December 7, 2007, 9:14 PM CT

New research may lead to better climate models

One hundred fifty researchers from more than 40 universities in nine countries are starting a coordinated program aimed at gaining new insights about the Earth's climate and the complex, interconnected system involving the oceans, the atmosphere and the land.

The program will study the southeastern Pacific Ocean, the marine area off South America's west coast a region where the interplay among low clouds, strong low-level winds, coastal ocean currents, surfacing of deep water, the Andes Mountains, aerosols and other factors shape the regional climate and affect global weather in ways that are poorly understood.

"Our research should produce a better understanding of the southeast Pacific Ocean system and improve our global computer climate models, which would lead to more confidence in climate forecasts, including predictions about global warming," said UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences C. Roberto Mechoso, who chairs the program, known as VOCALS (VAMOS Ocean-Cloud-Atmosphere-Land Study). "Models currently used for climate change studies have systematic errors concerning the southeastern Pacific Ocean, and because the models are not accurate for such an extensive area, the El Nios they produce in the Pacific are questionable as well. We hope our research will get rid of, or at least greatly decrease, these uncertainties." ......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

December 6, 2007, 8:09 PM CT

Scientists issue Bali climate change warning

More than 200 leading climate researchers have today warned the United Nations Climate Conference of the need to act immediately to cut greenhouse gas emissions, with a window of only 10-15 years for global emissions to peak and decline, and a goal of at least a 50 per cent reduction by 2050.

The roll-call of top climate scientists includes five University of East Anglia scientists: Prof Corinne Le Qur (also of the British Antarctic Survey), Prof Andrew Watson, Dr Dorothee Bakker, Dr Erik Buitenhuis and Dr Nathan Gillett.

The signatories warn that if immediate action is not taken, a number of millions of people will be at risk from extreme events such as heat waves, drought, floods and storms, with coasts and cities threatened by rising sea levels, and a number of ecosystems, plants and animal species in serious danger of extinction.

The researchers, who include a number of of the worlds most acclaimed climate scientists, have issued the Bali Climate Declaration by Researchers in which they call on government negotiators from the 180 nations represented at the meeting to recognize the urgency of taking action now. They say the world may have as little as 10 years to start reversing the global rise in emissions.

Prof Le Qur said: Climate change is unfolding very fast. There is only one option to limit the damages: stabilise the concentration of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

December 6, 2007, 7:48 PM CT

Hells Gate yields greenhouse gas-eating bug

A new species of bacteria discovered living in one of the most extreme environments on Earth could yield a tool in the fight against global warming.

In a paper published recently in the prestigious science journal Nature, U of C biology professor Peter Dunfield and his colleagues describe the methane-eating microorganism they found in the geothermal field known as Hells Gate, near the city of Rotorua in New Zealand. It is the hardiest methanotrophic bacterium yet discovered, which makes it a likely candidate for use in reducing methane gas emissions from landfills, mines, industrial wastes, geothermal power plants and other sources.

This is a really tough methane-consuming organism that lives in a much more acidic environment than any weve seen before, said Dunfield, who is the lead author of the paper. It belongs to a rather mysterious family of bacteria (called Verrucomicrobia) that are found everywhere but are very difficult to grow in the laboratory.

Methanotrophic bacteria consume methane as their only source of energy and convert it to carbon dioxide during their digestive process. Methane (usually known as natural gas) is 20 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and is largely produced by decaying organic matter. Researchers have long known that vast amounts of methane are produced in acidic environments, not only geothermal sites but also marshes and peat bogs. Much of it is consumed by methanotrophic bacteria, which serve an important role in regulating the methane content of the worlds atmosphere......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

December 4, 2007, 10:08 PM CT

Increased Chances For Stormy Weather

Scientists who study severe weather and climate change joined forces to study the effects of global warming on the number of severe storms in the future and discovered a dramatic increase in potential storm conditions for some parts of the United States.

The Purdue University-led team used climate models to examine future weather conditions favorable to formation of severe thunderstorms - those that produce flooding, damaging winds, hail and sometimes spawn tornadoes.

"It seems that areas in the U.S. prone to severe thunderstorms now will likely have more of them in the future," said Robert Trapp, the Purdue associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who led the research team. "We can't predict individual storms, but we can project the number of days with conditions conducive to storm formation".

