MORE ON GLOBAL OVERHEATING TIMEBOMBS

The release of Arctic methane could cost the world $60 trillion:
'Researchers have warned of an "economic time-bomb" in the Arctic, following a ground-breaking analysis of the likely cost of methane emissions in the region. Economic modelling shows that the methane emissions caused by shrinking sea ice from just one area of the Arctic could come with a global price tag of 60 trillion dollars -- the size of the world economy in 2012.'

When temperatures rise tropical ecosystems pump out more carbon-dioxide:
'NASA scientists and an international team of researchers have found tropical ecosystems can generate significant carbon dioxide when temperatures rise, unlike ecosystems in other parts of the world.'

Antarctic permafrost is melting fast:
'For the first time, scientists have documented an acceleration in the melt rate of permafrost, or ground ice, in a section of Antarctica where the ice had been considered stable. The melt rates are comparable with the Arctic, where accelerated melting of permafrost has become a regularly recurring phenomenon, and the change could offer a preview of melting permafrost in other parts of a warming Antarctic continent.'

GLOBAL CLIMATE ANALYSIS FOR JUNE 2013

Global Climate Analysis for June 2013:
Prepared by the US Government's National Climatic Data Centre of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Global Highlights
* The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for June 2013 tied with 2006 as the fifth highest on record, at 0.64°C (1.15°F) above the 20th-century average of 15.5°C (59.9°F).
* The global land surface temperature was 1.05°C (1.89°F) above the 20th-century average of 13.3°C (55.9°F), marking the third warmest June on record. For the ocean, the June global sea surface temperature was 0.48°C (0.86°F) above the 20th century average of 16.4°C (61.5°F), the 10th warmest June on record.
* The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–June period (year-to-date) was 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20th century average of 13.5°C (56.3°F), tying with 2003 as the seventh warmest such period on record.

NATURAL ICEBERG A SERIOUS THREAT

720-square-kilometre iceberg breaks away in the Antarctic:
'On July 8, 2013, a huge area of the ice shelf broke away from the Pine Island glacier, the longest and fastest flowing glacier in the Antarctic, and is now floating in the Amundsen Sea in the form of a very large iceberg.'
'For the Western Antarctic ice shelf, an even faster flow of the Pine Island glacier would presumably have serious consequences. "The Western Antarctic land ice is on land which is deeper than sea level. Its "bed" tends towards the land. The danger therefore exists that these large ice masses will become unstable and will start to slide," says Angelika Humbert. If the entire West Antarctic ice shield were to flow into the Ocean, this would lead to a global rise in sea level of around 3.3 metres.'

2-DEGREE RISE IS NOT SAFE

It is false to say that a 2-degree rise in average global temperature is safe.

'The notion that we'll avoid serious damage to the world's climate if we limit the warming of the atmosphere to a 2-degree-Celsius rise in temperature is untrue, says Stanford climate scientist Chris Field.'

Full story on Stanford News.

TIMELAPSE SHOWS HUMAN CHANGES TO EARTH

The changing world--timelapse powered by Google:
'These Timelapse pictures tell the pretty and not-so-pretty story of a finite planet and how its residents are treating it — razing even as we build, destroying even as we preserve. It takes a certain amount of courage to look at the videos, but once you start, it’s impossible to look away.'

LIMITING GLOBAL WARMING IS NO ENOUGH

'So far, international climate targets have been restricted to limiting the increase in temperature. But if we are to stop the rising sea levels, ocean acidification and the loss of production from agriculture, CO2 emissions will have to fall even more sharply.'

Full story on ScienceDaily.

2001 TO 2010 SHOWS FASTER GLOBAL WARMING

The United Nations says that the first decade of this century shows an accelerated trend in global warming.

'UN climate experts say the first decade of the new millennium was an unprecedented era of climate extremes, with more countries than ever before seeing their temperature records broken. The World Meteorological Organization's analysis Wednesday says average land and ocean surface temperatures during 2001-2010 rose from the previous decade and were up almost a half-degree Celsius from the 1961-1990 global average.'

Full story at NewsDaily.

SEA-RISE OF UP TO 10M POSSIBLE

'Climate change could be putting the planet on a path to an era not seen for 3 million years, a New Zealand scientist has warned. Professor Tim Naish, director of Victoria University's Antarctic Research Centre, said sea levels in 2100 could be alarmingly higher than today if carbon emissions continue at their present rate. Today, atmospheric CO2 has just reached 400 parts per million due to human emission, and the last time the planet experienced such levels was 3 million to 5 million years ago, during the Pliocene era, when the climate was 3°C warmer.... both the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and parts of the East Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets had melted and sea levels were at least 10m higher.'

CLIMATE-CHANGE LIKE 4 ATOM BOMBS PER SEC

Climate-change equals four Hiroshima bombs per second:

'The planet has been building up temperatures at the rate of four Hiroshima bombs of heat every second, and it's all our fault, say climate scientists.

