Climate Articles
Arctic glacier to lose Manhattan-sized 'tongue'
The biggest glacier in the Arctic is on the verge of losing a chunk of ice the size of Manhattan. A group of scientists and climate change activists who are closely monitoring the Petermann glacier's ice tongue believe the rapid flow of ice is in part due to warm ocean currents moving up along the coast of Greenland, fuelled by global warming.
During the summer of last year, Jason Box of Ohio State University in Columbus noticed a huge crack in the glacier's floating ice tongue, which acts as a conveyor belt, pushing the glacier's ice through a fjord and out to sea. The crack extended almost completely from one side of the fjord to the other, 16 kilometres away.
This prompted Box and colleagues to return this year on the Arctic Sunrise, a Greenpeace vessel. The researchers are equipped with an arsenal of cameras and sensors, which they have been setting up on surrounding cliffs as well as on the ice itself.
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Fast on the heels of the fourth warmest May on record, NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reports:
Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the second warmest on record for June, and the January-June year-to-date tied with 2004 as the fifth warmest on record.
NCDC notes that the ocean temperature was the warmest on record. In fact, it was a full 0.11oF warmer than the 2005 record. This is almost certainly the new El Nino on top of the long-term warming trend (see NOAA says "El Nino arrives; Expected to Persist through Winter 2009-10? - and that means record temperatures are coming and this will be the hottest decade on record).
This is worrisome because:
* NOAA recently reported: "Methane levels rose in 2008 for the second consecutive year after a 10-year lull,"
* Scientific analysis suggests the rise in 2007 methane levels came from Arctic wetlands (see here).
* Siberia contains probably the world's largest amount of carbon locked away in the permafrost (see here).
* The permafrost is increasingly not so perma (see here).
* Much of that carbon would be released as methane, which is 23 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
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Must-read NOAA paper smacks down the deniers:
Q: "Is there any question that surface temperatures in the United States have been rising rapidly during the last 50 years?" A: "None at all."
Nothing occupies global warming deniers more than trying to prove the U.S. temperature record - a tiny portion of the global temperature record - is not reliable. Now NOAA's National Climatic Data Center has issued an excellent Q&A, "Is the U.S. Temperature Record Reliable?" that should settle that question for any objective observer.
The NCDC paper proves we should all be delighted that deniers like Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre spend so much time on this: It is clearly a fruitless effort that consumes time which they might otherwise spend spinning out more potent disinformation.
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Parched Prairies: Latest drought a sign of things to come?
Cracked soil and cloudless skies have fuelled fears that 2009 could become etched in the minds of farmers as one of the worst recorded droughts in recent history.
Even more troubling is the fact that a severe dry spell could follow so closely after the last drought, in 2001-02, that cost the Canadian economy $5.8 billion and was one of Canada's most expensive natural disasters.
Dave Sauchyn, a University of Regina geography professor, says two major droughts in a decade is a "disconcerting" indication that climate change prediction models could be right - that the worst is yet to come.
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Tiny particles with a huge environmental impact
Dust is a conundrum for climate scientists. No sooner do they think they're getting a handle on its environmental impact than researchers discover more of its unexpected tricks.
Every year, dust blows up from deserts to cover high alpine meadows in mountains. The dust burden in these mountains now is five times greater than it was before the mid-19th century. That's mainly because of increased human activity in desert areas, according to a joint announcement of research from the University of Utah and Colorado State University. This heat-absorbing dust makes the mountain snow pack melt earlier than it used to.
Utah's Tom Painter noted that scientists already know that "earlier snowmelt by desert dust depletes the natural water reservoirs of mountain snow pacts and in turn affects the delivery of water to urban and agricultural areas." Now experiments he carried out with Colorado's Heidi Steltzer and colleagues show that the earlier snow melt timing may have a subtle yet potentially profound effect on the ecology of the high meadows. It encourages the alpine plants to synchronize their growth cycles instead of flowering at different times during the growing season. Dr. Steltzer says that this "synchronized growth was unexpected and may have adverse effects on plants, water quality, and wildlife" in ways not yet fully understood.
