Science News
May 15th, 2008
<http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/32207/title/Boreal_forests_shift_north>

Boreal forests shift north
By Janet Raloff

Advancing greenery could further heat the already warming climate

For the Arctic, green is the new black.

People frequently say “green” to mean
“environmentally friendly.” But conifer forests -
really big greens - encroaching on Arctic tundra
threaten to further accelerate warming in the far
North.

Temperatures at these high latitudes already are
climbing “at about twice the global average,”
notes F. Stuart Chapin of the University of
Alaska in Fairbanks.

Continue Reading »

Some interesting observations here…i have been giving alot of thought
over the years to the impacts of global warming on the characteristics of
severe thunderstorms & severe thunderstorm outbreaks, & thus far have
drawn only 1 fairly certain conclusion:

GET USED TO IT!

The nature of building construction is going to have to change ASAP…for
EVERYONE-not just those privileged enough to “afford” it. Along w/ energy
efficiency, storm-proofing will be as critical in places like the eastern
2/3 of the country (hell-EVERYWHERE) as earthquake-proofing building
standards are on the West Coast. It is rapidly becoming an issue of
disaster preparedness & public health-w/ all its racist & classist
implications…

A. Storm Tracker

Continue Reading »

Note the US Forest Service official’s quote at the end: smells like something’s afoot…

ASW

———————————————
“The findings run contrary to expectation. It was
thought that more trees meant more carbon being
drawn from the atmosphere. ‘If you suppress fires
and lots of little trees show up, then you ought
to store more carbon,’ says ecologist Richard
Houghton of the Woods Hole Research Center in
Falmouth, Massachusetts.”
—————————————————————

Nature
14 May 2008   doi:10.1038/news.2008.818

News

Forest-fire management ‘raises carbon emissions’

California study suggests fire-free forests store less carbon.

Quenching forest fires leads to more carbon in
the air, says new research carried out in
Californian forests. The discovery suggests that
forests spared from fire may release more of the
greenhouse gas into the air than they absorb.

Decades of suppressing natural fires has
increased the number of surviving trees in
California’s forests. But this growth has been at
the expense of larger trees, which are less
resilient to drought and other stresses than
smaller, younger trees, resulting in a decline in
the total amount of carbon stored in these
forests.

Continue Reading »

————————————————–
The new study is written by many of the people
who wrote the so-called Working Group I report,
the first of a trio of major assessments released
last year by the IPCC.

It concludes “significant changes” are already
occurring among natural systems on all
continents, with the exception of Antarctica, and
in most oceans.
—————————————————

Alalam News  (Tehran, Iran)
Wednesday,  14   May   2008

‘Significant’ Climate Change Occurring
<http://www.alalam.ir/english/en-NewsPage.aspnewsid=032060120080514111031>

PARIS, May 14–A wide-scale study published
Wednesday has strengthened warnings, spelt out
last year by UN scientists that climate change is
already on the march.

The paper, published in Nature, goes beyond the
scope taken by a landmark report issued by the
UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) in February 2007.

Continue Reading »

The latest from NASA’s Earth Observatory (13 May 2008

******************

- NASA Satellite Captures Image of
Cyclone Nargis Flooding in Burma (Myanmar)

* Media Alerts:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/

- Researchers Forecast 59 Percent Chance
of Record Low Arctic Sea Ice in 2008
- Scientists Discover New Ocean Current
- Before Fossil Fuels, Earth’s Minerals Kept CO2 in Check
- Northern Lights Glimmer with Unexpected Trait
- Stratospheric Injections to Counter
Global Warming Could Damage Ozone Layer
- Better Regional Monitoring of CO2
Needed as Global Levels Continue Rising
- Ozone Hole Recovery May Reshape Southern Hemisphere Climate Change
- Sierra Nevada Rose to Current Height Earlier Than Thought

———————————————————————
Earth Observatory weekly mailing — http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/
To unsubscribe, e-mail: eo-announce-unsubscribe@eodomo.gsfc.nasa.gov
For additional commands, e-mail: eo-announce-help@eodomo.gsfc.nasa.gov

———————————————————————————-

Medieval church re-emerges as Spain ships in water
Wed May 14, 2008 11:14am EDT

Barcelona ships in water supplies

By Martin Roberts

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Perhaps the most striking image of Spain’s drought, so severe it has forced Barcelona to ship in water, has been that of the underwater church which emerged from a drying dam.

For most of the past four decades, all that has been visible of the village of Sant Roma has been the belltower of its stone church, peeping above the water beside forested hills from a valley flooded in the 1960s to provide water for the Catalonia region.

This year, receding waters have exposed the 11th-century church completely, attracting crowds of tourists who stand gazing around it on the dusty bed of the reservoir.

Neighboring Vilanova de Sau is enjoying a tourist boom, its mayor Joan Riera says.

