Clipmarks | invictus's Climate collection

Arctic sea ice melt 'even faster'

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:33:56 GMT

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clipper's remarks:

Greenland is already losing ice to the oceans, contributing to the gradual rise in sea levels. The ice cap holds enough water to lift sea levels globally by about 7m (22ft) if it all melted.

Natural climatic cycles such as the Arctic Oscillation play a role in year-to-year variations in ice cover. But Julienne Stroeve believes the sea ice is now so thin that there is little chance of the melting trend turning round.

"If the ice were as thin as it was in the 1970s, last year's conditions would have brought a dip in cover, but nothing exceptional.

"But now it's so thin that you would have to have an exceptional sequence of cold winters and cold summers in order for it to rebuild."

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Arctic sea ice is melting even faster than last year, despite a cold winter.

Data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that the year began with ice covering a larger area than at the beginning of 2007.

But now it is down to levels seen last June, at the beginning of a summer that broke records for sea ice loss.

Scientists on the project say that much of the ice is so thin that it melts easily, and the Arctic may be ice-free in summer within five to 10 years.

In March, Nasa reported that the area covered by sea ice was slightly larger than in 2007, but much of it consisted of thin floes that had formed during the previous winter. These are much less robust than thicker, less saline floes that have already survived for several years.

By the end of last year, one research group was forecasting ice-free summers by 2013.

Tags: climate change, arctic sea, melting, nsidc, science

'No Sun link' to climate change

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 12:18:21 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun's activity.

The research contradicts a favoured theory of climate "sceptics", that changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature.

The idea is that variations in solar activity affect cosmic ray intensity.

But Lancaster University scientists found there has been no significant link between them in the last 20 years.

Presenting their findings in the Institute of Physics journal, Environmental Research Letters, the UK team explain that they used three different ways to search for a correlation, and found virtually none.

This is the latest piece of evidence which at the very least puts the cosmic ray theory, developed by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC), under very heavy pressure.

Tags: climate change, solar activity, science

Antarctic shelf 'hangs by thread'

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:44:45 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

A chunk of ice the size of the Isle of Man has started to break away from Antarctica in what scientists say is further evidence of a warming climate.

Satellite images suggest that part of the ice shelf is disintegrating, and will soon crumble away.

The Wilkins Ice Shelf has been stable for most of the last century, but began retreating in the 1990s.

Six ice shelves in the same part of the continent have already been lost, says the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

Professor David Vaughan of BAS said: "Wilkins is the largest ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula yet to be threatened.

"I didn't expect to see things happen this quickly. The ice shelf is hanging by a thread - we'll know in the next few days or weeks what its fate will be."

Tags: climate change, global warming, antarctica, wilkins ice shelf, science

Snow day in the sands of Baghdad

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 20:58:46 GMT

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Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

BAGHDAD - The flakes melted quickly. But the smiles, wonder and excited story-swapping went on throughout the day: It snowed in Baghdad.

The morning flurry Friday was the first in memory in the heart of the Iraqi capital. Perhaps more significant, however, was the rare ripple of delight through a city snarled by army checkpoints, divided by concrete walls and ravaged by sectarian killings.

"For the first time in my life I saw a snow-rain like this falling in Baghdad," said Mohammed Abdul-Hussein, a 63-year-old retiree from the New Baghdad area.

"When I was young, I heard from my father that such rain had fallen in the early '40s on the outskirts of northern Baghdad," Abdul-Hussein said, referring to snow as a type of rain. "But snow falling in Baghdad in such a magnificent scene was beyond my imagination."

Tags: iraq, baghdad, snow, weather

Ancient Flood Triggered Climate Cooling

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:42:11 GMT

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Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

ScienceDaily (Dec. 17, 2007) — As the giant North American ice sheets melted an enormous pool of freshwater, many times larger than all of the Great Lakes, formed behind them. About 8400 years ago this pool of freshwater burst free and flooded the North Atlantic. About the same time, a sharp century long cold spell is observed around the North Atlantic and other areas. Researchers have often speculated that the cooling was the result of changes in ocean circulation triggered by this freshwater flood. The sudden addition of so much freshwater would have curtailed (suppressed) the sinking of deep water in the North Atlantic and as a consequence less warm water would be pulled north in the Gulf stream.