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Climate change helps spread dengue fever in 28 states
Just in time for the summer mosquito season, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) released a report last week detailing the latest climate-based threat to human health.
The two mosquito species capable of carrying dengue fever are rapidly spreading across the southern United States, increasing the incidence of the disease. We already knew that "Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century" - now, it seems, we're reaching the point where "threat" turns into "harsh reality."
The report tells it straight:
Global warming threatens to further exacerbate the spread of many infectious diseases because increases in heat, precipitation, and humidity can foster better conditions for tropical and subtropical insects to survive and thrive in places previously inhospitable to those diseases.
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Declining Aral Sea: Satellite Images Highlight Dramatic Retreat
ScienceDaily (July 12, 2009) - New Envisat images highlight the dramatic retreat of the Aral Sea's shoreline from 2006 to 2009. The Aral Sea was once the world's fourth-largest inland body of water, but it has been steadily shrinking over the past 50 years since the rivers that fed it were diverted for irrigation projects.
By the end of the 1980s, it had split into the Small Aral Sea (north), located in Kazakhstan, and the horse-shoe shaped Large Aral Sea (south), shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
By 2000, the Large Aral Sea had split into two - an eastern and western lobe. As visible in the images, the eastern lobe retreated substantially between 2006 and 2009. It appears to have lost about 80% of its water since the 2006 acquisition, at which time the eastern lobe had a length of about 150 km and a width of about 70 km.
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The planet's future: Climate change 'will cause civilisation to collapse'
An effort on the scale of the Apollo mission that sent men to the Moon is needed if humanity is to have a fighting chance of surviving the ravages of climate change. The stakes are high, as, without sustainable growth, "billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse".
This is the stark warning from the biggest single report to look at the future of the planet - obtained by The Independent on Sunday ahead of its official publication next month. Backed by a diverse range of leading organisations such as Unesco, the World Bank, the US army and the Rockefeller Foundation, the 2009 State of the Future report runs to 6,700 pages and draws on contributions from 2,700 experts around the globe. Its findings are described by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the UN, as providing "invaluable insights into the future for the United Nations, its member states, and civil society".
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Wild weather in the year ahead, scientists predict
Climate scientists have warned of wild weather in the year ahead as the start of the global "El Nino" phenomenon exacerbates the impact of global warming. As well as droughts, floods and other extreme events, the next few years are also likely to be the hottest on record, scientists say.
In the UK, a Met Office spokesman said yesterday that the El Nino event was likely to cause a hot, dry summer following a warm June, but said it could have other unpredictable effects on weather in Britain and north-west Europe. "Much depends on how much the El Nino deepens in the next few months."
El Nino - "the child" in Spanish - was named by fishermen in Peru and Ecuador because the phenomenon arrives there at Christmas. It is part of a natural meteorological cycle that happens every 3-7 years and affects weather worldwide for a year or more. It is caused by changes in ocean temperatures, with the first sign being abnormal warming in the Pacific.
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Report predicts even hotter Southeast in decades to come
Are Middle Georgia summers hot enough for you?
Because according to the U.S. government, they're going to get hotter.
Due to global warming, the Southeast is likely to see twice as many days a year with temperatures hitting the 90 degree mark or hotter, according to a federal report released last month. The report also predicts that the hottest days will be more than 10 degrees hotter.
The report by the U.S. Global Change Research Program synthesizes the results of research assembled by 13 federal departments and agencies including NASA, the departments of defense and energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Research Council. It is the second report ever issued by the federal government on the predicted impacts of global climate change on the United States, and the first one to break down impacts by region.
Among other things, it shows a sweltering Southeast. The report predicts that by the 2080s, the region will see an increase of 4.5 to 9 degrees in its average temperatures, depending on carbon dioxide emissions. But the extremes of heat will be greater and the heat index higher.
This will be deadly to both humans and animals such as beef cattle, the report states. Although fewer cold-related deaths are predicted, these aren't expected to offset the higher number of heat-related deaths.
