Climate Articles
Hundreds of Thousands of Acres Burning in Interior Alaska
Large wildfires that began in July continued to burn in interior Alaska in the first week of August 2009. These images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite on August 2 show some of the state's largest blazes and the thick pall of smoke they were creating. The top image is a natural-color (photo-like) view of the area, while the lower image combines visible, shortwave-, and near-infrared light to make burned areas (brick red) stand out better from unburned vegetation (bright green). In this kind of false-color image, the bright pink areas along the perimeters of the fires are often a sign of open flame.
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Uncertainties surround future monsoons
It is almost halfway through the rainy season, and the monsoon in many parts of South Asia continues to remain unreliable.
In some places it has been crippling weak, while in others it has been devastatingly intense.
There are places reeling from drought, yet at the same time there are areas that have been hit by torrential rains, triggering floods and landslides in a very short span of time.
This has made the lives of millions of people difficult and has left them increasingly worried for the future.
Very little of the arable land is irrigated, and local populations depend on monsoon rainfall for agriculture.
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Large Trees Declining in Yosemite
Large trees have declined in Yosemite National Park during the 20th century, and warmer climate conditions may play a role.
The number of large-diameter trees in the park declined 24 percent between the 1930s and 1990s. U.S. Geological Survey and University of Washington scientists compared the earliest records of large-diameter trees densities from 1932 - 1936 to the most recent records from 1988 - 1999.
A decline in large trees means habitat loss and possible reduction in species such as spotted owls, mosses, orchids and fishers (a carnivore related to weasels).
Fewer new trees will grow in the landscape because large trees are a seed source for the surrounding landscape. Large-diameter trees generally resist fire more than small-diameter trees, so fewer large trees could also slow forest regeneration after fires.
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Comet Impacts Triggered Ice Age Extinctions?
National Geographic News
Rare diamonds found buried on an island near southern California strengthen the controversial idea that comet impacts wiped out huge beasts and an early human culture in North America about 12,900 years ago.
Similar "nanodiamonds" found in sediments across North America were presented earlier this year as proof that space rocks colliding with Earth led to the ancient mass extinction.
According to the theory, a barrage of comet debris rained down on North America during the last ice age and sparked massive wildfires. That initial heat and pressure formed tiny diamonds in the soil.
But the heat also abruptly melted ice sheets, causing an influx of freshwater that shut down a key ocean current and reversed the region's thaw.
The sudden recooling killed off mammals such as saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, and mammoths and wiped out some of North America's earliest known human inhabitants, the Clovis culture.
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Fuel Startup Makes Ethanol From the Sun, CO2
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- A New England startup claims it has found a way to make ethanol using solar power and carbon dioxide -- without agricultural land or fresh water.
Joule Biotechnologies Inc. has found a way to engineer photosynthetic organisms to convert sunlight and CO2 into transportation fuels. The process requires minimal resources and polishing operations, giving the finished product an advantage over biomass-derived biofuels, such as those made from algae, corn or cellulose.
Joule said its scalable system can produce more than 20,000 gallons of "SolarFuel" per acre every year at less than $50 per barrel. It predicts its first product dubbed SolarEthanol will be ready for commercial-scale development next year.
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Ways To Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emissions From Transport
ScienceDaily (July 27, 2009) - Security of supply and climate change are high on the global energy agenda. And the transport sector is no exception as virtually every means of transport by land, air and sea uses fossil fuels and thus emits CO2. Energy consumption for transport purposes represents 20% of the world's total energy consumption.
The most important thing is to introduce renewable energy in the transport sector and have the sector integrated in the energy system. By land, air and sea there are plenty of opportunities to reduce CO2 emissions.
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Scientists Expect Wildfires To Increase As Climate Warms In Coming Decades
ScienceDaily (July 29, 2009) - As the climate warms in the coming decades, atmospheric scientists at Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and their colleagues expect that the frequency of wildfires will increase in many regions. The spike in the number of fires could also adversely affect air quality due to the greater presence of smoke.
The study, led by SEAS Senior Research Fellow Jennifer Logan, was published in the June 18th issue of Journal of Geophysical Research. In their pioneering work, Logan and her collaborators investigated the consequences of climate change on future forest fires and on air quality in the western United States. Previous studies have probed the links between climate change and fire severity in the West and elsewhere. The Harvard study represents the first attempt to quantify the impact of future wildfires on the air we breathe.
"Warmer temperatures can dry out underbrush, leading to a more serious conflagration once a fire is started by lightening or human activity," says Logan. "Because smoke and other particles from fires adversely affect air quality, an increase in wildfires could have large impacts on human health."
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LEARNING FROM PAST CIVILIZATIONS
Lester R. Brown
To understand our current environmental dilemma, it helps to look at earlier civilizations that also got into environmental trouble. Our early twenty-first century civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond.
As Jared Diamond points out in his book Collapse, some of the early societies that were in environmental trouble were able to change their ways in time to avoid decline and collapse. Six centuries ago, for example, Icelanders realized that overgrazing on their grass-covered highlands was leading to extensive soil loss from the inherently thin soils of the region. Rather than lose the grasslands and face economic decline, farmers joined together to determine how many sheep the highlands could sustain and then allocated quotas among themselves, thus preserving their grasslands. Their wool production and woolen goods industry continue to thrive today.
