3.
What is the Controversy About?
Archives of Past Articles for Chapter
3
2008 August 8. The
Coming Arctic Invasion. By
Geerat J. Vermeij and Peter D.
Roopnarine, Science. Excerpt: The
current episode of climate warming
is having drastic consequences
for animal and plant life worldwide.
...North Pacific lineages will
resume spreading through the Bering
Strait into a warmer Arctic Ocean
and eventually into the temperate
North Atlantic.
Trans-Arctic invasion began about
3.5 million years ago during the
warm mid-Pliocene epoch. A combination
of northward flow through the Bering
Strait, high productivity in the
Bering Sea (the geographic source
of trans-Arctic invaders), favorable
conditions for rapid growth and
dispersal in the Arctic Ocean,
and the removal through extinction
of many species during the mid-Pliocene
in the North Atlantic enabled hundreds
of marine lineages to colonize
and enrich the biotas of the Arctic
and North Atlantic. ...the presence
of mid-Pliocene temperate marine
mollusks in northern Alaska and
Greenland indicates that coastal
sectors of the Arctic Ocean were
seasonally or perennially ice-free
at that time.
...Climate models and recently
observed trends toward contraction
and thinning of Arctic sea ice
predict seasonally or perennially
ice-free conditions in the nearshore
Arctic Ocean by 2050 or even earlier,
reestablishing a regime of temperature
and productivity similar to that
of the mid-Pliocene. Marine mollusks,
whose past and present distributions
are well documented, offer unparalleled
insight into how marine species
and communities are likely to respond
to these future conditions.
At least 77 molluscan lineages
(35% of 219 shell-bearing, shallow-water
mollusk species in the northern
Bering Sea) have the potential
to extend to the North Atlantic
via the warmer Arctic Ocean without
direct human assistance....
2008 August 7. Pacific
shellfish ready to invade Atlantic. Eureka
Alert. Excerpt: As the Arctic Ocean
warms this century, shellfish, snails
and other animals from the Pacific
Ocean will resume an invasion of the
northern Atlantic that was interrupted
by cooling conditions three million
years ago, predict Geerat Vermeij,
professor of geology at the University
of California, Davis, and Peter Roopnarine
at the California Academy of Sciences.
Climate models predict a nearly ice-free
Arctic Ocean by 2050. That will restore
conditions that last existed during
the mid-Pliocene era around three to
3.5 million years ago. Several north
Pacific species have relatives in the
north Atlantic, and the fossil record
shows a lot of invasion from the Pacific
to the Atlantic at that time, Vermeij
said.
When cold conditions returned, the
Arctic route was cut off, mostly by
a lack of food. As the ice melts, productivity
in the Arctic will rise and the northward
march of the mollusks will resume where
it left off three million years ago.
...But the invaders will not wipe out
native species, Vermeij said.... Instead,
the invasion will add new species and
hybrids and increase competition in
the North Atlantic.
"The composition and dynamics
of north Atlantic communities will
change," Roopnarine said. "But
whether that will help or harm local
fisheries is an open question. Humans
may have to adapt as well."
..."The interesting thing to me is
that the fossil record has something
to say about the consequences of global
warming," Vermeij said.
2008 August 6. Aphids
are sentinels of climate change. Biotechnology
and Biological Sciences Research
Council. Ecxerpt:
Aphids are emerging as sentinels
of climate change, researchers at
BBSRC-supported Rothamsted Research
have shown. One of the UK's most
damaging aphids - the peach-potato
aphid (Myzus persicae) - has been
found to be flying two weeks earlier
for every 1°C rise in mean temperature
for January and February combined.
This year, the first aphid was caught
on 25 April, which is almost four
weeks ahead of the 42-year average.
This work is reported in BBSRC Business,
the quarterly research highlights
magazine of BBSRC (the Biotechnology
and Biological Sciences Research
Council).
Dr Richard Harrington of the Rothamsted
Insect Survey said: "One of
the most noticeable consequences
of climate change in the UK is the
frequency of mild winters. As a direct
result of this, aphids seeking new
sources of food are appearing significantly
earlier in the year and in significantly
higher numbers. ... there are more
aphids flying in spring and early
summer, when crops are particularly
vulnerable to damage."....
2008 July 16. Eighth
Warmest June on Record for Globe. NOAA. Excerpt:
he combined average global land and
ocean surface temperatures for June
2008 ranked eighth warmest for June
since worldwide records began in
1880, according to an analysis by
NOAA’s National Climatic Data
Center in Asheville, N.C. Also, globally
it was the ninth warmest January – June
period on record.
Global Highlights:
• The combined global land
and ocean surface temperature for June
2008 was 60.8 degrees F, which is 0.9
degrees F above the 20th century mean
of 59.9 degrees F.
• For the January – June
period, the combined global land and
ocean surface temperature was 57.1
degrees F, which is 0.8 degrees F about
the 20th century mean of 56.3 degrees
F.
Other Highlights:
• Northern Hemisphere Arctic
sea ice extent for June 2008 ranked
third lowest for June since records
began in 1979. Southern Hemisphere
Antarctic sea ice extent for June 2008
was above the 1979-2000 mean, ranking
as the second largest June extent.
• El Niño-Southern Oscillation
conditions transitioned to a neutral
phase during June.
• Torrential rain lashed southern
China from June 7-18. These were followed
by more heavy rain from typhoon Fengshen
late in the month. The downpours caused
widespread floods and affected more
than five million people. June 2008
was the wettest month ever for Hong
Kong, Guangzhou, and Macao based on
records that began in 1884...
2008 July. Heat
Wave in Northern Europe. By Holli Riebeek and Jesse
Allen, NASA Earth Observatory. Excerpt:
On the calendar, Scandinavian summer
starts on June 21 in 2008, but summer
temperatures had already settled
over much of northern Europe by early
June. This
image shows land surface
temperatures—how hot the ground
is to the touch, a measure that is
different than the air temperatures
reported in the news—as observed
by the Moderate Resolution Imaging
Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's
Terra satellite between June 2 and
June 8, 2008.
The image compares the average temperature
between June 2 and June 8, 2008,
to average temperatures recorded
during the same period in June 2000
through 2007...
The intense heat and dry weather
led to dangerous fire conditions
in Scandinavia. Both Norway and Sweden
were plagued with several forest
fires in early June. A fire that
burned for several days in southern
Norway was the largest in the country's
history, causing an estimated ten
million dollars worth of damage,
reported The Norway Post on June
17, 2008...
2008 July 1. A
New Twist in Penguins’ Already
Uncertain Future. By Cornelia Dean,
The New York Times. Excerpt:
P. Dee Boersma, a biologist at the
University of Washington, has been
watching the Magellanic penguins
of Punta Tombo, in Argentina, for
almost 30 years. For most of that
time, their numbers have been declining:
breeding pairs are down 22 percent
there since 1987, she writes in Tuesday’s
issue of BioScience.
But the dwindling numbers do not
just mean the birds are suffering,
Dr. Boersma writes. Because penguins
are “marine sentinels,” their
decline is a blunt message that their
marine environment is in trouble,
chiefly from overfishing and pollution
from offshore oil operations and
shipping.
