NASA FINDS EARTH'S LAKES ARE WARMING

In the first comprehensive global survey of temperature trends in major lakes ( reported on ScienceDaily )NASA researchers have found that Earth's largest lakes have warmed during the past 25 years in response to climate-change. Satellite data was used to measure the surface temperatures of 167 large lakes, which showed an average warming-rate of 0.45 degrees Celsius per decade, with some lakes warming as much as 1 degree Celsius per decade. The trend was global; the greatest increases were in the mid- to high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

The results have implications for lake ecosystems, which can be adversely affected by even small water temperature changes.

MORE INTENSE STORMS FROM GLOBAL OVERHEATING

Reported in
ScienceDaily, an analysis of weather systems in the northern and southern hemispheres by an atmospheric scientist at MIT says they will respond differently to global overheating. There will be more intense storms in winter in the northern hemisphere and all year round in the southern hemisphere.

ARCTIC HEATING CONTINUES

The Arctic Report Card, an annual assessment of Arctic conditions, prepared in 2010 by a team of 69 scientists, shows taht the region is continuuing to heat up, affecting local populations and ecosystems as well as weather patterns in the most populated parts of the Northern Hemisphere.


Highlights this year include: record-setting high temperatures in Greenland, causing loss of glaciers; summer sea-ice continuing to decline; and the duration of snow cover at its lowest since record-keeping began in 1966.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

HUMAN EFFECT ON NITROGEN RISKS GLOBAL DAMAGE

An authoritative study published in the October 8 issue of Science magazine (the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science) sounds the alarm over what humans are doing to the Earth's nitrogen cycle.

Micro-organisms have been controlling the cycle since life began on the planet. With life evolving around it, nitrogen became both an essential nutrient and a major regulator of climate.

The study in Science (pages 192-196, Vol 330, Oct 8 2010) reviews the major changes there have been to the nitrogen cycle throughout the Earth's history. Most of the time they coincided with the arrival of new organisms that provided new metabolic pathways.

But the last century has seen humans push the biological nitrogen cycle into a very different stage. Adding large amounts of fixed nitrogen in the form of fertiliser chokes out aquatic life that relies on run-off, and significantly increases the amount of NO2 in the atmosphere ( a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than CO2).

Micro-organisms may one day restore balance in the nitrogen cycle that they helped shape for billions of years, but humans must change their behaviour, or risk causing irreversible changes to life on Earth.

SEVERE DROUGHT MAY BECOME GLOBAL PROBLEM

The United States and many other heavily populated countries face a growing threat of severe and prolonged drought in coming decades, according to a new study by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Aiguo Dai, and reported on ScienceDaily. The detailed analysis concludes that warming temperatures associated with climate change will probably create increasingly dry conditions across much of the globe in the next 30 years, possibly reaching a level in some regions by the end of the century rarely, if ever, observed in modern times.

HUMAN DEMANDS ON EARTH 50% TOO HIGH

New analysis shows populations of tropical species are plummeting and humanity's demands on natural resources are sky-rocketing to 50 per cent more than the earth can sustain, reveals the 2010 edition of WWF's Living Planet Report (the leading survey of the planet's health)--full report on ScienceDaily.

CARBON-DIOXIDE DRIVES OF GLOBAL TEMPERATURE

Water vapoUr and clouds are the major contributors to Earth's greenhouse effect, but a new atmosphere-ocean climate modeling study by Andrew Lacis and colleagues at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York shows that the planet's temperature ultimately depends on the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide.

The notable feature of the team's study of the nature of Earth's greenhouse effect was to identify the importance of non-condensing greenhouse gases--such as carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, and chlorofluorocarbons. Without them, water vapour and clouds could not provide the feedback mechanisms that amplify the greenhouse effect. The study's results were published on the 15th of October in Science. The consequence is that carbon-dioxide is responsible for 80% of the greenhouse effect.

Full story in ScienceDaily.

CLIMATE-CHANGE TARGET UNSAFE SAY RESEARCHERS

Analysis of geological records by climate-change experts at the University of Exeter, records that preserve details of the last known period of global warming, has revealed 'startling' results that suggest current targets for limiting climate change are unsafe. The study, reported on ScienceDaily, has important implications for international negotiators who are aiming to agree binding targets for future greenhouse gas emission targets.

HOW WARM WAS THE 2010 NORTHERN SUMMER?

And were the unusually high temperatures caused by global over-heating? The answers are on ScienceDaily.

LOOHOLES IN CLIMATE ACCORD COULD SEE 4.2-DEGREE RISE BY 2100

An increase in the global temperature of up to 4.2 º C and the end of coral reefs could be reality by 2100 if national targets in the Copenhagen Accord are not revised--see ScienceDaily for the full report.

A FIFTH OF THE WORLD'S PLANTS FACE EXTINCTION

A global analysis of the risk of extinction for the world's plants, conducted by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Natural History Museum, London, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), has revealed that they are as threatened as mammals. One in five species face extinction.

Full story in ScienceDaily.

BLEAK FUTURE FOR OCEAN LIFE
A unique natural laboratory in the Mediterranean is revealing the effects of rising carbon-dioxide levels on ocean life, and shows a bleak future as ocean acidity rises.

Scientists from the University of Plymouth in England and the University of Santa Catarina in Brazil studied single-celled organisms called Foraminifera round volcanic carbon-dioxide vents off Naples in Italy. The study, published in the September issue of the Journal of the Geological Society, found that increasing CO2 levels caused foram diversity to fall from 24 species to only 4. A tipping-point occurs at mean pH 7.8, the pH level predicted for the end of the century.

NEW TECHNOLOGY BRINGS ELECTRICITY-GENERATION HOME

Reported in ScienceDaily is a new technology aimed at making every household and place of business a generator of electricity. Every point of consumption will also be a point of generation. The energy-base of society will be sunlight and water, not oil and coal. And huge transmission-lines will vanish.

The technology to do all that has been with us for years (the International Space Station runs on it). The new technology makes it much more efficient.

HIGHEST GLOBAL TEMPERATURES CONTINUE.

Data published by America's NOAA Satellite and Information Service, shows that the alarming temperatures continue:

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for June 2010 was the warmest on record at 16.2°C (61.1°F), which is 0.68°C (1.22°F) above the 20th century average of 15.5°C (59.9°F). The previous record for June was set in 2005.

June 2010 was the fourth consecutive warmest month on record (March, April, and May 2010 were also the warmest on record). This was the 304th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last month with below-average temperature was February 1985.

