News release: “In 2013, the contiguous United States (CONUS) average temperature of 52.4°F was 0.3°F above the 20th century average, and tied with 1980 as the 37th warmest year in the 119-year period of record. The 2013 annual temperature marked the coolest year for the nation since 2009. The 2013 CONUS average temperature was 2.9°F cooler than the 2012… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Climate Change
NOAA Product Highlight: U.S. Climate Extremes Index
“The U.S. Climate Extremes Index or USCEI brings together several climate indicators to illustrate the occurrence of specific extreme events in the contiguous United States from 1910 to the present. These climate indicators include extremes in average monthly maximum and minimum temperatures, heavy one-day precipitation events, drought severity, the number of days with and without precipitation, and… Continue Reading
New Study – Made in China for us: Air pollution as well as exports
News release: “Chinese air pollution blowing across the Pacific Ocean is often caused by the manufacturing of goods for export to the U.S. and Europe, according to findings by UC Irvine and other researchers published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [see China’s international trade and air pollution in the United States]. The study is… Continue Reading
Paper – National contributions to observed global warming
Environmental Research Letters Volume 9 Number 1. H Damon Matthews et al 2014 Environ. Res. Lett. 9 014010 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/1/014010. National contributions to observed global warming “There is considerable interest in identifying national contributions to global warming as a way of allocating historical responsibility for observed climate change. This task is made difficult by uncertainty associated with national estimates of historical emissions, as well as by… Continue Reading
Billion-Dollar Weather/Climate Disasters
U.S. saw 7 billion-dollar weather and climate disasters in 2013: “The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is the Nation’s Scorekeeper in terms of addressing severe weather/climate events in their historical perspective. As part of its responsibility of monitoring and assessing the climate, NCDC tracks and evaluates climate events in the U.S. and globally that have great… Continue Reading
Technology Transfers for Climate Change
Technology Transfers for Climate Change. May Elsayyad – Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance; Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich – Munich Graduate School of Economics (MGSE); Florian Morath – Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, December 30, 2013, CESifo Working Paper Series No. 4521. “This paper considers investments in cost-reducing technology in the context of contributions to climate… Continue Reading
New GAO Reports – Medicare Part D, Air Emissions
MEDICARE PART D – CMS Has Implemented Processes to Oversee Plan Finder Pricing Accuracy and Improve Website Usability, GAO-14-143, Jan 10, 2014 AIR EMISSIONS – Status of Regulatory Activities and Permitting on Alaska’s Outer Continental Shelf, GAO-14-187R, Jan 9, 2014 Continue Reading
LA Times – Meager Sierra snowpack is way below average
By Bettina Boxall: “The signs aren’t good when the chief of California’s snow survey has to walk over bare ground to take a snowpack measurement in the Sierra Nevada, as Frank Gehrke did Friday near Echo Summit. Manual and electronic readings up and down the range placed the statewide snowpack at 20% of normal for this… Continue Reading
New Climate Change Study Projects Continued and Severe Future Warming
Spread in model climate sensitivity traced to atmospheric convective mixing, Steven C. Sherwood, Sandrine Bony & Jean-Louis Dufresne. Nature. 505, 37–42 (02 January 2014) doi:10.1038/nature12829. “This paper offers an explanation for the long-standing uncertainty in predictions of global warming derived from climate models. Uncertainties in predicted climate sensitivity — the magnitude of global warming due to an external influence — range from 1.5° C… Continue Reading
CRS – Federal Pollution Control Laws: How Are They Enforced?
Federal Pollution Control Laws: How Are They Enforced? by Robert Esworthy, Specialist in Environmental Policy. December 16, 2013 “This report focuses on enforcement of federal environmental pollution control requirements under the Clean Air Act (CAA); the Clean Water Act (CWA); the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA or Superfund); and other statutes for which EPA is the primary federal… Continue Reading
China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States
CRS – China’s Economic Rise: History, Trends, Challenges, and Implications for the United States, Wayne M. Morrison, Specialist in Asian Trade and Finance. December 17, 2013 “The rapid rise of China as a major economic power within a time span of about threedecades is often described by analysts as one of the greatest economic success stories… Continue Reading
Border Adjustments for Economywide Policies That Impose a Price on Greenhouse Gas Emissions
“Human activities around the world are producing increasingly large quantities of greenhouse gases (GHGs), the most abundant of which is carbon dioxide (CO2). In recent years, concerns about the effects those emissions might have on the climate have prompted the Congress, federal regulators, and others to consider policies to reduce them. This CBO report examines… Continue Reading
