3. What is the Controversy About?

Archives of Past Articles for Chapter 3

2009 November 5. Climate Change, Nitrogen Loss Threaten Plant Life in Arid Desert Soils. NSF Release 09-218. Excerpt: ...As Earth's climate warms, arid soils lose more nitrogen, which could lead to deserts with even less plant life than they sustain today.
Available nitrogen is second only to water as the biggest constraint to biological activity in arid ecosystems, but ecologists have struggled to understand the balance of the input and output of nitrogen in deserts. For the first time, however, researchers have discovered a mechanism that balances the nitrogen budget in deserts: Higher temperatures cause nitrogen to escape as gas from desert soils.
...In the past, researchers focused on biological mechanisms in which soil microbes near the surface produce nitrogen gas that dissipates into the air, but ecologists Jed Sparks and Carmody ("Carrie") McCalley, both at Cornell University and co-authors of the paper, found that non-biological processes are playing a bigger role in nitrogen losses from soil to air.
"This is a way that nitrogen is lost from an ecosystem that people have never accounted for before," said Sparks.  "It allows us to finally understand the dynamics of nitrogen in arid systems."
...Further temperature increases and shifting precipitation patterns due to climate change may lead to more nitrogen losses in arid ecosystems, making their soils even more infertile and unable to support most plant life, according to McCalley. Although some climate models predict more summer rainfall for desert areas, the water, when combined with heat, would greatly increase nitrogen losses, she said.
"We're on a trajectory where plant life in arid ecosystems could cease to do well," said McCalley....

2009 November 2. Mt. Kilimanjaro Ice Cap Continues Rapid Retreat. By Sindya N. Bhanoo, The NY Times. Excerpt: The ice atop Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania has continued to retreat rapidly, declining 26 percent since 2000, scientists say in a new report.
Yet the authors of the study, to be published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, reached no consensus on whether the melting could be attributed mainly to humanity’s role in warming the global climate.
Eighty-five percent of the ice cover that was present in 1912 has vanished, the scientists said.
...The lead author of the study, Lonnie G. Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University, has concluded that the melting of recent years is unique....
If his dating of the ice core layers is accurate, surface melting like that seen in recent years has not occurred over the last 11,700 years....

2009 July 14. Arctic glacier to lose Manhattan-sized 'tongue'. By Catherine Brahic, NewScientist. Excerpt: The biggest glacier in the Arctic is on the verge of losing a chunk of ice the size of Manhattan. A group of scientists and climate change activists who are closely monitoring the Petermann glacier's ice tongue believe the rapid flow of ice is in part due to warm ocean currents moving up along the coast of Greenland, fuelled by global warming.
... The team believes this will happen within weeks. Only yesterday, a 3-square-kilometre chunk broke away. There are now more than 10 cracks in the ice, some 500 metres wide. The researchers expect the ice tongue to break up within the coming weeks.
When this happens, an island of ice the size of Manhattan, spanning 100 km2 holding 5 billion tonnes of ice, will break free and drift out to sea.
As with all glaciers that terminate over water, big chunks of ice regularly break off the Petermann ice tongue, a process which is normally compensated for by the snow that falls on the upper reaches of the glacier. But the sheer amount of ice that could break away in a single event is concerning the scientists – five billion tonnes of ice is equivalent to nearly half of the glacier's usual annual flow.
The researchers are unsure what exactly is causing the break-up. A chunk of 1 million tonnes of ice broke off last year and there has been an acceleration in the flow of ice over the past few years. They think a number of factors are involved including warmer ocean currents that are melting the ice from below and warmer air temperatures that are melting it from above....

