Phys.org September 26, 2024 A team of researchers in the US (University of Illinois Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, University of Georgia) investigated 21st-century hydroclimate changes over the United States during winter and the sources of projection uncertainty under three emission scenarios using CMIP6 models. Their study revealed a robust intensification of winter precipitation across the US, except in the Southern Great Plains, where changes were very small. By the end of the 21st century, winter precipitation was projected to increase by about 2–5% K−1 over most of the US. The frequency of very wet winters was […]
Category Archives: Climate change
The skyscraper-sized tsunami that vibrated through the entire planet and no one saw
Phys.org September 14, 2024 A large rockslide occurred in Greenland on 16 September 2023 that generated a local tsunami. The event was energetic enough to generate a global signal that resonated for 9 days. An international team of researchers (Denmark, UK, Germany, Belgium, France, USA – USGS, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Riverside, Boston College, University of Washington, Norway, The Netherlands, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Costa Rica, New Zealand, Indonesia, Greenland) detected the start of a 9-day-long, global 10.88-millihertz (92-second) monochromatic very-long-period (VLP) seismic signal, originating from East Greenland. They demonstrated how this event started with a glacial thinning–induced rock-ice […]
Why the next pandemic could come from the Arctic — and what to do about it
Nature, 04 September 2024 Between 1979 and 2021, the region warmed four times faster than the global average. Its ability to store carbon and weather patterns are poorly understood. According to the researchers in Denmark in addition to the effects of biodiversity loss and pollution, and people, as the Arctic warms, its environment degrades and human activities increase, new health threats are emerging leading to a quadruple crisis. Since starting research in the Arctic in 1997, monitoring changes in pollution levels, habitats and food webs using a ‘One Health’ approach that integrates effects on wildlife, humans and ecosystems, the Arctic […]
New tool helps researchers investigate clouds, rain, and climate change
Phys.org October 12, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (Pennsylvania State University, Argonne National Laboratory, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, Texas A&M, College Station) developed the Earth Model Column Collaboratory (EMC2), an open-source ground-based lidar and radar instrument simulator and subcolumn generator, specifically designed for large-scale models, in particular climate models, but also applicable to high-resolution model output. It provides a flexible framework enabling direct comparison of model output with ground-based observations, including generation of subcolumns that may statistically represent finer model spatial resolutions and EMC2 large-scale models’ physical assumptions implemented in their cloud or […]
Scientists call for a moratorium on climate change research until governments take real action
Phys.org January 11, 2022 There is an unwritten social contract between science and society. Public investment in science is intended to improve understanding about our world and support beneficial societal outcomes. According to the authors the contract is broken. Science demonstrates why this is occurring, that it is getting worse, the implications for human well-being and social-ecological systems and substantiates action. Governments agree that the science is settled. The tragedy of climate change science is that at the same time as compelling evidence is gathered, fresh warnings issued, and novel methodologies developed, indicators of adverse global change rise year upon […]
Scientists fear global ‘cascade’ of climate impacts by 2030
Phys.org October 26, 2021 The report by UK-based policy institute Chatham House drew on the views of more than 200 climate scientists and other specialists to assess which immediate climate hazards and impacts should most concern decision-makers in the coming decade. According to the report the ten “hazard-impact pathways” of greatest near-term concern all relate to Africa or Asia. The vulnerability of the place where they happen means impacts cascade and have knock-on impacts that are global in their nature, or at least cover large regions. Without more aid for adaptation and poverty reduction storm damage and multiple crop failures […]
Decaying forest wood releases 10.9 billion tons of carbon yearly, which will increase with climate change
Phys.org September 2, 2021 The amount of carbon stored in deadwood is equivalent to about 8 per cent of the global forest carbon stocks. The decomposition of deadwood is largely governed by microorganisms and insects contributing to variations in the decomposition rates. An international team of researchers from a number of countries including Germany and USA conducted a field experiment of wood decomposition across 55 forest sites and 6 continents to show that the deadwood decomposition rates increase with temperature, and the strongest temperature effect is found at high precipitation levels. As a net effect insects accelerate the decomposition in tropical […]
‘Tipping points’ in Earth’s system triggered rapid climate change 55 million years ago
Science Daily August 31, 2021 The Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) was a period of geologically-rapid carbon release and global warming ~56 million years ago. Although modelling, outcrop and proxy records suggest volcanic carbon release occurred, it has not yet been possible to identify the PETM trigger, or if multiple reservoirs of carbon were involved. An international team of researchers (UK, Denmark, USA – UC Riverside) report that elevated levels of mercury relative to organic carbon—a proxy for volcanism—directly preceding and within the early PETM from two North Sea sedimentary cores, signifying pulsed volcanism from the North Atlantic Igneous Province likely […]
Can East Asian monsoon enhancement induce global cooling?
Phys.org August 2, 2021 The strong erosion in the Himalayas was assumed to be a primary driver of Cenozoic atmospheric CO2 decline and global cooling predominantly through accelerating silicate chemical weathering in the India-Asia collision zone or through effective burial of organic carbon in the nearby Bengal Fan in South Asia. An international team of researchers (China, France) has found that the northward advance of the East Asian monsoon on tectonically inactive subtropical China induced globally significant silicate weathering atmospheric CO2 sink. The organic carbon burial flux is approximately 25% of the contemporary CO2 consumption by silicate weathering. The unusual […]
Here’s What Ancient Climate Tipping Points May Be Able to Reveal About Earth’s Future
Science Alert July 30, 2021 In many cases, abrupt changes arise from slow changes in one component of the Earth system that eventually pass a critical threshold after which impacts cascade through coupled climate–ecological–social systems. The geological record provides the only long-term information we have on the conditions and processes that can drive physical, ecological, and social systems into new states or organizational structures that may be irreversible within human time frames. An international team of researchers (Germany, USA – Oregon State University, University Wisconsin, Arizona State University Tempe, UMass Amherst, Columbia University, USGS, University of Colorado, Northern Arizona University, […]