Climate Articles
Sea Levels Spiked With Ancient Warming Event
Around 125,000 years ago, global warming drove sea levels to surge by more than 20 feet.
Sea levels were likely eight meters higher around 125,000 years ago when polar temperatures were 3-5 degrees Celsius (5.4-9 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer, says a new study published Wednesday to show the effects of global warming.
The research by Harvard University and Princeton University was released in the journal Nature as the world's nations met in Denmark to forge a strategy to head off harmful effects of global warming blamed on greenhouse gases.
To understand the potential effects of a rise in temperature, the researchers reexamined data about the last interglacial stage -- a warmer period within an ice age -- which climaxed about 125,000 years ago, they said.
At the time, polar temperatures were 3-5 degrees Celsius higher than today, providing a comparison for current scenarios of future rises of 1-2 degrees Celsius (1.8-3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), they said.
"We find a 95 percent probability that global sea level peaked at least 6.6 meters (nearly 22 feet) higher than today during the last interglacial," the study said.
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Satellite sees "lumpy" layer of CO2
An instrument aboard a seven-year-old satellite designed to help weather forecasters is proving to be a powerful new tool in climate monitoring by detecting the distribution of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
And it turns out, NASA scientists say -- contrary to conventional thinking that the greenhouse gas is spread uniformly over the planet in a well mixed layer -- the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder instrument detects a distinctly "lumpy" pattern of CO2 in the mid-troposphere some 3-7 miles up.
Scientists reported their findings this week at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
The observations show a large band of carbon dioxide undulating around the Northern Hemisphere, where most of it originates, but also a smaller band that researchers didn't expect to find around the Southern Hemisphere. They can follow big lumps of CO2 moving across the Pacific from Asia and across the Atlantic from North America, and around again.
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Climate change increasing malaria risk, research reveals
UK-funded research shows climate change has caused a seven-fold increase in cases of malaria on the slopes of Mount Kenya
Rising temperatures on the slopes of Mount Kenya have put an extra 4 million people at risk of malaria, research funded by the UK government warned today.
Climate change has raised average temperatures in the Central Highlands region of Kenya, allowing the disease to creep into higher altitude areas where the population has little or no immunity.
The findings by a research team funded by the UK Department for International Development (DfID), showed that seven times more people are contracting the disease in outbreaks in the region than 10 years ago.
The team from the Kenyan Medical Research Institute (Kemri) said that while similar outbreaks elsewhere have been attributed to multiple factors including drug resistance and changes in land use, the only change on Mount Kenya is a rise in temperature.
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Pollution poisons our health
Pollution causes terrible human misery, devastating health concerns and has been directly linked to global warming. Cleaning up the environment is the right thing to do. Those who argue that the United States should not forge ahead in the fight against global warming unless China, India and other industrialized nations follow suit might consider a few sobering facts. (1) Coal-fired power plants generate over 131 million tons of coal ash per year which poisons streams and ground water. Coal ash is the waste product left over from burning coal. It contains several dangerous toxins like arsenic, lead and mercury.
These heavy metals can create havoc with the immune system and can cause devastating health problems. Unfortunately, no federal regulations exist to control these toxic wastes. Residents who live near coal ash sites face a 1-50 chance of cancer. Drinking water within a mile of a coal ash pond is far more likely to give you cancer than smoking cigarettes.
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WHO Warns Climate Change Bad For Health
World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan says she is disappointed a deal on climate change was not struck in Copenhagen. But she says important steps were taken that, she believes, will ultimately result in an agreement to stop or retard climate change.
She says the relationship between climate change and health is obvious. For example, she says millions of people will suffer from either too much water or too little water under climate change.
Chan says extensive flooding may lead to loss of life from drowning and disease. She says contaminated floodwaters can cause fatal illnesses, such as diarrhea and cholera.
On the other hand, she says some areas will have too little water and prolonged drought will affect the kind of crops people normally grow.
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Little egret arrives in Britain thanks to global warming
Little egrets and other birds from the Continent are spreading across Britain because of climate change, according to a new report.
In the last decade Britain has suffered massive declines in many garden and farmland birds including the turtle dove and fieldfare.
But due to mild winters and conservation efforts other bird populations have grown, including the little egret and Mediterranean gull that have flown over the Channel.
Other more exotic birds like the hoope, fan-tailed warbler and black kite may arrive in the future as temperatures rise further.
Birds that have been re-introduced into the country have also thrived including the red kite, bittern and sea eagle.
The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) compiled the surveys of threatened birds since 2000 to give a snapshot of the winners and losers of the 21st centry so far.
The bird that has seen the larges overall increase in the past decade is the little egret, a small heron that is usually only found on the Continent.
The white bird was first noticed in Britain around the 1980s and it is thought it started nesting in the late 1990s. The wader is now found throughout the south of the country, with several hundred pairs.
