Climate Articles

Green pioneers: Modern alchemy turns air into fuel
Petra Cameron and Matthew Jones will extract carbon dioxide and convert it PRODUCING petrol from air sounds like science fiction, but Petra Cameron and Matthew Jones, chemists at the University of Bath, have received £1.4m in taxpayer's money to show that it can be done.
The pair are leading a team of 14 scientists that could one day make "air refineries", which would pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and mix it with hydrogen to create fuel. The implications are mind-boggling. But Cameron and Jones speak about the project with the detachment of seasoned scientists.
"The basic idea is to take carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into chemicals, fuels and plastics that are today derived from hydrocarbons," said Jones. "We think we can make good headway in the next year or so."
It almost sounds easy.
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Jeremy Jackson: How we wrecked the ocean
In this bracing talk, coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson lays out the shocking state of the ocean today: overfished, overheated, polluted, with indicators that things will get much worse. Astonishing photos and stats make the case.
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Climate versus Weather: there is a difference
Are summers growing hotter than when we were kids? Are the "good old-fashioned winters" full of deep snows and bitter cold just that — a thing of the past? Such questions can lead to endless and often lively debate, not to mention pithy remarks about foggy, selective memory and nostalgic longings. Is it "just" weather? Or is it the climate — a changing, rapidly warming climate?
Recent events such as three record-breaking snowstorms that buried Washington and the mid- Atlantic (December and February), and the flooding downpours that nearly drowned Rhode Island (March), throw gasoline on the fire. Or how about trucking snow to the slopes for the Winter Olympics in Vancouver in a January that was too warm? It turns out that at least some of the problem is confusion over "weather" and "climate." They are not the same, even though they are tossed about in casual conversation as if they are interchangeable.
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Scientists investigate Ecuador's receding glaciers
Ever since the German explorer Alexander Von Humboldt visited Ecuador in 1802, foreign visitors have been drawn to its majestic volcanoes with delightful-sounding names like Cotopaxi, Chimborazo and Cayambe.
Scientists studying them are reluctant to predict how many more decades visitors have left to see the glaciers which crown the volcanoes.
There are too many uncertainties involved, the experts fear, and they are worried that many are losing their glacial cover at an alarming rate.
A study to be published this year by Ecuadorean glaciologist Bolivar Caceres suggests that the country's glaciers lost more than 40% of their surface area between 1956 and 2006.
For example, the Cotopaxi mountain with its famous volcanic cone has lost 40% of its glacial cap since 1976.
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Seasonal Allergies Getting Worse From Climate Change
16 States Make "Allergen Hotspots" List for Expanding Habitat of Trees with Highly Allergenic Pollen
Spring is in the air, and it's a mixed blessing for America's 25 million allergy sufferers. A new report says many allergy triggers are worsening as a result of climate change unless action is taken to curb global warming pollution and prepare communities for the changes to come. Tree pollen is the most common trigger for spring hay fever allergies. With spring arriving 10 to 14 days earlier than it did just 20 years ago, pollination is already starting sooner. New maps in the report show projected increases in habitat conducive to more allergenic trees. Nine states in the upper Midwest, lower Mississippi Valley, and Northeast are identified as hotspots for large increases in allergenic tree pollen if global warming pollution increases unabated. An additional seven states are at risk of moderate increases (see below).
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Grapes of Wrath
How much trouble does climate change mean for agriculture? Just ask the wine industry.
JOHN WILLIAMS has been making wine in California's Napa Valley for nearly 30 years, and he farms so ecologically that his peers call him Mr. Green. But if you ask him how climate change will affect Napa's world famous wines, he gets irritated, almost insulted. "You know, I've been getting that question a lot recently, and I feel we need to keep this issue in perspective," he told me. "When I hear about global warming in the news, I hear that it's going to melt the Arctic, inundate coastal cities, displace millions and millions of people, spread tropical diseases and bring lots of other horrible effects. Then I get calls from wine writers and all they want to know is, 'How is the character of cabernet sauvignon going to change under global warming?' I worry about global warming, but I worry about it at the humanity scale, not the vineyard scale."
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Earth Day: Are We Destroying the Oceans?
