Arguably, the most important impacts of climate change – including those to ecosystems, agriculture, energy, and industry – will be tied to changes in water availability
“The CO2 geological storage information in this Atlas was developed to provide a high-level overview of CO2 geological storage potential across Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The location and areal extent of promising geological storage formations and the CO2 resource estimates presented in this Atlas are intended to be used as an initial assessment of potential geological storage opportunities.” Quote from the Atlas introduction.
“Stalagmites are the ice cores of the tropics,” says Jess Adkins, professor [...] at the California Institute of Technology. He and Kim Cobb of the Georgia Institute of Technology led a team that collected samples from stalagmites in caves in northern Borneo and measured their levels of oxygen isotopes to reconstruct a history of the tropical West Pacific’s climate over four glacial cycles during the late Pleistocene era.
USGS is working on a national assessment of potential geologic storage resources for carbon dioxide. Their publication: Geologic Framework for the National Assessment of Carbon Dioxide Storage Resources─Bighorn Basin, Wyoming and Montana is part of that effort.
“This brief report, drawing from a multi-year effort by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), examines recent trends in March-June, June-September, and March-September rainfall and temperature, identifying significant reductions in rainfall and increases in temperature over time in many areas of Ethiopia.” Quoted from the USGS Fact Sheet.
Natural gas from shale currently costs half as much as coal per BTU. Producing electricity with natural gas from shale is more efficient than coal. Natural gas from shale produces less CO2 than coal when it is used to generate electricity. What’s the problem?
PBS NewsHour examines the challenge of teaching climate change in K-12 schools. In this blog post several teachers share their perspective and approach.
“The Omo Delta, at the north end of Lake Turkana, a lake now located mainly in Kenya. Left: February 1, 1973. Right: January 24, 2005 to February 12, 2006. In 1973, the delta was contained entirely within the boundaries of Ethiopia. By 2005-2006, the southernmost point of the delta had moved roughly 12 kilometers (7 miles) to the south, and had crossed the Ethiopia-Kenya border.” Quoted from the NASA image release.
Warm ocean currents attacking the underside of ice shelves are the dominant cause of recent ice loss from Antarctica, a new study using measurements from NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite revealed.
The map above shows global temperature anomalies for March 2012. [...] For the month, the eastern two-thirds of the United States, as well as the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba, saw temperatures [...] approaching as much as 10 degrees Celisius above normal (deepest reds on the map). Temperatures were similarly extreme in the Arctic Ocean around Svalbard, the Barents Sea, and the Kara Sea. Far eastern Siberia, Alaska, and northwestern North America were significantly colder, while much of Europe and western Russia were warmer than normal.
“The Earth’s crust beneath the Mississippi Delta sinks at a much slower rate than what had been assumed. [...] However, these subsidence rates are small compared to the rate of present-day sea-level rise.” Quoted from the National Science Foundation press release.
“Even if humankind manages to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius [...] future generations will likely have to deal with a completely different world.
One with sea levels 40 to 70 feet higher than at present.” Quoted from the National Science Foundation press release.
Droughts and Volcanic eruptions are both reflected in the tree rings of Guatemala. Read a series of blog posts by Kevin Anchukaitis, an assistant research professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University.
“News stories and web postings have raised concerns that climate warming will release large volumes of methane from gas hydrates, kicking off a chain reaction of warming and methane releases. But recent research indicates that most of the world’s gas hydrate deposits should remain stable for the next few thousand years. Of the hydrates likely to become unstable, few are likely to release methane that could reach the atmosphere and intensify global warming.” Quoted from the USGS press release.
“A study by the U.S. Geological Survey evaluated the hydrologic response to different projected carbon emission scenarios of the 21st century using a hydrologic simulation model.”
“The oceans act like a sponge to draw down excess carbon dioxide from the air. The gas reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid, which over time is neutralized by fossil carbonate shells on the seafloor. If too much carbon dioxide enters the ocean too quickly, it can deplete the carbonate ions that corals, mollusks and some plankton need for reef and shell-building.” Quote from the National Science Foundation press release.
“New clues as to how the Earth’s remote ecosystems have been influenced by the industrial revolution are locked, frozen in the ice of glaciers. [...] Globally, glacier ice loss is accelerating, driven in part by the deposition of carbon in the form of soot or “black carbon,” which darkens glacier surfaces and increases their absorption of light and heat.” Quoted from the Woods Hole Research Center press release.
Kiribati (formerly known as the Gilbert Islands) has over 100,000 residents who live on 32 atolls and one coral island. Sea level rise threatens their survival. The nation contemplates buying a large tract of land on Fiji’s main island as a future home.
“Drastic reductions in Arctic sea ice in the last decade may be intensifying the chemical release of bromine into the atmosphere, resulting in ground-level ozone depletion and the deposit of toxic mercury in the Arctic.”
“A new NASA study revealed that the oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice is disappearing at a faster rate than the younger and thinner ice at the edges of the Arctic Ocean’s floating ice cap.” Quoted from the NASA press release.
Fifty-five million years ago, Earth underwent a very rapid global warming event. About a third of mammal species responded with a significant reduction in size during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum , some by as much as one-half.
