Drought is almost surely the most important piece of climate change/variability in terms of its impacts on human society (sorry, hurricane fans – I’ll defend this if needed). And sub-Saharan Africa is ground zero, the Gulf Coast of drought risk. So this should give pause – evidence that the models aren’t getting African drought right:

We find that only eight CGCMs (hit models) produce a reasonable Sahel drought signal, while seven CGCMs (miss models) produce excessive rainfall over the Sahel during the observed drought period. Even the model with the highest prediction skill of the Sahel drought could only predict the increasing trend of severe drought events but not the beginning and duration of the events.

Lau, K. M., S. S. P. Shen, K.-M. Kim, and H. Wang (2006), A multimodel study of the twentieth-century simulations of Sahel drought from the 1970s to 1990s, J. Geophys. Res., 111, D07111, doi:10.1029/2005JD006281

Robert Lee Hotz had a great piece over the weekend in the LA Times about phenology as a climate change detector:

By analyzing decades of records kept by regional maple sugar producers, climate researchers are finding clear evidence here of what Rex Marsh can feel in his bones.

The weather just isn’t what it used to be.

In Ohio and New York, through New England and into Canada, the maple sugaring season starts and ends earlier than a generation ago, University of Vermont researchers and other experts say.

Moreover, the daily temperature cycle of frost and thaw on which sap production depends also has been disrupted.

While officials argue over carbon emission controls and global warming treaties, tree farmers such as the Marsh family, along with gardeners, anglers and bird-watchers, sense the change in the air.

Via James Annan, a BBC piece on the “cry wolf” problem:

Hardly a day goes by without a new dire warning about climate change. But some claims are more extreme than others, giving rise to fears that the problem is being oversold and damaging the issue.

I’ve written narrowly about this problem before from a media point of view – the seizing upon a small and suggestive result to suggest a large and conclusive problem. But the BBC piece is much more comprehensive.

James links to Roger Pielke Jr.’s post on the issue that covers the most important base well: the BBC’s decision not to quote your garden-variety skeptics, who are in a tiny minority and are therefore easily dismissed in the tribal climate wars tussle. Instead, the producers chose people who believe in the scientific consensus, and believe climate change is a problem. By shifting the debate off of the usual tribal terrain, the producers force the discussion into a much more useful territory.