"I think people totally underestimate how much a few degrees affects everything from what you grow to how virulent kudzu will become," said Jeanette Gayer with Environment Georgia. Gayer said she wants Georgia to act on the information by setting targets for renewable energy and energy efficiency.
The report predicts that between 2080 and 2099, the Southeast can expect 150 days a year when the mercury tops 90 degrees, at least twice the annual number during the period from 1961 to 1979.
Georgia scientists who had read the report said they were most alarmed by these predictions for extreme heat.
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'Once-in-a-century' drought sending campers indoors and stunting crops
North Texas has had average rainfall this year, and three "cool" days this week felt like Christmas in July. But don't tell your friends in Central and South Texas, because they are feeling hot, parched and bothered. A "once-in-a-century" drought is baking a big swath of Texas, says John Nielsen-Gammon, state climatologist and a professor at Texas A&M University. The drought is "zeroing out" crops and forcing ranchers to liquidate their herds....
The river is flowing at 10 cubic feet per second, Lyons said Wednesday. "Normal for this time of the year is 100 to 200 cfs," he said. "We used to think 100 was low, but the last two years have changed our perspective."
People are comparing the conditions to the epic drought of the 1950s, he said. "It's been so dry it's even killing cedar trees, so you know it's dry."
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Ozone, Nitrogen Change The Way Rising Carbon Dioxide Affects Earth's Water
ScienceDaily (July 10, 2009) - Through a recent modeling experiment, a team of NASA-funded researchers have found that future concentrations of carbon dioxide and ozone in the atmosphere and of nitrogen in the soil are likely to have an important but overlooked effect on the cycling of water from sky to land to waterways.
The researchers concluded that models of climate change may be underestimating how much water is likely to run off the land and back into the sea as atmospheric chemistry changes. Runoff may be as much as 17 percent higher in forests of the eastern United States when models account for changes in soil nitrogen levels and atmospheric ozone exposure.
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Lost Horizons: Melting glaciers in Kashmir causing regional chaos over water shortages
According to an article by Stephen Faris in Foreign Policy and the IPCC, the Himalayan glacier in the Kashmir province that provides 90 percent of Pakistan's water for agricultural irrigation will disappear by 2035 as a consequence of climate change.
Appropriately titled "The Last Straw," the article reviews water conflicts exacerbated by climate change in general while focusing on Pakistan's unsustainable dependence on Kashmiri waters - a dependence that only exacerbates the long-standing historical, cultural, and religious animosity between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir territory.
Faris reports that a shocking "ninety percent of Pakistan's agricultural irrigation depends on rivers that originate in Kashmir." This water comes from three of the six tributaries that India and Pakistan split in their 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. Is the treaty's continued existence a testament to how future resource shortages will draw normally hostile states into cooperating? Perhaps - the agreement has so far survived three major wars and nearly 50 years of hostile exchanges.
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New, Highly Toxic Pesticide Is Greenhouse Gas 4,780 Times More Potent Than CO2
San Francisco- Public health and environmental advocates Friday asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to deny a request from Dow AgroSciences for a permit allowing it to release large amounts of sulfuryl fluoride onto farm fields in four states. The chemical is a toxic pesticide whose global warming effects are thousands of times stronger than carbon dioxide.
"The hazards of using sulfuryl fluoride in agriculture have not been evaluated. It is also 4,780 times as potent a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide," said Dr. Brian Hill, a staff scientist at the Pesticide Action Network. "Either one of those facts makes permitting these tests a major mistake."
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Climate Change May Spell Demise Of Key Salt Marsh Constituent
ScienceDaily (July 15, 2009) - Global warming may exact a toll on salt marshes in New England, but new research shows that one key constitue
Pannes are waterlogged, low-oxygen zones of salt marshes. Despite the stresses associated with global warming, pannes are "plant diversity hotspots," according to Keryn Gedan, a graduate student and salt marsh expert at Brown University. At least a dozen species of plants known as forbs inhabit these natural depressions, Gedan said. The species include the purple flower-tipped plants Limonium nashii (sea lavender), the edible plant Salicornia europaea (pickleweed) and Triglochin maritima, a popular food for Brent and Canada geese as well as ducks and other migratory waterfowl.
