Climate Articles
As Nixon Aide, Moynihan Warned of Climate Change in '69
(AP) – President Richard Nixon's inner circle worried about the effects of global warming more than 30 years ago, according to documents released by his library yesterday. Future Democratic star Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1969 urged a global system of monitoring carbon dioxide, and worried that CO2 would rise 25% by 2000. "This could increase the average temperature near the earth's surface by 7 degrees Fahrenheit," he wrote. "This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter."
Moynihan received a response in a January 26, 1970 memo from Hubert Heffner, deputy director of the administration's Office of Science and Technology. Heffner acknowledged that atmospheric temperature rise was an issue that should be looked at. "The more I get into this, the more I find two classes of doomsayers," he wrote. "One group says we will turn into snow-tripping mastodons because of the atmospheric dust and the other says we will have to grow gills to survive the increased ocean level due to the temperature rise." Nixon established the EPA and approved the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970.
Read More...
Rising waters pose threat to Va. coast
POQUOSON -- Hurricane Isabel flooded Sandy Firman's house in 2003, and now routine storms drive water into the roads and marshes close by.
Several homes in this low-lying city, including Firman's, have been elevated about 10 feet to keep them above the ever-closer waters.
"We used to not have it like that," said Firman, who has lived in Poquoson all of his 46 years. "But something has changed around here."
One big thing that has changed is the sea level, which is rising -- an increase blamed on global warming.
Scientists say global warming could someday threaten Virginians' health, harm the Chesapeake Bay and imperil species from blue crabs to tiny birds.
"It's not an exaggeration to say it is the issue of our day," said J. Emmett Duffy, a marine ecologist at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Read More...
Sweet Hall marsh (VA) offers evidence on water levels
WEST POINT In Sweet Hall marsh, the ghosts tell tales.
Dead, bone-white trunks known as ghost trees say the marsh along the Pamunkey River is changing.
Scientists suspect the trees were exposed to too much water, and possibly salt water, because the sea level -- and hence, the river level -- is rising.
The rising sea is a well-documented effect of global warming. When water warms, it expands. The sea level is rising faster in southeastern Virginia than any other place on the East Coast, in part because the land is also sinking.
In the marsh, there are other signs the rising water is causing changes. For example, duck hunters complained a decade ago that giant cordgrass, the tall plants they used to hide in during winter, was disappearing.
"Instead of being in the middle of a forest of standing vegetation, you're in the middle of a mud flat or open water," said Carl Hershner, a wetlands expert with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Read More...
Satellites spot troubling bay trends
Data reveals urbanization, sea level rise but improvement in overall health
WASHINGTON -- Nearly 500 miles above Earth, NASA satellites are revealing land and water changes in the Chesapeake Bay region that are harming the area's landscape and wildlife.
NASA scientists have used satellite data to create a map that illustrates how land is used around the Chesapeake Bay -- specifically, how much land has been consumed by the concrete and asphalt of cities and how much remains wild. NASA's archive of satellite images is more than 40 years old, allowing scientists to study the way land use has changed over time.
It's easy to see that the Chesapeake Bay region has become more urban in the past four decades. Less visible are the problematic consequences the region's development has had on the natural environment, scientists say. The construction of more and more buildings, streets and parking lots in the past 40 years means that less rainwater seeps into the land. Instead, it flows rapidly into sewers, which empty into rivers and, ultimately, the Chesapeake Bay. This sudden influx of water increases the risk of erosion and floods.
"The place where we are is connected to the Chesapeake watershed, is connected to the country, is connected to the globe," said Eric Brown de Colstoun, an Earth science education coordinator at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who spoke on the issue Tuesday at the Library of Congress. "A lot of people don't realize that when you flush your toilet, well, it ends up in the Chesapeake Bay."
Read More...
