Global warming measure could suspend other landmark environmental rules
A November ballot measure that would suspend California's landmark global-warming law could also end up rolling back some of the state's other sweeping environmental standards -- including rules that require utilities to generate a third of their electricity from renewable sources and programs requiring oil refineries to make cleaner-burning fuels. How broadly courts might interpret Proposition 23 is setting off alarm bells among Silicon Valley executives and environmental groups. "If we don't go forward with 33 percent renewable standard for California's energy supply, we undercut all those companies and entrepreneurs creating jobs in solar, wind, biofuels and other renewable forms of energy," said Carl Guardino, CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, a San Jose organization that represents more than 300 companies and that opposes Proposition 23. "We're saying let's take a U-turn to yesterday and be totally dependent on fossil fuels, rather than California leading the way to a renewable economy," Guardino said.
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Going, going, gone in the tropics
Glaciers in one of the world's last tropical ice caps will be gone within a matter of years, rather than the decades thought previously, according to an Ohio State University researcher who has spent his career probing the world's ice fields. When they go, a unique record of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation phenomenon that drives climate patterns in the tropics could disappear, too, glaciologist Lonnie Thompson said. The cap, perched on a 16,000-foot-high mountain ridge in Indonesia, "was riddled with crevasses and lacked any substantial snowfall," Thompson said of his most recent trip, earlier this summer. During that trip a research team pulled three cores from the cap. They were shorter than other cores from some of Thompson's previous 57 expeditions to 16 countries from China to Peru. But a similarly short core from Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro helped the team reconstruct 11,700 years of climate history. That history is melting away.
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Official: Russian Disaster Sign of Global Warming
Official says Russia's heat wave, drought and fires are another indication of global warming Russia's heat wave, drought and wildfires - which have killed dozens of people and destroyed millions of acres (hectares) of wheat - are another indication that global warming is causing more weather extremes around the world, a Russian official said Monday. Alexander Bedritsky, the Kremlin's weather adviser, also cited other disasters that he believes may be related to rising world temperatures, including Pakistan's worst floods in recorded history, and France's 2003 heat wave, which killed 15,000 people. Taken together, they "are signs of global warming," Bedritsky, who also serves as president the World Meteorological Organization, said at a news conference. U.S. climate change envoy Jonathan Pershing also recently said that such weather disasters are the kind of changes that could be the result of climate change.
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Increase in 'warm water' dolphins off North East coast
Warmer seas could be responsible for a change in the type of dolphins spotted off the coast of the North East of England, a survey has suggested. The North East Cetacean Project found an increase in sightings of common, bottlenose and Risso's dolphins - species associated with warmer waters. There have also been fewer sightings of white-beaked dolphin and harbour porpoise, which prefer colder water. It is thought the distribution shift is due to increasing sea temperatures. The NECP is a partnership including the charity Marinelife, Northern Experience Wildlife Tours, Natural England, the Northumberland and Tyneside Bird Club and the University of Aberdeen.
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What happened to greenhouse warming during mid-century cooling?
And could global brightening be causing global warming? A few weeks back while researching global brightening, I came across a gem of a paper: Impact of Global brightening and dimming on global warming (Wild et al 2007). The paper examines temperature trends over the second half of the 20th Century, including the cooling period in the middle of the century. From the 1950s to early 1980s, while CO2 levels were rising, global temperatures cooled slightly. How can this be if CO2 causes warming? Wild 2007 found there was greenhouse warming during this cooling period and they find it in an interesting place… The paper looks at trends in the amount of sunlight reaching the ground over the latter 20th century. Various factors can affect how much sunlight gets through to the Earth's surface, with the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere being the main contributor. And of course, the amount of sunlight reaching the surface will have an effect on global temperatures. Wild 2007 attempts to disentangle just how much contribution this surface dimming and brightening has on global temperature.
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The dangerous reality of climate change justifies global warming law - in California and nationwide
Texas oil giants Valero Energy and Tesoro Corp have mounted a fear campaign to thwart AB 32, California's Global Warming Law this November. Californians have always valued the environment first and foremost. It's time to take a stand, once and for all, and allow innovation to deliver a made-in-America green technologies energy solution. In 2006 I finished the book Wild Weather the Truth Behind Global Warming. As a field biologist with a quarter century of experience I felt anxious about how nature and people would cope with the times ahead. So far this year, globally, the weather patterns, insects, wild fires, melting glaciers, sea ice and the oceans all appear to be on performance-enhancing drugs eclipsing, in some cases, thousand year events.
