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Climate Articles
Climate Outlook Raises Concerns for Haiti
The already challenging humanitarian relief and rebuilding efforts in earthquake-ravaged Haiti may become even more difficult, if a recent climate outlook verifies.
Significantly above average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Atlantic Ocean combined with a waning El Nino in the Pacific may make for a wetter than average rainy season in Haiti, potentially complicating already difficult humanitarian relief operations following the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 12.
The current Haiti rainfall outlook issued by Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) shows a 50 percent chance that rainfall will be above average during the period from May through July, and a 55 percent chance of above average rainfall from June through August. This compares to just a 15 percent chance that rainfall will be below average during both periods. The rainy season in Haiti lasts from April through the first half of October.
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The Anthropocene Debate: Marking Humanity's Impact
The Holocene - or "wholly recent" epoch - is what geologists call the 11,000 years or so since the end of the last ice age. As epochs go, the Holocene is barely out of diapers; its immediate predecessor, the Pleistocene, lasted more than two million years, while many earlier epochs, like the Eocene, went on for more than 20 million years. Still, the Holocene may be done for. People have become such a driving force on the planet that many geologists argue a new epoch - informally dubbed the Anthropocene - has begun.
In a recent paper titled "The New World of the Anthropocene," which appeared in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, a group of geologists listed more than a half dozen human-driven processes that are likely to leave a lasting mark on the planet - lasting here understood to mean likely to leave traces that will last tens of millions of years. These include: habitat destruction and the introduction of invasive species, which are causing widespread extinctions; ocean acidification, which is changing the chemical makeup of the seas; and urbanization, which is vastly increasing rates of sedimentation and erosion.
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So far, 2010 warmest year on record
Two separate sources of temperature data – the National Climatic Data Center and NASA – report that, through April, 2010 is the warmest year ever recorded.
The climate center (NCDC) reports that the Earth's combined land and ocean average surface temperature from January-April was 56 degrees, which is 1.24 degrees above the 20th-century average.
El Nino -- a periodic natural warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean -- is partly to blame for the unusual warmth.
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies also reports that 2010, so far, is the warmest out of 131 years. Both NCDC and NASA use data that goes back to 1880.
Last month, NASA issued a report that predicted 2010 would likely end up as the warmest year on record, due to the combintation of global warming and El Nino. The report states that "a new record global temperature, for the period with instrumental measurements, should be set within the next few months as the effects of the recent and current moderate El Nino continue."
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Africa's lake Tanganyika warming fast, life dying
(Reuters) - Africa's lake Tanganyika has heated up sharply over the past 90 years and is now warmer than at any time for at least 1,500 years, a scientific paper said on Sunday, adding that fish and wildlife are threatened.
The lake, which straddles the border between Tanzania in East Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is the world's second largest by volume and its second deepest, the paper says.
Lead scientist on the project Jessica Tierney told Reuters the sharp rise in temperature coincided with rises in human emissions of greenhouse gases seen in the past century, so the study added to evidence that emissions are warming the planet.
The 'Great Lakes' such as Tanganyika, Malawi and Kenya's lake Turkana were formed millions of years ago by the tectonic plate movements that tore Africa's Great Rift Valley.
Some 10 million people live around Tanganyika and depend upon it for drinking water and food, mostly fish.
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National Academy of Sciences: Climate Change
At a public briefing to discuss the reports, Ralph J. Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, will deliver opening remarks, and members of the panels that wrote the reports will discuss their recommendations and take questions. The briefing starts at 10 a.m. EDT Wednesday, May 19, in the Lecture Room of the National Academy of Sciences building at 2100 C Street, NW, Washington, DC. Those unable to attend the event can watch the live webcast at The National Academies website.
The National Academy is releasing reports tomorrow from three panels on "America's Climate Choices":
1. Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change. This panel will address the question: "What can be done to better understand climate change and its interactions with human and ecological systems?"
2. Panel on Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change
3. Panel on Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change
NAS panels tend to be quite conservative in their articulation of the science, but the reports are timely so it will be interesting to see just how much or how little coverage they get from the media.
