Global warming is well underway
Submitted by Martin on Tue, 06/06/2006 - 06:30
Even as sceptics do way too good a job of befuddling people re global warming, evidence is that it's real, it's happening, and it ain't gonna be pretty as the next few decades unfold.
Much has been written re impacts on polar regions - where global warming has been more evident than in many places. Now, news of changes in the tropics:
Quote:
Alarming new satellite evidence of the effects of global warming comes as forecasters predict more severe hurricanesBy Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
The world's tropical zones are growing, threatening to drive the world's great deserts into southern Europe and other heavily populated areas, alarming new research suggests.
The study - based on satellite measurements over the past quarter of a century - shows that the tropics have widened by 140 miles since 1979. Scientists suspect that global warming is to blame.
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the areas just outside the tropics, at around 30 degrees north and south - running through China, North India, the Middle East, North Africa, Florida and the US Gulf Coast, and through Australia, Southern Africa and Argentina - are warming particularly fast.The zones immediately outside the tropics are often very dry - containing many of the world's great deserts - and these are also expected to move towards the poles as part of the tropical shift.
The scientists believe that this may explain the recent droughts in southern Europe and the south-western United States. They say that if the process continues it could move the deserts into heavily populated areas, with devastating results.
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But the evidence that global warming is causing more severe hurricanes grew stronger last week as the annual season for them opened.
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Two new studies last week confirmed research which indicated that rising sea temperatures, caused by global warming, are increasing the strength of hurricanes. On Wednesday Jeb Bush - the Governor of Florida and the brother of the President - met some of the scientists who had conducted the research, saying that he found their information "compelling".
Widening tropics 'will drive deserts into Europe'
Comments
Arctic being transformed faster than anticipated
From a bloomberg item:
The most prominent differences observed over the last three years include a ``massively accelerated'' decline in summer sea ice and ``much greater'' shrinking of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the environmental campaign group, known in the U.S. as the World Wildlife Fund, said in a 123-page report today.
``We're seeing more rapid temperature-warming,'' Ted Scambos, lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, said by phone. The best explanation is ``a trigger from greenhouse gases,'' he said. Scambos wasn't involved in the WWF report.
Global Warming Is Affecting Arctic Faster, WWF Says
Wilkins Ice Shelf apparently disintegrating as world warms
The Wilkins Ice Shelf is a broad plate of permanent floating ice on the southwest Antarctic Peninsula, about 1,000 miles south of South America. In the past 50 years, the western Antarctic Peninsula has experienced the biggest temperature increase on Earth, rising by 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit) per decade. NSIDC Lead Scientist Ted Scambos, who first spotted the disintegration in March, said, "We believe the Wilkins has been in place for at least a few hundred years. But warm air and exposure to ocean waves are causing a break-up."
Satellite images indicate that the Wilkins began its collapse on February 28; data revealed that a large iceberg, 41 by 2.5 kilometers (25.5 by 1.5 miles), fell away from the ice shelf's southwestern front, triggering a runaway disintegration of 405 square kilometers (160 square miles) of the shelf interior. The edge of the shelf crumbled into the sky-blue pattern of exposed deep glacial ice that has become characteristic of climate-induced ice shelf break-ups such as the Larsen B in 2002. A narrow beam of intact ice, just 6 kilometers wide (3.7 miles) was protecting the remaining shelf from further breakup as of March 23.
Scientists track ice shelves and study collapses carefully because some of them hold back glaciers, which if unleashed, can accelerate and raise sea level. Scambos said, "The Wilkins disintegration won't raise sea level because it already floats in the ocean, and few glaciers flow into it. However, the collapse underscores that the Wilkins region has experienced an intense melt season. Regional sea ice has all but vanished, leaving the ice shelf exposed to the action of waves."
With Antarctica's summer melt season drawing to a close, scientists do not expect the Wilkins to further disintegrate in the next several months. "This unusual show is over for this season," Scambos said. "But come January, we'll be watching to see if the Wilkins continues to fall apart."
Antarctic Ice Shelf Disintegration Underscores a Warming World
there's video clip showing the disintegration at:
http://nsidc.org/news/images/20080325_wilkins_animation_low.mov
Melting glaciers the loudest and clearest warning signal of
From the Observer:
The details are revealed in the latest report from the World Glacier Monitoring Service and will add to growing alarm about the rise in sea levels and increased instances of flooding, avalanches and drought.
Based on historical records and other evidence, the rate at which the glaciers are melting is also thought to be faster that at any time in the past 5,000 years, said Professor Wilfried Haeberli, director of the monitoring service. 'There's no absolute proof, but nevertheless the evidence is strong: this is really extraordinary.'
