Author	Topic:   Climate Change (2)
Greenland glacier races to ocean (Moderator)	posted 12/9/05 3:19 AM     Greenland glacier races to ocean By Jonathan Amos BBC News science reporter, San Francisco Kangerdlugssuaq is 7km wide, 30km long and 1km deep Scientists have been monitoring what they say may be the fastest moving glacier on the planet. Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier on the east coast of Greenland has been clocked using GPS equipment and satellites to be flowing at a rate of 14km per year. It is also losing mass extremely fast, with its front end retreating 5km back up its fjord this year alone. The glacier "drains" about 4% of the ice sheet, dumping tens of cubic km of fresh water in the North Atlantic. This gives it significant influence not just on global sea level rise but on the system of ocean circulation which drives through the Arctic. "We've seen a 5km retreat of the terminus, we've see an almost 300% acceleration in the flow speed and we've seen about a 100m thinning of the glacier - all occurring in the last one or so years," said Dr Gordon Hamilton, of the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine. "These are very dramatic changes." And they are not confined to Kangerdlugssuaq. He was speaking here at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting. Model problem Helheim Glacier, just to the south of Kangerdlugssuaq, is exhibiting similar changed behaviour. It is flowing only slightly slower at 12km per year - the equivalent of half a football field a day. Hamilton thinks a couple of factors may be triggering the quick melt. GPS is used to measure the flow rate The observed recent increase in summer surface melting on the Greenland Ice Sheet is producing large quantities of liquid water which, if it percolates down to the base of the glacier, can lubricate its flow over rocks towards the ocean. And if that same warming is bringing higher-temperature sea waters into contact with the front of Kangerdlugssuaq and Helheim, this could explain their rapid retreat. If other large glaciers in the region are seen to go the same way, it could begin to "pull the plug" on Greenland, said Dr Hamilton. "The model predictions for sea level rise do not include the effects of rapid changes in ice dynamics," he added. "We're seeing now that this component might be extremely important. And what it suggests is that the predictions for both the rate and the timing for sea level rise in the next few decades will be largely underestimated." Alaskan lessons Tad Pfeffer, from the University of Colorado at Boulder, also gave the latest details here of his study of Alaska's Columbia Glacier. This has shrunk in length by more than 14km since 1980 and is moving at a speed just shy of Kangerdlugssuaq. The Columbia Glacier is now the single largest glacial contributor in North America to sea level rise, producing about 10% of the water volume entering the sea from all Alaskan glaciers each year. Dr Pfeffer said its current retreat, which started in 1980, appears to be linked to a combination of complex physical processes which cannot be explained simply by recent climate warming. "Tidewater glaciers advance and retreat in a fairly well documented cycle in Alaska. They advance slowly over millennia and they retreat rapidly over a few decades," Dr Pfeffer said. The longer and more detailed records of Columbia could be used as a model to better understand the current behaviour of glaciers in Greenland, Dr Pfeffer added. "If we are going to put things into a numerical model and try to figure out contributions to global sea levels from these processes, we have to have a pretty good way of looking at the physics and Columbia is an excellent place to do that," he told the meeting. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4508964.stm
Ground Frozen Since Ice Age Thaws and Collapses	posted 12/21/05 5:40 AM     Ground Frozen Since Ice Age Thaws and Collapses Robert Roy Britt LiveScience Managing Editor LiveScience.com Tue Dec 20,12:00 PM ET Melting permafrost is damaging roads and buildings in Alaska and Russia and threatens to get much worse as the planet grows warmer, researchers said this week. Up to 90 percent of the permafrost at the surface of the Northern Hemisphere could melt by the end of this century, leaving gaping holes in the ground and collapsed structures, roads and railways in northern regions. In what scientists predict to be a vicious cycle, the thaw will release more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, further exacerbating global warming. The meltdown of northern soil is already underway. Other teams have noted sunken railways, damaged structures and increased numbers of rock-falls at high elevations owing to thawed boulders. Getting worse Permafrost is soil that remains frozen through summer. Even in regions where a surface "active layer" thaws seasonally, a deep layer of permafrost exists below and has been frozen since the last Ice Age. Permafrost covers about a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere's land area. The top 10 feet (3 meters) or more of this perennially frozen soil could be decimated in the next few decades, altering ecosystems and causing damage across