Now, though, Dr. Boersma writes,
they are also threatened by climate
change, which is reducing sea ice
and, as a result, the abundance of
the marine creatures the birds eat.
Magellanic penguins can swim almost
100 miles a day, she said in an e-mail
message, but to get enough to eat
now they must venture as much as
40 miles farther from their nests
than they did a decade ago.
Some of the food shortage is fishing-related,
Dr. Boersma said, but some appears
to be caused by climate change. As
glaciers and sea ice retreat, she
writes in her article, “even
small variations can have major consequences
for penguins.”
Climate change further threatens
the birds because about half nest
in burrows vulnerable to flooding,
which seems to be on the rise. “Climate
variation that brings more water
to desert environments may benefit
humans, but it will not help penguins,” Dr.
Boersma wrote Their troubles show
that “we have entered a new
era of unprecedented challenges for
marine systems.”...
2008 June 27. Exclusive:
No ice at the North Pole. By Steve Connor,
The Independent. Excerpt: It seems
unthinkable, but for the first time
in human history, ice is on course
to disappear entirely from the North
Pole this year.
The disappearance of the Arctic sea
ice, making it possible to reach
the Pole sailing in a boat through
open water, would be one of the most
dramatic – and worrying – examples
of the impact of global warming on
the planet. Scientists say the ice
at 90 degrees north may well have
melted away by the summer.
"From the viewpoint of science,
the North Pole is just another point
on the globe, but symbolically it
is hugely important. There is supposed
to be ice at the North Pole, not
open water," said Mark Serreze
of the US National Snow and Ice Data
Centre in Colorado.
If it happens, it raises the prospect
of the Arctic nations being able
to exploit the valuable oil and mineral
deposits below these a bed which
have until now been impossible to
extract because of the thick sea
ice above.
Seasoned polar scientists believe
the chances of a totally ice-free
North Pole this summer are greater
than 50:50 because the normally thick
ice formed over many years at the
Pole has been blown away and replaced
by huge swathes of thinner ice formed
over a single year.
This one-year ice is highly vulnerable
to melting during the summer months
and satellite data coming in over
recent weeks shows that the rate
of melting is faster than last year,
when there was an all-time record
loss of summer sea ice at the Arctic.
"The issue is that, for the
first time that I am aware of, the
North Pole is covered with extensive
first-year ice – ice that formed
last autumn and winter. I'd say it's
even-odds whether the North Pole
melts out," said Dr Serreze...
2008 June 10. Permafrost Threatened
by Rapid Retreat of Arctic Sea Ice,
NCAR Study Finds. Excerpt:
BOULDER—The
rate of climate warming over northern
Alaska, Canada, and Russia could
more than triple during periods of
rapid sea ice loss, according to
a new study led by the National Center
for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The findings raise concerns about
the thawing of permafrost, or permanently
frozen soil, and the potential consequences
for sensitive ecosystems, human infrastructure,
and the release of additional greenhouse
gases.
"Our study suggests that, if
sea-ice continues to contract rapidly
over the next several years, Arctic
land warming and permafrost thaw
are likely to accelerate," says
lead author David Lawrence of NCAR.
The research was spurred in part
by events last summer, when the extent
of Arctic sea ice shrank to more
than 30 percent below average, setting
a modern-day record. From August
to October last year, air temperatures
over land in the western Arctic were
also unusually warm, reaching more
than 4 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees
Celsius) above the 1978-2006 average
and raising the question of whether
or not the unusually low sea-ice
extent and warm land temperatures
were related.
The team found that during episodes
of rapid sea-ice loss, the rate of
Arctic land warming is 3.5 times
greater than the average 21st century
warming rates predicted in global
climate models. While this warming
is largest over the ocean, the simulations
suggest that it can penetrate as
far as 900 miles inland. The simulations
also indicate that the warming acceleration
during such events is especially
pronounced in autumn. The decade
during which a rapid sea-ice loss
event occurs could see autumn temperatures
warm by as much as 9 degrees F (5
degrees C) along the Arctic coasts
of Russia, Alaska, and Canada.
"An important unresolved question
is how the delicate balance of life
in the Arctic will respond to such
a rapid warming," Lawrence says. "Will
we see, for example, accelerated
coastal erosion, or increased methane
emissions, or faster shrub encroachment
into tundra regions if sea ice continues
to retreat rapidly?"...
2008 May-June. Ecological
Responses to Climate Change on the
Antarctic Peninsula. Warming threatens
a rich but delicate biological community. by
James McClintock, Hugh Ducklow and
William Fraser. The western coast
of the Antarctic Peninsula is home
to a thriving biological community
that includes bottom-dwelling and
free-swimming animals, giant algae
much like the kelp of temperate latitudes,
marine organisms that shelter under
or within sea ice, as well as familiar
avian and mammalian predators: penguins,
seals and whales. But the authors
of this article outline various ways
in which the peninsular ecosystem
is on the threshold of rapid change.
Midwinter temperatures have increased
by 6 degrees Celsius since the
1950s, sea ice has diminished in
extent and longevity, and sea water
temperatures are climbing. The
loss of ice is detrimental to krill
and other organisms at the base
of the food chain. A once-common
penguin species is in decline on
the peninsula, whereas other species
are expanding their range. Further
warming could allow large predatory
crabs to invade the bottom-dwelling
community and greatly alter its
composition. McClintock is University
Professor of Polar and Marine Biology
at the University of Alabama at
Birmingham; Ducklow is co-director
of the Ecosystems Center of the
Marine Biological Laboratory in
Woods Hole; and Fraser is president
of the non-profit Polar Oceans
Research Group in Sheridan, Montana.
2008 Apr 24. Sediment
cores reveal Antarctica's warmer
past. Quirin
Schiermeier, Nature. Excerpt: A unique
drilling project in the western Ross
Sea has revealed that Antarctica
had a much more eventful climate
history than previously assumed.
A new sediment core hints that the
western part of the now-frozen continent
went through prolonged ice-free phases
- presumably offering a glimpse of
where our warming world might be
heading.
Researchers reported initial results
from ANDRILL, a US$30-million international
drilling project, on 16 April at
the assembly of the European Geosciences
Union in Vienna. During the past
two years, the team has extracted
two cores, each containing some 1,200
metres of sediment, from the seabed
below the vast Ross Ice Shelf, a
floating extension of the West Antarctic
Ice Sheet. Together, the cores provide
an almost uninterrupted 17-million-year
record of Antarctica's climatic past.
Palaeoclimatological records from
ice cores, although more detailed
and easier to interpret, cover only
the past 800,000 years or so. Now,
geologists say, Antarctica's history
is laid out much more clearly.
"We have every page of the book," says
David Harwood, an ANDRILL scientist
at the University of Nebraska in
Lincoln.
...During a warm period some 3.5
million years ago, ...the ice sheet
may have disappeared completely for
around 200,000 years, raising sea
levels globally by up to 10 metres.
