SEA WILL RISE FOR 500 YEARS?

Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute are part of a team that has calculated the long-term outlook for rising sea-levels in relation to the emission of greenhouse gases and pollution of the atmosphere using climate models, reports ScienceDaily.

In the pessimistic scenario, emissions keep increasing, and the sea rises 1.1 metres by the year 2100 and 5.5 metres by 2500.

Even in the most optimistic scenario, which requires extremely dramatic climate-change goals, major technological advances and strong international co-operation to stop emitting greenhouse gases and polluting the atmosphere, the sea would rise 60cm by 2100 and 1.8 metres by 2500.

The two more realistic scenarios, based on stablising emissions and pollution, show a sea-level rise of about 75cm by the year 2100 and 2 metres by 2500.

RECORD OZONE LOSS OVER THE ARTIC

The loss of ozone over the Arctic this year was so severe that for the first time it could be called an 'ozone hole' like the Antarctic one. The study, published in Nature, is reported on the the BBC's website.

About 20km above the ground 80% of the ozone was lost.

This is the report in ScienceDaily.

MANMADE AEROSOLS MESSING UP THE MONSOON

This research reported in Science blames human activity for the negative change in the South Asian summer monsoon.

Abstract: 'Observations show that South Asia underwent a widespread summertime drying during the second half of the 20th century, but it is unclear whether this trend was due to natural variations or human activities. We used a series of climate-model experiments to investigate the South Asian monsoon response to natural and anthropogenic forcings. We find that the observed precipitation decrease can be attributed mainly to human-influenced aerosol emissions. The drying is a robust outcome of a slowdown of the tropical meridional overturning circulation, which compensates for the aerosol-induced energy imbalance between the northern and southern hemispheres. These results provide compelling evidence of the prominent role of aerosols in shaping regional climate change over South Asia.'

CLIMATE-CHANGE ROCKS EVEREST?

Scientists and observers are concerned that climate-change will ultimately turn even Everest, the world's highest peak, into a rock-climb. One climber said that he was able to scale it without crampons there was so much bare rock.

Full story here.>/a>

ELECTRIC CARS SLASH SOLAR-CELL PAYBACK TIME

BusinessGreen reports on figures released by British Gas which show that owners of electric cars who charge them from their own installations of solar cells slash the payback time for the installation to less than five years.

The figures are based on a 2.52kWp system at the home of actor and TV presenter Robert Llewellyn, who uses the panels to charge his Nissan Leaf.

WHY GLOBAL OVER-HEATING RISES UNEVENLY

These stories, at TG Daily and LiveScience report a study that explains why the inexorable rise in the average global temperature is proceeding in fits and starts. The deep oceans store excess heat temporarily, for as long as a decade.

Satellites show that the discrepancy between heat coming in and being reflected back into space is growing, so the excess heat must have been going somewhere. Now we know where.

SMALLEST NORTH POLE IN 8000 YEARS

A report in the Guardian newspaper shows that the extent of Arctic sea-ice is the smallest it has been since satellite observations began in 1972, and is almost certainly the smallest it has been for at least 8000 years.

If current trends continue, a largely ice-free Arctic in the summer months is likely within 30 years. That is up to 40 years earlier than anticipated in the last assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

CLIMATE-CHANGE THREATENS AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

Science magazine (published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science) has published a study of the global production of the four largest agricultural commodities over the last 30 years: maize, wheat, soybean and rice. Together they account for about 75% of the calories consumed by humans, directly or indirectly.

The study found that maize and wheat have been negatively affected by the rise in global temperatures; rice and soybean have not been affected. Maize production declined 3.8%, wheat 5.5%. The authors conclude that 'climate-changes are already exerting a considerable drag on yield growth', which translates into substantial rises in prices.

Full study here.

CUT THE SOOT TO SLOW WARMING

ScienceDaily reports that a new study of dust-like particles of soot in the air--now emerging as the second most important, but previously overlooked, factor in global warming--provides fresh evidence that reducing soot emissions from diesel engines and other sources could slow melting of sea ice in the Arctic faster and more economically than any other quick fix, a scientist reported in Denver, Colorado on August 31, 2011.