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World temperatures set for record highs
World temperatures are set to rise much faster than expected as a result of climate change over the next ten years, according to meteorologists.
In the last few years the world has experienced a "cooler period" since record high temperatures in summer 1998.
This has been used by global warming sceptics as proof that greenhouse gases are not causing a rise in temperatures.
However a new study by Nasa said the warming effect of greenhouse gases has been masked since 1998 because of a downward phase in the cycles of the sun that means there is less incoming sunlight and the El Nino weather pattern causing a cooling period over the Pacific.
But from this year solar activity will begin to pick up again and the El Nino phenomenon will cause storms and heatwaves.
The research, to be published in Geophysical Research Letters, was carried out by Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies the US Naval Research Laboratory.
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Climate change to force 75 million Pacific Islanders from their homes
More than 75 million people living on Pacific islands will have to relocate by 2050 because of the effects of climate change, Oxfam has warned.
A report by the charity said Pacific Islanders were already feeling the effects of global warming, including food and water shortages, rising cases of malaria and more frequent flooding and storms. Some had already been forced from their homes and the number of displaced people was rising, it warned.
"The Future is Here: Climate Change in the Pacific" predicted that many Pacific Islanders would not be able to relocate within their own countries and would become international refugees.
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Another major study predicts rapid warming over next few years - nearly 0.3oF by 2014
From 2009 to 2014, projected rises in anthropogenic influences and solar irradiance will increase global surface temperature 0.15 + or -0.03 oC, at a rate 50% greater than predicted by IPCC.
So conclude Judith Lean, of the US Naval Research Laboratory, and David Rind, of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in a new Geophysical Research Letters study, "How Will Earth's Surface Temperature Change in Future Decades?" (subs. req'd). The UK Guardian explains:
The work is the first to assess the combined impact on global temperature of four factors: human influences such as CO2 and aerosol emissions; heating from the sun; volcanic activity and the El Niņo southern oscillation, the phenomenon by which the Pacific Ocean flips between warmer and cooler states every few years.
This study does not assume we will have a major El Niņo, but notes that if we did have a really big one, it could add as much as 0.2oC [0.36oF] to the temperature in an individual year. In the July 27 weekly update by NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction, "ENSO Cycle: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions," NCEP notes "Current observations and dynamical model forecasts indicate El Niņo conditions will continue to intensify and are expected to last through" the winter, and "nearly all of the dynamical models predict a moderate-to-strong episode." So again, it looks NASA's January prediction is accurate.
Given our expectation of the next El Niņo beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years,
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Beach Closing Days Nationwide Top 20,000 for Fourth Consecutive Year
The water at American beaches was seriously polluted and jeopardized the health of swimmers last year with the number of closing and advisory days at ocean, bay and Great Lakes beaches reaching more than 20,000 for the fourth consecutive year, according to the 19th annual beachwater quality report released today by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
"Pollution from dirty stormwater runoff and sewage overflows continues to make its way to our beaches. This not only makes swimmers sick - it hurts coastal economies," said Nancy Stoner, NRDC Water Program Co-Director. "Americans should not suffer the consequences of contaminated beachwater. From contracting the flu or pink eye, to jeopardizing millions of jobs and billions of dollars that rely on clean coasts, there are serious costs to inaction."
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Humans 'Damaging The Oceans' In Profound Ways
ScienceDaily (July 29, 2009) - There is mounting evidence that human activity is changing the world's oceans in profound and damaging ways.
Man-made carbon emissions "are affecting marine biological processes from genes to ecosystems over scales from rock pools to ocean basins, impacting ecosystem services and threatening human food security," the study by Professor Mike Kingsford of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University and colleague Dr Andrew Brierley of St Andrews University, Scotland, warns.
A new review, published in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology, says that rates of physical change in the oceans are unprecedented in some cases, and change in ocean life is likely to be equally quick.
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New Supercomputer To Reel In Answers To Some Of Earth's Problems
ScienceDaily (July 29, 2009) - The newest supercomputer in town is almost 15 times faster than its predecessor and ready to take on problems in areas such as climate science, hydrogen storage and molecular chemistry. The $21.4 million Chinook supercomputer was built by HP, tested by a variety of researchers, and has now been commissioned for use by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the Department of Energy.
Housed at EMSL, DOE's Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory on the PNNL campus, Chinook can perform more than 160 trillion calculations per second, ranking it in the top 40 fastest computers in the world (see the Top 50). Its predecessor, EMSL's MPP2, could run 11.2 trillion calculations per second.
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NOAA Bans Commercial Harvesting Of Krill
ScienceDaily (July 30, 2009) - The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has published a final rule in the Federal Register prohibiting the harvesting of krill in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) off the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. The rule goes into effect on August 12, 2009. Krill are a small shrimp-like crustacean and a key source of nutrition in the marine food web.
"Krill are the foundation for a healthy marine ecosystem," said Mark Helvey, NOAA's Fisheries Service Southwest Assistant Regional Administrator for Sustainable Fisheries. "Protecting this vital food resource will help protect and maintain marine resources and put federal regulations in line with West-Coast states."