For the first time, the ANDRILL cores
show exactly how ice retreated rapidly
and quickly in Antarctica. "That
happened at a time when it was three
to four degrees warmer than today,
owing to atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentrations, which we will very
likely reach again soon," says
Tim Naish, a project leader at the
Institute of Geological and Nuclear
Sciences in Lower Hutt, New Zealand....
2008 Apr 30. CU-Boulder
researchers forecast 3-in-5 chance
of record low Arctic sea ice in
2008. EurekAlert
(30.4.08) New University of Colorado
at Boulder calculations indicate
the record low minimum extent of
sea ice across the Arctic last September
has a three-in-five chance of being
shattered again in 2008 because of
continued warming temperatures and
a preponderance of younger, thinner
ice.
The forecast by researchers at CU-Boulder's
Colorado Center for Astrodynamics
Research is based on satellite data
and temperature records and indicates
there is a 59 percent chance the
annual minimum sea ice record will
be broken this fall for the third
time in five years. Arctic sea ice
declined by roughly 10 percent in
the past decade, culminating in a
record 2007 minimum ice cover of
1.59 million square miles. That broke
the 2005 record by 460,000 miles
-- an area the size of Texas and
California combined.
"The current Arctic ice cover
is thinner and younger than at any
previous time in our recorded history,
and this sets the stage for rapid
melt and a new record low," said
Research Associate Sheldon Drobot,
who leads CCAR's Arctic Regional
Ice Forecasting System group in CU-Boulder's
aerospace engineering sciences department.
Overall, 63 percent of the Arctic
ice cover is younger than average,
and only 2 percent is older than
average, according to Drobot.
2008 April 3, Are
Carbon Cuts Just a Fantasy? By JOHN TIERNEY Excerpt:
What if there's no way to cut greenhouse
emissions enough to make a real difference?
… It becomes a bit more
clear that we may have set ourselves
down the wrong path when we framed
the challenge of mitigating greenhouse
gases in terms of "reducing
emissions"… We
must acknowledge up front that the
world needs more energy. The
International Energy Agency projects
that global energy demand will increase
by 60% by 2030 and recent trends
in China and elsewhere suggest that
this may even be an underestimate.
Consider also that published estimates
suggest that 2 billion people or
more currently lack access to electricity.
Their energy needs have only one
direction to go.
…There can be only two answers
to this question. One is to develop
new technologies of energy supply
that are carbon neutral or, to take
carbon dioxide out of the air in
some manner.
…The conventional view is
that putting a price on carbon will
create incentives that motivate such
innovation. "Incentives" mean
(in the short term at least) creating
economic discomfort and/or pain leading
people to search for new technologies
that cost less than those that emit
carbon. But here is where the conventional
approach founders on the realities
of politics. Policy makers cannot
be expected to impose upon their
constituents discomfort and/or pain
and expect to stay in office. So
we see a lot of hand waving, talk
of long term targets and timetables,
emphasis on personal actions, while
emissions continue to increase.
…Current efforts to price
carbon may contribute in some small
way to innovation, but they just
as likely may lead to games/shenanigans
or just expensive energy.
Instead we should skip all of the
middle steps in trying to create
incentives that stimulate innovation
and focus on policies, and investments,
that stimulate such innovation directly.
2008 Mar 11. Sea
Levels Are Falling Over the Long
Term Because of Lower Basins. By
Henry Fountain, NY Times. Excerpt:
The idea of sea level changes in this
era of environmental concern and all
the discussion is about the effect
of melting glaciers and shrinking ice
caps over the coming decades or centuries. But
sea levels have fluctuated greatly
over much longer time scales, and glaciers
and ice caps have had little to do
with it. Instead, the changing size
and depth of the ocean basins is responsible. A
study looked at factors that affect
the size and depth of the basins, including
the spreading of new crust at midocean
ridges, the subsidence of this crust
as it ages and the changes in area
as the continents drift. The
study, published in Science, suggests
that in the late Cretaceous period,
80 million years ago, the oceans were
shallow, and thus the sea level was
high — about
550 feet higher than it is now. Since
then, though, as the ocean floors have
aged, they have become deeper and the
sea level has fallen. Although
in the near future sea levels may rise,
the researchers say that in the long
term the downward trend will continue.
Over the next 80 million years, the
sea level will fall by as much as 390
feet.
2008 Mar 4. REPORTER'S
NOTEBOOK - Cool View of Science
at Meeting on Warming.By
ANDREW C. REVKIN, NY Times. Excerpt:
Several hundred people sat in a fifth-floor
ballroom at the Marriott Marquis
Hotel in Times Square on Monday eating
pasta and trying hard to prove that
they had unraveled the established
science showing that humans are warming
the world in potentially disruptive
ways. ...One challenge they faced
was that even within their own ranks,
the group - among them government
and university scientists, antiregulatory
campaigners and Congressional staff
members - displayed a dizzying range
of ideas on what was, or was not,
influencing climate.
On Sunday night, the dinner speaker
was Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist
with a paid position at the antiregulatory
Cato Institute who says humans are
warming the climate - he projects
a three-degree Fahrenheit warming
by 2100 - but disputes the value
of cutting emissions of heat-trapping
gases.
At lunch on Monday, the message from
S. Fred Singer, a physicist who runs
a group challenging climate orthodoxy,
was that climate change was mainly
driven by vagaries in the sun.
...The two-day gathering, which concludes
Tuesday, was organized by the Heartland
Institute, a Chicago group whose
antiregulatory philosophy has long
been embraced by, and financially
supported by, various industries
and conservative donors.
...A centerpiece of the meeting was
a short report by 24 authors, led
by Dr. Singer, provocatively described
as the "Nongovernmental International
Panel on Climate Change." Its
main conclusion was this: "Our
findings, if sustained, point to
natural causes and a moderate warming
trend with beneficial effects for
humanity and wildlife." ...Kert
Davies, a campaigner from Greenpeace,
..."This is the largest convergence
of the lost tribe of skeptics ever
seen on the face of the earth"....
2008 February
20. Meltdown in your
wineglass? A
conference in Barcelona looks at
the effects of global climate change
on the world of wine. By Corie Brown,
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer. Excerpt:
BARCELONA, SPAIN -- THE "post-classic" era
of winemaking is dawning, according
to experts at the second Climate
Change & Wine conference in Barcelona,
Spain, at the end of last week. ...Scientists
told winemakers and other industry
professionals at the gathering to
expect natural acidity to drop, colors
to fade and alcohol levels to rise.
Aromas could vanish. In short, wine
may gradually lose the complexity
wine lovers appreciate. And as rising
levels of carbon dioxide encourage
out-of-control vegetative growth,
the green, herbaceous flavors consumers
deplore may well increase.
...PRATS and Lurton predicted that,
in Bordeaux, Merlot vineyards increasingly
will be replanted with Cabernet Sauvignon,
Petit Verdot, Malbec and Cabernet
Franc, Bordeaux varieties that do
better in warmer weather. ...Along
Germany's Rhine Valley, Loosen said
he expects more Cabernet Sauvignon
and Syrah to be planted.