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Pollution outruns Adirondacks
Forest proves no match for all the greenhouse gas emissions in park
TUPPER LAKE -- Every day, Adirondack forests soak up and store about 1,600 tons of carbon to help slow global warming. But even tens of millions of trees can't keep up with greenhouse gas emissions from a much smaller number of cars, homes and businesses.
That was the finding of a first-ever energy and greenhouse gas audit for the park, which at 6 million acres is the largest intact forest in the northeast. As trees grow, they absorb carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas released by the burning of fossil fuels that an international scientific consensus blames for global warming.
The Adirondacks, however, can't handle the CO2 emissions from the region's relatively paltry 130,000 full-time residents, along with businesses and cars driven by visitors.
Each year, the forests absorb about 600,000 tons of carbon, which is less than a third of what's emitted by human activity in the Adirondack Park, according to the audit. While 600,000 tons may sound like a lot, keep in mind that New York state emits more than 200 million tons of CO2.
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More Than 100 Million Acres of Forest in the United States and Canada Now Managed to Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Standards
Minneapolis, MN (July 16, 2009) - The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) reports that the area of U.S. and Canadian forests managed to its stringent environmental and social standards surpassed the 100 million-acre mark in June, representing 40% growth since January 2008 and helping solidify FSC's position as the fastest-growing forest certification system in the world (UN FAO, 2007).
"The core driver of this growth is a shared commitment among landowners, manufacturers, retailers and consumers to conserve forest ecosystems and safeguard the rights of native peoples and local communities," says Corey Brinkema, President of FSC-US. "And while this is a major achievement, it remains but one shared step in doing the right thing for forests, people and wildlife."
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Ocean Current Shutdown May Be Gradual, Not Sudden
ScienceDaily (July 17, 2009) - The findings of a major new study are consistent with gradual changes of current systems in the North Atlantic Ocean, rather than a more sudden shutdown that could lead to rapid climate changes in Europe and elsewhere.
The research, based on the longest experiment of its type ever run on a "general circulation model" that simulated the Earth's climate for 21,000 years back to the height of the last Ice Age, shows that major changes in these important ocean current systems can occur, but they may take place more slowly and gradually than had been suggested.
The newest findings, to be published July 17 in the journal Science, are consistent with other recent studies that are moving away from the theory of an abrupt "tipping point" that might cause dramatic atmospheric temperature and ocean circulation changes in as little as 50 years.
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Solar Cycle Linked To Global Climate
ScienceDaily (July 17, 2009) - Establishing a key link between the solar cycle and global climate, research led by scientists at the National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., shows that maximum solar activity and its aftermath have impacts on Earth that resemble La Niņa and El Niņo events in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
The research may pave the way toward predictions of temperature and precipitation patterns at certain times during the approximately 11-year solar cycle.
"These results are striking in that they point to a scientifically feasible series of events that link the 11-year solar cycle with ENSO, the tropical Pacific phenomenon that so strongly influences climate variability around the world," says Jay Fein, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric Sciences. "The next step is to confirm or dispute these intriguing model results with observational data analyses and targeted new observations."
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Mystery methane belched out by megacities
The Los Angeles metropolitan area belches far more methane into its air than scientists had previously realised. If other megacities are equally profligate, urban methane emissions may represent a surprisingly important source of this potent greenhouse gas.
Atmospheric researchers have long had good estimates of global methane emissions, but less is known about exactly where these emissions come from, particularly in urban areas.
To fill this void, a research team led by Paul Wennberg, an atmospheric chemist at Caltech in Pasadena, estimated methane emissions for the Los Angeles region, then subtracted all known sources of methane, such as livestock, landfills and sewage. They ended up with an enormous amount of methane - about 0.14 to 0.34 megatonnes per year, or up to half of the total emissions that could not be accounted for by known sources.
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