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Interview With A Global Warming Skeptic: Dr. Roy Spencer
It is no secret that a majority of the peer-reviewed climate change literature lays blame for global warming on human greenhouse gas emissions.
But despite the abundance of research supporting anthropogenic global warming, there is a sizable community of qualified scientists who believe the so-called consensus view on global warming is completely wrong. I wanted to find out why, so I contacted one skeptical researcher to ask.
Dr. Roy Spencer is a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. For many years he served as a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, and his research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Geophysical Research Letters and The Journal Of Climate. Dr. Spencer was kind enough to explain to me what convinced him that the consensus view on global warming is incorrect and what he believes is responsible for the rising temperatures we have observed.
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National Academy of Sciences- "Settle Facts" on Climate Change
U.S. National Academy of Sciences labels as "settled facts" that "the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities"
New report confirms failure to act poses "significant risks"
A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems...
Some scientific conclusions or theories have been so thoroughly examined and tested, and supported by so many independent observations and results, that their likelihood of subsequently being found to be wrong is vanishingly small. Such conclusions and theories are then regarded as settled facts. This is the case for the conclusions that the Earth system is warming and that much of this warming is very likely due to human activities.
The National Academy released three reports today on "America's Climate Choices."
Today I'll focus on their review of climate science, Advancing the Science of Climate Change (news release here, Report in Brief here, Read/purchase full report here).
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At 25, the Ozone Hole Still Matters
Looking back on it, the ozone hole seems almost quaint now. Oh, it's still there, and it probably won't go away for several decades.
But remember when we were terrified of it, when we weren't sure that industrialized society could ever be weened from its terrible habit of spewing ozone-destroying chemicals into the atmosphere? Remember that gut punch when you looked at your air conditioner, or a bottle of hairspray and realized you were tearing away Earth's protective shield? We were suddenly so fragile. Or at least, our planet was.
The hole in the ozone was discovered 25 years ago. Four years later, the Montreal Protocol went into effect -- in the following year, CFCs and other chemicals that strip away the ozone layer were phased out. It took just four years to put a major dent in a global air pollution problem, one that if left unchecked would've threatened the lives and well-being of every organism on the planet.
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Life in the Greenhouse: Losing Our Cool
The complicated give-and-take between our changing climate and the plant life of the planet is taking on a new look. Just when we need it most, it appears, rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are likely to raise temperatures even further by dialing down the natural air conditioning effects of trees and other vegetation.
Researchers at Carnegie Institution for Science have completed modeling simulations showing that at heightened levels of CO2 -- twice the pre-industrial levels -- this reduced-cooling effect on vegetation will account for 16 percent of the warming around the globe, and in some places -- North America and Asia -- it will represent 25 percent of the warming.
The map, courtesy of the Carnegie Institution, shows the percentage of predicted warming due to the direct effect of carbon dioxide on plants.
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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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Sea Ice Loss Accelerates Arctic Warming
The Arctic has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the globe thanks in part to melting sea ice, a new study finds
Melting sea ice has accelerated warming in the Arctic, which in recent decades has warmed twice as quickly as the global average, according to a new study.
"The findings reinforce suggestions that strong positive ice-temperature feedbacks have emerged in the Arctic, increasing the changes of further rapid warming and sea ice loss," concludes the research published yesterday by the journal Nature.
The work by James Screen and Ian Simmonds at Australia's University of Melbourne echoes earlier studies that identified the same basic feedback loop.
The feedback loop begins with warmer Arctic springs and summers, which cause more sea ice to melt each summer.