Experts have been monitoring 30 glaciers around the world for nearly three decades and the most recent figures, for 2006, show the biggest ever 'net loss' of ice. Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), told The Observer that melting glaciers were now the 'loudest and clearest' warning signal of global warming.
The problem could lead to failing infrastructure, mass migration and even conflict. 'We're talking about something that happens in your and my lifespan. We're not talking about something hypothetical, we're talking about something dramatic in its consequences,' he said
Glaciers melt 'at fastest rate in past 5,000 years'
Red Cross focusing on global warming and associated natural
This recalls post above, re Oxfam saying numbers of weather related disasters have increased.
"Climate change is also having a very real and very worrisome impact on water supplies, on food production and even on health crises," he said.
Red Cross refocuses aid budget on threat of climate change
Ice in western Antarctica melting more quickly
I've seen claims re Antarctic ice increasing, supposedly showing global warming isn't really such an issue. Contradicted by this research.
The measurements, which surveyed the coasts of nearly the entire continent, suggest that climate models underestimate how quickly Antarctica responds to ongoing global warming, said study co-author Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol in England.
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They found that for Antarctica overall, the ice loss increased about 75 percent over the ten-year period, from 112 gigatons of ice per year in 1996 to 196 gigatons of ice per year in 2006.
As to whether Antarctica will lose or gain ice as global warming proceeds, the measurements disagree with existing climate models that suggest "[the ice sheet] is going to get bigger because of increased snowfall with warming temperatures," Bamber said.
"We don't see that. We see the ice sheet losing mass," he said. "So there's a bit of a paradigm shift in what the ice sheet has done recently and what it could do in the future."
Scientists are concerned the melting ice will contribute to a dangerous sea level rise.
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The "most likely explanation" for the increased ice loss is that warming waters are melting away ice at the grounding point, according to Bamber.
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Antarctica Ice Loss Faster Than Ten Years Ago
High temp records plus rains n droughts in 2007
From the World Meteorological Organization:
The World Meteorological Organization reports on extreme weather and climate events
See also an Associated Press item that concludes:
"We're having an increasing trend of odd years," said Michael MacCracken, a former top federal climate scientist, now chief scientist at the Climate Institute in Washington. "Pretty soon odd years are going to become the norm."
2007 a Year of Weather Records in U.S. (also considers extremes around the globe)
Key glaciers in China melting fast
From AFP:
A survey of nearly 20,000 square kilometres (8,000 square miles) of China's glaciers showed they were on average 7.4 percent smaller than five years ago, Caijing magazine said, citing a government-funded survey.
Global warming causing China's glaciers to melt quickly: survey
Tropical belts expand and global warming may be the cause
Associated Press report, on another change that's evidently underway, and faster than computer models had predicted:
"They are big changes," she said. "It's a little puzzling."
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climate scientists Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria and Richard Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography said Seidel's work makes sense and that computer models have consistently been underestimating the ill effects of global warming.
"Every time you look at what the world is doing it's always far more dramatic than what climate models predict," Weaver said.
Earth's Tropics Belt Expands
Weather-related disasters have sharply increased
from AFP report:
"Oxfam... says that rising green house gas emissions are the major cause of weather-related disasters and must be tackled," the organisation said, adding that the world's poorest people were being hit the hardest.
The world suffered about 120 natural disasters per year in the early 1980s, which compared with the current figure of about 500 per year, according to the report.
"This year we have seen floods in South Asia, across the breadth of Africa and Mexico that have affected more than 250 million people," noted Oxfam director Barbara Stocking.
"This is no freak year. It follows a pattern of more frequent, more erratic, more unpredictable and more extreme weather events that are affecting more people."
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Floods and wind-storms have increased from 60 events in 1980 to 240 last year, with flooding itself up six-fold.
But the number of geothermal events, such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, has barely changed.
Natural disasters have quadrupled in two decades: study
California wildfires and impacts of warming
Interesting interview transcript on Alternet; includes Bill McKibben of www.stepitup2007.org saying:
It is -- you know, we used to think that we were still a decade or two away from the real emergency. That's what we would have said twenty years ago, when I wrote The End of Nature. Now, we understand, the modeling makes clear, that the planet was more finely balanced than we've understood. What we've done so far has been enough to throw every physical system on earth out of kilter.
What we're fighting for now is not to prevent global warming. There is going to be some global warming; there already is. What we're fighting for now is to keep that miserable and difficult century of global warming from turning into an absolute catastrophe that rewrites the geology and biology of this planet for eons to come.
Are the Wildfires in So. California Related to Global Warming?
Steamier world likely to be stormier
From 1976 to 2004, when the world's average surface temperature rose 0.49 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit), global levels of atmospheric water vapour rose 2.2 percent, according to the paper by British scientists.
