U.S. scientists muzzled on warming

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Gonna start getting hotter in a couple of years...

Global warming to shoot up after 2009: Scientists
10 Aug 2007, WASHINGTON: Global warming is forecast to set in with a vengeance after 2009 with at least half of the five following years expected to be hotter than 1998, the warmest year on record, scientists reported on Thursday.

Climate experts have long predicted a general warming trend over the 21st century spurred by the greenhouse effect, but this new study gets more specific about what is likely to happen in the decade that started in 2005. To make this kind of prediction, researchers at Britain's Met Office made a computer model that takes into account such natural phenomena as the El Nino pattern in the Pacific Ocean and other fluctuations in ocean circulation and heat content.

A forecast of the next decade is particularly useful because climate could be dominated over this period by these natural changes, rather than human-caused global warming, study author Douglas Smith said over the telephone. In research published in the journal Science, Smith and his colleagues predicted that the next three or four years would show little warming despite an overall forecast that saw warming over the decade.

"There is... particular interest in the coming decade, which represents a key planning horizon for infrastructure upgrades, insurance, energy policy and business development," Smith and his co-authors noted. The real heat will start after 2009, they said. Until then, the natural forces will offset the expected warming caused by human activities, such as the burning of fossil fuels, which releases the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

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Threat to rainforests...

Global warming could reduce rainforest tree growth by 50 percent
Aug.11, 2007 : Data collected on forests in Panama and Malaysia has revealed that global warming could reduce the growth of trees in tropical rainforests by 50 percent, besides severely affecting their ability to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

According to Ken Feeley of Harvard University's Arnold Arboretum in Boston, the study shows that rising average temperatures have reduced growth rates by up to 50 percent in the two rainforests, which have both experienced climate warming above the world average over the past few decades. Feeley, who presented his research at an annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America in San Jose, California, warned that if other rainforests follow suit as world temperatures rise, important carbon stores such as the pristine old-growth forests of the Amazon, could conceivably stop storing as much carbon.

The amount of carbon that a forest stores depends on the balance between the rate at which it draws carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and the rate at which it gives carbon dioxide back through respiration. In carbon sinks, which are mostly found at high latitudes, photosynthesis outstrips respiration and the amount of carbon stored increases. In general, tropical forests are today thought to act as stable stores of carbon, with their photosynthetic input and their respiratory output more or less in balance.

Some scientists and environmentalists have suggested that, given the way carbon dioxide spurs plant growth, tropical forests could in time come to act as a sink, offsetting some of the man-made carbon dioxide build-up. Feeley and his colleagues analysed data on climate and tree growth for 50-hectare plots in each of the two rainforests, at Barro Colorado Island in Panama, and Pasoh in Malaysia. Both have witnessed temperature rises of more than one degree Centigrade over the past 30 years, and both showed dramatic decreases in rates of tree growth.

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An increase in hunger and starvation, and how to afford a solution...

Global warming boosts crop disease devastation
Thursday, August 16, 2007 - Global warming will fuel a disease that annually causes hundreds of million dollars in damage to rapeseed plants, used to make canola oil, according to a study released Tuesday.

Using weather-based computer models, researchers in Britain predicted that climate change will expand the range and increase the severity of phoma stem canker, which already accounts for US$900 million (650 million euros) in losses each year. The study, published in the Royal Society journal Interface, found that warmer winters have significantly advanced the date of stem canker appearance in spring, giving it more time to spread before harvest.

Eleven of the past 12 years rank among the dozen warmest years on record, while mean global atmospheric temperature have risen by 0.8 C (1.44 F) over the last century. Plant pathologist Neal Evans, who led the research, forecast that the disease would move from England north to Scotland, where it does not currently exist. The computer model "was developed as a tool to help guide fungicide applications timing by farmers," he said. "We realised we could extend its use ... to examine how global warming might impact on future epidemics."

The top rapeseed growers in the world are China, Canada, India, Germany, France and Britain, accounted for nearly 80 percent of worldwide harvests. The United Nations authority on climate change has said earlier this year human activity is almost certain to blame for global warming, and warned that the Earth's average surface temperature could rise between 1.1 and 6.4 degrees by 2100.