...Eventually, the global map of
viable winemaking regions will shift
toward the poles, northward in the
Northern Hemisphere and southward
in the Southern Hemisphere. Warm
vineyards in today's warmest areas,
such as those in California's Central
Valley, may be abandoned. And new
parts of the globe including England,
Denmark, Belgium and the Patagonia
regions of Chile and Argentina will
emerge as high-quality producers.
... THE narrow coastal regions where
cool ocean breezes provide relief
from rising temperatures, including
Russian River Valley, Tasmania and
Puget Sound, will be premier wine
areas -- along with high-elevation
deserts in places as different as
China and Arizona. As for such seemingly
self-defeating practices as the wine
industry's fuel-burning worldwide
shipments of heavy glass bottles,
for example, some in the industry
are developing more environmentally
sensitive alternatives, such as lightweight
plastic containers. "We have
to be able to hold our heads up on
our packaging," Smart said.
Whoa! Screaming Eagle in a bag-in-a-box
container? Not while international
wine consultant Michel Rolland counts
that Napa Valley winery among his
clients. The naysayer at the conference,
Rolland dismissed concerns about
climate change. "Perhaps the
warming will stop? We don't know," he
said. "So far, climate change
has been very good for us."....
23 January 2008. ANTARCTIC
ICE LOSS SPEEDS UP, NEARLY MATCHES
GREENLAND LOSS. Excerpt: Ice
loss in Antarctica increased by 75
percent in the last 10 years due
to a speed-up in the flow of its
glaciers and is now nearly as great
as that observed in Greenland,
according to a new, comprehensive
study by NASA and university scientists.
In a first-of-its-kind study, an
international team led by Eric
Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., and the
University of California, Irvine,
estimated changes in Antarctica's
ice mass between 1996 and 2006 and
mapped patterns of ice loss on a
glacier-by-glacier basis. They detected
a sharp jump in Antarctica's
ice loss, from enough ice to raise
global sea level by 0.3
millimeters (.01 inches) a year in
1996, to 0.5 millimeters (.02
inches) a year in 2006.
...The team found that the net loss
of ice mass from Antarctica
increased from 112 (plus or minus
91) gigatonnes a year in 1996 to
196 (plus or minus 92) gigatonnes
a year in 2006. A gigatonne is one
billion metric tons, or more than
2.2 trillion pounds. These new
results are about 20 percent higher
over a comparable time frame than
those of a NASA study of Antarctic
mass balance last March
...Rignot says the increased contribution
of Antarctica to global sea
level rise indicated by the study
warrants closer monitoring... Results
of the study are published in February's
issue of Nature Geoscience.
22 January 2008. New
Antarctic Ice Core to Provide Clearest
Climate Record Yet. Excerpt:
After enduring months on the coldest,
driest and windiest continent
on Earth, researchers today closed
out the inaugural season on an
unprecedented, multi-year effort
to retrieve the most detailed record
of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere
over the last 100,000 years.
Working as part of the National Science
Foundation's West Antarctic
Ice Sheet Divide (WAIS Divide) Ice
Core Project, a team of
scientists, engineers, technicians
and students from multiple U.S.
institutions have recovered a 580-meter
(1,900-foot) ice core--the
first section of what is hoped to
be a 3,465-meter (11,360-foot)
column of ice detailing 100,000 years
of Earth's climate history,
including a precise year-by-year
record of the last 40,000 years.
The dust, chemicals and air trapped
in the two-mile-long ice core
will provide critical information
for scientists working to predict
the extent to which human activity
will alter Earth's climate,
according to the chief scientist
for the project, Kendrick Taylor
of
the Desert Research Institute of
the Nevada System of Higher
Education....
13 January 2008. Antarctic
ice loss. Excerpt:
Increasing amounts of ice mass
have been lost from West Antarctica
and the Antarctic peninsula over
the past ten years, according to
research from the University of
Bristol and published online this
week in Nature Geoscience. Meanwhile
the ice mass in East Antarctica
has been roughly stable, with neither
loss nor accumulation over the
past decade....Over the 10 year
time period of the survey, the
ice sheet as a whole was certainly
losing mass, and the mass loss increased
by 75% during this time. Most of
the mass loss is from the Amundsen
Sea sector of West Antarctica and
the northern tip of the Peninsula
where it is driven by ongoing, pronounced
glacier acceleration. In East Antarctica,
the mass balance is near zero, but
the thinning of its potentially vulnerable
marine sectors suggests this may
change in the near future.
2007 Dec 2. Widening
of the tropical belt in a changing
climate. Dian
J. Seidel, Qiang Fu, William J. Randel & Thomas
J. Reichler. Abstract: Some of the
earliest unequivocal signs of climate
change have been the warming of the
air and ocean, thawing of land and
melting of ice in the Arctic. But
recent studies are showing that the
tropics are also changing. Several
lines of evidence show that over
the past few decades the tropical
belt has expanded. This expansion
has potentially important implications
for subtropical societies and may
lead to profound changes in the global
climate system. Most importantly,
poleward movement of large-scale
atmospheric circulation systems,
such as jet streams and storm tracks,
could result in shifts in precipitation
patterns affecting natural ecosystems,
agriculture, and water resources.
The implications of the expansion
for stratospheric circulation and
the distribution of ozone in the
atmosphere are as yet poorly understood.
The observed recent rate of expansion
is greater than climate model projections
of expansion over the twenty-first
century, which suggests that there
is still much to be learned about
this aspect of global climate change.
18 November 2007. A
world dying, but can we unite to
save it? Excerpt:
Humanity is rapidly turning the
seas acid through the same pollution
that causes global warming, ....
The process - thought to be the most
profound change in the chemistry
of the oceans for 20 million years
- is expected both to disrupt the
entire web of life of the oceans
and to make climate change worse.
The warning is just one of a whole
series of alarming conclusions in
a new report published by the official
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), which last month shared
the Nobel Peace Prize with former
US vice president Al Gore.
...The new IPCC report, which is
designed to give impetus to the negotiations,
highlights the little-known acidification
of the oceans, .... It concludes
that emissions of carbon dioxide
- the main cause of global warming
- have already increased the acidity
of ocean surface water by 30 per
cent, and threaten to treble it by
the end of the century.
...the seas have already absorbed
about half of all the carbon dioxide
emitted by humanity since the start
of the industrial revolution,....
This has so far helped slow global
warming - which would have accelerated
even faster if all this pollution
had stayed in the atmosphere, already
causing catastrophe - but at an increasingly
severe cost.
The gas dissolves in the oceans to
make dilute carbonic acid, which
is increasingly souring the naturally
alkali seawater. This, in turn, mops
up calcium carbonate, a substance
normally plentiful in the seas, which
corals use to build their reefs,
and marine creatures use to make
the protective shells they need to
survive. These include many of the
plankton that form the base of the
food chain on which all fish and
other marine animals depend.
... something similar happened when
a comet hit Mexico's Yucatan peninsula
65 million years ago, blasting massive
amounts of calcium sulphate into
the atmosphere to form sulphuric
acid, which in turn caused the extinction
of corals and virtually all shell-building
species.
