DAYLIGHT-SAVING CAUSES BRAIN-DAMAGE?

This report on <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120110140225.htm">ScienceDaily</a> on research that shows neurological damage is caused by messing about with biological clocks should give pause to those who love 'daylight-saving.' Russia has already dumped it because of the known effects on health, including increases in the incidence of heart-attacks in the weeks immediately after the clocks are changed.

EVIL STATISTIC

From page 1330, volume 334 of Science magazine:

9.1 billion tons. Total global carbon-emissions in 2010, an all-time high, up from 8.6 billion tons in 2009, according to the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.

EARTHQUAKES LINKED TO TROPICAL CYCLONES

A groundbreaking study led by University of Miami (UM) scientist Shimon Wdowinski shows that earthquakes, including the recent 2010 ones in Haiti and Taiwan, may be triggered by tropical cyclones (hurricanes and typhoons).

'Very wet rain events are the trigger,' says Wdowinski, associate research professor of marine geology and geophysics at the UM Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. 'The heavy rain induces thousands of landslides and severe erosion, which removes ground material from the Earth's surface, releasing the stress load and encouraging movement along faults.'

Wdowinski and a colleague from Florida International University analyzed data from quakes magnitude-6 and above in Taiwan and Haiti and found a strong temporal relationship between the two natural hazards, where large earthquakes occurred within four years after a very wet tropical cyclone season.

Which means that because global overheating will increase the number of tropical cyclones, bringing more heavy rain, we can also expect an increase in the number of significant earthquakes.

Full report in <a href="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111208121016.htm">ScienceDaily.</a>

ESTARFUTURE ADDS AMAZON R&D SUPPLIES

It is fitting that EStarFuture Corporation, which has such a strong emphasis on R&D, has added to its repertoire by becoming a portal for SmallParts, a division of Amazon, 'the hardware store for researchers and developers', which stocks 200,000 items for R&Ders, including laboratory and scientific supplies, metalworking tools, measurement and inspection tools, raw materials, fasteners, tubing, power-transmission products, etc., etc. A vast range. The hundreds of brands feature a host of top names, such as 3M, De Walt, Rockwell...

As Edison said, invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. In other words R&D needs tools and materials to turn ideas into reality. Small Parts is an outlet to fulfil that need.

Click here for EStarFuture's portal to Small Parts.

ESTARFUTURE INVADED BY DOVES

As this post by our CEO shows, the 3475-square-metre property that is EStarFuture's headquarters (shared with the CEO) has been invaded by doves.

It a very fitting juxtaposition: white, glorious doves and a company that wants us to be living at peace with the planet.

Invaded by doves, blessed by doves, surrounded by doves, accompanied by doves. Would that every company had such companions and their daily inspiration!

GREENLAND'S BEDROCK RISING

ScienceDaily reports that an unusually hot melting-season in 2010 accelerated ice loss in southern Greenland by 100 billion tons. Fifty GPS stations planted along the coast to measure the bedrock's natural response to the ever-diminishing weight of ice above it, showed that large portions of the island's bedrock responded by rising another 6mm (0.25 of an inch).

The bedrock rises 15mm a year, but the temperature spike in 2010 lifted it more in only five months--as much as 20mm in some places (0.79 of an inch).

TUNA ON THE EDGE OF SUSTAINABILITY

Tuna stocks have declined 60% since 1954, reports Science, and in some areas more than 90%.

CLIMATE INSANITY ON STEROIDS

How much stupider can we humans get? We are wrecking the only planet we can live on in the entire universe, we have been given that message over and over and over again, we have been told very plainly how we are doing it, we have been told that we must to stop pumping carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere, yet we persist in making things worse, led by prats who we are too stupid to vote out of office because we actually like wrecking our home and don't want to pay a cent to stop it or fix the mess.

So last year we actually increased the amount of CO2 by 5.9%. Nearly six percent more! That is arrant, arrogant insanity. We have added 50% in the last 20 years. The combustion of coal accounts for more than half of the growth.

The New York Times adds its thunder to the insane litany.

An epsilion-semi-moronic, brain-damaged, frontally-lobotomised earthworm could do better. And we think of ourselves as the most intelligent life-form...

We are like the lemmings in the cartoon. Blindly plunging over the cliff, and the 'best' thing any can think of is to behave like happy sky-divers.

WMO RANKS 2011 ONE OF THE WARMEST

<a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/2011/11/29/idINIndia-60792420111129">Reuters says</a> a report by the UN's World Meteorological Organisation ranks 2011 as one of the warmest years on record.

The WMO says global temperatures in 2011 are at the moment the tenth highest on record--higher than any previous year with a La Nina event, despite the fact that it has a relative cooling influence.

It says that this year the global climate was influenced heavily by the strong La Nina, a natural phenomenon usually linked to extreme weather in Asia-Pacific, South America and Africa, which developed in the tropical Pacific in the second half of 2010 and continued till May 2011. One of the strongest such events in 60 years, it was closely associated with the drought in east Africa, islands in the central equatorial Pacific and the United States, as well as severe flooding in other parts of the world.

The WMO says the warmest 13 years of average global temperatures have occurred in the 15 years since 1997. That has contributed to extreme weather conditions that increase the intensity of droughts and heavy precipitation across the world. The extent of Arctic sea ice in 2011 was the second lowest on record, and its volume was the lowest.

