Climate Articles
Hot Air - Why don't TV weathermen believe in climate change?
The small makeup room off the main floor of KUSI's studios, in a suburban canyon on the north end of San Diego, has seen better days. The carpet is stained; the couch sags. John Coleman, KUSI's weatherman, pulls off the brown sweatshirt he has been wearing over his shirt and tie all day and appraises himself in the mirror, smoothing back his white hair and opening a makeup kit. "I kid that I have to use a trowel, to fill the crevasses of age," he says, swiping powder under one eye and then the other. "People have tried to convince me to use more advanced makeup, but I don't. I don't try to fool anyone."
Coleman is seventy-five years old, and looks it, which is refreshing in the Dorian Gray-like environs of television news. He refers to his position at KUSI, a modestly eccentric independent station in San Diego whose evening newscast usually runs fifth out of five in the local market, as his retirement job. When he steps in front of the green screen, it's clear why he has chosen it over actual retirement; in front of the camera he moves, if not quite like a man half his age, then at least like a man three quarters of it. His eyes light up, and the slight stoop with which he otherwise carries himself disappears. His rumble of a voice evens out into a theatrical baritone, full of the practiced jocularity of someone who has spent all but the first nineteen years of his life on TV.
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FoxNews' Neil Cavuto still thinks winter chill disproves global warming; actual scientists disagree
Last week I went on FoxNews so Neil Cavuto could diss global warming because it was cold outside. Shockingly, I failed to persuade him that no one ever said global warming would turn January into July — though at least he seems to have internalized my message as the "Duh!" part of his opening in the above compilation. Think Progress has the whole, sad story in this repost:
In recent days, conservatives have seized on the cold snap gripping the southeast region of the country to cast doubt on global warming. "Hey Al Gore: we want our global warming, and we want it now," said Newsbusters' Mark Finkelstein. In his newsletter today, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wondered about "Al Gore's explanation for this miserable, persistent chill," and the National Review's Mona Charen claimed that the "cold snap has spurred the 'warmists' to spin control."
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Global Temperatures in 2009 Tied with 2006 as Fifth Warmest on Record
The tally of global land and ocean surface temperatures for 2009 places it in a tie with 2006 as the fifth warmest year on record, according to the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Ocean surface temperatures were 0.86oF above the 20th century average, which put them in a tie with 2002 and 2004 as the fourth warmest on record. Land surface temperatures averaged 1.39oF above the 20th century average, tying with 2003 as the seventh warmest on record. Combining the two yielded an average global surface temperature that was 1.01oF above the 20th century average. Perhaps more significantly, the decade of 2000 through 2009 was the warmest on record, with an average global surface temperature of 0.96oF above the 20th century average. For comparison, the 1990s was the next warmest decade, at 0.65oF above the 20th century average.
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Breaking: 2009 hottest year on record in Southern Hemisphere and tied for second globally
- 2010 still poised to be hottest year on record despite cool start in parts of Northern Hemisphere
Eli Kintisch at Science Magazine just published, "2009 Hottest Year on Record in Southern Hemisphere." He quoted NASA mathematician Reto Ruedy of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies on the as-yet-not-released December and yearly data. We've all been waiting for NASA's final report on the year — to see whether 2009 will be the second hottest year on record (see Must-see NASA figures compare 2009 to the two hottest years on record: 2005 and 2007) and whether NASA would make an official prediction that 2010 is likely to be the hottest on record, as the UK's Met Office has and as Hansen himself did (here).
So I called up Dr. Ruedy, and he said that the data have been processed but won't be released officially until Friday, as they are awaiting completion of the accompanying report. Here's the story.
As Science reports:
The United States may be experiencing one of the coldest winters in decades, but things continue to heat up in the Southern Hemisphere. Science has obtained … data from NASA that indicates that 2009 was the hottest year on record south of the Equator. The find adds to multiple lines of evidence showing that the 2000s were the warmest decade in the modern instrumental record.Southern Hemisphere temperatures can serve as a trailing indicator of global warming, says NASA mathematician Reto Ruedy of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City, given that that part of the globe is mostly water, which warms more slowly and with less variability than land. Ruedy says 2009 temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere were 0.49oC warmer than the period between 1951 and 1980, with an error of +/- 0.05oC.
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If It's That Warm, How Come It's So Damned Cold?
The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year in the 130 years of global instrumental temperature records, in the surface temperature analysis of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The Southern Hemisphere set a record as the warmest year for that half of the world. Global mean temperature, as shown in Figure 1a, was 0.57oC (1.0oF) warmer than climatology (the 1951-1980 base period). Southern Hemisphere mean temperature, as shown in Figure 1b, was 0.49oC (0.88oF) warmer than in the period of climatology.
The global record warm year, in the period of near-global instrumental measurements (since the late 1800s), was 2005. Sometimes it is asserted that 1998 was the warmest year. The origin of this confusion is discussed below. There is a high degree of interannual (year-to-year) and decadal variability in both global and hemispheric temperatures. Underlying this variability, however, is a long-term warming trend that has become strong and persistent over the past three decades.