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New York Times front-page story: In Weather Chaos, a Case for Global Warming!
Trenberth: "It's not the right question to ask if this storm or that storm is due to global warming, or is it natural variability. Nowadays, there's always an element of both." The floods battered New England, then Nashville, then Arkansas, then Oklahoma - and were followed by a deluge in Pakistan that has upended the lives of 20 million people. The summer's heat waves baked the eastern United States, parts of Africa and eastern Asia, and above all Russia, which lost millions of acres of wheat and thousands of lives in a drought worse than any other in the historical record. Seemingly disconnected, these far-flung disasters are reviving the question of whether global warming is causing more weather extremes. The collective answer of the scientific community can be boiled down to a single word: probably.
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Massive Coral Die-Off Reported In Indonesia
Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society announced Monday that abnormally warm ocean water off the coast of Sumatra, in Indonesia, has caused a massive die-off of coral. The full extent of the damage remains uncertain, but it's a symptom of a worldwide problem: Many coral reefs may not survive rising ocean temperatures.
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Warmest Year-to-Date Global Temperature on Record
ScienceDaily (Aug. 17, 2010) - The combined global land and ocean surface temperature made this July the second warmest on record, behind 1998, and the warmest averaged January-July on record. The global average land surface temperature for July and January-July was warmest on record. The global ocean surface temperature for July was the fifth warmest, and for January-July 2010 was the second warmest on record, behind 1998. The monthly analysis from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, which is based on records going back to 1880, is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides government, business and community leaders so they can make informed decisions. Global Temperature Highlights * The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for July 2010 was the second warmest on record at 61.6°F (16.5°C), which is 1.19°F (0.66°C) above the 20th century average of 60.4°F (15.8°C). The averaged temperature for July 1998 was 61.7°F (16.5°C).
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Climate warming may help wine
New York - The wine industry may be among the very few in which a leading figure will smile broadly when asked about climate change and declare, "I love it." Egon Müller, owner of the famed Scharzhof estate in Germany's Saar Valley, made the comment at Riesling Rendezvous, a conference in Bellevue, Washington. Müller is elated because growers in cooler-climate regions like the Saar often struggle to achieve ripeness in their grapes, and warmer temperatures are helping. But what happens when it gets too warm, as scientists predict, for some grape varieties to grow optimally in some regions? If Egon Müller doesn't seem concerned about the possibility, two climate scientists who spoke at the conference certainly are.
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Global Temperature Anomalies, July 2010
In early August 2010, the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) released its analysis of global temperatures for the previous month. In July 2010, GISS found, the global average temperature was 0.55 degrees Celsius (almost 1 degree Fahrenheit) warmer than climatology-defined as average temperatures for the same month from 1951 to 1980. July 2010 was practically in a three-way tie for the warmest July on record, tied with July 1998 and July 2005. This color-coded map shows global surface temperature anomalies for July 2010 compared to average temperatures for the same time of year from 1951 to 1980. Above-normal temperatures appear in shades of red, and below-normal temperatures appear in shades of blue. Red-hued Greenland, for example, experienced above-normal temperatures while the blue-hued Pacific Northwest experienced below-normal temperatures. Gray patches indicate areas of insufficient data.
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The "CO2 is Plant Food" Crock
Our favorite climate de-crocker, Peter Sinclair has a new video that features someone who may be smarter than all the other anti-science disinformers [combined?]: UPDATE: Glenn Scherer emails to remind me of his Grist piece, "In a warmed world, even food won't be as good for you."
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Cook: "When someone mentions to you that CO2 lags temperature,
...remind them they're actually invoking evidence for a positive feedback that further increases global warming by an extra 15 to 78%." Physicist John Cook of Skeptical Science has a good piece on "The significance of the CO2 lag" that I'm reposting here, followed by a discussion of the best-studied feedbacks and their likely impact (with links to the literature). When we examine past climate change using ice cores, we observe that CO2 lags temperature. In other words, a change in temperature causes changes in atmospheric CO2. This is due to various processes such as warmer temperatures causing the oceans to release CO2. This has lead some to argue that the CO2 lag disproves the warming effect of CO2. However, this line of thinking doesn't take in the full body of evidence. We have many lines of empirical evidence that CO2 traps heat. Decades of lab experiments reveal how CO2 absorbs and scatters infrared radiation. Satellite measurements find CO2 trapping heat and surface measurements confirm more radiation at CO2 wavelengths returning to the Earth's surface. So the full body of evidence gives us these two facts: warming causes more CO2 and more CO2 causes warming. The significance should by now be obvious. The CO2 lag is evidence of a climate positive feedback.