It says the build-up of greenhouse gases puts the world at a tipping-point of irreversible changes in ecosystems.

CLIMATE THREAT FROM HFCs

<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15818659">The BBC reports</a> on growing concerns that ozone-friendly HFCs are not friendly to climate-change, because the average global warming potential of the present mix of HFCs is about 1600--so a kilogram of HFC has about 1600 times the effect on global warming as a kilogram of carbon dioxide.

The HFCs: A Critical Link in Protecting Climate and the Ozone Layer, a report produced by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), projected that the global warming potential of HFCs in 2050 could be comparable with present emissions from the global transport sector.

HOTTEST OCTOBER FOR NORTHERN HEMISPHERE LAND

The monthly figures prepared by the American government show that October 2011 was much warmer than normal compared with previous Octobers.

On average, land areas across the Northern Hemisphere—where the majority of the Earth's land mass is located—were the warmest on record for the month, at 1.29°C (2.32°F) above the 20th century average. The warmth was especially pronounced across Alaska, Canada, Mongolia, and most of Russia and Europe.

According to the UK Met Office, the United Kingdom marked its warmest October since 2006 and eighth warmest in the last 100 years, at 2.0°C (3.6°F) above the 1971–2000 average.

Norway also reported its eighth warmest October, at 1.8°C (2.6°F) above normal, with records dating back to 1900

The dot map from page linked to above shows much of central and northern Russia with average temperatures more than 5°C (9°F) above average.

We are told we must keep the global increase within 2°C if life on Earth is not to become rather nasty. Our chances of doing that are zilch.

AIR-POLLUTION WORSENS DROUGHT AND FLOODING

ScienceDaily reports research showing that increases in air pollution and other particulate matter in the atmosphere can strongly affect cloud development in ways that reduce precipitation in dry regions or seasons, while increasing rain, snowfall and the intensity of severe storms in wet regions or seasons.

The study by a University of Maryland-led team of researchers provides the first clear evidence of how aerosols--soot, dust and other small particles in the atmosphere--can affect weather and climate; and the findings have important implications for the availability, management and use of water resources in regions across the United States and around the world, say the researchers and other scientists.

The study found that under very dirty conditions, the mean cloud height of deep convective clouds is more than twice the mean height under crystal-clean air.

'The probability of heavy rain is virtually doubled from clean to dirty conditions, while the chance of light rain is reduced by 50 percent,' says Maryland's Li, who is also affiliated with Beijing Normal University.

AMERICA USED MORE ENERGY IN 2010

ScienceDaily reports that American energy use went back up in 2010 compared to 2009, when consumption was at a 12-year low. The United States used more fossil fuels in 2010 than in 2009, while renewable electricity remained approximately constant, with an increase in wind power offset by a modest decline in hydroelectricity. There also was a significant increase in biomass consumption, according to the most recent energy flow charts released by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Though carbon emissions in 2010 were higher than they were in 2009, Americans' carbon footprint has decreased over the past few years. The U.S. emitted 5,632 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2010, up from 5,428 in 2009, but down from the all time high of 6,022 in 2007. The decrease is due primarily to reduced energy consumption, aided by a shift from coal to natural gas in the electric sector and adoption of renewable energy resources

ANNUAL GREENHOUSE-GAS INDEX RISING

NOAA's updated Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI), which measures the direct climate influence of many greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, shows a continued steady upward trend, reports ScienceDaily.


The AGGI reached 1.29 in 2010, which means that the combined heating effect of long-lived greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere by human activities has increased 29 percent since 1990. That is up from 1.27% in 2009.

SCEPTIC'S DATA CONFIRMS CLIMATE-CHANGE

A US physicist who has been critical of climate change data says his own research has convinced him that global warming is real in this ABC interview.

Professor Richard Muller says that to his amazement his results correlate with previously published results from other teams that used both inaccurate temperature gauges and faulty weather stations. He says his research shows the earth's surface temperature has risen by 0.9 degrees Celsius since the 1950s.

EXTREME MELTING OF GREENLAND CAN SELF-AMPLIFY

The Greenland icesheet can experience extreme melting even when temperatures do not hit record highs, according to a new analysis by Dr. Marco Tedesco, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at The City College of New York. His findings suggest that glaciers can undergo a self-amplifying cycle of melting and warming that would be hard to stop.

'We are finding that even if you don't have record-breaking highs, as long as warm temperatures persist you can get record-breaking melting because of positive feedback mechanisms,' said Professor Tedesco, who directs CCNY's Cryospheric Processes Laboratory and also serves on CUNY Graduate Centre doctoral faculty.

Full report on ScienceDaily.

STILL A BIG OZONE HOLE OVER SOUTH POLE

The Antarctic ozone hole, which yawns wide every Southern Hemisphere spring, reached its annual peak on September 12, stretching 26.03 million square kilometres (10.05 million square miles), the ninth largest on record. Above the South Pole, the ozone hole reached its deepest point of the season on October 9 when total ozone readings dropped to 102 Dobson units, tied for the 10th lowest in the 26-year record, reports ScienceDaily.

NEW STUDY GAZUMPS CLIMATE-CHANGE SCEPTICS

Global warming is real says a major study released on October the 20th. Despite issues raised by climate-change sCeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study found reliable evidence of a rise in the average global land temperature of approximately 1°C since the mid-1950s, reports ScienceDaily.

Click here for more data from the Berkley Earth study.

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!