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Rapid Sea Ice Breakup along the Ronne-Filchner Ice Shelf
Within a 24-hour space, an area of sea ice larger than the state of Rhode Island broke away from the Ronne-Filchner Ice Shelf and shattered into many smaller pieces. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites captured this event in this series of photo-like images from January 12 and January 13, 2010.
The long, narrow tongue of ice is a bridge of sea ice linking the A-23A iceberg to the Ronne-Filchner Ice Shelf in West Antarctica. The ice bridge is fast ice, or sea ice that does not move because it is anchored to the shore. Compared to an ice shelf, the sea ice is a thin shell of ice over the ocean. The difference in thickness is visible in the images. The taller, thicker Ronne-Filchner Ice Shelf casts a visible shadow on the ice bridge made of sea ice.
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Earth's growing nitrogen threat
It helps feed a hungry world, but it's worse than CO2.
With nitrogen, the family's corn crop suddenly grew much higher and stronger, and produced full ears and big harvests. When fed to their cows and pigs, that high-quality corn produced far more milk and meat. As a result, the family bought more livestock - and the farm grew. "I remember Dad bringing the neighbors over to see how much greener and better the quality of the stalk was," Mr. Lindsay says. "It was a really big deal then."
It's an even bigger deal today. Lindsay and his son farm 3,000 acres of corn and soybeans, using about 150 tons of nitrogen fertilizer annually. Farmers from China, Europe, and South America rely on nitrogen, too, to make ends meet and feed a growing world.
Yet it's also becoming clear that too much of a good thing can have a downside for the environment. The world is awash in man-made "reactive" nitrogen (the chemically active form), researchers say.
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Major Antarctic glacier is 'past its tipping point'
A major Antarctic glacier has passed its tipping point, according to a new modelling study. After losing increasing amounts of ice over the past decades, it is poised to collapse in a catastrophe that could raise global sea levels by 24 centimetres.
Pine Island glacier (PIG) is one of many at the fringes of the West Antarctic ice sheet. In 2004, satellite observations showed that it had started to thin, and that ice was flowing into the Amundsen Sea 25 per cent faster than it had 30 years before.
Now, the first study to model changes in the ice sheet in three dimensions shows that PIG has probably passed a critical "tipping point" and is irreversibly on track to lose 50 per cent of its ice in as little as 100 years, significantly raising global sea levels.
The team that carried out the study admits their model can represent only a simplified version of the physics that govern changes in glaciers, but say that if anything, the model is optimistic and PIG will disappear faster than it projects.
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Arctic warm while Northern Hemisphere shivers
WASHINGTON -- While much of the Northern Hemisphere has shivered in a cold snap in recent weeks, temperatures in the Arctic soared to unusually high levels, U.S. scientists reported.
This strange atmospheric pattern is caused by natural variability and not by rising levels of greenhouse gases. However, it could affect Arctic ice which in turn may impact global warming, said Mark Serreze, director of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado.
"It's very warm over the Arctic, with air temperatures locally at 10 to 15 degrees F (5.6 to 8.4 degrees C) warmer than they should be in certain areas," Serreze said in a telephone interview on Monday.
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ECO-ECONOMY INDICATOR: PAST DECADE THE HOTTEST ON RECORD
The first decade of the twenty-first century was the hottest since recordkeeping began in 1880. With an average global temperature of 14.52 degrees Celsius (58.1 degrees Fahrenheit), this decade was 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than any previous decade. The year 2005 was the hottest on record, while 2007 and 2009 tied for second hottest. In fact, 9 of the 10 warmest years on record occurred in the past decade.
Temperature rise has accelerated in recent decades. The earth's temperature is now 0.8 degrees Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than it was in the first decade of the twentieth century, and two-thirds of that increase has taken place since 1970.
Even with these seemingly small increases in global temperature, natural systems are already starting to respond, as evidenced by melting ice sheets and glaciers, shifting weather patterns, and changes in the timing of seasonal events. If temperatures continue to rise on their current trajectory, by the end of the century they will have left the narrow range in which human civilization has developed and flourished.
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Is the ocean choking on greenhouse gas?
Earth's oceans may be losing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide, the worst of the human-generated greenhouse gases believed to drive global warming, according to a new study co-authored by a UC Irvine scientist.
If the study's conclusions are right, implications for climate change could be serious. The oceans normally act as a giant sponge, mopping up excess carbon from the atmosphere; reducing that ability could, under some scenarios, hasten the planet's rise in temperature, which scientists say is already being accelerated by human emissions.
"If we keep burning fossil fuels at the same rate, a bigger fraction will accumulate in the atmosphere," said UC Irvine physical oceanographer Francois Primeau. "The ocean becomes more acidic, diminishing the ocean's ability to take up the carbon."
In a paper published in November in the science journal, "Nature," Primeau and his co-authors describe the novel method they used, based in part on real-world measurements and in part on computer modeling, to create a kind of three-dimensional profile of ocean absorption since 1765.
