A warming Arctic can stretch the polar vortex, a high-altitude air ribbon, one says. The “wobble” can disrupt the jet stream, causing extreme cold in the East.

Pedestrians walked the snow-covered streets of Jersey City, N.J., during last month’s winter storm. Some scientists say there is a link between a warming planet and the recent frigid temperatures. Credit…Aristide Economopoulos for The New York Times

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https://tinyurl.com/Brooklyn-Story-Lab

July/August 2025

Newsletter

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Terraformation is just one of 10 organizations recognized by the Global Warming Mitigation Project (GWMP) as winners of the 2025 Keeling Curve Prize (KCP). The Keeling Curve Prize — overseen by GWMP, a Brooklyn Story Lab partner — supports organizations developing practical, scalable answers to the climate crisis.

This year, the 10 winning organizations were announced by Jacquelyn Francis, Founder and Executive Director of GWMP, at the TED Countdown Summit main stage in Nairobi, Kenya, awarding $50,000 to each project to help expand their impact in the fight against climate change.

Learn more about the 10 winning organizations — and GWMP — here.

Travel 200 miles from any country’s shoreline and you enter the “High Seas,” the UN’s designation for international waters. The High Seas might as well be the Wild West, as there are few laws that govern this territory, which covers 43% of Earth’s surface (the ocean itself covers 71%). That chaotic lack of law jeopardizes the future health of the ocean, including the Blue Economy: the food that 3 billion people globally count on, and the economic opportunities on which 11% of the planet depends.

Elephant Mothers Elephants are a matriarchal species. This year, World Elephant Day (August 12) is honoring both the matriarch elephants AND the women conservation leaders and rangers in communities in Africa and Asia who are working to protect them.

EXCLUSIVE OFFER FOR BROOKLYN STORY LAB READERS Expert Fundraising Offer for BSL Readers Fundraising is expensive. Yes, it takes money to make money, and hiring a consultant can be hugely impactful, but doing so can also be costly. For startups or small nonprofits already reeling from the shock and awe of recent political events, that can create a barrier to entry that has existential implications. Our strategic partners at boutique fundraising firm Hudson Ferris have come up with a dynamic solution: a new platform called Margaret, which democratizes the fundraising experience at an affordable price point (hundreds a month as opposed to thousands). Membership offers unlimited fundraising questions from experts in the field via the platform. Margaret already includes partners such as Civic Hall (which has 62,000 members), fundraising CMS platform Arreva, and donor-research tool DonorAtlas, the latter two of which have integrated Margaret into their platforms. To learn more about Margaret — and a special introductory package for the Brooklyn Story Lab community — visit here. Take a Video Tour of Margaret

July/August Calendar Though the new Administration has banned references to many, there are social-awareness days or tentpole events every month that can help organizations like yours connect to a larger, purpose-driven audience. By creating content connected to these key dates, you have the potential to create viral experiences. Here are the global dates that stand out to us in July and August. 6/30-7/3: Green Climate Fund Board Meeting (Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea) 6/30-7/3: International Business Forum (Seville, Spain) 6/30-7/4: SDG Investment Fair (Seville, Spain) 7/6-7/7: BRICS Summit (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) 7/7-7/11: Montreal Protocol, 47th Meeting (Bangkok, Thailand) 7/7-7/25: International Seabed Authority Assembly (Kingston, Jamaica) 7/8-7/11: AI for Good Global Summit (Geneva, Switzerland) 7/11: World Population Day 7/12: International Day of South-South Cooperation 2024 7/12: International Malala Day 7/14-7/23: UN High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (New York, U.S.) 7/17: Day of International Criminal Justice 7/18: Nelson Mandela International Day 7/27-7/29: UN Food Systems Summit Stocktake (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) 7/29: International Tiger Day 7/31: World Ranger Day 8/5-8/8: UN Conference on Landlocked Developing Countries (Awaza, Turkmenistan) 8/9: International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples 8/10: World Lion Day 8/12: International Youth Day 8/12: World Elephant Day 8/19: World Humanitarian Day 8/20: World World Mosquito Day Day 8/23: International Day for Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition 8/24-8/28: World Water Week (Stockholm, Sweden) 8/26: Women’s Equality Day 8/27: World Lake Day 8/29: International Day Against Nuclear Tests Ask us how to create noteworthy content that connects with these dates for your purpose-driven organization or brand — or how to get more attention for your social media, digital media, or feature stories. Contact Us Let’s Tell Your Story Brooklyn Story Lab is a globally focused media consultancy that creates content solutions for purpose-driven organizations, with a particular focus on their social good commitments. Our work is aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals — a blueprint for making sure no one on the planet is left behind. If you would like your purpose-driven project to reach new audiences and deliver more impact, we’d love to help you tell the story through our Content Solutions:   Articles and Impact Stories Brand Strategy Campaign Ideation and Execution Content Strategy and Storytelling Fundraising Collateral and Strategy Newsletters Op-Eds and Thought Leadership Podcasts: Audio and Video Seminars, Panels, and Moderated Events Social Media Campaigns and Events Storytelling Workshops Strategic Partnerships Video: Longform and Short Web Design and Development Please send us more information about your project so we can help you get started. Fill out our contact form here, or email info@brooklynstorylab.net.   Get in Touch