"Two million years went by before
corals reappeared in the fossil record," ...
it took "a further 20 million
years" before the diversity
of species that use calcium returned
to its former levels.
...Getting agreement on a new treaty
to tackle climate change hangs on
resolving an "after you, Claude" impasse
between the United States and China,
the two biggest emitters of carbon
dioxide, the main cause of global
warming....
17 October 2007. Record
September Temperatures Extend Southeast
Drought. (ENS) Excerpt:
ASHEVILLE, North Carolina. Temperatures
in September 2007 were the eighth
warmest on record, hot enough to
break 1,000 daily high records across
the United States, say scientists
at NOAA's National Climatic Data
Center in Asheville.
The global surface temperature was
the fifth warmest on record for September,
and the extent of Arctic Sea ice
reached its lowest amount in September
since satellite measurements began
in 1979, shattering the previous
record low set in 2005.
The heat extended the worsening drought
to almost half of the contiguous
United States, with the Southeast,
Mid-Atlantic and Tennessee Valley
experiencing the driest conditions.
Thirty-eight of the 48 contiguous
states were warmer than average,
and no state was cooler than average
for the month.
...Reports from farmers indicate
that the state's hay shortage could
be as high as 800,000 round bales,
forcing farmers to seek other options
for feeding cattle through the winter.
Farmers whose corn and soybean crops
were damaged by the drought have
offered to help livestock producers
by baling and selling their crops
for animal feed.
5 October 2007. Is
Battered Arctic Sea Ice Down For
the Count? Science Vol. 318.
no. 5847, pp. 33 - 34. Richard
A. Kerr. Excerpt:
A few years ago, researchers modeling
the fate of Arctic sea ice under
global warming saw a good chance
that the ice could disappear, in
summertime at least, by the end of
the 21st century. Then talk swung
to summer ice not making it past
mid-century. Now, after watching
Arctic sea ice shrink back last month
to a startling record-low area, scientists
are worried that 2050 may be overoptimistic. "This
year has been such a quantum leap
downward, it has surprised many scientists," says
polar researcher John Walsh of the
University of Alaska, Fairbanks. "This
ice is more vulnerable than we thought." And
that vulnerability seems to be growing
from year to year, inspiring concern
that Arctic ice could be in an abrupt,
irreversible decline. "Maybe
we are reaching the tipping point," says
Walsh. Bad
sign. Arctic
sea ice (gauged here using NASA's
measurement techniques) has been
declining, but 2007's unfavorable
weather drove the increasingly vulnerable
ice to a new record low. CREDIT:
NASA/GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION STUDIO;
(DATA) ROB GERSTON, GSFC...
last month, "we
completely blew 2005 out of the water," says
sea ice specialist Mark Serreze of
the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Ice area plummeted to 4.13 million
square kilometers, down 43% from
1979. That's a loss equivalent to
more than two Alaskas. .... A
plus. The
record-breaking loss of sea ice this
summer opened the Northwest Passage.
CREDIT: IMAGE COURTESY OF MODIS RAPID
RESPONSE PROJECT AT NASA/GSFC
3 October 2007. An
interactive graphic from NY Times:
Sea Ice in Retreat. A
look at this summer's record-breaking
loss of Arctic sea ice.
2 October 2007. Arctic Melt Unnerves
the Experts
By ANDREW C. REVKIN. The Arctic ice
cap shrank so much this summer that
waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined
Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest
Passage over Canada and the Northern
Sea Route over Russia.
Over all, the floating ice dwindled
to an extent unparalleled in a century
or more, by several estimates.
Now the six-month dark season has
returned to the North Pole. In the
deepening chill, new ice is already
spreading over vast stretches of
the Arctic Ocean. Astonished by the
summer's changes, scientists are
studying the forces that exposed
one million square miles of open
water - six Californias - beyond
the average since satellites started
measurements in 1979.
...Scientists are also unnerved by
the summer's implications for the
future, and their ability to predict
it.
Complicating the picture, the striking
Arctic change was as much a result
of ice moving as melting, many say.
A new study, led by Son Nghiem at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
and appearing this week in Geophysical
Research Letters, used satellites
and buoys to show that winds since
2000 had pushed huge amounts of thick
old ice out of the Arctic basin past
Greenland. The thin floes that formed
on the resulting open water melted
quicker or could be shuffled together
by winds and similarly expelled,
the authors said.
The pace of change has far exceeded
what had been estimated by almost
all the simulations used to envision
how the Arctic will respond to rising
concentrations of greenhouse gases
linked to global warming. But that
disconnect can cut two ways. Are
the models overly conservative? Or
are they missing natural influences
that can cause wide swings in ice
and temperature, thereby dwarfing
the slow background warming?
The world is paying more attention
than ever.
Russia, Canada and Denmark, prompted
in part by years of warming and the
ice retreat this year, ratcheted
up rhetoric and actions aimed at
securing sea routes and seabed resources....
7 September 2007. Buzzing
about Climate Change. By Rebecca
Lindsey. Excerpt: ...Biological
oceanographer Wayne Esaias ...
has made a career studying patterns
of plant growth in the world's
oceans and how they relate to climate
and ecosystem change, first from
ships, then from aircraft, and
finally from satellites. But for
the past year, he's been preoccupied
with his bee hives, which started
as a family project around 1990 when
his son was in the Boy Scouts. According
to his honeybees, big changes are
underway in Maryland forests. The
most important event in the life
of flowering plants and their pollinators-flowering
itself-is happening much earlier
in the year than it used to.
...From spring until fall, worker
bees forage from dawn until twilight
over a radius of up to about 5 kilometers
from the hive, bringing back pollen
and nectar from plants that are blooming.
They turn the nectar into honey,
which feeds the colony in the winter
or when nectar and pollen are scarce.
As the bees stockpile honey, the
hive weight goes up....
"During the peak of the nectar flow, a good, strong colony
can gain 10 to 20 pounds in one day," he says. "In
Maryland, that goes on for a few weeks in late spring, and
then, suddenly, it's over." For the remainder of the year,
the weight of the hive dwindles as bees sustain themselves
on the honey and pollen they have stockpiled during their three-to-four-week
feeding frenzy. ..."Nearly every night in the spring and
summer someone would go out weigh the hives," he said. "And
I guess just because I am a scientist, I started writing these
things down. ...One day, I just decided to plot it all up [on
a graph], just out of curiosity. And what I saw was that although
you do see a lot of variability from year to year due to climate
events, there was a very noticeable long-term trend, with flowering
and nectar flows getting earlier and earlier in the year."...records
showed an advance in flowering (earlier blooming) beginning
as far back as 1970.
...Esaias thinks that urbanization
is mostly responsible for the changes
in flowering. ...Urbanization creates
a heat island, an area where surface
temperatures are much higher than
surrounding rural areas. Pavement,
less soil moisture, air pollution,
and heat generated by energy use
conspire to raise the city temperatures
as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit
(6 degrees Celsius) over surrounding
areas. ...As temperatures rise, spring
comes earlier. Earlier leaf emergence
and flowering have been observed
in numerous cities across the world.