Imagine flying over a section of clear-cut rainforest, somewhere in the Amazon. Even after the bulldozers were gone and the fires had smoked out, you would know that something had happened on this land. You would see the scar that the forest once was, and know that it was wrong.
Now imagine this destruction submerged deep under the ocean — perhaps off the coast of South America, near the remote Galapagos Islands. Flying over the open water, all you would see is clear, blue sea, untouched, not a boat on the horizon. You wouldn't know that beneath the surface, the ocean was hurting — or that humans were the cause. See pictures of the effects of global warming.
But human-related injury to the oceans is rife. We have fished out an estimated 90% of the major commercial fish species that swim the high seas, including the giant and endangered blue fin tuna. The trawlers carrying out that destruction are raking the ocean floor, turning parts of the once vibrant continental shelf into so much mud. Climate change is warming the oceans, disrupting the fundamental structure of the marine food pyramid and destroying coral reefs. Meanwhile, increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are making the seas acidic, which threatens to kill off species in large numbers. "The ocean is becoming a desert," says Jeremy Jackson, the director of the Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
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US & Canada lose higher percentage of forests than Brazil
Brazil Has Highest Area Loss, But Average Percentage
There is a little bit of stats parsing going on here: Looking at the seven nations which have more than one million square kilometers of forest still remaining–that's Brazil, Canada, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Russia, and the United States–Brazil still led the pack in terms of area cleared, with about 33,000 square kilometers of both rainforest and tropical dry forest cleared per year, for a total of 165,000 square kilometers lost. That represents 3.6% of it's total forest cover at the start of the period examined.
However, though Canada and the United States lost less forest cover by area (160,000 and 120,000 square kilometers, respectively), in percentage terms Canada lost 5.2% of it's total and the US lost 6% of total forest cover.
Keep in mind, the global average for the time period was 3.5%.
The main drivers of forest loss in the US during this time period were fire and better infestation in Alaska and the western states, "large-scale logging in the southeast, along the western coast, and in the Midwest."
US Southeast Among Highest Rates of Global Deforestation
The report concludes,
The often publicized phenomenon of forest conversion within the humid tropics is observed in our results, but significant [gross forest cover loss] is evident in all biomes. For example, rates of GFCL in regions such as the southeast United States are among the highest globally.
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Smog Bloggers Untangle Air Pollution 365 Days a Year
Pollen counts are hovering at record levels in the United States. A massive plume of ash — released by a volcano with a tongue-twister of a name — is causing havoc across Europe. Parts of the Himalayas are bathed in soot levels comparable to those found over major cities. Details about all of those events — and much more — are available from the Smog Blog, a website that monitors air pollution much like meteorologists track the daily weather.
The blog, managed by faculty and graduate students from the University of Maryland – Baltimore County (UMBC) and NASA, began as a casual suggestion from a student four years ago. Today, it is a web traffic magnet, racking up 20 million hits in four years and serving readers ranging from weather forecasters to asthmatics to amateur astronomers.
We sat down with lead smog blogger Raymond Hoff, a UMBC physicist and the director of the NASA-UMBC Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology, to learn more about his group's foray into blogging.
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Ocean Temperatures Effect on Weather
Earth's oceans and atmosphere are engaged in a complex dance, continually exchanging heat and moisture. Ocean conditions directly influence the conditions of the atmosphere. To predict our weather, forecasters need the best information they can get about the state of affairs in the sea. That's where the Short-term Prediction Research and Transition, or SPoRT, project at the Marshall Space Flight Center steps in. The SPoRT team uses NASA Earth observation satellite sensors to provide ocean temperature updates to the National Weather Service four times daily. The SPoRT scientists recently enhanced their ability to detect changes in sea surface temperatures -- a variable that greatly affects weather in coastal regions -- and the public will benefit.
The SPoRT project is expanding its reach too. The previous sea surface temperature product covered the Gulf of Mexico and the southern and eastern coastlines of the U.S. The new coverage region will include all of the ocean areas surrounding North America, from the Hawaiian Islands to the middle of the Atlantic, and from Hudson's Bay and the Gulf of Alaska to the equator, including the tropical oceans where hurricanes form.
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Oceans' Saltiness Reaching Extremes
The supercharging of Earth's water cycle by global warming is already making some parts of Earth's oceans much saltier while others parts are getting fresher.
