Chapter 2

State of the Climate

This is a nice explanation how global avg. temperatures are calculated.

Every year, NOAA puts out a summary of climate statistics and figures, entitled State of the Climate.  You can see the latest one here.  

If you're interested in looking at data yourself, NOAA also has a primer on climate data.

Check out NOAA's climate explorer and climate at a glance web pages to see what the climate in your area (or any area) looks like.

calculate the trend yourself

SkepticalScience has a nice web page where you can do your own temperature trend calculation. If your friend tells you the Earth is not warming, tell them to check it out for themselves.

Another neat way to visualize the climate is to look at maps of temperature anomalies.  NOAA has a cool website where you can do that.

short-term variability

Understanding how short-term climate variability can mask long-term climate change is an important concept. This video is a very cute illustration of why the warming will occasionally pause, even when the climate is, on average, warming. Conclusion to remember: when you look at temperature data, you see the dog, but understanding climate change means trying to infer from the dog what the man is doing. For short periods of time, that can be hard because they can be going in opposite directions.

Paleoclimate Variations

This CarbonBrief article summarizes what paleoclimate data tell us about our climatic past.

For a detailed summary of what the warmth of the Eocene and the abrupt warming of the PETM can tell us, see this great review paper by Richard Alley. [paywall]

On Dessler’s substack, you can read about “the scariest climate plot in the world”

A view from the skeptical side ...

Dr. Fred Singer is a very well known climate contrarian who does not believe the Earth is warming. Watch dueling presentations from Prof. Dessler and Dr. Singer on this question.