Rise in tornadoes no certainty as Earth warms, scientists say
Twisters called nature's hardest weather event to predict
You may have heard that thunderstorms, lightning, sleet, hail, damaging winds, and hurricanes will occur more frequently later this century if the Earth's climate continues to warm as rapidly as America's top climate scientists believe it is now.
But tornadoes? Not so fast.
"This science is in its infancy," explained Tony Del Genio, a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.
Mr. Del Genio's words of caution may be noteworthy to those who follow climate research.
NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies is widely considered one of the U.S. government's most authoritative research facilities on the subject. Its director, James Hansen, was the first to testify before Congress about climate change in the 1980s and became a higher-profile figure after the New York Times published accounts claiming his work had been censored by the Bush administration.
Read More...
Journalists should not forget climate change, say experts
A British study shows journalists are overlooking the issue of global warming in favor of more sensational stories, an issue that will be discussed at this year's Deutsche Welle Global Media Forum.
It's been a difficult few months for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, one of the foremost bodies charged with evaluating the risk climate change.
Since the unearthing of an embarrassing error in the most recent IPCC report - the statement that the Himalayan glaciers might be gone by 2035 - the hunt for further IPCC blunders has been on, drawing in scientists, bloggers and journalists from all over the world.
Yet some experts argue that, the occasional scandal aside, climate change is a subject that receives relatively little media attention. Three years ago, Dortmund University professor of journalism Holger Wormer described climate change as a "shooting star" topic for the media. At the time, he and others in the scientific and journalistic communities had big ideas about the role the media could play in the struggle against global warming.
Read More...
Global warming book removed from schools
But Millard says it will use it again as soon as a factual error is corrected.
The Millard Public Schools will stop using a children's book about global warming, but only until the district can obtain copies with a factual error corrected.
A review committee, convened after parents complained, concluded that author Laurie David's book, "The Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming," contained "a major factual error" in a graphic about rising temperatures and carbon-dioxide levels.
Mark Feldhausen, associate superintendent for educational services, this week sent a letter to parents who complained, including the wife of U.S. Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., outlining the committee's findings.
"Although the authors have pledged to correct the graph in subsequent editions, the committee recommends that this correction be made to all MPS-owned texts before using it with students in the future," Feldhausen wrote.
Corrected versions will continue to be used in Millard's sixth-grade language arts curriculum, he wrote.
However, the district will cease to use a companion video about global warming, narrated by actor Leonardo DiCaprio, he wrote.
The committee found the video "without merit" and recommended that it not be used.
Robyn Terry, the congressman's wife, had described the video as a "political commercial."
Read More...
Ocean Changes May Have Dire Impact on People
ScienceDaily (June 19, 2010) - The first comprehensive synthesis on the effects of climate change on the world's oceans has found they are now changing at a rate not seen for several million years.
In an article published June 18 in Science magazine, scientists reveal the growing atmospheric concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases are driving irreversible and dramatic changes to the way the ocean functions, with potentially dire impacts for hundreds of millions of people across the planet.
The findings of the report emerged from a synthesis of recent research on the world's oceans, carried out by two of the world's leading marine scientists, one from The University of Queensland in Australia, and one from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the USA.
Read More...
Could Grasslands Help Fight Global Warming? Scientists Dig Deep for Carbon Solution
ScienceDaily (June 21, 2010) - Lake District grasslands could be playing an important role in the fight against global warming.
Grasslands cover a vast area of the UK, forming the backbone of the livestock industry. However, they also play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle, storing vast amounts of carbon beneath them in their soils.
New research is being carried out by scientists from the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, to work out how much carbon is being stored in UK grasslands and find out if it could potentially store even more. This would contribute to climate change mitigation, because carbon locked in soils isn't being released into the atmosphere where it contributes to global warming.
Read More...
Greenhouse Gase Increases Linked to Changes in Ocean Currents
ScienceDaily (June 21, 2010) - By examining 800,000-year-old polar ice, scientists increasingly are learning how the climate has changed since the last ice melt and that carbon dioxide has become more abundant in Earth's atmosphere.
