Global Warming

What Climate Change is doing to our Lakes

A new study has found that global warming is resulting in rapidly increasing temperatures in lakes worldwide, an alarming find that means freshwater supplies and ecosystems are being threatened by climate change.

The study, conducted by NASA and the National Science Foundation, is the largest study of its kind, using satellite temperature data and long-term ground measurements to examine 235 lakes.

The result were stunning: there was an increase of 0.34 degrees Celsius on average each decade for lakes worldwide, which would have massive effects on drinking water and the habitat for animals and fish.

The 235 lakes the study examined represents half the world’s freshwater supply.

The 0.34 degree increase is greater than the warming rate for both the ocean and the atmosphere. That can mean only one thing: more algal blooms, which can suck up oxygen and water. The study suggests that such blooms will increase 20 percent over the next century, and the kind of blooms that are toxic to wildlife would jump 5 percent.

It would also result in a 4 percent increase in methane emissions. That’s concerning because methane is 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.

But rapid changes in temperature like this are more than just bad in terms of creating algal blooms or resulting in methane releases. A quick change in temperature can dramatically alter the survival rate of life forms in a lake, causing some species to suddenly disappear from the Earth. That can upset the balance of an ecosystem, causing further havoc in the wildlife kingdom — which will certainly have ripple effects for mankind.

Arctic air temperature highest since 1900 — Report

The Arctic is heating up, with air temperatures the hottest in 115 years, and the melting ice destroying walrus habitat and forcing some fish northward.

Air temperature anomalies over land were 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 degrees Celsius) above average, “the highest since records began in 1900,” said the 2015 Arctic Report Card, an annual peer-reviewed study issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Meanwhile, the annual sea ice maximum occurred February 25, about two weeks earlier than average, and was “the lowest extent recorded since records began in 1979.”

“Warming is happening more than twice as fast in the Arctic than anywhere else in the world. We know this is due to climate change, and its impacts are creating major challenges for Arctic communities,” said NOAA chief scientist Rick Spinrad at the annual American Geophysical Union fall meeting in San Francisco.

The average annual air temperature was measured over land between October 2014 and September 2015. It marked a 5.4 degree F (3 degree C) increase since the beginning of the 20th century.

The minimum sea ice extent, measured on September 11, 2015, was the fourth lowest in the satellite record since 1979. “Arctic minimum sea ice extent has been declining at a rate of 13.4 percent per decade” relative to the 1981-2010 average, said the findings.

In the 1980s, older, thicker ice made up about half of the ice sheet, but now, what is known as “first year ice” dominates the winter ice cover and made up 70 percent of the March 2015 ice pack. This thinner, younger ice is more likely to melt in the summer than thicker ice, said the report.

Snow cover across the Arctic has also been declining and is down 18 percent per decade since 1979.

This year, Greenland experienced its first significant melting event since 2012, and lost more than half of its surface area.

Wildlife

World's Fish Migrating To Escape Global Warming

For several years now, some fishers have been noticing changes in their nets. In places, new species are being caught. Sea bass and red mullet have moved north into British waters. Pacific salmon have swum to the Beaufort Sea, where – according to Dan Pauly of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada – the Inuit have no name for them.

Elsewhere, staple catches are vanishing fast.

But whether this is a global effect and what is behind the change have been unclear. Are fish being ousted from their original habitats as climate change warms the waters? Are disappearances due to overfishing?

Now, Pauly and colleagues have found that the mix of fish in all the world's major fisheries has changed since 1970, as fish that prefer warmer waters move in. The average temperature preference of fisheries has risen by nearly 1 ºC in temperate regions. The effect correlated closely with local increases in sea surface temperatures, but not with fishing pressure or other oceanic features such as currents.

Ominously, the temperature preference of tropical fisheries also rose initially, until the 1980s, then levelled off. Cooler-water species moved out, but there are no heat-loving species to replace them. The species that are abandoning tropical fisheries may also be the most important food species for coastal communities that subsist on fishing.

Global Warming

Climate Change Threatens Food Security in Asia and Africa

Growing crops is predicted to become more difficult if not impossible in parts of Africa and Asia as global climate change shifts rainfall patterns and temperatures.

Millions of people across Africa and parts of Asia could become destitute and face a mounting threat of starvation in the coming decades as greenhouse gas-induced climate change shifts how and where crops can be grown.

That was one of the issues being discussed at an international conference in Dublin, convened to examine the link between food security and global warming.

Many researchers and activists there believe climate change may spell lower crop yields, higher food prices and widespread hunger later on in the 21st century.

As the climate of the Earth continues to change, there are concerns that extreme weather and changing seasonal precipitation patterns will limit both crop yields and livestock production.

Warmer weather may also exacerbate the spread of disease, fungi, and insect pests.

Some regions are already experiencing the effects of climate change, says Ertharin Cousin, executive director of the UN’s World Food Programme. Speaking in Ireland, she warned that “we are entering an uncertain and risky period.”

Environment

Tropical Forests Unexpectedly Resilient to Climate Change

Tropical forests are unlikely to die off as a result of the predicted rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases this century, a new study finds. The analysis refutes previous work that predicted the catastrophic loss of the Amazon rainforest as one of the more startling potential outcomes of climate change.