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Thinning cloud cover over oceans speeds global warming, study finds
New research dents hopes that clouds could act as brake on climate change
Thinning clouds over the ocean exacerbate global warming by leading to more rapid temperature increases, according to the results of a new study, published today.
The research combined data, collected by observers on ships and satellites, going back over a century.
The effect clouds have on climate has been something of a mystery to atmospheric scientists, with some researchers hoping they would provide a silver lining by acting as a brake on climate change.
One possibility was that higher temperatures would mean more clouds, which in turn would bounce more of the sun's radiation back into space, but this theory has not been reflected in the study's findings.
Instead, researchers found that, as oceans become warmer, low-level clouds dissipate from the skies.
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Global warming pushes up building insurance costs
Flash floods and giant hailstones help increase claims by 15% and insurance premiums by 10%
Householders face higher building insurance premiums after a sharp increase in property damage blamed on climate change. A rise in insurance claims has been caused by flash floods and storms in areas of Britain previously immune to severe weather events.
The AA, which produces an insurance premium index monitoring costs, reports a 15% rise in claims in the first six months of 2009 over the same period in 2008 "in the number and cost of payments for buildings damaged by flash floods and storms in areas with little or no previous record of such claims."
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Arctic tundra hotter, boosts global warming: expert
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Regions of Arctic tundra around the world are heating up very rapidly, releasing more greenhouse gases than predicted and boosting the process of global warming, a leading expert said on Wednesday.
Professor Greg Henry of the University of British Columbia also said higher temperatures meant larger plants were starting to spread across the tundra, which is usually covered by small shrubs, grasses and lichen. The thicker plant cover means the region is getting darker and absorbing more heat.
He said tundra covers about 15 percent of the world's surface and makes up around 30 percent of Canadian territory.
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Sub-Arctic timebomb: warming speeds CO2 release from soil
PARIS - Climate change is speeding up the release of carbon dioxide from frigid peatlands in the sub-Arctic, fuelling a vicious circle of global warming, according to a study to be published Thursday.
An increase of just 1.0 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) over current average temperatures would more than double the CO2 escaping from the peatlands.
Northern peatlands contain one-third of the planet's soil-bound organic carbon, the equivalent of half of all the CO2 in the atmosphere.
Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation found in wetlands or peatlands, which cover between two and three percent of the global land mass. While present in all climate zones, the vast majority of peatlands are found in sub-Arctic regions.
A team of European researchers led by Ellen Dorrepaal of the University of Amsterdam artificially warmed natural peatlands in Abisko, in northern Sweden, by 1.0 C over a period of eight years.
The experimental plots exhaled and extra 60 percent of CO2 in Spring and 52 percent in Summer over the entire period, reported the study, published in the British journal Nature.
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Global poll finds 73% want higher priority for climate change
A majority of peoples around the world want their governments to put action on climate change at the top of the political agenda, a new global public opinion poll suggests.
Unfortunately for Barack Obama though, who has put energy reform at the top of his White House to-do list, Americans are not necessarily among them.
Only 44% of Americans thought climate change should be a major preoccupation for the Obama administration, the survey coordinated by the University of Maryland's Programme on International Policy Attitudes said. The only other two countries unwilling to see their governments make climate change a top focus were Iraq and the Palestinian territories. In 15 other countries though there was strong support for governments to do more to deal with climate change.
Britons were among the most enthusiastic supporters for greater government intervention, with 77% urging officials to do more. Germans, however, think their government has already done enough. Some 83% think their government has already adopted climate change action as a top priority; 27% would like the government to turn its attention elsewhere.
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Research Offers Hope for Recovery of Global Fish Populations
HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, Canada, July 31, 2009 (ENS)- Efforts to curb overfishing have begun to succeed, bringing hope that fish populations can rebuild if given a chance.
A new study by an international team of scientists examined global fish populations and fishing trends in 10 large marine ecosystems and found that in five of the areas where intensive management is taking place, fish stocks are beginning to rebuild.
The two-year study, published in today's issue of the journal "Science," was led by Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax and Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington in Seattle, along with an international team of 19 co-authors.
Global fisheries are in crisis, the authors warn, explaining that marine fisheries provide 15 percent of the animal protein consumed by humans, yet 80 percent of the world's fish stocks are either fully exploited, overexploited or have collapsed.
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Scientists hit back at climate skepticism
FIFTEEN senior Australian climate scientists have hit back at the resurgence of climate skepticism among the nation's politicians and the media, warning that the threat from climate change is real, urgent and approaching a series of "tipping points" where it will feed on itself.
"New findings suggest that the situation is, if anything, more serious than the assessment of just a few years ago", say the scientists, who include the CSIRO's Dr Michael Raupach and Dr John Church, along with the Australian National University's Professor Will Steffen, who recently completed a report on climate change science for the Federal Government.
Writing in today's Herald, the scientists, many of whom worked with the top United Nations scientific body on climate change, argue "rapid, sustained and effective" cuts in the world's greenhouse gas emissions are needed to avoid dangerous climate change.
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