2009 July 7. NASA RELEASE: 09-155. New NASA Satellite Survey Reveals Dramatic Arctic Sea Ice Thinning. Excerpt: WASHINGTON -- Arctic sea ice thinned dramatically between the winters of 2004 and 2008, with thin seasonal ice replacing thick older ice as the dominant type for the first time on record. The new results, based on data from a NASA Earth-orbiting spacecraft, provide further evidence for the rapid, ongoing transformation of the Arctic's ice cover.
Scientists from NASA and the University of Washington in Seattle conducted the most comprehensive survey to date using observations from NASA's Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite, known as ICESat, to make the first basin-wide estimate of the thickness and volume of the Arctic Ocean's ice cover....
The Arctic ice cap grows each winter as the sun sets for several months and intense cold ensues. In the summer, wind and ocean currents cause some of the ice naturally to flow out of the Arctic, while much of it melts in place. But not all of the Arctic ice melts each summer; the thicker, older ice is more likely to survive. Seasonal sea ice usually reaches about 6 feet in thickness, while multi-year ice averages 9 feet.
Using ICESat measurements, scientists found that overall Arctic sea ice thinned about 7 inches a year, for a total of 2.2 feet over four winters. The total area covered by the thicker, older "multi-year" ice that has survived one or more summers shrank by 42 percent.
...In recent years, the amount of ice replaced in the winter has not been sufficient to offset summer ice losses. The result is more open water in summer, which then absorbs more heat, warming the ocean and further melting the ice. Between 2004 and 2008, multi-year ice cover shrank 595,000 square miles -- nearly the size of Alaska's land area....

2009 June 16. Government Study Warns of Climate Change Effects. By John M. Broder, The NY Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — The impact of a changing climate is already being felt across the United States, like shifting migration patterns of butterflies in the West and heavier downpours in the Midwest and East, according to a government study to be released on Tuesday.
Even if the nation takes significant steps to slow emissions of heat-trapping gases, the impact of global warming is expected to become more severe in coming years, the report says, affecting farms and forests, coastlines and floodplains, water and energy supplies, transportation and human health....
The study, overseen by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will be posted at www.globalchange.gov/usimpacts.
Some of the effects being seen today and cited in the report are familiar, like more powerful tropical storms and erosion of ocean coastlines caused by melting Arctic ice. The study also cites an increase in drought in the Southwest and more intense heat waves in the Northeast as a result of growing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other climate-altering gases in the atmosphere.
...“What we would want to have people take away is that climate change is happening now, and it’s actually beginning to affect our lives,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a principal author of the report. “It’s not just happening in the Arctic regions, but it’s beginning to show up in our own backyards.”...

2009 May 27. RELEASE 2009-10. Melting Greenland Ice Sheets May Threaten Northeast United States, Canada. NCAR. Excerpt: BOULDER--Melting of the Greenland ice sheet this century may drive more water than previously thought toward the already threatened coastlines of New York, Boston, Halifax, and other cities in the northeastern United States and in Canada, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
The study, which will be published Friday in Geophysical Research Letters, finds that if Greenland's ice melts at moderate to high rates, ocean circulation by 2100 may shift and cause sea levels off the northeast coast of North America to rise by about 12 to 20 inches (about 30 to 50 centimeters) more than in other coastal areas. The research builds on recent reports that have found that sea level rise associated with global warming could adversely affect North America, and its findings suggest that the situation is more threatening than previously believed.
"If the Greenland melt continues to accelerate, we could see significant
impacts this century on the northeast U.S. coast from the resulting sea level rise," says NCAR scientist Aixue Hu, the lead author. "Major northeastern cities are directly in the path of the greatest rise."
...The northeast coast of North America is especially vulnerable to the effects of Greenland ice melt because of the way the meridional overturning circulation acts like a conveyer belt transporting water through the Atlantic Ocean. The circulation carries warm Atlantic water from the tropics to the north, where it cools and descends to create a dense layer of cold water. As a result, sea level is currently about 28 inches (71 cm) lower in the North Atlantic than the North Pacific, which lacks such a dense layer. ...Unlike water in a bathtub, water in the oceans does not spread out evenly. Sea level can vary by several feet from one region to another, depending on such factors as ocean circulation and the extent to which water at lower depths is compressed....

2009 May 18. As Alaska Glaciers Melt, It's Land That's Rising. By CORNELIA DEAN, NY Times. Excerpt: Relieved of billions of tons of glacial weight, the land in Juneau is rising much as a cushion regains its shape after someone gets up from a couch....

2009 May 4. Sun Oddly Quiet -- Hints at Next "Little Ice Age"? By Anne Minard for National Geographic News. Excerpt: A prolonged lull in solar activity has astrophysicists glued to their telescopes waiting to see what the sun will do next—and how Earth's climate might respond. The sun is the least active it's been in decades and the dimmest in a hundred years. The lull is causing some scientists to recall the Little Ice Age, an unusual cold spell in Europe and North America, which lasted from about 1300 to 1850. The coldest period of the Little Ice Age, between 1645 and 1715, has been linked to a deep dip in solar storms known as the Maunder Minimum. During that time, access to Greenland was largely cut off by ice, and canals in Holland routinely froze solid. Glaciers in the Alps engulfed whole villages, and sea ice increased so much that no open water flowed around Iceland in the year 1695. But researchers are on guard against their concerns about a new cold snap being misinterpreted....