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Levels Plummet in Crucial Reservoir
Water levels in Lake Mead, the Colorado River reservoir, fell sharply again this summer and are nearing an elevation that would set off the first-ever official water shortage on the river, The Arizona Republic reported last week. The reservoir, which supplies roughly 30 million users in the West, dropped to 1,087 feet above sea level, or about 40 percent of capacity. Were the lake to hit 1,075 feet, allocations on the river would be cut by more than 100 billion gallons under the terms of a 2007 agreement struck by seven Western states and Mexico. Las Vegas, which draws about 90 percent of its water from Lake Mead, is particularly vulnerable to dropping lake levels. Were levels to fall to 1,050 feet, or 26 percent capacity, one of the city's two water intake pipes on the lake would cease functioning. In anticipation of such an event, water managers have developed a highly controversial plan to tap groundwater in northeast Nevada and transport it to the city via a multibillion-dollar pipeline. A few wet years would do much to diminish the threat of imminent shortages, but the outlook for the river and the states that depend on it remains poor, with the arrival of La Niña in the equatorial Pacific expected to further dry out the arid West over the next two years.
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Deadly Russian heatwave declared over
(Reuters) - Russian meteorologists said on Wednesday Moscow's deadly heat wave was ending after two months of searing weather which took a high human and economic toll. "Today is the last hot day in Moscow," said Roman Vilfand, head of the meteorological service. The capital's temperature will plunge from Wednesday's 31 degrees Celsius (88 F) to 21-23 (70-73 F) on Thursday, he said. Muscovites woke up on Wednesday to what seemed like the remains of the acrid smoke from forest and peat bog fires that had blanketed the capital for two weeks. Rains of varied intensity were expected in almost all regions of European Russia, the Urals, Siberia and the country's Far East though to the weekend, Roshydromet said on its website. Officials broke the silence over the effects of the heat and smoke on Aug. 9, when the head of Moscow's health department, Andrei Seltsovsky, said deaths had doubled to 700 per day and heat was the main cause.
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Pine beetles' march across B.C. is a catastrophe in slow motion
Unemployment among forestry workers and amount of denuded timber harvest land will rise dramatically over next 20 years, a report says
Read More... It's funny. You can read that pine beetles have denuded and killed an area of B.C. forest land equivalent to the area of California and New York combined, but it doesn't sink in. It seems impossible. Sheer hyperbole. But drive the circular route through Hope, Princeton, Merritt, Cache Creek, Lillooet, Pemberton, Whistler as I did this past weekend, and you can see it. Kilometre after kilometre of trees stripped of needles and tinder-dry. It's heartbreaking and frightening. We're in the middle of a slow-motion disaster that, unlike the Gulf oil spill, Hurricane Katrina or the floods in Pakistan, is unfolding in years, not minutes and hours, weeks and months. If you can't go and see it for yourself, look at the forest ministry's series of maps ( www.for.gov.bc.ca/hre/bcmpb/cumulative/1999.htm)that show the beetles' 15-year march east across the province, munching everything in their path.
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Ready or not, climate change, and climate displacement, is happening
The devastating floods in Pakistan have claimed the lives of at least 1,500 people and rendered millions more homeless and displaced. According to the United Nations, the deluge's human toll, which has reportedly affected 14 million Pakistanis, is worse than the 2004 tsunami, the January earthquake in Haiti, and the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan combined. The record-breaking floods – along with other recent unprecedented climate-related catastrophes such as the heat wave in Russia and torrential rains and subsequent mudslides in China – are in line with the predictions of climate scientists that global warming will cause an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. According to climate vulnerability indices, Pakistan is one of the world's most at-risk countries due not only to its exposure to climate-related hazards such as flooding and droughts, but also its human vulnerability in terms of the capacity of individuals, communities, and societies to effectively respond to such hazards based on a combination of natural, human, social, financial and physical factors.
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I went to a statistician fight and a hockey stick broke out
Part 2, DeepClimate throws McShane and Wyner into the penalty box: "This is a deeply flawed study" Last week, the anti-science crowd were touting a couple of statisticians who had launched a slashing cross-check on a small portion of the scientific research supporting our scientific understanding that current warming is very likely unprecedented in the last thousand years. As I discussed here, the McShane and Wyner analysis actually produced a Hockey Stick - and even as the climate science community ducked the blow, the Medieval Warm Period got hit in the head (see also Deltoid, who spruced up their graph): But wait, the anti-science disinformers say, you left out the part of their analysis where they call into question all such graphs. And that was because I am on vacation and was waiting for the refs who I knew were busy reviewing the tapes before making their penalty call. In short, I knew that part of the analysis was deeply flawed.
