day and night.

“The tragedy is that drone aircraft deployed by the USA over Pakistan now instill the same kind of fear in the people of the tribal areas that was once associated only with al-Qa’ida and the Taliban,” said Qadri.

As the report documents, local men and women have little control over the presence of groups like the Taliban and al-Qa’ida in their villages and districts.

Al-Qa’ida-linked groups have killed dozens of local villagers they accused of being spies for US drone strikes. Residents of Mir Ali told Amnesty International that bodies are routinely seen dumped by the side of streets with written messages warning that anyone accused of spying for the USA will meet the same fate.

Residents also told Amnesty International they could not report abuses by armed groups to local authorities for fear of retaliation. Many residents were also fearful of talking about drones strikes to Amnesty International. Some of those who did speak openly received threats afterwards.

While the Pakistan government maintains it opposes the US drone program, Amnesty International is concerned that some officials and institutions in Pakistan and in other countries including Australia, Germany and the UK may be assisting the USA to carry out drone strikes that constitute human rights violations.

“Pakistan must provide access to justice and other remedies for victims of drone strikes. The authorities of Pakistan, Australia, Germany and the UK must also investigate all officials and institutions suspected of involvement in US drone strikes or other abuses in the tribal areas that may constitute human rights violations,” said Qadri.

“The Pakistani authorities must disclose information on all US drone strikes they have documented and what measures they have taken or will take to assist victims of these strikes.”

The report also documents the failure of the Pakistan state to protect the human rights of people in North Waziristan. This ranges from deaths, injuries and displacement of residents due to bombardment by the military, to the absence of justice mechanisms and lack of adequate medical assistance.

The Pakistani authorities have a very poor record in bringing al-Qa’ida, Taliban and other perpetrators of human rights abuses from the region to justice in fair trials without recourse to the death penalty.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are jointly calling on the US Congress to fully investigate the cases the two organizations have documented and other potentially unlawful deaths, and to disclose any evidence of human rights violations to the public.

Amnesty International is calling on:

The US authorities to:

Publicly disclose the facts and legal basis for drone strikes carried out in Pakistan and information about any investigation into killings by US drones.
Ensure prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigations into all cases where there are reasonable grounds to believe that drone strikes resulted in unlawful killings.
Bring those responsible for unlawful drone strikes to justice in public and fair trials without recourse to the death penalty.
Ensure that victims of unlawful drone strikes, including family members of victims of unlawful killings, have effective access to justice, compensation and other remedies.

The Pakistani authorities to:

Provide adequate access to justice and reparations for victims of US drone strikes and attacks by Pakistan forces, and seek reparations and other remedies for drone strikes from the US authorities.
Bring to justice, in fair trials without recourse to the death penalty, individuals responsible for unlawful killings and other human rights abuses in North Waziristan. This should include US drone strikes, attacks by the Pakistan armed forces, or groups like the Taliban and al-Qa’ida.
Publicly disclose information on all US drone strikes that the Pakistani authorities are aware of, including casualties and all assistance provided to victims.

The international community to:

Oppose US drone strikes and other killings that violate international law and urge the USA and Pakistan to take the measures outlined above. States should officially protest and pursue remedies under international law when lethal force is unlawfully used by the USA or other states.
Refrain from participating in any way in US drone strikes that violate international law, including by sharing intelligence or facilities.

bookmark_borderClimate Change in the United States

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says:

The Earth’s climate is changing. Temperatures are rising, snow and rainfall patterns are shifting, and more extreme climate events—like heavy rainstorms and record high temperatures—are already affecting society and ecosystems. Scientists are confident that many of the observed changes in the climate can be linked to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, caused largely by people burning fossil fuels to generate electricity, heat and cool buildings, and power vehicles.

EPA is working with many other organizations to better understand the causes and effects of climate change. With help from these partners, EPA has compiled a set of 26 indicators tracking signs of climate change. Most of these indicators focus on the United States, but some include global trends to provide context or a basis for comparison. These indicators represent a selected set of key climate change measurements, and are not an exhaustive group of all climate change indicators. EPA’s indicators are based on peer-reviewed data from various government agencies, academic institutions, and other organizations. EPA selected these indicators based on the quality of the data and other criteria.

