Alabama State Climatologist Dr. John Christy has released a report that shows that increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have had essentially no impact on the weather and climate in the state of Alabama.

His report, “A Practical Guide to Climate Change in Alabama” contains charts and graphic representations that demonstrate numerous and important climate variables for our state. The conclusion of his research is that the increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have produced NO significant changes in Alabama’s climate variables.

Dr. Christy is one of the world’s leading authorities on global climate change and has compiled research on climate variables as part of a global database that he has broken down to take a closer look at those variables for the state of Alabama.

In addition to serving as the Alabama climatologist, Dr. Christy is the distinguished professor of Atmospheric Science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a member of the University of Alabama System. Dr. Christy teamed with Dr. Roy W. Spencer (then a NASA scientist and now a principal research scientist at UAH) to develop a global temperature data set from microwave data observed from satellites beginning in 1979. For this achievement, the Christy-Spencer team was awarded NASA’s Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in 1991. He has been called to testify before the U.S. Congress 20 times on climate change.

Dr. Christy said the word “practical” in the report’s title was used for a specific purpose.
“The word practical in the title of the booklet was used because of the dynamic and often over-hyped nature of the topic,” he said. “Few issues have been so politicized while simultaneously fraught with a lack of scientific understanding regarding the changes in our climate, whether it is in Alabama, the United States or on a global scale.” The information in this report is “practical,” i.e. it is real information based on real observations that are then useable by those looking to reduce risks related to climate variations and trends Dr. Christy added.

The report demonstrates that the latest theoretical climate model simulations have been unable to replicate the types of changes in climate variables that Alabama has experienced since the late 19th century, and so offer little guidance for the future. During the past half-century, Alabama’s sea level has risen at variable rates along the Gulf Coast with a reasonable estimate for the Alabama portion of a continued rate-of-rise of about 1 to 1.5 inch per decade.

Christy said any climate variable will show some type of change between different periods whether those periods are separated by weeks, months, years or millennia. He said knowing “why” such changes occur can’t really be solved (or predicted) because our climate system is an expression of two chaotic and turbulent fluids – the atmosphere and the ocean – which together can create an infinite variety of weather and climate patterns all on their own.

“Included in this report we demonstrate the lack of changes relative to greenhouse gas increases through charts and visual representations of variables in Alabama’s weather,” Dr. Christy said. He examined variables such as: Changes in temperature; changes in temperature extremes; temperature changes in the future; changes in precipitation; changes in precipitation extremes; changes in drought; changes in snowfall; changes in sea level; changes in hurricanes; and changes in tornadoes.

“This report provides a tour through the climate metrics that are of interest to Alabamians, displaying how they have varied and changed over time,” Dr. Christy said. “As indicated, there hasn’t been a detectable impact on these metrics from the extra greenhouse gases. These GHGs, for the foreseeable future, will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere as a result of energy production that allows human life to be sustained and to thrive – we just haven’t been able to detect with confidence their impact on climate in Alabama.”

Alabama Climate Practical Guide Hi Res by Yellowhammer News on Scribd

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Ray Garner is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News.