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Global warming: World's highest island glacier vanishing
The glacier on Puncak Jaya in Papua, Indonesia, the Earth's highest island, is quickly melting away, giving geologists little time to extract ice core samples. Ice cores extracted in June from one of the last tropical glaciers in the Pacific recently arrived in the United States, where researchers will spend the coming months scrutinizing their every detail. Glaciologists spent two grueling weeks drilling for the ice cores atop Puncak Jaya in Papua, Indonesia. Puncak Jaya is the Earth's highest island peak and the tallest mountain between the Andes and the Himalayas at 16,000 feet (4,884 meters). Reach team member Dwi Susanto of Columbia University said the excursion was "a lifetime achievement for me, as I usually work at sea level." The mission may have been a once-in-a-lifetime mission for another reason: The Puncak Jaya glacier is disappearing - fast. The glaciologists who drilled through the cap, led by Lonnie Thompson of Ohio State University, said the ice field could vanish within the next few years.
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New Computer Model Advances Climate Change Research
ScienceDaily (Aug. 19, 2010) - Scientists can now study climate change in far more detail with powerful new computer software released by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The Community Earth System Model (CESM) will be one of the primary climate models used for the next assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The CESM is the latest in a series of NCAR-based global models developed over the last 30 years. The models are jointly supported by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation, which is NCAR's sponsor. Scientists and engineers at NCAR, DOE laboratories, and several universities developed the CESM. The new model's advanced capabilities will help scientists shed light on some of the critical mysteries of global warming, including: * What impact will warming temperatures have on the massive ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica? * How will patterns in the ocean and atmosphere affect regional climate in coming decades? * How will climate change influence the severity and frequency of tropical cyclones, including hurricanes? * What are the effects of tiny airborne particles, known as aerosols, on clouds and temperatures?
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Earth's green carbon sink on the wane
Satellite data indicate that carbon storage by plants is decreasing despite climate warming. The capacity of plants to act as a carbon sink could be on the decline. As global temperatures have risen in recent decades, the amount of atmospheric carbon being converted into plant biomass has increased in step. However, in a paper published today in Science, ecologists Maosheng Zhao and Steve Running at the University of Montana in Missoula report a surprising reversal of this trend over the last decade, despite its having been the warmest on record1. In 2003, a study on which Running was a co-author, led by Ramakrishna Nemani, who is also at the University of Montana, reported an increase in plant productivity between 1982 and 1999. The researchers attributed that trend to a warmer climate and increased solar radiation2. Zhao and Running expected to find a similar increase for 2000-2009 - an expectation that was not met.
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Damaged Ecosystems Amplify Killer Floods
Climate change isn't the only reason the record rains in Pakistan have been so devastating. Climate change may be playing a part in record rains ravaging Asia but environment experts say the destruction of ecosystems is more directly to blame for the severity of killer floods. Widespread deforestation, the conversion of wetlands to farms or urban sprawl and the clogging up of natural drainage systems with garbage are just some of the factors exacerbating the impacts of the floods, they say. "You can't just blame nature... humans have encroached on the natural flood plains," said Ganesh Pangare, Bangkok-based regional water and wetlands coordinator with the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Pangare said better management of flood plains would limit the human and economic costs of natural disasters, such as the recent record rains in Pakistan that killed an estimated 1,400 people. "You have to ensure that natural infrastructure is protected. Otherwise development in Asia is not sustainable," he said. Red Constantino, the Manila-based head of the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Cities, said climate change was becoming a convenient way for Asian leaders to excuse themselves when natural disasters struck.
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Climate change basics III – environmental impacts and tipping points
The world's climate is inherently dynamic and changeable. Past aeons have borne witness to a planet choked by intense volcanic activity, dried out in vast circumglobal deserts, heated to a point where polar oceans were as warm as subtropical seas, and frozen in successive ice ages that entombed northern Eurasia and America under miles of ice. These changes to the Earth's environment imposed great stresses upon ecosystems and often led to mass extinctions of species. Life always went on, but the world was inevitably a very different place. We, a single species, are now the agent of global change. We are undertaking an unplanned and unprecedented experiment in planetary engineering, which has the potential to unleash physical and biological transformations on a scale never before witnessed by civilization. Our actions are causing a massive loss and fragmentation of habitats (e.g., deforestation of the tropical rain forests), over-exploitation of species (e.g., collapse of major fisheries), and severe environmental degradation (e.g., pollution and excessive draw-down of rivers, lakes and groundwater). These patently unsustainable human impacts are operating worldwide, and accelerating. They foreshadow a grim future. And then, on top of all of this, there is the looming spectre of climate change.