Canada, Alaska, and Russia, according to new computer simulations from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). By 2050, the topmost layer of permafrost could be gone across more than half this region, with 90 percent of it melted by 2100 [map]. "Thawing permafrost could send considerable amounts of water to the oceans," said study team member Andrew Slater of the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center. Water runoff to the Arctic has increased about 7 percent since the 1930s, Slater said. That could jump by up to 28 percent by the end of the century depending on the extent of greenhouse gas emissions which, according to a report today, are on the rise in the United States, which refuses to agree to an international plan to cut the output. Early signs Other studies have documented actual permafrost reductions already under way. Several researchers presented preliminary findings on the problem a year ago at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. Slater and NCAR's David Lawrence, who led the new study, reviewed some of the observed changes: Pocket of soil have collapsed in central Alaska, causing buckled highways, destabilized homes, forests with trees that lean at wild angles, and outright holes in the ground; industrial facilities in Siberia have reported significant damage. The new work is the first to project future change in permafrost based on a global model that takes into account changes in the atmosphere, ocean, on land, and with sea ice and the overall effects on freezing and thawing in the soil. The researchers also estimate that permafrost holds up to 30 percent of the world's carbon. As the ground melts, it could put more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere than what is produced by burning fossil fuels. "If the permafrost does thaw, as our model predicts, it could have a major influence on climate," Lawrence said. The study, announced yesterday, is detailed in the Dec. 17 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters. http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20051220/sc_space/groundfrozensinceiceagethawsandcollapses
Report: 2005 Will Be Hottest, Stormiest	posted 12/21/05 5:59 AM     Report: 2005 Will Be Hottest, Stormiest By Phil Couvrette Associated Press posted: 07 December 2005 12:15 am ET MONTREAL (AP) -- This year is likely to go down as the hottest, stormiest and driest ever, making a strong case for the urgent need to combat global warming, a report released Tuesday at the U.N. Climate Change Conference said. The year 2005, the World Wildlife Fund said, is shaping up as the worst for extreme weather, with the hottest temperatures, most Arctic melting, worst Atlantic hurricane season and warmest Caribbean waters. It's also been the driest year in decades in the Amazon, where a drought may surpass anything in the past century, said the report by international environmental group. The report, using data from the U.S. government World Meteorological Organization, was released on the sidelines of the U.N. conference reviewing and upgrading the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty that commits 35 industrialized nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions more than 5 percent by 2012. The United States has not signed on to the protocol. Kyoto blames carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases for rising global temperatures and disrupted weather patterns. Many scientists believe if temperatures keep rising, extreme weather will continue to kill humans, disrupt lifestyles and make some animal species extinct. Lara Hansen, chief scientist for WWF's Climate Change Program, said cyclical patterns alone cannot explain the number of hurricanes this year. "What we're seeing now is even beyond what that cyclical nature would lead us to believe has happened,'' Hansen told the AP by telephone from Washington. She noted the National Hurricane Center failed to predict how many hurricanes there would be in 2005. Last year, the center predicted 18 to 21 storms, but so many were recorded that the official naming of them exceeded the Roman alphabet and had to be supplemented with letters of the Greek alphabet. Waters in the Caribbean were also hotter for longer, causing extensive bleaching from Colombia to the Florida Keys, she said. In the north, the smallest area of Arctic sea ice ever was recorded in September -- 500,000 square miles smaller than the historic average -- and a 9.8 percent decline, per decade, of perennial sea ice cover, the report said. Canada's Inuit issued their own report last week, saying eroding shorelines, thinning ice and losses of hunting and polar bears have affected their lives. Hansen said some predictions indicate the Arctic North could become ice-free by the end of the century, even possibly by mid-century. "The rate at which we are losing sea ice goes beyond the normal models of what we would think would be happening,'' she said. The United States, which produces one-fourth of the world's pollution, has refused to join the Kyoto Protocol, resisting any binding commitments to cap industrial emissions of greenhouse gases, saying it would harm the U.S economy. President Bush instead has called for an 18 percent cut in the U.S. growth of greenhouse gases by 2012 and commits about $5 billion a year to global warming science and technology. http://www.livescience.com/environment/ap_051207_hot_stormy.html