In a new study in Science (published online in Science Express 6 December) Kleiven and co workers confirm that the deep ocean was disturbed in just the way previous workers had speculated.

Tags: oceans, flood, climate change, prehistory, science

Rising seas 'to beat predictions'

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 20:37:06 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Sea level rise is fuelled by melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica

The world's sea levels could rise twice as high this century as UN climate scientists have previously predicted, according to a study.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proposes a maximum sea level rise of 81cm (32in) this century.

But in the journal Nature Geoscience, researchers say the true maximum could be about twice that: 163cm (64in).

They looked at what happened more than 100,000 years ago - the last time Earth was this warm.

The results join other studies showing that current sea level projections may be very conservative.

Sea level rise is a key effect of global climate change. There are two major contributory effects: expansion of sea water as the oceans warm, and the melting of ice over land.

Tags: climate change, sea levels, environment, science

2007 data confirms warming trend

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:44:45 GMT

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clipper's remarks: "The 11 warmest years in this set have all occurred within the last 13 years."

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

In Spain's 2007 heatwave, people cooled off as best they could

2007 has been one of the warmest years since 1850, despite the cooling influence of La Nina conditions.

The UK's Hadley Centre and University of East Anglia conclude that globally, this year ranks as the seventh warmest.

The 11 warmest years in this set have all occurred within the last 13 years. For the northern hemisphere alone, 2007 was the second warmest recorded.

The findings come as politicians at the UN climate summit try to agree a path leading to cuts in carbon emissions.

Tags: climate change, global warming, science

Experts warn Fla. about climate change

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 00:08:59 GMT

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Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

Scientists and economists Tuesday warned lawmakers of consequences Florida faces from climate change, including more destructive hurricanes and a rising sea level, but they also said the state could be a leader in reducing global warming.

Three panels of experts spoke at a symposium held by the House Environmental Resources Council and three related committees.

Climate change will figure into comprehensive energy and environmental policy legislation the lawmakers will be considering during the 2008 legislative session, said Council Chairman Stan Mayfield, R-Vero Beach.

Some legislators, though, questioned whether Florida could do much to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses, spewed mostly from power plants and vehicle exhausts, that contribute to global warming. That's because Florida emits only 1 percent of those gasses worldwide.

Tags: climate change, global warming, florida, science

Gore and UN panel win Nobel prize

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:47:59 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth was an unlikely box office hit

Climate change campaigner Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The committee cited "their efforts to build up and disseminate knowledge about man-made climate change".

Mr Gore, US vice-president under Bill Clinton, said he was "deeply honoured".

Mr Gore, 59, won an Oscar for his climate change film An Inconvenient Truth while the IPCC is the top authority on global warming.

HAVE YOUR SAY

It would have made more sense to wait and see if Gore et al actually had an effect, but at least this might serve as a wake-up call to the naysayers

Geoff, Bensberg, Germany

Send us your comments

Nobel Peace Prize quiz

Indian's surprise at award

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said he was "overwhelmed" by the award.

Tags: climate change, inconvenient truth, al gore, nobel peace prize

Ancient records help test climate change

Sun, 16 Sep 2007 01:07:05 GMT

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Clip Source: news.yahoo.com

A librarian at this 10th century monastery leads a visitor beneath the vaulted ceilings of the archive past the skulls of two former abbots.

He pushes aside medieval ledgers of indulgences and absolutions, pulls out one of 13 bound diaries inscribed from 1671 to 1704 and starts to read about the weather.

"Jan. 11 was so frightfully cold that all of the communion wine froze," says an entry from 1684 by Brother Josef Dietrich, governor and "weatherman" of the once-powerful Einsiedeln Monastery.

"But on Jan. 13 it got even worse and one could say it has never been so cold in human memory,"

Diaries of day-to-day weather details from the age before 19th-century standardized thermometers are proving of great value to scientists who study today's climate.

The accounts dispel any lingering doubts that the Earth is heating up more dramatically than ever before

Most historians and scientists delving deep into archives seek accounts of disasters and extreme weather events.

Tags: climate change, history, weather

Hurricane Planet: Is the Worst Yet to Come?

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 21:36:01 GMT

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Clip Source: dsc.discovery.com

Aug. 22, 2007 — If Earth is running a fever, then hurricanes like Dean and Katrina are her febrile seizures. As the rise in global temperature has accelerated over the last century, these tempestuous spasms have become more frequent and violent.

