Climate Articles
Endangered-porpoise numbers fall to just 250
Time is running out for vanishing vaquitas.
At the northern end of the Gulf of California, where the Baja peninsula joins the rest of Mexico, the world's most endangered marine mammal is inching closer to extinction.
With adults only 1.5 metres long, the vaquita (Phocoena sinus), a rare porpoise found only in these waters, epitomizes the plight of small cetaceans, which bear the brunt of pollution, ship traffic and fishing because they live in rivers and coastal areas. In China, the Yangtze river dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer) was last seen in 2007 and is now considered extinct. The vaquita - vulnerable to gill nets used by local fisherman - could be the next to go.
On the basis of data gathered in 2008 during an acoustic survey researchers now estimate that only 250 individuals of the species remain, a drop of 56% in just over a decade. The finding was presented this week at a scientific meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Agadir, Morocco.
Read More...
Oil, the Loop Current and the Atlantic
Many have fretted that oil from the spill in the Gulf of Mexico could spread to the Florida Keys and then northward up the Atlantic. Now, the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. has come up with some computer modeling suggesting that the spill could extend along thousands of miles up the Atlantic coast as early as this summer.
The researchers at the center, a national lab sponsored by the National Science Foundation, stressed that their study was not a forecast and had not undergone scientific peer review. But they said their computer simulations offered a likely pathway for the dispersal of the oil if it entered the gulf's so-called loop current, which circulates the waters in a clockwise pattern.
They said the current could propel the oil to Florida's Atlantic coast within weeks, with the spill spreading as far north as Cape Hatteras in North Carolina by July or August before turning east.
The scientists used a dye tracer in a computer model to simulate how a liquid released at the spill site would disperse and circulate based on the best understanding of how ocean currents transport material under typical wind conditions.
Read More...
Unmasking Disinformation, from Tobacco to Climate
It's no secret that many climate skeptics have ties to the fossil fuel industry, or are ideologically opposed to the policy implications of mainstream climate science, which holds that emissions of greenhouse gases are causing global temperatures to increase. This has been explored in numerous books, most notably in Ross Gelbspan's "The Heat is On" and "Boiling Point," as well as the more recent work by James Hoggan, "Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming."
What's been missing from these accounts, however, are details regarding how the climate issue stacks up against major scientific controversies in the past, such as the debate over links between tobacco and cancer. Now a new book - "Merchants of Doubt" - by science historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway finally explores such territory, creating a devastating portrayal of organized scientific disinformation campaigns that makes clear just how gullible the press, scientific community and the public have been (and to a large extent, continue to be).
Through the use of original documents and other source material, Oreskes and Conway trace the history of organized scientific disinformation campaigns back to the 1950s. Although the book does not focus solely on climate change, it is highly relevant to anyone who follows the climate issue, from avid consumers of climate information to casual observers. The book demonstrates what many commentators, such as myself, have stated for years: that attacks on climate science and individual scientists are motivated more by a hostility to the proposed policy solutions to the problem than by clear scientific evidence showing that greenhouse gas emissions do not cause climate change after all.
Read More...
Climate change scepticism is on the rise
CLIMATE change scepticism is on the rise as people grow suspicious of scientists' forecasts and motives, Welsh researchers have found.
In a major study published today, the team of Cardiff University academics discovered that 22% of the population either did not know or did not believe the world's climate is changing.
Five years ago, that figure stood at just 9%. The findings pose a problem for environmentalists wanting to hit home the message that climate change poses a catastrophic risk to the future of the planet.
While 78% of people across the UK consider the world's climate is changing, that compares starkly to the data in 2005, when 91% of people believed in the theory.
It follows a colder-than-average winter, rows over the veracity of climate science and the high-profile controversy over leaked e-mails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, an issue that was very publicly seized upon by climate change sceptics.
Read More...
Climate already helping disease spread north: study
(Reuters) - Rising global temperatures might already be helping infectious diseases to creep north, according to a report by European scientists.
