Climate Articles
Happy 35th birthday, global warming!
Global warming is turning 35! Not only has the current spate of global warming been going on for about 35 years now, but also the term "global warming" will have its 35th anniversary next week. On 8 August 1975, Wally Broecker published his paper "Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?" in the journal Science. That appears to be the first use of the term "global warming" in the scientific literature (at least it's the first of over 10,000 papers for this search term according to the ISI database of journal articles).
In this paper, Broecker correctly predicted "that the present cooling trend will, within a decade or so, give way to a pronounced warming induced by carbon dioxide", and that "by early in the next century [carbon dioxide] will have driven the mean planetary temperature beyond the limits experienced during the last 1000 years". He predicted an overall 20th Century global warming of 0.8ºC due to CO2 and worried about the consequences for agriculture and sea level.
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The Heat Goes On, Scorching Much of the Nation
WASHINGTON - When people in the nation's capital talked about an endless summer this week, they did not mean surfing or margaritas (though they surely craved them). Throughout the mid-Atlantic states, from New York to Georgia, and out through the Great Plains, the heat this spring and summer has been relentless, causing clothes, hair and spirits to wilt well before the dog days of August.
Saturday, as one meteorologist had predicted with scientific precision, was "one of those just downright awful summer days."
Even as a tropical storm visited Florida, and California continued its strange cold streak, in much of the East a Bermuda High was pushing weekend temperatures to the 100 range and humidity beyond the tolerable.
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Heat continues to grip much of nation
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Temperatures topped 100 degrees in much of the nation again Wednesday, elevating the risk of health problems and wildfires.
Excessive heat warnings stretched from Georgia to Texas and Illinois to Nebraska. In Arkansas, officials reported that concrete had buckled, and firefighters were busy with more than a dozen wildfires. They warned residents to take care to prevent more fires from starting.
Even chains under a vehicle "dragging on road can shoot out sparks which can ignite grasses on the roadway," said Christina Fowler, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Forestry Commission.
At Roller Funeral Home in Jonesboro, where the temperature reached 104 degrees Wednesday afternoon, funeral director Kendell Snedeker said graveside services had been particularly trying.
The home has provided mourners with "cold, bottled water, and we do have tents for them to be under," he said. "Sometimes we hand out fans and things of that nature." So far, no mourners had become ill from the heat, but Snedeker said he had seen that happen in past years.
Temperatures reached 105 degrees in Oklahoma City, 102 in Dallas and Little Rock, 103 in Memphis, Tenn., and 101 in Shreveport, La.
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Audio: How green is my country?
The race is on to develop sustainable solutions to climate change. From clean coal technology in Tianjin to the construction of Masdar City - a self-contained metropolis in the United Arab Emirates designed to be carbon neutral - countries around the world are devising new ways to reduce global dependency on fossil fuels. But as places like China and the U.A.E. move ahead with large scale green initiatives, is the U.S. lagging behind?
Need to Know's Alison Stewart runs that question by Professor Bill Chameides, Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.
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Must-read Jeremy Grantham: Everything You Need to Know About Global Warming in 5 Minutes
Calls out the disinformers: "Have they no grandchildren?"
Global warming will be the most important investment issue for the foreseeable future.
Uber-hedge fund manager Jeremy Grantham, a self-described "die hard contrarian," tells it like it is in his blunt 2Q 2010 letter:
1) The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, after at least several hundred thousand years of remaining within a constant range, started to rise with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. It has increased by almost 40% and is rising each year. This is certain and straightforward.
2) One of the properties of CO2 is that it creates a greenhouse effect and, all other things being equal, an increase in its concentration in the atmosphere causes the Earth's temperature to rise. This is just physics. (The amount of other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as methane, has also risen steeply since industrialization, which has added to the impact of higher CO2 levels.)
3) Several other factors, like changes in solar output, have major in?uences on climate over millennia, but these effects have been observed and measured. They alone cannot explain the rise in the global temperature over the past 50 years.
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Friedman on climate inaction: We're Gonna Be Sorry
For any first time visitors here because of Tom Friedman's column in the Sunday NY Times, "We're Gonna Be Sorry," you might start with "An Introduction to Climate Progress."
When I first heard on Thursday that Senate Democrats were abandoning the effort to pass an energy/climate bill that would begin to cap greenhouse gases that cause global warming and promote renewable energy that could diminish our addiction to oil, I remembered something that Joe Romm, the climateprogress.org blogger, once said: The best thing about improvements in health care is that all the climate-change deniers are now going to live long enough to see how wrong they were.
We'll always have gallows humor!
For some reason, the NYT is home to a large fraction of the U.S. opinion columnists who get global warming. Nicholas Kristof had a terrific piece last week, "Our Beaker Is Starting to Boil," on global warming and the work of David Breashears to document "stunning declines in glaciers on the roof of the world."
