Climate Change Articles
Efficiency, Renewables and Trees Vital to Global Climate Goals
LONDON, UK -- Scaling up energy efficiency, renewable energy and deforestation prevention can dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the short-term while next generation technologies are developed, according to a new report.
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Tennessee: Climate game changer
Today's heat may be tomorrow's balmy weather, and while the Southeast may have more rain, it could come in such downpours the region still would face severe seasonal droughts like that of 2007.
The region's eastern hemlocks will disappear, along with fish such as Tennessee's brook trout and North Georgia's blue shiner. Hardwood forests will contain fewer oaks and more pines, and woodlands gradually could become more like savannas, as catastrophic fires become common.
These forecasts are part of new state and national reports released last month. Both reports say climate change spells significant challenges for landscapes, wildlife and people in Tennessee, Georgia and the entire Southeast.
"We need to understand climate change impacts are no longer hypothetical," said Dr. Thomas J. Wilbanks, a corporate research fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and an author of the national report, "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States."
The report, called "a game changer" by officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is the first of its kind to state and document that climate change has begun.
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Earth's Most Prominent Rainfall Feature Creeping Northward
ScienceDaily (July 1, 2009) - The rain band near the equator that determines the supply of freshwater to nearly a billion people throughout the tropics and subtropics has been creeping north for more than 300 years, probably because of a warmer world, according to research published in the July issue of Nature Geoscience.
If the band continues to migrate at just less than a mile (1.4 kilometers) a year, which is the average for all the years it has been moving north, then some Pacific islands near the equator - even those that currently enjoy abundant rainfall - may be drier within decades and starved of freshwater by midcentury or sooner. The prospect of additional warming because of greenhouse gases means that situation could happen even sooner.
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UW study: Pacific's rainiest zone slowly creeping north
The rainiest segment of the Pacific tropics is creeping oh-so-slowly north.
That's going to mean something to the weather in the Pacific Northwest.
But what exactly?
A University of Washington project might have an answer to that question in a year or so.
The scientists -- led by University of Washington associate professor of oceanography Julian Sachs -- collected and analyzed what is essentially several-hundred-year-old muck from four Pacific islands to get a grasp on rainfall figures just north of the equator from 1400 to 1850.
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Olives and peaches blossom in Britain as farmers adapt to climate change
It's out with wheat and potatoes, in with peaches and pecans. Matt Ford meets two men changing the face of farming
From a distance it may look like any other farm clinging to the curves of the River Otter in Devon, but Mark Diacono's 18-acre smallholding may just hold the key to the future of food in this country.
As spring turned to summer, buds became flowers and flowers became fruit, this little corner of England proved that our changing climate holds some genuinely exciting opportunities for those willing to experiment. "There is nothing like eating one of our peaches," says Diacono enthusiastically. "They are so far away from the things you get in the supermarket. They are right off the radar."
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Wildfire Season (2008) Smashes Records - and the Media Keeps Blowing the Story
The total acreage burned by wildfires so far this year now exceeds the total acreage burned in any year since records started being kept in 1960.
As of September 13, some 8.7 million acres have burned -an area nearly twice the size of New Jersey. This exceeds the record set just last year of 8.5 million acres.
But much of the media seems unwilling to even mention the possibility that this record has anything whatsoever to do with global warming. As Climate Progress noted in August, the New York Times neglected to mention this possibility in its major wildfire story, even though the cover story of Science magazine the previous week was on research establishing the global warming-wildfire link.
The current story by the Associated Press, reprinted in the Times and the Washington Post today, offers this as the entire explanation:
Federal officials attributed the increase to two consecutive seasons of hot and dry weather that left forest and ranges parched and easily ignited by lightning.
It has been "hot and dry." Thanks for clearing that up major media.
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Tropic zones expanding due to climate change
MELBOURNE: Climate change is rapidly expanding the size of the world's tropical zone, threatening to bring disease and drought to heavily populated areas, an Australian study has found.
Researchers at James Cook University concluded the tropics had widened by up to 500 kilometers (310.6 miles) in the past 25 years after examining 70 peer-reviewed scientific articles.
They looked at findings from long-term satellite measurements, weather balloon data, climate models and sea temperature studies to determine how global warming was impacting on the tropical zone.
The findings showed it now extended well beyond the traditional definition of the tropics, the equatorial band circling the Earth between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn.
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Ozone Depletes Oil Seed Rape Productivity
ScienceDaily (July 8, 2009) - High ozone conditions cause a 30% decrease in yield and an increase in the concentration of a group of toxic compounds within oilseed rape plants. Rape seed oil is also known as canola oil.
Combined with the results of previous studies which have shown a decrease in oil, protein and carbohydrate content of oilseed rape seeds in high ozone, these results (to be presented at the Society for Experimental Biology Annual Main Meeting in Glasgow on 29th June 2009) could signal a significant income loss for farmers and an indirect effect on human health and the safety of food in future climates.
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The many uses of manure
Dairy farms are putting in digesters, creating methane to power electrical generators, fertilizer, and cattle bedding.
The rear ends of Dan DeRuyter's 4,500 dairy cows are powering hundreds of homes in Central Washington. At George DeRuyter & Sons' 2,000-acre farm in Outlook, in the Yakima Valley, 150,000 gallons a day of cow manure from the corrals flow downhill in chutes and are collected in a large underground concrete tank. There, the waste is heated to 100 degrees by two big generating engines manufactured in Spain and installed by Ferndale-based Andgar Corp., which sets up anaerobic manure digesters. Bacteria in the tank decompose the waste, producing methane, which fuels the two nearby engines that crank 1.2 megawatts of electricity directly into Pacific Power's grid.
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Climate change could boost U.S. dengue fever cases
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Climate change could push dengue fever into all corners of the United States, as the mosquitoes that can carry the traditionally tropical virus survive warmer U.S. winters, researchers said on Wednesday.
Known colloquially as breakbone fever for the aching bones that are one symptom of the disease, dengue fever can be treated effectively with bed rest and liquids, but it often goes undiagnosed in the United States.
Two species of mosquitoes capable of transmitting dengue fever have been spotted in 28 states and Washington D.C., according to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Cases of the disease have been reported in every U.S. state, but many of those are so-called imported cases where the patient was infected by mosquitoes elsewhere in the world.
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NASA satellites reveal extent of Arctic sea ice loss
The Earth is going thin on top. A new study has revealed that the Arctic Ocean's permanent blanket of ice around the North Pole has thinned by more than 40% since 2004.
Scientists said the rapid loss was "remarkable" and could force experts to reassess how quickly the Arctic ice in the summer may disappear completely. They blame the loss on global warming, which has driven temperatures in the Arctic to record highs and summer ice extent to recent lows.
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