For two decades, French scientist Jérôme Chappellaz has been examining ice cores collected from deep inside the polar ice caps of Greenland and Antarctica. His studies on the interconnecting air spaces of old snow -- or firn air -- in the ice cores show that the roughly 40 percent increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since the Earth's last deglaciation can be attributed in large part to changes in the circulation and biological activity of the oceanic waters surrounding Antarctica.
Chappellaz presented his findings in Knoxville, Tenn. during the Goldschmidt Conference, an international gathering of several thousand geochemists who converge annually to share their research on Earth, energy and the environment. The event, hosted by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is taking place June 13-18.
Read More...
Polar Oceans Key to Temperature in the Tropics
ScienceDaily (June 21, 2010) - Scientists have found that the ocean temperature at Earth's polar extremes has a significant impact thousands of miles away at the equator.
Newcastle University's Dr Erin McClymont is part of an international team of researchers who have published research in Science June 18, 2010 demonstrating a close link between the changes in the subpolar climate and the development of the modern tropical Pacific climate around two million years ago.
The team believes this solves another piece of the puzzle concerning oceanic behaviour and its influence on climate.
This research, led by the Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals in Barcelona, studied the Northern Pacific and Southern Atlantic sea-surface temperatures from the Pliocene Era (3.65 million years ago) to the present day. Data obtained during the reconstruction indicates that the regions close to the poles of both oceans have played a fundamental role in the way the tropical climate has evolved.
The cooling and expansion of polar waters between 1.8 and 1.2 million years ago increased the temperature difference between the equator and the poles. This intensified atmospheric circulation and helped to develop the modern day 'cold tongue' in the east Pacific.
Read More...
New Research Sheds Light on Antarctica's Melting Pine Island Glacier
ScienceDaily (June 21, 2010) - New results from an investigation into Antarctica's potential contribution to sea level rise are reported by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) and the National Oceanography Centre in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Thinning ice in West Antarctica is currently contributing nearly 10 per cent of global sea level rise and scientists have identified Pine Island Glacier (PIG) as a major source. As part of a series of investigations to better understand the impact of melting ice on sea level an exciting new discovery has been made. Using Autosub (an autonomous underwater vehicle) to dive deep and travel far beneath the pine Island Glacier's floating ice shelf, scientists captured ocean and sea-floor measurements, which revealed a 300m high ridge (mountain) on the sea floor.
Read More...
New England's stately oaks and hemlocks give way as the region warms
'You just watched the trees and realized they weren't coming back.'
WEST TISBURY, Mass. – Spring did not come for the oaks of Martha's Vineyard.
For three years, the residents here watched a stunning outbreak of caterpillars that stripped an oak tree bare in a week, then wafted on gossamer threads to another.
The islanders fought through clouds of drifting filaments with brooms, brushed off the showers of excrement after they walked under trees, and tiptoed through a maze of half-inch worms on the sidewalks. The local newspapers ran pictures of building sides covered with caterpillars, looking like horror-movie outtakes.
"They were gross," recalled Barbara Hoffman, 53, with a visible shudder. "You could hear them munching. I said spray 'em."
Most trees recovered in the first year; fewer survived the second. But as the bugs struck again in late 2007, an accomplice drought hit the weakened trees, leaving the island now with swaths of stark, barren and lifeless branches.
"You just watched the trees and realized they weren't coming back," said Kathy Tackabury, 58, who lost seven oaks on her property.
Read More...
Climate change sceptic scientists 'less prominent and authoritative'
Scientists who believe in man-made climate change have better scientific credentials than global warming sceptics, according to a study.
The research indicates that scientists who blame human activity for global warming have published more relevant and influential papers than those who question man's impact.
The analysis of climate scientists claims the "vast majority" of climate change researchers agree on the issue, and that those who oppose the consensus are "not actually climate researchers or not very productive researchers".
But the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has been dismissed as misleading by critics.