Continue Reading »

—————————————
“The figures, published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) on its website, also confirm that carbon dioxide,
the chief greenhouse gas, is accumulating in the atmosphere faster than
expected.”
———–

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/12/climatechange.carbonemissions
Monday May 12 2008

World CO2 levels at record high, scientists warn
David Adam

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has reached a
record high, according to new figures that renew fears that climate
change could begin to slide out of control.

Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in
the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40%
since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last
650,000 years.

Continue Reading »

A new entry titled ‘What the IPCC Models Really Say’ has been posted to RealClimate.org.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=564

————————————————————————–

Fire managers predict bad year for blazes
Sat May 10, 2008 2:37pm EDT

By Laura Zuckerman

SALMON, Idaho (Reuters) - U.S. fire managers are forecasting a grim year for blazes in drought-plagued Western states, just weeks after a premature start to the Southwest’s wildfire season.

This comes even as the U.S. Forest Service, the lead agency for fighting fires on vast swaths of public and private lands, is reassessing a years-old model that sought to contain all blazes at all times.

Environmental and financial strains paired with demographic changes have made that strategy ineffective in an era of record-size fires sweeping across the West, experts say.

Continue Reading »

Sun May 11, 2008 11:51am EDT

Deadly tornadoes hit U.S.

OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) - At least 19 people were killed in Missouri and Oklahoma when tornadoes and violent storms ripped through the central and southeastern United States, devastating neighborhoods and injuring hundreds, officials said on Sunday.

The National Weather Service reported six deaths in Oklahoma and 13 in Missouri but those tolls may rise.

Continue Reading »

Global cooling theories put scientists on guard
Fri May 9, 2008 1:44pm EDT  By Gerard Wynn

LONDON (Reuters) - A new study suggesting a possible lull in manmade global warming has raised fears of a reduced urgency to battle climate change.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of hundreds of scientists, last year said global warming was “unequivocal” and that manmade greenhouse gas emissions were “very likely” part of the problem.

And while the study published in the journal Nature last week did not dispute manmade global warming, it did predict a cooling from recent average temperatures through 2015, as a result of a natural and temporary shift in ocean currents.

The IPCC predicted global temperature increases this century of 1.8 to 4 degrees Celsius.

Continue Reading »

Sahara dried out slowly, not abruptly: study
Thu May 8, 2008 5:46pm EDT

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - The once-green Sahara turned to desert over thousands of years rather than in an abrupt shift as previously believed, according to a study on Thursday that may help understanding of future climate changes.

And there are now signs of a tiny shift back towards greener conditions in parts of the Sahara, apparently because of global warming, said the lead author of the report about the desert’s history published in the journal Science.

The study of ancient pollen, spores and aquatic organisms in sediments in Lake Yoa in northern Chad showed the region gradually shifted from savannah 6,000 years ago towards the arid conditions that took over about 2,700 years ago.

Continue Reading »

A new entry titled ‘Global Cooling-Wanna Bet?’ has been posted to
RealClimate.org.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=563

———————————————————————————–

Do you eat shrimp imported from Asia? Do you vacation there?
Lance
——————————————–
“… large-scale conversion of mangroves into
shrimp and fish farms were among the main
destructive drivers.

“Other pressures included new development to
accommodate the growth in the tourism sector and
rising populations.”
———————————————-

BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7385315.stm

Published: 2008/05/06 17:30:25 GMT

Mangrove loss ‘left Burma exposed’
By Mark Kinver
Science and nature reporter, BBC News

Destruction of mangrove forests in Burma left
coastal areas exposed to the devastating force of
the weekend’s cyclone, a top politician suggests.

ASEAN secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan said
coastal developments had resulted in mangroves,
which act as a natural defence against storms,
being lost.

At least 22,000 people have died in the disaster, say state officials.

Continue Reading »

Published on Monday, May 5, 2008 by The Independent/UK
Sinking Without Trace: Australia’s Climate Change Victims

Like Kiribati and Tuvalu, the islands of the Torres Strait are slowly being submerged. But unlike their Pacific neighbours, the plight of their inhabitants is being overlooked.

Ron and Maria Passi, who operate Murray Island’s only taxi, were out driving the night the king tide struck. Neighbours flagged them down, asking for help, and so it was not until some time later that they saw their own grandchildren standing in the road. “They were shouting ‘Granddad, stop the car, the water is coming in the house’,” says Ron. “I just slammed on the brakes.”

The couple’s son, Sonny, was outside his fibro shack with his five children, watching the monster surf, lashed by north-west winds, rise ever higher. In the commotion, everyone had forgotten that Sedoi, the baby, was still inside. They heard her crying and found her in her cot, covered in sand. Water had surged in after a wave picked up a big wooden pallet and flung it through the front wall.

Continue Reading »

———————————————————————————
“We have to try to model an immensely complex
system all the way from the tropical rainforest,
the oceans, the northern hemisphere forests, the
soil - and we have no fundamental equations to do
that with,” he says.