“If the correlation holds, we would have a thermometer that goes back in time, a paleothermometer of how hot or cold water temperatures were when the nacre formed.” Quote from the University of Wisconsin press release.
New clues as to how the Earth’s remote ecosystems have been influenced by the industrial revolution are locked, frozen in the ice of glaciers. “We are finding this human derived signature in a corner of the U.S. that is traditionally viewed as being exceptionally pristine.”
“Rivers and streams in the United States are releasing substantially more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than previously thought. These findings could change the way scientists model the movement of carbon between land, water, and the atmosphere.” Quoted from the USGS press release.
“This methodology is designed to assess the storage resources in mappable subsurface bodies of rock into which CO2 is injected and trapped; in this methodology, these mappable subsurface bodies of rock are referred to as storage assessment units (SAUs). The total volume of pore space within a SAU can be described as the total in-place resource.” Quoted from the USGS report.
“Around the world coral reefs are facing threats brought by climate change and dramatic shifts in sea temperatures. While warming has been the primary focus for scientists and ocean policy managers, cold can also cause significant damage.” Quoted from the NSF press release.
“In the first comprehensive satellite study of its kind, a University of Colorado at Boulder-led team used NASA data to calculate how much Earth’s melting land ice is adding to global sea level rise.” Quoted from the NASA press release.
“Some climate cooling caused by past volcanic eruptions may not be evident in tree-ring reconstructions of temperature change because large enough temperature drops lead to greatly shortened or even absent growing seasons, according to climate researchers, who compared tree-ring temperature reconstructions with model simulations of past temperature changes.”
“According to NOAA scientists, 2011 was a record-breaking year for climate extremes, as much of the United States faced historic levels of heat, precipitation, flooding and severe weather, while La Niña events at both ends of the year impacted weather patterns at home and around the world.” Quoted from the NOAA press release.
“Fountain Stream is one of the largest rivers draining Malaspina Glacier. The changes in this river over the past 120 years provides an example of how glacial retreat can starve rivers of sediment and lead to erosion downstream, and an example of the complex changes that can result from climate change.”
“Mediterranean bottom currents and the sediment deposits they leave behind offer new insights into global climate change, the opening and closing of ocean circulation gateways and locations where hydrocarbon deposits may lie buried under the sea.”
” The storm we watched eroded 10 feet of forest floor. Beneath the tree roots, we could see the remains of beaches formed only a few decades ago, when a surplus of sand was still flowing from the glacier.” Quoted from the case study.
After a storm, the signs of rapid coastal erosion are especially obvious. Here, spruce roots trail uselessly down to the beach, where the dirt has been washed away beneath them. Coastal Erosion Slideshow
“ESA satellites show that a large dome of fresh water has been building up in the ArcticOcean over the last 15 years. A change in wind direction could cause the water to spill into the north Atlantic, cooling Europe.” Quote from the ESA website.
“Researchers are beginning their analysis of what are probably the first successful ice cores drilled to bedrock from a glacier in the eastern European Alps.” Quoted from the Ohio State University press release.
The World Economic Forum just released their annual report, Global Risks 2012, that describes 50 global risks grouped into economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological categories. Some of these risks are geoscience based and include rising greenhouse gas emissions, volatility in energy prices and more.
NASA researchers “investigated how Earth’s plant life is likely to react over the next three centuries as Earth’s climate changes in response to rising levels of human-produced greenhouse gases.” Quote from the NASA press release.
“As the Arctic warms, greenhouse gases will be released from thawing permafrost faster and at significantly higher levels than previous estimates. This thawing will release approximately the same amount of carbon as deforestation. However, the effect of thawing permafrost on climate will be 2.5 times greater because emissions include methane.” Quoted from the University of Alaska Fairbanks press release.
“An international team of scientists drilling deep under the bed of the Dead Sea has found evidence that the sea may have dried up during a past warm period similar to predicted scenarios for climate change in coming decades.” Quoted from the University of Minnesota press release.
“According to the Arctic Report Card, ice mass loss from Greenland in 2011 was about 430 gigatons—enough ice to raise global sea level by just over 1 millimeter.” Quoted from NASA’s Earth Observatory.
* Data for 2011 is available before the end of the calendar year because the melt season is over.
Depending on the data analysis approach, 2011 was either the third most extensive or the sixth most extensive melting year since satellite records began in 1979.
* Data for 2011 is available before the end of the calendar year because the melt season is over.
The land beneath Bangkok is subsiding, sea level is rising and that means flood risk for the Thai capital is rapidly increasing. An article in Discovery News explores the threat of flooding for the citizens, businesses and government of Thailand.
For surface life, the greatest biodiversity is generally found in the tropics. However, researchers are finding that biodiversity levels of underground life can be very high at almost any latitude.
Researchers have found that streams in the United States contain significant amounts of carbon and that streams play a more important role in the carbon cycle than previously believed.
This animation by Richard Muller of the University of California, Berkeley graphically shows how global temperatures have increased over the past 200 years. Get more information at the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature website.
Researchers at City College of New York have discovered that the Greenland ice sheet can experience cycles of extreme melting even when temperatures are not hitting record highs.
NOAA has in interesting animation that shows the motion of multi-year ice in the ArcticOcean. Increasing summer melting has severely reduced the amount of ice that survives in any given year.
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