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42,226 Daily Temperature Readings, and Counting
Every day since Jan. 1, 1896, an observer has hiked to a spot at The Mohonk Preserve, a resort and nature area some 90 miles north of New York City, to record daily temperature and other conditions there. It is the rarest of the rare: a weather station that has never missed a day of temperature recording; never been moved; never seen its surroundings change; and never been tended by anyone but a short, continuous line of family and friends, using the same methods, for 114 years. On top of that, observers have for decades recorded related phenomena such as first appearances of spring peepers, migratory birds and blooming plants. At a time when scientists are wrestling to ensure that temperature readings from thousands of divergent weather stations can be accurately compared with one another to form a large-scale picture, Mohonk offers a powerful confirmation of warming climate, as well as a compelling multigenerational yarn. The story is told in an article by researchers from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Mohonk in the current issue of the Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology.
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Study: Climate Change Will Worsen Lake Pollution
A new study warns that climate change will aggravate Lake Champlain's pollution problems.
The report for The Nature Conservancy says the lake's levels are higher because of increased precipitation. And the researchers say the wetter weather may cause more phosphorus pollution to wash off the land and harm the big lake.
VPR's John Dillon has more:
(Dillon) The study for the Adirondack and Vermont chapters of The Nature Conservancy is one of the first to forecast the impacts of climate change on a local scale.
Curt Stager of Paul Smith's College in the northern Adirondacks did much of the research. Stager specializes in aquatic ecology and climate change. He used decades of historical weather data coupled with new computer tools to look at the effects of a warmer world on Lake Champlain's 8,000-square-mile watershed.
He says one major change is that the lake often fails to freeze over in the winter as it used to.
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Greenland's coastal areas rising
Greenland's ice is melting at such a rapid pace that the land beneath it is rising up, say U.S. researchers.
The dense, two-kilometre thick icecap that covers Greenland suppresses the land, keeping its elevation in check, researchers at the University of Miami write in a new study. However, it is melting so quickly that the island's coastal areas are rising at a rate of one inch per year.
The scientists predict that by 2025, that rate could be two inches a year.
"What's surprising, and a bit worrisome, is that the ice is melting so fast that we can actually see the land uplift in response," said the study's principal investigator, Tim Dixon, professor of geophysics at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS), in a news release.
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Getting Smart About Climate Change
In recent years, the debate over the causes and potential consequences of climate change has evolved into a dynamic discussion of how government at all levels should respond. On the local level, policy makers have begun to recognize that many of the nation's current challenges-such as climate change, public health, and dependence on foreign oil-have revealed how unsustainable traditional development patterns and the policies that support them can be.
As a result, a growing number of local governments across the United States are using smart growth approaches in their efforts to address climate change in their communities. In urban and suburban areas, in small towns and rural areas, and in every region of the country-from Keene, New Hampshire, to Sarasota County, Florida, to Sacramento, California, to Tacoma, Washington-local government professionals are incorporating smart growth principles into their climate protection plans.
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Man-made climate change blamed for 'significant' rise in ocean temperature
The world's oceans are warming up and the rise is both significant and real, according to one of the most comprehensive studies into marine temperature data gathered over the past two decades.
Measuring the temperature of the oceans has not been easy, but the scientists behind the latest study believe there is now incontrovertible evidence to show that the top few hundred metres of the sea are warming – and that this temperature rise is consistent with man-made climate change.
The findings are important because ocean temperatures are seen as a more reliable and convincing signal of global warming than land-based measurements, which are prone to huge variability. This is due to the fluctuating influences of the weather and the spread of cities, which can artificially increase local terrestrial temperatures by the urban "heat island" effect.
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National Academy of Sciences Urges Swift U.S. Action to Curb Greenhouse Gases
The National Academy of Sciences wants to put the United States on a low-carbon diet.
That is the underlying message of a hotly anticipated trio of reports requested by Congress and released today. In them, the academy describes an "urgent need" for the nation to trim its greenhouse gas emissions.
The reports say available evidence "makes a compelling case" that climate change is happening now, is largely driven by human activities and threatens the well-being of people today and in future generations.
"There is good evidence that not all climate changes will be smooth and gradual and thus easy to adapt to," said Pamela Matson, dean of Stanford University's School of Earth Sciences and chairwoman of the NAS panel on climate change science.