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Expensive global warming cuts feasible: study
Thursday, August 16, 2007 - WASHINGTON: Making big cuts in emissions linked to global warming could come at considerable cost to the U.S. economy: between US$400 billion (euro293 billion) and US$1.8 trillion (euro1.3 trillion) in reduced growth over the next four decades, a new study says.

The study published Monday by a nonprofit research group partially funded by the power industry concludes that reducing emissions of carbon dioxide -- the main greenhouse gas linked to global warming -- will require "fundamental" changes in energy production and consumption. The Electric Power Research Institute said the most cost-effective way to reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is to make many changes at once, including expanding nuclear power, developing renewable technologies and building systems to capture and store carbon dioxide emitted from coal plants. Reducing demand for fossil-fuel power is also key, the institute said.

The EPRI cost estimate is based on a 50 percent economy-wide cut in carbon emissions from 2010 levels by 2050. Without such a cut and the shifts in technology it would bring, the Energy Department projects that U.S. carbon emissions will rise from about 6 billion metric tons a year in 2005 to 8 billion metric tons by 2030. The report calls for more modest cuts in emissions than some proposals currently being considered in Congress. Bigger cuts could well be more expensive.

However, environmentalists said the study misses a key point: the economic costs of not doing anything to stop global warming -- which they warn will lead to problems as diverse as flooding damage, refugee crises and less snow at ski resorts. "We think it will be more expensive to do nothing," David G. Hawkins, director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said. "We think the economy is going to be threatened by unabated global warming."

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Tornado in China??

Tornado kills nine in China
Aug 19, 2007 - Nine people were killed and 62 injured as a tornado hit east China's Zhejiang province, reports said Sunday.

A gale belt of 800-meter broad and eight-km-long swept through the Longgang township, Cangnan county of Wenzhou city at about 11.30 p.m. Saturday from the sea, the meteorological bureau said. The victims, three men and six women, aged between 30 to 75, were killed in house collapses. The tornado toppled down 156 houses.

Eight of the injured were described as 'in serious condition'. 'The bizarre wind smashed all the windows of our four-storey building and tore down my mom's old house in no more than one minute, just like a hurricane,' recalled 48-year-old villager Zhang Zhongling, who is under medical treatment together with his wife and mother in hospital.

Experts believe that the tornado was formed under the influence of typhoon Sepat that churned ashore in Chongwu town, Hui'an of Fujian province early Sunday. Heading northwestward to the Jiangxi province, Sepat is forecasted to unleash downpour with the rainfall of up to 400 mm in Fujian in next three days.

More than 900,000 people in south China's Guangdong province and the eastern provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang have been relocated to safer places before the typhoon's arrival. By 6 a.m. Sunday, gale and torrential rain in Wenzhou had destroyed 198 houses, affecting 475,912 people and causing an economic loss of 138.35 million yuan ($18.2 million) in this manufacturing city.

Tornado kills nine in China

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Analysis: evidence still shows global warming
Aug 17, 2007 - The wrongly calculated temperature statistics have left Nasa with egg on its face, but should have little long term effect beyond handing global warming-deniers a propaganda coup.

However embarrassing the oversight may have been, the adjustment to the temperature records from the United States is a matter of hundredths of a degree and does not alter the overall trend. The records that have had to be adjusted were from the US, excluding the states of Alaska and Hawaii, which forms about 2 per cent of the world’s surface.

Though the inaccurate figures would have been included in the calculations of average global temperatures, they have a negligible impact on the worldwide figures. The temperature figures that were found to be flawed were not inaccurate on their own, but Nasa had failed to ensure they had been adjusted. Raw data rather than adjusted figures had been used.

Temperature records have to be adjusted by scientists so as to make the statistics from different meteorological stations comparable. Adjustments take into account factors such as whether the readings were taken at the same time of day and whether the meteorological stations has always been in the same place.

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Modification of previous prediction...

NASA Predicts Global Warming Will Lead To Fewer Storms, But More Severe Ones
30 August 2007

It's the climate cat and dog fight of the decade. When Al Gore alleged that Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming, it set off a firestorm in the atmospheric science community. A few prominent experts disputed it and the websites and email campaigns took over from there. A trip of NASA/Goddard researchers say that storms may at least be impacted by global warming.

