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‘A better path’ toward projecting, planning for rising seas on a warmer Earth

By Guest PostApril 30, 2013Environment21st century, Antarctica, basins, behavior, christopher little, climate change, climate change policy, coastal planning, computer algorithms, continental ice sheets, geosciences, greenland, ice sheet dynamics, ipcc, massive ice sheets, methodology, michael oppenheimer, monte carlo simulations, nathan urban, Nature, polar ice sheets, princeton university, projection, risk tolerance, sea level, sea level change, sparse data, upper bounds

More useful projections of sea level are possible despite substantial uncertainty about the future behavior of massive ice sheets, according to Princeton University researchers.

In two recent papers in the journals Nature Climate Change and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers present a probabilistic assessment of the Antarctic contribution to 21st-century sea-level change. Their methodology folds observed changes and models of different complexity into unified projections that can be updated with new information. This approach provides a consistent means to integrate the potential contribution of both continental ice sheets — Greenland and Antarctica — into sea-level rise projections. (more…)

NASA Satellites Find Freshwater Losses in Middle East

By Guest PostFebruary 14, 2013Scienceamount of water, austin, basin, data, dead sea, drought, euphrates river, geosciences, german aerospace center, german research center, goddard, grace data, greenbelt, ground based data, hydrologic observations, hydrological modeling, international laws, iran, Iraq, irvine, jay famiglietti, lost freshwater reserves, matt rodell, middle east region, nasa satellites, pumping of groundwater, satellite data, space flight center, stakeholders, syria, tigris, turkey, underground reservoirs, united states, university of california, university of texas, water management

PASADENA, Calif. – A new study using data from a pair of gravity-measuring NASA satellites finds that large parts of the arid Middle East region lost freshwater reserves rapidly during the past decade.

Scientists at the University of California, Irvine; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; and the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., found during a seven-year period beginning in 2003 that parts of Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran along the Tigris and Euphrates river basins lost 117 million acre feet (144 cubic kilometers) of total stored freshwater. That is almost the amount of water in the Dead Sea. The researchers attribute about 60 percent of the loss to pumping of groundwater from underground reservoirs. (more…)

Ancient Fossils Hold Clues for Predicting Future Climate Change, Scientists Report

By Guest PostApril 18, 2011Environmentadam csank, ancient climate record, ancient fossils, Antarctica, aradhna tripati, arctic circle, arctic temperatures, beaver pond, canada, carbon dioxide, climate modeling, coal mine, early pliocene epoch, ellesmere island, Environment, fossilized mollusks, geochemical techniques, geosciences, global climate change, greenland, mollusk shells, natalia rybczynski, polar ice cap, strathcona fiord

By studying fossilized mollusks from some 3.5 million years ago, UCLA geoscientists and colleagues have been able to construct an ancient climate record that holds clues about the long-term effects of Earth’s current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a key contributor to global climate change.

Two novel geochemical techniques used to determine the temperature at which the mollusk shells were formed suggest that summertime Arctic temperatures during the early Pliocene epoch (3.5 million to 4 million years ago) may have been a staggering 18 to 28 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than today. And these ancient fossils, harvested from deep within the Arctic Circle, may have once lived in an environment in which the polar ice cap melted completely during the summer months. (more…)

Tag Archives: geosciences

‘A better path’ toward projecting, planning for rising seas on a warmer Earth

NASA Satellites Find Freshwater Losses in Middle East

Ancient Fossils Hold Clues for Predicting Future Climate Change, Scientists Report