Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Tom Karl, the director of the National Climatic Data Center here in Asheville, has been taking questions this morning about climate change and the ongoing talks in Copenhagen. Here’s a snippet:
Germantown, Md.: Good Afternoon,
A lot has been made about the e-mails from East Anglia, (especially in Washington, D.C.). It’s difficult to assess the true scope of the issue because of the plainly partisan bias at play in the gov’t. Could you please explain what exactly the e-mails mean for the scientific community at work on climate issues, and also explain why East Anglia university is important in this debate, if it is at all. (If it had been MIT, or Harvard, how would that have affected the debate?) Thank you!
Thomas R. Karl: These emails do nothing to undermine the very strong scientific consensus that the earth is warming and that human activity is largely responsible.
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Washington, D.C.: Everyone goes on about the Arctic ice melting and causing catastrophic flooding in coastal areas. But since most of the Arctic ice is floating ice, wouldn’t this have little to no effect on sea levels? Think of an ice cube in a glass of water. When the ice cube melts, the level of water has not changed. So why the panic?
Thomas R. Karl: You are absolutely correct. Melting of Arctic sea ice does not change global sea level. Sea-level rise is caused by increasing ocean temperatures, which expands the volume of water in the ocean. Additionally, melting of the world’s glaciers contributes to sea-level rise, and of particular concern is the recently observed melting of major ice sheets, including Greenland.
Sea-level rise has been accelerating over the past two decades compared to the previous 100 years of observed data. This trend is expected to continue with potential large additional contributions of melting from the major ice sheets.
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Amherst, Mass.: Why isn’t the raw temperature measurement data set/s freely available to anyone who wants to do own calculations?
Thomas R. Karl: All original NOAA data are freely available to anyone who requests it.
All of the data that NOAA uses to develop our time series are openly available. NOAA operates 3 National Data Centers and 5 World Data Centers. Part of their mission is to make climate-related data available to all users.
Data are available at http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov, phone: 828-271-4800.
The emails do nothing to undermine the case for human-caused global warming? A half degree rise in ocean temp is going to cause several feet in sea level rise? Give me a break. This guy is a hack job.