“When we are modelling the physics of the oceans
and the atmosphere, we do have some fundamental
equations.

“We don’t have those for the living parts of the system.”
———————————————————————-

BBC NEWS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7381250.stm
Published: 2008/05/06 08:12:52 GMT

Climate prediction: No model for success
By Roger Harrabin
Environment analyst, BBC News

Pier Luigi Vidale smiles fondly as he gazes at
the image unfolding on his screen.

It is a rare and beautiful view of Planet Earth.

Curlicues of cloud formations swirl around the
Antarctic at the bottom of the screen as if
captured by time-lapse photography.

The image resembles a view of the Earth from space, stretched full frame.

But a small yellow ball scudding along the bottom
of the screen hints at another story.

The ball is the Sun, heating the surface as it
passes and provoking a daily puff of cloud from
the Amazon rainforest in this computer-generated
climate model.

The animation comes from research led by Dr
Vidale at Reading University’s Walker Institute.

It is designed to provide long-term data to help
scientists distinguish between heating trends and
natural climatic fluctuations.

Continue Reading »

“Research by  definition is done at the frontier of ignorance. Like
nearly everyone described in these essays, Callendar had to use
intuition as well as logic to draw any conclusions at all from the
murky data and theories at his disposal. Like nearly everyone, he
argued for conclusions that mingled the true with the false, leaving
it to later workers to peel away the bad parts. While he could not
prove that global warming was underway, he had given reasons to
reconsider the question. We owe much to Callendar’s courage. His
claims rescued the idea of global warming from obscurity and thrust
it into the marketplace of scientific ideas. Not everyone dismissed
his claims. Their very uncertainty attracted scientific curiosity.”

Excerpt from The Discovery of Global Warming, by Spencer Weart, an
excellent book available free from the American Institute of Physics:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

————————————————————————————

——————–
“If you are planting long-lived plants like trees then you might want
to choose a species that can cope with hotter, drier, summers and
warmer, wetter, winters,” said Vicky Pope, the Met Office’s head of
climate change. The decision to take the message to gardeners
reflects concern among researchers that the public has still not
understood the threat of climate change.”
———————————

Times Online
From The Sunday Times
May 4, 2008

Park the mower: climate change to kill off lawns
Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

THE Met Office is to warn gardeners to plan for a
warmer climate by cultivating drought-tolerant
plants such as palms, olives and Mediterranean
herbs and to resign themselves to the death of
the traditional lawn.

It believes this year will be one of the hottest on record.

Continue Reading »

-Over 350 dead as cyclone pounds Myanmar
Sun May 4, 2008 4:00pm EDT 
Cyclone devastates Myanmar

Myanmar damage will take days to assess: U.N.
3:48am EDT By Aung Hla Tun

YANGON (Reuters) - A cyclone killed more than 350 people in military-ruled Myanmar, ripping through Yangon and the Irrawaddy delta where it flattened at least two towns, officials and state media said on Sunday.

The death toll is likely to climb as the authorities manage to contact outlying islands and villages that felt the full force of Cyclone Nagris, a Category 3 storm packing winds of 120 miles per hour when it hit early on Saturday.

State television, which was still off air in Yangon more than 36 hours after Nagris slammed into the city of 5 million, reported 20,000 homes destroyed on one island alone, a government official in the remote capital, Naypyidaw, said.

Continue Reading »

Climate change warms Arctic, cools Antarctica
Fri May 2, 2008 5:07pm EDT  By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Arctic and Antarctica are poles apart when it comes to the effects of human-fueled climate change, scientists said on Friday: in the north, it is melting sea ice, but in the south, it powers winds that chill things down.

The North and South poles are both subject to solar radiation and rising levels of climate-warming greenhouse gases, the researchers said in a telephone briefing. But Antarctica is also affected by an ozone hole hovering high above it during the austral summer.

“All the evidence points toward human-made effects playing a major role in the changes that we see at both poles and evidence that contradicts this is very hard to find,” said Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Continue Reading »

Rain and snow spell relief for Great Lakes
Fri May 2, 2008 1:26pm EDT  By Jonathan Spice

TORONTO (Reuters) - Twice as much autumn rain and early winter ice helped Lake Superior, the biggest of North America’s Great Lakes, bounce back from record low water levels reached last year.

The deep, cold lake on the Canada-U.S. border — the largest freshwater body of water in the world by surface area — rose about 31 cm (1 foot) in seven months, with half of that in April alone as the spring thaw melted heavy winter snowfall that arrived late in the season.

The turnaround in the uppermost of the Great Lakes could literally trickle down to its four lower cousins, spelling relief for shippers who use the major waterway and residents concerned over shallow channels and receding shorelines.

