Climate
Nuclear weapons' surprising contribution to climate science
July 13, 2012 8:47 am | News | CommentsNuclear weapons testing may at first glance appear to have little connection with climate change research. But key Cold War research laboratories and the science used to track radioactivity and model nuclear bomb blasts have today been repurposed by climate scientists.
Study: Natural gas “much-needed tool” in climate battle
July 10, 2012 2:54 pm | News | CommentsThe conclusion of a new study by Cornell University Professor Lawrence M. Cathles shows that, no matter the timeframe considered, substituting natural gas energy for all coal and some oil production provides about 40% of the global warming benefit that a complete switch to low-carbon sources would deliver. And, it would be a far quicker option than going to sources like nuclear or solar.
U.S. scientist: Ocean acidity major threat to reefs
July 10, 2012 3:52 am | by Kristen Gelineau, Associated Press | News | CommentsOn Monday, the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that oceans' rising acid levels have emerged as one of the biggest threats to coral reefs. Acid acts as the "osteoporosis of the sea,” he said, and threatens everything from food security to tourism to livelihoods.
Study: Computing advances vital to sustainability efforts
June 29, 2012 8:17 am | News | CommentsInnovation in computing will be essential to finding real-world solutions to sustainability challenges. The immense scale, numerous interconnected effects of actions over time, and diverse scope of these challenges require the ability to collect, structure, and analyze vast amounts of data.
Remote Siberian lake holds clues to high latitude climate change
June 25, 2012 9:31 am | News | CommentsAfter analyzing the longest sediment cores ever retrieved on land, obtained from beneath remote, ice-covered Lake El'gygytgyn ("Lake E") in the northeastern Russian Arctic, researchers say the polar regions are much more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought. The cores reveal intense warm climate intervals in the Arctic’s recent past.
Mercury rising
June 22, 2012 10:58 am | News | CommentsA groundbreaking new study led by University of California, Los Angeles climate expert Alex Hall shows that climate change will cause temperatures in the Los Angeles region to rise by an average of 4 to 5 F by the middle of this century, tripling the number of extremely hot days in the downtown area and quadrupling the number in the valleys and at high elevations.
Study: Humans are primary cause of global ocean warming
June 11, 2012 3:59 am | News | CommentsNew research by a team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and international collaborators shows that the observed ocean warming over the last 50 years is consistent with climate models only if the models include the impacts of observed increases in greenhouse gas during the 20th century.
Scientists: Earth faces impending tipping point
June 7, 2012 5:42 am | by Robert Sanders | News | CommentsA recently published review paper by 22 internationally known scientists contains data that suggests that within just a few human generations there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life. Part of their research gauges how plants and animals respond to major shifts in the atmosphere, oceans, and climate.
Latin American, Asian cities lead way in planning for global warming
June 6, 2012 9:37 am | by Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office | News | CommentsA Massachusetts Institute of Technology survey shows that 95% of major cities in Latin America are planning for climate change, compared to only 59% of such cities in the United States.
Seagrasses can store as much carbon as forests
May 22, 2012 12:45 pm | News | CommentsThe first global analysis of carbon stored in seagrasses has revealed a surprising figure. While a typical terrestrial forest stores about 30,000 metric tons of carbon per square kilometer, most of which is in the form of wood, coastal seagrasses can account for 83,000 metric tons of carbon per square kilometer. Their global impact is significant as well.
Could paint particles cool the planet?
May 15, 2012 8:47 am | News | CommentsA former U.K. government advisor and chemical engineer recently published an article that discussed how dispersing sub-micrometer light-scattering particles into the upper atmosphere could help to combat climate change. Author Peter Davidson says the effect would replicate the cooling that occurred after the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo.
Climate scientists discover new weak point of the Antarctic ice sheet
May 15, 2012 6:37 am | News | CommentsAccording to predictions made by climate researchers with the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, the Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf fringing the Weddell Sea in Antarctica may start to melt rapidly in this century and no longer act as a barrier for ice streams draining the Antarctic Ice Sheet. They claim this finding refutes previous assumptions that climate change would not affect the Weddell Sea.
Support for climate change action drops
May 9, 2012 10:22 am | by Rob Jordan, Stanford University | News | CommentsAmericans' support for government action on global warming remains high but has dropped during the past two years, according to a new survey by Stanford University researchers in collaboration with Ipsos Public Affairs. Political rhetoric and cooler-than-average weather appear to have influenced the shift, but economics doesn't appear to have played a role.