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An icy retreat
It's almost routine by now: Every summer, many of those interested in climate change check again and again the latest data on sea-ice evolution in the Arctic. Such data are for example available on a daily basis from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. And again and again in early summer the question arises whether the most recent trend in sea-ice extent might lead to a new record minimum, with a sea-ice cover that will be smaller than that in the record summer of 2007.
However, before looking at the possible future evolution of Arctic sea ice in more detail, it might be a good idea to briefly re-capitulate some events of the previous winter, because some of those are quite relevant for the current state of the sea-ice cover. The winter 2009/2010 will be remembered by many people in Europe (and not only there) as particularly cold, with lots of snow and ice. Not least because of the sustained cold, some began to wonder if global warming indeed was real.
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Converging Weather Patterns Caused Last Winter's Huge Snows in U.S.
ScienceDaily (July 26, 2010) - The memory of last winter's blizzards may be fading in this summer's searing heat, but scientists studying them have detected a perfect storm of converging weather patterns that had little relation to climate change. The extraordinarily cold, snowy weather that hit parts of the U.S. East Coast and Europe was the result of a collision of two periodic weather patterns in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, a new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters finds.
It was the snowiest winter on record for Washington D.C., Baltimore and Philadelphia, where more than six feet of snow fell over each. After a blizzard shut down the nation's capital, skeptics of global warming used the frozen landscape to suggest that manmade climate change did not exist, with the family of conservative senator James Inhofe posing next to an igloo labeled "Al Gore's new home."
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Unaccounted Feedbacks from Climate-Induced Ecosystem Changes May Increase Future Climate Warming
ScienceDaily (July 26, 2010) - The terrestrial biosphere regulates atmospheric composition, and hence climate. Projections of future climate changes already account for "carbon-climate feedbacks," which means that more CO2 is released from soils in a warming climate than is taken up by plants due to photosynthesis. Climate changes will also lead to increases in the emission of CO2 and methane from wetlands, nitrous oxides from soils, volatile organic compounds from forests, and trace gases and soot from fires. All these emissions affect atmospheric chemistry, including the amount of ozone in the lower atmosphere, where it acts as a powerful greenhouse gas as well as a pollutant toxic to people and plants.
Although our understanding of other feedbacks associated with climate-induced ecosystem changes is improving, the impact of these changes is not yet accounted for in climate-change modelling. An international consortium of scientists, led by Almut Arneth from Lund University, has estimated the importance of these unaccounted "biogeochemical feedbacks" in an article that appears in Nature Geoscience. They estimate a total additional radiative forcing by the end of the 21st century that is large enough to offset a significant proportion of the cooling due to carbon uptake by the biosphere as a result of fertilization of plant growth.
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Spread of disease linked to warming climate
CDC warns doctors to be on the alert after concluding a once-tropical disease is spreading in the Pacific Northwest.
A deadly infectious disease once thought to be exclusively tropical has gained a toehold in the Pacific Northwest, and health experts suspect climate change is partially to blame.
Last week the CDC issued a report warning U.S. doctors to be alert for patients showing signs of a cryptoccocal infection.
The infection is spread by a fungus, Cryptococcus gattii, that attacks the nasal cavity and spreads to other body sites, causing pneumonia, meningitis and other lung, brain or muscle ailments. The disease also affects animals.
Until 1999 most human cases were limited to Australia and other tropical and sub-tropical regions, including Asia and Africa, along with parts of southern California.
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Cutting Into Arctic Sea Ice
"Over by the fish, below the soccer field," said ice scientist Bonnie Light, pointing at the Arctic sea ice from the bridge of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy earlier this month during NASA's ICESCAPE oceanographic mission.
Light, of University of Washington, and other ice scientists crowd around the windows on the bridge of the Healy describing shapes created by the melt ponds on the surface of the Arctic sea ice. They point out everything from unicorns to Volkswagons. But the imaginative morning ritual is serious business; the ice teams are discussing where on the ice to work and planning the logistics of the day's field work.
Since 1979, satellites have tracked changes to Arctic sea ice extent, showing dramatic declines. On average the ice is losing about 13 percent of its summer coverage each decade and the record low was set in 2007. The decline raises two key questions: Why are these changes happening and what do they mean for Arctic ecosystems, particularly the ocean-dwelling plants -- phytoplankton -- that play an integral role in Earth's carbon cycle?
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Antarctica Traced from Space
Antarctica may not be the world's largest landmass -- it's the fifth-largest continent -- but resting on top of that land is the world's largest ice sheet. That ice holds more than 60 percent of Earth's fresh water and carries the potential to significantly raise sea level. The continent is losing ice to the sea, and scientists want to know how much.
Antarctica's ice generally flows from the middle of the continent toward the edge, dipping toward the sea before lifting back up and floating. The point where ice separates from land is called the "grounding line." For scientists, an accurate map of the grounding line is a first step toward a complete calculation of how much ice the continent is losing.
