Climate Change online resources

Want to have a better understanding of the issues surrounding the changing climate? I’ve assembled below resources that I believe represent the most objective resources available on the internet that have helped me get beneath all the hoopla, provide objective data sources (continually updated) that leads to a better understanding of climate dynamics, what is hyperbole and what is of real concern. So without further ado, here are my topics and resources. Feel free to add/comment at the bottom–Ken Lassman

Weather and climate basics
Weather is what happens in the real world. Climate science uses weather data to tease out subtle trends and set the odds for what is going to happen tomorrow, in ten or even a hundred years. This is accommplished by collecting and analyzing statistically valid and physically relevant weather data over time, we are able to detect patterns that allows us to delineate weather regions, how they interact with each other, and detect regional and even global trends and probabilities. better understand the weather over time, over large areas, and across the planet as a whole. Weather is what is actually happening in terms of temperature, humidity, wind, precipitation, clouds and other atmospheric events. The climate describes the probability of that weather happening for that place, that region, or the whole planet. As the climate changes, the probabilities of extreme weather events increases in severity and frequency. Every current weather event adds to the data that is averaged for the past 5 or 15 or 30 years of previous weather events to calculate what the climate is. Here is a useful online resource:
http://scied.ucar.edu/shortcontent/climate

Evidence for climate change
There are many, many reliable web resources that review this information in a comprehensive, up-to-date matter. Here are some of my favorites:
http://climate.nasa.gov/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=8
http://skepticalscience.com/argument.php
http://www.climate.gov/
https://www.climate.gov/teaching

A convenient birdseye view of both the evidence for and consequent changes occurring (see below) at the EPA website: http://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/index.html

Human and natural forcings of climate
The answer is very clear that humanity has changed the chemistry of the atmosphere and those changes are driving the current climate changes we are seeing, but that doesn’t mean that the sun, volcanoes, our orbit around the sun, cosmic rays and other factors don’t play a part. Here are some of my favorite resources to explain both human and more than human contributions to the climate.
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/

And here’s the unequivocal “No” answer as to whether volcanoes emit more greenhouse gases than human activity does: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/gas_climate.html

Human emissions of carbon
http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/

CO2 and greenhouse gas amounts in the atmosphere
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/
Fascinating time lapse showing carbon composition over the past 800,000 years: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html

Here are the physical consequences for changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere and oceans

arctic sea ice levels
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

combined global land and sea surface temps
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/
There are many graphs, datasets and animations available here; I usually look at the LOTI (land, ocean temperature index) graph, which shows the anomalies from the 1951-1980 averages. This is available here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/

ocean heat content
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/

polar ice mass
WAY more complicated than you might think, with some parts of antarctica shrinking, other parts expanding for a whole bunch of reasons. To get a flavor of how all these pieces fit together, check out: https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/sotc/ice_sheets.html Toward the end, they provde cumulative data that indicates the extent of ice mass loss and how much they have contributed to the sea level rise–see the Merging Methods section for details.

glacier ice mass
http://wgms.ch/

sea level rise
http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/

ocean acidification
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/OA+Observations+and+Data

extreme weather events
The IPCC overview of the issue: http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/
Famous James Hansen study that uses weighted dice analogy to increasing probability of extreme weather events: http://www.pnas.org/content/109/37/E2415.full.pdf
A discussion of the nuances of Hanson’s paper as discussed by climatologists and denialists: http://www.skepticalscience.com/hansens-new-climate-dice-loaded-misunderstood.html

Here are some of the ecological consequences of climate changes
poleward migration of animal species
Here’s an example of the white pelican projections, among 314 bird species threatened by poleward shifting trends: http://climate.audubon.org/birds/amwpel/american-white-pelican
Here’s a good place to track new data on the poleward migration of fisheries: http://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/stories/2014/03/climate_portal.html

1.5 degree Celsius: 2/3 of the planet’s coral reefs are spared; 2 degrees Celsius: most of the planet’s coral reefs are lost: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n2/full/nclimate1674.html

Impacts on different countries and efforts to adapt
Humans are part of the planet’s ecosystem and here’s how different countries are being affected:
http://www.cgdev.org/page/mapping-impacts-climate-change

Mitigation efforts to minimize climate change
Efforts to reduce fossil fuel emissions
http://riskybusiness.org/

IPCC efforts/Paris
http://www.ipcc.ch/

Clean Power Plan
Gina McCarthy EPA video introducing the CPP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8uUKIbaGaI
EPA main Clean Power Plan website: http://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan/clean-power-plan-existing-power-plants
Excellent overview of CPP by the Climate Energy Project: http://climateandenergy.org/page.53.clean-power-plan

Carbon tax/fee and dividend