The June worldwide averaged land surface temperature was 1.07°C (1.93°F) above the 20th century average of 13.3°C (55.9°F)—the warmest on record.

It was the warmest April–June (three-month period) on record for the global land and ocean temperature and the land-only temperature. The three-month period was the second warmest for the world's oceans, behind 1998.

It was the warmest June and April–June on record for the Northern Hemisphere as a whole and all land areas of the Northern Hemisphere.

It was the warmest January–June on record for the global land and ocean temperature. The worldwide land on average had its second warmest January–June, behind 2007. The worldwide averaged ocean temperature was the second warmest January–June, behind 1998.

Click for the full report.

ABOUT 500 BILLION SHOULD DO IT

Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have found that if we removed 100 billion tons of carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere the average global temperature would drop only 0.16 degrees Celsius.

Which means that to reverse the damage we have done to the planet we would have to remove about 500 billion tons.

Even if we knew how to do that it would take many lifetimes.

Full report at ScienceDaily.

DIRE IMPACT FROM CHANGES IN OCEANS

The first comprehensive synthesis on the effects of climate change on the world's oceans has found they are now changing at a rate not seen for several million years, reports ScienceDaily.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, lead author of the report and Director of The University of Queensland's Global Change Institute, says the findings have enormous implications for mankind, particularly if the trend continues.

He said that the Earth's ocean, which produces half of the oxygen we breathe and absorbs 30% of human-generated CO2, is equivalent to its heart and lungs. "Quite plainly, the Earth cannot do without its ocean. This study, however, shows worrying signs of ill health.

"It's as if the Earth has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day!"

He warned that we may soon see "sudden, unexpected changes that have serious ramifications for the overall well-being of humans," including the capacity of the planet to support people. "This is further evidence that we are well on the way to the next great extinction event."

HOTTEST APRIL ON RECORD SAYS NOAA

The combined global land and sea surface temperatures for April, and for January to April, were the warmest on record, according to measurements by
NCDC-NOAA.

ANOTHER CHEAP HYDROGEN CATALYST FROM MIT

Expanding on work published two years ago, MIT's Daniel Nocera and associates have found another formulation, based on inexpensive and widely available materials, that can efficiently catalyse the electrolysis of water. It could be the basis for new storage-systems that would allow buildings to be independent and self-sustaining in energy. They would use energy from intermittent sources like sunlight or wind to create hydrogen fuel, which could then be used in fuel cells or other devices to produce electricity or transportation fuels. The technology eliminates any need for expensive platinum, which has been an obstacle to the move to a sunlight/wind and split-water economy.

Full report at ScienceDaily.

OVERHEATED EARTH WILL KILL HUMANS

Reasonable worst-case scenarios for global warming could mean deadly temperatures for humans in coming centuries, according to research findings from Purdue University and the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Researchers have for the first time calculated the highest tolerable wet-bulb temperature and found that it could be exceeded for the first time in human history in future climate scenarios if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate--ultimately reaching temperatures not seen on earth for 50 million years.

Wet-bulb temperature is equivalent to what is felt when wet skin is exposed to moving air. It includes temperature and atmospheric humidity and is measured by covering a standard thermometer bulb with a wetted cloth and fully ventilating it.

The researchers calculated that humans and most mammals, which have internal body temperatures near 37 degrees Celsius, will experience a potentially lethal level of heat stress at a wet-bulb temperature over 35 degrees that continues for six hours or more.

At worst whole countries would intermittently be subject to severe heat stress requiring large-scale adaptation efforts. Livestock would still be exposed. Outside work would be hazardous.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates of business-as-usual warming by 2100 are 4 degrees Celsius, eventual warming of 14 degrees is feasible.

"We found that a warming of 7 degrees would cause some areas of the world to surpass the wet-bulb temperature limit, and a 12-degree warming would put half of the world's population in an uninhabitable environment. When it comes to evaluating the risk of carbon emissions, such worst-case scenarios need to be taken into account. It's the difference between a game of roulette and playing Russian roulette with a pistol. Sometimes the stakes are too high, even if there is only a small chance of losing."

A person produces 100 watts of heat, which has to be got rid of. If the wet-buld temperature is too high that becomes impossible.

"The wet-bulb limit is the point at which people would overheat even if they were naked in the shade, soaking wet and standing in front of a large fan. Although we are very unlikely to reach such temperatures this century, they could happen in the next."

CHEAP CATALYST MAKES HYDROGEN FROM WATER

A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley has discovered an inexpensive metal catalyst that can effectively generate hydrogen gas from water.

The new proton-reduction catalyst is based on a molybdenum-oxo metal complex that is about one seventieth the cost of platinum, the most widely used metal catalyst for splitting the water molecule. The new catalyst does not need organic additives, and can operate in neutral water, even if it is dirty. It can also operate in sea water, the most abundant source of hydrogen on earth and a natural electrolyte. It is therefore ideal for renewable energy and sustainable chemistry.

The research team found that the complex catalyses the generation of hydrogen from neutral buffered water or even sea water with a turnover frequency of 2.4 moles of hydrogen per mole of catalyst per second.

MARCH 2010 HOTTEST MARCH ON RECORD

The monthly measurements by NOAA show that the combined land and ocean temperature for the planet made March the hottest on record (since 1880), reports ScienceDaily.

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ACIDIFICATION THREATENS WORLD'S OCEANS

The rise in human emissions of carbon dioxide is driving fundamental and dangerous changes in the chemistry and ecosystems of the world's oceans, international marine scientists have warned in a study reported in ScienceDaily.

surface waters have already acidified an average of 0.1 pH units from pre-industrial levels, and we are seeing signs of its impact even in the deep oceans.

"Future acidification depends on how much CO2 humans emit from here on--but by 2100 various projections indicate that the oceans will have acidified by a further 0.3 to 0.4 pH units, which is more than many organisms like corals can stand," says co-author, Prof. Hoegh-Guldberg of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and The University of Queensland. "This will create conditions not seen on Earth for at least 40 million years. These changes are taking place as much as 100 times faster than they ever have over the last tens of millions of years."

Under such circumstances, "Conditions are likely to become very hostile for calcifying species in the north Atlantic and Pacific over the next decade and in the Southern Ocean over the next few decades," the researchers warn.

Besides directly impacting on the fishing industry and its contribution to the human food supply at a time when global food demand is doubling, a major die-off in the oceans would affect birds and many land species and change the biology of Earth as a whole profoundly, Prof. Hoegh-Guldberg adds.

