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.