New research brings satellite measurements, global climate models closer
May 8, 2012 4:23 am | News | CommentsOne popular climate record that shows a slower atmospheric warming trend than other studies contains a data calibration problem, and when the problem is corrected the results fall in line with other records and climate models, according to a new University of Washington study.
Researchers use stalagmites to study past climate change
May 3, 2012 11:23 am | News | CommentsExisting historical climate records are typically biased to the high latitudes, where polar ice and ocean sediments lock in the atmosphere’s past. Yet a main driver of climate variability today is El Niño, which is a completely tropical phenomenon. Scientists at the California Institute of Technology believe they have found the ice core of the tropics, however.
Data shows spring advancing faster than experiments suggest
May 3, 2012 9:13 am | News | CommentsTo help predict the rate at which plants respond to changing climate conditions, researchers use experiments that manipulate the temperature surrounding small plots of plants to gauge how specific plants will react to higher temperatures. But wild plants are leafing out and flowering sooner each year than predicted by results from these experiments, according to data from a major new archive of historical observations.
Scientists launch nationwide study of thunderstorm effects on upper atmosphere
May 2, 2012 9:33 am | News | CommentsWhile past field projects have focused on thunderstorm details with only some chemistry information, or on chemistry with limited data on storms, the Deep Convective Clouds & Chemistry (DC3) Experiment, which begins later this month, will be the first to take a comprehensive look at both chemistry and thunderstorm details, including air movement, cloud physics, and electrical activity.
Scientists find night-warming effect over Texas wind farms
April 30, 2012 9:32 am | News | CommentsAccording to recent research into how wind turbines affect local weather, large wind farms in certain areas in the United States appear to affect local land surface temperatures, especially at night. The warming trend was spatially matched to the locations of wind farms, and caused warming by nearly three-quarters of a degree Celsius.
Geophysicists find sea-level fingerprints, identify sources sea level rise
April 25, 2012 8:33 am | News | CommentsSeeking out statistical techniques that had not previously been applied to finding the current rate of sea level rise and the rates of ice sheet melting, scientists in Canada have developed a new method to distinguish sea-level fingerprints. The technique relies on the fact that the historical pattern for each ice sheet is unique and is preserved.
Climate change may create price volatility in the corn market
April 23, 2012 12:21 pm | by Rob Jordan, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment | News | CommentsIn a study from Stanford University and Purdue University, researchers have shown for the first time that climate change may force the U.S. corn belt to move north in the next 10 years, escaping devastating heat waves. In turn, this will bring substantial price swings to the corn market, adversely affecting industries like food and biofuels.
As ice cap melts, militaries vie for Arctic edge
April 16, 2012 7:22 am | by Eric Talmadge, Associated Press | News | CommentsTo the world's military leaders, the debate over climate change is long over. They are preparing for a new kind of Cold War in the Arctic, anticipating that rising temperatures there will open up a treasure trove of resources, long-dreamed-of sea lanes and a slew of potential conflicts.
Resurfacing urban areas could offset 150 billion tons of CO2
April 13, 2012 8:57 am | News | CommentsAlbedo is measured on a scale ranging from 0 for a non-reflecting, perfectly black surface to 1 for a perfectly white surface. A new estimate developed by researchers in Canada suggests that increasing the reflectance—commonly known as albedo—of every urban area by 0.1 will give a carbon dioxide offset between 130 and 150 billion tons.
Study: Climate change boosts, then stunts, plant growth
April 11, 2012 10:59 am | News | CommentsGlobal warming may initially make the grass greener, but not for long, according to new research results. Ecologists subjected four grassland ecosystems to simulated climate change during a decade-long study. Plants grew more the first year in the global warming treatment, but this effect progressively diminished over the next nine years and finally disappeared.
Which plants will survive droughts, climate change?
April 9, 2012 11:04 am | News | CommentsNew research by University of California, Los Angeles biologists could lead to predictions of which plant species will escape extinction from climate change. Droughts are worsening around the world, which poses a great challenge to plants in gardens and forests. Scientists have debated for more than a century how to predict which species are most vulnerable.
Impact of warming climate doesn't always translate to streamflow
April 6, 2012 9:44 am | by Mark Floyd, Oregon State University | News | CommentsAn analysis of 35 headwater basins in the United States and Canada found that the impact of warmer air temperatures on streamflow rates was less than expected in many locations, suggesting that some ecosystems may be resilient to certain aspects of climate change.
