“Climatologists pick up where meteorologists leave off. We focus on weather timescales beyond the memory of the atmosphere, which is only about one week. And I guess you could say we also focus on timescales beyond human memory, which is… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share Image
“Bjerknes had come up with equations capable of describing the behavior of the atmosphere. The state of the atmosphere at any point could be… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“Sahel’s rainfall, thanks to El Niño. During an El Niño event, the Sahel is typically expected to experience a drought, whereas during a La… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“mechanisms of weather predictions are very similar to those of climate predictions. So if we’re comfortable trusting local forecasters’ predictions about weather, we should… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“The instrument Keeling built, the gas chromatograph, works by passing infrared (IR) light through a sample of air and measuring the amount of IR… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“But the latest climate models paint a very bleak picture. According to their predictions, by the 2040s such summers will be happening every other… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“The Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) synthesized the results from eighteen climate models used by groups around the… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“In the past 100 years alone, the region experienced three devastating droughts. The first stretched from 1910 to 1916; the second stretched from 1941… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“The climate models showed that greenhouse gas emissions had contributed to an increase in such summers, from one in 1,000 years to at least… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“ozone and particulate matter contribute to 8,800 deaths and $71 billion in health care costs every year. The connection with global warming is nothing… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“The goal was to build a model that represented the climate system. This was no small task. Weather models are concerned only about what’s… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“Giannini discovered that ocean temperatures helped regulate the strength of the African monsoon. What was even more fascinating was how each ocean played a… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“Using satellites capable of measuring cloud cover from space, Chiang showed that there was an increase in high clouds during El Niño years. Specifically,… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“Another issue, called the single-action bias,2 is the human habit of taking just one action in response to a problem in situations where multiple… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“Predictions often give us an illusion of control in situations that are inherently out of our control. Nothing exemplifies this better than our relationship… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
“Each location I’ve chosen has its own Achilles’ heel, a vulnerability that unabated climate change will expose and exploit until the place is forever… — Heidi Cullen Copy Share
