Climate Articles
'Block the sun, control global warming'
Toronto, Jan 30 : Canadian and US scientists want to block the sun to cool the earth and limit global warming.
Research and field-testing on what they call "geo-engineering" of the earth's atmosphere to limit risk of climate change must begin quickly, say scientists from the University of Calgary in Canada, and the University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon University in the US.
Studies on geo-engineering or solar radiation management (SRM) should be undertaken collectively with government funding, rather that unilaterally by nations, argue the scientists.
They say SRM would involve releasing mega-tonnes of light-scattering aerosol particles in the upper atmosphere to reduce earth's absorption of solar energy, thereby cooling the planet.
Another technique would be to release particles of sea salt to make low-altitude clouds reflect more solar energy back into space, the scientists say.
"Collaborative and government-supported studies on solar-radiation management will help identify technologies to combat climate change," writes David Keith of Calgary university in an article in Nature this week.
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Another Blizzard: What Happened to Global Warming?
As the blizzard-bound residents of the mid-Atlantic region get ready to dig themselves out of the third major storm of the season, they may stop to wonder two things: Why haven't we bothered to invest in a snow blower and, also, what happened to climate change? After all, it stands to reason that if the world is getting warmer - and the past decade was the hottest on record - major snowstorms should become a thing of the past, like Palm Pilots and majority rule in the Senate. Certainly that's what the Virginia state Republican Party thinks: the GOP aired an ad last weekend attacking two Democratic Congressmen for supporting the 2009 carbon-cap-and-trade bill, and using the recent storms to cast doubt on global warming. (See pictures of a massive blizzard hitting Washington, D.C.)
Brace yourselves now - this may be a case of politicians twisting the facts. There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to warm. As the meteorologist Jeff Masters points out in his excellent blog at Weather Underground, the two major storms that hit Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., this winter - in December and during the first weekend of February - are already among the 10 heaviest snowfalls those cities have ever recorded. The chance of that happening in the same winter is incredibly unlikely.
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Sea-level rise slowly becomes issue in Outer Banks
Coastal scientists are predicting that rising seas could drown much of the Outer Banks by the next century, but the issue is just starting to be recognized as a looming crisis in league with beach erosion.
Despite the vulnerability of the barrier islands to potentially catastrophic rising seas, there is no clarion call to be proactive.
"I think most people who spend time around the ocean probably think there is some rise in the ocean levels," said Allen Burrus, vice chairman of the Dare County Board of Commissioners and a Hatteras native. "But they also feel that, like most things in nature, it comes in cycles."
A science panel - hosted by the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources - this month presented data that showed seas off the Outer Banks have risen 0.17 of an inch a year over a 24-year period, the highest rate in the state. Data will be reviewed every five years to observe trends.
Tancred Miller, policy analyst for the state Division of Coastal Management, said a report based on the panel's analysis soon will be presented to the state Coastal Resources Commission, which will use it to begin drafting policies on rising sea levels. Eventually, he said, local governments in the state's 20 coastal counties will be expected to incorporate the policies into their land-use plans.
For the time being, the town of Nags Head is addressing severe beach erosion and storm damage on the oceanfront on the south end of the town, but the topic of rising sea levels is not on the table.
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Egypt's fertile Nile Delta falls prey to climate change
The Nile Delta, Egypt's bread basket since antiquity, is being turned into a salty wasteland by rising seawaters, forcing some farmers off their lands and others to import sand in a desperate bid to turn back the tide.
Experts warn that global warming will have a major impact in the delta on agriculture resources, tourism and human migration besides shaking the region's fragile ecosystems.
Over the last century, the Mediterranean Sea, which fronts the coast of the Nile Delta, has risen by 20 centimetres (six inches) and saltwater intrusion has created a major challenge, experts say.
A recent government study on the coast of Alexandria, Egypt's second largest city, expects the sea to continue to rise and flood large swathes of land.
"A 30 centimetre rise in sea level is expected to occur by 2025, flooding approximately 200 square kilometres (77 square miles).
"As a result, over half a million inhabitants may be displaced and approximately 70,000 jobs could be lost," the study said.
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New world wines: now from the north
Is global warming to thank for the rise of wines from England, Belgium and Sweden?
GENOELSELDEREN, Belgium - The terrace of the elegant 18th-century chateau offers views over the formal French garden and fields filled with neat rows of vines.
This idyllic scene could be reminiscent of Bordeaux or the Cotes du Rhone - were it not for all the snow.
Wijnkasteel Genoels-Elderen is the biggest and best-known vineyard in Belgium. It is one of a growing number of wineries taking root in parts of northern Europe once considered too chilly to produce drinkable wine.
"We can compare this region with the Champagne region or Burgundy, or the Chablis," said Belgian winemaker Joyce Kekko-van Rennes. "If you are in period of warming, we are in a fantastic place for winemaking."
The extent to which global warming has encouraged the expansion of winemaking in northern lands better known for their beer is up for debate.
There is no doubt, however, that it was perfectly possible to toast the arrival of 2010 with some very drinkable English bubbly, Dutch riesling or even Swedish chardonnay.