2009 March 30. A Census Taker for Penguins in Argentina. A Conversation with Dee Boersma. By Claudia Dreifus, The NY Times. Excerpt: P. Dee Boersma, a University of Washington conservation biologist, is the Jane Goodall of penguins. As director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Penguin Project, Dr. Boersma, 62, has spent the last quarter of a century studying the behaviors of some 40,000 Magellanic penguins, inhabitants of one stretch of beach in southern Argentina....
Q. WHAT DOES YOUR RESEARCH INVOLVE?
A. I’m a kind of census taker of the 200,000 breeding pairs of penguins at Punta Tombo. I track who is at home, who gets to mate, where the penguins go for the meals, their health, their behaviors.
...I’m interested in where they go. Through the tagging we’ve been able to show that in the last decade, the birds are swimming about 25 miles further in search of food. They’re having trouble finding enough fish to eat....
These penguins are now laying eggs on the average three days later in the season then they did a decade ago. That means that the chicks may leave for sea at more inopportune times, when fish may not be close to the colony. Many will not survive to come back and breed. The Punta Tombo colony has declined 22 percent since 1987. That’s a lot. This type of penguin is considered near-threatened. Of the 17 different penguin species, 12 are suffering rapid decreases in numbers.
Q. Why is this decline occurring among the Magellanic penguins?
A. Changes in the availability and abundance of prey. And we think that’s due to both climate change and exploitation of the penguins’ food sources by commercial fisheries....
Q. WHAT ARE THE POLICY IMPLICATIONS OF YOUR RESEARCH?
A. ...The big thing is that penguins are showing us that climate change has already happened. The birds are trying to adapt. But evolution is not fast enough to allow them to do that, over the long term....

2009 March 15. Northeast US to suffer most from future sea rise. By Seth Borenstein, The Huffington Post. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — The northeastern U.S. coast is likely to see the world's biggest sea level rise from man-made global warming, a new study predicts.
However much the oceans rise by the end of the century, add an extra 8 inches or so for New York, Boston and other spots along the coast from the mid-Atlantic to New England....
An extra 8 inches – on top of a possible 2 or 3 feet of sea rise globally by 2100 – is a big deal, especially when nor'easters and hurricanes hit, experts said.
...the oceans won't rise at the same rate everywhere, said study author Jianjun Yin of the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies at Florida State University. It will be "greater and faster" for the Northeast, with Boston one of the worst hit among major cities, he said. So, if it's 3 feet, add another 8 inches for that region.
The explanation involves complicated ocean currents. Computer models forecast that as climate change continues, there will be a slowdown of the great ocean conveyor belt. That system moves heat energy in warm currents from the tropics to the North Atlantic and pushes the cooler, saltier water down, moving it farther south around Africa and into the Pacific. As the conveyor belt slows, so will the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic current. Those two fast-running currents have kept the Northeast's sea level unusually low because of a combination of physics and geography, Yin said.
Slow down the conveyor belt 33 to 43 percent as predicted by computer models, and the Northeast sea level rises faster, Yin said....

2009 March 10. Sea level rise could bust IPCC estimate. By Catherine Brahic, NewScientist. Excerpt: Sea level rises could bust official estimates – that's the first big message to come from the climate change congress that kicked off in Copenhagen, Denmark, today.
Researchers, including John Church of the Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, presented evidence that Greenland and Antarctica are losing ice fast, contributing to the annual sea-level rise. Recent data shows that waters have been rising by 3 millimetres a year since 1993.
Church says this is above any of the rates forecast by the IPCC models. By 2100, sea levels could be 1 metre or more above current levels, he says. And it looks increasingly unlikely that the rise will be much less than 50 centimetres.
In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast a rise of 18 cm to 59 cm by 2100. But the numbers came with a heavy caveat that often went unnoticed by the popular press.
Because modelling how the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will react to rising temperatures is fiendishly complicated, the IPCC did not include either in its estimate. It's no small omission: the Greenland ice cap, the smaller and so far less stable of the two, holds enough water that if it all melted, it would raise sea levels by 6 metres on average across the globe....