"I am farther out from the city, and it took 15 years
for the urban heat island effect to get here," he concludes.
Between urbanization and global warming from greenhouse gases,
temperatures will continue to rise in coming years; the acceleration
in flowering times that Esaias' honeybees have documented so
far may not be the end of the changes....
4 September 2007. Loss
of Arctic ice leaves experts stunned.
David Adam, environment correspondent. Guardian
Unlimited
Excerpt: The Arctic ice cap has collapsed
at an unprecedented rate this summer
and levels of sea ice in the region
now stand at record lows, scientists
have announced.
Experts say they are "stunned" by
the loss of ice, with an area almost
twice as big as the UK disappearing
in the last week alone. So much ice
has melted this summer that the Northwest
passage across the top of Canada
is fully navigable, and observers
say the Northeast passage along Russia's
Arctic coast could open later this
month.
If the increased rate of melting
continues, the summertime Arctic
could be totally free of ice by 2030.
Mark Serreze, an Arctic specialist
at the US National Snow and Ice Data
Centre at Colorado University in
Denver, said: "It's amazing.
It's simply fallen off a cliff and
we're still losing ice." The
Arctic has now lost about a third
of its ice since satellite measurements
began thirty years ago, and the rate
of loss has accelerated sharply since
2002.
Dr Serreze said: "If you asked
me a couple of years ago when the
Arctic could lose all of its ice
then I would have said 2100, or 2070
maybe. But now I think that 2030
is a reasonable estimate. It seems
that the Arctic is going to be a
very different place within our lifetimes,
and certainly within our childrens'
lifetimes."
...Changes in wind and ocean circulation
patterns can help reduce sea ice
extent, but Dr Serreze said the main
culprit was man-made global warming.
"The rules are starting to change
and what's changing the rules is
the input of greenhouse gases."
6 August 2007 The CO2 problem in
6 easy steps.
(From
RealClimate website). We
often get requests to provide an
easy-to-understand explanation for
why increasing CO2 is a significant
problem without relying on climate
models and we are generally happy
to oblige. The explanation has a
number of separate steps which tend
to sometimes get confused and so
we will try to break it down carefully.
[Titles of steps:]
Step 1: There is a natural greenhouse
effect.....
Step 2: Trace gases contribute to
the natural greenhouse effect.....
Step 3: The trace greenhouse gases
have increased markedly due to human
emissions....
Step 4: Radiative forcing is a useful
diagnostic and can easily be calculated....
Step 5: Climate sensitivity is around
3¼C for a doubling of CO2
....
Step 6: Radiative forcing x climate
sensitivity is a significant number....
17 July 2007, Glaciers
in Retreat.
By SOMINI SENGUPTA, NY Times. Excerpt:
ON CHORABARI GLACIER, India - This
is how a glacier retreats. At nearly
13,000 feet above sea level, in the
shadow of a sharp Himalayan peak,
a wall of black ice oozes in the
sunshine. A tumbling stone breaks
the silence of the mountains, or
water gurgles under the ground, a
sign that the glacier is melting
from inside. Where it empties out
- scientists call it the snout -
a noisy, frothy stream rushes down
to meet the river Ganges.
D.P. Dobhal, a glaciologist who has
spent the last three years climbing
and poking the Chorabari glacier,
stands at the edge of the snout and
points ahead. Three years ago, the
snout was roughly 90 feet farther
away. On a map drawn in 1962, it
was plotted 860 feet from here. Mr.
Dobhal marked the spot with a Stonehenge-like
pile of rocks.
Mr. Dobhal's steep and solitary quest
- to measure the changes in the glacier's
size and volume - points to a looming
worldwide concern, with particularly
serious repercussions for India and
its neighbors. The thousands of glaciers
studded across 1,500 miles of the
Himalayas make up the savings account
of South Asia's water supply, feeding
more than a dozen major rivers and
sustaining a billion people downstream.
Their apparent retreat threatens
to bear heavily on everything from
the region's drinking water supply
to agricultural production to disease
and floods.
...According to Mr. Dobhal's measurements,
the Chorabari's snout has retreated
29.5 feet every year for the last
three years, .... A recent study
by the Indian Space Research Organization,
using satellite imaging to gauge
the changes to 466 glaciers, has
found more than a 20 percent reduction
in size from 1962 to 2001, with bigger
glaciers breaking into smaller pieces,
each one retreating faster than its
parent. A separate study found the
Parbati glacier, one of the largest
in the area, to be retreating by
170 feet a year during the 1990s.
Another glacier that Mr. Dobhal has
tracked, known as Dokriani, lost
20 percent of its size in three decades.
Between 1991 and 1995, its snout
inched back 55 feet each year....
12 July 2007. Conservation
Key as Climate Change Curtails
Western Water.
SAN FRANCISCO, California
(ENS) - The
drought now parching Western states
is a taste of things to come, finds
a new report by the Natural Resources
Defense Council that assesses the
effects of global warming on water
supplies in the West. ..."Global warming will
make it harder for farms and cities
to find water," said Barry Nelson,
study co-author and co-director of
NRDC's western water project. "The
latest global warming science is
clear - drought-like conditions are
likely to increase. This means that
conservation and water use efficiency
will become our most important sources
of new water supply," Nelson
said. Over the past eight years,
the Colorado River, which supplies
water to parts of Arizona, California,
Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah
and Wyoming, has received just over
half its average flow.
Southern California is experiencing
its driest year on record. The state
Department of Water Resources predicts
that every river in the southern
Sierra Nevada will receive less than
half of normal runoff this year.
Global warming may cause winter precipitation
to fall as rain instead of snow,
reducing water supply from the snowpack.
...The report calls on regions to develop cooperative solutions
that meet their water needs together with other benefits. For
example, groundwater de-salters in California's Chino basin produce
water supplies, while cleaning up contaminated underground aquifers.
Urban stormwater retention programs designed to reduce flooding
and pollution can also supply water. The report highlights wastewater
recycling as a promising solution because it will not be affected
by global warming, but advises that traditional approaches -
dams, diversions and groundwater pumping - are likely to perform
poorly in the future.
...The full report, "In Hot Water: Water Management Strategies
to Weather the Effects of Global Warming," is online at: http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/hotwater/contents.asp
8 July 2007. Elevated
Carbon Dioxide In Atmosphere Weakens
Defenses Of Soybeans To Herbivores.
Science Daily, July 8, 2007. Excerpt:
Scientists have found that elevated
carbon dioxide levels may negatively
impact the relationship between some
plants and insects. Elevated CO2
is considered to be a serious catalyst
of global change. Its effects can
be felt throughout the ecosystem,
including the insect-plant food chain
link... Many plants have inherent
enzyme-based defenses that are released
during insect attack. This study
found that when soybeans were exposed
to elevated amounts of CO2 the plants
became more susceptible to attack
by Japanese beetles... Dr. Jorge
Zavala, Sr. of the Institute for
Genomic Biology at the University
of Illinois, and his colleagues conducted
tests in which they evaluated this
herbivorous attack-defense cycle.
They studied soybeans grown in traditional
field conditions but with additional
exposure to ambient CO2.
