Tag Archives: temperature

2010 Spike in Greenland Ice Loss Lifted Bedrock, GPS Reveals

By Guest PostDecember 10, 2011Environmentamerican geophysical union, bedrock, climate change, dana john caccamise, eric c kendrick, german aerospace center, gnet, gps stations, grace, gravity recovery and climate experiment, greenland coast, greenland gps network, greenland ice sheet, hao zhou, ice, ice sheet, implications, island, jason e box, jian wang, k brown, melting season, michael bevis, NASA, natural response, ohio state university, san francisco, satellites, southern greenland, temperature, terry j wilson

SAN FRANCISCO – An unusually hot melting season in 2010 accelerated ice loss in southern Greenland by 100 billion tons – and large portions of the island’s bedrock rose an additional quarter of an inch in response.

That’s the finding from a network of nearly 50 GPS stations planted along the Greenland coast to measure the bedrock’s natural response to the ever-diminishing weight of ice above it.

Every year as the Greenland Ice Sheet melts, the rocky coast rises, explained Michael Bevis, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Geodynamics and professor in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University. Some GPS stations around Greenland routinely detect uplift of 15 mm (0.59 inches) or more, year after year. But a temperature spike in 2010 lifted the bedrock a detectably higher amount over a short five-month period – as high as 20 mm (0.79 inches) in some locations. (more…)

Flash Forward 100 Years: Climate Change Scenarios in California’s Bay-Delta

By Guest PostNovember 3, 2011Environmentchinook salmon, climate change, ecosystem, endangered delta smelt, farmland, fish and wildlife service, francis parchaso, frequency of winter flooding, global climate change, irrigation water, james cloern, marcia mcnutt, native species, noaa, rising sea level, salinity, sea-level rise, state of california, temperature, the delta, warming scenarios

USGS scientists and academic colleagues investigated how California’s interconnected San Francisco Bay and Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (the Bay-Delta system) is expected to change from 2010 to 2099 in response to both fast and moderate climate warming scenarios. Results indicate that this area will feel impacts of global climate change in the next century with shifts in its biological communities, rising sea level, and modified water supplies.

“The protection of California’s Bay-Delta system will continue to be a top priority for maintaining the state’s agricultural economy, water security to tens of millions of users, and essential habitat to a valuable ecosystem,” said USGS Director Marcia McNutt. “This new USGS research complements ongoing initiatives to conserve the Bay-Delta by providing sound scientific understanding for managing this valuable system such that it continues to provide the services we need in the face of climate uncertainty.” (more…)

Deep Oceans May Mask Global Warming for Years at a Time

By Guest PostSeptember 22, 2011Environmentatlantic, climate system, community climate system model, computer simulations of global climate, coupled model intercomparison project phase 5, earth, el niño, eric deweaver, gerald meehl, global air temperatures, greenhouse gas, ice and snow, john fasullo, kevin trenberth, la niña, missing heat, national center for atmospheric research, ncar, oceanic circulation, rate of global warming, software tool, temperature, tropical pacific, warming the upper ocean

*Computer simulations of global climate lead to new conclusions*

Earth’s deep oceans may absorb enough heat at times to flatten the rate of global warming for periods of as long as a decade–even in the midst of longer-term warming. This according to a new analysis led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

The study, based on computer simulations of global climate, points to ocean layers deeper than 1,000 feet as the main location of the “missing heat” during periods such as the past decade when global air temperatures showed little trend. (more…)

Thawing Permafrost Could Release Vast Amounts of Carbon and Accelerate Climate Change by the end of this Century

By Guest PostAugust 27, 2011Environmentalternative energies and atomic energy commission, amount of soil carbon, atmosphere, berkeley lab, boreal and arctic land ecosystems, canada, carbon, carbon dioxide, charles koven, climate changes, combine, computer modeling, energy, European Union, france, frozen soils, global warming, high latitude permafrost, intergovernmental panel on climate change, land surface ecosystem model, lawrence berkeley national laboratory, methane emissions, orchidee, organic matter, plant growth, project, rate of soil carbon decomposition, simulation, supercomputing facility, temperature, united kingdom

*New computer modeling study, led by a Berkeley Lab scientist, could help revise understanding of permafrost’s role in global warming*

Billions of tons of carbon trapped in high-latitude permafrost may be released into the atmosphere by the end of this century as the Earth’s climate changes, further accelerating global warming, a new computer modeling study indicates.