Continue Reading »

————————–
“…  a conversion of tundra to boreal forest as temperatures increase.”
—————————————————–

ECOLOGY: Fire in the Far North
Andrew M. Sugden

Paleoecological data sets contain historical
records of biotic responses to changes in
climate. Currently, high-latitude regions are
suffering a particularly aggressive regimen of
climate change; hence, an understanding of past
vegetation dynamics in these regions is
especially pertinent. Higuera et al. have
analyzed pollen records from north-central Alaska
and find that a combination of drier climates and
shrubbier tundra during the late glacial period
14,000 to 10,000 years ago led to regular fires.
Given present-day increases in shrub biomass and
temperature, tundra fire activity might increase
again, with consequences for vegetation dynamics
and carbon cycling. Tinner et al. have analyzed
pollen and other records from the past 700 years
(a period that includes the Little Ice Age of
1500 to 1800 CE) in southern Alaska, and find
that temperature fluctuations of 1° to 2°C,
together with changes in moisture balance, led to
conversions between boreal forest and tundra with
concomitant alterations in fire regimes. Taken
together, these findings are consistent with
models predicting a conversion of tundra to
boreal forest as temperatures increase. — AMS

PLoS ONE 3, e0001744 (2008); Ecology 89, 729 (2008).

———————————————————————————–

‘Big Dry’ hits Australian farmers 
By Nick Bryant
BBC News, Sydney 

The drought has forced 10% of farmers off the land in just five years

More than 10,000 Australian farming families have had to leave their land as a result of the country’s ongoing drought, new figures reveal. There has been a 10% drop in the number of farmers in the past five years, the figures released by the Australia Bureau of Statistics revealed.

Australia is presently in the grip of the what’s known locally as the “Big Dry” - the worst drought in a century. The figures reveal its impact on the nation’s farming communities. They show that the number of farmers in Australia has dropped by a third in just 20 years.

Continue Reading »

Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study
Thu May 1, 2008 2:31pm EDT 
Natural changes may offset global warming briefly
30 Apr 2008 By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming could gradually starve parts of the tropical oceans of oxygen, damaging fisheries and coastal economies, a study showed on Thursday.

Areas of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with low amounts of dissolved oxygen have expanded in the past 50 years, apparently in line with rising temperatures, according to the scientists based in Germany and the United States.

And models of global warming indicate the trend will continue because oxygen in the air mixes less readily with warmer water. Large fish such as tuna or swordfish avoid, or are unable to survive, in regions starved of oxygen.

Continue Reading »

Arctic sea ice forecast: another record low in 2008
Arctic ice seen melting faster than anticipated
Thu May 1, 2008 1:43am EDT
24 Apr 2008
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Arctic sea ice, sometimes billed as Earth’s air conditioner for its moderating effects on world climate, will probably shrink to a record low level this year, scientists predicted on Wednesday.

In releasing the forecast, climate researcher Sheldon Drobot of the University of Colorado at Boulder called the changes in Arctic sea ice “one of the more compelling and obvious signs of climate change.”

Continue Reading »

Next decade ‘may see no warming’ 
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website 
 
La Nina conditions have brought unseasonably cold weather to Europe

The Earth’s temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.

A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.

However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.

Continue Reading »

World’s largest lake warming rapidly: scientists
Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:46pm EDT  By Timothy Gardner

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Siberia’s Lake Baikal has warmed faster than global air temperatures over the past 60 years, which could put animals unique to the world’s largest lake in jeopardy, U.S. and Russian scientists said.

The lake has warmed 1.21 degrees Celsius (2.18 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1946 due to climate change, almost three times faster than global air temperatures, according to a paper by the scientists to be published next month in the journal “Global Change Biology.”

Continue Reading »

Excerpts from George M. Woodwell’s “The Energy Cycle of the
Biosphere,” Scientific American, September 1970.

******************************************************************************
“It is solar energy that moves the rabbit, the deer, the whale, the
boy on the bicycle outside my window, my pencil as I write these
words.”

“Only about a tenth of 1 percent of the energy received from the sun
by the earth is fixed by photosynthesis ….  about the equivalent to
the annual production of between 150 and 200 billion tons of dry
organic matter and includes both food for man and the energy that
runs the life support systems of the biosphere, namely the earth’s
major ecosystems : the forests, grasslands, oceans, marshes,
estuaries, lakes, rivers, tundras, and deserts.

Continue Reading »

Those of you who still try to contend with
debunkers will have noticed that they say that
weather is hard to predict beyond the next few
days, so we sure can’t trust predictions for the
next few decades or centuries.