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Global Warming Acceleration: Impact on Sea Ice

02 April 2025
James Hansen, Joe Kelly, Pushker Kharecha

Abstract. Global warming has accelerated.[2] Warming melts sea ice, but it also melts ice sheets, ice shelves, ice caps and glaciers, which affects sea ice cover. Injection of cold freshwater and icebergs into the ocean tends to increase sea ice cover during a transient period until the climate forcing stabilizes and a new climate state is approached. Sea ice melt due to the warming ocean has the upper hand over freshwater injection in both hemispheres today, and thus global sea ice cover is near a historic low (Fig. 1). Arctic sea ice has been relatively stable for the past 10-20 years while Antarctic sea ice has declined, but global warming acceleration may alter both cases. In the Arctic, warm Atlantic water is intruding under the cold Arctic surface layer and warm Pacific water is spilling over the Aleutian sill into the Arctic Basin. Paleoclimate data show that warming at depth can lead to sudden loss of sea ice near Greenland, with consequences for the Greenland ice sheet. In the Antarctic, accelerated ocean warming increases melting of ice shelves and freshwater injection, which can cause temporary growth of sea ice cover. Global climate models employed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have failed to account well for the freshwater effect on sea ice cover, thus contributing to IPCC’s underestimate of climate sensitivity. Overall, accelerated global warming does not bode well for stability of the ice sheets, the ocean’s overturning circulations, and global sea level in coming decades – despite the complexity of sea ice changes and uncertainty about the growth rate of ice sheet mass loss.

Global sea ice cover is one of the three big “fast” climate feedbacks in the classical definition of equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS), which the Charney report[3] cemented. The Charney committee’s decision to exclude the “slow” feedbacks of ice sheets and the carbon cycle in their assessment was invaluable, as it allowed focus on the crucial water vapor, cloud and ice/snow feedbacks, and their interactions, in the global climate models (GCMs) then under development. Charney realized that the excluded feedbacks may have effects on short timescales, but those could be kept in mind for later study.

Recently, we concluded that climate sensitivity is high, ECS = 4.5 ± 0.5°C (1σ) for doubled atmospheric CO₂, based on three independent analyses (glacial-interglacial climate change, 1850-2024 global warming, and Earth’s darkening during 2000-2024).[2] High ECS changes everything: it fundamentally alters expectations for continued climate change. Why? Because “fast” feedbacks are not really fast: they come into play in proportion to temperature change, not in direct response to climate forcing. Thus, climate response time is approximately proportional to climate sensitivity squared.[4] One consequence is that the “fast” feedback response to ship aerosol reduction[2] is still growing significantly after five years, which is the reason we expect 2025 global temperature to be about as high as in 2024, despite the El Nino having faded to the ENSO-neutral state. A second result is that we must simultaneously consider “fast” and “slow” feedback effects because their timescales overlap. Let’s start with sea ice.