EPA published these indicators in a comprehensive report in December 2012. Indicators will be updated periodically on the Web as newer data become available.

Use this site to learn more about EPA’s indicators related to greenhouse gases, weather and climate, oceans, snow and ice, and society and ecosystems.

bookmark_borderFirst Global Pollution Tax

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The United Nations’ aviation agency (International Civil Aviation Organization) approved the initial steps in implementing a worldwide tax on greenhouse gas emissions from airplanes. If the proposal gets accepted, it would take effect in 2022.

The European Union had been seeking a more robust agreement:
“While we would have liked more countries to accept our regional scheme, progress was made overall,” the EU’s Climate Change Commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, said in a statement. “We will now factor this in when, together with the member states and the European Parliament, we decide on the way forward with the EU ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme).”

At least the United Nations initiative would invoke the first global effort to reduce greenhouse gases and hopefully pave the way for reductions in other industries.

More on taxing pollution.
More on global warming.

bookmark_borderTax Pollution

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One of the only taxes that makes sense is a pollution tax. A progressive income tax is perhaps the worst type of taxation. Why would you want to tax people for being productive… then, tax them higher the more productive they are?

These countries currently have taxes on carbon emissions: Australia, India, South Korea, Japan, Europe (28 countries), Finland, The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, UK, Ireland, Costa Rica, South Africa, New Zealand.

Why doesn’t the United States have a pollution tax?

More about emissions trading.

Help stop global warming.

bookmark_borderDeath Of Ash Trees

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Ash trees are dying for a variety of reasons. In the USA, Emerald Ash Borer is killing many trees. In Europe, the fungus Chalara is spreading and killing trees.

More about the decline of the forests.

Emerald Ash Borer
The signs and symptoms of an EAB attack

The symptoms an ash tree shows when it is infested with emerald ash borer are similar to symptoms caused by other ash pests or diseases in Wisconsin.

For example, crown dieback can occur due to EAB damage, but can also be the result of drought stress, soil compaction or verticillium wilt, just to name a few.

Therefore, it is important to look for a combination of at least two symptoms or signs when trying to figure out if emerald ash borer is in your ash tree. If you see two or more from the lists below report your findings here.

Symptoms

Crown dieback: Dieback of the upper and outer crown begins after multiple years of EAB larval feeding. Trees start to show dead branches throughout the canopy, beginning at the top. Larval feeding disrupts nutrient and water flow to the upper canopy, resulting in leaf loss. Leaves at the top of the tree may be thin and discolored. An example of this is shown below.

Epicormic Sprouting: When trees are stressed or sick, they will try to grow new branches and leaves wherever they still can. Trees may have new growth at the base of the tree and on the trunk, often just below where the larvae are feeding. An example of this is shown in the picture above, where small branches are growing on the trunk, about 6 feet off the ground.

Bark splits: Vertical splits in the bark are caused due to callus tissue that develops around larval galleries. Larval galleries can often be seen beneath bark splits.

Woodpecker feeding: Woodpeckers eat emerald ash borer larvae that are under the bark. This usually happens higher in the tree where the emerald ash borer prefers to attack first. If there are large numbers of larvae under the bark the woodpecker damage can make it look like strips of bark have been pulled off of the tree. This is called “flecking.” An example of this is shown below.

Signs

D-shaped emergence holes: As adults emerge from under the bark they create a D-shaped emergence hole that is about 1/8 inch in diameter. An example of this is shown below.

S-shaped larval galleries: As larvae feed under the bark they wind back and forth, creating galleries that are packed with frass (larva poop) and sawdust and follow a serpentine pattern. An example of this is shown below.

Larvae: Larvae are cream-colored, slightly flattened (dorso-ventrally) and have pincher-like appendages (urogomphi) at the end of their abdomen. By the time larvae are done growing they are 1 1/2 inches long. Larvae are found feeding beneath the bark.