The two letters, below, published by Nature in
2007, will give you something to work with.
Lance

  NATURE
  Vol 448
  30 August 2007

  CORRESPONDENCE

Continue Reading »

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Salon: “Poison ice” and global warming
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:17:57 -0700
From: Fred Heutte <phred@SUNLIGHTDATA.COM>
Reply-To: Fred Heutte <phred@SUNLIGHTDATA.COM>
To: OREGON-LEADERS@LISTS.SIERRACLUB.ORG

My friend Elizabeth Grossman, a very talented and wide-ranging
writer (her books include “High Tech Trash,” about e-waste;
“The Undamming of America” and a Sierra Club Travel Guide,
“Adventuring Along the Lewis & Clark Trail”) has now turned her
attention to the Arctic and has a good piece below published
by Salon today . . .

This is the result of research she’s doing for a book on
bioaccumulative chemicals generally but the Arctic plays a big
role in it.
fh

——————————–

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/04/30/arctic_pollutants/

Poison ice

By Elizabeth Grossman

April 30, 2008 | ARCTIC OCEAN — Over 300 miles north of the Arctic
Circle, in the polar dark of a December morning, University of
Manitoba Ph.D. student Jesse Carrie is out on the frozen Beaufort
Sea, collecting ice samples to measure for mercury and pesticides.
Lowered by crane from the deck of the icebreaking research vessel
the CCGS Amundsen, and accompanied by a rifle bearer who keeps
watch for polar bears, Carrie extracts ice cores and vials of
frigid water. Carrie is part of a $40 million International Polar
Year scientific expedition, the first ever to spend the winter
moving through sea ice north of the Arctic Circle. The expedition’s
labor-intensive work is essential to understanding the impacts of
global warming.

Continue Reading »

Warming shifts gardeners’ maps
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

Every gardener is familiar with the multicolor U.S. map of climate zones
on the back of seed packets. It’s the Department of Agriculture’s
indicator of whether a flower, bush or tree will survive the winters in
a given region.

It’s also 18 years old. A growing number of meteorologists and
horticulturists say that because of the warming climate, the 1990 map
doesn’t reflect a trend that home gardeners have noticed for more than a
decade: a gradual shift northward of growing zones for many plants.

The map doesn’t show, for example, that the Southern magnolia, once
limited largely to growing zones ranging from Florida to Virginia, now
can thrive as far north as Pennsylvania. Or that kiwis, long hardy only
as far north as Oklahoma, now might give fruit in St. Louis.

Continue Reading »

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/7363600.stm
2008/04/28 Nature’s carbon balance confirmed

Scientists have found new evidence that the Earth’s
natural feedback mechanism regulated carbon dioxide
levels for hundreds of thousands of years. But they say
humans are now emitting CO2 so fast thatthe planet’s
natural balancing mechanism cannot keep up.

The researchers, writing in the journal Nature
Geoscience, say their findings confirm a long-believed
theory.

Continue Reading »

National Geographic News: NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM/NEWS
April 25, 2008

Arctic Getting “Wetter” Due to Human-Driven Warming
Mason Inman for National Geographic News

In addition to heating up faster than almost
anywhere else on the planet, the Arctic has
gotten wetter and snowier because of global
warming, according to a new study.

The extra precipitation could freshen ocean water
in the Arctic and North Atlantic, researchers
say, which might disrupt the so-called ocean
conveyor belt, a current that runs through the
Atlantic and carries warm water northward from
the Equator.

Continue Reading »

Climate ‘fix’ could deplete ozone
By Helen Briggs  Science reporter, BBC News

Research has cast new doubt on the wisdom of using
Sun-blocking sulphate particles to cool the planet.

Sulphate injections are one of several
“geo-engineering” solutions to climate change being
discussed by scientists.

But data published in Science journal suggests the
strategy would lead to drastic thinning of the ozone
layer.

Continue Reading »

More 08 Caribbean hurricanes than avg: AccuWeather
Fri Apr 25, 2008 11:01am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - AccuWeather.com on Friday predicted the 2008 hurricane season in the Caribbean would be slightly above average, with an increased chance that storms would make landfall in North America.

A waning La Nina condition in the Pacific Ocean and a warm water cycle in the Atlantic ocean are the two main factors cited by the private weather forecasting service.

“The warming is not uniform across the entire Atlantic. In some areas where hurricanes normally form … ocean water temperatures are near or below normal,” Joe Bastardi, AccuWeather’s chief long-range forecaster, said in a news release.

Bastardi told Reuters in an interview in early April that the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season would see 12 to 13 named storms.

Up to four of the predicted storms would become hurricanes, with one of those becoming a major hurricane, Bastardi said.

Average hurricane seasons have 10 named storms.

(Reporting by Robert Campbell, editing by Matthew Lewis)

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——————————————————————————-
“Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago,
extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small
numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction.”
—————————————————————-

Associated Press
Apr 24 06:15 PM US/Eastern

Study says near extinction threatened people
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Human beings may have had a brush with extinction
70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests. The human
population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in
Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis
released Thursday.

The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford
University estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as
low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone
Age.