Opponents said that the paper divided scientists into artificial groups and did not consider a balanced spectrum of scientists.
They also pointed out that climate sceptics often struggled to get their papers accepted by journals, as they must first be reviewed and approved by climate change "believers".
Judith Curry, a climate expert at the Georgia Institute of Technology – who was not part of the analysis – called the study "completely unconvincing" while John Christy of University of Alabama claimed he and other climate sceptics included in the survey were simply "being blacklisted" by colleagues.
The study examined 1,372 scientists who had taken part in reviews of climate science or had put their name to statements regarding the key findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Read More...
How Destructive will the 2010 Hurricane Season Be? 5 Critical Factors to Watch
Record-high ocean temperatures are influencing the forecasts for a dangerous 2010 hurricane season. See the five factors affecting how much damage the tropical storms will cause this year.
Forecasters are unanimous in their assessment of the 2010 hurricane season: It is likely to be a dangerously active storm season, on par with 2005, the worst hurricane season on record. Hurricane Katrina, the costliest and one of the deadliest hurricanes on record, came in 2005, and another hurricane passing through the Gulf of Mexico right now would exacerbate the damage from the BP oil spill.
While 2009 was a breather, you need only look back to the 2008 hurricane season for another exceedingly deadly spate, when 16 named tropical storms, stretching from May 30 to Nov. 5, upended life on the coast, particularly in Haiti, where at least 800 people died from successive strong hurricanes. After the Port-au-Prince earthquake, another bad hurricane season is the last thing the poor residents and relief workers need. Eight of the last 15 hurricane seasons rank in the top ten for the most named storms with 2005 in first place with 28 named storms.
What's in store for 2010?
Read More...
New study reaffirms broad scientific understanding of climate change,
questions media's reliance on tiny group of less-credibile scientists for "balance"
Here, we use an extensive dataset of 1,372 climate researchers and their publication and citation data to show that 1) 97-98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and 2) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.
That is the conclusion of an important first-of-its-kind study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, "Expert credibility in climate change."
The findings will come as no surprise whatsoever to 97% to 98% of scientists or regular CP readers - but it could theoretically open the eyes of those in the status quo media who keep suggesting the 'experts' they cite that keep pushing anti-science disinformation are somehow close to being equal in number, credibility, or expertise to the broad community of climate scientists, thereby implying serious disagreements among mainstream scientists.
Read More...
Climate already helping disease spread north: study
BRUSSELS (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.
Read More...
Comprehensive Look at Human Impacts on Ocean Chemistry
ScienceDaily (June 21, 2010) - Numerous studies are documenting the growing effects of climate change, carbon dioxide, pollution and other human-related phenomena on the world's oceans. But most of those have studied single, isolated sources of pollution and other influences.
Now, a marine geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has published a report in the latest issue of the journal Science that evaluates the total impact of such factors on the ocean and considers what the future might hold.
"What we do on land -- agriculture, fossil fuel combustion and pollution -- can have a profound impact on the chemistry of the sea," says Scott C. Doney, a senior scientist at WHOI and author of the Science report. "A whole range of these factors have been studied in isolation but have not been put in a single venue."
Doney's paper represents a meticulous compilation of the work of others as well as his own research in this area, which includes ocean acidification, climate change, and the global carbon cycle.
Read More...
Himalayan ice is stable, but Asia faces drought
The Himalayan glaciers that feed Asia's five largest rivers are in no danger of disappearing by 2035, as claimed in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent report. In fact, only the glaciers that melt into the Ganges are shrinking, according to the most detailed analysis yet of how climate change will affect key Asian glaciers.
The aim of the study was to determine how rising carbon dioxide levels will affect Asia's "water towers" – the glaciers whose meltwater supplies drinking and irrigation water to 1.4 billion people. And although the glaciers are safe for now, the study warns of drought to come: the five rivers will be able to water crops for almost 60 million fewer mouths by 2050.