The scientists say there is now persuasive evidence that mass extinctions in past Earth history, like the "Great Dying" of 251 million years ago and another wipeout 55 million years ago, were accompanied by ocean acidification, which may have delivered the deathblow to many species that were unable to cope with it.

"These past periods can serve as great lessons of what we can expect in the future, if we continue to push the acidity the ocean even further" said lead author, Dr. Carles Pelejero, from ICREA and the Marine Science Institute of CSIC in Barcelona, Spain.

GLOBAL CONVEYOR BELT NOT SLOWING

Some good news amongst the climate-change gloom, in this report from an AAAS page.

The global conveyor-belt, the great current circling much of the planet, which keeps Europe warm, is not slowing down, according to careful analysis at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

So The Day After Tomorrow is still just a very good movie.

TIPPING-POINT FOR GLOBAL OIL

ScienceDaily reports that the world's capacity to meet projected future oil demand is at a tipping point, according to research by the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University.

It says that the age of cheap oil has ended as demand starts to outstrip supply, that current estimates of oil-reserves should be downgraded from between 1150-1350 billion barrels to between 850-900 billion barrels, and that we must accelerate the development of alternative energy fuel resources to ensure energy security and reduce emissions. But the oil-shortage cannot be mitigates with biofuels; there is not enough land.

GREENLANDS NORTHWEST COAST LOSING ICE

The ice-loss off Greeenland is accelerating up its northwest coast, according to satellite measurements. Full report in ScienceDaily.

CLIMATE-CHANGE EFFECTS UNDERESTIMATED

Charles H. Greene, Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, one of the authors of 'A Very Inconvenient Truth,' published in the peer-reviewed journal Oceanography (March 2010), says that he and his co-authors conclude that the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 Fourth Assessment Report underestimates the potential dangerous effects that man-made climate change will have on society.

'Even if all man-made greenhouse gas emissions were stopped tomorrow and carbon-dioxide levels stabilized at today's concentration, by the end of this century the global average temperature would increase by about 2.4 degrees [Celsius] above pre-industrial levels, which is significantly above the level which scientists and policymakers agree is a threshold for dangerous climate change. Of course, greenhouse gas emissions will not stop tomorrow, so the actual temperature increase will likely be significantly larger, resulting in potentially catastrophic impacts to society unless other steps are taken to reduce the Earth's temperature.'

He also says that thermal inertia in the oceans means that the temperature rise this century will last for a thousand years.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

HUGE METHANE LEAK IN ARCTIC

A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to the findings of an international research team led by University of Alaska Fairbanks scientists Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov.

The research results, published in Science on March 5th, show that the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, which has long been considered an impermeable barrier that seals in methane, is perforated, and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climatic warming.

'The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world's oceans,' said Shakhova, a researcher at UAF's International Arctic Research Center. 'Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap.'

Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

The full report is on ScienceDaily

ANTARCTIC MELTING SINCE 1947 SAYS USGS

New data shows that ice-shelves are retreating in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula due to climate change, which can can cause glaciers to retreat and a rise in sea-levels if warming continues, threatening coastal communities and low-lying islands.

Research by the U.S. Geological Survey is the first to document that every ice-front in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula has been retreating overall from 1947 to 2009, with the most dramatic changes occurring since 1990. The USGS previously documented that the majority of ice fronts on the entire Peninsula have also retreated during the late 20th century and into the early 21st century.

The ice-shelves, which are attached to the continent and floating, hold in place the Antarctic ice-sheet that covers about 98% of the Antarctic continent. As they break off, it is easier for outlet glaciers and ice-streams to flow into the sea and raise it.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

PERMAFROST NOW-130KM FURTHER NORTH THAN IN 1960

The southern limit of permafrost is now 130 kilometres further north in the James Bay region than it was 50 years ago.

The average temperature in the area has increased 2 degrees Celsius in the last twenty years.

SUB-TROPICAL IN GREENLAND'S GLACIERS

Researchers have found that ocean currents in the North Atlantic have changed to the extent that sub-tropical water is now reaching deep into Greenland's glaciers all year round, driving melting and probably triggering an accelerated loss of ice. Full report in ScienceDaily.

Sub-tropical heat is being rapidly transported to the glaciers--in months, not years.

ARCTIC CHANGING FASTER THAN EXPECTED

Climate-change is transforming the Arctic environment faster than expected and accelerating the disappearance of sea ice, reports the biggest-ever study of Canada's changing north, which involved more than 370 scientists from 27 countries. Collectively they spent 15 months, starting in June 2007, aboard a research vessel above the Arctic Circle, the first time a ship has stayed mobile in Canada's high Arctic for a whole winter.

'(Climate change) is happening much faster than our most pessimistic models expected,' says David Barber, a professor at the University of Manitoba and the study's lead investigator.

Models predicted only a few years ago that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer by the year 2100, but the increasing pace of climate change now suggests it could happen between 2013 and 2030, Barber said.

The cost of the Arctic's rapid melt will be $US2.4 trillion by 2050 as the region loses its ability to cool the global climate, says the U.S.-based Pew Environment Group, which released a report showing the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet.

Full report in NewsDaily.

2000 TO 2009 WARMEST DECADE SAYS NASA

NASA says the average global temperature for the last ten years are the warmest decade on record (since 1880), reports ScienceDaily.

CLIMATE WIZARD SHOWS WHAT IS COMING

Climate Wizard, makes rapid visual sense of climate models or a combination of some of all of sixteen of the leading ones.

Read the report on ScienceDaily.

MAN-MADE CLIMATE-CHANGE IRREFUTABLE FACT

Those who say that the changes in climate, average global-temperature, and weather are not man-made are dead wrong. The facts are irrefutable, the reasoning from them is irrefutable, and therfore the conclusion is irrefutable. The argument is so simple it is beyond denial, even for the worst prat-headed denial-addict on the planet.

A mixture has the characteristics of its components. The behaviour of a mixture is determined by its components and their proportions. Every cook on the planet knows that. Change the ingredients or change the proportions of the ingredients and the outcome will be different. The mixture will behave differently; its internal activity will be different.