Continue Reading »

Plan to reverse global warming could backfire
Thu Apr 24, 2008 7:14pm EDT  By Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A proposed solution to reverse the effects of global warming by spraying sulfate particles into Earth’s stratosphere could make matters much worse, climate researchers said on Thursday.

They said trying to cool off the planet by creating a kind of artificial sun block would delay the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole by 30 to 70 years and create a new loss of Earth’s protective ozone layer over the Arctic.

“What our study shows is if you actually put a lot of sulfur into the atmosphere we get a larger ozone depletion than we had before,” said Simone Tilmes of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, whose research appears in the journal Science.

Continue Reading »

NEW ZEALAND

Largest glacier shrinking quickly

WELLINGTON — New Zealand’s biggest glacier is melting at its fastest pace in recent history, Massey University glacier expert Martin Brook said Thursday. The Tasman Glacier on South Island was 18 miles long in 1990, with virtually no lake at its front edge.
New measurements last week showed the glacier was 14 miles long, Brook said.
Meanwhile, a lake that has formed next to the glacier is now 4.4 miles long, 1.2 miles wide and 800 feet deep, he said.

————————————————————————————

Scientists have been citing evidence of links between greenhouse
forcing and the stratospheric ozone shield for some years. Here’s one
more.
Lance

========================
“The supercomputer modeling effort also indicated that ozone hole
recovery would weaken the intense westerly winds that currently whip
around Antarctica and block air masses from crossing into the
continent’s interior. As a result, Antarctica would no longer be
isolated from the warming patterns affecting the rest of the world.”
=================================================
Public release date: 24-Apr-2008
University of Colorado at Boulder

Contact: Judith Perlwitz
judith.perlwitz@noaa.gov
303-497-4814

Ozone hole recovery may reshape southern hemisphere climate change
A full recovery of the stratospheric ozone hole could modify climate
change in the Southern Hemisphere and even amplify Antarctic warming,
according to scientists from the University of Colorado at Boulder,
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

Continue Reading »

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080424-am-jurassic-warming.html

“During the Jurassic, abrupt global warming of between 9 and 18
Fahrenheit (5 and 10 degrees Celsius) was associated with severe
environmental change. Many organisms went extinct and the global
carbon cycle was thrown off balance. One of the most intriguing
effects was that the oxygen content of the oceans became drastically
reduced, and this caused many marine species to die off.

“These intervals of reduced oxygen content in the oceans are now
known as oceanic anoxic events, or OAEs. OAEs are associated with
periods of global warming and have occurred a few times in Earth’s
history. In the recent study, researchers focused specifically on the
Toarcian OAE, a well-documented OAE from the early Jurassic.

“During OAEs, the remains of dead organisms and other organic matter
accumulate on the ocean floor and became layers of organic-rich
sediments. Today, scientists are examining the chemical and isotopic
compositions of these sedimentary deposits in order to determine the
actual extent to which the oceans became anoxic. By doing so, they
have been able to draw connections between oxygen-depleted oceans and
the disruption of Earth’s carbon cycle.”

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080424-am-jurassic-warming.html
“The structural relations within and between human societies
and their environments form the most complex systems
known to science.”

Charles D. Laughlin and Ivan Brady, editors,
Extinction and Survival in Human Populations
==============================================

“Making connections is the essence of scientific progress.”

Chris Quigg, “Aesthetic Science,”
Scientific American, April 1999
=============================================
————————————————————————————

U.S. environment scientists report political meddling
Wed Apr 23, 2008 7:10pm EDT By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nearly 900 scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency have experienced political interference in their work in the last five years, the Union of Concerned Scientists reported on Wednesday.

The nonprofit environmental organization said its investigation of EPA was in line with previous probes of other U.S. agencies which found “significant administration manipulation of federal science.”

A government spokesman denied this, and said scientific findings were balanced with policy concerns.

Continue Reading »

UK butterflies ‘need good summer’ 
 
The Duke of Burgundy butterflies have seen their numbers fall
 
Butterflies need a warm summer in order to help numbers recover from last year’s washout, say conservationists.

Data from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme showed that eight species were at an all-time low as a result of an unsuccessful summer in 2007.

The main reason behind the decline was an above average rainfall, which meant the insects, such as the common blue, had fewer chances to feed or breed.

Early forecasts suggest this summer could be wetter than average.

Continue Reading »

CO2, methane up sharply in 2007
Wed Apr 23, 2008 4:55pm EDT  
 
By Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The amount of two key greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere rose sharply in 2007, and carbon dioxide levels this year are literally off the chart, the U.S. government reported on Wednesday.

In its annual index of greenhouse gas emissions, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found atmospheric carbon dioxide, the primary driver of global climate change, rose by 0.6 percent, or 19 billion tons last year.

The amount of methane increased by 0.5 percent, or 27 million tons, after nearly a decade of little or no change, according preliminary figures to scientists at the government’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Colorado.

