Hot Global Warming Science Links

Looking for authoritative online information about the scientific research into global warming or, more generally, climate change? Here are a few good links to get you started.

• The Discovery of Global Warming - This site by Spencer Weart accompanies the recent publication of his book by the same name. Spencer Weart is Director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics and holds a Ph.D. in Physics and Astrophysics. The site actually contains more information than was included in the book and allows you to skip through various topics, such as the discovery of the carbon dioxide greenhouse effect and links to various other published references and scientific papers. An interesting timeline of key milestones in climate change research from 1800 to the present is located here.
  
  
• Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years - This report by the National Academy of Sciences, just released last month, reviewed the famous 1998 'hockey stick' paper by Michael Mann and others, which studied several lines of proxy evidence for climate conditions for the past 2,000 years. Mann et al. concluded that the Northern Hemisphere was warming during the end of the 20th century more than at any other time in the past 1,000 years. The NAS report supported Mann et al.'s conclusions and noted that "the scientific consensus regarding human-induced global warming would not be substantively altered if, for example, the global mean surface temperature 1,000 years ago was found to be as warm as it is today." Further, "anthropogenic forcing, and particularly increases in greenhouse gases, are needed to reproduce the late 20th century warming" (p. 102). You can download the full report (PDF), read it online, or order a hardcopy paperback edition from the website here.
  
  
• RealClimate.org - RealClimate blog is run by several academic climate scientists, who are scattered at research labs from around the world. It is currently the most popular climate science blog thanks to its authoritative authorship and the responsiveness of the bloggers to current climate science topics that are being discussed in the media.