The atmosphere is a mixture. That is undeniable. We have changed the characteristics of the mixture by putting in components that were not there before and changing the proportions of existing components, in particular carbon-dioxide. That is undeniable. For two hundred years we have been busily putting back into the sky massive amounts of carbon that were taken out of it many millions of years ago and put deep into the ground in the form of nice safe coal and oil. That is undeniable. We know how much carbon-dioxide we are pumping into the sky; it is a simple calculation--at present over 9 billion tonnes a year. That is undeniable. Before we started using the sky as an open sewer for the waste gases from coal and oil, carbon-dioxide was 280 parts per million. Now it is 390ppm. That is undeniable. That is a massive change--about 40%--in the proportions of a very important ingredient. That is undeniable. The ingredient we have increased is one that traps heat, like the glass of a greenhouse. That is undeniable. After 4.5 billion years the Earth had reached a perfect equilibrium, and for the past 10,000 years it had not gone outside a one-degree band. Now it has. Before we changed the atmosphere the same amount of heat was being reflected back into space as was being received from the Sun. Now ~0.8 watts per square metre more is coming in than going out. Therefore the atmosphere is warming up, the average global temperature is rising, the polar ice is melting. That is all undeniable. The rise in temperature has been compounding at 1.5% per annum; the rise in carbon-dioxide has been compounding at 1.5% per annum. The correlation is no accident. That is undeniable.

In short, it is undeniable that human beings have changed the mixture called the atmosphere. We have therefore changed its characteristics and its behaviour, its internal activity. Weather is the short-term behaviour of the atmosphere; global climate is its long-term behaviour. We have caused a fundamental change in those behaviours.

That is undeniable.

QED.

For the latest data off the satellites, and records going back to 1880, click here.

NASA UNVEILS CO2 SATELLITE MAPPING TOOL

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite is proving a precise and sophisticated tool for tracking carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, and its effect on climate in conjunction with water vapour, reports ScienceDaily.

The new data, which span the seven-plus years of the AIRS mission, measure the concentration and distribution of carbon-dioxide in the mid-troposphere--the region of Earth's atmosphere located between 5-12 kilometers (3-7 miles), above Earth's surface. They also track its global transport. The product represents the first-ever release of global carbon-dioxide data based solely on observations. The data have been extensively validated against both aircraft and ground-based observations.

In another major finding, scientists using AIRS data have removed most of the uncertainty about the role of water vapour in atmospheric models. The data are the strongest observational evidence to date for how water vapour responds to a warming climate.

"AIRS temperature and water vapour observations have corroborated climate model predictions that the warming of our climate produced as carbon-dioxide levels rise will be greatly exacerbated--in fact, more than doubled--by water vapour," said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.

He explained that most of the warming caused by carbon-dioxide does not come directly from it but from effects known as feedbacks. Water vapour is a particularly important feedback. As the climate warms, the atmosphere becomes more humid. Since water is a greenhouse gas, it serves as a powerful positive feedback to the climate system, amplifying the initial warming. AIRS measurements of water vapour reveal that water greatly amplifies warming caused by increased levels of carbon-dioxide. Comparisons of AIRS data with models and re-analyses are in excellent agreement.

"The implication of these studies is that, should greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current course of increase, we are virtually certain to see Earth's climate warm by several degrees Celsius in the next century, unless some strong negative feedback mechanism emerges elsewhere in Earth's climate system," said Dressler.

NEW IGBP INDEX PROVES CLIMATE-CHANGE

A new index prepared by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), which reduces solid climate-change data to a simple index, rather like a stock-market index, once again proves that human activity is the cause. Full report in ScienceDaily.

STUDY PREDICTS SEA WIL RISE UP TO 1.9M

A careful new study shows that the global oceans will rise may rise anywhere between 0.75 metres and 1.9 metres, reports ScienceDaily. ~The latter figure is consistent with another study that predicted up to 2.0 metres.

EARTH MORE SENSITIVE TO CO2 THAN THOUGHT

A detailed study of paleoclimatological data, reported by ScienceDaily, shows that the Earth's temperature may be 30-50% more sensitive to the carbon-dioxide than previously thought. There are facts not factored into our models.

Oh dear!

OCEANS NOW ABSORBING CO2 MORE SLOWLY

A new study, reported in ScienceDaily has for the first time used hard data to measure the level at which the oceans are absorbing carbon-dioxided, and found a significant reduction.

"Researchers have used climate models that suggest the oceans have been absorbing less CO2, but this is the first study to quantify the change directly using observations," said the author of the study, Jeffrey Park, who is professor of geology and geophysics and director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studiesthe Park. "It strengthens the projection that the oceans will not absorb as much of our future CO2 emissions, and that the pace of future climate change will quicken."

He used data collected from atmospheric observing stations in Hawaii, Alaska and Antarctica to study the relationship between fluctuations in global temperatures and the global abundance of atmospheric CO2 on interannual time scales (one to 10 years). A similar study done 20 years ago found a five-month lag between interannual temperature changes and the resulting changes in CO2 levels. Park found that the lag has increased to at least fifteen months, a surprisingly large change, which indicates that the ability of the oceans to absorb carbon-dioxide is much reduced.

NASA SEES UNEXPECTED ANTARCTIC ICE-LOSS

ScienceDaily reports satellite measurements by NASA showing an unexpected, and large, loss of ice in East Antarctica, an area that holds 90% of the world's fresh water, and was previously thought stable.

West Antarctica is losing 132 gigatonnes of ice a year. Now East Antarctica is estimated to be losing 57 gigatonnes a year. (A gigatonne is a billion metric tons.)

CARBON-DIOXIDE EMISSIONS UP 29 PERCENT

A report in ScienceDaily says that atmospheric CO2 emissions have risen 29% since 2000 and 41% between 1990 and 2008. 1990 is the reference year for the Kyoto Protocol...

Another report, on a study that has for the first time measured the greenhouse-strength of a range of other chemicals, some of which last for thousands of years in the atmosphere, found that they have far greater heat-trapping power than carbon-dioxide.

HOTTER AMERICA AND GREENLAND MELTING FASTER

Two reports from ScienceDaily show that the Greenland icesheet is losing mass at an accelerating rate, and that record high temperatures across the United States are far outpacing lows.

MULTI-YEAR ARCTIC ICE ALL GONE

ScienceDaily reports that an Arctic expert who recently surveyed the region says that the thick, hard multi-year ice in the Arctic has in effect all vanished, leaving only 'rotten' ice that can easily be sailed through.

MUD SAYS WARMING IS NOT NATURAL

Sediment at the bottom of a remote Artctic lake shows that the warming in the late twentieth century was unlike anything caused by natural events during the last 200,000 years, reports ScienceDaily.