Hurricane Katrina and superstorm Sandy are just two examples of how extreme weather will intensify, Australia's Climate Action Summit has heard.'

NOAA-NCDC CLIMATE ANALYSIS MAY 2013

Global Climate Analysis for May 2013 - NOAA's Nationals Climatic Data Centre:

Highlights

* The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces for May 2013 tied with 1998 and 2005 as the third warmest on record, at 0.66°C (1.9°F)) above the 20th century average of 14.8°C (58.6°F).

* The global land surface temperature was 1.11°C (2.00°F) above the 20th century average of 11.1°C (52.0°F), also the third warmest May on record. For the ocean, the May global sea surface temperature was 0.49°C (0.88°F) above the 20th century average of 16.3°C (61.3°F), tying with 2003 and 2009 as the fifth warmest May on record.

* The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the March–May period was 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20th century average of 13.7°C (56.7°F), tying with 2004 as the eighth warmest such period on record.

* The March–May worldwide land surface temperature was 0.97°C (1.75°F) above the 20th century average, the 11th warmest such period on record. The global ocean surface temperature for the same period was 0.45°C (0.81°F) above the 20th century average and tied with 2001 as the seventh warmest such period on record.

* The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for the January–May period (year-to-date) was 0.59°C (1.06°F) above the 20th century average of 13.1°C (55.5°F), the eighth warmest such period on record. 

CAVES POINT TO THAWING OF SIBERIA

Evidence from Siberian caves suggests that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius could see permanently-frozen ground thaw over a large area of Siberia, threatening release of carbon from soils, and damage to natural and human environments. A thaw in Siberia's permafrost (ground frozen throughout the year) could release over 1000 giga-tonnes of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, potentially enhancing global warming.

Full story on ScienceDaily.

ARCTIC PERMAFROST MELTING UNSTOPPABLY

The worst effect of manmade climate-change has begun and is unstoppable. The world is on the cusp of a 'tipping-point into dangerous climate change, according to new data gathered by scientists measuring methane leaking from the Arctic permafrost and a report presented to the United Nations on Tuesday.

'The permafrost carbon feedback is irreversible on human time scales,' says the report, Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost. 'Overall, these observations indicate that large-scale thawing of permafrost may already have started.'

While countries the size of Australia tally up their greenhouse emissions in hundreds of millions of tonnes, the Arctic's stores are measured in tens of billions.

'Lift your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath: the heavens grow murky as smoke; the earth wears into tatters like a garment, and those who live on it die like maggots; but the deliverance of the LORD God is everlasting and his saving power shall never wane.' Isaiah 51:6 (New English Bible).

Full story here.

WHY SEAS ARE RISING FASTER THAN FORECAST

Estimates of the rate at which the sea will rise may be too low, because it is rising faster than expected from global warming. The last official IPCC report in 2007 projected a global sea level rise between 0.2 and 0.5 metres by 2100, but current measurements meet or exceed the high end of that range and suggest a rise of one metre or more by the end of the century.

'What's missing from the models used to forecast sea-level rise are critical feedbacks that speed everything up,' says Bill Hay, a geologist at the University of Colorado.

Full story on ScienceDaily.

This blog has said all along that the seas will be at least a metre and half higher in 2100. Now science is beginning to agree.

CLIMATE-CHANGE OZONE AND SKIN-CANCER

For decades, scientists have known that the effects of global climate change could have a potentially devastating impact across the globe, but Harvard researchers say there is now evidence that it may also have a dramatic impact on public health, reports ScienceDaily.

In a paper published in the July 27 issue of <i>Science,</i> a team of researchers led by James G. Anderson, the Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, warn that a newly-discovered connection between climate change and depletion of the ozone layer over the U.S. could allow more damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation to reach the Earth's surface, leading to increased incidence of skin cancer, because of the effects of the lightning generated by powerful storms on the chlorine and bromine high in the atmosphere, which in turn reduces the level of ozone.

SATELLITES SEE UNPRECEDENTED MELTING IN GREENLAND

In early-to-mid July 2012 satellites saw unprecedented melting in Greenland--reaching up to 97% of the surface.

Full story on this NASA site.

PROOF THAT CLIMATE AND CO2 CLOSELY LINKED

New research from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen indicates that, contrary to previous opinion, the rise in temperature and the rise in the atmospheric CO2 follow each other closely in terms of time. The results have been published in the scientific journal, Climate of the Past, reports ScienceDaily.

'What we are observing in the present day is the mankind has caused the CO2 content in the atmosphere to rise as much in just 150 years as it rose over 8,000 years during the transition from the last ice age to the current interglacial period and that can bring the Earth's climate out of balance,'says Sune Olander Rasmussen, Associate Professor and centre coordinator at the Centre for Ice and Climate at the Niels Bohr Institute.

