Climate Articles
Watch: Climate Change's Impact on Your Region (Thursday Night)
Climate scientist Gerald Meehl explains how the latest findings affect you. (ABC News Now)
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6 Myths of Green Consumers
Released Aug. 21, the Green Living Pulse study polled 1,007 U.S. consumers who at least occasionally buy green products (77% of the population) and found there is no typical "green consumer."
Myth 1: Green consumers' top concern is the environment.
When asked to identify their top concern, the economy, by far, is No. 1 (with 59% calling it their top concern) and the environment falls far behind (8%).
Myth 2: Green consumers' main motivation when reducing their energy use is to save the planet.
When asked the most important reason to reduce energy consumption, 73% chose "to reduce my bills/control costs" and only 26% chose "to lessen my impact on the environment."
Myth 3: Green consumers are all-knowledgeable about environmental issues.
For example, the survey asked, "From what you have read or heard about CO2 (carbon dioxide), please place a check beside any of the following statements you think are true." Almost half (49%)
chose the incorrect answer, "It depletes the ozone layer."
Myth 4: Green consumers fall into a simple demographic profile.
While the study detected some demographic tendencies, it found that green consumers aren't easily defined by their age, income, or ethnicity.
Myth 5: Children play a big part in influencing their parents to be green.
Only 20% of respondents with children said their kids encouraged them to be greener by, for example, promoting recycling and turning off lights.
Myth 6: If buyers just knew the facts they'd make greener choices.
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Australia's warm winter a record
Australia has experienced its warmest August on record amid soaring winter temperatures.
Climatologists have blamed both the effects of climate change and natural variability.
Australia's Bureau of Meteorology says that August was a "most extraordinary month" with mean temperatures 2.47C above the long-term average.
August in Australia culminated in a record-breaking heat-wave across much of the continent.
In the Queensland town of Bedourie the temperature reached 38.5C.
Elsewhere, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia have had their warmest winters on record.
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Farmers warned to get ready as climate change threatens crops
Even if global temperatures rise slowly, climate change could slash the yields of some of the world's most important crops almost in half, according to a new study co-authored by an N.C. State
University scientist.
The study, recently published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looked at three frequently used scenarios for global warming. It found the average U.S. yields for corn,
soybeans and cotton could plummet 30 percent to 46 percent by the end of the century under the slowest warming scenario, and 63 percent to 82 percent under the quickest.
"There are some caveats, but this is a real cause for concern," said Michael Roberts, an assistant professor of agricultural and resource economics at NCSU.
Roberts collaborated with Wolfram Schlenker of Columbia University on the study. They used massive amounts of data on crop yields and weather from 1950 to 2005 to look at yields from nearly
every U.S. county. They focused on swings in temperature on individual days.
Many earlier studies examined temperature changes averaged over longer periods, such as a month or a growing season, Roberts said. That can mask the effects of extreme temperatures on crops.
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Fish Farms Supply 50% of Global Harvest
Fish farms, once a fledgling industry, now account for 50 percent of the fish consumed globally, according to a new report by an international team of researchers. And while getting more efficient, it is
putting strains on marine resources by consuming large amounts of feed made from wild fish harvested from the sea, the authors conclude. Their findings are published in the online edition of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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North Sea cod 'doomed by climate change'
Cod are doomed to disappear from the North Sea because of climate change and not just as a result of over-fishing, researchers have discovered.
In the past 40 years the average temperature of the North Sea has increased by 1C with catastrophic effects on its delicate eco-systems.
Species of plankton, on which cod larvae feed, have moved away in search of cooler waters. The decline in cod stocks has led to an explosion in the populations of crabs and jellyfish, on which the
adult fish feed. The shortage of predators at the top of the food chain has had a knock-on effect on flat fish, such as plaice and sole, whose offspring are eaten by crabs.
The cumulative consequences of warming for the North Sea have been spelt out in detail in the study published yesterday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences journal.
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Shrinking Bylot Island Glaciers Tell Story Of Climate Change
ScienceDaily (Sep. 9, 2009) - The U.S. Geological Survey has released the results of a long-term study of key glaciers in western North America, reporting this month that glacial shrinkage is rapid
and accelerating and a result of climate change.
University of Illinois geologist William Shilts spent nearly two decades studying glaciers on Bylot Island, an uninhabited island about 300 miles southwest of Thule, Greenland. He, his students and other
geologists who followed in his footsteps have chronicled the decline of several Bylot Island glaciers. Photos of the island from the 1940s to the present offer a vivid picture of the changing glaciers and
the forces that shape their retreat.
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Arctic Geological Record Correlates Warming to Man
Long-term climate records from the Arctic provide strong new evidence that human-caused global warming
can override Earth's natural heating and cooling cycles, U.S. researchers reported this week in the journal Science.
For more than 2,000 years, a natural wobble in Earth's axis has caused the Arctic region to move farther away from the sun during the region's summer, reducing the amount of solar radiation it
receives. The Arctic is now 600,000 miles farther from the sun than it was in AD 1, and temperatures there should have fallen a little more than 1 degree Fahrenheit since then.
Instead, the region has warmed 2.2 degrees since 1900 alone, and the decade from 1998 to 2008 was the warmest in two millenniums, according to a team headed by climatologist Darrell S.
Kaufman of Northern Arizona University.
