Global Warming Knowledge Test

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Canary in the coal mine?...

Birds 'off the pace' with warming
Wednesday, 20 August 2008 - French birds are moving northwards in response to climate change, but not fast enough, a study suggests.

Their data came from a large survey in which volunteer ornithologists counted more than 105 species of bird. In the Royal Society journal Proceedings B, researchers say that the birds are lagging some 182km behind the increases in temperature. This lag may be of particular concern to rare birds or species that have very specific food requirements.

"The flora and fauna around us are shifting over time due to climate change," said Vincent Devictor, who led the research project from the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) in Paris. "The result is desynchronisation. If birds and the insects on which they depend do not react in the same way, we are headed for an upheaval in the interaction between species," he told the AFP news agency. At its worst, this desynchronisation could result in species extinctions, he said.

Slow march

In 1989, French ornithologists began a systematic survey of breeding birds. Sightings are taken at set times of the year in set locations, and follow a standard protocol. A wide variety of habitats are surveyed across the whole country, including farmland, forests, suburbs and cities. The result is a dataset that covers virtually all wild bird species in the country, and can be used to track changes over the period.

More BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Birds 'off the pace' with warming

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Scientists Concerned About Impact of Acid Levels on Sea Life Worldwide...

Acid on the Rise Under the Sea
Aug. 22, 2008 - Corrosive Oceans: Carbon Emissions Threaten Ecosystem

Under the vast, trackless surface of the ocean, scientists have discovered a monster of a problem, literally rising from the deep. The world's oceans are becoming more acidic and corrosive because of the same carbon emissions that cause another immense problem: global warming. "We think this can have devastating impacts on our ocean ecosystem," said Richard Feely, program manager at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. Cold water naturally absorbs carbon dioxide from the air, and the oceans have absorbed about half of the carbon emissions we've spewed out in the last two centuries -- hundreds of billions of tons of it.

Scientists first thought that was a good thing, since all that carbon sinking into the ocean meant it wouldn't be causing even more global warming in the air. But Feely says that "the ocean ecosystem can no longer handle all this excess Co2." The problem? Excess carbon dioxide turns seawater into carbonic acid. Scientists report the ocean's new acidity worldwide is crippling sea creatures in their efforts to form their shells and skeletons, to breathe, to move and catch prey, and to reproduce and mature.

Scientists have been slow to identify the problem, partly because it's invisible. Life in the ocean is mostly out of sight and out of mind, down there under that vast gray surface. Also invisible is all the carbon dioxide and its absorption into the ocean surface. But now scientists are beginning to see it all. Huge amounts of fossil fuels have been burned since the industrial age began, and those carbon emissions have already increased the ocean's acidification by 30 percent. This summer scientists were stunned to find acidic waters -- normally trapped in the deeper parts of the ocean -- rising up to shallow waters just off shore on the continental shelf, where so much sea life is found.

More ABC News: Corrosive Oceans: Carbon Emissions Threaten Ecosystem

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Global warming sea level rise...

Sea Buries a Ghanan Village, and More May Follow
August 26, 2008 - In Possible Climate Change Preview Rising Sea Buries Ghanaian Coastal Village

The old shore road to Totope is now under the sea, and when developers began carving out another one, it was washed away so often they abandoned it. Now the road to this village is just a track across the sand. On this southern coast of Ghana, the Atlantic Ocean is rising. Every few years, residents of a string of villages leave their homes and build new ones farther back, abandoning them to the encroaching sand and water.

"When I was young, you had to climb a coconut tree to see the sea," said Alex Horgah, a 57-year-old fisherman, sitting under a thatch shelter. The old men of the village say every year the shore advances a few yards. Totope has no place left to run: It is squeezed between the ocean and the Songho Lagoon, and the villagers say that in a few years they will have to leave.

Coastal erosion in West Africa has many causes, from wind-driven wave energy pounding the shore to the construction of dams. The amount of beach disappearing every year varies along the coastline and from country to country. But if predictions of the impact of climate change run true, this could be a preview for many coastal areas. In Accra, Ghana's capital about 60 miles to the west, a weeklong 160-nation conference is meeting through Wednesday to work on a treaty to limit global warming and combat the consequences of climate change.

Negotiators have a deadline of December 2009 to complete one of the most complex and difficult international agreements in history. They need to map out ways to drastically reduce emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, and devise a flow of hundreds of billions of dollars every year to help poor countries cope with changing weather.

