Articles with the keyword: 


Coral Fossils Reveal Sea Levels Rising Fast
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 4 months (www.time.com)
Heat waves, droughts and mass extinctions are all potential threats from climate change. But the scariest risk has always been that of rapid sea-level rise caused by the collapse of the massive ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica. There is enough water locked on Greenland alone to raise global sea levels by 23 ft. (7 m) if it melted, which would swamp coastal cities like London and Shanghai and all but wipe away small island states like the Maldives and Tuvalu 


sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (www.nature.com)
Climate change can take the blame for many dim prospects: rising sea levels, more frequent droughts and disappearing glaciers, to name just a few. But perhaps the warming trend should be absolved of responsibility for a predicted bump in the global burden of infectious disease.
A paper in the April issue of Ecology suggests that, while warming temperatures will likely cause disease bearers to shift in range, these ranges may not significantly increase in size. The data are primarily concerned with malaria and yellow fever 


March of Penguins Turning into Trail of Tears
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 5 months (blog.wired.com)
Emperor penguins could be headed toward extinction if Antarctic sea ice shrinks as projected. 


Ocean Less Effective at Absorbing Carbon Dioxide Emitted by Human Activity
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 6 months (www.sciencedaily.com)
In the Southern Indian Ocean, climate change is leading to stronger winds, which mix waters, bringing CO2 up from the ocean depths to the surface. This is the conclusion of researchers who have studied the latest field measurements carried out by CNRS's INSU, IPEV and IPSL. As a result, the Southern Ocean can no longer absorb as much atmospheric CO2 as before. Its role as a carbon sink has been weakened, and it may now be ten times less efficient than previously estimated. The same trend can be observed at high latitudes in the North Atlantic. 


Ozone layer may grow back faster over northern lattitudes
Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (sciencenow.sciencemag.org)
This will come as no shock to anyone who has been paying attention: Things are complicated.
In general, the depletion of the ozone layer and climate change (a term usually used to mean global warming caused by human activity) are directly linked. However, due to changes in air currents and other factors, places such as North America and Europe may see a thickening--or at least a REthickening--of their patch of ozone before the rest of the planet does. This will probably not change overall average temperatures, but will affect the levels of radiation that reach the surface. 


Research ties tree mortality trends to climate warming
piggy submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www4.nau.edu)
Global warming is speeding up the mortality of trees, and NAU research is providing some of the data to prove it.
Pete Fulé, an NAU associate professor in the School of Forestry and a director of the university's Ecological Restoration Institute, is a coauthor of "Widespread Increase of Tree Mortality Rates in the Western United States," an article to be published in the Jan. 23 issue of Science journal.
The study, led by principal authors Phillip J. van Mantgem and Nathan L. Stephenson, scientists with the Western Ecological Research Center for the U.S 


Report calls aerosol research key to improving climate predictions
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 7 months (www.eurekalert.org)
Scientists need a more detailed understanding of how human-produced atmospheric particles, called aerosols, affect climate in order to produce better predictions of Earth's future climate, according to a NASA-led report issued by the US Climate Change Science Program on Friday. 


Greenhouse gases hit modern-day highs
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (www.nature.com)
Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases reached new highs in 2007, according to the most recent analysis by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — which together contribute 88% of the anthropogenic global-warming effect — were last year 37%, 156% and 19% above pre-industrial levels, respectively.
Since 1990, total radiative forcing — the re-radiation of heat back towards Earth's surface — by all long-lived heat-trapping gases has increased by 24%, the WMO reports 
Carbon dioxide levels may put the squeeze on squid
Darkfrog submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (www.nytimes.com)
This is a New York Times writeup of an issue discussed in PNAS. It seems that rising CO2 levels may disproportionately affect the most delicious I mean mysterious of all sea creatures: the squid.
As the oceans absorb more carbon dioxide from the air, they become more acidic. This can affect corals and other small organisms, but it can also affect bigger creatures, like large, ready-to-eat I mean shell-less mollusks 


sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (www.nature.com)
In a Commentary in this week's Nature, science policy experts Daniel Sarewitz of Arizona State University in Tempe and Richard Nelson of Columbia University in New York argue that removing carbon dioxide directly from the air is an effective way to tackle climate change. Nature News asks how advanced the plans to do this are. 


Nobel physicist to run energy agency
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (www.nature.com)
By choosing Nobel-prizewinning physicist Steven Chu to head the Department of Energy (DoE), US President-elect Barack Obama has sent a clear message: solving climate issues in a world dependent on fossil fuels will depend on science coming up with new energy technologies. 


How Climate Change Will Impact Animals
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 10 months (www.time.com)
The threats to wildlife on the African island of Madagascar are manifold: rampant deforestation that has stripped most of the island of its original forest cover, leaving a wasteland; a human population that is growing at 3% a year, straining natural resources and hunting animals for food, especially Madagascar's emblematic lemurs; extractive industry, including a nickel mine not far from a national park that could become the world's biggest 


The greenhouse effect that may be cooling the climate
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 10 months (environment.newscientist.com)
Here is one greenhouse effect that is welcome: the roofs of hothouse farms in Spain reflect so much sunlight that they may be pushing down local temperatures. Spain's semi-arid areas have slowly been transitioning from farming to greenhouses since the 1970's. Those areas have seen an annual temperature drop of .3 degrees per year. The rest of Spain has seen a rise of .5. 


Scientists: Global Warming May Spread "Deadly Dozen" Diseases
jerry submitted, created time 1 year 10 months (www.foxnews.com)
Bird flu is just one of eleven diseases that may worsen with global warming, scientists are warning. Scientists from the Wildlife Conservation Society have nicknamed twelve diseases the “deadly dozen” and say they are spreading across the globe and becoming dangerous to human an animal populations.
The other eleven diseases include babesiosis, cholera, ebola, lyme disease, plague, red tides, rift valley fever, sleeping sickness, tuberculosis, and yellow fever. Intestinal and external parasites are counted as one problem. 


The Extent of Arctic Sea Ice Has Declined
sea-maid submitted, created time 1 year 11 months (www.sciencenews.org)
This summer, the area covered by Arctic sea ice dropped to its second-lowest since satellite measurements began in 1979. It has recovered slightly from 2007 with regard to ice coverage, but since this is new, first-year ice, it is very thin. Overall ice volume may in fact be lower.
First-year ice is more likely to break up and melt than multi-year ice. This exacerbates the global worming process. Sea water is dark in color and it absorbs (and converts to heat) 90% of the sunlight that hits it. White ice, however, can reflect between 70% and 90% 