Each new spinning storm is also finding ever more victims populating its coastal targets — whether it be Mississippi or Madagascar, Kingston or Connecticut — and more ways to trigger trouble thousands of miles inland by way of an ever-more interdependent, globalized economy.

Climatologists and hurricane scientists now have little doubt there is a connection between hurricanes and global warming. Some of the strongest evidence comes from 100 years of records on Atlantic hurricanes — the most complete archive of its kind for any ocean basin. That record shows hurricanes have been increasing in a stepwise fashion since 1900.

Tags: climate change, hurricanes, weather, world

Arctic sea ice set to hit new low

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 16:00:44 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Measurements made by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) showed the extent of sea ice on 8 August was almost 30% below the long-term average.

The extent of sea ice has been declining over the past 30 years

Because the region's melting season runs until the middle of September, scientists believe this summer will end with the lowest ice cover on record.

"If you look at data for the first week in August, we are way below what we saw in 2005," explained Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the NSIDC.

"So unless something really changes, for example the Arctic suddenly becomes a lot colder, it is going to be hard not to beat the previous record."

Scientists fear that this feedback mechanism will have major consequences for wildlife in the region, not least polar bears, which traverse ice-floes in search of food.

On a global scale, the Earth would lose a major reflective surface and so absorb more solar energy, potentially accelerating climatic change across the world.

Tags: climate change, arctic, sea ice

Soot 'influences Arctic climate'

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 13:51:12 GMT

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Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Soot 'influences Arctic climate'

Human activities have left a visible mark on the Arctic

Measurements from ice cores suggest that soot released by industrial activities has influenced climate change in the Arctic.

The researchers looked at ice cores covering the period 1788 to 2002.

The natural record shows that concentrations of black carbon, or soot, were particularly bad from 1851 to 1951, Science journal reports.

Soot adds to local climate warming because dark ground absorbs energy from the Sun that white snow would reflect.

Joe McConnell and Ross Edwards from the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno, US, gathered and analysed ice core samples from various regions of Greenland.

These samples allowed them to analyse annual deposits of soot and other chemicals going back 215 years.

"In addition to black carbon, we measured a broad range of other chemicals at very high depth resolution in this same ice core," said Dr McConnell.

Tags: climate change, global warming, arctic, ice cores, industry, science

Is climate change boosting hurricanes?

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 23:15:55 GMT

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clipper's remarks:

What it tells us, says Mooney, is that the link between climate change and hurricanes is complicated. As he emphasizes again and again, “global warming did not cause Hurricane Katrina, or any other weather disaster.” On the other hand, statistical analysis of the past century’s hurricanes and computer modeling of a warmer climate, nudged along by greenhouse gases, does indicate that rising ocean temperatures could fuel hurricanes that are more intense.

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

More than 28 tropical storms and hurricanes, including Katrina, were spawned in the Atlantic Ocean in 2005. In fact, the season was so extreme that it instigated an ongoing debate: Has climate change made hurricanes fiercer and more frequent? As Chris Mooney relates in Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming (Harcourt, 2007), proponents of both sides of the dispute have had a field day with this question. Yet the danger of extrapolating from a single catastrophic season became clear in 2006, an unusually quiet year for Atlantic hurricanes. Just 10 storms brewed, only two of which became major hurricanes. So what does this mixed record say about global warming?

The basic scenario goes as follows: Hurricanes—circular storms spinning around a region of low atmospheric pressure—are powered by energy released by spiraling surface winds that draw heat from the ocean. Warmer seas should provide more energy and make hurricanes stronger.

Tags: climate change, global warming, hurricanes, weather, science

Climate Change Endangers India

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:25:59 GMT

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Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Climate Change Endangers India, U.N. Says

NEW DELHI, Aug. 7 — As exceptionally heavy rains continued to cut a wide swath of ruin across northern India, a top United Nations official warned today that climate change could destroy vast swaths of farmland in this country, ultimately affecting food production and adding to the woes of already desperate peasants who live off of the land.

Even a small increase in temperatures, said Jacques Diouf, head of the Food and Agricultural Organization, could push down crop yields in the south around the world, even as agricultural productivity goes up in northern climes, including Europe. A greater frequency of droughts and floods, one of the hallmarks of climate change, the agency added, could be particularly bad for agriculture.

Tags: climate change, india, asia