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The mystery of Lake Louise's missing water
Unexplained absence of 510,000 cubic metres of water from resort's distribution system 'an embarrassment for Canada'
The Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise taps into the iconic emerald-blue lake in Alberta that shares its name for everything from supplying its laundry room and watering its gardens to ensuring the ice
buckets are filled.
That water distribution system has lost almost 510,000 cubic metres of water – the equivalent of 33,630 tanker trucks or 204 Olympic-sized swimming pools – pulled from the lake since 2003,
according to records that the hotel submits to Parks Canada, which oversees all operations in Banff National Park.
That's almost as much water as Ottawa allows the hotel to draw each year from the postcard-perfect lake that thrives on glacial runoff in Canada's oldest national park.
Brad Cabana, a former member of Parks Canada's advisory development board, rang alarm bells about the water losses for more than a year before he resigned. He said he received little
explanation – or assurances the problem has been fixed.
"This is not a slough in Saskatchewan," said the former mayor of Elstow, Sask., who lives in the Rocky Mountain resort town of Canmore, Alta. "This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I'm trying to
save something that can't speak for itself. I want to hold people accountable."
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Effects of Arctic warming seen as widespread
WASHINGTON - Arctic warming is affecting plants, birds, animals and insects as ice melts and the growing season changes, scientists report in a new review of the many impacts climate change is
having on the far north.
As the global climate changes, the Arctic Circle has been warming faster than other regions and scientists have documented a series of affects on wildlife in the region.
Indeed, just last week researchers reported that the Arctic is warmer than it's been in 2,000 years, even though it should be cooling because of changes in the Earth's orbit that cause the region to get
less direct sunlight.
"The Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past," Eric Post, an associate professor of biology at Penn State University, said in a statement.
Post led a research team that studied the Arctic during the International Polar Year, which ended in 2008. Their findings are reported in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Snow cover has declined steadily in recent years and in the last two to three decades the minimum sea ice coverage declined sharply, a change that affect animals like polar bears that depend on the
ice for habitat and hunting.
"Species on land and at sea are suffering adverse consequences of human behavior at latitudes thousands of miles away," Post said. "It seems no matter where you look - on the ground, in the air,
or in the water - we're seeing signs of rapid change."
In addition, he added, the Arctic is very complex and "not all populations within a given species respond similarly to warming because physical and landscape features that interact with climate can
vary tremendously from site to site."
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Arctic Ecosystems Changing, May be Irreversible
The dramatic changes sweeping the Arctic as a result of global warming aren't just confined to melting sea ice and polar bears - a new study finds that the forces of climate change
are propagating throughout the frigid north, producing different effects in each ecosystem with the upshot that the face of the Arctic may be forever altered.
"The Arctic as we know it may be a thing of the past," said Eric Post of Penn State, who led an international team that brought together research on the effects of climate change from ecosystems
across the Arctic.
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India: Dying of thirst
Pollution and an exploding population are drying the subcontinent as never before. Experts warn the problem may only have just begun
You wouldn't think of India as being water-starved. Sometimes, it seems more waterlogged. Each summer, journalists set off in helicopters to report on the country's latest, devastating flood.
But pollution and climate change – combined with a severe drought this year – have created critical water shortages in India. With the population mushrooming and little or no progress on the pollution
and global warming fronts, the problem may well get worse in the years to come.
Speaking at a conference last month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said: "Climate change is threatening our ecosystems, water scarcity is becoming a way of life and pollution is a growing threat
to our health and habitat."
Most of India's rain falls during the monsoon season between June and September, a period when it's so hot that much of the moisture evaporates before it can be stored properly. Storm sewers that
feed underground aquifers are typically clogged with garbage, compounding the problem, and canals and water pipes are laced with cracks and holes. As much as 40 per cent of the water carried in
pipes in New Delhi is wasted, the country's Central Pollution Control Board says.
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NOAA: Summer Temperature Below Average for U.S.
Global warming doesn't necessarily mean that temperatures are rising every year, everywhere. Superimposed on global trends are local and regional climate effects that may differ from global trends.
For example, the average June-August 2009 summer temperature for the contiguous United States
was below average - the 34th coolest on record, according to a preliminary analysis by NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. August was also below the long-term average. The
analysis is based on records dating back to 1895.
* For the 2009 summer, the average temperature of 71.7 degrees F was 0.4 degree F below the 20th Century average. The 2008 average summer temperature was 72.7 degrees F.
* A recurring upper level trough held the June-August temperatures down in the central states, where Michigan experienced its fifth, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and South Dakota their seventh, Nebraska
its eighth, and Iowa its ninth coolest summer. By contrast, Florida had its fourth warmest summer, while Washington and Texas experienced their eighth and ninth warmest, respectively.
* The Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota region experienced its sixth coolest summer on record. Only the Northwest averaged above normal temperatures.
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Climate change depresses beer drinkers
IF THE sinking Maldives aren't enough to galvanise action on climate change, could losing a classic beer do it? Climatologist Martin Mozny of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute and colleagues
say that the quality of Saaz hops - the delicate variety used to make pilsner lager - has been decreasing in recent years. They say the culprit is climate change in the form of increased air temperature.
Mozny's team used a high-resolution dataset of weather patterns, crop yield and hop quality to estimate the impact of climate change on Saaz hops in the Czech Republic between 1954 and 2006.
Best-quality Saaz hops contain about 5 per cent alpha acid, the compound that produces the delicate, bitter taste of pilsners.
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