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Sun cycles seen not key to recent global warming
Wed Apr 23, 2008 6:15pm EDT  By Bruce Nichols

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - Satellite data show that changes in the sun are contributing to global warming but to a smaller extent than human activity, a space scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington told a group of petroleum geologists on Wednesday.

“The sun is playing a role that you can detect, but it’s not the dominant role,” Judith Lean told a crowded session at the 2008 convention of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in San Antonio.

Climate-change skeptics have suggested that solar cycles may be more responsible than human activity for increasing global temperature. But Lean said her findings showed “the sun is a factor of 10 less than the anthropogenic.”

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This work out of Purdue regarding incorporating deforestation into climate models is critical…
except see what they’re doing with it: incrporating it right into false solutions. I got my undergrad
degree from that department…not always so proud of that when reminded of who they really
cater to.

Kyoto & “Green capitalism” makes me wanna puke…

ASW

From AAAS EurekAlert
http://www.eurekalert.org/bysubject/atmospheric.php

—————————————–
Public Release: 22-Apr-2008
AGU journal highlights — April 22, 2008

In this issue:

Cooling a climate disagreement; Southern skies sensitive to ozone
variation; Do surges trigger geomagnetic substorms?; Model warns
early of Indonesia, Australia drought; Corals reveal oceans’ carbon
reservoir age; Unusual tremor jiggles Mexican zone.

Contact: Peter Weiss
pweiss@agu.org
202-777-7507
American Geophysical Union

—————————————
Public Release: 22-Apr-2008
Carbon Balance and Management

Purdue researchers propose way to incorporate deforestation into
climate change treaty

Purdue University researchers have proposed a new option for
incorporating deforestation into the international climate change
treaty. The approach would provide carbon credits for developing
countries that both set aside a portion of existing forests and slow
the rate at which the remaining forests are cut down. A key point in
the approach is its call for a deceleration of deforestation.

Contact: Elizabeth K. Gardner
ekgardner@purdue.edu
765-494-2081
Purdue University

———————————————————————————————-

—————————–
“In fact,” said Willis, “these natural climate phenomena can sometimes
hide global warming caused by human activities. Or they can have the
opposite effect of accentuating it.”
—————————–

Science Daily
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080421195005.htm
Larger Pacific Climate Event Helps Current La Nina Linger

ScienceDaily (Apr. 22, 2008) - Boosted by the
influence of a larger climate event in the
Pacific, one of the strongest La Niñas in many
years is slowly weakening but continues to
blanket the Pacific Ocean near the equator, as
shown by new sea-level height data collected by
the U.S.-French Jason oceanographic satellite.

This La Niña, which has persisted for the past
year, is indicated by the blue area in the center
of the image along the equator. Blue indicates
lower than normal sea level (cold water). The
data were gathered in early April.

Continue Reading »

National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
April 21, 2008

Arctic Ice More Vulnerable to Sunny Weather, New Study Shows
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2008/arcticice.jsp

BOULDER-The shrinking expanse of Arctic sea ice is increasingly
vulnerable to summer sunshine, new research concludes. The study, by
scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and
Colorado State University (CSU), finds that unusually sunny weather
contributed to last summer’s record loss of Arctic ice, while similar
weather conditions in past summers do not appear to have had
comparable impacts.

The study, which draws on observations from instruments on a new
group of NASA satellites known as the “A-Train,” will be published
tomorrow in Geophysical Research Letters. It was funded by NASA and
the National Science Foundation, which is NCAR’s principal sponsor.

“In a warmer world, the thinner sea ice is becoming increasingly
sensitive to year-to-year variations in weather and cloud patterns,”
says NCAR’s Jennifer Kay, the lead author. “A single unusually clear
summer can now have a dramatic impact.”

The findings indicate that summer sunshine in the Arctic produces
more pronounced melting than in the past, largely because there is
now less ice to reflect solar radiation back into space. As a result,
the presence or absence of clouds now has greater implications for
sea ice loss.

******************
The above paragraphs are excerpts. For the complete press release, go to:
http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2008/arcticice.jsp

—————————————————————

—————————
“   * Although the ocean surface average was only
the 13th warmest on record, as the cooling
influence of La Niña in the tropical Pacific
continued, much warmer than average conditions
across large parts of Eurasia helped push the
global average to a near record high for March.
     * Despite above average snowpack levels in
the U.S., the total Northern Hemisphere snow
cover extent was the fourth lowest on record for
March, remaining consistent with boreal spring
conditions of the past two decades, in which
warming temperatures have contributed to
anomalously low snow cover extent.
     * Some weakening of La Niña, the cold phase
of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, occurred in
March, but moderate La Niña conditions remained
across the tropical Pacific Ocean.”
———

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080418112341.htm

Global Land Temperature Warmest
On Record In March 2008

ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2008) - The average global
land temperature last month was the warmest on
record and ocean surface temperatures were the
13th warmest. Combining the land and the ocean
temperatures, the overall global temperature
ranked the second warmest for the month of March.
Global temperature averages have been recorded
since 1880.