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Melt Season in the Arctic Getting Longer
The icy cap over Earth's North Pole reaches its summer minimum in September and its winter maximum in late February or early March. Satellite observations since 1979 have shown that amount of ice that survives the summer is getting smaller; declines have been especially dramatic in the past decade. Recently, scientists from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center described another way Arctic sea ice is changing: the summer melt season is getting significantly longer.
This trio of images shows changes between 1979 and 2007 in the average date of melt onset in the spring (left), the first autumn freeze (center), and the total average increase in the length of the Arctic sea ice melt season. The color scales show the trends in days per decade. Red indicates trends consistent with warming: earlier melt onset, later freezes, and longer total melt season. White indicates little or no change. The maps are based on satellite observations of microwave energy radiated from the ice. (Even a small amount of melt water on snow or ice dramatically changes the way the surface looks in the microwave part of the electromagnetic spectrum.)
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Less Water Vapor May Slow Warming Trends
A decrease in water vapor concentrations in parts of the middle atmosphere has contributed to a slowing of Earth's warming, researchers are reporting. The finding, they said, offers part of the explanation for a string of years with relatively stable global surface temperatures.
Despite the decrease in water vapor, the study's authors said, the overall trend is still toward a warming climate, primarily caused by a buildup in emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from human sources.
"This doesn't alter the fundamental conclusion that the world has warmed and that most of that warming has to do with greenhouse gas emissions caused by man," said Susan Solomon, a climate scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the lead author of the report, which appears in the Jan. 29 issue of the journal Science.
Water vapor, a potent heat-trapping gas, absorbs sunlight and re-emits heat into Earth's atmosphere. Its concentrations in the stratosphere, the second of three layers in the atmosphere, appear to have decreased in the last 10 years, according to the study.
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New Hampshire: A Record Is Blown Away
Mount Washington has lost its distinction as the site of the fastest wind gust ever recorded on Earth, officials at the Mount Washington Observatory said. The concession came after the World Meteorological Organization said on its Web site that a panel of experts reviewing extreme weather and climate data turned up a 253 m.p.h. gust on Barrow Island, Australia, in 1996 during Cyclone Olivia. That tops the 231 m.p.h. recorded atop Mount Washington on April 12, 1934.
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Researcher on Climate Is Cleared in Inquiry
WASHINGTON - An academic board of inquiry has largely cleared a noted Pennsylvania State University climatologist of scientific misconduct, but a second panel will convene to determine whether his behavior undermined public faith in the science of climate change, the university said Wednesday.
The scientist, Dr. Michael E. Mann, has been at the center of a dispute arising from the unauthorized release of more than 1,000 e-mail messages from the servers of the University of East Anglia in England, home to one of the world's premier climate research units.
While the Pennsylvania State inquiry, conducted by three senior faculty members and administrators, absolved Dr. Mann of the most serious charges against him, it is not likely to silence the controversy over climate science. New questions about the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to which Dr. Mann was a significant contributor, have arisen since the hacked e-mail messages surfaced last November.
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CRU Hack Was A Highly Sophisticated Spy Job, Prominent British Scientist Says
Sir David King, the UK's former chief scientist, strongly believes that the theft of hundreds of emails from the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia was carried out by highly-paid professionals, perhaps a foreign intelligence agency, and was deliberately designed to destabilize the Copenhagen climate talks last December.
The highly sophisticated hacking operation involved stealing more than 1,000 emails and some 2,000 documents from a backup server at the University which would have been difficult to access remotely.
According to The Independent newspaper, King believes the hack "was carried out by a team of skilled professionals, either on behalf of a foreign government or at the behest of anti-climate change lobbyists in the United States."
"It was a sophisticated and expensive operation. In terms of the expense, there is the American lobby system which is a very likely source of finance. Right now, the American lobbyists are a very likely source of finance for this, so the finger must point to them," he said.
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In the Mountains of the Moon, A Trek to Africa's Last Glaciers
Tom Knudson visits one of Africa's most fabled places - Uganda's Rwenzori Range, also known as the Mountains of the Moon - in search of a rarity on the continent: glaciers. The rapidly melting ice cap atop Mount Kilimanjaro is Africa's most famous glacier, but the Rwenzori - rising to 16,763 feet - once harbored large glaciers on several peaks. Since an Italian expedition first mapped the area a century ago, however, Rwenzori's glaciers have shrunk by 80 percent and now cover less than half a square mile. Like the ice atop Kilimanjaro, the Rwenzori glaciers are expected to disappear within 20 years, taking with them not only an important glaciological record, but also a source of income for local people who cater to tourists seeking a glimpse of Africa's vanishing ice.
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Tibet temperature 'highest since records began' say Chinese climatologists
Average Tibet temperatures in 2009 increased 1.5C, with rises noted in both winter and summer at 29 monitoring sites
The roof of the world is heating up, according to a report today that said temperatures in Tibet soared last year to the highest level since records began.
Adding to the fierce international debate about the impact of climate change on the Himalayas, the state-run China Daily noted that the average temperature in Tibet in 2009 was 5.9C, 1.5 degrees higher than "normal".
