OZONE HOLE EXPLAINS ANTARCTIC ICE

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

NEW WAY TO SPLIT WATER

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

CARBON-SINKS LOSING AGAINST EMISSIONS

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

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

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

HORROR WORLD WITHOUT OZONE SIMULATED

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

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

RISING OCEANS WILL IMPACT 600M PEOPLE

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

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

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

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

BOTH POLES WARMING FASTER THAN THOUGHT

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

TROPICAL FORESTS ABSORB A FIFTH OF CO2

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

IPCC SCIENTIST SAYS GOH TO BE FAR WORSE

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

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

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

SEA 21 METRES HIGHER 400,000 YEARS AGO

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

STRATOSPHERIC SECRETS DISCOVERED DOWN A MINE

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

GOH IRREVERSIBLE AND OCEAN DEAD-ZONES SOAR

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

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

ANTARCTIC IS WARMING NOT COOLING

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

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

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

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

ARCTIC MELTING PREDICTS HIGH SEA-LEVELS

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

The new report also makes several conclusions about the Arctic:

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

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

OCEANS TO RISE A METRE IN 100 YEARS

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

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

CLIMATE-CHANGE LINK TO SEVERE STORMS

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

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

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

See ScienceDaily.

GLOBAL OVERHEATING WILL AFFECT USA SOONER

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

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

GREENLAND's 2008 ICE-LOSS TRIPLE 2007'S

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

WARMEST OCTOBER RECORDED SINCE 1880

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

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

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

GAIA ON THE ROCKS

Minerals have evolved too, reports ScienceDaily.

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