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Science shocker: Drought drives decade-long decline in plant growth
This could drive an amplifying feedback, undermine biofuels strategy Earth has done an ecological about-face: Global plant productivity that once flourished under warming temperatures and a lengthened growing season is now on the decline, struck by the stress of drought. NASA-funded researchers Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running, of the University of Montana in Missoula, discovered the global shift during an analysis of NASA satellite data. Compared with a six-percent increase spanning two earlier decades, the recent ten-year decline is slight - just one percent. The shift, however, could impact food security, biofuels, and the global carbon cycle. "We see this as a bit of a surprise, and potentially significant on a policy level because previous interpretations suggested that global warming might actually help plant growth around the world," Running said.
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Widespread Floating Plastic Debris Found in the Western North Atlantic Ocean
ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2010) - Despite growing awareness of the problem of plastic pollution in the world's oceans, little solid scientific information existed to illustrate the nature and scope of the issue. Now, a team of researchers from Sea Education Association (SEA), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the University of Hawaii (UH) published a study of plastic marine debris based on data collected over 22 years by undergraduate students in the latest issue of the journal Science. A previously undefined expanse of the western North Atlantic has been found to contain high concentrations of plastic debris, comparable to those observed in the region of the Pacific commonly referred to as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." More than 64,000 individual plastic pieces were collected at 6100 locations that were sampled yearly over the course of the study. A surface plankton net was used to collect plastic debris as well as biological organisms at each station. The highest concentrations of plastic were observed in a region centered at 32°N (roughly the latitude of Atlanta, GA) and extending from 22-38°N latitude. Numerical model simulations by Nikolai Maximenko (UH) explain why surface currents cause the plastic to accumulate in this region.
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Is the Ice in the Arctic Ocean Getting Thinner?
ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2010) - The extent of the sea ice in the Arctic will reach its annual minimum in September. Forecasts indicate that it will not be as low as in 2007, the year of the smallest area covered by sea ice since satellites started recording such data. Nevertheless, sea ice physicists at the Alfred Wegener Institute are concerned about the long-term equilibrium in the Arctic Ocean. They have indications that the mass of sea ice is dwindling because its thickness is declining. To substantiate this, they are currently measuring the ice thickness north and east of Greenland using the research aircraft Polar 5. The objective of the roughly one-week campaign is to determine the export of sea ice from the Arctic. Around a third to half of the freshwater export from the Arctic Ocean takes place in this way -- a major drive factor in the global ocean current system. The question of when the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer has been preoccupying the sea ice researchers headed by Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Gerdes from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association for a long time now. Satellites have been recording the extent of the Arctic ice for more than 30 years. In addition to the area covered, the thickness of the ice is a decisive factor in assessing how much sea ice there is.
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Deep Plumes of Oil Could Cause Dead Zones in the Gulf
ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2010) - A new simulation of oil and methane leaked into the Gulf of Mexico suggests that deep hypoxic zones or "dead zones" could form near the source of the pollution. The research investigates five scenarios of oil and methane plumes at different depths and incorporates an estimated rate of flow from the Deepwater Horizon spill, which released oil and methane gas into the Gulf from April to mid July of this year. A scientific paper on the research has been accepted for publication by Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Princeton University conducted the research. Based on their simulations, they conclude that the ocean hypoxia or toxic concentrations of dissolved oil arising from the Deepwater Horizon blowout are likely to be "locally significant but regionally confined to the northern Gulf of Mexico." A hypoxic or "dead" zone is a region of ocean where oxygen levels have dropped too low to support most forms of life, typically because microbes consuming a glut of nutrients in the water use up the local oxygen as they consume the material.
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Drought Drives Decade-Long Decline in Plant Growth
ScienceDaily (Aug. 21, 2010) - Global plant productivity that once was on the rise with warming temperatures and a lengthened growing season is now on the decline because of regional drought, according to a new study of NASA satellite data. Plant productivity is a measure of the rate of the photosynthesis process that green plants use to convert solar energy, carbon dioxide and water to sugar, oxygen and eventually plant tissue. Compared with a 6 percent increase in plant productivity during the 1980s and 1990s, the decline observed over the last decade is only 1 percent. The shift, however, could impact food security, biofuels and the global carbon cycle. Researchers Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running of the University of Montana in Missoula discovered the global shift from an analysis of NASA satellite data. The discovery comes from an analysis of plant productivity data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer on NASA's Terra satellite, combined with other growing season climate data, including temperature, solar radiation and water.