15M YEARS AGO C02 WAS THIS HIGH

New research, reported in ScienceDaily shows that the last time carbon-dioxide was at its present 387 parts per million was 15 million years ago. The research uses a new method of calculating carbon-dioxide levels that enables data to be extracted back to about 20 million years. It checks against data extracted from ice-cores going back 800,000 years, which was the previous limit.

15 million years ago the planet was radically different, which suggests that we have put it on an inelectable path to an environment inimical to our civilisation.

TWO-METRE RISE IN OCEANS UNSTOPPABLE

ScienceDaily News reports that experts have told a climate conferene at Oxford University that a rise of at least two metres in the world's sea levels is now almost unstoppable.

'The crux of the sea level issue is that it starts very slowly but once it gets going it is practically unstoppable,' said Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at Germany's Potsdam Institute and a widely recognised sea level expert. 'There is no way I can see to stop this rise, even if we have gone to zero emissions.'

He said the best outcome was that after temperatures stabilised, sea-levels would only rise at a steady rate 'for centuries to come,' and not accelerate.

Most scientists expect at least 2 degrees Celsius warming as a result of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, and probably more. The world warmed 0.7-0.8 degrees last century.

Rahmstorf estimated that if the world limited warming to 1.5 degrees then it would still see a two-metre rise in sea-levels over a period of centuries, causing some island nations to disappear. His best guess was a one-metre rise this century, assuming three degrees warming, and up to five metres over the next 300 years.

'There is nothing we can do to stop this unless we manage to cool the planet. That would require extracting the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. There is no way of doing this on the sufficient scale known today' he said.

Scientists say that ice melt acquires a momentum of its own--for example warming the air as less ice reflects less heat, warming the local area.

'Once the ice is on the move, it's like a tipping point which reinforces itself,' said Wageningen University's Pier Vellinga, citing various research.

He thinks that above a two-degree rise in global average temperature there is a 50% chance that the Greenland ice-sheet will disintegrate, which 'will result in about a seven-metre sea-level rise, and the time frame is about 300-1000 years.'

Speakers in Oxford used history to back up their arguments on rising seas. They said that three million years ago the planet was 2-3 degrees warmer and the sea 25-35 metres higher, and 122,000 years ago 2 degrees warmer and 10 metres higher.

FAST-MELTING ICE AT POLES MAPPED

The most comprehensive picture of the rapidly thinning glaciers along the coastline of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets has been created using satellite lasers, marking an important step forward in the quest to make more accurate predictions for future sea level rise.

Researchers from British Antarctic Survey and the University of Bristol describe how analysis of millions of NASA satellite measurements from both of these vast ice sheets shows that the most profound ice loss is a result of glaciers speeding up where they flow into the sea.

The scientists compared the rates of change in elevation of both fast-flowing and slow-flowing ice. In Greenland, for example, they studied 111 fast-moving glaciers and found 81 thinning at rates twice that of slow-flowing ice at the same altitude. They found that ice loss from many glaciers in both Antarctica and Greenland is greater than the rate of snowfall further inland.

In Antarctica some of the fastest thinning glaciers are in West Antarctica (Amundsen Sea Embayment) where Pine Island Glacier and neighbouring Smith and Thwaites Glacier are thinning by up to 9 metres per year.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

DRAMATIC ARCTIC RESPONSES TO GLOBAL OVERHEATING

'The Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past,' says Eric Post, associate professor of biology at Penn State University, who led a large international team that carried out wide-ranging studies in 2008 of the biological responses to Arctic warming.

The paper by Post's research team shows that the effects of Arctic warming have been dramatic so far, especially considering that the warming amounts to only about 1-degree Celsius over the last 150 years. He said it is difficult to predict what will happen with the anticipated 6-degree warming over the next century.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

LESS SUN BUT ARCTIC IS GETTING WARMER

Detailed research into the Arctic climate has revealed that although it has been receiving progressively less energy from the sun for the past 8000 years, a decline that will not reverse for another 4000 years, and which means it should be getting cooler, it suddenly started warming round about 1900 and has since been warming at an accelerating rate.

It is now 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 1900, higher than it has been for two thousand years. Till the twentieth century it had been cooling 0.2 degrees Celsius per thousand years.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

MODELS AGREE: WE ARE MAKING AIR WETTER

An exhaustive study of climate models has found the unmistakable fingerprint of human activity is the cause of the inexorable rise of the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere--it has been rising at 0.4kg/cu.m per decade since 1988.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

WARMER ARCTIC MELTING METHYL HYDRATE

The warming of an Arctic current over the last thirty years has triggered the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from methane hydrate stored in the sediment beneath the seabed, reports ScienceDaily.
Scientists at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Birmingham, Royal Holloway London and IFM-Geomar in Germany have found that more than 250 plumes of bubbles of methane gas are rising from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin in the Arctic, in a depth range of 150 to 400 metres.

Methane released from gas hydrate in submarine sediments has been identified in the past as an agent of climate change. The likelihood of methane being released in this has been widely predicted.

ANTARCTIC GLACIER THINNING MUCH FASTER

The Pine Island Glacier is losing ice four times faster that it was ten years ago. If melting continues at that rate it will vanish in a hundred years, a sixth the time that was previously estimated, reports ScienceDaily.

The 5,400 square kilometre region now affected is big enough to impact the rate at which sea-levels will rise around the world. It contains enough ice to almost double the IPCC's best estimate of the rise this century, so how it will respond to the accelerated thinning of great concern.

OCEANS BEING PROFOUNDLY DAMAGED BY HUMANS

'The climate is currently warming faster than the worst case known from the fossil record, about 56 million years ago, when temperatures rose about 6 degrees over 1000 years. If emissions continue it is not unreasonable to expect ... warming of 5.5 degrees by the end of this century.'

'Scientists expect ocean oxygen-levels to decline by about six per cent for every one degree increase in temperature and areas in the sea which are low in oxygen to grow by at least 50 per cent. This has major implications for the world’s most productive fishing waters in the cool temperate regions. The seas provide around one sixth of humanity’s protein food and any loss in fisheries production will have a direct impact on us.'

Full report in ScienceDaily.

Then there's the rubbish collecting in a vast area of the Pacific.

EARTH'S CYCLES FALLING OUT OF SYNC

The Earth's biogeochemical cycles, the natural interlocked biological, chemical and geological cycles that were once operating in concert, are falling out of sync because of the impact humans are having on the planet, reports ScienceDaily.