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Climate Change Leads to 'Migration' of Trees
Global warming has caused the ``migration'' of broadleaf evergreen trees northward by up to 74 kilometers in 60 years.
The National Institute of Biological Resources (NIBR) reported Sunday that the average temperature on the Korean Peninsula rose 1.3 degrees Celsius during that time.
In 1941, few broadleaf evergreens were found outside North Jeolla Province, but now the trees can be found near Baengnyeong Island close to the Demilitarized Zone.
The trees have ``migrated'' northward from 14 kilometers ? Daecheong Island to Baengnyeong Island ? to a maximum 74 kilometers ? from Yeongam to Jeongeup.
The speed of timberline movement caused by global warming is estimated at some 5 to 150 kilometers per century when the average temperature rises 1 degree Celsius.
Climate change has affected fish species' habitats, primarily through rising water temperatures.
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AFRICA: Drying, Drying, Disappearing...
ROME, Dec 26 (IPS) - Lake Chad was bigger than Israel less than 50 years ago. Today its surface area is les than a tenth of its earlier size, amid forecasts the lake could disappear altogether within 20 years. Climate change and overuse have put one of Africa's mightiest lakes in mortal danger, and the livelihoods of the 30 million people who depend on its waters is hanging by a thread as a result.
An unprecedented crisis is looming that would create fresh hunger in a region already suffering grave food insecurity, and pose a massive threat to peace and stability, experts say.
"If Lake Chad dries up, 30 million people will have no means of a livelihood, and that is a big security problem because of growing competition for smaller quantities of water," Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, executive secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission (LCBC) tells IPS in Rome.
"Poverty and hunger will increase. When there is no food to eat, there is bound to be violence."
The lake, which shrank 90 percent between 1963 and 2001 from 25,000 square kilometres to under 1,500, is bordered by Chad, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria.
Four more countries, the Central African Republic, Algeria, Sudan and Libya, share the lake's hydrological basin and are therefore affected by its fortunes.
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The Effects of Climate Change on U.S. Ecosystems
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), in cooperation with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research and the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), today released The Effects of Climate Change on U.S. Ecosystems on Dec. 15, 2009, at the climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark.
"Climate change poses significant threats and challenges for farmers, ranchers, and those who make a living off the land, which will have a serious impact on our ability to feed the people of the United States and the world,'' said Vilsack. ''President Obama has made climate change one of his top domestic priorities and under his Administration, the United States has done more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than at any other time in history, both by supporting domestic policies that advance clean energy, climate security, and economic recovery; and by vigorously engaging in international climate negotiations."
''The report provides an accessible summary of findings contained in a U.S. scientific assessment project commissioned by the USGCRP and released in May 2008. New information has been added to provide additional detail on the original findings.
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Climate Wizard Makes Large Databases of Climate Information Visual, Accessible
ScienceDaily (Dec. 29, 2009) - A Web tool that generates color maps of projected temperature and precipitation changes using 16 of the world's most prominent climate-change models is being used to consider such things as habitat shifts that will affect endangered species, places around the world where crops could be at risk because of drought and temperatures that could cripple fruit and nut production in California's Great Central Valley.
Climate Wizard, a tool meant for scientists and non-scientists alike, is being demonstrated by The Nature Conservancy in Copenhagen, Denmark, in conjunction with the climate summit underway there. It also is the subject of a presentation Tuesday, Dec. 15, at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco and a paper just released online by the Public Library of Science's PLoS ONE with Evan Girvetz as lead presenter and lead author. Girvetz worked on Climate Wizard during postdoctoral work at the University of Washington's School of Forest Resources and just accepted a job with The Nature Conservancy.
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Contrails And Warming
(CNN) -- The thin wisps of condensation that trail jet airliners have a significant influence on the climate, according to scientists who studied U.S. skies during a rare interruption in national air traffic after the September 11 terrorist attacks.
During the three-day commercial flight hiatus, when the artificial clouds known as contrails all but disappeared, the variations in high and low temperatures increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) each day, said meteorological researchers.
While the temperature range is significant, whether the jet clouds have a net effect on global warming remains unknown.
"I think what we've shown are that contrails are capable of affecting temperatures," said lead scientist David Travis of the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater. "Which direction, in terms of net heating or cooling, is still up in the air."
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Carbon Dioxide and the Climate
A 1956 American Scientist article explores climate change; two contemporary commentaries illuminate its relevance to the present
Gilbert N. Plass, James Rodger Fleming, Gavin Schmidt
Scientists have long been fascinated with the problem of explaining variations in the climate. For at least nine-tenths of the time since the beginning of recorded geological history, the average temperature of the Earth has been higher than it is today. Between these warm epochs there have been severe periods of glaciation which have lasted a few million years and which have occurred at intervals of roughly 250,000,000 years. Of more immediate interest to us is the general warming of the climate that has taken place in the last sixty years.
