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Why Are Vines Overtaking the American Tropics?

By Guest PostFebruary 15, 2011Environment, ScienceAmazon, american tropics, barro colorado island, beauty kingdom, bolivian smazon, brazil, carbon, carbon storage, el nino events, english ivy, forest canopy, forests, french guiana, human communities, impact on animals, japanese honeysuckle, kudzu, liana vines, milwaukee, oliver phillips, oriental bittersweet, panama, planet, Smithsonian, south carolina, stefan schnitzer, subtropical forests, tropical forests, united states, vines

A Million-Dollar Question

Sleeping Beauty’s kingdom was overgrown by vines when she fell into a deep sleep. Researchers at the Smithsonian in Panama and the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee received more than a million dollars from the U.S. National Science Foundation to discover why real vines are overtaking the American tropics. Data from eight sites show that vines are overgrowing trees in all cases.

“We are witnessing a fundamental structural change in the physical make-up of forests that will have a profound impact on the animals, human communities and businesses that depend on them for their livelihoods,” said Stefan Schnitzer, research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. (more…)

Weather Extremes Are Growing Trend in Northern Australia, Corals Show

By Guest PostFebruary 10, 2011Environmentaims, annual bands, australia, australian institute of marine science, calcium carbonate skeletons, climate patterns, climate scientist, coast, coral colonies, cores, cyclone, dome shaped colonies, el niño southern oscillation, extreme rain, flooding, great barrier reef, growth patterns, janice lough, luminescence, luminometer, near shore corals, northeast queensland, northern australia, porites coral, precipitation, rainfall, summers, townsville, tropical climate pattern, weather extremes

WASHINGTON —The extreme rain events that have caused flooding across northern Australia may become an increasingly familiar occurrence, new research suggests. The study uses the growth patterns in near-shore corals to determine which summers brought more rain than others, creating a centuries-long rainfall record for northern Australia.

“This reconstruction provides a new insight into rainfall in northeast Queensland,” says Janice Lough, climate scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in Townsville, Queensland, who authored the study. “These coral samples, which date from 1639 to 1981, suggest that the summer of 1973–1974 was the wettest in 300 years. This summer is now being compared with that record-setting one.” (more…)

Shark Attacks Increase Worldwide; Florida Continues Four-year Decline

By Guest PostFebruary 7, 2011Environment, Generalapex predators, australia, beach, economic downturn, egypt, fishing lines, florida, george burgess, hawaii, ichthyologist, native floridians, red sea, shark attacks, South Africa, tourists, united states, unusual shark incident, Vietnam, water temperatures, worldwide

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The number of reported shark attacks last year increased worldwide but declined in Florida, according to the University of Florida’s International Shark Attack File annual report released today.

Ichthyologist George Burgess, director of the file housed at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus, said Florida typically has the highest number of attacks worldwide, but 2010 marked the state’s fourth straight year of decline. Florida led the U.S. with 13 reported attacks, but the total was significantly lower than the yearly average of 23 over the past decade. (more…)

Oil in Gulf of Mexico: Biologists Cite Need for Critical Data to Determine Ecological Consequences

By Guest PostFebruary 6, 2011Environmentbiologists, bp disaster, brian bowen, demographic traits, ecological damages, ecosystems, environmental disasters, exxon valdez oil spill, karen bjorndal, largest offshore oil spill, marine life, political will, u s history, valdez oil spill

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Twenty years after biologists attempted to determine the ecological damages to marine life from the Exxon Valdez oil spill, scientists dealing with the BP disaster find themselves with the same problem: the lack of critical data to determine the ecological consequences of human-induced environmental disasters, a University of Florida researcher said. (more…)

Pakistan Floods Last Summer Could Have Been Predicted

By Guest PostFebruary 5, 2011Environment, Scienceanna ghelli, Bangladesh, computer models, disaster, downpours, environmental prediction, european weather forecasting center, flood forecasting technique, floods, hydrological model, meteorological agency, monitoring, monsoonal deluges, Pakistan, peter Webster, rainfall, terrain

WASHINGTON — Five days before intense monsoonal deluges unleashed vast floods across Pakistan last July, computer models at a European weather-forecasting center were giving clear indications that the downpours were imminent. Now, a new scientific study that retrospectively examines the raw data from these computer models, has confirmed that, if the information had been processed, forecasters could have predicted extremely accurate rainfall totals 8-10 days beforehand.

The study also finds that the floods themselves could have been predicted if this data, which originated from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF), had been processed and fed into a hydrological model, which takes terrain into account. (more…)

Ice Cores Yield Rich History of Climate Change

By Guest PostFebruary 4, 2011EnvironmentAntarctica, atmosphere, borehole, carbon dioxide, climate history, climate record, concentration of greenhouse gases, core, coring, earth, gases, human activity, ice, ice core, isotopic composition, julie palais, kendrick taylor, krypton, logging, russia, sample, temperature of the ocean, vostok station, wais, west antarctic ice sheet divide, xenon

*Research project completes drilling for the year, reaching two miles below West Antarctic Ice Sheet*

On Friday, Jan. 28 in Antarctica, a research team investigating the last 100,000 years of Earth’s climate history reached an important milestone completing the main ice core to a depth of 3,331 meters (10,928 feet) at West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide (WAIS). The project will be completed over the next two years with some additional coring and borehole logging to obtain additional information and samples of the ice for the study of the climate record contained in the core.

As part of the project, begun six years ago, the team, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), has been drilling deep into the ice at the WAIS Divide site and recovering and analyzing ice cores for clues about how changes in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have influenced the Earth’s climate over time. (more…)

‘Feeling Warm Makes People More Likely to Believe in Global Warming’

By Guest PostFebruary 2, 2011Culture, Environmentchicago booth, clayton critcher, desertification and drought, feeling warm, fresh drinking water, global warming, haas, hot landscapes, hot sun, idea of global warming, jane risen, mental image, overheated room, pretzels, risen and critcher, warm room

Being in a warm room can make the idea of global warming seem more likely, according to researchers from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley.

A new study finds that when people feel warmer—either because they are out in the hot sun or because they are in an overheated room—they believe in global warming more. The findings were published online Jan. 20 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. (more…)

NASA Satellite Tracks Menacing Australian Cyclone

By Guest PostFebruary 1, 20111 commentEnvironment, Science3d map, airs, anthony, aqua satellite, atmospheric infrared sounder, atmospheric temperature, australia, cairns, clouds, crippling floods, deep convective, earth, forecasters, heavy precipitation, infrared image, NASA, northeastern australia, queensland, saffir simpson scale, thunderstorm, tropical cyclone, water vapor, yasi

Fresh on the heels of a series of crippling floods that began in December 2010, and a small tropical cyclone, Anthony, this past weekend, the northeastern Australian state of Queensland is now bracing for what could become one of the largest tropical cyclones the state has ever seen.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite, built and managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., captured this infrared image of Yasi on Jan. 31, 2011, at 6:29 a.m. PST (9:29 a.m. EST). The AIRS data create an accurate 3-D map of atmospheric temperature, water vapor and clouds, data that are useful to forecasters. The image shows the temperature of Yasi’s cloud tops or the surface of Earth in cloud-free regions. The coldest cloud-top temperatures appear in purple, indicating towering cold clouds and heavy precipitation. The infrared signal of AIRS does not penetrate through clouds. Where there are no clouds, AIRS reads the infrared signal from the surface of the ocean waters, revealing warmer temperatures in orange and red. (more…)

Category Archives: Environment