BACTERIA PLUS MUD EQUALS ELECTRICITY

Scientists at the University of Massachusetts have discovered how to multiply eight-fold the power-output of Geobacter bacteria, which produce electricity from mud, creating the promise of using bugs and wastewater to produce household electricity. The microbial fuel-cell. Details in ScienceDaily.

SIXTH EXTINCTION WAVE BECOMING A TSUNAMI

A bleak picture of what humans are doing to the planet's biosphere, especially in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands (Oceania), is painted by a landmark new study. Over 1200 species of birds are now extinct in Oceania.

Globally, the average extinction rate is now some 1,000 to 10,000 times faster than the rate that prevailed over the past 60 million years.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

CO2 HIGHER NOW THAN IN PAST 2M YEARS

A new study, reported on ScienceDaily, which was able to reconstruct carbon-dioxide levels in the sharpest detail ever and over a much longer period than any previous one, shows that the peak average over the past 2.1 million years has been 280 parts per million--which was the level before human activity raised it to its present level of 385ppm.

Another study on ScienceDaily shows that glaciers can vanish in a geological eyeblink.

Not a pleasant conjunction of studies. Yet all the fools who run the world can think of as the Arctic melts away is that they will now be able to get at the oil and gas beneath it.

And fools of the same breed are excited about a new technique that will enable the human race to extract even more fossil fuels--folly fuels--from the earth.

GREENLAND ICE-SHEET MELTING FASTER THAN EXPECTED

A report in ScienceDaily cites a new study showing that Greenland's ice-sheet is melting faster than expected, and is contributing up to 25% of the global rise in ocean levels.

The oceans are now rising 3mm a year, and Greenland has been contributing about 0.7mm of that since 1995. About 265 cubic kilometres of ice have been lost each year.

CLIMATE DAMAGE WILL LAST FOR MILLENNIA

From the American Association for the Advancement of Science: 'The idea that we are already committed to a certain amount of surface air temperature increase and sea-level rise over the coming century, even if we could immediately halt all CO2 emissions, has become well known in scientific and science policy circles. The longer-term outlook is less well understood. Eby et al. use a complex, coupled climate-carbon cycle model to investigate how long anthropogenic climate change will persist as a function of how high the concentration of atmospheric CO2 rises. They calculate how long it will take for half of the total emissions to be removed from the atmosphere, what the maximum global average sea surface temperature increase will be, and how long it will take for 80% of that sea surface thermal anomaly to decay. The results suggest that atmospheric CO2 can persist at high concentrations for several thousand years, and that sea surface temperature increases can last many times longer than that. It looks, then, like we are in this for the long haul.'

CLIMATE PROJECTIONS ARE NOW FAR WORSE

New climate-change projections by MIT, published this month in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, and reported in ScienceDaily, show that climate-change, if no action is taken, will be much worse than previously thought--a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees.

PARTICULATES REPROGRAM GENES IN THREE DAYS

A new study, reported in
ScienceDaily, shows that certain particulates in polluted air can reprogram genes in as little as three days--genes responsible for the suppression of tumours.

To avoid cancer, stop breathing pollution.

COSMIC-RAY MODEL SHOOTS CLIMATE-SCEPTICS DOWN

A favourite theory of climate-change sceptics, who say the problem is caused by cosmic rays caused by increased solar activity, not greenhouse gases, has been buried by a new study, reported in ScienceDaily.

Sorry, guys, you will have to accept the truth sooner or later. And you'd better sell your oil shares quick...

OZONE HOLE EXPLAINS ANTARCTIC ICE

A new study explains why Antarctic sea-ice has been increasing overall, in contrast to Arctic sea-ice, which is vanishing away. The ozone hole is the answer to the puzzle. It is keeping the area artificially cooler than it would otherwise be. But once it has gone the overall effect will be the same as some local effects--the melt will be on. Full report in ScienceDaily.

NEW WAY TO SPLIT WATER

And a very clever one it is too. The only drawback is that the reported process needs ruthenium, not the most plentiful element known to science or anybody.

CARBON-SINKS LOSING AGAINST EMISSIONS

Scientists attending the Copenhagen Climate-Change Conference say that the stabilising influence that the carbon-sinks have on climate-change is gradually weakening because the sinks are not keeping pace with rapidly rising emissions. Report in Science Daily.

A study looking back millions of years via 1280-metre core drilledn from under Antarctic's Ross Sea Ice Shelf adds to the worry, because it shows that the amount of carbon-dioxide now in the atmosphere is about what it was when the huge West Antarctica Ice Shelf last vanished.

If it were to vanish again global sea-levels would be about 7 metres higher.

HORROR WORLD WITHOUT OZONE SIMULATED

This report in Science Daily shows what the world would have been if we had not realised what our CFCs were doing to the vital ozone layer. It would have virtually collapsed in the middle of this century, with terrifying consequences.

That study underlines what we could and should be doing about climate-change. There are some new thoughts on the risks from that, again in Science Daily.

RISING OCEANS WILL IMPACT 600M PEOPLE

The predicted rise in global sea-levels by 2100 is now expected to be at least 1 metre, and heading for metres unless urgent action is taken, according to presentations at the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change in Copenhagen--report in ScienceDaily.

Even the best-case scenario will hit low-lying coastal areas that house a tenth of the global population--about 600 million people.

AMERICAN BIRDS CONFIRM CLIMATE-CHANGE
The northward and inland movements of American birds, established by the observations of a vast number of citizens over many decades, shows that climate-change is having a serious impact on bird-life, reports
ScienceDaily.

Some species have moved hundreds of kilometres north, and are breeding earlier. Others, constrained by changes to habitat caused by human occupation and use, cannot move.

BOTH POLES WARMING FASTER THAN THOUGHT

The poles are warming faster than previously thought, raising global sea-levels and making drastic climate-change far more likely, concludes two years of wide-ranging research in a UN-backed programme called International Polar Year, which involved 10,000 scientists. See the full report in NewsDaily.

TROPICAL FORESTS ABSORB A FIFTH OF CO2

A long, careful study reported in
ScienceDaily shows that tropical forests are soaking up about a fifth of the 32 billion tonnes of CO2 that being pumped into the atmosphere every year. The oceans absorb another huge portion, leaving about 15 billion tonnes floating about.