Walter Immerzeel of Utrecht University in the Netherlands used data from a pair of satellites known as GRACE to estimate changes in the thickness of the glaciers that supply the Indus, Brahmaputra, Ganges, Yangtze and Yellow rivers between 2001 and 2007.
He found that only the 100-metre-thick glaciers that feed the Ganges are thinning, at a rate of 22 centimetres per year.
The glaciers that sit at the head of the Indus grew at a rate of 19 centimetres per year on average, while those that melt into the other rivers in the study were unchanged. "It is unlikely that the Himalayan glaciers will have disappeared completely by 2035, as the IPCC's latest report claimed," says Immerzeel. "The real date is further off."
Read More...
Alps to Become More Dangerous in Warming World
Heat waves, floods, avalanches and other deadly natural disasters could become more common in mountainous regions thanks to climate change, a new study suggests, making the famous peaks more dangerous for mountaineers and skiers.
Extreme weather events are predicted to become more frequent on a warmer Earth. In the Eastern European Alps, two such events - the 2003 heat wave and the 2005 flood - gave researchers a preview of how similar events could pose a threat to alpine regions and local communities in and around the mountains.
Global climate models do not usually specify how climate change will play out in a given town or city. But for villages in the mountains' shadows or ski resorts nestled in the snowy slopes, natural features such as glaciers - if they become unstable - pose a hazard to the people living near them.
Read More...
Arctic Sea Ice at Lowest Point in Thousands of Years
The shrinking amount of sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean today is the smallest it has been in the last few thousand years, a new study suggests.
The sea ice that normally covers huge swaths of the Arctic Ocean has been retreating and thinning over the last few decades, due to the amplified warming at the North Pole, which is a consequence of the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere.
The most dramatic sea-ice melt in recent years came in 2007, when sea-ice extent (or the area of ocean covered by the ice) dropped to its lowest level since 1979, when satellite measurements began. This event also opened up the fabled Northwest Passage.
Climate fossils
While satellite images are useful in looking at the changes in sea-ice extent over the last few years to decades, scientists also want to know how conditions today compare with those further back in the past. To get this information, scientists can look at sediment cores - long cylinders of the Earth's crust - drilled from the Arctic Ocean floor.
"Sediment cores are essentially a record of sediments that settled at the sea floor, layer by layer, and they record the conditions of the ocean system during the time that they settled," explained researcher Leonid Polyak of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University in Columbus, who led a study looking at these sediment records, which are like fossils of the ocean's climate.
Read More...
Urban Areas Getting Hotter Faster
A combination of climate change and urban growth will push temperatures higher in cities worldwide.
On a sizzling summer day, the center of a city's downtown can make you feel like a turkey baking in an oven -- and it's only going to get worse.
Not only do cities retain more heat than rural areas do, found a new study, hot cities will grow even hotter as the climate warms and cities grow. By mid-century, nighttime temperatures in cities could rise by more than 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
At stake are the comfort and health of people who live in cities around the world, especially those who don't have access to air-conditioning.
"If you've been exposed to hot temperatures during the day and you expect relief over night, that becomes increasingly difficult as temperatures at night get warmer," said Richard Betts, a climate scientist at the United Kingdom's Met Office. "We have to prepare to live in a warmer world."
In a concrete jungle, roads and buildings absorb sunlight and trap heat, which also flows as waste out of cars, air-conditioning units and even just the breathing of millions of people crammed into a busy grid of streets. As a result, cities create their own, warmer microclimates -- a phenomenon called the urban heat island effect.
Scientists have known about urban heat islands for many decades. Still, most climate models are based only on conditions in rural areas, where soil, trees, lawns and fields don't absorb and reflect sunlight the same way that asphalt crosswalks and concrete skyscrapers do.
Read More...