The report links warmer temperatures to the spread of dengue fever, yellow fever, malaria and even human plague in Europe.
"Fundamental influences of climate change on infectious disease can already be discerned and it is likely that new vectors and pathogens will emerge and become established in Europe within the next few years," says the report by the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC).
The independent group is formed of 26 national science academies from across the European Union.
United Nations climate experts recommend cutting carbon emissions to prevent the rise of global temperatures beyond 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
But the prospects of success look poor, with international climate negotiations making slow progress.
When temperatures rise, the insects that spread disease mature faster and produce more offspring, the report says.
Though the report is cautious about making a causal link between global warming and the spread of disease, EASAC's chairman said the risk was undeniable and called for more research.
Read More...
Himalayan climate impacts 'cannot be generalised'
Melting glaciers in the Himalayas will have varying impacts on the region's five major river basins, a study says.
Changes to the flow of meltwater as a result of global warming is likely to have a "severe" impact on food security in some areas, say scientists.
Yet people living elsewhere are likely to see food productivity increase, they added in a paper published in Science.
Overall, the food security of 4.5% of 1.4bn people in the region is threatened, the researchers conclude.
More than 1.4bn people depend on water from the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra, Yangtze and Yellow rivers.
"We show that meltwater is extremely important in the Indus basin and important for the Brahmanputra basin, but only plays a modest role for the Ganges, Yangtze and Yellow rivers," the team from the Netherlands wrote.
Read More...
Trees shift upward as climate warms, data show
The world's warming climate is forcing trees and the plant life around them into new territories where the environment is more like the areas where they normally thrive, scientists report from a new global survey.
Some forests and groups of vegetation have begun moving upward to higher elevations, or northward to higher latitudes to meet the climate change, while others in areas that are drying are shifting southward toward greater sources of moisture, the researchers say.
In California, for example, a detailed forest census along the west side of the Sierra in the Tahoe National Forest by UC Berkeley scientists found that the warming climate is shifting growth patterns uphill among many species of shrubs, oaks, firs and pines that for hundreds of years have been thriving at lower elevations.
Similar forest changes are being found on every continent by biologists working around the world, according to a report published this week in the journal Global Ecology and Biogeography.
The global report was compiled by Patrick Gonzalez, a visiting scholar at Berkeley's Center for Forestry in the College of Natural Resources, together with U.S. Forest Service researchers at Corvallis, Ore.
Gonzalez is also leading a research group that has surveyed hundreds of trees and shrubs along a 12-mile transect of the Tahoe National Forest, ranging from the foothills at 2,300 feet to the High Sierra at 6,900 feet.
Read More...
Rapid Changes for Arctic Flora and Fauna
ScienceDaily (June 9, 2010) - Unique Arctic habitats for flora and fauna, including sea ice, tundra, lakes, and peatlands have been disappearing over recent decades, and some characteristic Arctic species have shown a decline. The changes in Arctic Biodiversity have global repercussions and are further creating challenges for people living in the Arctic.
Arctic Biodiversity -- affected by multiple stressors
The Arctic Biodiversity Trends 2010 Report, produced by some of the world's leading experts of Arctic ecosystems and biodiversity, is the Arctic Council's contribution to the United Nations International Year of Biodiversity in 2010 and will be a preliminary product under the Arctic Council project 'Arctic Biodiversity Assessment' (ABA).
Read More...
As the Far North Melts, Calls Grow for Arctic Treaty
The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a warning, conservationists say, of what could happen in the Arctic as melting sea ice opens the Arctic Ocean to oil and gas drilling. Many experts argue that the time has come to adopt an Arctic Treaty similar to the one that has safeguarded Antarctica for half a century.