IPCC SCIENTIST SAYS GOH TO BE FAR WORSE

A ScienceDaily report says that 'Without decisive action, global warming in the 21st century is likely to accelerate at a much faster pace and cause more environmental damage than predicted [in the fourth IPCC report], according to a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

'The IPCC scientist Chris Field of Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science points to recent studies showing that, in a business-as-usual world, higher temperatures could ignite tropical forests and melt the Arctic tundra, releasing billions of tons of greenhouse gas that could raise global temperatures even more--a vicious cycle that could spiral out of control by the end of the century.'

He says humans have released 350 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution, and that there is 1000 billion tons locked up in the tundra.

SEA 21 METRES HIGHER 400,000 YEARS AGO

Proof that the oceans were 21 metres higher 400,000 years ago has been found in Bermuda, a worrying discovery because of the conditions that the earth is now heading for. Full report in ScienceDaily.

STRATOSPHERIC SECRETS DISCOVERED DOWN A MINE

Cosmic-rays detected half a mile underground in a disused US iron-mine can be used to detect major weather events occurring 20 miles up in the Earth’s upper atmosphere, a new study has revealed, reports ScienceDaily. The surprise discovery will enable accurate measurements of a part of the atmosphere that till now has been hard to get at (no ladders tall enough).

GOH IRREVERSIBLE AND OCEAN DEAD-ZONES SOAR

The BBC reports that a team of US environmental scientists says many effects of climate change are irreversible, and that global temperatures could remain high for 1000 years even if carbon emissions can somehow be stopped right now. Their report was sponsored by the US Department of Energy; it appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ScienceDaily reported the same story.

And if global overheating is not stoppped ocean dead-zones will increase tenfold, reports ScienceDaily.

ANTARCTIC IS WARMING NOT COOLING

Sorry, all you oil-washed climate-change sceptics, but new research published on ScienceDaily shows that the Antarctic 'cooling', on which you were pinning a big chunk of your denial, is a myth. It is warming about the same amount as the rest of the planet.

If West Antarctica and Greenland melt the oceans will be 14 metres higher.

Even worse, thousands of scientists are agreed: that the planet is warming, and that it's our fault.

But geologists who work for oil companies are not convinced. They must have inside knowledge denied to ordinary mortals. ;-)))

ARCTIC MELTING PREDICTS HIGH SEA-LEVELS

A new report on ScienceDaily says, once again, that the Arctic is heating up faster than other places in the Northern Hemisphere. The US Geological Survey led the new assessment, which is a synthesis of published science literature and authored by a team of climate scientists from academia and government. The US Climate Change Science Program commissioned the report, which has contributions from 37 scientists from the United States, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom and Denmark.

The new report also makes several conclusions about the Arctic:

The size and speed of the summer sea-ice loss over the last few decades is highly unusual compared to events from previous millennia, especially considering that changes in Earth's orbit over this time have made sea-ice melting less, not more, likely.

The entire Greenland icesheet will vanish if there is sustained warming as little as 2 degrees Celsius above twentieth century values. That would raise sea-levels about 7 metres.

OCEANS TO RISE A METRE IN 100 YEARS

After studying the records of sea-level rises in the past instead of computer models, a multinational group of researches are predicting a rise of up to 1.3 metres in 100 years, which is many times what the IPCC's official vew, reports ScienceDaily.

Other scientists have knee-capped the climate-sceptics with research showing that the chances of the rising temperatures in recent years being nothing but statistical chance are the same as their chances of flipping a coin and getting heads fourteen times in a row (ScienceDaily).

CLIMATE-CHANGE LINK TO SEVERE STORMS

A NASA-funded study of five years of data from its Aqua spacecraft shows that the frequency of extremely high clouds in the tropics--the type associated with severe storms, torrential rain and hail--has been increasing as a result of global overheating.

For every 1-degree Celsius rise in average sea-surface temperature the team saw a 45% increase in the frequency of such clouds. At the present rate of global overheating that would mean that the frequency of storms will increase 6% per decade.

The results are consistent with another NASA-funded study done in 2005, which found an increase of 1.5% in the global rain-rate per decade--five times higher than the value estimated by the models used in the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

See ScienceDaily.

GLOBAL OVERHEATING WILL AFFECT USA SOONER

A report to the American Geophysical Union predicts a significant risk of abrupt climate-change due to global overheating affecting the US, says

Sea-level rises are expected to 'substantially exceed' the 600mm now projected for 2100, but how much is not yet known. This blog has previously predicted 1.5 metres. We shall see.

GREENLAND's 2008 ICE-LOSS TRIPLE 2007'S

The ice-loss from Greenland in the summer of 2008 is three times the record-breaking loss seen a year ago, reports
ScienceDaily.

WARMEST OCTOBER RECORDED SINCE 1880

The global average for land temperatures in October were the warmest since records began in 1880, reports the
NCDC/NOAA website. The average for land was up 1.12 degrees Celsius on the 1961-1990 base average.

The global average for land plus ocean was the second warmest on record. For land in the southern hemisphere it was the second warmest, for land in the northern hemisphere it was the third hemisphere.

The stratosphere, which trends downward as the surface trends upward, recorded the 3rd coolest temperature.

GAIA ON THE ROCKS

Minerals have evolved too, reports ScienceDaily.

Two-thirds of the over 4000 minerals on Earth owe their existence, directly or indirectly, to living organisms--which of course owe their existence to them, and so on.

COATING A HUGE BOOST FOR SOLAR-CELLS

A new nano coating for silicon solar cells boosts their absorption of sunlight from a maximum of 67.4% to a massive 96.21%, thus giving near-perfect absorption, right across the entire spectrum of sunlight. Even better, they function at that high level no matter what angle the light is coming from. That means static panels will no longer be less efficient than the ones that track the sun. Details in ScienceDaily.

CLIMATE-CHANGE SEEPS INTO THE SEA

And life seeps out...

MACHINE TO TAKE CO2 OUT OF AIR?

This article in ScienceDaily and this link describe 'a simple machine' being developed at university that could, if multiplied across the planet, remove billions of tonnes of carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere.

Richard Branson, head of the Virgin Group, has offered a $25 million prize to anyone who can devise a system to remove a billion tonnes of CO2 per year from the atmosphere for at least ten years.

The Calgary device consumes 100kWh for every tonne of carbon-dioxide it removes. The prototype removes 20 tonnes a year. So 50,000 devices of the same capacity would be needed to win the Virgin prize, and would consume 5GWh/year of electricity.

2005 LEVELS MAKE WARMING UNSTOPPABLE

ScienceDaily reports a study by the authoritative Scripps Oceanographic Institute, showing that the planet will warm about 2.4 degrees Celsius (4.3F) above pre-industrial levels, even under extremely conservative greenhouse-gas emission scenarios.