In a presentation at the 242nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS), Mark Z. Jacobson, Ph.D., cited concerns that continued melting of sea ice above the Arctic Circle will be a tipping-point for Earth's climate, a point of no return. That's because the ice, which reflects sunlight and heat back into space, would give way to darker water that absorbs heat and exacerbates warming. And there is no known way to make the sea refreeze in the short term.

Jacobson's calculations indicate that controlling soot could reduce warming above parts of the Arctic Circle by almost 3 degrees Fahrenheit within 15 years. That would virtually erase all of the warming that has occurred in the Arctic during the last 100 years.

'No other measure could have such an immediate effect,' said Jacobson, who is with Stanford University. 'Soot emissions are second only to carbon-dioxide in promoting global warming, but its effects have been underestimated in previous climate models. Consequently, soot's effect on climate change has not been adequately addressed in national and international global warming legislation. Soot emissions account for about 17 percent of global warming, more than greenhouse gases like methane. Soot's contribution, however, could be reduced by 90 percent in 5-10 years with aggressive national and international policies.'

SIMPLE CATALYST SPLITS WATER IN SUNLIGHT

Using computational science researchers at the universities of Kentucky and Louisville have found a simple new catalyst that splits water in sunlight, thus opening another carbon-free door to the hydrogen age.

Full story on ScienceDaily.

CLIMATE-CHANGE MAY WIPE OUT A THIRD OF SPECIES

If global warming continues as expected, it is estimated that almost a third of all flora and fauna species worldwide could become extinct. Scientists from the Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (Biodiversität und Klima Forschungszentrum, BiK-F) and the SENCKENBERG Gesellschaft für Naturkunde discovered that the proportion of actual biodiversity loss should be revised upwards: by 2080, more than 80% of genetic diversity within species may disappear in certain groups of organisms. The study is the first world-wide to quantify the loss of biological diversity on the basis of genetic diversity.

Full story at ScienceDaily.

KEY GREENLAND GLACIER MELTING FASTER

A key glacier in Greenland is melting faster than previously expected, according to findings by a team of academics that included Dr Edward Hanna from University of Sheffield's Deaprtment of Geography, Dr Sebastian Mernild from the Los Alamos Laboratory, USA, and Professor Niels Tvis Knudsen from the University of Aarhus, Denmark. The team´s new findings present crucial insight into the effects of climate change.

The researchers found that Greenland's longest-observed glacier, Mittivakkat Glacier, made two consecutive record losses in mass observations for 2010 and 2011.

Full story on ScienceDaily.

IRON TO REPLACE PLATINUM IN FUEL-CELLS

A research-team at INRS have now built on their pioneering achievement--the first high-performance iron-based catalyst for fuel-cells. They have developed a new and improved iron-based catalyst that generates even more electric power. Previously, only platinum-based catalysts could produce similar performance.

The team, led by Professor Jean-Pol Dodelet, bolsters the prospect of iron-based catalysts replacing platinum ones. Platinum is rare and very costly; iron is the second most abundant metal on earth and is inexpensive.

'Thanks to this breakthrough we are nearing the day when we will be able to drive electric-electric hybrid vehicles--i.e. battery and fuel-cell powered--which can potentially free us from our current dependence on oil to power our cars,' said Professor Dodelet.

Full story on ScienceDaily.

In the EStarCar the need for the so-called 'electric-electric hybrid' was recognised many years ago--right from the start. That is why it has multiple sources of power, centred on a power-train made up of a fuel-cell, a lithium-polymer battery array and an ultracapacitor array. It also has solar cells in the roof. Its sources of power, both primary (such as the fuel-cell), and secondary, such as the ultracapacitors and regenerative braking, at present total more than a dozen.

'Electric-electric hybrid'! What a silly term! Why not keep things simple and call it an electric car? Otherwise every time another source of power is added we will need to add another '-electric' to the string. Under that silly regime the EStarCar would have to be called 'an electric-electric-electric-electric-electric-electric-electric-electric-electric-electric-electric-electric-electric-electric hybrid'. NO. It is an electric car. An advanced electric car, yes, but an electric car.

SMALL AMOUNT OF WARMING COLLAPSES ICE-SHELVES

An analysis of prehistoric 'Heinrich events' that happened many thousands of years ago, creating mass discharges of icebergs into the North Atlantic Ocean, make it clear that very small amounts of subsurface warming of water can trigger a rapid collapse of ice-shelves. The findings provide historical evidence that warming of water by 3-4 degrees was enough to trigger these huge, episodic discharges of ice from the Laurentide Ice Sheet in what is now Canada, and raise serious concerns about Antarctic ice sheets.