Theories of climatic change are exceedingly numerous. Is it possible that any of these theories can explain most of the known facts about climate? The most widely held theories at the present time call upon variations in the solar energy received by the earth, changes in the amount of volcanic dust in the atmosphere, and variations in the average elevation of the continents. Although it is entirely possible that changes in each of these factors may have had an influence on the Earth's climate at particular times and places, none of these theories alone seems able to explain a majority of the known facts about world-wide climatic variations.
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Italians trying to keep Venice above water
VENICE, Italy -- The scene in Venice in November was one that for many is becoming all too familiar: residents waddling in their gumboots on raised wooden walkways to cope with the "acqua alta," or high water.
The Italian lagoon city's famed St. Mark's Square is now flooded more than 100 times a year, compared to around seven times a year a century ago. That makes the walkways placed along some of the city's submerged alleys and squares more than necessary.
Some predict that the city could disappear altogether over the next century as ice from the poles melts and ocean and sea levels rise.
"Venice has been experiencing the effects of climate change long before other cities in the world," Elena Zombardi of the Consorzio Venezia Nuova - the consortium appointed by the Italian state for safeguarding the city - told the German Press Agency dpa.
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Gone: a look at extinction over the past decade
A survey of twelve species lost to extinction over the past ten years.
No one can say with any certainty how many species went extinct from 2000-2009. Because no one knows if the world's species number 3 million or 30 million, it is impossible to guess how many known species-let alone unknown-may have vanished recently. Species in tropical forests and the world's oceans are notoriously under-surveyed, leaving gaping holes where species can vanish taking all of their secrets-even knowledge of their existence-with them.
It is also difficult to know when a species is truly gone. Some species reappear after they were thought to be extinct for decades, sometimes even centuries. Officially, species are usually not considered "extinct" until ample time passes without a sighting, for example, fifty years. Still, with many biologists and conservationists warning that we are in the midst of a human-caused mass extinction which may prove even larger than the demise of the dinosaurs, it is important to recognize likely vanished species before we know for certain they are gone, if only to remind ourselves of our impact and our failures.
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Australia baked under hottest decade on record
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia experienced its hottest decade on record from 2000 to 2009 due to global warming, the nation's bureau of meteorology said on Tuesday, as annual summer bushfires again burn drought lands and destroy homes.
The average temperature in Australia over the past 10 years was 0.48 degrees Celsius above the 1961-1990 average, said the Bureau of Meteorology said in its annual climate statement.
And 2010 is forecast to be even hotter, with temperatures likely to be between 0.5 and 1 degrees above average.
"We're getting these increasingly warm temperatures, not just for Australia but globally. Climate change, global warming is clearly continuing," said bureau climatologist David Jones.
"We're in the latter stages of an El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean and what that means for Australian and global temperatures is that 2010 is likely to be another very warm year -- perhaps even the warmest on record."
Environment Minister Peter Garrett used the report to attack opposition politicians for blocking the government's key climate policy, a carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS) aimed at reducing greenhouses gases causing global warming.
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Study: Nitrogen limits add to warming
Usually when we worry about global warming, carbon is all we think about. But it turns out we have a new element to worry about: nitrogen.
Specifically, the lack of it.
Humanity's carbon-belching habit is a feast for plants, which consume the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) as they grow. But they also need nitrogen, and, according to a new study, as rising carbon levels fuel more plant growth in the coming decades, Earth's hungry greenery is going to start running low on nitrogen.
That could leave billions of tons of excess carbon in the atmosphere that would warm the climate an additional 1.19 degrees Centigrade (2.14 degrees Fahrenheit) above current estimates by the year 2100.
Nitrogen makes up over 70 percent of our atmosphere, but it's mostly locked away in a chemical bond that plants can't crack. They depend on a few types of nitrogen-fixing plants, which employ soil-dwelling bacteria to convert the nutrient into more usable forms. Outside of agricultural lands, where humans sow fertilizer into the soils, plant growth is mostly limited by whatever nitrogen nature provides.
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Arctic roots of 'upside-down' weather
It's cold in Kirkcaldy, freezing in Frankfurt and brass monkeys in Bryn Mawr... a winter spell with weather that's unusually - well - wintry.
But not everywhere; in fact, other places in the Northern Hemisphere are seeing weather that's unseasonably warm.
In Goose Bay in Newfoundland, it's barely getting below 0C - bikini weather, relatively speaking, given that the average minimum for January is -23C.
The cause of what one weather service refers to as these "upside down" conditions is an extreme of the Arctic Oscillation (AO).
Essentially, air pressure is measured at various places across the Arctic and at the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere - about 45 degrees north, roughly the latitude of Milan, Montreal or Vladivostok.
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Climate Numerology: How Much Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Is Safe?