Even if we held to the 2005 levels, irreversible warming will lead to a significant loss of biodiversity and the substantial melting of glaciers.

GREENLAND HEADING BACK TO GREEN

Modelling of why Greenland stopped being green and became covered with ice indicates that it was the drop three million years ago in the global concentration of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere from high to pre-industrial levels, reports ScienceDaily.

The present level is now approaching those ancient levels.

No wonder Arctic ice-coverage is on the verge of another all-time low.

This BBC News report says the Arctic is passing through a tipping-point.

OCEAN ACIDIFICATION HAMPERS REPRODUCTION

As this ScienceDaily article warns, the rising acidification of the ocean looks likely to have a major impact on the ability of marine animals to reproduce.

The oceans are already 25% more acid than they were at the start of the industrial revolution and look to be heading towards 300% by 2100. Sperm do not function as well in a more acid environment.

ARTIFICIAL PHOTOSYNTHESIS BREAKTHROUGH FOR HYDROGEN

A breakthrough in creating artificial photosynthesis by mimicking nature looks as if it has the potential to usher in a low-cost hydrogen age, reports ScienceDaily.

SLIME ARISING TO KILL THE OCEANS

ScienceDaily reports that human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world's oceans down a death spiral that only prompt action can reverse.

CHANGE IN SEA-CHEMISTRY A HUGE THREAT

ScienceDaily reports a dire warning about the changing chemistry of the oceans due to the amount of carbon-dioxide they have been forced to absorb through human activity.

They have absorbed about 40% of the CO2 that we have emitted over the past two centuries. That has slowed global warming but at a serious cost: the extra carbon dioxide has caused the ocean's average surface pH (a measure of water's acidity) to shift by about 0.1 unit from pre-industrial levels. Depending on the rate and magnitude of future emissions, their pH could drop as much as 0.35 units by the middle of this century.

That acidification can damage marine organisms. Experiments have shown that changes of as little as 0.2-0.3 units can hamper the ability of key marine organisms such as corals and some plankton to calcify their skeletons, which are built from pH-sensitive carbonate minerals. Large areas of the ocean are in danger of exceeding those changes in pH by the middle of the century, including reef habitats such as Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

Most marine organisms live in the sunlit surface waters, which are also those most vulnerable to CO2-induced acidification. To stop their pH from declining more than 0.2 units, which is the current limit set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1976, CO2 emissions would have to be reduced immediately.

PENGUINS ARE CANARIES SCREAMING ALARM

Like canaries dying in a coal-mine, the declining populations of the world's penguins are sounding the alarm at the deteriorating state of the oceans and Antarctica, reports ScienceDaily.

ARCTIC ICE MELTING FASTER THAN IN 2007

As this BBC report details, the Arctic ice is already melting faster than it did in 2007, the year in which it shrank to a record minimum, which is leading scientists to predict that Arctic summers will be ice-free within 5-10 years.

That prediction used to be for 2080, then it was moved forward to 2050, then to 2030 (now one leading scientist has been reported elsewhere as saying that it might even happen this year).

ANTARCTIC ICE BREAKING UP IN WINTER

Even winter is not protecting the inexorable breakup of Antarctic ice. The Wilkins iceshelf, off the southern tip of South America, has just lost another 160 square kilometres. Now a strip only 2.7 kilometres wide is left to protect thousands of square kilometres, reports
ScienceDaily.

DEADLY EFFECT OF RISE IN OCEAN ACIDITY

Scientists studying life round natural CO2 vents in the Mediterranean have found exactly the effect predicted--a significant drop in biodiversity--reports the BBC.

The oceans are thought to have absorbed about half the extra CO2 put into the atmosphere in the industrial age, which has lowered its pH by 0.1, from 8.2 to 8.1, i.e., made it more acidic (pH is the measure of acidity and alkalinity, with 0 being very acidic, 7 being neutral, and 14 is very alkaline--seawater is mildly alkaline). Adding CO2 to water creates carbonic acid; the more added the more the acid is produced.

Round the vents studied, the pH went as low as 7.4. Even at 7.8 to 7.9 the number of species was down 30%.

The leader of the research said 'It's clear that marine food-webs as we know them are going to alter, and biodiversity will decrease. Those impacts are inevitable because acidification is inevitable--we've started it and we can't stop it.'

WHY DIESEL PARTICLES CAUSE DISEASE

How the particles emmitted by diesel engines increase the risk of cardiovasulcar disease and mortality has now been mapped, reports ScienceDaily.

The dissertation clarifies previously unknown mechanisms that can explain why air-pollution in particulate form causes heart-attacks, stroke, and increased mortality. It shows that diesel exhaust causes a rapid deterioration of the function of blood-vessels that persists for up to 24 hours after exposure.

The EKG findings in heart patients indicate acute heart effects that are consistent with increased risk of heart-attack in connection with exposure to traffic.

WILL AN ANCIENT CLIMATE-CHANGE REPEAT?

A
ScienceDaily report on an international study of the abrupt, runaway climate-change that took place 635 million years ago, due to a massive release of methane, raises the possibility that we may trigger a similar event, and cause a global temperature rise of tens of degrees.

REACTIVE NITROGEN AS SERIOUS AS CO2?

ScienceDaily reports the growing alarm among scientists at the increase in the environment of reactive nitrogen, which may be as serious a problem for the human race as the growing concentration of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere.

In its inert form, nitrogen is harmless and abundant, making up 78 percent of the Earth's atmosphere. But in the past century, with the mass production of nitrogen-based fertilisers and the large-scale burning of fossil fuels, massive amounts of reactive nitrogen compounds, such as ammonia, have entered the environment.

A nitrogen atom that starts out as part of a smog-forming compound may be deposited in lakes and forests as nitric acid, which can kill fish and insects. Carried out to the coast, the same nitrogen atom may contribute to red tides and dead zones. Finally, the nitrogen will be put back into the atmosphere as part of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide, which destroys atmospheric ozone.

CARBON-DIOXIDE HIGHEST IN 800,000 YEARS

ScienceDaily reports that the study of Antarctic ice-cores has established that the present concentration of carbon-dioxide is higher than it has been at any time during the past 800,000 years. It is now a bit more than 380 parts per million, compared to a range of about 200-300 parts per million during that time. The current concentration of methane is 1,800 parts per billion, compared to a range of about 400-700 parts per billion during that time.