Few people around the world have more closely watched the unfolding Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster than those concerned about the environmental impact of oil and gas development on a swiftly thawing Arctic Ocean. A similar-sized offshore spill would likely have even more profound consequences in the Arctic, a pristine environment that is home to a wide variety of seabirds, marine mammals, and fish. And cleanup efforts would be hamstrung for parts of the year by sea ice and the lack of the well-developed spill-response infrastructure that exists along the Gulf of Mexico.
With numerous nations and oil companies preparing for the day when widespread oil exploration will be possible in the Arctic Ocean, the Gulf spill has crystallized the fears of conservationists and native people in the Far North. And the prospect of such a disaster in the Arctic has brought to the fore a question that regional experts have debated for decades: Should the Arctic be protected by the same sort of international treaty that has safeguarded Antarctica for nearly half a century?
Read More...
Chesapeake Bay Acid Affected Oysters
The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. In its waters are abundant marine life but the environment is changing. The shells of young oysters in Chesapeake Bay are not getting as thick as they've been in the past, and higher acidity levels seem to be to blame.
The bay is mostly known for its great seafood production, especially blue crabs, clams and oysters. The plentiful oyster harvests led to the development of the skipjack, the state boat of Maryland, which is the only remaining working boat type in the United States still under sail power.
Today, the body of water is less productive than it used to be, because of runoff from urban areas (mostly on the Western Shore) and farms (especially on the Eastern Shore), over harvesting, and invasion of foreign species. The bay still yields more fish and shellfish (about 45,000 tons annually) than any other estuary in the United States.
Oysters provide a natural way of filtering the bay waters of all sorts of suspended debris. At one time the local oyster population was huge but in the present era it is only at a fraction of what it once was. There has been some efforts to improve the situation and oyster production is up. However, scientists have found a potential problem.
"The regional changes in acidity revealed in our analysis are greater than what could be caused by increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide alone," says George Waldbusser, the lead author of a study by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science that looked at 23 years of water quality data.
Read More...
Rise of temperature in Singapore due to many factors: URA
SINGAPORE -- Martha Stewart, the popular American lifestyle guru who visited Singapore recently, commented on the "cruel" heat.
Singaporeans who feel their country has become hotter over the years are not wrong.
According to figures from the National Environment Agency (NEA), the average temperature last year was 27.9 deg C, or about 1 deg C higher than the average temperature over the last 50 years.
The NEA said last year that it was difficult to determine how much of the upward trend was due to global warming and how much to Singapore's rapid development over the past 30 years, but it pointed out that the rise was consistent with higher global temperature levels.
Read More...
What Lies Beneath: An Interview with Permafrost Expert Larry Hinzman
Permafrost is not your garden-variety soil. Beneath the frozen depths of the Arctic, the icy soil stores an estimated 1.5 trillion tons of carbon - including methane and other hydrocarbons - twice as much as is found in the atmosphere. These greenhouse gases are locked up in frozen ground that covers 24 percent of the exposed land in the high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere, as well as Antarctica and the Patagonia region of Argentina and Chile.
Greenhouse gases are now escaping the permafrost and entering the atmosphere at an increasing rate - up to 50 billion tons of methane per year - due to a global thawing trend. This is particularly troublesome because methane heats the atmosphere with 25 times the efficiency of carbon dioxide. The release of this stored carbon could change climate in the Arctic in ways researchers have yet to fully understand. Researchers, such as Larry Hinzman of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, are digging deeper to find out more. Hinzman is the director of the International Arctic Research Center at the University, and a leading expert on permafrost.
Read More...
Clouds and Global Warming
Clouds are vehicles for energy. They carry solar energy from the warm tropics to other parts of the globe through weather systems. But they also act as gatekeepers between Earth and space, helping regulate the global temperature by capturing and releasing infrared (thermal) energy in the atmosphere. In this respect, clouds are like greenhouse gases. As detailed in the Earth Observatory's newly updated article, Global Warming, if clouds change as a result of global warming, the change could cause additional warming.