More ABC News: Sea Buries a Ghanan Village, and More May Follow

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2nd largest summer shrinkage...

Ice cap 'melting more than ever'
August 28, 2008 - THE Arctic ice cap keeps melting under the effects of global warming and in August saw its second largest summer shrinkage since satellite observations began 30 years ago, US scientists say.

Measurements on August 26 showed an ice cap of 5.26 million sq km , just below the 5.32 million sq km observed on 21 September 2005, making it the second biggest summer Arctic ice-cap melt in history, said the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC). Since the start of August, the Boulder, Colorado-based center said, the Arctic polar cap shrank by 2.06 million sq km.

The melting is so fast and extensive it could shrink the ice cap to below the 4.25 million sq km reached in the summer of 2007, the smallest it has ever been observed by satellites, the centre said. Since the end of the Arctic summer and the start of the freezing autumn is several weeks away, it said, the ice cap could dwindle even more than it did in 2007.

At the end of northern hemisphere summer 2007, the Arctic ice cap was 40 per cent smaller than the average 7.23 million sq km observed in 1979-2000, the NSIDC said. The North Pole melting season begins in mid-June. The ice cap shrinks to its smallest area by mid-September and grows the most in winter by mid-March.

"The bottom line, however, is that the strong negative trend in summertime ice extent characterising the past decade continues," the centre said in a report. The North Pole itself could even become free of ice by September for the first time in modern history, setting setting a new milestone in the effects of global warming on the Arctic ice shelf, NSIDC glaciologist Mark Serreze said in late June.

Ice cap 'melting more than ever' | NEWS.com.au

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UN worried about climate change...

UN Calls for Urgent Action on Climate Change
31 August 2008 - The United Nations is calling for urgent action to halt climate change on the 20th anniversary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

For much of the past 20 years, studies by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have been greeted with skepticism and even vilified in some quarters. But, UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, says any lingering doubts that the globe is warming were laid to rest in the Panel's Fourth Assessment Report. He says the report established that climate change is real, that it is happening, and that human activity is the primary driver of this phenomenon. "It has developed into a full-scale crisis that makes it increasingly difficult for us to reach and maintain development aspirations such as the Millennium Development Goals. But, the crisis needs a commensurate response. After 20 years of the work of the IPCC, we have the science. We know what needs to be done," he said.

Last year, the IPCC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, together with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. The Nobel Committee praised them for their efforts in spreading greater knowledge about man-made climate change and for presenting the measures needed to counteract such changes. IPCC Chairman R.K. Pachauri is pleased with the award, but he says this is no time for the IPCC to rest on its laurels. In an interview with VOA, he says the threats from climate change are huge. He says the clock is running out on the amount of time left to reverse this process. "I would say about six or seven years. We need to think about change rather quickly because unless we do that, then the impacts of climate change are going to get more and more serious," he said.

Pachauri says the United States, which is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, must take a leadership role in combating climate change. He says he believes there will be a positive change in attitude from the new Administration. "I expect in the next few months you will definitely see a change out of the U.S. and that is largely because there is a great deal of public opinion which is demanding that the U.S. should take more of a leadership position in climate change negotiations and the agreement that we hope will come into existence," he said. The IPCC's 29th plenary meeting is taking place this year. This is part of ongoing negotiations aimed at reaching a comprehensive climate change agreement in Copenhagen by December 2009. That agreement will succeed the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012.

VOA News - UN Calls for Urgent Action on Climate Change

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Ward Hunt shelf in peril...

Major ice-shelf loss for Canada
Wednesday, 3 September 2008 - Ward Hunt is the largest of the remnant ice shelves

The ice shelves in Canada's High Arctic have lost a colossal area this year, scientists report. The floating tongues of ice attached to Ellesmere Island, which have lasted for thousands of years, have seen almost a quarter of their cover break away. One of them, the 50 sq km (20 sq miles) Markham shelf, has completely broken off to become floating sea-ice.

Researchers say warm air temperatures and reduced sea-ice conditions in the region have assisted the break-up. "These substantial calving events underscore the rapidity of changes taking place in the Arctic," said Trent University's Dr Derek Mueller. "These changes are irreversible under the present climate."

Scientists reported in July that substantial slabs of ice had calved from Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, the largest of the Ellesmere shelves. Similar changes have been seen in the other four shelves. As well as the complete breakaway of the Markham, the Serson shelf lost two sections totalling an estimated 122 sq km (47 sq miles), and the break-up of the Ward Hunt has continued.