Full report on ScienceDaily.

TUNDRA FIRES COULD ACCELERATE GLOBAL WARMING

After a 10,000-year absence, wildfires have returned to the Arctic tundra, and a University of Florida study shows that their impact could extend far beyond the areas blackened by flames, reports ScienceDaily.

316 STRAIGHT MONTHS WARMER THAN 20TH CENTURY AVERAGE

June 2011 was the 316th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th century average. The last month with below-average temperature was February 1985.

Full report at NOAA/NCDC.

That's 316 in the eye for the head-in-the-sand-junk-science-it-ain't-happening brigade. And still counting...

OCEANS SET TO RISE MANY METRES

An analysis of records left by the Last Interglacial led by the University of Arizona has found that most of the 8-metre rise in sea-levels was due to the melting of ice-sheets, not thermal expansion, and that average ocean temperatures then were only 0.7 degrees Celsius above what they are now.

'This means that even small amounts of warming may have committed us to more ice sheet melting than we previously thought. The temperature during that time of high sea levels wasn't that much warmer than it is today,' said Nicholas McKay, a doctoral student at the UA's department of geosciences and the paper's lead author.

McKay pointed out that even if ocean levels rose to similar heights as during the Last Interglacial, they would do so at a rate of up to a metre per century.

'Even though the oceans are absorbing a good deal of the total global warming, the atmosphere is warming faster than the oceans. Moreover, ocean warming is lagging behind the warming of the atmosphere. The melting of large polar ice sheets lags even farther behind. As a result, even if we stopped greenhouse gas emissions right now, the Earth would keep warming, the oceans would keep warming, the ice sheets would keep shrinking, and sea levels would keep rising for a long time.'

Jonathan Overpeck, co-director of the UA's Institute of the Environment and a professor with joint appointments in the department of geosciences and atmospheric sciences, said: 'This study marks the strongest case yet made that humans--by warming the atmosphere and oceans--are pushing the Earth's climate toward the threshold where we will likely be committed to four to six or even more metres of sea level rise in coming centuries.'

Overpeck, who is McKay's doctoral advisor and a co-author of the study, said: 'Unless we dramatically curb global warming, we are in for centuries of sea level rise at a rate of up to three feet per century, with the bulk of the water coming from the melting of the great polar ice sheets--both the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets.'

Full story at ScienceDaily.

DRAMATIC CLIMATE SWINGS LIKELY AS WORLD WARMS

Using research into the ancients behaviour of El Niño, scientists at Oxford and Leeds Universities predict that the dramatic climate swings behind both last year's Pakistan flooding and this year's Queensland floods in Australia are likely to continue as the world gets warmer.

They have discovered that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the sloshing of the warmest waters on the planet from the West Pacific towards the East Pacific every 2-7 years, continued during Earth's last great warm period, the Pliocene

The Pliocene (which lasted from 5 to 3 million years ago) had carbon dioxide levels similar to the present day, with global mean temperatures about 2-3ºC higher, so it is a useful test-ground for climate research. Ancient temperatures are derived from analysis of the chemical composition of the shells of small organisms, known as foraminifera, in ocean-floor sediments.

Full story on ScienceDaily.

GREEN-ENERGY INVESTMENT UP $211 BILLION IN 2010

World-wide spending in 2010 on renewable energy was up 32% on 2009, with wind-farms in China and small-scale solar panels on rooftops in Europe largely responsible for the increase, according to the latest annual report on renewable energy investment trends issued by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

Last year, investors pumped a record $211 billion into renewables, 32% more than the $160 billion invested in 2009, and a 540% rise since 2004.

For the first time, developing economies overtook developed ones in 'financial new investment'--i.e., spending on utility-scale renewable energy projects and provision of equity capital for renewable energy companies. $72 billion was invested in developing countries versus $70 billion in developed economies. That is huge contrast with 2004, when financial new investments in developing countries were about one quarter of those in developed countries.

Full story on ScienceDaily.

2010 ONE OF TWO WARMEST YEARS ON RECORD

Globally, 2010 was one of the two warmest years on record, according to the 2010 State of the Climate report, which NOAA has just released. The peer-reviewed report, issued in coordination with the American Meteorological Society, was compiled by 368 scientists from 45 countries. It provides a detailed, yearly update on global climate indicators, notable climate events and other climate information from every continent.