2009 March 8. Skeptics Dispute Climate Worries and Each Other. By Andrew C. Revkin, The NY Times. Excerpt: More than 600 self-professed climate skeptics are meeting in a Times Square hotel this week to challenge what has become a broad scientific and political consensus: that without big changes in energy choices, humans will dangerously heat up the planet.
The three-day International Conference on Climate Change...brings together political figures, conservative campaigners, scientists, an Apollo astronaut and the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus.
Organizers say the discussions, which began Sunday, are intended to counter the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers, who have vowed to tackle global warming with legislation requiring cuts in the greenhouse gases that scientists have linked to rising temperatures.
But two years after the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded with near certainty that most of the recent warming was a result of human influences, global warming’s skeptics are showing signs of internal rifts and weakening support....

2009 January 29. New data show much of Antarctica is warming more than previously thought. EurekAlert. Excerpt: Scientists studying climate change have long believed that while most of the rest of the globe has been getting steadily warmer, a large part of Antarctica – the East Antarctic Ice Sheet – has actually been getting colder.
But new research shows that for the last 50 years, much of Antarctica has been warming at a rate comparable to the rest of the world. In fact, the warming in West Antarctica is greater than the cooling in East Antarctica, meaning that on average the continent has gotten warmer, said Eric Steig, a University of Washington professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the Quaternary Research Center at the UW.
..."Simple explanations don't capture the complexity of climate," Steig said. "The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling and that's not the case. If anything it's the reverse, but it's more complex than that. Antarctica isn't warming at the same rate everywhere, and while some areas have been cooling for a long time the evidence shows the continent as a whole is getting warmer."
A major reason most of Antarctica was thought to be cooling is because of a hole in the Earth's protective ozone layer that appears during the spring months in the Southern Hemisphere's polar region. Steig noted that it is well established that the ozone hole has contributed to cooling in East Antarctica.
"However, it seems to have been assumed that the ozone hole was affecting the entire continent when there wasn't any evidence to support that idea, or even any theory to support it," he said.
"In any case, efforts to repair the ozone layer eventually will begin taking effect and the hole could be eliminated by the middle of this century. If that happens, all of Antarctica could begin warming on a par with the rest of the world."...

2008 October 27. Climate change 'making seas more salty'. By David Adam, The Guardian. Excerpt: Global warming is making the sea more salty, according to new research that demonstrates the massive shifts in natural systems triggered by climate change.
Experts at the UK Met Office and Reading University say warmer temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean have significantly increased evaporation and reduced rainfall across a giant stretch of water from Africa to the Carribean in recent years. The change concentrates salt in the water left behind, and is predicted to make southern Europe and the Mediterranean much drier in future.
Peter Stott of the Met Office, who led the study, said: "With global warming we're talking about very big changes in the overall water cycle. This moisture is being evaporated and transported to higher latitudes."
The team wanted to see whether manmade climate change could be blamed for changes in salinity measured in the Atlantic....
...further south towards the tropics, Atlantic waters have been getting saltier – about 0.5% more since the 1960s.
Using state-of-the-art climate models, the scientists simulated events over both parts of the ocean with and without increased levels of greenhouse gases....
...for the mid Atlantic, the models showed that only human-driven global warming could explain the increase in saltiness – the first time such an explicit link has been made between climate change and salinity....

2008 October 13. Rising Temperatures May Dry Up Peat Bogs, Causing Carbon Release. By Henry Fountain, The New York Times. Excerpt: ...A study in Nature Geoscience suggests that northern bogs may lose a significant portion of their peat as global temperatures rise. Organic matter in the peat will decompose, releasing carbon into the atmosphere.
Ordinarily peat bogs are a huge carbon sink. They consist of marsh grasses, trees and other organic matter that, because of the wet, oxygen-starved conditions, don’t decay much. What’s more, peat generally begets more peat: because it holds so much water and blocks drainage, as it accumulates the water table rises, reducing decay even further.
This water table-peat interaction is what scientists call a positive feedback loop. Takeshi Ise of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology and colleagues looked at what would happen to this process when environmental conditions change.
...They found that higher temperatures would in effect reverse the feedback loop: the water table would drop, causing more peat to dry and decompose.
Over hundreds of years, their simulation suggests, 40 percent of organic carbon could be lost from bogs where the peat layer is shallow, while in deep bogs, the losses would be as much as 86 percent.