Cold remnants

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Warmer water = stronger hurricanes...

As ocean surface temperatures rise, so do hurricanes' strength
09-03-08 -- Hurricanes have grown more and more powerful over the past 30 years as ocean surface temperatures - probably aided by global warming - have increased, climate scientists said today.

The trend is worldwide, the researcher said, but the evidence is strongest in the North Atlantic, which takes in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, where just days ago hurricane Gustav bore down on the Louisiana coast, reviving memories of Katrina. "The fact that Gustav reached category 4 in the increasingly warm Caribbean is consistent with what we've noted as a trend over the past 30 years," James B. Elsner, leader of a hurricane research team at Florida State University said Wednesday in an e-mail. The one-two punch of Gustav and of Katrina, the category 5 hurricane that devastated New Orleans just three years ago, he said, "might be a harbinger of things to come in a warmer world as the observed and modeled consequence of climate change."

The study is appearing today in the journal Nature just a day after two other published reports concluded that for the past decade temperatures throughout the Northern Hemisphere have been warmer than at any time in the past 1,300 years. Surface temperatures both on land and sea have been rising for centuries, and when ocean surfaces heat up they provide energy that can whip the circular winds of normal storms over the ocean into full-scale hurricanes. Using satellite measurements, Elsner and researchers at the University of Wisconsin studied the peak wind speeds of storms over the world's tropic oceans that later grew to become full-scale hurricanes.

The result, they said, was consistent with the long-held hypothesis that "as the seas warm, the ocean has more energy to convert to tropical winds." More often now than in the past, those winds have speeded up to become hurricanes, Elsner's team has found. The link between those hurricanes and sea surface temperatures during the past three decades was most clear in the North Atlantic, but it was less significant in other parts of the world, the scientists concluded. In an earlier review of the links between climate change and hurricane intensity, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Elsner noted that his results "have serious implications for life and property throughout the Caribbean, Mexico and portions of the United States."

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Guess we'll have to wait and see if New Orleans and Florida end up underwater.

Global warming sea level rise may not be so dramatic
Friday 5th September, 2008 - A new Colorado University study has pegged rise in sea levels to six feet by 2100, rather than the 20 feet feared by some scientists.

Calculations were made using conservative, medium and extreme glaciological assumptions for sea rise expected from Greenland, Antarctica and smaller glaciers, the three primary contributors to sea rise. The survey team concluded the most plausible scenario, when factoring in thermal expansion due to warming waters, will lead to a total sea level rise of roughly three to to six feet by 2100.

The team found that some of the very large predictions of sea level rise are unlikely, because there is simply no way to move the ice or the water into the ocean that quickly. They began the study by postulating future sea level rise at about two metres by 2100 produced only by Greenland.

For Greenland alone to raise sea level by two metres by 2100, they said, all of the outlet glaciers involved would need to move more than three times faster than the fastest outlet glaciers ever observed, or more than 70 times faster than they presently move. The study concluded the outlet glaciers would have to start moving that fast today, not 10 years from now.

Global warming sea level rise may not be so dramatic

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Not a bad idea...

'Climate crisis' needs brain gain
Sunday, 7 September 2008 - The most brilliant minds should be directed to solving Earth's greatest challenges, such as climate change, says Sir David King.

The former UK chief scientist will use his presidential address at the BA Science Festival to call for a gear-change among innovative thinkers. He will suggest that less time and money is spent on endeavours such as space exploration and particle physics. He says population growth and poverty in Africa also demand attention.

"The challenges of the 21st Century are qualitatively different from anything that we've had to face up to before," he told reporters before the opening of the festival, which is being held this year in Liverpool. "This requires a re-think of priorities in science and technology and a redrawing of our society's inner attitudes towards science and technology."

Huge expense

Sir David's remarks will be controversial because they are being made just as the UK is about to celebrate its participation in the Large Hadron Collider, the world's biggest physics experiment. The Collider, built at the Cern laboratory under the Swiss-French border, is starting full operations this Wednesday.

More BBC NEWS | UK | 'Climate crisis' needs brain gain

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Solar cycle impacts global warming more than CO2...

Astronomical Influences Affect Climate More Than CO2, Say Experts
Wednesday, September 17, 2008 – Warming and cooling cycles are more directly tied in with astronomical influences than they are with human-caused carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, some scientists now say.