Fig. 2. Arctic and Antarctic sea ice area (31-day running-mean of daily data) from National Snow and Ice Data Center daily sea ice extent data.[1] The most recent 15 days (shown be a dotted line) are 29-day, 27-day… 3-day, 1-day means, and are thus estimates that will be replaced as data are updated.

Sea ice cover is now near its minimum during the era of global satellite data (i.e., since 1979) in both hemispheres (Figs. 2 and 3). The warm-season minimum of Arctic sea ice decreased sharply in 2007 and even further in 2012. The 2007 decrease was associated with sustained wind anomalies that drove ice from the Arctic toward warmer water and the Fram Strait.[6],[7] The 2012 melt was enhanced by an intense cyclonic storm that mixed heat upward in a normally well-stratified summer ocean, thus melting sea ice from below.[8] As the thickness of sea ice declines, such weather anomalies melt ice more effectively.

Fig. 3. Arctic and Antarctic sea ice area, with the solid curves being the 365-day running-mean of National Snow and Ice Data Center daily sea ice extent data[1] and the squares being annual results.

Sea ice volume is an important diagnostic because reduction of ice volume is a freshwater injection onto the ocean that can affect ocean circulation. Sea ice volume change is more difficult to measure than area change. Remarkably, changes of the ice “freeboard” (the height of the ice surface above sea level) can be detected by satellite, but measurement accuracy is limited, especially for Antarctic sea ice, which is less thick than Arctic sea ice. Sea ice volume estimates for the entire ocean (Fig. 4) are based on ice-ocean data assimilation models constrained by available observations. The difference between results from two data assimilation models for Arctic sea (Fig. 4, left) is one measure of uncertainty in sea ice volume changes. [PIOMAS (Pan-Arctic Ice-Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System) and GIOMAS (Global Ice-Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System) employ different ocean and sea ice models.[10]] The PIOMAS data set is preferred for the Arctic because it has been more extensively validated and used.[11]

Fig. 4. Sea ice volume: solid curves are 12-month running-mean of PIOMAS and 365-day running-mean of GIOMAS data, both from the Polar Science Center of the University of Washington.[5]

The volume of Arctic sea ice declined of the order of 10,000 cubic kilometers in the 40 years 1980-2020, thus about 250 km³/year, a freshwater injection rate comparable to the annual mass loss rate of the Greenland ice sheet. This decrease of Arctic sea ice volume over the past several decades provides a substantial term to the total freshwater injection that affects stability of the Atlantic Overturning Meridional Circulation (AMOC), as discussed in the Supplementary Material of our recent paper.[2] Total freshwater injection from all sources is now large enough to affect ocean temperature, salinity, and overturning ocean circulations, as shown, for example, in observed zonal-mean ocean temperature change (Fig. 5A)[12] and in our climate simulations.[13] However, increase of freshwater injection is absent or underestimated in models employed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as shown by the absence of cooling in their climate model simulations (Fig. 5B,C) and underestimates of the freshening of polar surface waters.

Fig. 5. (A) Observed zonal-mean 2001-2020 ocean temperature relative to 1981-2000, (B) ensemble mean of CMIP6 for that period, and (C) CMIP6 result for 2081-2100 (from Fig. 1, Shu et al., 2022).[10]

Climate sensitivity. Failure of IPCC models to capture the cooling from freshwater injection affects IPCC’s best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) because IPCC relies heavily on comparison of climate simulations for 1850-present with observed global warming. Models that fail to capture the freshwater effect – which causes a delay of polar warming and reduced global warming – require unrealistically low ECS in order to avoid global warming that exceeds observations. However, this effect on estimated ECS is exceeded by the aerosol effect described next.

Aerosols are the main reason for IPCC’s underestimate of climate sensitivity. IPCC’s estimate of aerosol climate forcing (Fig. 3 of ref. 2) is nearly linear in global sulfur emissions (Fig. SM1 of ref. 2). With the IPCC aerosol forcing, an ECS of about 3°C for doubled CO₂ is required to yield close agreement with observed global warming over the past century. However, the impact of aerosols on clouds (which is most of the aerosol forcing) is highly nonlinear; we conclude in paper 2 that global aerosol forcing increased (became more negative) by about 0.5 W/m² during the period 1970-2005 as a result of human-made aerosols being spread more globally into more pristine air, including over the ocean. Aerosols thus reduced the net human-made (greenhouse gas plus aerosols) climate forcing, and as a result a higher climate sensitivity (4.5°C ± 0.5°C for doubled CO₂) is required to match observed global warming. This high climate sensitivity is also best able to simulate the strong warming in the past two years, and it is the main reason that we expect little if any cooling in the annual mean 2025 global temperature.