A new study by Australian scientists shows a clear link between salinity changes at the surface and changes in the deeper waters over the last six decades caused by the warming seen over the same period.
The reasoning goes like this: The saltiness, or salinity, of the oceans is controlled by evaporation and rainfall at Earth's surface, explains Paul Durack of CSIRO, the Australian government's research agency.
The more evaporation there is at a given patch of ocean, the more concentrated the salts get in the seawater, and the higher the salinity. In places where lots of rain is falling, the water gets more diluted, becoming fresher.
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Can Global Warming Give You Kidney Stones?
The 1995 Chicago heat wave was one of the most brutal weather events the United States has ever experienced. On July 13, the thermostat hit 106 degrees. Many of the city's poor and elderly residents had no air conditioning; many of those who did lost power as blackouts swept the city. Soon, thousands were suffering from dehydration, kidney failure, and respiratory distress. The hospitals were overloaded; the city couldn't cope with the flood of 911 calls. Over the following days, more than 600 people died from heat-related illnesses, with hundreds of bodies temporarily stored in refrigerated meat trucks because the city morgues were full.
The Chicago disaster was the worst heat wave in recent US memory. But if greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current path, health experts say catastrophic heat waves are likely to become far more common. Heat-related deaths in Chicago are expected to quadruple by 2050, up from the current annual average of 182, according to the US Global Change Research Program, a government study. Rising temperatures and accompanying atmospheric changes will alter disease patterns and aggravate all manners of medical conditions, from asthma to respiratory diseases to—believe it or not—kidney stones. In May 2009, the medical journal The Lancet and University College London's Institute for Global Health issued a major report concluding that climate change is the "biggest global health threat of the 21st century."
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US EPA Report Warns of Extreme Weather
Deaths from heat waves, property damage from floods and rising seas from melting glaciers are a few of the things Americans can expect as a result of climate change, says the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The report, called "Climate Change Indicators in the United States," examined the impact of global warming on 24 environmental indicators, such as ice cover and ocean temperatures.
It said there was scientific evidence that climate change was making 22 of the 24 indicators worse.
For instance, eight of the top 10 years for extreme one-day floods or heavy snowfalls in the United States have occurred since 1990, the report said.
In addition heat waves have increased steadily since the end of the 1970s. "For society, increases in temperature are likely to increase heat-related illnesses and deaths, especially in urban areas," said the report, which relied on data from a variety of U.S. and international agencies and sources.
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Calling deadly Tennessee superstorm an "unprecedented rain event" did "not capture the magnitude"
Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen called it an "unprecedented rain event," but that statement did not capture the magnitude. More than 13 inches of rain fell in Nashville over two days, nearly doubling the previous record of 6.68 inches that fell after Hurricane Frederic in 1979.
"That is an astonishing amount of rain in a 24- or 36-hour period," Bredesen said Sunday.
Don't worry, anti-science disinformers who try to shout down any talk of a link between climate change and extreme weather, the AP/WashPost story never mentions global warming. Indeed, I couldn't a single story on the superstorm that did.
Not that there were that many stories on the deluge at all given 1) the other mega-stories of the weekend and 2) the fact this didn't occur on one of the coasts where Big Media lives.
But the fact that this superstorm blew away rainfall records set from the remnants of a hurricane three decades ago bring to mind Weather Channel expert Stu Ostro's discussion of Georgia's record-smashing global-warming-type deluge. Of course, Ostro pointed out there was no way to know if global warming had "caused" the record floods, but Nevertheless, there's a straightforward connection in the way the changing climate "set the table" for what happened this September in Atlanta and elsewhere.
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Global Cooling or Warming: What to Believe?
This winter some parts of the world are freezing in record cold conditions. Is this really what global warming looks like? This winter, Britain has seen the longest cold spell in more than three decades, North America was hit by blizzards that brought frost to Florida, two dozen patients in a psychiatric hospital froze to death on the Caribbean island of Cuba. Surely, global warming has got to be a joke! That is how the argument goes and the number of comments and articles that promote it around the world is growing. The UK's Daily Mail newspaper, among the most avid proponents of ‘global cooling', even proclaimed the beginning of a "mini ice age". How weird this must sound to an Australian sweltering in Melbourne? The Southern Hemisphere is in full summer swing. Heat waves left people gasping in Australia's garden city, culminating in the hottest night in a century when temperatures never dipped below 30 degrees Celsius. The point is such short-term weather extremes don't prove anything about long-term climate change. Not that it is a hoax, nor the fact that humans are causing it. Unfortunately, most of us confuse climate and weather; and this is where emotions come in.