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Gillett said water vapour was a "positive feedback" -- a vicious circle, in scientific parlance -- in the global warming equation.
Steam is a greenhouse gas, meaning that like carbon pollution that results from burning fossil fuels, it traps solar heat in the atmosphere, thus stoking the warming effect and so worsening humidity.
Global warming driving up humidity levels, says study
Worldwide climate change mega disaster during 2007
From the Guardian:
Sir John, a British diplomat who is also known as the UN's under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said dire predictions about the impact of global warming on humanity were already coming true.
"We are seeing the effects of climate change. Any year can be a freak but the pattern looks pretty clear to be honest. That's why we're trying ... to say, of course you've got to deal with mitigation of emissions, but this is here and now, this is with us already," he said.
As a measure of the worsening situation, Ocha, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs - part of the UN secretariat that employs Sir John - has issued 13 emergency "flash" appeals so far this year. The number is three more than in 2005, which held the previous record.
Two years ago only half the international disasters dealt with by Ocha had anything to do with the climate; this year all but one of the 13 emergency appeals is climate-related. "
Climate change disaster is upon us, warns UN
Arctic ice cover at new record low
From CNN:
Additionally, the European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, according to news reports.
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Mark Serreze, senior research scientist at NSIDC, termed the decline "astounding."
"It's almost an exclamation point on the pronounced ice loss we've seen in the past 30 years," he said.
Most researchers had anticipated the complete disappearance of the Arctic ice pack during summer months would happen after the year 2070, he said, but now, "losing summer sea ice cover by 2030 is not unreasonable."
Ice loss 'opens Northwest Passage'
Warming impacting US ecosystems
Glacier's alpine meadows are disappearing, sea levels are rising in the Keys and other federal lands are feeling the heat from global warming — and the government is not doing much about it, congressional investigators said in a report Thursday.
Climate change, however, does have things looking up for heat-loving pests like beetles, grasshoppers and fungi.
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After more than three years of study, the Government Accountability Office, an arm of Congress, harshly faulted the Bush administration for doing little to deal with the far-reaching effects of climate change rapidly taking place in national parks, forests, marine sanctuaries and other federal lands and waters — almost 30 percent of the United States.
GAO Faults Agencies Over Global Warming
Summary - and link to download pdf of the report - at:
Climate Change: Agencies Should Develop Guidance for Addressing the Effects on Federal Land and Water Resources
US high temps in 2006 fuelled by greenhouse gases
From Reuters:
The annual average U.S. temperature in 2006 was 2.1 degrees F (1.16C) above the 20th century average and the ninth consecutive year of above-normal U.S. temperatures, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration wrote.
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"What we found was a very strong footprint of the observed warming, consistent with the greenhouse gas effect," [Martin Hoerling of the U.S. climate administration] said in a telephone interview.
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For most states, 2006 ranked among the 10 hottest years since 1895. Globally, 2005 was the warmest, edging out 1998, with 2006 ranked about sixth for the world, Hoerling said.
Greenhouse gases fueled 2006 U.S. heat
China blames climate change for extreme weather
From Reuters report:
Such extremes are likely to get worse and more common in the future, said Song Lianchun, head of the China Meteorological Administration's Department of Forecasting Services and Disaster Mitigation.
"It should be said that one of the reasons for the weather extremes this year has been unusual atmospheric circulation bought about by global warming," Song told a news conference carried live on the central government Web site (www.gov.cn).
"These kind of extremes will become more frequent, and more obvious. This has already been borne out by the facts," he said. "I think the impact on our country will definitely be very large."
Some parts of China have had too much rain, and others too little this summer.
China blames climate change for extreme weather
Here in Hong Kong, we're in a heatwave - most sustained hot, sunny summer weather I've known in 20 years here. Seen forecast suggesting this is set to change - maybe next week will see typhoons hit Hainan and Taiwan, shortly after one bashing Japan.
Reuters interview on fast melting Greenland ice sheet
From a Reuters interview:
A: I think it definitely underestimated. We complained heavily before it was released
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Right now we have warming all the way down to the mid-latitudes.
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We have never had such a high carbon dioxide level in the past 500,000 years.
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Q: How do you view the media coverage of climate change?
A: One disappointment I would raise is if you look at the understanding of climate change by scientists -- let's be generous -- 95 percent of scientists say we understand the process and we are convinced there is global warming. The media reports it, like a lot of other stories, as 50-50. ...
INTERVIEW-Global warming and the melting of Greenland
UNEP: fast melting Himalayan glaciers - massive problems
Closely related to the above, a new report from UNEP.
Nearly 15000 glaciers and 9000 glacial lakes are found in the Himalayan mountain chain which stretches 2500 km across five countries – Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, India and China. The mountain range feeds nine perennial river systems in the region and constitutes a lifeline for nearly 1.3 billion people downstream.