The study also found that soil in high-latitude regions could shift from being a sink to a source of carbon dioxide by the end of the 21^st century as the soil warms in response to climate change. (more…)

WHOI Scientists Analyze, Explain the Chemical Makeup of Gulf Plume

By Guest PostJuly 20, 2011Environmentaquatic organisms, autonomous underwater vehicle sentry, benzene, btex, chemicals, christopher reddy, conductivity, ctd, dana yoerger, deep sea hydrothermal vents, deep submergence laboratory, deepwater horizon oil spill, depth, ecotoxicological impact of plumes, ethybenzene, gas and oil, gas to oil ratio, gor, gulf of mexico, hydrocarbon containing plume, jeff seewald, judith mcdowell, macondo well, mass spectrometer tethys, milligrams per liter, natural resource damage assessment protocol, nrda, plume, research vessel endeavor, richard camilli, surface spills, temperature, toluene, toxicity levels of btex, undersea life, water soluble petroleum compounds, whoi, woods hole oceanographic institution, xylenes

Taking another major step in sleuthing the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a research team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has determined what chemicals were contained in a deep, hydrocarbon-containing plume at least 22 miles long that WHOI scientists mapped and sampled last summer in the Gulf of Mexico, a residue of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Moreover, they have taken a big step in explaining why some chemicals, but not others, made their way into the plume.

The findings, published this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “help explain and shed light on the plume formation and verify much of what we thought about the plume’s composition,” said WHOI chemist Christopher Reddy, lead author of the study. The data “provide compelling evidence” that the oil component of the plume sampled in June 2010 essentially comprised benzene, toluene, ethybenzene, and total xylenes—together, called BTEX—at concentrations of about 70 micrograms per liter, the researchers reported. (more…)

Climate Adaptation of Rice

By Guest PostJuly 17, 2011Environmentbacteria, China, climate change, climate impacts on plants, developing countries, disease, dna of the rice plant, drought, dunegrass, endophytes, genetically unrelated plant species, geothermal, heat tolerant plants, microscopic fungi, minimum air temperature, native plants, natural and agricultural ecosystems, process of darwinian evolution, rice, rusty rodriguez, salt, salt tolerant, seattle, seawater, symbiogenics, symbiotic endophytes, temperature, the philippines, tiny fungi, U.S. Geological Survey

*Symbiogenics — a New Strategy for Reducing Climate Impacts on Plants*

Seattle – Rice – which provides nearly half the daily calories for the world’s population – could become adapted to climate change and some catastrophic events by colonizing its seeds or plants with the spores of tiny naturally occurring fungi, just-published U.S. Geological Survey-led research shows.

In an effort to explore ways to increase the adaptability of rice to climatic scourges such as tsunamis and tidal surges that have already led to rice shortages, USGS researchers and their colleagues colonized two commercial varieties of rice with the spores of fungi that exist naturally within native coastal (salt-tolerant) and geothermal (heat-tolerant) plants. (more…)

Scientists Discover a New Tiger Shark Hunting Technique

By Guest PostJune 8, 2011Natureacceleration, carl meyer, cosmopolitan predators, depth, digital still cameras, hawaii institute of marine biology, high resolution accelerometers, himb, hunting behavior of tiger sharks, japanese national institute of polar research, prey, reef and pelagic fishes, swimming dynamics, swimming speed, temperature, three dimensional spaces, tiger sharks, unicornfish, university of florida, university of hawaii at manoa, university of tokyo, west coast of hawaii island, yo yo swimming patterns

In a joint research effort between the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Hawai‘i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), University of Tokyo, the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research, and the University of Florida, scientists have shed new light on the hunting behavior of tiger sharks by studying their swimming dynamics off the west coast of Hawai‘i Island. (more…)

Some People’s Climate Beliefs Shift with Weather

By Guest PostApril 8, 2011Culture, Environmentatmospheric mechanisms, australia, clean air, climate, conservatives, cool planet, day, democrats, earth science, global warming, human influenced climate change, manmade global warming, political belief, political liberals, public opinion, republicans, social scientists, temperature, united states, weather, ye li

*Study shows daily malleability on a long-term question*

Social scientists are struggling with a perplexing earth-science question: as the power of evidence showing manmade global warming is rising, why do opinion polls suggest public belief in the findings is wavering? Part of the answer may be that some people are too easily swayed by the easiest, most irrational piece of evidence at hand: their own estimation of the day’s temperature.

In three separate studies, researchers affiliated with Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) surveyed about 1,200 people in the United States and Australia, and found that those who thought the current day was warmer than usual were more likely to believe in and feel concern about global warming than those who thought the day was unusually cold. A new paper describing the studies appears in the current issue of the journal Psychological Science. (more…)