This image, acquired by the GOES satellite on May 30, 2010, shows thermal energy in the Western Hemisphere. The areas that are warmest and therefore emitting the most thermal energy are white and pale gray. The desert lining the Pacific coast of South America is a bright white strip in the lower center of the globe. The coldest regions emitting the least amount of thermal energy are dark gray and black. These dark spots on the globe are high clouds.
Clouds emit energy in proportion to their temperature. Low, warm clouds emit more thermal energy than high, cold clouds. This image illustrates that low clouds emit about the same amount of thermal energy as Earth's surface does. This is most clearly seen over the Pacific Ocean. The water is nearly white, while the low marine clouds are pale gray, only slightly cooler. This means that a world without low clouds loses about the same amount of energy to space as a world with low clouds.
Read More...
GEOS-5: A High Resolution Global Climate Model
Science is a process. A scientist makes observations, poses a hypothesis to explain the observations, and then systematically tests the hypothesis, looking for evidence that either supports or refutes its validity. Many of us think of scientists experimenting in a lab during the hypothesis-testing phase, but for scientists studying how the Earth works, their lab is the planet. It's difficult to systematically tweak temperatures here or clouds there to see how the system works. Instead, Earth system scientists combine observations of the real world with complex computer models. The models allow scientists to test different scenarios, while the observations provide a reality check. Both are necessary in understanding how and why Earth's atmosphere, land, and oceans function together as they do.
These images compare a simulation from a detailed global climate model, top image, with observations from the GOES satellite from the same time, lower image. The model is called the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GEOS-5), and it is the highest-resolution global climate model to date. GEOS is not a weather forecasting model-it is an atmospheric model used to study the physics of the atmosphere-but comparing the results for a single day to a satellite image reveals how well the model works. The model image represents a single point in time 90 hours into a 20-day model run that started on February 2. The lower image, taken by the NASA-NOAA GOES satellite, shows how well the model predicted cloud features for February 6, 2010, the day a massive winter storm dumped several feet of snow on the Washington, DC region.
Read More...
Climate Change Increases Hazard Risk in Alpine Regions, Study Shows
ScienceDaily (June 15, 2010) - Climate change could cause increasing and unpredictable hazard risks in mountainous regions, according to a new study from the University of Exeter and Austrian researchers. The study analyzes the effects of two extreme weather events -- the 2003 heatwave and the 2005 flood -- on the Eastern European Alps. It demonstrates what impact events like these, predicted to become more frequent under a changing climate, could have on alpine regions and what implications these changes might have for local communities.
The mean summer temperatures during the 2003 heat wave in a large area of the European Alps exceeded the 1961-1990 mean by 3-5oC. This triggered a record Alpine glacier loss that was three times above the 1980-2000 average. Furthermore, melting permafrost caused increased rock-fall activity.
The severe floods that occurred as a result of heavy rainfall in August 2005 were the most damaging for 100 years and led to high volumes of water and sediment being deposited downstream, causing an estimated €555 million worth of damage in Austria to buildings, railways, roads and industrial areas. In Switzerland, this has been estimated to have caused one quarter of all damage by floods, debris flows, landslides and rock falls recorded since 1972.
Read More...
More Cold and Snowy Winters to Come in Europe, Eastern Asia and Eastern North America
ScienceDaily (June 15, 2010) - A warmer Arctic climate is influencing the air pressure at the North Pole and shifting wind patterns on our planet. We can expect more cold and snowy winters in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America.
"Cold and snowy winters will be the rule, rather than the exception," says Dr James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in the United States. Dr Overland is at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference (IPY-OSC) to chair a session on polar climate feedbacks, amplification and teleconnections, including impacts on mid-latitudes.
Loss of sea ice causes major climate change
Continued rapid loss of sea ice will be an important driver of major change in the world's climate system in the years to come.
Read More...
May 2010 was warmest on record: U.S. government data
(Reuters) - Last month was the warmest May on record, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said on Tuesday.
It was also the 303rd consecutive month that was hotter than the 20th century global average for that month, according to Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.