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Winter Leaves Mongolians a Harvest of Carcasses
SOUTH HANGAY PROVINCE, Mongolia - They call it the zud, a prolonged period of heavy snows and paralyzing cold that adds to the challenges of living on a treeless expanse nearly the size of Alaska. But this year's zud followed a punishing summer drought that stunted the grass and left Munkhbat Lkhagvasuren's herds emaciated and his family in debt after borrowing money for fodder.
As the snow piled waist high this winter and temperatures plunged to 40 below zero, Mr. Lkhagvasuren crammed two dozen of the weakest goats and sheep into his yurt. The unlucky ones, more than 1,000 animals, froze to death in a great heap outside his front door. "I tried everything but could not fight against nature," he said tearfully in a recent interview, the stench of rotting flesh overpowering despite a devilish wind. "I am broken and lost."
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"Double trouble" in acidic, warming oceans - study
OSLO (Reuters) - Acidification of the oceans means "double trouble" for marine life from corals to shellfish since it is adding to stresses caused by global warming, a study showed on Wednesday.
"The oceans are more acidic than they have ever been for at least 20 million years," according to the report by the European Science Foundation. On current trends, seas could be 150 percent more acidic by 2100 than they were in pre-industrial times.
Sea water is acidifying because carbon dioxide, released to the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, is slightly corrosive in water. That makes it harder for creatures such as corals, lobsters, crabs or oysters to build their protective shells.
"Ocean acidification...is double trouble because it is happening on top of global warming," Jelle Bijma, lead author of the report and a professor at the Alred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in Germany, told Reuters.
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The Anthropocene Debate: Marking Humanity's Impact
Is human activity altering the planet on a scale comparable to major geological events of the past? Scientists are now considering whether to officially designate a new geological epoch to reflect the changes that homo sapiens have wrought: the Anthropocene.
The Holocene - or "wholly recent" epoch - is what geologists call the 11,000 years or so since the end of the last ice age. As epochs go, the Holocene is barely out of diapers; its immediate predecessor, the Pleistocene, lasted more than two million years, while many earlier epochs, like the Eocene, went on for more than 20 million years. Still, the Holocene may be done for. People have become such a driving force on the planet that many geologists argue a new epoch - informally dubbed the Anthropocene - has begun.
In a recent paper titled "The New World of the Anthropocene," which appeared in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, a group of geologists listed more than a half dozen human-driven processes that are likely to leave a lasting mark on the planet - lasting here understood to mean likely to leave traces that will last tens of millions of years. These include: habitat destruction and the introduction of invasive species, which are causing widespread extinctions; ocean acidification, which is changing the chemical makeup of the seas; and urbanization, which is vastly increasing rates of sedimentation and erosion.
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For want of a drink
Finite, vital, much wanted, little understood, water looks unmanageable. But it needn't be, argues John Grimond
WHEN the word water appears in print these days, crisis is rarely far behind. Water, it is said, is the new oil: a resource long squandered, now growing expensive and soon to be overwhelmed by insatiable demand. Aquifers are falling, glaciers vanishing, reservoirs drying up and rivers no longer flowing to the sea. Climate change threatens to make the problems worse. Everyone must use less water if famine, pestilence and mass migration are not to sweep the globe. As it is, wars are about to break out between countries squabbling over dams and rivers. If the apocalypse is still a little way off, it is only because the four horsemen and their steeds have stopped to search for something to drink.
The language is often overblown, and the remedies sometimes ill conceived, but the basic message is not wrong. Water is indeed scarce in many places, and will grow scarcer. Bringing supply and demand into equilibrium will be painful, and political disputes may increase in number and intensify in their capacity to cause trouble. To carry on with present practices would indeed be to invite disaster.
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Warmer winters chill ice fishing
Lake Champlain study at Adirondack meeting warns of global warming
But the ice surface is gradually vanishing, sending a message on climate change as it disappears, according to a report presented Thursday at the annual conference of the Adirondack Research Consortium.