Adults: Adult beetles are metallic green and about the size of one grain of cooked rice (3/8 – 1/2 inch long and 1/16 inch wide). Adults are flat on the back and rounded on their underside.

Chalara
Description

Chalara dieback of ash is a serious disease of ash trees caused by a fungus called Chalara fraxinea (C. fraxinea), including its sexual stage, Hymenoscyphus pseudoalbidus (H. pseudoalbidus). The disease causes leaf loss and crown dieback in affected trees, and usually leads to tree death.
Threat

It is potentially a very serious threat. It has caused widespread damage to ash populations in continental Europe, including estimated losses of between 60 and 90 per cent of Denmark’s ash trees. We have no reason to believe that the consequences of its entering the natural environment in Britain would be any less serious. Experience on the Continent indicates that it kills young ash trees very quickly, while older trees tend to resist it for some time until prolonged exposure causes them to succumb as well.
Susceptible species

Chalara fraxinea is especially destructive of common ash (Fraxinus excelsior), including its ‘Pendula’ ornamental variety. Narrow-leaved ash (Fraxinus angustifolia) is also susceptible. Chalara dieback of ash is particularly destructive of young ash plants, killing them within one growing season of symptoms becoming visible. Older trees can survive initial attacks, but tend to succumb eventually after several seasons of infection.
Spread

Local spread, up to some tens of miles, may be by wind. Over longer distances the risk of disease spread is most likely to be through the movement of diseased ash plants. Movement of logs or unsawn wood from infected trees might also be a pathway for the disease, although this is considered to be a low risk.
Outbreak stage

Ash trees suffering with the infection have been found widely across Europe since trees believed to have been infected with this newly identified pathogen were reported dying in large numbers in Poland in 1992. These have included forest trees, trees in urban areas such as parks and gardens, and also young trees in nurseries.

In February 2012 it was found in a consignment of infected trees sent from a nursery in the Netherlands to a nursery in Buckinghamshire, England. Since then it has been found in young ash trees in a number and variety of locations in Great Britain, including urban landscaping schemes, newly planted woodland, and more nurseries.

In October 2012, Food & Environment Research Agency (FERA) scientists confirmed a small number of cases in Norfolk and Suffolk in ash trees at sites in the wider natural environment, including established woodland, which do not appear to have any association with recently supplied nursery stock. Further finds in trees in the wider environment have since been confirmed in a number of places, mostly on the eastern side of England and Scotland, and mostly concentrated in the south-eastern region of England. In May 2013 the first wider-environment case was found in south-west Wales, which is the farthest west site in Britain that a wider-environment case has been confirmed. (Map below)

C. fraxinea is now being treated as a quarantine pest under national emergency measures and any suspected sighting must be reported.

Hundreds of staff from government agencies checked ash trees across the UK for signs of the disease during early November 2012. It was one of several actions to emerge from a meeting of the Government’s emergency committee, COBR, chaired by Environment Secretary Owen Paterson.

Survey results

Plant health experts are also undertaking a survey of about a thousand sites which have received saplings from nurseries where Chalara dieback has been found.

National plans have been drawn up for Chalara.

bookmark_borderDisappearing Ice Sheets, Glaciers and Arctic Sea Ice

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The U.N.’s panel on global warming warns:

Over the last two decades, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass, glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide, and Arctic sea ice and Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover have continued to decrease in extent (high confidence).