Last December world leaders met in Copenhagen to add more hot air to the climate debate. That is because although the impacts humanity would like to avoid-fire, flood and drought, for starters-are pretty clear, the right strategy to halt global warming is not. Despite decades of effort, scientists do not know what "number"-in terms of temperature or concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere-constitutes a danger.
When it comes to defining the climate's sensitivity to forcings such as rising atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, "we don't know much more than we did in 1975," says climatologist Stephen Schneider of Stanford University, who first defined the term "climate sensitivity" in the 1970s. "What we know is if you add watts per square meter to the system, it's going to warm up."
Greenhouse gases add those watts by acting as a blanket, trapping the sun's heat. They have warmed the earth by roughly 0.75 degree Celsius over the past century. Scientists can measure how much energy greenhouse gases now add (roughly three watts per square meter), but what eludes precise definition is how much other factors play a role-the response of clouds to warming, the cooling role of aerosols, the heat and gas absorbed by oceans, human transformation of the landscape, even the natural variability of solar strength. "We may have to wait 20 or 30 years before the data set in the 21st century is good enough to pin down sensitivity," says climate modeler Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
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Global Warming Likely to be Amplified by Slow Changes to Earth Systems
SANTA CRUZ, CA--Researchers studying a period of high carbon dioxide levels and warm climate several million years ago have concluded that slow changes such as melting ice sheets amplified the initial warming caused by greenhouse gases.
The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, found that a relatively small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels was associated with substantial global warming about 4.5 million years ago during the early Pliocene.
Coauthor Christina Ravelo, professor of ocean sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the study indicates that the sensitivity of Earth's temperature to increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is greater than has been expected on the basis of climate models that only include rapid responses.
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Global Temperatures Could Rise More than Expected
New Haven, Conn.-The kinds of increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide taking place today could have a significantly larger effect on global temperatures than previously thought, according to a new study led by Yale University geologists. Their findings appear December 20 in the advanced online edition of Nature Geoscience.
The team demonstrated that only a relatively small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) was associated with a period of substantial warming in the mid- and early-Pliocene era, between three to five million years ago, when temperatures were approximately 3 to 4 degrees Celsius warmer than they are today.
Climate sensitivity-the mean global temperature response to a doubling of the concentration of atmospheric CO2-is estimated to be 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius, using current models.
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Scientists Map Speed of Climate Change
SAN FRANCISCO (December 18, 2009) - From beetles to barnacles, pikas to pine warblers, many species are already on the move in response to shifting climate regimes. But how fast will they - and their habitats - have to move to keep pace with global climate change over the next century? In a new study, a team of scientists including Dr. Healy Hamilton from the California Academy of Sciences have calculated that on average, ecosystems will need to shift about 0.42 kilometers per year (about a quarter mile per year) to keep pace with changing temperatures across the globe. Mountainous habitats will be able to move more slowly, since a modest move up or down slope can result in a large change in temperature. However, flatter ecosystems, such as flooded grasslands, mangroves, and deserts, will need to move much more rapidly to stay in their comfort zone - sometimes more than a kilometer per year. The team, which also included scientists from the Carnegie Institute of Science, Climate Central, and U.C. Berkeley, will publish their results in the December 24 issue of Nature.
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Arctic Could Face Warmer and Ice-Free Conditions
There is increased evidence that the Arctic could face seasonally ice-free conditions and much warmer temperatures in the future.
Scientists documented evidence that the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas were too warm to support summer sea ice during the mid-Pliocene warm period (3.3 to 3 million years ago). This period is characterized by warm temperatures similar to those projected for the end of this century, and is used as an analog to understand future conditions.
The U.S. Geological Survey found that summer sea-surface temperatures in the Arctic were between 10 to 18°C (50 to 64°F) during the mid-Pliocene, while current temperatures are around or below 0°C (32°F).
Examining past climate conditions allows for a true understanding of how Earth's climate system really functions. USGS research on the mid-Pliocene is the most comprehensive global reconstruction for any warm period. This will help refine climate models, which currently underestimate the rate of sea ice loss in the Arctic.
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Portions of Arctic Coastline Eroding, No End in Sight
The northern coastline of Alaska midway between Point Barrow and Prudhoe Bay is eroding by up to one-third the length of a football field annually because of a "triple whammy" of declining sea ice, warming seawater and increased wave activity, according to new study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The conditions have led to the steady retreat of 30 to 45 feet a year of the 12-foot-high bluffs -- frozen blocks of silt and peat containing 50 to 80 percent ice -- which are toppled into the Beaufort Sea during the summer months by a combination of large waves pounding the shoreline and warm seawater melting the base of the bluffs, said CU-Boulder Associate Professor Robert Anderson, a co-author on the study. Once the blocks have fallen, the coastal seawater melts them in a matter of days, sweeping the silty material out to sea.
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