'We're continuing to closely track these indicators because it is quite clear that the climate of the past cannot be assumed to represent the climate of the future. These indicators are vital for understanding and making reliable projections of future climate,' said Thomas R. Karl, L.H.D, director of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Full report on ScienceDaily.

WORLD'S OCEANS IN 'SHOCKING' DECLINE

The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists. In a new report they warn that ocean life is 'at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history'.

Full story on BBC News, and also on Reuters.

More in the New Zealand Herald.

FOOD-PRODUCTION RACING TO BEAT CLIMATE-CHANGE

Across the globe, rising temperatures and more intense droughts, floods and storms are forcing a rethink in how to grow food, from breeding hardier crop varieties and changing planting times to complete genetic overhauls of plants, in a desperate bid to beat the effects of what we have done to the planet and sustain enough food-production for a growing population.

Full story on NewsDaily.

FASTEST C02 RELEASE AND HOT SUMMERS

The rate of release of carbon into the atmosphere today is nearly 10 times as fast as during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), 55.9 million years ago, the best analog we have for current global warming, according to an international team of geologists. Rate matters, and this current rapid change may not allow sufficient time for the biological environment to adjust. Full story at ScienceDaily. Second story on the same subject also at ScienceDaily.

The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, according to a new climate study by Stanford University scientists. The Stanford team concluded that many tropical regions in Africa, Asia and South America could see 'the permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat' in the next two decades. Middle latitudes of Europe, China and North America--including the United States--are likely to undergo extreme summer temperature shifts within 60 years, the researchers found. Full story at ScienceDaily.

WEIRD WEATHER IS THE NEW NORMAL

The extremes of weather in the United States are signs of a new normal, says a group of scientists and government planners.

'It's a new normal and I really do think that global-weirding is the best way to describe what we're seeing,' says climate-scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University.

Full story at
NewsDaily.

REMOVAL OF C02 FROM AIR NOT VIABLE

Technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere are unlikely to offer an economically feasible way to slow human-driven climate change for several decades, according to a new report. The American Physical Society has released a new assessment -- Direct Air Capture (DAC) of CO2 with Chemicals -- to better inform the scientific community on the technical aspects of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Robert Socolow, a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University, who served as a co-chair of the DAC study, said, "We humans should not kid ourselves that we can pour all the carbon dioxide we wish into the atmosphere right now and pull it out later at little cost."

Full report on ScienceDaily.

ALGAE STARING DOWN THE CO2 BARREL

New research shows that coccoliths, an important part of the marine environment, dissolve when seawater acidifies, which means that acidification of the world's oceans could have major consequences for the marine and global environments. Experiments show that coccoliths fall apart at the pH levels expected in 2100. Full story at ScienceDaily.

ARCTIC MELTING AND RAISING SEA FASTER
A much reduced covering of snow, shorter winter season and thawing tundra: the effects of climate change in the Arctic are already here, and are taking place significantly faster than previously thought--the conclusions of new research report on the Arctic, presented in Copenhagen this week. 'The changes are dramatic, not coincidental; the trends are unequivocal and deviate from the norm.' See ScienceDaily.

On top of that, a new study is projected a rise of up to 1.6 meters in global sea-levels by 2100, due to accelerating climate-change in the Arctic and the melting of Greenland's icecap.

CLIMATE-CHANGE WORSE THAN WORST PREDICTIONS

The founder of New Zealand's Climate Change Research Institute, Professor Martin Manning, who also worked on the IPCC's fifth report, says the way the climate is changing is beyond their worst-case scenarios.

Click here for the full article.

Professor Manning says we need a 75% cut in carbon emissions. The technology is there to achieve that, but not the political will.

ARCTIC SEA-ICE STILL DWINDLING

Although the final data is not in, it seems that the maximum winter extent of sea-ice in the Arctic is tied with 2006 as the lowest ever measured by satellites. That also means that the last seven years have seen the seven lowest measurements since records began in 1979. Full report on ScienceDaily.

AMAZON FORESTS NOT IN GOOD HEALTH

A new NASA-funded study has revealed widespread reductions in the greenness of the forests in the vast Amazon basin in South America caused by the record-breaking drought of 2010.