Absence of sunspots make scientists wonder if they're seeing a calm before a storm of energy
Sunspots come and go, but recently they have mostly gone. For centuries, astronomers have recorded when these dark blemishes on the solar surface emerge, only to fade away after a few days, weeks or months. Thanks to their efforts, we know that sunspot numbers ebb and flow in cycles lasting about 11 years.
But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged in nearly 100 years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. "This is solar behavior we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
The sun is under scrutiny as never before, thanks to an armada of space telescopes. The results they beam back are portraying our nearest star, and its influence on Earth, in a new light. Sunspots and other clues indicate that the sun's magnetic activity is diminishing and that the sun may even be shrinking. Together, the results hint that something profound is happening inside the sun. The big question is: What?
Read More...
Discovery of How Coral Reefs Adapt to Global Warming Could Aid Reef Restoration
ScienceDaily (June 24, 2010) - Discoveries about tropical coral reefs are expected to be invaluable in efforts to restore the corals, which are succumbing to bleaching and other diseases at an unprecedented rate as ocean temperatures rise worldwide. The research gives new insights into how the scientists can help to preserve or restore the coral reefs that protect coastlines, foster tourism, and nurture many species of fish. The research, which will be published in the journal PLoS One, was accomplished by an international team whose leaders include Iliana Baums, an assistant professor of biology at Penn State University.
The team focused on one of the most abundant reef-building species in the Caribbean, Montastraea faveolata, known as the mountainous star coral. Though widespread, this species is listed as endangered on the Red List of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature because its numbers have declined significantly -- in recent years, up to 90 percent of the population has been lost in some areas.
Read More...
Single Asian carp found 6 miles from Lake Michigan
CHICAGO – An Asian carp was found for the first time beyond electric barriers meant to keep the voracious invasive species out of the Great Lakes, state and federal officials said Wednesday, prompting renewed calls for swift action to block their advance.
Commercial fishermen landed the 3-foot-long, 20-pound bighead carp in Lake Calumet on Chicago's South Side, about six miles from Lake Michigan, according to the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee.
Officials said they need more information to determine the significance of the find.
"The threat to the Great Lakes depends on how many have access to the lakes, which depends on how many are in the Chicago waterway right now," said John Rogner, assistant director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Read More...
Higher Wetland Methane Emissions Caused by Climate Warming 40,000 Years Ago
ScienceDaily (June 24, 2010) - 40,000 years ago rapid warming led to an increase in methane concentration. The culprit for this increase has now been identified. Mainly wetlands in high northern latitudes caused the methane increase, as discovered by a research team from the University of Bern and the German Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association. This result refutes an alternative theory discussed amongst experts, the so-called "clathrate gun hypothesis." The latter assumed that large amounts of methane were released from the ocean sediment and led to higher atmospheric methane concentrations and thus to rapid climate warming.
Read More...
Northern Wisconsin region suffering long dry spell
LAKE TOMAHAWK, Wis. - The drought that has gripped northern Wisconsin for eight years is drying up lakes, distressing wildlife and forests and changing Pat Wingo's business.
At Captain Hooks, the bait, tackle and gift shop he owns in this town of 1,200, Wingo, 45, stocks less live bait and more plastic lures because there are fewer walleye and more bass in some lakes. Walleye are finicky about where they spawn, and changes in some lakes have reduced their population, he says.
His work as a fishing guide is altered, too. Some of the usual hot spots are gone. He takes anglers in pursuit of musky and perch to different lakes than he once did. "We've seen some big changes," Wingo says. The lakes and their fish populations "probably have changed forever."
Parts of this state's North Woods and the adjacent Upper Peninsula of Michigan are the only areas in the continental USA experiencing "extreme" drought. It's the region's most severe drought since the 1930s and its longest dry period since the 1950s, says Roy Eckberg, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Green Bay, Wis.
Read More...
Arctic Tipping Points - #7: Can The Arctic Recover?
