2047 - every year hotter (even coolest) than hottest year ever recorded

[Tor Bejnar]

According to a new report, after 2047 every year -even the coolest- will be hotter than the hottest years ever recorded. This deadline offers an original and potentially very useful new frame for climate change that breaks with the history of environmentalist deadlines and brings a sense of proximity, and a narrative of a journey that leads to an irreversible transformation.

      Climate Change Denial blog (http://climatedenial.org/)

This new report is in Nature:  "The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability"
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v502/n7470/full/nature12540.html
Abstract:

Ecological and societal disruptions by modern climate change are critically determined by the time frame over which climates shift beyond historical analogues. Here we present a new index of the year when the projected mean climate of a given location moves to a state continuously outside the bounds of historical variability under alternative greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. Using 1860 to 2005 as the historical period, this index has a global mean of 2069 (±18 years s.d.) for near-surface air temperature under an emissions stabilization scenario and 2047 (±14 years s.d.) under a ‘business-as-usual’ scenario. Unprecedented climates will occur earliest in the tropics and among low-income countries, highlighting the vulnerability of global biodiversity and the limited governmental capacity to respond to the impacts of climate change. Our findings shed light on the urgency of mitigating greenhouse gas emissions if climates potentially harmful to biodiversity and society are to be prevented.

[ccgwebmaster]

I think that paper was discussed somewhat in "Science" at https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,598.0.html?

[Tor Bejnar]

Thanks, ccgwebmaster.  (I had not noticed ) 

I put this here because of the interesting contextual questions raised by George Marshall's Climate Change Denial blog entry (http://climatedenial.org/).  Is this approach to communicating the consequences of AGW functionally different for middle-of-the-road just-plain-folk than the "in 2100 things will be a real mess" approach?

^{[Edit:  I changed "middle-of-the-ground" to "middle-of-the-road".  Where did I get "ground" from??]}

[ccgwebmaster]

Is this approach to communicating the consequences of AGW functionally different for middle-of-the-ground just-plain-folk than the "in 2100 things will be a real mess" approach?

It has to be functionally different? I thought this study did a very good job of conveying the fundamental nature of the changes that are happening (and that have happened to date re: ocean acidification) - without conveying any negativity over the "real mess" side of things?

Given that a lot of people think the negativity implied by trying to communicate causes for alarm and the ultimate consequences of our actions turns people off listening to the message or propagates defeatism - that's perhaps somewhat important.

It also nicely brought forwards the timescales in peoples minds - from end of century to much sooner, again by side stepping the "real mess" - as most of that is generally predicted to happen much later - beyond the lifetime of too many people listening to this stuff today. If you live in the tropics, I think it would be hard to be as sanguine about climate change as you were before, knowing that within two decades you move entirely beyond the bounds of historic variability on an annual basis?