Canada.com issued a press release on the government study about whether global warming is actually occurring with some acceleration, or whether current events are simply a continuation of the ice age exit Earth has been experiencing for a few thousand years. From the article:

The current rate of human-influenced Arctic warming is comparable to peak natural rates documented by reconstructions of past climates....The past tells us that when thresholds in the climate system are crossed, climate change can be very large and very fast. We cannot rule out that human-induced climate change will trigger such events in the future.

Along similar lines, Science Direct highlighted a new study on how soot accelerates snow melt and early runoff. Using modeling techniques, the authors found that soot both increased the surface temperatures and made the snowpack thinner. From the article:

The team also found that soot decreased snow's brightness in two ways. About half of soot's effect came from its dark color. The other half came indirectly from reducing the size of the snowpack, exposing the underlying darker earth.

Overall, the authors found that a 50 percent reduction in the brightness of the surface of snow resulted in a 50 percent increase in surface temperature.

In a trend that field workers have been noticing intuitively, Hartmut Aumann of JPL and NASA has linked global warming to an increase in severe storms.

This study focuses on the formation of very high cloud cover which then, in turn, relates to the formation of severe storms. Science Daily says:

For every degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in average ocean surface temperature, the team observed a 45-percent increase in the frequency of the very high clouds. At the present rate of global warming of 0.13 degrees Celsius (0.23 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, the team inferred the frequency of these storms can be expected to increase by six percent per decade.

This study corroborates another similar study by Wentz et al which studied rainfall more directly and came to the conclusion that rainfall was increasing by 1-3 percent per year.