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Climate Tipping Points of No Return
Climate change won't be a smooth transition to a warmer world, warns the Tipping Points Report by Allianz and WWF. Twelve regions around the world will be especially affected by abrupt changes, among them the North Pole, the Amazon rainforest, and California. We tend to think of climate change like the retreat or growth of a glacier, a slow and steady process, almost imperceptible, but following a fairly predictable, perhaps even manageable path. That is a mistake, warns the Tipping Points Report published by Allianz and WWF. A global temperature rise of 2oC and one slightly in excess of 2oC can have fundamentally different effects. Or to put it differently, an avalanche is a lot worse than just heavy snowfall, and it does not happen in slow motion. Pressure builds until a threshold, or tipping point is passed, and catastrophe ensues.
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Arctic Tipping Points - #4: The Broken Bridges Of Nares
This series is a follow-on to my 3-part series Arctic Ice 2010. It began with part #1: Background And Recent History. In Arctic Tipping Points - #2: Some Feedback Mechanisms and Arctic Tipping Points - #3: More About Feedback I wrote about various ways in which ice could melt, and how the melt rate might be accelerated. In this current article I am going to show what is happening in the Nares Strait and Lincoln Sea area North of Greenland. The ice in that area is showing signs of very early melting and dispersion. The Arctic Ocean is the world's cooler. If it switches from mainly reflective ice to mainly absorptive water it will be as if the human race has switched off the cooling fan and switched on the room heater. In the height of Summer, that is not a rational thing to do.
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Arctic Tipping Points - #5: Where Warm Water Meets Ice
The Gulf Stream in the Arctic Most diagrams of the Gulf Stream show it looping back somewhere near the southern tip of Greenland. That presents a false picture of one of the major influences on Arctic climates in the North Atlantic sector of the Arctic. If the Gulf stream lost its heat to atmosphere and warmed Europe as shown in the diagram then it would have nothing left to contribute to Arctic climates. I have previously referred to Richard Seager's take on this. The Gulf stream, retaining most of its warmth, continues North, dividing as it goes. One part flows past scandinavia where it makes the port of Hammerfest ice-free all year round. Another part flows into the Fram Strait between Greenland and Iceland, where its course is affected by the shape of the sea bed, by ice and by meltwater. Other flows will be discussed in a later article. When streams or layers of ocean water interact, they do so more like a river running over loose sand than like two lots of water freely mixing. There is some exchange of water and temperature, but generally the layers slide over and under one another. If a video could be made of cold water pouring into an Arctic basin deep beneath the surface it would put Niagara Falls in the shade.
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Rivers in England and Wales face drying out because of climate change
One in three rivers is in danger of drying out due to demand for drinking water, including some of the country's most famous stretches of salmon fishing, according to conservationists. The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) fears that the growing population will mean more water from Britain's rivers is needed for washing and drinking in future. They are already running low and climate change could make the situation even worse as floods and droughts become more frequent. The charity is warning that during a hot summer with little rainfall, a third could almost completely dry out because so much water is being taken by utility companies. This would have catastrophic consequences for wildlife. The charity wants new restrictions so that water companies can no longer take too much water from areas where wildlife is endangered. Also households need to cut their water use by more than 10 per cent over the next 20 years, it says.
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Melting ice makes the Arctic a vicious circle
EVERYONE knows how much hotter it feels to wear a black T-shirt, rather than a white one, on a warm day. In the same way, the melting of sea ice in the Arctic, revealing the dark water below, has been shown by Australian scientists to be the main cause of unusually rapid warming at the top of the world. Confirmation of this "feedback loop" means the region is likely to continue to warm strongly, with greater loss of sea ice and possible melting of the ice sheets. James Screen and Ian Simmonds, of the University of Melbourne, said the rise in surface temperatures in the Arctic in the past 20 years had been more than double the global average. The reasons for this enhanced warming have been "hotly debated" by scientists, with factors such as changes in cloud cover, and ocean and atmospheric circulation suggested as playing a role, along with sea ice loss, Dr Screen said.