2 July 2007. Alaskan
Wildlife-Rich Coastal Land Eroding
Because of Disappearing Ice.
By Yereth Rosen, Reuters, Excerpt:
A swath of marshy, wildlife-rich
coastal land in Arctic Alaska being
eyed for oil drilling is eroding
rapidly probably because of the disappearance
of sea ice that used to protect it
from the ocean waves, according to
a study released on Monday. Using
satellite data and maps compiled
from aerial photographs, scientists
from the U.S. Geological Survey,
or USGS, found that land lost to
erosion north of Teshekpuk Lake,
Arctic Alaska's largest lake, was
twice as fast in 1985 to 2005 period
than in the previous 30 years...
In addition, salty sea water has
contaminated formerly freshwater
lakes, migratory birds, caribou and
other wildlife populations has lost
habitat and the sparse human infrastructure
along the coastline has been damaged,
the study said... 'The area (Teshekpuk
Lake) is one of the most important
areas in the entire Arctic, and I
don't just mean in Arctic Alaska,'
said Stan Senner, executive director
of Audubon
Alaska. 'It is simply the most important
goose-molting area in the Arctic.'
It is also believed to hold vast
amounts of untapped oil. In recent
years, the Bush administration lifted
a decades-long ban on oil development
and has tried to sell oil and gas
exploration rights there. Environmentalists
and the region's Inupiat Eskimos
have cited global warming impacts
as a reason to oppose drilling in
land near Teshekpuk Lake.
1 July 2007. Penguins
Struggle in a Warning World. By William
Mullen, The Chicago Tribune. Excerpt:
On a cloudy spring day, the first
gray Adelie penguin chicks are hatching
out in round pebble nests strewn
across a bleak, rocky coastline,
poking their heads from beneath the
snowy-white shirt front of an adult
for their first blinking look at
the world... These days, however,
Adelies are being stalked by a threat
they cannot see and cannot fight
off: the weather. The birds, which
have adapted over millions of years
to the most extreme climate on Earth,
are beginning to die off by the tens
of thousands as a result of global
warming. The Adelie penguin is regarded
as an 'indicator' species, an animal
so delicately attuned to its environment
that its survival is threatened as
soon as something goes wrong. So
as temperatures rise, Adelies are
among the first to feel the effects,
early victims of the devastating
worldwide changes that scientists
expect if the warming persists and
intensifies... In this vulnerable
area, entire colonies of Adelie penguins
have died because, researchers believe,
the ice no longer extends far enough
into the sea to allow the birds to
reach their winter feeding grounds.
Biologist William Fraser monitors
a 50-square-mile area where 56,000
Adelies have perished... For now,
such deaths represent a small fraction
of the world's estimated 8 million
to 10 million Adelie penguins, which
live only on Antarctica... But the
die-offs scientists are seeing in
the warmest areas of Antarctica are
expected to spread as temperatures
continue to rise... The reason is
simple, he said: 'Penguins don't
see well in the dark.' Below the
Antarctic Circle, the hours of sunlight
shrink during winter until it is
dark 24 hours a day. That is one
key reason Adelie penguins migrate:
They must travel far enough north
so there is enough sunlight for a
successful daily hunt. Otherwise,
they will starve. A warmer Antarctic
climate may shrink the winter ice
so much that it strands the birds
too far south, in places where the
sun doesn't rise, and the lights
may go out permanently for the Adelies.
28 June 2007. Study
Sees Climate Change Impact on Alaska. By William
Yardley. New York Times.
Excerpt:
Many of Alaska’s roads,
runways, railroads and water and
sewer systems will wear out more
quickly and cost more to repair or
replace because of climate change,
according to a study released yesterday.
Higher temperatures, melting permafrost,
a reduction in polar ice and increased
flooding are expected to raise the
repair and replacement cost of thousands
of infrastructure projects as much
as $6.1 billion for a total of nearly
$40 billion — about a 20 percent
increase — from now to 2030,
according to the study... The cost
estimates are based on the needs
of nearly 16,000 pieces of public
infrastructure, including airports
and small segments of roads. ...
Temperatures have risen by an average
of two to five degrees in different
parts of the state in recent decades,
and the changes have already been
linked to problems like coastal erosion
in remote Alaskan villages and wildfires.
...“There are a million other
issues related to climate change,” said
Peter Larsen, a natural resource
economist at the Institute for Social
and Economic Research and the lead
researcher for the report. “This
is just one component, but it’s
a critical piece because this is
where all the goods and services
come through the state’s economy,
is through the infrastructure.” ...
27 May 2007. Victim
of Climate Change, a Town Seeks
a Lifeline. By WILLIAM
YARDLEY. NY Times. Excerpt:
NEWTOK, Alaska ..."I don't want to live
in permafrost no more," said
Frank Tommy, 47, ..."It's too
muddy. Everything is crooked around
here." The earth beneath much
of Alaska ... permanently frozen
subsoil, known as permafrost, upon
which Newtok and so many other Native
Alaskan villages rest, is melting,
yielding to warming air temperatures
and a warming ocean. ...The village
is below sea level, and sinking.
Boardwalks squish into the spring
muck. ...Studies say Newtok could
be washed away within a decade. Along
with the villages of Shishmaref and
Kivalina farther to the north, it
has been the hardest hit of about
180 Alaska villages that suffer some
degree of erosion....
15 May 2007. Panel:
Climate Change Will Hurt Africa.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - Seth
Borenstein in Washington and Michael
Casey in Bangkok, Thailand..
Excerpt:
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP)
-- Global warming isn't just a
matter of melting icebergs and
polar bears chasing after them.
It's also Lake Chad drying up,
the glaciers of Mt. Kilimanjaro
disappearing, increasing extreme
weather, conflict and hungry people
throughout Africa. According to
a landmark effort to assess the
risks of global warming, Africa
-- by far the lowest emitter of
greenhouse gases in the world --
is projected to be among the regions
hardest hit by environmental change.
''We never used to have malaria in
the highlands where I'm from, now
we do,'' said Kenyan lawmaker Mwancha
Okioma, at a briefing on climate
change at the Pan African Parliament
Monday.
...''Planes used to take people through
Kilimanjaro to see the snows, now
it's only at the very top. ...On
the Net: Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change: www.ipcc.ch
15 May 2007. Scientists
Back Off Theory of a Colder Europe
in a Warming World. Associated Press...By WALTER
GIBBS. Excerpt: OSLO - Mainstream
climatologists who have feared that
global warming could have the paradoxical
effect of cooling northwestern Europe
or even plunging it into a small
ice age have stopped worrying about
that particular disaster, although
it retains a vivid hold on the public
imagination.
The idea, which held climate theorists
in its icy grip for years, was that
the North Atlantic Current, an extension
of the Gulf Stream that cuts northeast
across the Atlantic Ocean to bathe
the high latitudes of Europe with
warmish equatorial water, could shut
down in a greenhouse world....
All that has now been removed from
the forecast. Not only is northern
Europe warming, but every major climate
model produced by scientists worldwide
in recent years has also shown that
the warming will almost certainly
continue.