Himalayan glaciers are shrinking at an average of 10 to 60 m annually, with some retreating by 74 m a year. In China, glaciers have been retreating at a rate of 5.5 per cent in the last three decades. With current climate change projections two-thirds of China's glaciers are likely to disappear by 2050, and almost all would be gone by 2100.
Significant changes were also seen in the Indian Himalaya, with the highest rate of glacial retreat found in the Bada Shigri Glacier and lowest in the Chhota Shigri Glacier in the Chenab River Basin, where glaciers are retreating by 6.8 to 29.8 m each year.
In Bhutan, the Luggye Glacier retreated by 160 m yearly from 1988 to 1993 resulting in rapid growth of the Luggye Tso Lake. The Raphstreng Glacier retreated 35 m every year on average from 1984 to 1998 but from 1988 to 1993 the retreat rate almost doubled to 60 m per year.
Glacier retreat has been accelerating in Nepal since the 1990s, with dramatic retreats recorded between 1994 and 1998 especially in the Dudh Koshi sub-basin where all of the glaciers studied have retreat by 10 to 59 m yearly. The Dudh Koshi sub-basin is the largest basin and most densely glaciated region in Nepal.
Melting glaciers are also leading to some of the fastest-growing glacial lakes in the region. Some glacial lakes have grown by almost 800 per cent since the 1970s.
Fast Melting Glaciers from Rising Temperatures Expose Millions in Himalaya to Devastating Floods and Water Shortages
Glaciers on Everest and in Yellow River source shrinking
In a picture taken in 1968, the Middle Rongbuk glacier skirts through the mountain valley with the peaks above thickly covered with snow.
But almost exactly the same shot taken this year by a Greenpeace team reveals much barer peaks and a scarcely visible glacier.
And the environmental pressure group is in no doubt that the radical changes to the area are due to the effects of climate change.
"The degradation of the Everest environment and glacial retreat is, Greenpeace believes, a direct result of climate change," a spokeswoman said.
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The Greenpeace team found that the glaciers of the Yellow River source have shrunk by 17 per cent in the past 30 years and warns that this trend could leave the region without glaciers by the end of the century.
Mt Everest climate devastation
Hottest January on record
From NOAA:
GLOBAL AVERAGE TEMPERATURE FOR JANUARY HIGHEST ON RECORD, U.S. TEMPERATURE NEAR AVERAGE FOR MONTH
I'm in shorts and t-shirt as I write this - yet here in Hong Kong, February tends to be cool, even downright chilly. This winter, haven't (so far) even needed heater; barely a need for warm clothes.
IPCC summary of 4th assessment report
As you've likely seen in the news, the IPCC's fourth report is due out soon.
There's a summary available online: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis - Summary for Policymakers
You can obtain at:
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/
Reuters has an item with some of the main details:
FACTBOX-U.N. climate panel report
- makes for grim reading
see also the Independent:
Global warming: the final warning
According to yesterday's UN report, the world will be a much hotter place by 2100. This will be the impact ...
Starts with scenario of 2.4C rise in temp, for which impacts forecast include:
In North America, a new dust-bowl brings deserts to life in the high plains states, centred on Nebraska, but also wipes out agriculture and
cattle ranching as sand dunes appear across five US states, from Texas in the south to Montana in the north.
Rising sea levels accelerate as the Greenland ice sheet tips into irreversible melt, submerging atoll nations and low-lying deltas.
and continues from there; by maximum potential rise of 6.4C:
Ice shelf snapped free in Canadian Arctic
The mass of ice broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, about 800 kilometers (497 miles) south of the North Pole, but no one was present to see it in Canada's remote north.
Scientists using satellite images later noticed that it became a newly formed ice island in just an hour and left a trail of icy boulders floating in its wake.
Warwick Vincent of Laval University, who studies Arctic conditions, traveled to the newly formed ice island and could not believe what he saw.
"This is a dramatic and disturbing event. It shows that we are losing remarkable features of the Canadian North that have been in place for many thousands of years. We are crossing climate thresholds, and these may signal the onset of accelerated change ahead," Vincent said Thursday.
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"What surprised us was how quickly it happened," Copland [head of the new global ice lab at the University of Ottawa] said. "It's pretty alarming.
"Even 10 years ago scientists assumed that when global warming changes occur that it would happen gradually so that perhaps we expected these ice shelves just to melt away quite slowly, but the big surprise is that for one they are going, but secondly that when they do go, they just go suddenly, it's all at once, in a span of an hour."
Ancient ice shelf breaks free from Canadian Arctic
First inhabited island disappears below rising seas
As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.
Disappearing world: Global warming claims tropical island
For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas.