In Arctic Tipping Points - #6: Are We There Yet? I attempted to show that there are multiple feedback mechanisms which are capable of causing a composite positive feedback effect in which Arctic sea ice once reduced beyond a limit will disperse very rapidly and will fail to recover.
Since I published that Article - April 29 2010 - I have investigated the matter further. Current satellite data and historical reports combine to suggest that this year's Arctic sea ice loss will be the greatest ever seen in human history.
Throughout human history the North West and North East Passages have been traps for ships and killers of men. Prior to 2000 none of the passages was ever open from end to end. The ice which blocks these passages once melted is - by definition - first year ice, hence easily melted. That is a positive feedback.
Read More...
Climate Change Complicates Plant Diseases of the Future
ScienceDaily (June 26, 2010) - Human-driven changes in the earth's atmospheric composition are likely to alter plant diseases of the future. Researchers predict carbon dioxide will reach levels double those of the preindustrial era by the year 2050, complicating agriculture's need to produce enough food for a rapidly growing population.
University of Illinois researchers are studying the impact of elevated carbon dioxide, elevated ozone and higher atmospheric temperatures on plant diseases that could challenge crops in these changing conditions.
Darin Eastburn, U of I associate professor of crop sciences, evaluated the effects of elevated carbon dioxide and ozone on three economically important soybean diseases under natural field conditions at the soybean-free air-concentrating enrichment (SoyFACE) facility in Urbana.
The diseases downy mildew, Septoria brown spot, and sudden death syndrome were observed from 2005 to 2007 using visual surveys and digital image analysis. While changes in atmospheric composition altered disease expression, the responses of the three pathosystems varied considerably, Eastburn said.
Read More...
'CO2 storage' won't stop global warming: Study
Dreams of braking global warming by storing carbon emissions from power plants could be undermined by the risk of leakage, according to a study published on Sunday.
Rich countries have earmarked tens of billions of dollars of investment in carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that is still only at an experimental stage.
Under CCS, carbon dioxide (CO2) would be snared at source from plants that are big burners of oil, gas and coal.
Instead of being released into the atmosphere, where it would contribute to global warming, the gas would be buried in the deep ocean or piped into underground chambers such as disused gas fields.
CCS supporters say the sequestered carbon would slow the pace of man-made warming.
It would buy time for politicians to forge an effective treaty on greenhouse gases and wean the global economy off cheap but dirty fossil fuels.
Critics say CCS could be dangerous if the stored gas returns to the atmosphere.
Read More...
Climate reactions vary from frightened to calm
GLOUCESTER --Doug Dwoyer is a friendly, smiling man who looks like the late actor Walter Matthau in a good-guy role.
But Dwoyer goes around telling scary, depressing stories -- about climate change.
"It depresses me, I can tell you that," Dwoyer said the other day at the kitchen table of his home here.
In 2007, Dwoyer retired from the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, where he was chief operating officer. The space agency offered him a new job -- scouring the scientific literature on climate change and boiling it down into presentations for lay people.
"I'm educating the public on climate change one Rotary [Club] at a time," said Dwoyer, 68. He does the work for free.
An expert in aerodynamics and fluid mechanics with a doctorate from his beloved Virginia Tech, Dwoyer had a basic understanding of climate science. But the deeper he got into it, the more concerned he got.
Humans have been releasing heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for many decades, and that carbon can last hundreds of years.
Even if society ratchets back its carbon emissions -- and there is no sign of that so far -- we have already begun the process of warming the planet and causing sea levels to rise, Dwoyer said.
"Climate change is irreversible. There is no magic solution to this problem. It's not something that just goes away if we all buy a Prius and screw in some [compact fluorescent] light bulbs."
Barring some major international effort fairly soon to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, this is Dwoyer's vision of the future:
Read More...
Little done to prevent polar bear extinction, climate change, feds say
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Polar bear policy in America can be summed up succinctly: The iconic bears are threatened with extinction, and so far nothing much is being done.