"The concern had previously
been that we were close to a threshold
where the Atlantic circulation system
would stop," said Susan Solomon,
a senior scientist at the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "We
now believe we are much farther from
that threshold, thanks to improved
modeling and ocean measurements.
The Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic
Current are more stable than previously
thought."....
11 April 2007. Sea's
Rise in India Buries Islands and
a Way of Life.
By SOMINI SENGUPTA. New York Times.
Excerpt:
Shyamal Mandal lives at the edge
of ruin. In front of his small
mud house lies the wreckage of
what was once his village on this
fragile delta island near the Bay
of Bengal. Half of it has sunk into
the river. ...The sinking of Ghoramara
can be attributed to a confluence
of disasters, natural and human,
not least the rising sea. The rivers
that pour down from the Himalayas
and empty into the bay have swelled
and shifted in recent decades, placing
this and the rest of the delicate
islands known as the Sundarbans in
the mouth of daily danger. Certainly
nature would have forced these
islands to shift size and shape,
drowning some, giving rise to others.
But there is little doubt, scientists
say, that human-induced climate change
has made them particularly vulnerable.
A recent study by Sugata Hazra,
an oceanographer at Jadavpur University
in nearby Calcutta, found that in
the last 30 years, nearly 31 square
miles of the Sundarbans have vanished
entirely. More than 600 families
have been displaced, according to
local government authorities. Fields
and ponds have been submerged. Ghoramara
alone has shrunk to less than two
square miles, about half of its size
in 1969, Mr. Hazra's study concluded.
Two other islands have vanished entirely.
....
1 April 2007. 60
Minutes TV Program: The Age of Warming.
Includes the following movie segments (on
Yahoo site):
-DISAPPEARING ACT -- How the loss of glaciers will impact mankind.
-PENGUIN PROBLEM -- What's behind a dramatic drop in a penguin
population?
-THE CORE OF IT ALL -- For Antarctic scientist Paul Mayewski,
the answers are on ice.
-COASTAL COLLAPSE? -- A dire prediction for mankind
-An Era Of Consequence
-A Skeptic No More
-Why Antarctica Matters
-Going. . . Going. . . Gone?
You have to suffer through the commercials, but the 60 Minutes
piece is excellent
April 2007 The
Global Warming Survival Guide. Time
Magazine website. Includes 51 Things
We Can Do [to slow global
warming]
29 March 2007. On
the Front Lines Of Climate Change.
By MARK HERTSGAARD, Time Magazine
29 March 2007. What
Now For Our Feverish Planet? By
JEFFREY KLUGER, Time Magazine.
27 March 2007. Cities
at Risk of Rising Sea Levels.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. Excerpt:
LONDON (AP) -- More
than two-thirds of the world's
large cities are in areas vulnerable
to global warming and rising sea
levels, and millions of people
are at risk of being swamped by
flooding and intense storms, according
to a new study released Wednesday.
...threatened coastal areas worldwide
-- defined as those lying at less
than 33 feet above sea level ...More
than 180 countries have populations
in low-elevation coastal zones,
and about 70 percent of those have
urban areas of more than 5 million
people that are under threat. Among
them: Tokyo; New York; Mumbai,
India; Shanghai, China; Jakarta,
Indonesia; and Dhaka, Bangladesh.
...''Migration away from the zone
at risk will be necessary but costly
and hard to implement, so coastal
settlements will also need to be
modified to protect residents,''
said Gordon McGranahan of the International
Institute for Environment and Development
in London, a co-author of the study.
...the authoritative Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change...warned
of sea-level rises of 7-23 inches
by the end of the century due to
global warming, making coastal populations
vulnerable to flooding and more intense
hurricanes and typhoons. ...The five
nations with the largest total population
living in endangered coastal areas
are all in Asia: China, India, Bangladesh,
Vietnam and Indonesia.
23 March 2007. GRAVITY
MEASUREMENTS HELP MELT ICE MYSTERIES.
Earth Observatory. Excerpt:
Greenland is cold and hot. It's
a deep freezer storing 10 percent
of Earth's ice and a subject of
fevered debate. If something should
melt all that ice, global sea level
could rise as much as 7 meters
(23 feet). Greenland and Antarctica
- Earth's two biggest icehouses
- are important indicators of climate
change and a high priority for
research, as highlighted by the
newly inaugurated International
Polar Year. Just a few years ago,
the world's climate scientists
predicted that Greenland wouldn't
have much impact at all on sea
level in the coming decades. But
recent measurements show that Greenland's
ice cap is melting much faster
than expected. These new data come
from the NASA/German Aerospace
Center's Gravity Recovery and Climate
Experiment (Grace). …Grace
measurements have revealed that
in just four years, from 2002 to
2006, Greenland lost between 150
and 250 cubic kilometers (36 to
60 cubic miles) of ice per year. …."Before
Grace, the change of Greenland's
ice sheet was inferred by a combination
of more regional radar and altimeter
studies pieced together over many
years, but Grace can measure changes
in the weight of the ice directly
and cover the entire ice sheet
of Greenland every month," says
Michael Watkins, Grace project
scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif….."We
have to pay attention," Velicogna
adds. "These ice sheets are
changing much faster than we were
expecting. Observations are the
most powerful tool we have to know
what is going on, especially when
the changes - and what's causing
them - are not obvious."
For more information and images, visit: NASA
Looking at Earth
25 February 2007. Global
warming: enough to make you sick
Rising temperatures are redistributing
bacteria, insects and plants, exposing
people to diseases they'd never
encountered before.
By Jia-Rui Chong, Times Staff Writer. EXCERPT:
CORDOVA, ALASKA -
Oysterman Jim Aguiar had never
had to deal with the bacterium
Vibrio parahaemolyticus in his
25 years working the frigid waters
of Prince William Sound….
By summer 2004, the temperature had
risen just enough to poke above the
crucial 59-degree mark. Cruise ship
passengers who had eaten local oysters
were soon coming down with diarrhea,
cramping and vomiting - the first
cases of Vibrio food poisoning in
Alaska that anyone could remember.
As scientists later determined, the
culprit was not just the bacterium,
but the warming that allowed it to
proliferate."This
was probably the best example to
date of how global climate change
is changing the importation of infectious
diseases," said Dr. Joe McLaughlin,
acting chief of epidemiology at the
Alaska Division of Public Health, who
published a study on the outbreak….
Incremental temperature changes have
begun to redraw the distribution of
bacteria, insects and plants, exposing
new populations to diseases that they
have never seen before…...The
temperature change has been small,
about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the
last 150 years, but it has been enough
to alter disease patterns across the
globe…….According
to a landmark United Nations report
released this month, global warming
has reached a point where even if greenhouse
gas emissions could be held stable,
the trend would continue for centuries.
The report painted a grim picture of
the future - rising sea levels, more
intense storms, widespread drought.
Predicting the future of disease, however,
has proven difficult because of myriad
factors - many of which have little
to do with global warming. Diseases
move with people, they follow trade
routes, they thrive in places with
poor sanitation, they develop resistance
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