Recent observations point to a strong link between “solar variability” – or fluctuations in the sun’s radiation – and climate change on Earth, while other research sees the sun as just one of many heavenly bodies affecting global warming in the later half of the 20th century. Contrary to what has been stated in a “Summary for Policymakers” attached to the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report -- and in subsequent press coverage of the report -- there is scant evidence in favor of human-caused global warming, according to geologists, astrophysicists, and climatologists who have released updated studies. The IPCC report was issued most recently in February 2007.

An examination of warming and cooling trends over the last 400 years shows an “almost exact correlation” between all of the known climate changes that have occurred and solar energy transmitted to the Earth, while showing “no correlation at all with CO2,” Don J. Easterbrook, a geologist with Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash., told CNSNews.com. The isotopes located in Greenland’s ice core, along with layering features, make it possible to date and track some of the climate changes that have occurred, he explained. Consequently, he has identified about 30 warming and cooling cycles that have taken place reaching back over the past several hundred years.

“Only one in 30 shows any correlation with CO2,” he said. “So if you’re a baseball player with 30 at bats, that’s not a very good average.” The ice core records also show that after the last Ice Age ended, temperatures rose for about 800 years before CO2 increased, Easterbrook pointed out in a recent paper. This demonstrates that “climatic warming causes CO2 to rise, not vice-versa,” he wrote. “There is no actual physical evidence you can point to that would say CO2 is causing climate change,” he said in the interview. “If CO2 was causing global warming, you would be able to detect this warming in the lower part of the atmosphere (called the troposphere) but there is no warming here, so the answer for some is to look the other way.”

More CNSNews.com - Astronomical Influences Affect Climate More Than CO2, Say Experts

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Arctic Sea Ice Shrinkage Grows
Sept. 17, 2008 - Permanent "Sea Ice" Shown To Have Shrunk By Half In Latest NASA Images

NASA has issued a preliminary report confirming environmentalists' fears of disappearing sea ice at the Arctic. Sea ice is the thick permanent ice formed by frozen ocean water that remains even as seasonal ice melts away in the summer. In the past, it has covered about 60 percent of the Arctic.

The sea ice at the Arctic has now been found to have melted away by as much as half, according to a preliminary report issued Tuesday by NASA and the NASA-supported National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado. "According to NASA-processed satellite microwave data, this perennial ice used to cover 50 to 60 percent of the Arctic, but this winter it covered less than 30 percent," NASA said in a statement.

It is the second-smallest amount of coverage since NASA began monitoring the situation in 1979. The Artic's sea ice coverage this September is about 33 percent below average, compared with the record low of 39 percent below average recorded in 2007. At this time, neither NASA nor the National Snow and Ice Data Center have made suggestions as to the possible cause for the change. A thorough analysis of the data is scheduled to be released the first week of October, according to NASA.

Source

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Will tropical heat preclude human habitation?...

Tropical Species Also Threatened by Climate Change
WASHINGTON October 9, 2008 - Polar Bears May be the Poster Children for Global Warming, but Tropics Also Threatened

If you can't stand global warming, get out of the tropics. While the most significant harm from climate change so far has been in the polar regions, tropical plants and animals may face an even greater threat, say scientists who studied conditions in Costa Rica. "Many lowland tropical species could be in trouble," the team of researchers, led by Robert K. Colwell of the University of Connecticut, warns in Friday's edition of the journal Science. "The tropics, in the popular view, are already hot, so how could global warming harm tropical species? We hope to put this concern on the conservation agenda," Colwell said.

That's because some tropical species, insects are an example, are living near their maximum temperatures already and warmer conditions could cause them to decline, Colwell explained. "We chose the word 'attrition' to emphasize slow deterioration," he said. "How soon that will be evident enough for a consensus is difficult to say." But the researchers estimated that a temperature increase of 5.8 degrees Fahrenheit (3.2 Celsius) over a century would make 53 percent of the 1,902 lowland tropical species they studied subject to attrition.

That doesn't mean today's jungles will one day be barren, however. "'Tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Some species will thrive," Colwell said. "But they are likely to be those already adapted to stressful conditions," such as weeds. What of the others?

There are few nearby cooler locations for tropical plants and animals fleeing rising temperatures. In the tropics in particular, going up rather than out may be an answer. That's because tropical species with small ranges would have to shift thousands of kilometers north or south to maintain their current climatic conditions. "Instead," Colwell said, "the most likely escape route in the tropics is to follow temperature zone shifts upward in elevation on tropical mountainsides."

More ABC News: Tropical Species Also Threatened by Climate Change