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Blue crabs flooding Narragansett Bay
The smell of squid was all it took. Clutching the free lunch with a sky blue claw, a crab pulled the squid closer. Another swam over to drag the meat in an opposite direction. In an instant, more joined the frantic tug of war. Save The Bay's Baykeeper John Torgan can't remember this many blue crabs in Narragansett Bay, once the northernmost vacation spot for warm-water crustaceans, but now they are so plentiful that quick - and careful - hands can pluck them out around low tide. State environment officials even received calls this week that crabs are rampant in Waterplace Park, in Providence. This crab invasion - along with other signs of a changing Bay, such as the decline in some native inhabitants (winter flounder) and the earlier arrival of juvenile fish predators (comb jellies) - are drawing the attention of scientists. But there isn't consensus yet about why it's happening and how the changes will affect the future of the ecosystem and local fishing industry.
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The ice is missing in Sachs Harbour
They cut short Canada Day celebrations here this year. It was simply too hot to play outdoors. That might not be unusual in the humidity soaking some Canadian cities this summer, but tiny Sachs Harbour clings to a shoreline more than 500 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle. Until 10 years ago, the ocean was clogged with ice thick enough to walk across in late June. Strange things are happening 'neath the midnight sun these days. "We were playing games and cooking on Canada Day and everybody was having fun until the afternoon, when it got real hot and with so many mosquitos," recalls Sachs elder Leena Wolki. "We had to stop and everybody went home." She looks across at a group of five youngsters paddling along the shoreline. "They're swimming at the beach and going way out in the water now. I've never seen that before." Not all locals think these are signs of a global warming phenomenon. More like a coincidence, says John Lucas, site manger for Aulavik National Park.
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Doing it yourselves
We've been a little preoccupied recently, but there are some recent developments in the field of do-it-yourself climate science that are worth noting. First off, the NOAA/BAMS "State of the Climate 2009" report arrived in mailboxes this week (it has been available online since July though). Each year this gets better and more useful for people tracking what is going on. And this year they have created a data portal for all the data appearing in the graphs, including a lot of data previously unavailable online. Well worth a visit. Second, many of you will be aware that the UK Met Office is embarking on a bottom-up renovation of the surface temperature data sets including daily data and more extensive sources than have previously been available. Their website is surfacetemperatures.org, and they are canvassing input from the public until Sept 1 on their brand new blog. In related news, Ron Broberg has made a great deal of progress on a project to use the much more extensive daily weather report data into a useful climate record. Something that the pros have been meaning to do for a while….
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Species extinctions happening before our eyes
In the past, research has predicted that global warming could lead to the extinction of more than one-fifth of animal and plant species. This research has largely been based on theoretical models. However, now observations can confirm whether reality matches theory. The paper Erosion of Lizard Diversity by Climate Change and Altered Thermal Niches (Sinervo 2010) compares global observations of lizard populations from 1975 to present day. The result? Rapidly warming temperatures are causing lizard species to go extinct before our eyes. How does climate change affect lizard populations? While lizards bask in the morning sun to warm up, they retreat to the shade when temperatures get too hot to avoid heat stress. As it gets hotter, they have less time to forage for food. Warmer springs are particularly devastating as this is when lizards reproduce and need extra food. Sinervo 2010 first analysed observations of lizard populations in Mexico. Since 1975 when observations began, 12% of local populations have gone extinct. Looking at weather station data, they found a correlation between the change in maximum temperature and local extinctions. The number of hours that lizards were forced to retreat to shade were significantly higher at extinction sites.
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Limiting Ocean Acidification Under Global Change
ScienceDaily (Aug. 20, 2010) - Largely as a result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels for energy and land-use changes such deforestation, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now higher that it has been at any time over the last 800,000 years. Most scientists believe this increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide to be an important cause of global warming. Both the peak year of emissions and post-peak reduction rates influence how much ocean acidity increases by 2100. Changes in ocean pH over subsequent centuries will depend on how much the rate of carbon dioxide emissions can be reduced in the longer term. Largely as a result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels for energy and land-use changes such deforestation, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now higher that it has been at any time over the last 800,000 years. Most scientists believe this increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide to be an important cause of global warming.
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