Over the past three decades, the 120-mile-long lake is freezing later and more often incompletely, said Curt Stager, a study co-author and a professor of biology and geology at Paul Smith's College in Franklin County.
Stager was among more than 100 scientists, advocates and government officials who attended the 17th annual conference of the consortium, founded in 1994 to provide scientific study to help guide policy within the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park.
Lake Champlain forms the park's eastern boundary, and is fed water from a large swath of the northeast Adirondacks, including Lake George and Lake Placid.
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Engineering a cooler Earth
Researchers brainstorm radical ways to counter climate change
None of the scientists in the room so much as blinked when David Keith suggested saving the world with spy planes spraying sulfuric acid.
Keith, a physicist at the University of Calgary in Canada, was facing an audience not likely to be shocked: nearly 200 other researchers, some of whom had their own radical ideas for fighting global warming. His concept was to spray a mist of sulfuric acid high in the stratosphere to form particles called sulfate aerosols, which would act like a sprinkling of tiny sunshades for the overheating Earth.
Keith's idea may sound outrageous, but it is just one of many proposals for bumping the global thermostat down a couple of degrees by tinkering directly with the planet's heating and cooling systems. Plans to cool the Earth range from shading it to fertilizing it, from seeding clouds to building massive supersuckers that filter greenhouse gases from the air. The schemes are all part of a growing field known as geoengineering: a subject once taboo for all but the scientific fringe, but now beginning to go mainstream.
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Climate Change Hits the Oceans
When scientists say the planet is warming, they usually point to rising air temperatures as proof. That's reasonable enough, especially since the warmth of the air temperature affects us directly so we feel the change the scientists are measuring. But it's also misleading: while the lower atmosphere has been gradually warming over the past 50 years, it happens unevenly, rising sharply for a year or two or even ten, then flattening out. That stutterstep pattern is due to relatively short-lived effects on top of the general warming - an El Nino current in the Pacific making things warmer, for example, or a volcanic eruption like 1991's Mt. Pinatubo producing a cloud of dust that makes things cooler. Over time, these cancel out, but it can be tempting - though incorrect - to think a temporary flattening means global warming has stopped.
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The Oceans' Pirate Fishermen
The oceans are being emptied of fish. A forthcoming United Nations report lays out the stark numbers: only around 25% of commercial stocks are in a healthy or even reasonably healthy state. Some 30% of fish stocks are considered collapsed, and 90% of large predatory fish - like the bluefin tuna so prized by sushi aficionados - have disappeared since the middle of the 20th century. More than 60% of assessed fish stocks are in need of rebuilding, and some researchers estimate that if current trends hold, virtually all commercial fisheries will have collapsed by mid century.
"Fisheries across the world are being plundered, or exploited at unsustainable rates," said Achim Steiner, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme. (Read: Will Killing Whales Save the World's Fisheries?)
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Ocean heat content increases update
There is a new paper in Nature this week on recent trends in ocean heat content from a large group of oceanographers led by John Lyman at PMEL. Their target is the uncertainty surrounding the various efforts to create a homogenised ocean heat content data set that deals appropriately with the various instrument changes and coverage biases that have plagued previous attempts.
We have discussed this issue a number of times because of its importance in diagnosing the long term radiative imbalance of the atmosphere. Basically, if there has been more energy coming in at the top than is leaving, then it has to have been going somewhere – and that somewhere is mainly the ocean. (Other reservoirs for this energy, like the land surface or melting ice, are much smaller, and can be neglected for the most part).
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Is The 'plants Love CO2' Theory Valid?
Plants use CO2 from the atmosphere to grow. It follows that more CO2 will promote more growth. That is the gist of the 'plants love CO2' theory. But is the theory valid?
In a recent article I argued that Plants Can't Sequester Excess CO2.
In this article I examine the matter further.
If it is true that plants will adapt to rising CO2 levels by absorbing more CO2 then there are logical consequences to be expected. One way to test a theory is to show the expected consequences of the theory and compare that with observed experimental data. Let us do that with the theory that plants can, or do, or will make use of excess CO2.
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