The research, which was carried out in collaboration with researchers from the University of Tasmania in Australia, is based on measurements of ice cores from five boreholes through the ice sheet in Antarctica. The ice-sheet is formed by snow that doesn't melt, but remains year after year and is gradually compressed into kilometers thick ice. During the compression, air is trapped between the snowflakes and as a result the ice contains tiny samples of ancient atmospheres. The composition of the ice also shows what the temperature was when the snow fell, so it is an archive of past climate and atmospheric composition.

NOAA'S GLOBAL REPORT FOR 2011

Worldwide, 2011 was the coolest year on record since 2008, yet temperatures remained above the 30-year average, according to the 2011 State of the Climate report released online on July 10, 2012 by NOAA. The peer-reviewed report, issued in coordination with the American Meteorological Society (AMS), was compiled by 378 scientists from 48 countries around the world. It was reported on ScienceDaily.

The Arctic continued to show more rapid changes than the rest of the planet. Sea-ice shrank to its second smallest 'summer minimum' extent on record during 2011, as older ice (four to five years old) reached a new record minimum at more than 80% below average. Overall, glaciers around the world continued to lose mass. Loss from Canadian Arctic glaciers and ice caps were the greatest since measurements began in 2002.

The report used forty-three climate-indicators to track and identify changes and overall trends to the global climate system, including greenhouse gas concentrations, temperature of the lower and upper atmosphere, cloud cover, sea-surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean salinity, sea-ice extent and snow cover. Each indicator includes thousands of measurements from multiple independent datasets.

Four independent datasets show 2011 among the 15 warmest since records began in the late 19th century, with annually-averaged temperatures above the 1981-2010 average. The Arctic continued to warm at about twice the rate compared with lower latitudes. On the opposite pole, the South Pole station recorded its all-time highest temperature of -22.1°C (9.9°F) on December 25, breaking the previous record by over 1 degree Celsius (over 2 degrees Fahrenheit).

Major greenhouse gas concentrations, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, continued to rise. Carbon dioxide steadily increased in 2011 and the yearly global average exceeded 390 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since instrumental records began.

The extent of Arctic sea-ice was below average for all of 2011 and has been since June 2001, a span of 127 consecutive months.

The ozone-level over the Arctic was the lowest since records began in 1979.

Even with La Niña conditions occurring during most of the year, the 2011 global sea-surface temperature was among the twelve highest years on record. Ocean heat content, measured from the surface to 700 metres deep (2,300 feet), continued to rise since records began in 1993 and was a record high.

La Niña-related heat waves, like that experienced in Texas in 2011, are now twenty times more likely to occur during La Niña years today than La Niña years fifty years ago.

The UK experienced a very warm November 2011 and a very cold December 2010. In analyzing these two very different events, UK scientists uncovered interesting changes in the odds. Cold Decembers are now half as likely to occur now versus fifty years ago, whereas warm Novembers are now sixty-two times more likely.

NASA VIDEO SHOWS THE WORLD WARMING

This brilliant video from NASA  shows the change in temperature across the globe from 1880 to 2011. The colours show the amount of deviation from the 1951-1980 average. The animation clearly shows the warming trend, particularly since the mid-1970s, and the differences in different parts of the world so you can see how your part of the world has changed. 2011 was the ninth warmest year since 1880.

EXPECT THE SEA TO RISE 1.5 TO 4M

Sea-levels round the world can be expected to rise by several metres in coming centuries, if global warming carries on. Even if it is limited to 2 degrees Celsius, the global mean could continue to rise to 1.5-4m above present levels by 2300, with the best estimate being 2.7m, says a study just published in <i>Nature Climate Change.</i>

Reductions in emissions that allow warming to drop below 1.5 degrees Celsius could limit the rise strongly.


Full report in  ScienceDaily.

400PPM, TIPPING-POINT NEAR, ARCTIC EFFECT

The world recently passed the point where carbon-dioxide emissions have raised the level of that gas in the atmosphere to 400 parts per million.

By no coincidence a group of scientists around the world is warning that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate-change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a global tipping-point that would have destructive consequences unless we do something.

'It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,' warns Anthony Barnosky, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of a review paper appearing in the June 7 issue of the journal <i>Nature.</i> 'The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations.'

Full story onScienceDaily.

America's winters have already been tipped into a new era. The dramatic melt-off of Arctic sea-ice due to climate-change is hitting closer to home than millions of Americans might think, because melting Arctic sea ice can trigger a domino effect that leads to greater odds of severe winter weather outbreaks in the Northern Hemisphere's middle latitudes -- such as the 'Snowmageddon' storm that hamstrung Washington, D.C. in February 2010.

Full story on ScienceDaily.

And Arctic tundra is being replaced by trees. In just a few decades shrubs have turned into trees as a result of the warming Arctic climate, creating patches of forest which, if replicated across the tundra, would significantly accelerate global warming.

Full story on ScienceDaily.