"Since February 1985, every single month has been warmer than its 20th century average," Arndt said by telephone from Asheville, North Carolina.
The long-term warming trend, along with reports that Arctic sea ice covered less of the ocean and snow covered less ground around the world in May, is consistent with the science of climate change, Arndt said.
Many climate scientists believe that Earth's surface is warming, due in part to the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide.
In addition to a record-hot May, high temperature surface records -- for warmth on the planet's land and oceans -- were set for the period of March through May and for January through May, the data center said in a statement.
Read More...
As the Sun Awakens, NASA Keeps a Wary Eye on Space Weather
ScienceDaily (June 16, 2010) - Earth and space are about to come into contact in a way that's new to human history. To make preparations, authorities in Washington, DC recently held a meeting: The Space Weather Enterprise Forum at the National Press Club on June 8th.
Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division, explains what it's all about: "The Sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity. At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms. The intersection of these two issues is what we're getting together to discuss."
The National Academy of Sciences framed the problem two years ago in a landmark report entitled "Severe Space Weather Events-Societal and Economic Impacts." It noted how people of the 21st-century rely on high-tech systems for the basics of daily life. Smart power grids, GPS navigation, air travel, financial services and emergency radio communications can all be knocked out by intense solar activity. A century-class solar storm, the Academy warned, could cause twenty times more economic damage than Hurricane Katrina.
Read More...
Cutting greenhouse gases will be no quick fix for our weather, scientists say
Global warming will continue to bring havoc to the world's weather systems for decades after reductions are made in greenhouse gas emissions, a new study shows.
Scientists at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter say climate change could bring greater disruption to the planet's water cycle than previously thought.
The research suggests that increased floods and droughts could continue long after future efforts to stabilise temperature may succeed.
Vicky Pope, head of climate change advice at the Hadley Centre, said: "We can't say that if we manage to bring down our carbon dioxide emissions then we don't need to worry any more. There will still be changes beyond that point."
A team led by Peili Wu used a computer model to analyse how the Earth's water cycle could react to changes in future amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
It found that once carbon dioxide levels rise to a high level, even sharp reductions fail to prevent longlasting impacts on snow and rainfall.
Read More...
Carbon Dioxide Is the Missing Link to Past Global Climate Changes
ScienceDaily (June 17, 2010) - Increasingly, the Earth's climate appears to be more connected than anyone would have imagined. El Nino, the weather pattern that originates in a patch of the equatorial Pacific, can spawn heat waves and droughts as far away as Africa.
Now, a research team led by Brown University has established that the climate in the tropics over at least the last 2.7 million years changed in lockstep with the cyclical spread and retreat of ice sheets thousands of miles away in the Northern Hemisphere. The findings appear to cement the link between the recent Ice Ages and temperature changes in tropical oceans. Based on that new link, the scientists conclude that carbon dioxide has played the lead role in dictating global climate patterns, beginning with the Ice Ages and continuing today.
"We think we have the simplest explanation for the link between the Ice Ages and the tropics over that time and the apparent role of carbon dioxide in the intensification of Ice Ages and corresponding changes in the tropics," said Timothy Herbert, professor of geological sciences at Brown and the lead author of the paper in Science.
Read More...
Ancient climate change 'link' to CO2
A "global pattern" of change in the Earth's climate began 2.7 million years ago, say scientists.
Researchers found that, at this point, temperature patterns in the tropics slipped into step with patterns of Ice Ages in the Northern Hemisphere.
They report in the journal Science that atmospheric CO2 could be the "missing link" to explain this global pattern.
The findings, they say, reveal a "feedback process" that could have been magnified by greenhouse gases.
This loop of feedback could have intensified both the Ice Ages in the Northern Hemisphere, and temperature fluctuations in the tropics.
Professor Timothy Herbert from Brown University in Rhode Island, US, led the research.
