Capital Weather Gang: climate change

Scientists who study plant stages and their relationship to climate say the spring of 2012 was the earliest spring on record.

Nickolay Lamm, a 24-year-old researcher and artist, was motivated to gain a better idea of what a devastating rise in sea level would look like. And so he created a set of surreal images showing treasured landmarks swallowed by sea water.

Mother nature does her best to even things out: The chart-busting heat of March 2012 was followed by a March that closed out cooler than normal in the Lower 48.

Drought, record heat and Hurricane Sandy were among the major weather-related disasters that affected the United States in 2012. But just how many Americans felt the impact of these events? A newly released report from the Environment America Research and Policy Center says 243 million people nearly 80 percent of the U.S. population live in counties that experienced at least one weather-related disaster since 2007.

Global warming is often connected with increased extreme weather, but will it make warm season thunderstorms more severe? On balance, yes - the latest research concludes: models and theory point to an increase in severe thunderstorms as the climate warms.

A recent study that suggests the Earth is now warmer than it's been in at least 4,000 years is causing a stir in the climate world.

After plunging to its lowest level on record in September, Arctic sea ice mounted an impressive recovery. But its maximum, reached March 15, still ranked 6th lowest on record. All ten of the lowest maximums on record (since 1979) have occurred in the last 10 years.

As regular readers of this column know well, the past several months have been unusually good to climate skeptics, and extremely bad for the majority of climate scientists who think the scientific evidence pointing to manmade climate change is extremely robust. The key opening salvo came last December, when several well-known scientists had their emails stolen and used for an effective assault on climate science via out-of-context quotes and baseless allegations. This dustup, referred to by many as 'climategate,' helped foster the notion that climate science is controlled by a tight-knit cabal of experts determined to rig the science to suit their best interests. Although several investigations have since cleared these scientists of most allegations, individual researchers have come under heavy fire as a result of this episode, as well as the discovery of several relatively insignificant errors in the landmark 2007 U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. In the process, the public has grown more confused about what scientists know about the climate system and how human activities are transforming it, and public concern about climate change has declined significantly in several key countries, including the U.S. How should scientists counterattack? One researcher, prominent Canadian climatologist Andrew Weaver, thinks he has an answer: Sue the media for libel.