'The greenness levels of Amazonian vegetation--a measure of its health--decreased dramatically over an area more than three and one-half times the size of Texas and did not recover to normal levels, even after the drought ended in late October 2010,' said Liang Xu, the study's lead author from Boston University.

Full report on ScienceDaily.

RUSSIAN BOREAL FOREST CHANGING RAPIDLY

A rapid, large-scale change in the type of trees is accelerating in Russia's boreal forest, which spans its cold northern regions, and is the largest continuous expanse of forest in the world. The change is the result of globally and regionally warming climate. That in turn is creating an even warmer climate in the region, according to a new study reported in
ScienceDaily

CO2 RAPIDLY AFFECTS ATMOSPHERIC STRUCTURE

New research reported in ScienceDaily work shows that carbon-dioxide rapidly affects the structure of the atmosphere, causing quick changes precipitation, as well as many other aspects of Earth's climate, well before the greenhouse gas noticeably affects temperature.

‘The direct effects of carbon-dioxide on precipitation take place quickly,’ said a lead researcher. ‘If we could cut carbon-dioxide concentrations now, we would see precipitation increase within the year, but it would take many decades for the climate to cool.’

HYDROGEN FUEL-CELL VEHICLES NOW CLOSER

ScienceDaily outlines a paper published in
Science magazine that reveals a breakthrough in using ammonia borane to store hydrogen that will make it a far more attractive fuel for vehiclesby researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory describes a simple scheme that regenerates ammonia borane from a hydrogen-depleted 'spent fuel' form (called polyborazylene) back into a usable fuel via reactions in a single container. That 'one pot' method represents a significant step toward the practical use of hydrogen in vehicles by potentially reducing the expense and complexity of the recycling stage. Regeneration takes place in a sealed pressure-vessel in off-vehicle sites using hydrazine and liquid ammonia at 40 degrees Celsius. The researchers envision vehicles with interchangeable hydrogen storage tanks containing ammonia borane that are used then sent back to a factory for recharging.

ARCTIC OZONE-LEVEL PLUMMETS

Unusually low temperatures in the Arctic's ozone layer have initiated a massive depletion of ozone there recently, and the Arctic seems to be heading for a record loss. At the relevant altitudes about half the ozone that above the Arctic has been destroyed in recent weeks, which may also affect regions further south. Scientists expect further depletion, because the conditions that caused the unusally rapid depletion are continuing. Full report on ScienceDaily.

The predicted drop in the temperature of the stratosphere as the troposphere warms due to climate-change was obviously right on the button.

MELTING ICE-SHEETS DOMINATE RISING SEA

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are losing mass at an accelerating rate, according to a new NASA-funded satellite study, the longest study of changes in polar ice sheet mass. It suggests that they are overtaking the loss from mountain glaciers and ice-caps to become the dominant contributor to global sea-level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted.

In 2006, a year in which comparable results for the loss from mountain glaciers and ice caps are available from a separate study, the Greenland and Antarctic ice-sheets lost a total average of 475 gigatonnes a year, enough to raise global sea-level an average of 1.3 millimeters a year

The pace at which the polar ice sheets are losing mass was found to be accelerating rapidly. Each year over the course of the study, the two ice-sheets lost a combined average of 36.3 gigatonnes more than they had the year before. In comparison, the 2006 study of mountain glaciers and ice caps estimated their loss at 402 gigatonnes a year on average, with an acceleration rate a third that of the ice-sheets.

'That ice-sheets will dominate future sea-level rise is not surprising -- they hold a lot more ice than mountain glaciers,' said lead author Eric Rignot, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, and the University of California, Irvine. 'What is surprising is this increased contribution by the ice-sheets is already happening. If present trends continue, sea-level is likely to be significantly higher than levels projected by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007.'

The authors conclude that if the rate at which the ice-sheets are now melting continues, the world's oceans would be 15 centimetres higher by 2050. When that is added to the predicted contribution of 8cms from glacial ice caps and 9cms from thermal-expansion, the total could reach 32cms.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

EXTREME WEATHER LINKED TO CLIMATE-CHANGE

A report in ScienceDaily links the warming of the planet with the extreme winter weather that has hit the United States in the last two years.