Two additional – independent and consistent – evaluations of climate sensitivity are provided by (1) comparison of paleoclimate equilibrium states,[14] and (2) inference of large amplifying cloud feedback based on accurate monitoring of Earth’s radiation balance.[2]

Summary implications. High climate sensitivity (including the implied corollary that human-made aerosols have partly offset greenhouse gas warming) changes everything. Most important: it makes it much more difficult to avoid passing the “point-of-no-return” – shutdown of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and, in turn, sea level rise of several meters.

AMOC shutdown occurs when the density of the upper ocean in the regions of deepwater formation in the North Atlantic becomes sufficiently light relative to deeper ocean layers, i.e., light enough to prevent the winter sinking of surface water that drives the global ocean conveyor. Accelerated warming has three effects that increase the likelihood of AMOC shutdown and the speed with which shutdown can occur: (1) accelerated global warming limits mixing of the warmed surface water with deeper, colder, layers, (2) greater warming increases precipitation, adding freshwater to the surface layer; and (3) greater warming increases ice melt and thus increases freshwater injection onto the North Atlantic.

AMOC shutdown is the “point-of-no-return” because it requires centuries for the ocean circulation to recover from shutdown and, in the meantime, transport of heat from the Southern Hemisphere into the North Atlantic is greatly reduced. Resulting increase of ocean temperature in the Southern Hemisphere practically locks in demise of the West Antarctic ice sheet, with sea level rise of several meters.

Evaluation of how close the world is to AMOC shutdown is extremely difficult. IPCC’s approach – relying almost entirely on global climate models – is fraught with uncertainty and errors, as suggested by a paper[15] concluding that AMOC would not shut down even with 5°C global warming and by the IPCC AR6[16] conclusion that AMOC shutdown is low probability.

More reliable analysis, we argue, requires comparable emphasis on information obtained from (1) paleoclimate, (2) global climate models, and (3) ongoing observations of climate change and climate processes. That is the approach that we will follow at Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions (CSAS) and we appreciate support that allows us to continue to pursue that research. We plan to make available and continually update a broad array of the most essential data, e.g., the sea ice graphs are here.[17] However, timely results in support of policy needs are dependent on continuation and enhancement of crucial observations. We draw attention especially to:

(1) the global ARGO float program[18] of several thousand deep-diving autonomous floats, which needs to be continued and expanded with more capable floats in the polar regions that can assess changes near vulnerable ice shelves and in the sub-sea-ice ocean. The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has provided a large fraction of these floats, but it is unclear whether they can be counted on to continue and to enhance the observations. It is important for more nations to step up their contributions to the program.

(2) the global Earth radiation budget measurements presently obtained by CERES[19] instruments nearing their end-of-life. It is not clear that NASA has adequate plans for continuation of the measurements. In any case, it would be very useful if the European Union and/or China carried out measurements with a quality comparable to the high-precision NASA data and made the data freely available.