India storms intensifying, moderate rains declining
When It Warms, It Pours: Climate Change Produces Fewer but More Extreme Monsoon Rains
Climate change appears to be increasing the risk of monsoon flooding on the Indian subcontinent
Canadian Arctic transforming as temperatures rise
The seals have changed, as well.
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Wayne Davidson, the resident meteorologist in Resolute Bay for 20 years, says monthly temperatures throughout the year are 5 to 11 degrees higher than recent historical averages. For example, Davidson said, the average daily temperature last March was minus 13.4 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with an average of minus 24.2 degrees from 1947 to 1991.
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"There's almost nobody left anymore who doesn't accept that global warming is real."
It certainly feels real enough to the people of Resolute Bay. From their perch on the edge of the Barrow Strait, they watched this summer as the waters of their rocky bay melted and filled with drifting icebergs - a view as depressing as it was picturesque, because in years past the water remained frozen solid enough to traverse aboard sleds and snowmobiles to their traditional hunting grounds.
"The heat of the sun is different now," said Kalluk, the village elder, trying to make sense of the changes. "I think there is global warming, because snow that has never melted before is starting to melt now."
In the Arctic, air conditioning on blast
UK Royal Society website section re warming
Britain's most distinguished scientific academy - the Royal Society - has a good section on warming, with plenty of info, inc debunking climate change myths (as propounded by some sectors of energy industry, and cronies).
Climate Change
US getting warmer
The US - home to the loudest global warming sceptics (and a more than fair number of idiots) - is warming, according to new report from PennEnvironment.
During the first six months of 2006, the average temperature was above normal at 91% of the locations.
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Executive summary, and link to full report (pdf) at:
Feeling the Heat: Global Warming and Rising Temperatures in the United States
Arctic ice shrinkage observed even in winter
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Arctic perennial sea ice -- the kind that stays frozen year-round -- declined by 14 percent between 2004 and 2005, climate scientists said on Wednesday, in what one expert saw as a clear sign of greenhouse warming.
Researchers have been monitoring the shrinking polar ice cap with satellites since the 1970s. What is new, and remarkable to scientists, is that the decline has been observed in winter as well as summer.
"The greenhouse phenomenon is actually becoming apparent in the Arctic," said Josefino Comiso of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center outside Washington DC. "The winter warming signal is finally coming out."
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Arctic sea ice shrinks, a sign of greenhouse effect
Sun not responsible for global warming
Claims the sun's output is varying, leading to global warming, looking more threadbare after study just out, showing output
"varied by only 0.07 percent over 11-year sunspot cycles, far too little to account for the rise in temperatures since the Industrial Revolution."
Study says global warming isn’t sun’s fault
Analysis disputes claims that solar radiance is behind rising temperatures
Freak storms like Katrina result from our actions
But that's the inescapable implication of a piece of research published yesterday by a group of the world's most distinguished climate scientists. Freak storms such as Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the Big Easy a year ago, are not just freaks, they suggest. They are down to us.
Warmer seas causing more violent hurricanes and typhoons are almost certainly the result of greenhouse gas emissions, they conclude; they are caused, ultimately, by the carbon dioxide from the power station that provides your electricity, from the exhaust of the car you drove to work this morning.
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The 19 scientists, from America, Britain and Germany, include James Hansen of Nasa, the doyen of American climate change researchers, and Professor Phil Jones from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia at Norwich.
They said that, in a comprehensive investigation, they had found an 84 per cent probability that human triggers accounted for most of the observed increases in sea surface temperatures (SSTs), during the past century, in the breeding grounds for hurricanes (as they are called in the Atlantic) and cyclones (as they are known in the Pacific).
The gathering storms: How man is making the wind blow
Carbon releases from permafrost like a time bomb
Following the "compost effect" notions, news that carbon is being released more quickly from some northern lakes:
Methane trapped in a special type of permafrost is bubbling up at a rate five times faster than originally measured, the journal said.
Scientists are fretting about a global warming vicious cycle that had not been part of their already gloomy climate forecasts: Warming already underway thaws permafrost, soil that had been continuously frozen for thousands of years.
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The effect reported in Nature is seen mostly in Siberia, but also elsewhere, in a type of carbon-rich permafrost, flash frozen about 40,000 years ago.
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"It's kind of like a slow-motion time bomb," said Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at the University of Florida and co-author of the Science study. "There's these big surprises out there that we don't even know about."
Scientists find new global warming threat from melting permafrost
Soils may release carbon, sending temps surging
Professor Peter Cox, of Exeter University, told the Royal Geographical Society annual conference that temperatures could rise 8C by 2100 because of a "compost effect" which could see carbon dioxide levels increase 50 per cent faster than previously estimated.
