Science Daily April 2, 2019 The dramatic loss of ice in the Arctic is influencing sea-ice transport across the Arctic Ocean. Researchers in Germany report that today only 20 percent of the sea ice that forms in the shallow Russian marginal seas of the Arctic Ocean actually reaches the Central Arctic, where it joins the Transpolar Drift; the remaining 80 percent of the young ice melts before it has a chance to leave its ‘nursery’. Before 2000, that number was only 50 percent. This trend has been confirmed by the outcomes of sea-ice thickness measurements taken in the Fram Strait. […]
Tag Archives: Climatology
The Doomsday Vault’s Home Is Already Threatened by Warming, And It May Get Much Worse
Science Alert March 27, 2019 The global seed ark, popularly known as the “Doomsday Vault”, is embedded deep in the permafrost of a northerly Norwegian island and stores nearly a million samples from around the world for safekeeping in the event of war, famine, disease, and climate change. It backs up gene banks around the globe and it is supposed to be indestructible, the frigid landscape serving as a natural coolant for the genetic material it protects. Climate change has been profoundly affecting the region, causing permafrost to melt, avalanches to strike, and, on one notable occasion, water to collect […]
A billion people will be newly exposed to diseases like dengue fever as world temperatures rise
Science Daily March 28, 2019 An international team of researchers (USA – University of Florida, South Africa) applied an empirically parameterized model of viral transmission by the vectors Aedes aegypti and Ae. albopictus, as a function of temperature, to predict cumulative monthly global transmission risk in current climates and compare them with projected risk in 2050 and 2080 based on general circulation models. According to the researchers climate-driven risk of transmission from both mosquitoes will increase substantially, even in the short term, for most of Europe. In contrast, significant reductions in climate suitability are expected for Ae. albopictus, most noticeably […]
Finding the right ‘dose’ for solar geoengineering
Science Daily March 11, 2019 Applying huge doses of solar geoengineering to offset all warming from rising atmospheric C02 levels could worsen the climate problem — particularly rainfall patterns — in certain regions. However, through modeling, a team of researchers in the US (Harvard University, MIT, Princeton University Georgia Institute of Technology) found that if solar geoengineering (SG) is used to cut global temperature increases in half, no IPCC-defined region is made worse off in any of the major climate impact indicators. Climate models suggest that geoengineering could enable surprisingly uniform benefits. The model indicates that SG moderates changes in […]
International research collaboration computes climate past, present, and future
Eurekalert February 18, 2019 An international team of researchers (Canada, Germany) is working on ClimEx Project to improve researchers’ understanding of severe flooding dynamics under changing climate conditions. To investigate extreme floods associated with long return periods, there is a relatively short time period to reference, often less than 30 years of accurate, detailed data. To predict flooding, the team further downscales the ClimEx simulations statistically to provide input data for hyper-accurate, high-resolution hydrological modeling. The team’s simulations showed good agreement with historical climate data, leaving them confident in its predictive power and its ability to help improve impact models […]
Undersea gases could superheat the planet
Science Daily February 13, 2019 As volcanic activity releases heat, carbon dioxide and methane accumulating underwater and scattered across the seafloor can congeal into liquid and solid hydrates which encapsulate the reservoirs. An international team of researchers (USA – University of Southern California, Australia, Sweden) shows that the natural reservoirs are vulnerable in a warming ocean and provides proof the Earth’s climate has been affected by rapid release of geologic carbon. They focused on the Eastern Equatorial Pacific (EEP) which is a primary conduit through which the ocean releases carbon to the atmosphere. Undersea carbon gas reservoirs have been found […]
Climate of North American cities will shift hundreds of miles in one generation
Science Daily February 12, 2019 Climate-analog mapping involves matching the expected future climate at a location with current climate of another location – thereby providing a more relatable, place-based assessment of climate change. A team of researchers in the US (University of Maryland, North Carolina State University) has developed climate-analog map for 540 North American urban areas identifying the location that has a contemporary climate most similar to each urban area’s expected 2080’s climate. They show that climate of most urban areas will shift considerably and become either more akin to contemporary climates hundreds of kilometers away or will have […]
Future of planet-cooling tech: Study creates roadmap for geoengineering research
Science Daily January 8, 2019 A team of researchers in the US (Cornell University, Caltech, PNNL) established a roadmap for responsible exploration of geoengineering. They focus on the idea of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering mimicking the eruption of a volcano. They highlight two important observations, while field experiments may eventually be needed to reduce some of the uncertainties, they expect that the next phase of research will continue to be primarily model-based, and they anticipate a clear separation in scale and character between small-scale experimental research to resolve specific process uncertainties and global-scale activities…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Harvard Scientists Will Actually Launch a Geoengineering Experiment Next Year
Science Alert December 4, 2018 The project – called the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) – is part of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program. To cool down the surface of the planet, in the experiment Harvard University researchers will fly a high-altitude balloon up to the stratosphere, at an altitude of about 20 kilometres, and release a small aerosol plume of calcium carbonate that is expected to disperse into a perturbed air mass about 1 kilometre long and 100 metres in diameter. The balloon will then fly back and forth through this cloud repeatedly for about 24 hours, analysing the […]
National Climate Assessment
Globalchange.gov November 1, 2018 The Third National Climate Assessment is the result of a three-year analytical effort by a team of over 300 experts, overseen by a broadly constituted Federal Advisory Committee of 60 members. It was developed from information and analyses gathered in over 70 workshops and listening sessions held across the country. It was subjected to extensive review by the public and by scientific experts in and out of government, including a special panel of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. This process of unprecedented rigor and transparency was undertaken so that the findings […]