Cold Water Thrown on Antarctic Warming Predictions
Antarctica hasn’t warmed as much over the last century as climate models had
originally predicted, a new study finds.
Source: LiveScience, May 7 2008
The Science Daily article is
here.
Will Global Warming Take A Short Break? Improved Climate Predictions Suggest A
Reduced Warming Trend During The Next 10 Years
To date climate change projections, as published in the last IPCC report,
only considered changes in future atmospheric composition. This strategy is
appropriate for long-term changes in climate such as predictions for the end of
the century. However, in order to predict short-term developments over the next
decade, models need additional information on natural climate variations, in
particular associated with ocean currents.
Source: ScienceDaily, May 5, 2008
Angry Scientists Want Off Climate Change Deniers List
Dennis T. Avery (a fixture among climate-change skeptics and listed as a
senior fellow at the
Heartland Institute) wrote
an article
originally published last fall by the Hudson Institute, “500 Scientists with
Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares.” It turns out that the list
might not hit such a nice round number, according to
DeSmogBlog.
Source: LiveScience, April 30, 2008
Before Fossil Fuels, Earth's Minerals Kept Carbon Dioxide In Check
"The system is finely in tune," says Caldeira. "That one or two percent
imbalance works out to an average imbalance in natural carbon dioxide emissions
that is thousands of times smaller than our current emissions from industry and
the destruction of forests."
Source: ScienceDaily, April 30, 2008
Human warming hobbles ancient climate cycle
Before humans began burning fossil fuels, there was an eons-long balance
between carbon dioxide emissions and Earth's ability to absorb them, but now the
planet can't keep up, scientists said on Sunday.
Source: NewsDaily, April 27, 2008
Antarctic Deep Sea Gets Colder
The Antarctic deep sea is getting colder, which might stimulate the
circulation of the oceanic water masses. This is the first result of the
Polarstern expedition of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine
Research in the Helmholtz Association that has just ended in Punta Arenas/Chile.
At the same time satellite images from the Antarctic summer have shown the
largest sea-ice extent on record. In the coming years autonomous measuring buoys
will be used to find out whether the cold Antarctic summer induces a new trend
or was only a "slip“.
Source: ScienceDaily, April 23, 2008
Arctic Ice More Vulnerable To Sunny Weather, New Study Shows
The shrinking expanse of Arctic sea ice is increasingly vulnerable to summer
sunshine, new research concludes. The study, by scientists at the National
Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Colorado State University (CSU),
finds that unusually sunny weather contributed to last summer's record loss of
Arctic ice, while similar weather conditions in past summers do not appear to
have had comparable impacts.
Source: ScienceDaily, April 22, 2008
Ward Hunt Ice Shelf, Largest In Northern Hemisphere, Has Fractured Into Three
Main Pieces
A team of scientists including polar expert Dr. Derek Mueller from Trent
University and Canadian Rangers have discovered that the largest ice shelf in
the Northern Hemisphere has fractured into three main pieces.
Source: ScienceDaily, April 16, 2008
Scientists Debate The Accuracy Of Al Gore's Documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth'
There is no question that Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth is
a powerful example of how scientific knowledge can be communicated to a lay
audience. What is up for debate is whether it accurately presents the scientific
argument that global warming is caused by human activities. Climate change
experts express their opinions on the scientific validity of the film’s claims
in articles just published online in Springer’s journal, GeoJournal.
ScienceDaily, April 15, 2008
Why Is Arctic Sea Ice Melting Faster Than Predicted? NOAA Probing Arctic
Pollution
NOAA scientists are now flying through springtime Arctic pollution to find
out why the region is warming — and summertime sea ice is melting — faster than
predicted. Some 35 NOAA researchers are gathering with government and university
colleagues in Fairbanks, Alaska, to conduct the study through April 23.
Source: ScienceDaily, April 9, 2008
Climate Change Is Not Caused By Cosmic Rays, According To New Research
New research has dealt a blow to the skeptics who argue that climate change
is all due to cosmic rays rather than to man-made greenhouse gases. The new
evidence shows no reliable connection between the cosmic ray intensity and cloud
cover.