• The average rate of ice loss 8 from glaciers around the world, excluding glaciers on the periphery of the ice sheets 9, was very likely 226 [91 to 361] Gt yr−1 over the period 1971−2009, and very likely 275 [140 to 410] Gt yr −1 over the period 1993−2009 10. {4.3}
• The average rate of ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet has very likely substantially increased from 34 [–6 to 74] Gt yr –1 over the period 1992–2001 to 215 [157 to 274] Gt yr –1 over the period 2002–2011. {4.4}
• The average rate of ice loss from the Antarctic ice sheet has likely increased from 30 [–37 to 97] Gt yr –1 over the period 1992–2001 to 147 [72 to 221] Gt yr –1 over the period 2002–2011. There is very high confidence that these losses are mainly from the northern Antarctic Peninsula and the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica.
• The annual mean Arctic sea ice extent decreased over the period 1979–2012 with a rate that was very likely in the range 3.5 to 4.1% per decade (range of 0.45 to 0.51 million km 2 per decade), and very likely in the range 9.4 to 13.6% per decade (range of 0.73 to 1.07 million km 2 per decade) for the summer sea ice minimum (perennial sea ice). The average decrease in decadal mean extent of Arctic sea ice has been most rapid in summer (high confidence); the spatial extent has decreased in every season, and in every successive decade since 1979 (high confidence). There is medium confidence from reconstructions that over the past three decades, Arctic summer sea ice retreat was unprecedented and sea surface  temperatures were anomalously high in at least the last 1,450 years. {4.2, 5.5}
• It is very likely that the annual mean Antarctic sea ice extent increased at a rate in the range of 1.2 to 1.8% per decade (range of 0.13 to 0.20 million km 2 per decade) between 1979 and 2012. There is high confidence that there are strong regional differences in this annual rate, with extent increasing in some regions and decreasing in others. {4.2}
• There is very high confidence that the extent of Northern Hemisphere snow cover has decreased since the mid-20th century (see Figure SPM.3). Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent decreased 1.6 [0.8 to 2.4] % per decade for March and April, and 11.7 [8.8 to 14.6] % per decade for June, over the 1967–2012 period. During this period, snow cover extent in the Northern Hemisphere did not show a statistically significant increase in any month. {4.5}
• There is high confidence that permafrost temperatures have increased in most regions since the early 1980s. Observed warming was up to 3°C in parts of Northern Alaska (early 1980s to mid-2000s) and up to 2°C in parts of the Russian European North (1971–2010). In the latter region, a considerable reduction in permafrost thickness and areal extent has been observed over the period 1975–2005 (medium  confidence). {4.7}
• Multiple lines of evidence support very substantial Arctic warming since the mid-20th century. {Box 5.1, 10.3}

bookmark_borderWhy Doesn’t Global Warming Feel Warmer?

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). The report states that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal.”

Then, why doesn’t it feel that much hotter? Because most of the rise in temperature is in the water:

Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010 (high confidence). It is virtually certain that the upper ocean (0?700 m) warmed from 1971 to 2010, and it likely warmed between the 1870s and 1971.

• On a global scale, the ocean warming is largest near the surface, and the upper 75 m warmed by 0.11 [0.09 to 0.13] °C per decade over the period 1971–2010. Since AR4, instrumental biases in upper-ocean temperature records have been identified and reduced, enhancing confidence in the assessment of change.
• It is likely that the ocean warmed between 700 and 2000 m from 1957 to 2009. Sufficient observations are available for the period 1992 to 2005 for a global assessment of temperature change below 2000 m. There were likely no significant observed temperature trends between 2000 and 3000 m for this period. It is likely that the ocean warmed from 3000 m to the bottom for this period, with the largest warming observed in the Southern Ocean.
• More than 60% of the net energy increase in the climate system is stored in the upper ocean (0–700 m) during the relatively well-sampled 40-year period from 1971 to 2010, and about 30% is stored in the ocean below 700 m. The increase in upper ocean heat content during this time period estimated from a linear trend is likely.
• It is about as likely as not that ocean heat content from 0–700 m increased more slowly during 2003–2010 than during 1993–2002. Ocean heat uptake from 700–2000m, where interannual variability is smaller, likely continued unabated from 1993 to 2009.
• It is very likely that regions of high salinity where evaporation dominates have become more saline, while regions of low salinity where precipitation dominates have become fresher since the 1950s. These regional trends in ocean salinity provide indirect evidence that evaporationand precipitation over the oceans have changed (medium confidence).
• There is no observational evidence of a trend in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), based on the decade-long record of the complete AMOC and longer records of individual AMOC components.