Such a map is a primary objective of the Antarctic Surface Accumulation and Ice Discharge (ASAID) project. Researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., led a team that used high-resolution satellite images, along with newly developed computer software, to trace the most accurate Antarctic grounding line ever compiled.
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Satellite spies vast algal bloom in Baltic Sea
The potentially toxic bloom, covering 377,000 sq km, could pose a risk to marine life in the region, warn scientists.
They added that a lack of wind and prolonged high temperatures had triggered the largest bloom since 2005.
The affected area stretches from Finland in the north to parts of Germany and Poland in the south.
The image, captured earlier this month, was recorded by a camera on the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite.
Researchers monitoring the spread of the blue-green algae said such blooms had spread over the Baltic Sea each summer for decades.
They added that fertilizers from surrounding agricultural land were being washed into the sea and exacerbating the problem.
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Huge Ocean Blooms Don't Wait for Spring, Study Finds
Microscopic, plant-like ocean creatures called phytoplankton spend their winters bulking up for the giant blooms that can cover thousands of square miles of the ocean surface come spring, a new study suggests.
The findings challenge the conventional wisdom that phytoplankton growth in the temperate oceans is spurred by the heating of the surface of the ocean and the increased light during the spring, which would provide extra fuel for the growing creatures. This 50-year-old theory is outdated, said study researcher Michael Behrenfeld, a botanist at Oregon State University in Corvallis.
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Spain sees temperatures rising 3 to 6 degrees by 2100
MADRID (Reuters) - Spanish daytime temperatures will rise by an average of between 3 and 6 degrees Celsius by 2100, and rainfall will tumble to 15-30 percent of recent levels, according to forecasts on Tuesday by the Met Office.
The Met Office said it produced the forecasts in order to plan for the impact of climate change.
"Madrid will be like (southern city) Seville, and Seville like Tucson. This is a report for action," Met Office President Ricardo Garcia told journalists.
Climate Change Secretary Teresa Ribera added at a news conference that Spain, which already suffers from water shortages and is building desalination plants, was particularly vulnerable to climate change.
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Best Hope for Saving Arctic Sea Ice Is Cutting Soot Emissions, Say Researchers
ScienceDaily (July 30, 2010) - Soot from the burning of fossil fuels and solid biofuels contributes far more to global warming than has been thought, according to a new Stanford study. But, unlike carbon dioxide, soot lingers only a few weeks in the atmosphere, so cutting emissions could have a significant and rapid impact on the climate. Controlling it may be the only option for saving the Arctic sea ice from melting. If soot emissions were eliminated, more than 1.5 million premature deaths from soot inhalation could be prevented worldwide each year.
The quickest, best way to slow the rapid melting of Arctic sea ice is to reduce soot emissions from the burning of fossil fuel, wood and dung, according to a new study by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson.
His analysis shows that soot is second only to carbon dioxide in contributing to global warming. But, he said, climate models to date have mischaracterized the effects of soot in the atmosphere.
Because of that, soot's contribution to global warming has been ignored in national and international global warming policy legislation, he said.
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Signs of Reversal of Arctic Cooling: Rapid Temperature Rise in the Coldest Region of Mainland Europe
ScienceDaily (July 29, 2010) - Parts of the Arctic have cooled over the past century, but temperatures have been rising steeply since 1990. This is the finding of a summer temperature reconstruction for the past 400 years produced on the base of tree rings from regions beyond the Arctic Circle.
German and Russian researchers analysed tree growth using ring width of pine from Russia's Kola Peninsula and compared their findings with similar studies from other parts of the Arctic. For the past 400 years since AD 1600, the reconstructed summer temperature on Kola in the months of July and August has varied between 10.4°C (1709) and 14.7°C (1957), with a mean of 12.2°C. Afterwards, after a cooling phase, a ongoing warming can be observed from 1990 onwards.
Researchers from the Institute of Geography in Moscow, Hohenheim University and the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) report in journal Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research: "The data indicate that solar activity may have been one of the major driving factors of summer temperatures, but this has been overlaid by other factors since 1990."
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Global warming signs unmistakable: report
A new report by 300 scientists has flagged the past decade as the hottest on record and compiled 10 "unmistakable" indicators that the world is getting warmer.
But the scientists mostly stayed away from discussions about the cause.
The 2009 State of the Climate report released Wednesday by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration combines data on temperatures, humidity, sea levels, sea ice, glaciers and spring snow cover going back to 1940 or 1850, depending on the type of data.
"When we follow decade-to-decade trends using multiple data sets and independent analyses from around the world, we see clear and unmistakable signs of a warming world," said Peter Stott, one of the report's 300 contributors, in a statement.