2008 September 15. Weather History Offers Insight Into Global Warming. By Anthony DePalma, The New York Times. Excerpt: NEW PALTZ, N.Y. — It is probably a good thing that the Mohonk Mountain House, the 19th-century resort, was built on Shawangunk conglomerate, a concrete-hard quartz rock. Otherwise, the path to the National Weather Service’s cooperative station here surely would have turned to dust by now.
Every day for the last 112 years, people have trekked up the same gray outcropping to dutifully record temperatures and weather conditions. In the process, they have compiled a remarkable data collection that has become a climatological treasure chest.
The problems that often haunt other weather records — the station is moved, buildings are constructed nearby or observers record data inconsistently — have not arisen here because so much of this place has been frozen in time. The weather has been taken in exactly the same place, in precisely the same way, by just a handful of the same dedicated people since Grover Cleveland was president.
For much of that time, those same weather observers have also made detailed records about recurring natural events, like the appearance of the first spring peeper or the first witch hazel bush to bud in the fall. Together, these two sets of data, meticulously collected in the same area, are beginning to offer up intriguing indicators about climate change — not about what is causing it but rather how it affects the lives of animals, plants, insects and birds....
...The record shows that on this ridge in the Shawangunk Mountains, about 20 miles south of the better-known Catskills, the average annual temperature has risen 2.7 degrees in 112 years. Of the top 10 warmest years in that time, 7 have come since 1990. Both annual precipitation and annual snowfall have increased, and the growing season has lengthened by 10 days.
But what makes the data truly singular is how it parallels a vast collection of phenological observations taken at this same place, and by many of the same observers, since 1925....

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 May. The Carbon Hoofprint. Lauren Wilcox, The WorldArk. Excerpt: A recent report from the United Nations contained a stunning statistic: One industry is responsible for nearly 20% of the greenhouse gases released int the atmosphere worldwide. It isn't long-haul trucking, or air travel, or stell-smelting vactories, or any of the other exhaust-belching suspects ususally associated wtih environmental woes.
It is the livestock industry.
In "Livestock's Long Shadow," released in 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations freported that raising and processing cattle, hogs, poultry and other animals produces 18% of the greenhouse gases; just 13% comes from trucks, cars and other transportation. ...The livestock industry's transgressions include the deforestation of grazing land, the pollution of air and grondwater from animal waste, the excessive use of water to raise grain for feed and its threat on biodiversity....

2008 May 28. The Gathering Storm. By George Black, OnEarth (NRDC). Excerpt: What Happens When Global Warming Turns Millions of Destitute Muslims Into Environmental Refugees?
...water, from the rivers, from the ocean, from the ground, is this country's existential curse. Bangladesh and its 150 million people -- the world's seventh-largest population, compressed into an area the size of Iowa -- have somehow contrived to have too much water, too little water, and more and more water of the wrong kind.
The long-range apocalypse facing the country is global warming and the accelerating sea-level rise that will accompany it. ...the daily short-term menace is the steady northward creep of salt from the Bay of Bengal. Today the land is saturated with people; little by little it is also becoming saturated with salt.
...However, try asking the millions of people in the Ganges Delta if they have too much water -- at least of the kind they can use. Over the last few centuries, the natural course of the sacred river has shifted eastward, redirecting the surge of freshwater that used to dilute the salt inflow from the Bay of Bengal. ...in 1970, India made things worse by building a diversion dam across the Ganges at Farraka, a few miles short of the border. Indian engineers did this to increase the flow of water into the Hooghly River, which runs through Calcutta, ... to provide a reliable supply of drinking water to the city and to flush out the silt that threatened to block navigation. Each of these natural and man-made changes has deepened Bangladesh's freshwater crisis, ...many of the smaller rivers and channels that used to thread through the Ganges Delta have dried up and disappeared.
It gets worse. There's also the scourge that comes from the other direction, from the Bay of Bengal, in the form of catastrophic floods and cyclones.
... "Well, at the moment the sea level is rising at about three millimeters a year" -- a little more than one-tenth of an inch -- "but that's going to get worse. The current projections deal with three grades of sea-level rise -- 30 centimeters, 75 centimeters, one meter." He pauses. "Under the most benign of these three scenarios, there's going to be a permanent loss of 12 percent to 15 percent of our surface area, with a present population of five million to seven million."....

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."....

2008 January 23. 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.

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