The study observed that by the end of this century the number of days that favor severe storms could more than double in locations such as Atlanta and New York. The study also observed that the increase in storm conditions occurs during the typical storm seasons for these locations and not during dry seasons when such storms could be beneficial. The findings will be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

December 3, 2007, 10:15 PM CT

Toll of climate change on world food supply

Global agriculture, already predicted to be stressed by climate change in coming decades, could go into steep, unanticipated declines in some regions due to complications that researchers have so far inadequately considered, say three new scientific reports. The authors say that progressive changes predicted to stem from 1- to 5-degree C temperature rises in coming decades fail to account for seasonal extremes of heat, drought or rain, multiplier effects of spreading diseases or weeds, and other ecological upsets. All are believed more likely in the future. Coauthored by leading scientists from Europe, North America and Australia, they appear in this weeks issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

A number of people assume that we will never have a problem with food production on a global scale. But there is a strong potential for negative surprises, said Francesco Tubiello, a physicist and agricultural expert at the NASA/Goddard Institute of Space Studies who coauthored all three papers. Goddard is a member of Columbia Universitys Earth Institute.

In order to keep pace with population growth, current production of grainfrom which humans derive two-thirds of their proteinwill probably have to double, to 4 billion tons a years before 2100. Studies in the past 10 years suggest that mounting levels of carbon dioxide in the airthought to bethe basis of human-caused climate changemay initially bolster the photosynthetic rate of a number of plants, and, along with new farming techniques, possibly add to some crop yields. Between now and mid-century, higher temperatures in northerly latitudes will probably also expand lands available for farming, and bring longer growing seasons. However, these gains likely will be canceled by agricultural declines in the tropics, where even modest 1- to 2-degree rises are expected to evaporate rainfall and push staple crops over their survival thresholds. Existing research estimates that developing countries may lose 135 million hectares (334 million acres) of prime farm land in the next 50 years. After mid-century, continuing temperature rises5 degrees C or more by then--are expected to start adversely affecting northern crops as well, tipping the whole world into a danger zone......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

December 2, 2007, 9:12 PM CT

Between water and rock

Water chemistry and mineralogy are scientific fields that have been around long enough to develop extensive knowledge and technologies. The boundary of water and rock, however, is not a thin wet line but the huge new field of nanoparticle science.

Researchers are discovering that aquatic nanoparticles, from 1 to 100 nanometers, influence natural and engineered water chemistry and systems differently than similar materials of a larger size. Nanoparticles are in an awkward intermediate state, between elements dissolved in water and minerals that you can hold in your hand, said Michael Hochella Jr., University Distinguished Professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech. The nanoscale represents a transition zone. For instance, the electronic, magnetic, and optical properties at the atomic, nano, and bulk scales are all different.

The cover story of the recent issue of the Royal Society of Chemistrys Journal of Environmental Monitoring (www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/em/) offers a critical review of the emerging field of Aquatic environmental nanoparticles. Written by Virginia Tech Ph.D. students Nicholas S. Wigginton of Holt, Mich., and Kelly (Plathe) Haus of Rochester, Minn., and Hochella, the article looks at recent advances in identifying nanoparticles in water and in understanding their properties and reactivity......... Posted by: Sarah      Read more         Source

November 29, 2007, 10:50 PM CT

Having the climate cake and eating it, too

Is it possible to solve climate change, reduce poverty and save biodiversity at a single stroke" It might seem like a dream, but this is exactly the issue that is being discussed at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) in Bali 3-14 December 2007. The key is to include reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in the Kyoto Protocol so that developing countries can be compensated for saving their forests and woodlands.

A recent paper in the African Journal of Ecology points out that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that 20-25% of current annual carbon emissions result from loss of tropical forest. This has prompted efforts to renegotiate climate change policy to include REDD so that tropical forest nations can claim compensation for sustainable management of their natural forest resources. But not all tropical countries are pushing for an agreement and a number of African countries do not appear to be participating in the discussion. Eliakimu Zahabu from the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania and lead author on the paper suggests that The lack of African action might be partly because estimation of carbon emission from the forest sector has been based on forest areas cleared entirely, i.e. deforestation, but excludes the small-scale degradation processes common in African dry forests. This means that the concepts for lowering carbon emissions from developing countries that have been worked out under the climate change agreements need rethinking. Dr Margaret Skutsch, from the University of Twente in the Netherlands, has been studying the problem for five years Degradation is often a different process with different drivers and needs a different instrument in Kyoto she says, and adds for African countries to benefit from the new policy, they need to support the idea of reduced emissions from controlling degradation in a way that reflects African realities, and to do this they need to engage in the debate......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

November 29, 2007, 10:46 PM CT

New research discredits $100B global warming 'fix'

Researchers have revealed an important discovery that raises doubts concerning the viability of plans to fertilize the ocean to solve global warming, a projected $100 billion venture.