It did not define "normal", but Chinese climatologists have previously drawn comparisons with an average over several decades.
"Average temperatures recorded at 29 observatories reached record highs," Zhang Hezhen, a Lhasa resident and specialist at the regional weather bureau told the newspaper. "It's high time for all of us to take global warming seriously and think about what we can do to save the earth."
The average rose in both summer and winter, which is unusual as most of mountain warming has previously been observed in the winter.
A monitoring station at the foot of Mt Everest also recorded a new record high temperature of 25.8 degrees, which was 0.7C warmer than the previous peak.
Amid the worst drought in decades, Lhasa experienced its first temperature above 30C since records began in 1961, the report said. Rainfall in Tibet fell to its lowest level in 39 years, affecting nearly 30,000 hectares of cropland - an eighth of Tibet's arable land.
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Lies Don Blankenship Told Me: Why Climate Activists Are Heading To The West Virginian Coal Fields
Throughout the debate, Blankenship challenged Kennedy's assertion that coal-fired power plants are a large source of industrial mercury pollution. In their 1997 Report to Congress, the EPA looked at a range of peer-reviewed studies and concluded that 32.8% of US mercury emissions came from coal-fired power plants (an updated 1999 EPA inventory increased the percentage to >40%). At the time, it was recognized that this proportion would increase, since regulation of other major sources of industrial mercury pollution had already begun (most notably on municipal waste incinerators, which have reduced their own mercury emissions by 90% in recent years).
If the EPA attributed 32.8% of mercury emissions to coal-fired power plants in 1997, a number that several environmental groups thought was conservative, how does Blankenship arrive at 1%? The number shows up in a report entitled, 'Reality Check: Straight Talk About MERCURY,' which was produced by the US Chamber of Commerce, where Blankenship is a member of the board and who are also known for their controversial stances against climate change legislation.
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Video and PPTs of "The Science of Climate Change" with Dr. Christopher Field and Dr. Michael MacCracken
The event was a big success, I thought, mainly because we had two top climate scientists who had a lot of experience with the IPCC.
Some people complained that you couldn't see the PPTs. So we have posted them here, which you can open in a separate window while you watch this:
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Videos: How we know humans are changing the climate and Why climate change is a clear and present danger
After the 90-minute panel on "The Science of Climate Change" with Dr. Christopher Field and Dr. Michael MacCracken (video and PPTs here), I interviewed them both.
First, here's Christopher Field, the director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, professor of biology and environmental earth system science at Stanford University, and the Working Group II Co-Chair for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
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The Science of Climate Change
An overwhelming quantity of direct observations and analyses published by scientists in various disciplines around the world demonstrates that human activity has warmed the planet and altered the climate. The severity of the projected impacts of continuing on our current greenhouse gas emissions path has only increased in recent years.
Please join the Center for American Progress for an educational event featuring two respected scientists who have both helped author reports produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Dr. Michael MacCracken and Dr. Christopher Field will explain the IPCC's assessment process, how we know what we know about human-caused climate change, what we have learned since the 2007 IPCC report, and why the science must inform public policy in the United States.
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Global Climate Change Indicators
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Climatic Data Center
Many lines of scientific evidence show the Earth's climate is changing. This page presents the latest information from several independent measures of observed climate change that illustrate an overwhelmingly compelling story of a planet that is undergoing global warming. It is worth noting that increasing global temperature is only one element of observed global climate change. Precipitation patterns are also changing; storms and other extremes are changing as well.
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What Is The Average Global Temperature?
I recently encountered the following chart as part of an argument that CO2 does not affect global temperatures. It instantly raised my suspicions because the temperature data is just too clean--I can't believe that global temperatures is almost always one of two values, 12 degrees or 22 degrees, and that there is no noise in the measurements.
I looked into this phenomenon a little more, and came away satisfied that the above cartoon was basically accurate--the dinosaurs lived on a hotter planet than we do, and CO2 is not the main determinant of temperatures over the course of hundreds of millions of years (solar activity has changed a lot, among other things).
Still, I could swear that I've seen data showing a strong correlation between CO2 and temperature. Turns out that CO2 and temperature do have a strong correlation on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years.
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Learning from Climate's Sedimental Journey
ScienceDaily (Feb. 4, 2010) - By analyzing sediments up to 4,000 years old, Susan Zimmerman is hoping to provide a tool to help predict future climate change.
Ancient records of what was happening with climate conditions can be used with regional climate models to tell a story of what happened in the past and to correlate it to the present and the future. Current models typically use data only for the last 100 years or less and may miss wet and dry periods from past millennia.
Specifically, Zimmerman, who works as an environmental scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (CAMS), along with colleagues Tom Guilderson and Tom Brown, are mapping patterns of past droughts in California by looking at lake sediments from the late Holocene period (0-4,000 years ago).
Through a Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program-funded project, the team will develop high-resolution, well-dated lake-sediment records of paleoclimate change in California, focusing on water variability. Predicting the timing, amount and patterns of precipitation using computer climate models that predict future patterns of change is especially critical in California, with its heavily engineered water distribution system.
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