In the most extensive study of its kind, an international team of scientists simulated the effect of business-as-usual emissions on the amounts of carbon locked up in tropical forests across Amazonia, Central America, Asia and Africa through to 2100. They compared the results from 22 different global climate models teamed with various models of land-surface processes. In all but one simulation, rainforests across the three regions retained their carbon stocks even as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration increased throughout the century.

The fertilizing effect of carbon dioxide, which boosts plant growth, counteracts the release completely if it is as large as expected due to climate change.

That tropical forests will retain their carbon stocks long term gives a major boost to policies aimed at keeping forests intact, such as the United Nations' REDD programme on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

But there may be more immediate threats to forests in the next 20 to 30 years from extreme weather events. And those events will only become more common in a warming world.

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2,800 Dead Pigs in Shanghai River, China

A surge in the dumping of dead pigs upstream from Shanghai — with more than 2,800 carcasses floating into the financial hub through Monday — has followed a police campaign to curb the illicit trade in sick pig parts.

The effort to keep infected pork off dinner tables may be fuelling new health fears, as Shanghai residents and local media fret over the possibility of contamination of the city’s water supply, though authorities say no contamination has been detected.

Authorities have been pulling out the swollen and rotting pigs, some with their internal organs visible, since Friday.

Environment

Norway's $650 billion sovereign wealth fund, one of the world's biggest investors, has started asking companies it invests in to minimise their impact on rainforests.

It is hoped this will mean Norway stops investing and pulls out of many companies that are damaging rainforests.

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A new study by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, USA has found that climate model projections that show a greater rise in global temperature are likely to prove more accurate than those showing a lesser rise over the coming decades.

Scientists analyzed how well 16 leading sophisticated climate models reproduce observed relative humidity in Earth's tropics and subtropics.

Current climate models predict temperature increases in this century, if current carbon dioxide emission levels continue unchanged, at between 3 and 8 degrees Fahrenheit, compared to 19th century temperatures. The average prediction is 5 degrees. If this new study proves accurate, that would mean temperature increases on the upper end of the 3-to-8 degree range if nothing changes. The greater the temperature rise, the greater the effect on sea level rise, heat waves, droughts and other effects

The world's major global climate models are all based on long-established physical laws known to guide the atmosphere. However, because these relationships are challenging to translate into software, each model differs slightly in its portrayal of global climate. In particular, some processes, such as those associated with clouds, are too small to be represented properly. Although satellites observe many types of clouds, satellite failure, observing errors and other inconsistencies make it challenging to build a comprehensive global cloud census that is consistent over many years.

Environment

Major nations failed to reach agreement on Thursday to set up huge marine protected areas off Antarctica under a plan to step up conservation of creatures such as whales and penguins around the frozen continent.

Environmentalists criticised the failure to agree new marine protected areas in the Ross Sea and off East Antarctica, home to penguins, seals, whales and seabirds as well as valuable stocks of shrimp-like krill.

Most resistance came from Ukraine, Russia and China.

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Peru, the world's top fishmeal exporter, has slashed its commercial fishing quota as warmer water temperatures and controversial practices deplete stocks of anchovy in one of the world's richest fisheries.

The government cut its quota for this summer's anchovy season by 68 percent to 810,000 tonnes, the smallest allowance in 25 years. Anchovy is rarely eaten fresh, but is instead dried, ground up and exported as a protein-rich feed for livestock and farmed fish.

Environment

Venice, Italy sees its first 'acqua alta' of the season on October 15, 2012. The 'acqua alta' is a convergence of high tides and a strong sirocco. Tourists walk with plastic bags to protect their shoes on a flooded St Mark's square. Venice is particularly vulnerable to rising ocean levels due to climate change.

 

 

September's average temperature was 60.2 degrees Fahrenheit (15.6 degrees Celsius) worldwide, which is 1.2 degrees above normal. This year matched the hottest September on record which was 2005, with the heat most intense in South America, Japan, Russia, Canada and the Atlantic Ocean. It was the third time since 2000 that the world set or tied a heat record for September. In addition to 2012 and 2005, previous hot September records were set in 2003. These records go back to 1880.

Climate Change

As expected, the amount of sea ice in the Arctic has fallen to the lowest level on record.

Satellites tracking the extent of the sea ice found over the weekend that it covered about 1.58 million square miles, or less than 30 percent of the Arctic Ocean's surface, scientists said. That is below the previous record low, set in 2007, but with weeks still to go in the summer melting season, it is clear that the record will be beaten by a wide margin.

Arctic Warming

A rare summer storm blasted the Arctic this week, beginning off the coast of Alaska, and moving over much of the Arctic Sea for several days before dissipating.

Nasa reports that Arctic storms such as this one can have a large impact on the sea ice, causing it to melt rapidly through many mechanisms, such as tearing off large swaths of ice and pushing them to warmer sites, churning the ice and making it slushier, or lifting warmer waters from the depths of the Arctic Ocean.