Previous climate model studies have shown that heavy rainstorms will be more common in a warmer climate, but the model developed by researchers Tony Del Genio, Mao-Sung Yao, and Jeff Jonas is the first to successfully simulate the difference in strength between land and ocean storms and includes how the strength will change in a warming climate. It predicts that in a warmer climate, stronger and more severe storms can be expected, but with fewer storms overall.

Simulating the weather is tricky business. If we could accurately do it, we would be able to predict the weather more than a week in the future. The NASA global computer model instead represents weather and climate over large areas and evaluates when conditions are conducive to the outbreak of storms of varying strengths. To help calibrate, they tested it against current climate conditions. It was found to represent major known global storm features including the prevalence of lightning over tropical continents such as Africa and, to a lesser extent, the Amazon Basin, and the near absence of lightning in oceanic storms.

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Global warming bad for the heart...

Global warming may pose threat to heart
Wed Sep 5, 2007 - Global warming may be melting glaciers and forcing polar bears onto land, but doctors warn it could also affect your heart.

"If it really is a few degrees warmer in the next 50 years, we could definitely have more cardiovascular disease," said Dr. Karin Schenck-Gustafsson, of the department of cardiology at Sweden's Karolinska Institute. On the sidelines of the European Society of Cardiology's annual meeting in Vienna this week, some experts said the issue deserves more attention. It's well-known that people have more heart problems when it's hot.

During the European heat wave in 2003, there were an estimated 35,000 deaths above expected levels in the first two weeks of August. In France alone, nearly 15,000 extra people died when temperatures soared. Experts say much of that was due to heart problems in the elderly worsened by the extreme heat. The hardening of the heart's arteries is like rust developing on a car, said Dr. Gordon Tomaselli, chief of cardiology at Johns Hopkins University. "Rust develops much more quickly at warm temperatures and so does atherosclerosis," said Tomaselli, who is program chair at the American Heart Association.

In higher temperatures, we sweat to get rid of heat. During that process, blood is sent to the skin where temperatures are cooler, which opens up the blood vessels. In turn, the heart rate rises and blood pressure drops. That combination can be dangerous for older people and those with weakened cardiovascular systems. Extreme events like the recent devastating fires in Greece may complicate the problem. The increasing number of forest fires that have swept through Southeast Asia in the last decade have also brought a spike in heart disease, experts say.

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Dams contributing to global warming, reveals study
Sept 4, 2007 : The world's dams are contributing millions of tonnes of harmful greenhouse gases and spurring on global warming, a new study by a US environmental agency has revealed.

"Often it's accepted that hydropower is a climate friendly technology but in fact probably all reservoirs around the world emit greenhouse gases and some of them, especially some of the ones in the tropics, emit very high quantities of greenhouse gases even comparable to, in some cases even much worse than, fossil fuels like coal and gas," said International Rivers Network executive director Patrick McCully. He said when water flow was stopped, vegetation and soil in the flooded area and from upstream was left to rot, as well as fish and other animals, which died in the dam.

These decaying animal and vegetable matter then released carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide into the air. "Basically they're factories for converting carbon into methane and methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas - it's less known than carbon dioxide but it's actually about 25 times stronger than carbon dioxide in terms of trapping heat in the atmosphere," said McCully. He said studies had also shown that dams were responsible for a third of all methane emissions worldwide.

But it was an area that was under-researched so a clearer picture of how dams were contributing to global warming was not known, he added. He said scientists should now make efforts to incorporate technology that could produce energy from methane from dams. The findings were presented at the 10th annual Riversymposium in Brisbane this week, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

Dams contributing to global warming, reveals study

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Record melting arctic ice confirmed...

Ice withdrawal 'shatters record'
Friday, 21 September 2007, Scientists will be looking now to see how well the ice recovers

Arctic sea ice shrank to the smallest area on record this year, US scientists have confirmed.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) was reached on 16 September.

The figure shatters all previous satellite surveys, including the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km measured in 2005. Earlier this month, it was reported that the Northwest Passage was open.