[1] Sea ice extent is defined by NSIDC (National Snow and Ice Data Center) as the ocean area with sea ice concentration exceeding 15%. NSIDC Artic Sea Ice News and Analysis and daily updates of sea ice extent for the Arctic and Antarctic are available from NSIDC.
[2] JE Hansen, P Kharecha, M Sato et al., Global warming has accelerated: are the United Nations and the public well-informed? Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development, 67(1), 6–44, 2025, https://doi.org/10.1080/00139157.2025.2434494
[3] J Charney et al., Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment. (Washington: National Academy of Sciences Press, 1979)
[4] J Hansen, G Russell, A Lacis et al. Climate response times: dependence on climate sensitivity and ocean mixing. Science 229, 857-9, 1985
[5] Polar Science Center. Data. Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington. (last accessed 31 March 2025), https://psc.apl.uw.edu/data/
[6] J Zhang, RW Lindsay, A Schweiger, I. Rigor, What drove the dramatic retreat of Arctic sea ice during summer 2007?, Geophys Res Lett, 35, doi:10.1029/2008GL034005
[7] RW Lindsay, J Zhang, A. Schweiger et al, Arctic sea ice retreat in 2007 following thinning trend, J Clim 22, 165-76, 2009
[8] J Zhang, R Lindsay, A. Schweiger, M Steele, The impact of an intense cyclone on 2012 Arctic sea ice retreat, Geophys Res Lett 40, 720-6, 2013
[9] J Zhang, DA Rothrock, Modeling global sea ice with a thickness and enthalpy distribution model in generalized curvilinear coordinates, Mon. Wea. Rev., 131(5), 681-97, 2003
[10] S Liao, H Luo, J Wang et al., An evaluation of Antarctic sea-ice thickness from the Global Ice-Ocean Modeling and Assimilation System based on in situ and satellite observations, The Cryosphere, 16, 1807-19, 2022
[11] J Zhang, private communication, 27 March 2025
[12] Q Shu, Q Wang, M Arthum et al., “Arctic Ocean amplification in a warming climate in CMIP6 models,” Sci. Adv. 8, eabn9755, 2022
[13] J Hansen, M Sato, P Hearty et al., “Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 C global warming is highly dangerous,” Atmos Chem Phys 16, 3761-812, 2015. See also the Supplementary Material of reference 2
[14] JE Hansen, M Sato, L Simons et al., “Global warming in the pipeline,” Oxford Open Clim. Chan. 3 (1) (2023): doi.org/10.1093/oxfclm/kgad008
[15] P Bakker, A Schmittner, JTM Lenaerts et al., Fate of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation: strong decline under continued warming and Greenland melting. Geophy Res Lett; 43, 12252-60, 2016
[16] IPCC. Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis [Masson-Delmotte V, Zhai P, Pirani A et al. (eds)]. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021
[17] Various data sets are being revised and updated, to be made available at https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/Data
[18] K. von Schuckmann, L Cheng, ND Palmer et al., “Heat stored in the Earth system: where does the energy go?” Earth System Science Data 12, 2013-41, 2020
[19] NG Loeb, GC Johnson, TJ Thorsen et al., “Satellite and ocean data reveal marked increase in Earth’s heating rate,” Geophys Res Lett 48, 2021: e2021GL093047

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Our new paper, Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed? is available here.

A webinar discussing the paper will take place TODAY, 4 February, at 9 AM Eastern Standard Time, accessible here.

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A solar farm abutting a coal-burning power plant in Weifang, China, last year. Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times

Depending on how you look at it, the climate story is one that can inspire genuine optimism or a fair bit of doomerism.

On any given day, there are news stories, academic studies and memes that support two dueling narratives:

This week brought yet another slew of data that provides an opportunity to hold these two seemingly contradictory truths at the same time.

There are elements of truth to both perspectives, of course. It’s a disorienting dynamic that we grapple with as reporters covering climate change. Our work involves reporting on the world as it is. Sometimes that means staring down hard facts about the mess we’ve made, and sometimes that means highlighting the real progress that is underway.

Yes, planet-warming emissions are still on the rise, and the effects of climate change are growing worse. And also, yes, renewable energy is coming online at record rates, and there is a huge global effort to deal with an overheating planet.

On Wednesday, a new report highlighted the stunning, record-breaking gains in wind and solar power around the world. A full 30 percent of global electricity was generated by renewables last year, according to Ember, an energy think tank.

On the very same day, however, the latest figures from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Mauna Loa Observatory revealed record levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This was the largest 12-month increase ever recorded on the so-called Keeling Curve, which has been used to measure the concentration of CO2 since 1958.

To help make sense of this split-screen moment, I turned to Tony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Leiserowitz, who tracks public perceptions of global warming, is finely attuned to the often jarring work of reconciling conflicting story lines.