“It seems that this storm has detached a large chunk of ice from the main sea ice pack. This could lead to a more serious decay of the summertime ice cover than would have been the case otherwise, even perhaps leading to a new Arctic sea ice minimum,” said Claire Parkinson, a climate scientist with NASA Goddard. “Decades ago, a storm of the same magnitude would have been less likely to have as large an impact on the sea ice, because at that time the ice cover was thicker and more expansive.”

 

Climate Change

Nearly all of Greenland's massive ice sheet suddenly started melting a bit this month, a freak event that surprised scientists.

Three satellites show unprecedented melting of the ice sheet that blankets the island, starting on July 8 and lasting four days to 12 July. Most of the thick ice remains. While some ice usually melts during the summer, what was unusual was that the melting happened in a flash and over a widespread area.

A wave of warm air washed over the Greenland ice sheet and melted it. The ice melt area went from 40 percent of the ice sheet to 97 percent in four days, according to NASA.

 

Global Warming

A new study has shown that dumping iron into the oceans can alleviate global warming.

The introduction of iron into the ocean has the effect of fertilising algae which prompts blooms of algae and phytoplankton. The fast growing algae absorbs relatively large quantities of carbon dioxide. When the algae dies, it sinks to the bottom of the ocean, taking the carbon with it - thereby removing the carbon from the atmosphere.

The value of such geoengineering remains in question. Iron fertilization of the oceans could at most remove about 1 gigatonne of CO₂ per year compared to annual emissions of 8-9Gt.

More research concerning the possible long term effects on the ocean environment of dumping huge quantities of iron needs to be done.

 

Climate Change

A chunk of ice twice the size of Manhattan island has broken off the Petermann glacier in Greenland due to warmer ocean temperatures. Not only are the glaciers seen to be retreating, but the volume of ice covering Greenland has substantially diminished due to extraordinary melt.

 

Climate Change

The U.S. government has concluded for the first time that man-made climate change is likely connected to a rash of recent extreme weather events across the country, in particular the drought affecting Texas and the corn belt as well as the severe wildfires that have hit Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah.

 

Climate Change

An unprecedented heat wave across south-eastern and midwest USA. 3 200 high temperature records have been broken or tied during the last month.

University of Adelaide researchers have found that certain Australian plants are narrowing their leaves in response to changes in climate.

 

Climate Change

A recent study published Sunday, shows that sea levels are rising much faster along a 600 mile stretch of USA coastline from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to just north of Boston, than they are around the globe.

Since 1990, global sea levels have risen by about 2 inches, while along this stretch of coastline, sea levels have risen by up to 4.8 inches.

Computer models have previously suggested that melting ice from Greenland and Antarctica will change ocean currents causing a rise of sea levels along the US east coast. Now this is the first study that shows this has already happened.

 

Climate Change

NASA scientists say they have discovered an astonishing algae bloom in the Arctic Ocean. When a team of NASA scientists pushed a hole through three feet of ice, they found waters richer in the microscopic marine plants known as phytoplankton than in any other ocean region on Earth. They have equated their discovery as one being 'as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert'. The discovery bodes well for the planet, as fast-growing phytoplankton consume large amounts of carbon dioxide.

On the other hand, a group of international scientists suggest that the Earth is reaching a "tipping point" in climate change that will lead to increasingly rapid and irreversible destruction of the global environment unless its effects are controlled by concerted international action.

In their report in Nature, the scientists say their research shows that many combined factors are thrusting the world toward the tipping point they foresee. Among the problems are these:

-- The rapid growth in the world's human population - to 9 billion or more by 2050 and possibly as many as 27 billion by the end of the century - is quickly consuming available resources.

Fossil fuels are being burned at a rapidly increasing rate, increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 35 percent since the industrial revolution began. At the same time, ocean acidity has risen by 5 percent in the past 20 years.

-- Ocean productivity is being diminished by vast "dead zones" where no fish swim, while 40 percent of Earth's land mass that was once "biodiverse" now contains far fewer species of crop plants and domestic animals.

-- More animal species than ever are becoming extinct, and many plant and animal species are being forced by global warming to seek new ranges that could place them at risk of extinction, as well.

-- Within the next 60 years, the average global temperature "will be higher than it has been since the human species evolved."

However, as with many climate change models, there remains an element of uncertainty in their predictions . . . .

 

Climate Change

Researchers from New Zealand’s University of Auckland suggest that according to satellite data from March 2000 to February 2010, the average height of clouds declined by approximately 100 to 130 feet.

A reduction in cloud height would allow the planet to radiate more heat into space thereby slowing the effects of global warming.

More research needs to be done, as the test period is too short to determine a definite trend.

Climate Change

Scientists report that carbon dioxide levels in the Arctic have reached 400 parts per million [ppm]. Years ago, when levels passed 350 ppm, scientists said that was the highest safe level for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Levels were at 275 ppm in the pre-industrial age.

At present only the Arctic is showing levels of 400 ppm, with the global average being 395.

Climate Change

Dozens of streams and springs dry up in the Kullu region in northern India. The flow of major rivers has also dropped dramatically, placing pressure on available drinking water resources. Insufficient and declining snowfalls are being blamed for this phenomenon.