Continue Reading »

Freshening of deep Antarctic waters worries experts
Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:13pm EDT 

 
powered by  Sphere
Featured Broker sponsored link
  By David Fogarty

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Scientists studying the icy depths of the sea around Antarctica have detected changes in salinity that could have profound effects on the world’s climate and ocean currents.

The scientists returned to the southern Australian city of Hobart on Thursday after a one-month voyage studying the Southern Ocean to see how it is changing and what those changes might mean for global climate patterns.

Voyage leader Steve Rintoul said his team found that salty, dense water that sinks near the edge of Antarctica to the bottom of the ocean about 5 km (3 miles) down was becoming fresher and more buoyant.

Continue Reading »

Carnegie Institution
Public release date: 16-Apr-2008

Contact: Cristina Archer
lozej@stanford.edu
650-462-1047 x232

Changing jet streams may alter paths of storms and hurricanes

Stanford, CA-The Earth’s jet streams, the
high-altitude bands of fast winds that strongly
influence the paths of storms and other weather
systems, are shifting-possibly in response to
global warming. Scientists at the Carnegie
Institution determined that over a 23-year span
from 1979 to 2001 the jet streams in both
hemispheres have risen in altitude and shifted
toward the poles. The jet stream in the northern
hemisphere has also weakened. These changes fit
the predictions of global warming models and have
implications for the frequency and intensity of
future storms, including hurricanes.

Cristina Archer and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie
Institution’s Department of Global Ecology
tracked changes in the average position and
strength of jet streams using records compiled by
the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather
Forecasts, the National Centers for Environmental
Protection, and the National Center for
Atmospheric Research. The data included outputs
from weather prediction models, conventional
observations from weather balloons and surface
instruments, and remote observations from
satellites. The results are published in the
April 18 Geophysical Research Letters.

Continue Reading »

———————-
” … a good example of the “Cinderella science”-unloved
and overlooked-that often support significant discoveries.”
———————————

Seismological Society of America
Public release date: 17-Apr-2008

Contact: Nan Broadbent
press@seismosoc.org
408-431-9885

Tiny tremors can track extreme storms in a warming planet

SANTA FE, New Mexico–Data from faint earth
tremors caused by wind-driven ocean waves-often
dismissed as “background noise” at seismographic
stations around the world-suggest extreme ocean
storms have become more frequent over the past
three decades, according to research presented at
the annual meeting of the Seismological Society
of America.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
and other prominent researchers have predicted
that stronger and more frequent storms may occur
as a result of global warming trends. The tiny
tremors, or microseisms, offer a new way to
discover whether these predictions are already
coming true, said Richard Aster, a geophysics
professor at the New Mexico Institute of Mining
and Technology.

Continue Reading »

Nature   11 April 2008

News

The volcano that changed the world

Eruption in 1600 may have plunged the globe into cold climate chaos.
Alexandra Witze

Four centuries ago, a Peruvian volcano blew its
top - and the whole world may have felt it, a new
study suggests.

The eruption in 1600 of Huaynaputina, a
stratovolcano in the Andes mountains, blanketed
nearby villages with glowing rock and ash, and
killed some 1,500 people. But it may also have
had a far wider effect, by injecting sulphur
particles high into the atmosphere and disrupting
the climate worldwide.

Continue Reading »

Blog: Science Global Warming Researchers Reverse
Stance on Storm Intensity Theory
Michael Asher (Blog) - April 13, 2008 3:56 AM

The image of a hurricane-spawning smokestack was
used to promote the film, An Inconvenient Truth.

Author of the theory that global warming breeds
stronger hurricanes recants his view

Noted Hurricane Expert Kerry Emanuel has publicly
reversed his stance on the impact of Global
Warming on Hurricanes. Saying “The models are
telling us something quite different from what
nature seems to be telling us,” Emanuel has
released new research indicating that even in a
rapidly warming world, hurricane frequency and
intensity will not be substantially affected.

“The results surprised me,” says Emanuel, one of
the media’s most quoted figures on the topic.

Continue Reading »

EurekAlert! AAAS
10-Apr-2008

Pennsylvania State University

Contact: A’ndrea Elyse Messer
aem1@psu.edu
814-865-9481

Absence of clouds caused pre-human supergreenhouse periods

In a world without human-produced pollution, biological productivity
controls cloud formation and may be the lever that caused
supergreenhouse episodes during the Cetaceous and Eocene, according
to Penn State paleoclimatologists.

“Our motivation was the inability of climate models to reproduce the
climate of the supergreenhouse episodes of the Cetaceous and Eocene
adequately,” said Lee R. Kump, professor of geosciences. “People have
tried increasing carbon dioxide in the models to explain t