“More than one thing can be true at the same time,” he wrote in an email. “We are witnessing astonishing growth in clean energy. Meanwhile, the hourglass of time we have left to limit global warming at ‘safe’ levels is running out.”

‘Take heart in this news’

Gains in clean energy generation is a theme we’ve been tracking for years now.

Solar power has gotten exponentially cheaper over the past decade, thanks largely to low-cost Chinese manufacturing. And in recent years, it has become more affordable to install wind turbines.

The result, according to Ember, was a 23 percent jump in solar power generation last year, and a 10 percent jump in wind generation. Much of the growth came in China. The country accounted for 51 percent of new solar generation and 60 percent of new wind generation.

Global fossil fuel production grew less than 1 percent last year.

“We should take heart in this news,” said Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia state representative who is now senior counsel at Rewiring America, a nonprofit group working to promote clean power. “We now have more evidence that our shift to clean energy sources is the only viable path to healthier, more resilient communities and a safer climate, here and around the globe.”

And it’s not just power generation that is changing for the better. As my colleagues Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich report, giant batteries are beginning to play a meaningful role in keeping the lights on and stabilizing the grid.

But Abrams cautioned that good news about renewables shouldn’t lead to complacency. “We can’t for a moment slow down,” she said. “These twin reports demonstrate the urgency of action to ratchet down reliance on fossil fuels while speeding delivery of investment in clean generation.”

‘We sadly continue to break records’

The Keeling Curve data offers another reminder, as if one were needed, that planet-warming emissions, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels, are continuing to transform our planet.

For more than 65 years now, scientific instruments atop volcanoes in Hawaii have monitored how much carbon dioxide is present in the atmosphere. The data “reveals a saw-toothed line that ticks continually upward over time,” my colleague Elena Shao wrote in 2022. “That pattern is considered by many scientists to be the most important evidence that the climate is changing because of human activity.”

This week’s update was a doozy.

Not only did the concentration of CO2 reach an all-time high, but the trend is accelerating: This was biggest year-over-year jump ever seen. The NOAA report also said CO2 concentration tends to rise quickly toward the end of El Niño cycles like the one we’re currently experiencing.

Which leads us back to the Ember study. The world is making steady progress in ramping up renewables. And that’s a real cause for optimism.

“The notion of a ‘doomer camp’ is overstated,” Leiserowitz said. “The larger majority of Americans reject a fatalistic view of climate change. In fact, the far larger and more important problem is that most Americans are not worried enough.”

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The research, detailed in this week’s issue of the journal Science, synthesizes findings scattered across diverse fields ranging from archaeology to economics to paint a clearer picture of how global warming-related shifts in temperature and rainfall could fuel acts of aggression.

Though scientists don’t know exactly why global warming increases violence, the findings suggest that it’s another major fallout of human-made climate change, in addition to rising sea levels and increased heat waves.

“This study shows that the value of reducing [greenhouse gas] emissions is actually higher than we previously thought,” said study first author Solomon Hsiang, an economist at Princeton University in New Jersey. (Related: “Global Warming Making People More Aggressive?”)

Leveling the Field

To perform their analysis, Hsiang and his colleagues sifted through hundreds of studies published across a number of fields, including climatology, archaeology, economics, political science, and psychology.

“[As economists], we were way out of our comfort zone,” Hsiang said. “It’s been quite an interesting experience. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

The team eventually settled on 60 studies on subjects related to climate, conflict, temperature, violence, crime, and more, and reanalyzed those studies’ data using a common statistical framework. An analogy would be converting currencies from different European countries into the euro so that meaningful comparisons could be made.

They did this to account for the fact that different parts of the world experience different variabilities in temperature and rainfall. For example, an increase of 2°F (1.1°C) might not be a big deal in the United States, where temperatures can vary widely, but it might be unusual for a country in Africa.

When the team converted the data and compared them, the results were striking: They found that even relatively minor departures from normal temperatures or rainfall amounts substantially increased the risk of conflict on a variety of levels, ranging from individual aggression, such as murder and rape, to country-level political instability and international wars.

The study data covered all major regions of the world and different time spans as well, from hours and years to decades and centuries. Across the data, the researchers found similar patterns of human aggression fueled by climate factors.