Direct measurements of ocean chemistry go back roughly 20 years, allowing the scientists to map out how carbon dioxide has been absorbed, carried into the depths and stored there for decades or longer, then returned to the surface.
The more carbon dioxide held in the upwelling water, the less it can absorb from the atmosphere.
The scientists used these measurements to extrapolate backward in time, revealing how carbon dioxide moved through the oceans.
The scientists also relied on data from bubbles trapped in ice cores and other "proxy" measurements, which reveal the composition of the atmosphere in the deep past — including concentrations of carbon dioxide.
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How climate change is shrinking the river Nile - Watch the Video
The water level of the river Nile - crucial to the economy in many parts of Uganda, Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia - is dropping. Film-maker Andrew Johnstone follows the course of the Nile to discover how climate change is already affecting the river's farming communities
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Seeing The Effects Of Climate Change (PHOTOS)
Sometimes as we go about our daily lives, climate change can seem abstract, and not something we think we are experiencing on a daily basis. However, our planet is rapidly being altered and the physical signs of this shift can't be ignored. These photos reveal how the world has already been impacted and what kind of changes we can expect in the future if we continue with our carbon-intense ways.
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As climate warms, what will our rivers do?
A team of University of Washington researchers is finishing the most detailed yet report what is likely to happen to Pacific Northwest rivers as the climate warms.
The Columbia Basin Climate Change Scenarios Project predicts a shift in the landscape so great that engineers and planners are going to have to fundamentally change their methods of predicting what rivers are likely to do.
The usual method -- the one that people use to make decisions about buildings, roads, salmon, hydroelectric projects and water for agriculture -- analyses the historical data from river gauges.
Alan Hamlet, a research assistant professor at the University of Washington's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the lead researcher on the project, says this method makes sense only if the climate isn't changing.
"It's sort of like driving down the highway and only looking in the rear view mirror," he said. "It only works if the road is straight."
So Hamlet, Eric Salathe, a senior climate researcher with the University of Washington' Climate Impacts Group, and a team of researchers set about showing the implications for different climate scenarios on 297 river gauges in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.
They used 20 different climate models to generate temperature and precipitation projections for different watersheds. All of them show changes.
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Antarctic weather station shows extraordinary burst of warming since 1950
Washington, January 19 (ANI): Records of more than a century of weather data from the southern hemisphere's oldest, coldest weather station have revealed an extraordinary burst of warming since 1950.
The base at the Islas Orcadas, a remote band of land that looks as if it's been whipped off the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, was founded by Scots in 1903, and has been manned by Argentines ever since, all of whom collected daily weather data.
That longevity is paying off in terms of getting a better grasp of southern climate changes, according to NOAA climate researcher Susan Solomon and her colleagues.
The Orcadas weather data were the culmination of years of searching for old records that contained daily weather information from the Antarctic.
Such records are especially useful because they reveal extreme warm and cold weather days, all of which are lost in the easier to locate monthly mean records, Solomon explained.
"It turns out to be a fascinating record. What it shows is that there have been changes in the extremes and changes in the actual cycles," Solomon told Discovery News.
The Orcadas record shows that summers at the base have been warming up since the 1950s.
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Why Hasn't Earth Warmed as Much as Expected? New Report on Climate Change Explores the Reasons
ScienceDaily (Jan. 19, 2010) - Planet Earth has warmed much less than expected during the industrial era based on current best estimates of Earth's "climate sensitivity" -- the amount of global temperature increase expected in response to a given rise in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2). In a study to be published in the Journal of Climate, a publication of the American Meteorological Society, Stephen Schwartz, of Brookhaven National Laboratory, and colleagues examine the reasons for this discrepancy.
According to current best estimates of climate sensitivity, the amount of CO2 and other heat-trapping gases added to Earth's atmosphere since humanity began burning fossil fuels on a significant scale during the industrial period would be expected to result in a mean global temperature rise of 3.8oF -- well more than the 1.4oF increase that has been observed for this time span. Schwartz's analysis attributes the reasons for this discrepancy to a possible mix of two major factors: 1) Earth's climate may be less sensitive to rising greenhouse gases than currently assumed and/or 2) reflection of sunlight by haze particles in the atmosphere may be offsetting some of the expected warming.
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Climate change may trigger earthquakes and volcanoes
FAR from being the benign figure of mythology, Mother Earth is short-tempered and volatile. So sensitive in fact, that even slight changes in weather and climate can rip the planet's crust apart, unleashing the furious might of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and landslides.
That's the conclusion of the researchers who got together last week in London at the conference on Climate Forcing of Geological and Geomorphological Hazards. It suggests climate change could tip the planet's delicate balance and unleash a host of geological disasters. What's more, even our attempts to stall global warming could trigger a catastrophic event (see "Bury the carbon").
Evidence of a link between climate and the rumblings of the crust has been around for years, but only now is it becoming clear just how sensitive rock can be to the air, ice and water above. "You don't need huge changes to trigger responses from the crust," says Bill McGuire of University College London (UCL), who organised the meeting. "The changes can be tiny."
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