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Warmer Great Lakes: Nice for a dip, but worrisome
MINNEAPOLIS - Don Kermeen grew up along the shores of Lake Superior, and early on he learned a lesson about the mighty lake: "For most of the year, you don't swim in it unless you're in a wetsuit."
Not this summer. Superior and the four other Great Lakes have been at or near record high temperatures for the 30 years such measurements have been taken -- and there's still a month left before the lakes typically hit their warmest levels of the year.
"It's been awesome," Kermeen, the co-owner of Superior Shores Resort in Ontonagon, Mich., along Superior's southern shore, said this week. "I think every single guest I had yesterday was out swimming. I don't care if they were a kid or in their 60s, they were out in that water."
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Video: Everything you wanted to know about climate science in under 10 minutes
James Powell, Executive Director, National Physical Science Consortium, has produced an excellent YouTube video summarizing the evidence for anthropogenic global warming
Powell is a former college and museum president. "President Reagan and later, President George H. W. Bush, both appointed Powell to the National Science Board, where he served for 12 years."
Great for sending to any skeptics you may know:
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Nature Stunner: "Global warming blamed for 40% decline in the ocean's phytoplankton"
"Microscopic life crucial to the marine food chain is dying out. The consequences could be catastrophic."
Scientists may have found the most devastating impact yet of human-caused global warming - a 40% decline in phytoplankton since 1950 linked to the rise in ocean sea surface temperatures. If confirmed, it may represent the single most important finding of the year in climate science.
The headlines above are from an appropriately blunt article in The Independent about the new study in Nature, "Global phytoplankton decline over the past century" (subs. req'd). Even the Wall Street Journal warned, "Vital Marine Plants in Steep Decline." Seth Borenstein of the AP explains, "plant plankton found in the world's oceans are crucial to much of life on Earth. They are the foundation of the bountiful marine food web, produce half the world's oxygen and suck up harmful carbon dioxide."
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Is It Hot in Here? Must Be Global Warming.
In any debate over climate change, conventional wisdom holds that there is no reflex more absurd than invoking the local weather.
And yet this year's wild weather fluctuations seem to have motivated people on both sides of the issue to stick a finger in the air and declare the matter resolved - in their favor.
"Within psychology, it's called motivated reasoning, or the confirmation bias," explained Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of the Project on Climate Change Communication at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. "People are looking for evidence of any kind that validates or reinforces or justifies what they already believe."
Last February, for example, as a freak winter storm paralyzed much of the East Coast, relatives of Senator James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who is a skeptic of climate change, came to Washington and erected an igloo.
They topped it with a cheeky sign asking passers-by to "Honk if you ? global warming." Another sign, added later, christened the ice dome "Al Gore's new home."
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Extreme hot, cold waves torturing world
The northern hemisphere has been scorched by an ongoing heatwave since mid-June, while the southern half of the earth has witnessed intense cold and record snows. The abnormal weather has triggered social and environmental problems around the world.
Sustained high temperatures have posed serious public health hazard in many countries. In Japan alone, nearly 10,000 people were hospitalized and a record 57 died due to heat stroke from July 19 to July 25.
The unusual heat has triggered a number of forest fires in Russia. Fires in central Russian regions had burned down more than 900 houses and killed at least five people, the Russian Emergencies Ministry announced on Friday.
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IT'S BACK TO SCHOOL TIME FOR CLIMATE AND ENERGY.
How many ordinary people, do you suppose, know what the troposphere is? How many voters could describe in detail the composition of the air we breathe? How many politicians could speak at length - without the help of office researchers - about the hydrologic cycle? How many good, hard-working Americans could discuss the dangers of persistent trade deficits, even if they knew what a deficit was?
Senate Democrats have decided against an effort to pass major energy and climate legislation this year. The votes weren't in their favor they said. They'd offer energy-lite instead, which as I write this is legislation in limbo.
One of the problems of trying to pass an energy and climate bill is that, very likely, many people - from citizens to politicians - don't get it. They don't understand the core, simple principles behind global warming science or the economic problems of energy dependency. They're uneducated as well about basic earth sciences and some very simple economic mechanisms.
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Climate change prolongs Interior Alaska growing season
FAIRBANKS -- Researchers say higher temperatures have given Alaska a longer growing season.
According to the Alaska Climate Research Center, Fairbanks is 2 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer and 11 percent drier than it was 100 years ago.
The changes have stretched the growing season from 85 days in the early 20th century to 123 days.
Gerd Wendler, director of the University of Alaska Fairbanks research center, says every change in climate will have positive effects and negative ones.
For example, warming might produce more pumpkins and potatoes, but it also could wipe out tree populations.
Agriculture is one beneficiary, but a discrepancy existed among growing seasons in the just past five years. In 2006, the last hard freeze struck June 6, while last spring, the final frost came May 15, according to the National Weather Service.
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