When I was teaching cliamte science to my own students, I would ask them to
refer to sources as close to the data as possible.
Sources like the National Snow & Ice Data Center, which has as its feature
article right now "2017 ushers in record low extent": https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2017/02/2017-ushers-in-record-low-extent/
"Arctic sea ice extent for January 2017 averaged 13.38 million square
kilometers (5.17 million square miles), the lowest January extent in the
38-year satellite record. This is 260,000 square kilometers (100,000 square
miles) below January 2016, the previous lowest January extent, and 1.26
million square kilometers (487,000 square miles) below the January 1981 to
2010 long-term average."
Or NOAA, especially the State of the Climate report. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/
"2016 is Earth's warmest year, culminating in a remarkable 3-year streak of
record warm years for the globe."
Be sure to challenge your students (and yourself) by examing the graph in
Victor Venema's post: "You can see this "pause" in the graph below of the
global mean temperature. Can you find it?"
As a teacher, I spend a lot of time developing resources for students. I do
read the scientific literature, but my undergraduate students need some
more: I have suggested these in the lsat decade (this is not an exclusive
list):
And Then There's Physics
Arctic Sea Ice
Energy and Environment - The Washington Post
Inside Climate News
National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)
Open Mind (by Tamino, aka Grant Foster)
Quark Soup (by David Appell)
Rabett Run
Real Climate
Science Daily
Skeptical Science
Variable Variability
This is a mix of sources from the casual to the condensed, all useful in my
book. I check these blogs and news aggregators on a daily basis, and I
recommend the same to anyone teaching climate science to undergraduates.
Don't bother with the Daily Mail.
And Happy Spring Festival to you and your family.. "Jinian jixiang" - May
fortune smile on you in this year of the rooster.
--
Jim