Currently, around one quarter of carbon emissions are absorbed by the soil and one quarter by the oceans. It had previously been assumed that these proportions would remain the same. But Professor Cox said that global warming is damaging the soil's ability to absorb carbon emissions.
Changing climate: 'Compost effect' may cause global warming to reach crisis point in 2050
China weather disasters increasing as world warms
BEIJING (Reuters) - Storms, floods, heat and drought that have killed more than 2,000 people in China this year are a prelude to weather patterns likely to become more extreme due to global warming, the head of the Beijing Climate Center said.
China was braced for further hardship as rising temperatures worldwide trigger increasingly extreme weather, Dong Wenjie, director-general of the climate center, said.
"The precise causes of these phenomena aren't easy to determine on their own," Dong told Reuters of meteorological disasters that have caused 160 billion yuan (10.58 billion pounds) worth of damage this year.
"But we know the broad background is global warming. That's clear. It's a reminder that global warming will bring about increasingly extreme weather events more often."
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- and yet, the article notes, China remains unwilling to join international "action" in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as it's "a developing country".
Add more disasters, and it won't be developing too well.
Disaster-prone China takes heed of global warmingPost edited by: Martin, at: 2006/12/24 03:35
Can't go on pretending laws of nature don't exist
Commentary in Washington Times, by MICHAEL PRAVICA, Assistant Professor of Physics, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Forum: Physicist examines global warming
European plants and animals show climate change
Scientists claim to have produced the first conclusive proof that spring is arriving earlier as a result of global warming.
In Britain trees are coming into leaf 10 days earlier than they did 30 years ago while in countries with more pronounced warming, such as Spain, they are doing so by a fortnight. On average spring has advanced by between six and eight days across Europe.
According to the study, the biggest of its kind, the extended growing season has resulted in autumn being delayed by three days.
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Spain, which is growing hotter more quickly than any other European country, has experienced the most pronounced change, the report found.
Countries to the east and north are warming relatively slowly and had changed the least. In Slovakia, spring was arriving only three days earlier.
Dr Sparks said that the study was particularly effective because it used species that grow across all countries in Europe. Scientists examined the date that beech trees (fagus sylvatica) and wild cherries (prunus avium) came into leaf to measure the changes, giving a consistent picture of the effect of warming, the authors said.
Annette Menzel, of the Technical University Munich, who co-wrote the study, said the findings had profound implications. "Unlike some studies that record individual species, this is the first comprehensive examination of all available data at the continental scale, and the timing of change is clear, very clear," she said....
Animals and plants 'prove' that spring arrives earlier every year
Here in Hong Kong, too, seems to me to be tendency towards earlier springs.
When I arrived in 1980s, was told Asian Koel didn't sing till March, yet I've recently heard as early as the beginning of January. Winters seeming warmer; frost-intolerant plants are now advancing up highest slopes of HK's highest mountain (957-metre Tai Mo Shan): might be reflection of climate change.
In northeast China, changes are more pronounced. Some resident birds that were once rare/scarce on coast at Beidaihe - such as Vinous-throated Parrotbill - have become more common, I think as winters less severe; Chinese Bulbul has spread north, to breed at Beidaihe (becoming fairly common in the area), where the species was unknown before 1986.
Current warming like accelerated ancient heatwave?
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON - It was one of the greatest calamities of all time: Something turned up the Earth's thermostat, touching off a monstrous heat wave that killed many animals and drove others far from their homes to seek cooler climes.
This catastrophe occurred 55 million years ago, after the age of the dinosaurs and long before humans appeared. But scientists warn that today's global warming means that it could be happening again.
The ancient hot spell, which lasted 50,000 to 100,000 years, goes by the unwieldy name of Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. It was caused by a sudden - in geological terms - doubling or tripling of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Climate scientists say the result was a massive increase of 10 to 12 degrees Fahrenheit - even higher near the poles - above the prevailing temperature.
"In certain regards, the PETM is very similar to what is happening right now," said Gerald Dickens, an earth scientist at Rice University in Houston. "Just like now, a huge amount of carbon rapidly entered the ocean or atmosphere. The most notable difference is the rate. Things are happening much faster now than during the PETM."
Most scientists attribute much of today's global warming to the burning of carbon-rich fossil fuels in factories, cars and trucks. If the present trend continues, Dickens said, the world will add as much carbon to the atmosphere in 500 years - from 1800 to 2300 - as the PETM did over 10,000 years.
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Global warming may be an accelerated version of ancient heat wavePost edited by: martin, at: 2006/08/26 13:26
Heatwaves 2006
We're not just seeing heatwaves here and there this summer; instead, seems typical that places are warmer than usual.