The fabled Arctic shipping route from the Atlantic to the Pacific is normally ice-bound at some location throughout the year; but this year, ships have been able to complete an unimpeded navigation.

'Fast track'

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China blames drought on global warming...

China blames global warming for growing water shortage
5 Nov 2007, China suffers a water shortage of nearly 40 billion cubic metres a year which Water Resources Minister Chen Lei blamed largely on global warming, state media reported on Monday.

"The changes have led to a combination of both frequent drought and flooding," the China Daily newspaper quoted Chen as saying. Although global warming has contributed to falling water tables in China, rising consumption both by farmers and booming cities as well as severe pollution have also led to the problem. Decades of heavy industrialisation have made water from some lakes and rivers so polluted it is no longer useable, and tonnes of untreated waste are pumped directly into water sources.

Data also showed that rainfall in arid north China has been decreasing, the report said, adding that water resources in areas surrounding the Yellow, Huai, Hai and Liao rivers had dropped by about 12 percent.

"Seasonal water shortage in some of those areas are getting worse, seriously restricting sustainable social and economic development," the newspaper quoted an unnamed official as saying. Water shortage has also been affecting rice cultivation in China, the world's top consumer and producer of the grain, leading to plans for it to expand acreage for a new kind of rice that can grow in dry soil.

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Drought in China...

Autumn Rain Down 90 Percent in China Rice Belt
November 21, 2007 - Large areas of south China are suffering from serious drought, with water levels on two major rivers in rice-growing provinces dropping to historic lows, state media said on Tuesday.

Rainfall since the beginning of October had dropped by 90 percent in Jiangxi and 86 percent in neighbouring Hunan, the country's largest rice-growing province, from average figures, Xinhua news agency said. Rice is a staple for most Chinese and a crop which needs a constant supply of water

The Gan and Xiang rivers running through the two provinces had seen their lowest water levels in history, Xinhua said. The shallow water has caused a jam of barges in some sections of the Gan. Authorities had rushed to ensure drinking water supplies in big cities along the rivers and irrigation of fields by diverting water from reservoirs and installing pumps, Xinhua said.

Water levels on China's longest river, the Yangtze, and on the Pearl River in the southern province of Guangdong had also dropped, Xinhua said. Drought and floods are perennial problems in China where meteorologists have complained about the increased extreme weather, partly blaming it on climate change.

More than 1,100 Chinese were killed during summer floods this year. But some parts of the south were hit by weeks of scorching heat and drought in the summer, when as much as a third of farmland was damaged and millions of people were short of drinking water.

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Climate change facilitating the spread of malaria...

Malaria climbs into warmer highlands
Sat Dec 8, 2007 : In one New Guinea hilltop village the message was rooted deep in lore: If you hunt in the valley below and sleep there overnight, evil spirits will possess you, you'll become sick, and you'll die.

It was a homespun kind of malaria control in the highlands of this western Pacific island, long free of the disease-bearing mosquitoes that plague the hot and humid nights of its lowlands, said Dr. Ivo Mueller, a lead scientist at the Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research. As the Earth warms, however, "malaria epidemics in the highlands are now basically happening every year," Mueller said.

The threat of collapsing ice sheets and super-hurricanes dominates many discussions at the annual U.N. climate conference now under way in Bali, Indonesia. On the litany of ills linked to climate change, the slow spread of warm-weather diseases is more a quiet scourge, one whose ultimate cost remains incalculable. "What is going to be the burden on the health care infrastructure of poor, developing countries?" asked Hannah Reid, of London's International Institute for Environment and Development, opening a panel session Wednesday in Bali on the health impacts of climate change.

Forecasting those impacts can be controversial, both politically and scientifically. In Washington this October, for example, The Associated Press reported that the Bush administration, which opposes mandatory international action to rein in warming, expurgated pages discussing such negative health effects from a U.S. official's congressional testimony.

At the technical level, researchers in poorer nations like Papua New Guinea often cannot find the reliable health statistics — or, sometimes, historical temperature readings — they need to reach scientific conclusions. "Not having quality health data that spans many decades makes the long-term assessment of climate change impact on health rather difficult," Dr. Jonathan Patz, an international expert on health and climate, said in a telephone interview from his office at the University of Wisconsin.

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