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Bear shot in N.W.T. was grizzly-polar hybrid
Biologists in the Northwest Territories have confirmed that an unusual-looking bear shot earlier this month near Ulukhaktok, N.W.T., was a rare hybrid grizzly-polar bear. The unusual-looking bear caught the attention of biologists after David Kuptana, an Inuvialuit hunter, shot and killed it on April 8 on the sea ice just west of the Arctic community, formerly known as Holman. The bear had thick white fur like a polar bear, but it also had a wide head, brown legs and brown paws like a grizzly. Kuptana said he shot the bear from a distance after it scavenged through five unoccupied cabins near Ulukhaktok, then tried running toward the community. Wildlife DNA analysis shows the bear was a second-generation hybrid, officials with the N.W.T. Environment and Natural Resources Department said in a news release Friday. The bear was the result of a female grizzly-polar hybrid mating with a male grizzly bear, according to the department. "This confirms the existence of at least one female polar-grizzly hybrid near Banks Island," the release said.
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Melting icebergs boost sea-level rise
When an ice cube melts in a glass, the overall water level does not change from when the ice is frozen to when it joins the liquid. Doesn't that mean that melting icebergs shouldn't contribute to sea-level rise? Not quite. Although most of the contributions to sea-level rise come from water and ice moving from land into the oceanMovie Camera, it turns out that the melting of floating ice causes a small amount of sea-level rise, too. Globally, it doesn't sound like much – just 0.049 millimetres per year – but if all the sea ice currently bobbing on the oceans were to melt, it could raise sea level by 4 to 6 centimetres. Fresh water, of which icebergs are made, is less dense than salty sea water. So while the amount of sea water displaced by the iceberg is equal to its weight, the melted fresh water will take up a slightly larger volume than the displaced salt water. This results in a small increase in the water level.
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Warmer planet to stress humans: study
A large number of healthy people won't handle the heat if temperatures continue to increase into next century, predict researchers. The study, which appears today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also suggests heat could affect more land mass than rising sea levels. The human body maintains a constant core temperature of 37oC by giving off excess heat through the skin. But, if the 'web-bulb' temperature of the air reaches 35oC, this heat dissipation stops causing the body to retain heat, resulting in heat stress. Wet-bulb temperature is measured using a thermometer wrapped in a wet, porous material. It is typically less than 'dry-bulb' temperature and is used to calculate humidity. Professor Steven Sherwood of University of New South Wales and Associate Professor Matthew Huber of Purdue University in Illinois, used climate models to predict where and when temperatures will increase to uncomfortable levels. They found a global temperature increase of 7oC above pre-industrial levels would push temperatures in some regions above 35oC for extended periods, resulting in heat stress across the whole population.
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Uganda's highest ice cap splits on Mt Margherita
The ice cap on Uganda's highest peak has split because of global warming, Uganda's Wildlife Authority (UWA) says. The glacier is located at an altitude of 5,109m (16,763ft) in the Rwenzori mountain range, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. The authorities say a crevasse has blocked access to the Margherita summit - the third-highest peak in Africa, and a popular destination with climbers. Scientists say glaciers in the Rwenzori range could disappear within 20 years.
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The End is Near... but we get to choose the ending!
The End is Near That's the conclusion of a team of researchers from NASA, NREL, Architecture 2030, and Columbia University. Architecture 2030 joined together with this remarkable team of scientists and engineers to tackle the critical question, "Can CO2-emitting coal be phased out by 2030?" We're happy to report the answer is a resounding yes! This is particularly good news because the alternative ending is rather dire. To quote from the team's paper, Options for Near-Term Phaseout of CO2 Emissions from Coal Use in the United States, which will be published in the June print edition of the American Chemical Society's journal Environmental Science & Technology: "The only practical way to preserve a planet resembling that of the Holocene [i.e. the world as we know it],…is to rapidly phase out coal emissions..." This sets up an immediate choice. We can phase out coal CO2 emissions by 2030 and keep the planet we have or we can continue with 'business as usual' and hope for the best in one of the craziest games of risk the world has ever known.
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