Two years after they were listed under the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has taken no major action in response to their principal threat, the loss of sea ice habitat due to climate change.
Federal officials have declared that the Endangered Species Act will not be used in the attempt to regulate greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming and melting ice in the Arctic Ocean.
That leaves Rosa Meehan, the Fish and Wildlife Service marine mammals manager in Alaska, with few tools to protect the great bears of the Arctic. She hangs on to the hope that the scientists are wrong about the bears' future.
"Our crystal ball is not perfect," Meehan said last week.
She spoke between public hearings on whether the federal government should designate critical habitat for polar bears. Her agency has proposed designating 187,166 square miles of U.S. territory - 95 percent of it in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas - as polar bear critical habitat.
Read More...
Scientists debate humanity's role in warming
VIRGINIA BEACH -- On a lonely lighthouse 13 miles off the Atlantic coast, NASA scientists are helping detect the plight of the planet.
Futuristic-looking instruments atop the Chesapeake Lighthouse measure, among other things, how much radiation the sun sends into our atmosphere, how much is reflected back and how much the Earth absorbs and releases as heat.
The NASA work and related efforts by experts across the globe are aimed at determining how and why Earth's climate is changing.
"The whole idea is to try and determine what the issues are before it's too late," NASA scientist Greg Schuster said over the wind atop the 110-foot-tall lighthouse tower.
Scientists such as Schuster, with the space agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, know the planet is warming. Years ago, the question was whether humans played a role.
"Nowadays," said Schuster, a dark-haired, youthful 49-year-old, "people are trying to tease out the details" about how much of the warming is manmade, and what might happen in the future.
There is a lot that scientists don't know about climate change. There is also a lot they know. These facts are beyond dispute:
•Earth is warming.
•Certain gases such as carbon dioxide trap heat in our atmosphere. That's what makes Earth habitable.
•We add carbon dioxide to our atmosphere by burning oil, coal and natural gas, among other activities.
"[There] is a strong, credible body of evidence, based on multiple lines of research, documenting that climate is changing, and that these changes are in large part caused by human activities," said a study last month by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.
The science of climate change dates to the 1800s, when scientists theorized that gases in the atmosphere might trap heat from the sun.
Read More...
When things were rotten: Arctic sees record sea ice shrinkage, headed toward record low volume
On a streetcar named denial, Watts and Goddard assert: "Arctic Basin ice generally looks healthier than 20 years ago."
Back in mid-May, I argued the Arctic is poised to see record low sea ice volume this year. Since then, volume has plummeted some 3000 km3 (relative to its recent historical average) to "19,000 km3, the lowest May volume over the 1979–2010 period, 42% below the 1979 maximum and 32% below the 1979–2009 May average," according to the Polar Science Center, which has the best Arctic ice volume model around.
If I'm reading their historical average right, we're probably below 10,000 km3 now. The September minimum record was set 9 months ago, at 5,800 km3.
Most attention gets focused on the more visible but less important metric of sea ice extent, which collapsed last month faster than any May in the satellite record. As a result, at least one group in the highly touted suite of forecasts is looking to sharply lower their September sea ice extent estimate.
Here is where we are now on extent, via the National Snow and Ice Data Center:
Read More...
Debunked Climate Hoax: Letting Go is So Hard to Do
Q: When do a hodge-podge of climate change science denying groups with energy industry ties – including the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) – hold a Capitol Hill briefing on "Climategate"?
A: They do so within 72 hours of the latest scientific review panel exonerating climate scientists of any wrongdoing. See "Climategate: Officially a Fake Scandal" for more details. The Los Angeles Times has a good account as well.
That's right. Just when those ill-informed attacks on climate scientists have been stripped of even the remotest pretense of credibility, Heritage, Cato and CEI went to Congress last Friday in a vain attempt to breathe new life into their debunked conspiracy theory. I guess it's natural for professional denier groups to be in denial about the fact that there's no "there" there. Letting go is so hard to do…
Read More...