An international team of scientists has determined that the Atlantic Ocean rose faster in the 20th century than at any time in the last 4,000 years, but not uniformly along the coast.
One of the researchers, assistant professor Benjamin Horton in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Pennsylvania, says: “There is universal agreement that sea level will rise as a result of global warming but by how much, when and where it will have the most effect is unclear.” He and other researchers have now started to tackle this issue.
Interestingly, the rate of sea level rise in recent years varies according to how far north or south you are on the coast.
There has been a lot of effort in the past few months to knock down climate change activists, say it isn’t happening. No wonder, of course, given that we are quickly approaching one of the most important meetings in the history of the human race — the climate change conference in Copenhagen. This new report shows again that whether we admit it or not, ice is melting, sea levels are bound to rise, climate change is happening, and the whole world will be changed as a result of it.
This week in the journal Nature scientists give the most comprehensive view of thinning ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica to date.
Scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the University of Bristol analyzed 50 million satellite measurements (from NASA) to show the massive ice loss on these polar giants.
The result are surprising, even to the scientists.
The break up of the Arctic ice sheet–now at record levels –might make an Arctic crossing much easier for a small group of previously untracked Right Whales. And that’s the problem. The Arctic ice-sheet break up is making the “Northwest Passage” across the Pole much easier for everyone–including commercial fishing ships. If this newly discovered group of whales decides to take this short cut (heading south for the Winter), scientists fear, they could swim headlong into the newly opened shipping [...]
Scientists studying northeastern Greenland’s hairy, meat-eating wolf spiders have discovered every arachnophobe’s worst nightmare.
It appears that as the Earth has been warming and summers have been getting longer, the 8-legged hunters have been steadily growing larger and more numerous. And it’s likely that other creepy-crawly species around the world could be growing larger too.
This month, as the results of data analyses come in, climate scientists are getting a more detailed, far clearer picture of the ‘State of the Poles’ and the effects of warming and climate change in these most extreme regions of our planet. Although this project is actually the culmination of two years work (encompassing 160 separate studies and costing 1.2 billion dollars) it has been officially deemed the ‘International Polar Year’ (IPY).
One of the most important findings of this project is a confirmation of what many climate scientists have suspected for a couple of years now–that the impact of climate change on our environment is happening at a much faster rate than previous computer models predicted. This is true even for the four major reports released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the last of which was released in 2007).
Friday the 13th just got a little scarier. Here are 13 facts about the realities of global warming.
The numbers speak for themselves — we must make 2009 the showdown year for global warming action. There is no time to lose.
35%
Increase in the global carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1992.
388.57 ppm
Average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in May 2008, a record high.
541 – 970 ppm
The projected concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 2100 under a business as usual scenario where we don’t dramatically reduce global warming emissions.
260 – 280 ppm
Average concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere before industrial emissions.
The following video is from our friends at ViroPOP. Head over to their website for more great clips with host Jessica Williamson.
$268 bottle of water, anyone? Going once… going twice….
Just as growth in the US bottled water market is finally dropping off, Greenland has made the bewildering move to bottle and export 1 to 3,000 year old water that it will drill from icebergs. To add insult to environmental injury, Greenland will market its product as “sustainable.” Just how much marketing sense went into the idea to bottle the climate-induced melt from Greenland’s glaciers in plastic and ship it with a heavy carbon footprint stamped firmly into each “sustainable” bottle is anyone’s guess.
Over the past few years we have sadly had to watch the Arctic ice concentrations drop significantly. Focus has been primarily centered on the Arctic Circle, but Greenland is also suffering from the increased global temperature.
And now, thanks to researchers from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and the Center for Space Research (CSR) in America, a new and accurate picture of Greenland’s shrinking ice cap has been formulated.
Subsequently, the researchers have found that Greenland is currently responsible for an annual increase of sea levels of up to half a millimeter.
