Climate runaway feedback looping validations
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Dry regions becoming drier: Ocean salinities show an intensified
ScienceDaily (Apr. 16, 2010) — The stronger water cycle means arid regions have become drier and high rainfall regions wetter as atmospheric temperature increases.
Global warming monitoring needs to find 'missing heat', say scie
Sea surface temperature from March this year. Illustration: MODIS/Aqua/NASA
Deadly Heat Waves Are Becoming More Frequent In California
ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2009) — From mid July to early August 2006, a heat wave swept through the southwestern United States.
Mysterious Glaciers That Grew When Asia Heated Up
ScienceDaily (Aug. 27, 2009) — Ice, when heated, is supposed to melt. That’s why a collection of glaciers in the Southeast Himalayas stymies those who know what they did 9,000 years ago. While most other Central Asian glaciers retreated under hotter summer temperatures, this group of glaciers advanced from one to six kilometers.
This is just the beginning, warn scientists - Times Online
London is the global capital for “divorce tourism” with marriage break-ups involving foreign nationals accounting for a sixth of cases before the courts. The legal system is also witnessing a surge in disputes between the international super-rich over business deals, contracts, children and money, leading to worries about the widening gulf in access to justice with British taxpayers who more and more find themselves unable to afford to go to law. Inquiries by The Times have found: • a significant increase in international divorce, now estimated to involve 24,000 of the 150,000 divorces in England and Wales each year; • a dramatic rise in the number of commercial disputes, in which one or both parties were foreign. The percentage rose from 65 per cent in 2008 to 81 per cent in 2011; • a huge rise in cases involving “tug of love” disputes between parents t
ScienceDaily (May 4, 2010) — Reasonable worst-case scenarios for global warming could lead to deadly temperatures for humans in coming centuries, according to research findings from Purdue University and the University of New South Wales, Australia. Researchers for the first time have calculated the highest tolerable "wet-bulb" temperature and found that this temperature could be exceeded for the first time in human history in future climate scenarios if greenhouse gas emissions continue at their current rate. Wet-bulb temperature is equivalent to what is felt when wet skin is exposed to moving air.
Global warming: Future temperatures could exceed livable limits,
The carbon dioxide molecule. New research suggests that the Earth is more sensitive to carbon dioxide in the air than we thought. (PhysOrg.com) -- A little extra carbon dioxide in the air may, unfortunately, go further towards warming Earth than previously thought. A team of British and U.S. researchers have uncovered evidence [1] that Earth’s climate may be up to 50 percent more sensitive to long-term increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide than current climate models predict.
Sensitive side
Researchers studying a period of high carbon dioxide levels and warm climate several million years ago have concluded that slow changes such as melting ice sheets amplified the initial warming caused by greenhouse gases. The study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience , found that a relatively small rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels was associated with substantial global warming about 4.5 million years ago during the early Pliocene. Coauthor Christina Ravelo, professor of ocean sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said the study indicates that the sensitivity of Earth's temperature to increases in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is greater than has been expected on the basis of climate models that only include rapid responses.
Global warming likely to be amplified by slow changes to Earth s
An analysis has been completed of the global carbon cycle and climate for a 70,000 year period in the most recent Ice Age, showing a remarkable correlation between carbon dioxide levels and surprisingly abrupt changes in climate. The findings, to be published this week in the online edition of the journal Science, shed further light on the fluctuations in greenhouse gases and climate in Earth's past, and appear to confirm the validity of the types of computer models that are used to project a warmer climate in the future, researchers said. "We've identified a consistent and coherent pattern of carbon dioxide fluctuations from the past and are able to observe the correlation of this to temperature in the northern and southern hemispheres," said Ed Brook, an associate professor of geosciences at Oregon State University. "This is a global, interconnected system of ocean and atmosphere, and data like these help us better understand how it works."
Ice core studies confirm accuracy of climate models
CO2 effects on plants increases global warming
"Plants have a very complex and diverse influence on the climate system ," says study co-author Ken Caldeira of Carnegie's Department of Global Ecology. "Plants take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, but they also have other effects, such as changing the amount of evaporation from the land surface.
Carbon “sinks” such as growing forests may remove up to half this amount, but these current sinks may turn into new sources as climate changes. “By burning fossil fuel and clearing forests human beings have significantly altered the global carbon cycle,” says Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, one of the report’s lead authors. A result has been the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but so far this has been partially offset by carbon uptake by the oceans and by plants and soils on land.
First-ever 'State of the Carbon Cycle Report' finds troubling im
The new study approach, which relies on chemical tracers in stream water, is described in the journal Chemical Geology . Overlying permafrost is a thin "active layer" that thaws every summer, and increases in the thickness of this layer over the years indicate thawing of permafrost. Both physical measurements and modeling suggest that active layer thickness has increased in some areas over the 20th century and that if present warming trends continue, increases of up to 40 percent could occur by the end of the 21st century.
Stream water study detects thawing permafrost
So concludes a group of nearly two dozen scientists in a paper appearing this week in the journal Bioscience . The lead author is Ted Schuur, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Florida. Previous studies by Schuur and his colleagues elsewhere have estimated the carbon contained in permafrost in northeast Siberia. The new research expands that estimate to the rest of the permafrost-covered northern latitudes of Russia, Europe, Greenland and North America. The estimated 1,672 billion metric tons of carbon locked up in the permafrost is more than double the 780 billion tons in the atmosphere today. "It's bigger than we thought," Schuur said.