Source: ScienceDaily, April 4, 2008
"Mountains of the Moon" Glaciers Melting in Africa
Photographs taken by members of a WWF expedition to the Ruwenzoris last month
show a massive reduction in glacier size when compared with similar images from
the 1950s, probably from increased temperatures or humidity.
Source: The National Geographic News (online), March 25, 2008
Huge Iceberg Breaks Away, Antarctic Ice Shelf 'Hangs By A Thread'
British Antarctic Survey has captured dramatic satellite images of an
Antarctic ice shelf that looks set to be the latest to break out from the
Antarctic Peninsula. A large part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf on the Antarctic
Peninsula is now supported only by a thin strip of ice hanging between two
islands. It is another identifiable impact of climate change on the Antarctic
environment.
Source: ScienceDaily, March 25, 2008
Climate facts to warm to
Duffy asked Marohasy: "Is the Earth stillwarming?"
She replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your
point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then
temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon
dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been
increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10
years."
Source: The Australian (online), March 22, 2008
Arctic Pollution Dates to 1800s
Today's Arctic explorers are well-acquainted with the ugly haze that hangs
over the North Pole, created by air pollution that drifts up from cities in
lower latitudes. But a new study suggests this veil of pollution has been
present since the late 1800s.
Source: LiveScience, March 19, 2008
Arctic Ice Returns, Thin and Tentative
Arctic ice has reformed rapidly this winter after a record summer low, but it
still covers less of the Arctic Ocean than it did in previous decades, NASA
scientists announced today in an update of the states of Arctic and Antarctic
sea ice.
Source: LiveScience, March 18, 2008
Thickest, oldest Arctic ice is melting
The thickest, oldest and toughest sea ice around the North Pole is melting, a
bad sign for the future of the Arctic ice cap, NASA satellite data showed on
Tuesday.
Source: NewsDaily, March 18, 2008
Even Skeptics Admit Global Warming is Real [Video]
In other words, even skeptics, deniers, contrarians—pick your favorite
term—agree that global warming is real, or so it appears from the recent
three-day conference in New York City put together by the Heartland Institute, a
bastion of free-market thinking on the perils of junk science and government
economic regulation. They just disagree—even amongst themselves—whether it is
man-made.
Source: Scientific American (online), March 18, 2008
UN: World's Glaciers Melting Faster
Haeberli said glaciers lost an average of about a foot of ice a year between
1980 and 1999. But since the turn of the millennium the average loss has
increased to about 20 inches.
Source: LiveScience, March 16, 2008
Glaciers Before and After
Glacier Image Gallery
Source: LiveScience
Not Much Warming Under the Sun
To help nail down the effect of solar radiation, geophysicist Mike Lockwood
of the University of Southampton, U.K., examined data available since 1955 on
the monthly average output of the sun, including sunspots, magnetic activity,
and cosmic-ray variations. Then he compared those data, month by month, with
average global temperature records, as well as El Niño- and La Niña-induced
weather cycles and the atmospheric effects of major volcanic eruptions. The
result, Lockwood and colleagues report in two papers published online this week
in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A, is that for the past
half-century, the sun has exerted only a small influence on climate--about 3%
compared with the warming influence of greenhouse gases and natural climate
cycles (see illustration).
Source: ScienceNOW (AAAS), March 12, 2008
Scientists meet in NYC to challenge Gore, U.N.
Global
warming is a natural process, not likely the result of human
activities, argued more than 100 internationally prominent environmental
scientists in papers presented at the 2008 International Conference on
Climate
Change, which concluded here today.
Source: WorldNetDaily, March 4, 2008
Baliunas Says Global Warming Related To Sun
Dr. Baliunas' work with fellow Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
astronomer Willie Soon suggests global warming is more directly related to solar
variability than to increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, an
alternative view to what's been widely publicized in the mainstream media.
Source: Tyler Morning Telegraph (online), February 14, 2008
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