Here in Hong Kong, had some even hotter than usual weather lately, with neighbouring Guangdong province warning of heatwave.
from a couple of news items:
While leading climate scientists have been reluctant to link regional heat waves with rising temperatures in the world's atmosphere and oceans, they say the recent weather patterns are consistent with computer projections for global warming.
In the United States, the first six months of 2006 were the hottest recorded in more than a century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center. Canada reported the hottest winter and spring since it started keeping track about a half-century ago, while England, Germany and France are sweltering, and the Netherlands is recording the hottest month since temperatures were first measured 300 years ago.
"The current heat waves throughout much of North America and Europe are consistent with the predictions of our global climate models," said physicist John Harte, a professor and researcher in UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group and the Ecosystem Sciences Division.
...
The warming has been the greatest in the Arctic regions, particularly Alaska, Siberia and Scandinavia, as melting ice and snow reflect less sunlight back into the atmosphere and expose more land to heat and warmth. Antarctica also has warmed. Within the United States, the warming is greater in the West than in the East.
"This is expected," said James Hansen, director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The subtropics, which include the American Southwest and the Mediterranean regions, become hotter and drier with increasing greenhouse gases, he said.
"Weather will fluctuate a lot from year to year. But the situation this year is of the nature of the expected trend. So get used to it," Hansen said....
Yes, the planet is heating up
Hottest year on record; more to come
The phenomenon has surprised meteorologists who are used to seeing drought as a regional, not global, problem. This weekend they said early analysis of the hot weather, together with the size of the areas affected, suggested it was linked to global climate change.
“Greenhouse gas emissions raise the likelihood of heatwaves like this one,” said Dave Griggs, a Met Office representative on the Joint Scientific Committee for the World Climate Research Programme. “By 2040 this will be just an average summer and by 2060 it will be a relatively cool one.”
Heatwave with a global grip
Increasing wildfires as the world warms?
In the Siberian taiga and Canadian Rockies, in Southern California and Australia, researchers find growing evidence tying an upsurge in wildfires to climate change, an impact long predicted by global-warming forecasters.
A team at California's Scripps Institution, in a headline-making report this month, found that warmer temperatures, causing earlier snow runoff and consequently drier summer conditions, were the key factor in an explosion of big wildfires in the U.S. West over three decades, including fires now rampaging east of Los Angeles.
Researchers previously reached similar conclusions in Canada, where fire is destroying an average of 6.4 million acres a year, compared with 2.5 million in the early 1970s. And an upcoming U.S.-Russian-Canadian scientific paper points to links between warming and wildfires in Siberia, where 2006 already qualifies as an extreme fire season, sixth in the past eight years. Far to the south in drought-stricken Australia, meanwhile, 2005 was the hottest year on record, and the dangerous bush fire season is growing longer.
``Temperature increases are intimately linked with increases in area burned in Canada, and I would expect the same worldwide,'' said Mike Flannigan, a veteran Canadian Forest Service researcher....
Global warming, fire upsurge linked
INCREASED TEMPERATURES CAUSING DRIER SUMMERS
Increased CO2 also making seas more acidic
Now comes an article suggesting that marine life such as coral not only threatened by warming, but also by more acidic oceans.
Article including:
Ocean acidity has already increased 30 percent since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19th century, said Richard Feely, an oceanographer at NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle.
at: Rising Ocean Acidity Threatens Reefs
nw Europe inc Britain winters to become colder?
from the Independent - evidence supporting ideas that even as planet warmer overall, Britain [and elsewhere in nw Europe] could experience colder winters than have been the norm of late.
Scientists have found the first hard evidence to show that this actually happened 8,200 years ago, when the climate in parts of the northern hemisphere cooled dramatically after a period of global warming.
Paradoxically, a warmer world could lead to harsher winters in Britain because of the way that melting freshwater from the Greenland ice cap can interfere with the saltwater engine that drives the Gulf Stream
Global warming may lead to colder winters in Britain
Flooding in ne US linked to global warming?
Has seemed many Americans have been happy to drive around in SUVs and so on, and if the US of A weather seemed ok, never mind about the rest of the world, they'd just keep on truckin.
Recent hurricanes, now these rainstorms, plus a few other oddities weather-wise, may now give a few more of the gung-ho gas-guzzlers pause for thought. (Not all, of course; saw one article labelling Gore and others who are concerned re warming as "Marxists". Duh, not much thought there, and not for a thoughtful audience either.)
Northeast U.S. floods stir global warming debate
Re:Global warming spurred 2005 US hurricane season
Australian Academy of Science believes that, with changing rainfall patterns, higher temperatures, global warming is set to impact many Australian species. Especially montane species such as pygmy possum and alpine plants.