What goes round comes round: the United States is responsible for a huge amount of the total global carbon-emissions, and more per head than any other nation.

WARMER EARTH EVEN WITH ZERO EMISSIONS

New research by the University of Washington (UW), reported on ScienceDaily, shows that the world is committed to a warmer climate because of emissions that have occurred up to now, regardless of what we do to mitigate the effects.

There would continue to be warming even if the most stringent policy proposals were adopted, because there still would be some emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. The new research shows that even if all emissions were stopped now, temperatures would remain higher than levels before the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century because the greenhouse gases already emitted will probably persist in the atmosphere for thousands of years.

In fact, temperatures may continue to escalate even if all cars, heating and cooling systems and other sources of greenhouse gases were suddenly eliminated, said Kyle Armour, a UW doctoral student in physics, because tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols, which tend to counteract the effect of greenhouse warming by reflecting sunlight back into space, would last only a matter of weeks once emissions stopped, but the greenhouse gases would continue.

'The aerosols would wash out quickly and then we would see an abrupt rise in temperatures over several decades,' he said.

RISING SEA THREATENS 180 US CITIES

Research led by scientists at the University of Arizona, reported in ScienceDaily, says rising sea-levels caused by climate-change could threaten an average of 9 percent of the land in 180 U.S. coastal cities by 2100. The Gulf and southern Atlantic coasts will be particularly hard-hit. Miami, New Orleans, Tampa, Fla., and Virginia Beach, Va. could lose more than 10 percent. The research is the first analysis of vulnerability to sea-level rise that includes every U.S. coastal city in the lower 48 with a population of 50,000 or more. The latest scientific projections indicate that by 2100 the sea level will rise about 1 metre, or more.

AMAZONIAN DROUGHTS RING ALARM BELLS

The 2010 drought in the Amazon may have been even more devastating for its rainforests than the unusual 2005 drought, which had been billed as a 1-in-100-year event, report ScienceDaily and NewsDaily.

Analyses of rainfall across 5.3 million square kilometres of Amazonia during the 2010 dry season, recently published in Science, shows that the drought was more widespread and severe than the one in 2005. The UK-Brazilian team also calculated that the carbon impact of the 2010 drought may exceed the 5 billion tonnes of CO2 released after the 2005 event, because severe droughts kill trees (to put that in perspective the United States emitted 5.4 billion tonnes of CO2 from fossil fuel use in 2009).

2010 SETS MELT RECORD FOR GREENLAND

2010 set new records for the melting of the Greenland ice-sheet, expected to be a major contributor to projected sea level rises in coming decades, reports ScienceDaily.

'This melt season was exceptional, with melting in some areas up to 50 days longer than average,' said Dr. Marco Tedesco, director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at The City College of New York (CCNY -- CUNY), who is leading a project studying variables that affect the melting of the ice-sheet.

'Melting in 2010 started exceptionally early at the end of April and ended quite late in mid- September.'

The study, with different aspects sponsored by World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the National Science Foundation and NASA, examined surface temperature anomalies over the surface of the ice-sheet, as well as estimates of surface melting from satellite data, ground observations and models.

In 2010, summer temperatures up to 3C above the average were combined with reduced snowfall.

2010 TIES 2005 AS WARMEST ON RECORD

How many times does the human race have to be told the bad news before we call it bad news and stop being bad?

Full report on ScienceDaily.

CLIMATE DAMAGE TO LAST 1000 YEARS

This ScienceDaily report on new research indicates that the impact of rising CO2 levels in Earth's atmosphere will cause unstoppable effects to the climate for at least the next 1000 years, a collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet by the year 3000, and an eventual rise in the global sea-level of at least four metres--even if emissions stopped at their present levels.

Thanks, all you petrol-heads!

COMPOST BOMB COULD SPEED GLOBAL OVERHEATING

The rate at which the global climate heats could lead to a rapid release of carbon from peatlands that would further accelerate the heating, reports ScienceDaily. Two recent studies published by the Mathematics Research Institute at the University of Exeter highlight the risk that this 'compost bomb' instability could pose, and show that there is a dangerous rate of warming beyond which the instability occurs, which then accelerates climate-change. It is the speed of change that tips the bomb. That contrasts with the general belief that tipping-points correspond to dangerous levels of warming. The researchers are exploring the link with the peat fires round Moscow earlier this year.

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.