He and his colleagues, in the US and China, analysed mud cores from the seabed in the four tropical ocean basins - the Arabian Sea, the South China Sea, the eastern Pacific and the equatorial Atlantic Ocean.
These mud cores are laid down over millions of years - as sediments of dead plant and animal material sink to the ocean floor.
Read More...
Carbon emissions having harmful, lasting impact on oceans: Reports
The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a disaster, but it may pale compared to what scientists say is brewing in the world's oceans due to everyday consumption of fossil fuels.
The billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide sent wafting into the atmosphere each year through the burning of oil, gas and coal are profoundly affecting the oceans, says a series of reports published Friday in the journal Science.
One says there is mounting evidence that "rapidly rising greenhouse gas concentrations are driving ocean systems toward conditions not seen for millions of years, with an associated risk of fundamental and irreversible ecological transformation."
Another says that the effects are already rippling through the food web in Antarctica.
And a third says humans, and their ever-increasing carbon emissions, are acidifying the ocean in a "grand planetary experiment" that could have devastating impacts.
Marine scientists Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, at the University of Queensland in Australia, and John Bruno, at University of North Carolina, describe how the oceans act as a "heat sink" and are slowly heating up along with the atmosphere as greenhouse gas emissions climb.
The warming, they say, is "likely to have profound influences on the strength, direction and behaviour" of major ocean currents and far-reaching impacts on sea life.
Read More...
Ocean Acidification Unprecedented, Unsettling
By spewing carbon dioxide from smokestacks and tailpipes at a gigatons-per-year pace, humans are lowering the pH of the world ocean. The geochemical disruption will reverberate for tens of thousands of years. It's less clear how marine life will fare. With nothing in the geologic record as severe as the ongoing plunge in ocean pH, paleontologists can't say for sure how organisms that build carbonate shells or skeletons will react. In the laboratory, corals always do poorly. The lab responses of other organisms are mixed. In the field, researchers see signs that coral growth does slow, oyster larvae suffer, and plankton with calcareous skeletons lose mass.
Read More...
Experts Warn Climate Change Is Beginning to Disrupt Agriculture
With the added environmental stresses of climate change, prices of staple crops could double
Every nation -- developed and otherwise -- is dependent upon a stable agricultural sector, and climate change threatens that stability, a panel of experts said yesterday.
World population is expected to swell by 50 percent by 2050. This alone is a challenge for the world's supply of vital grains, said Gerald Nelson, an agricultural economist and fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute. But then you have to tack on the impacts of climate change.
The price of major grains like rice and wheat were already projected to also increase by roughly 50 percent by 2050, Nelson said. With the added environmental stresses expected of climate change, prices could instead double, according to IFPRI.
Global agriculture, he said, could adapt to climate change for about $7 billion annually, with most of the resources being devoted to research, new irrigation techniques and training small farmers for rises in sea level.
Agricultural management directly affects how the three major greenhouse gases -- carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide -- are cycled through the environment. According to United Nations Environment Programme, "Agriculture, deforestation and other forms of land use account for nearly one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions."
Read More...
Warming Up to Climate Change
Schools Work With Companies to Develop Strategies on the Environment and Sustainability
Business school faculty and students are applying their management skills to one of the world's knottiest problems: climate change.
Several years after global warming first became a big topic in B-school classrooms and cafeterias, schools are now digging into the issue in a far more detailed way. There are new faculty posts dedicated to environmental concerns, case studies highlighting companies that have succeeded in shrinking their carbon footprints and a slew of student consulting projects on cutting emissions. Norwich Business School in England recently launched what it says is the world's first M.B.A. in strategic carbon management.
"This has gone from what 10 years ago, when I started, was kind of a novelty to something that is a core part of our business, because it's a core part of business," says Gail Whiteman, who holds a newly created chair in sustainability and climate change at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, in the Netherlands. "As opposed to a few years ago, the legitimacy within the business school has climbed significantly."
Read More...