Impact of global warming on biodiversity
Global warming spurred 2005 US hurricane season
Even before last year, I had a look at histogram showing the nos of US hurricanes over time; seemed to me the frequency had become fair bit higher than a cursory look at the cycles would predict.
"The global warming influence provides a new background level that increases the risk of future enhancements in hurricane activity," co-author Kevin Trenberth wrote in the study.
A statement issued by the center said that the study "contradicts recent claims that natural cycles are responsible for the upturn in Atlantic hurricane activity since 1995. It also adds support to the premise that hurricane seasons will become more active as global temperatures rise."
Study finds strong warming tie to hurricanes
Half of Atlantic temperature increase in 2005 linked to global rise
Nat Research Council - Earth Hottest for 400 years
Even as Disinformation for Idiots brigade (read, right-wingers in US) puts up more smokescreens re warming, main science keeps showing it's real.
This just in:
Scientists rely on proxies to reconstruct paleoclimatic surface temperatures because geographically widespread records of temperatures measured with instruments date back only about 150 years. Other proxies include corals, ocean and lake sediments, ice cores, cave deposits, and documentary sources, such as historic drawings of glaciers. The globally averaged warming of about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees Celsius) that instruments have recorded during the last century is also reflected in proxy data for that time period, the committee noted.
The report was requested by Congress after a controversy arose last year over surface temperature reconstructions published by climatologist Michael Mann and his colleagues in the late 1990s. The researchers concluded that the warming of the Northern Hemisphere in the last decades of the 20th century was unprecedented in the past thousand years. In particular, they concluded that the 1990s were the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year. Their graph depicting a rise in temperatures at the end of a long era became known as the "hockey stick."
The Research Council committee found the Mann team's conclusion that warming in the last few decades of the 20th century was unprecedented over the last thousand years to be plausible, but it had less confidence that the warming was unprecedented prior to 1600; fewer proxies -- in fewer locations -- provide temperatures for periods before then. Because of larger uncertainties in temperature reconstructions for decades and individual years, and because not all proxies record temperatures for such short timescales, even less confidence can be placed in the Mann team's conclusions about the 1990s, and 1998 in particular.
The committee noted that scientists' reconstructions of Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures for the past thousand years are generally consistent. The reconstructions show relatively warm conditions centered around the year 1000, and a relatively cold period, or "Little Ice Age," from roughly 1500 to 1850. The exact timing of warm episodes in the medieval period may have varied by region, and the magnitude and geographical extent of the warmth is uncertain, the committee said. None of the reconstructions indicates that temperatures were warmer during medieval times than during the past few decades, the committee added.
The scarcity of precisely dated proxy evidence for temperatures before 1600, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, is the main reason there is less confidence in global reconstructions dating back further than that. Other factors that limit confidence include the short length of the instrumental record, which is used to calibrate and validate reconstructions, and the possibility that the relationship between proxy data and local surface temperatures may have varied over time. It also is difficult to estimate a mean global temperature using data from a limited number of sites. On the other hand, confidence in large-scale reconstructions is boosted by the fact that the proxies on which they are based generally exhibit strong correlations with local environmental conditions. Confidence increases further when multiple independent lines of evidence point to the same general phenomenon, such as the Little Ice Age.
Collecting additional proxy data, especially for years before 1600 and for areas where the current data are relatively sparse, would increase our understanding of temperature variations over the last 2,000 years, the report says. In addition, improving access to data on which published temperature reconstructions are based would boost confidence in the results. The report also notes that new analytical methods, or more careful use of existing methods, might help circumvent some of the current limitations associated with large-scale reconstructions.
The committee pointed out that surface temperature reconstructions for periods before the Industrial Revolution -- when levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases were much lower -- are only one of multiple lines of evidence supporting the conclusion that current warming is occurring in response to human activities, and they are not the primary evidence.
The National Research Council is the principal operating arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. It is a private, nonprofit institution that provides science and technology advice under a congressional charter.
'High Confidence' That Planet Is Warmest in 400 Years;
Less Confidence in Temperature Reconstructions Prior to 1600
you can order the book, or read online for free, at:
Surface Temperature Reconstructions for the Last 2,000 Years
Climate change and migratory species
The British Trust for Ornithology has prepared a report on apparent impacts of climate change on migratory species.
Includes birds that are wintering in Britain, or parts of Britain, in higher numbers - rather than moving south/west to warmer places; also variations in ranges of some marine animals inc cetaceans.
Notes that, "Although it is thought that no species has yet become extinct solely because of climate change (Golden Toad is a possible exception), many extinctions (of both migratory and non-migratory species) are predicted in the near future."
summary:
CLIMATE CHANGE AND MIGRATORY SPECIES
includes link to page with pdf files of full report and executive summary
Re:Scary Movie: An Inconvenient Truth w Al Gore