Examples included spikes in domestic violence in India and Australia, increased assaults and murders in the United States and Tanzania, ethnic violence in Europe and South Asia, land invasions in Brazil, and police using force in the Netherlands.

Ancient Insights

The effect wasn’t limited to just modern societies, either. Among the research Hsiang and his team looked at was a study that linked increased political instability and warfare in the ancient Maya civilization around A.D. 900 to prolonged droughts brought about by global warming-related climate shifts in lands near the Pacific Ocean. (Related: “Why the Maya Fell: Climate Change, Conflict—And a Trip to the Beach?”)

“That’s when the classical period of Mayan civilization ends,” said study co-author Edward Miguel, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Another study linked the 14th-century collapse of Cambodia’s ancient Khmer civilization, which built the temple of Angkor Wat, to decades of drought interspersed with intense monsoon rains.

“Archaeologists can actually observe how [Khmer] engineers were trying to adapt,” Hsiang said. “They were trying to keep up with the climatic changes, but in the end, even though they were the most sophisticated water engineers in the region at the time, it still seemed too much.”

Hsiang says his team included these historic case studies in their analysis in order to understand how populations adapted—or didn’t—to the kinds of gradual climate changes that climatologists predict for the future. But he thinks there are also lessons to be learned from the past.

“A lot of the civilizations that were nailed by climatic shifts were the most advanced societies in their region or on the planet during their day, and they probably felt they could cope with anything,” he said.

“I think we should have some humility [and] recognize that people in the past were very innovative and they were trying to adapt to these changes as well.”

Why Does Warming Make People Mad?

Brad Bushman, a professor of communication and psychology at Ohio State University who specializes in human aggression and violence, called the study “impressive.”

“The convergence of findings across so many different disciplines increases your confidence that you’ve got a pretty reliable effect here,” said Bushman, who was not involved in the research.

“Hopefully, this study will increase awareness that climate change spans many different domains of human activity, including conflict.” (See “6 Ways Climate Change Will Affect You.”)

While the new study helps strengthens the case for climate change influencing human aggression, it was not designed to address the question of why it does.

Other scientists have speculated on possible mechanisms. For example, Bushman thinks dramatic changes in temperature and rainfall are unpleasant and naturally make people more cranky. “When people are in a cranky mood, they’re more likely to behave aggressively,” he said.

Another theory is that too much or too little rain can negatively affect a country’s agriculture and lead to economic ruin.

“When individuals have very low income or the economy of the region collapses, that changes people’s incentives to take part in various activities,” study first author Hsiang said. And “one activity they could take part in is joining a militant group.”

The team thinks researchers will eventually discover that multiple mechanisms are at play simultaneously.

Hsiang compared modern scientists studying the relationship between climate and aggression to medical doctors in the 1930s who knew that smoking and lung cancer were linked but had not yet uncovered the mechanism.

“It took decades, but people did eventually figure out what was going on, and that helped us design policies and institutions to help mitigate the harmful effects [of smoking],” Hsiang said.

Similarly, co-author Miguel said, pinning down the mechanisms behind how global warming affects aggression will be the “next key frontier” for this area of research.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/08/130801-global-warming-violence-climate-change-science-environment/

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RICHARD BELZER
“Dead Wrong”

Friday, October 5, 2012
6:00 PM
Milton Berle Room

Do you still believe that
Marilyn Monroe overdosed on drugs?
Or that Sirhan Sirhan killed Robert Kennedy?
If the answer is yes, then keep reading.
For years the government has put out hits
on people who were “talking too much,”
covering up government assassinations
with drug overdoses and mysterious suicides.
In Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country’s
Most Controversial Cover-Ups the most
historic government conspiracies
are finally revealed.

Friar Richard Belzer and David Wayne
prove, by examining the sheer evidence,
that the allegations on some of the
most famous deaths in history are,
quite simply, impossible.

Join Belzer for cocktails and
hors d’oeuvres and hear the real
stories behind the coverups.

http://www.friarsclub.com/members/event%20pdfs/RichardBelzer-DeadWrong-10-5-12.pdf

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