Research performed at Stanford and Oregon State Universities, reported in the Journal of Geophysical Research, suggests that ocean fertilization may not be an effective method of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a major contributor to global warming. Ocean fertilization, the process of adding iron or other nutrients to the ocean to cause large algal blooms, has been proposed as a possible solution to global warming because the growing algae absorb carbon dioxide as they grow.

However, this process, which is analogous to adding fertilizer to a lawn to help the grass grow, only reduces carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if the carbon incorporated into the algae sinks to deeper waters. This process, which researchers call the Biological Pump, has been believed to be dependent on the abundance of algae in the top layers of the ocean. The more algae in a bloom, the more carbon is transported, or pumped, from the atmosphere to the deep ocean.

To test this theory, scientists compared the abundance of algae in the surface waters of the worlds oceans with the amount of carbon actually sinking to deep water. They found clear seasonal patterns in both algal abundance and carbon sinking rates. However, the relationship between the two was surprising: less carbon was transported to deep water during a summertime bloom than during the rest of the year. This analysis has never been done before and mandatory designing specialized mathematical algorithms......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

November 29, 2007, 4:22 PM CT

The ingredients for more powerful Atlantic hurricanes

As the world warms, the interaction between the Atlantic Ocean and atmosphere may be the recipe for stronger, more frequent hurricanes.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have observed that the Atlantic organizes the ingredients for a powerful hurricane season to create a situation where either everything is conducive to hurricane activity or nothing is-potentially making the Atlantic more vulnerable to climate change than the world's other hurricane hot spots.

After the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, a number of worry what Atlantic hurricane seasons will look like in a warmer world. Evidence indicates that higher ocean temperatures add a lot of fuel to these devastating storms. In a paper published recently in the "Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society," co-authors Jim Kossin and Dan Vimont caution against only looking at one piece of the puzzle. "Sea surface temperature is a bit overrated," says Kossin, an atmospheric scientist at UW-Madison's Cooperative Institute of Meteorological Satellite Studies. "It's part of a larger pattern".

Kossin and Vimont, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, noticed that warmer water is just one part of a larger pattern indicating that the conditions are right for more frequent, stronger hurricanes in the Atlantic. The atmosphere reacts to ocean conditions and the ocean reacts to the atmospheric situation, creating a distinct circulation pattern known as the Atlantic Meridional Mode (AMM). The AMM unifies the connections among the factors that influence hurricanes such as ocean temperature, characteristics of the wind, and moisture in the atmosphere......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source

November 27, 2007, 10:45 PM CT

Climate change and life in the Southern Ocean

Bremerhaven, November 27, 2007. A ten-week expedition to the Lazarev Sea and the eastern part of the Weddell Sea opens this year's Antarctic research season of the German research vessel Polarstern. On the evening of November 28, just some two hours after an official ceremony at the Berlin Museum of Natural History honouring Polarstern's 25th anniversary of service, the research vessel will begin its 24th scientific voyage to the Southern Ocean from Cape Town. The 53 researchers from eight nations aboard Polarstern will focus much of their work on climate-related research as part of the International Polar Year. In addition, Polarstern will also supply the German Neumayer Station during the first leg of the trip, and accompany the freighter 'Naja Arctica' which will deliver construction materials for the new research station Neumayer III to the Antarctic. On February 4, 2008, Polarstern is expected to return to Cape Town.

"Our research projects will improve the understanding of physical and biological processes linked to the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Weddell Gyre, both of which play a key role for the earth's climate", explains chief scientist Prof Dr Ulrich Bathmann of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association, referring to the central goal of the expedition. Plankton algae from these two marine currents south of the Atlantic Ocean are absorbing significant amounts of the climate gas carbon dioxide through their growth during the summer. By sinking to the Antarctic deep sea, these algae are subsequently transferring the carbon dioxide to the seafloor, where, in some cases below 4000 meter water depth, they provide food for bottom dwelling organisms. "The efficiency of this biological pump is controlled, for example, by nutrients, by physical dynamics in the ocean surface layer, and by the species of algae involved", says Bathmann. "We have to investigate these complex interactions further, in order to optimise scientific climate predictions"......... Posted by: Tyler      Read more         Source