Tag: Climate

ScienceDaily (Oct. 12, 2011) In recent decades, Arctic sea ice has suffered a dramatic decline that exceeds climate model predictions. The unexpected rate of ice shrinkage has now been explained by researchers at CNRS, Universitי Joseph Fourier and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
They argue that climate models underestimate the rate of ice thinning, which is actually about four times faster than calculations. This model bias is due to the poor representation of the sea ice southward drift out of the Arctic basin through the Fram Strait.
When this mechanism was taken into account to correct the discrepancy between simulations and observations, results from the new model suggested that there will be no Arctic sea ice in summer by the end of the century.

ScienceDaily (Aug. 5, 2011) The demise of the world's forests some 250 million years ago likely was accelerated by aggressive tree-killing fungi triggered by global climate change, according to a new study by a University of California, Berkeley, scientist and her Dutch and British colleagues.

The researchers do not rule out the possibility that today's changing climate could cause a similar increase in pathogenic soil bacteria that could devastate forests already stressed by a warming climate and pollution.

ScienceDaily (June 8, 2011) Animals and plants may not be able to evolve their way out of the threat posed by climate change, according to a UC Davis study of a tiny seashore animal. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

The tide pool copepod Tigriopus californicus is found from Alaska to Baja California -- but in a unique lab study, the animals showed little ability to evolve heat tolerance.

ScienceDaily (Apr. 4, 2011) An 18-year study of 27,000 individual trees by National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded scientists finds that tree growth and fecundity--the ability to produce viable seeds--are more sensitive to climate change than previously thought.

The results, published April 5 in the journal Global Change Biology, identify earlier spring warming as one of several factors that affect tree reproduction and growth.

ScienceDaily (Mar. 9, 2010) A team of scientists has discovered that the drastic decline in Arctic musk ox populations that began roughly 12,000 years ago was due to a warming climate rather than to human hunting.

"This is the first study to use ancient musk ox DNA collected from across the animal's former geographic range to test for human impacts on musk ox populations," said Beth Shapiro, the Shaffer Career Development assistant professor of biology at Penn State University and one of the team's leaders. "We found that, although human and musk ox populations overlapped in many regions across the globe, humans probably were not responsible for the decline and eventual extinction of musk oxen across much of their former range."

ScienceDaily (Dec. 24, 2009) From beetles to barnacles, pikas to pine warblers, many species are already on the move in response to shifting climate regimes.
But how fast will they -- and their habitats -- have to move to keep pace with global climate change over the next century? In a new study, a team of scientists including Dr. Healy Hamilton from the California Academy of Sciences have calculated that on average, ecosystems will need to shift about 0.42 kilometers per year (about a quarter mile per year) to keep pace with changing temperatures across the globe.

Last week, delegates in Copenhagen were concerned that the leaking of an unfair climate-mitigation proposal would cause a rift between rich and poor countries and derail talks. Today increased tension brought negotiations even closer to the brink.

With the end of the conference just two days away, thousands of activists and credentialed advocates turned up the heat, storming Copenhagen's Bella Center, the venue hosting the talks, to protest the lack of a foreseeable agreement between top emitters by the week's end. Conference organizers went into scramble mode, cracking down with something resembling martial law.

Pines are at their peak glory in fall through early spring. Deciduous trees have all lost their leaves, but pines of all shapes and sizes still add a monumental, evergreen beauty to the landscape.

There are many different kinds of pines; from dwarf species that hover around knee height to the monolithic Ponderosa that can reach over 200 feet tall in the wild.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 11, 2009) New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's busy climate change diplomacy has become increasingly feverish weeks before crucial talks that could forge a new pact to fight global warming, or end in rancor that could rebound onto the world's biggest emitter.

President Hu Jintao told President Barack Obama last week that China wants a successful outcome in Copenhagen when the world gathers from December 7 to wrangle over the proposed new climate pact, and the topic is sure to feature when Obama visits Beijing in mid-November.