Scientists: Key Atlantic current slowing	posted 12/21/05 7:04 AM     Scientists: Key Atlantic current slowing Long-forecast result of warming may portend chill for Northern Europe Updated: 9:31 p.m. ET Nov. 30, 2005 LONDON - The Atlantic Conveyor, a life-giving ocean current that keeps Northern Europe warm, is slowing down, scientists said Wednesday. If the 30 percent slowdown seen over the past 12 years is not just a blip, temperatures in Northern Europe could drop significantly, despite global warming, they added. Scientists have long forecast that the Atlantic Conveyor that carries warm surface water north and cold deep water back to the equator could break down because of global warming. According to the theory, rising air temperatures cause ice caps to melt, making the water less salty and therefore less dense so it can't sink and flow back south. First flesh on theory's bones The scientists on Wednesday said this was the first time that observations had put flesh on the bones of the theory. "This is the first time we have observed a change in the current on a human time scale," oceanographer Harry Bryden said, noting that the current had completely shut down during the ice ages. But he said the latest figures were far from proving a trend and that constant and long-term monitoring was needed. "It is like a radiator heating the atmosphere and is too important to leave to periodic observations," Bryden told a news conference to flesh out a paper he co-authored in the science journal Nature. The Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research has calculated that if the current stopped, temperatures in northern Europe could drop by up to 6 degrees centigrade in 20 years. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10271816/ or http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CaNdY-for-the-BrAiN/message/57982
Scientists: Key Atlantic current slowing	posted 12/21/05 7:04 AM     Scientists: Key Atlantic current slowing Long-forecast result of warming may portend chill for Northern Europe Updated: 9:31 p.m. ET Nov. 30, 2005 LONDON - The Atlantic Conveyor, a life-giving ocean current that keeps Northern Europe warm, is slowing down, scientists said Wednesday. If the 30 percent slowdown seen over the past 12 years is not just a blip, temperatures in Northern Europe could drop significantly, despite global warming, they added. Scientists have long forecast that the Atlantic Conveyor that carries warm surface water north and cold deep water back to the equator could break down because of global warming. According to the theory, rising air temperatures cause ice caps to melt, making the water less salty and therefore less dense so it can't sink and flow back south. First flesh on theory's bones The scientists on Wednesday said this was the first time that observations had put flesh on the bones of the theory. "This is the first time we have observed a change in the current on a human time scale," oceanographer Harry Bryden said, noting that the current had completely shut down during the ice ages. But he said the latest figures were far from proving a trend and that constant and long-term monitoring was needed. "It is like a radiator heating the atmosphere and is too important to leave to periodic observations," Bryden told a news conference to flesh out a paper he co-authored in the science journal Nature. The Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research has calculated that if the current stopped, temperatures in northern Europe could drop by up to 6 degrees centigrade in 20 years. http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10271816/ or http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CaNdY-for-the-BrAiN/message/57996
Major polluters launch controversial global warming talks Wednesday January 11, 06:20 AM (Moderator)	posted 1/12/06 4:40 AM     Major polluters launch controversial global warming talks Wednesday January 11, 06:20 AM SYDNEY (AFP) - Some of the world's worst polluting nations have launched a controversial conference with international business chiefs here to seek high-tech solutions to global warming. Ministers from the United States, China, India, Japan, South Korea and Australia were meeting with executives from major mining and energy companies including Exxon Mobil, Rio Tinto and Peabody Energy. A group of around 80 protesters demonstrated outside the hotel in downtown Sydney where the two-day Advertisement conference was taking place, dumping a load of coal on an effigy of the host, Australian Prime Minister John Howard. Police forming part of a tight security operation for the six-nation talks looked on as the environmental activists chanted, "Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, take your oil and go to hell." The talks are controversial partly because two of the major players in the new Asia-Pacific Clean Development and Climate Partnership, the United States and Australia, have refused to ratify the UN Kyoto Protocol on global warming. While the protocol commits developed countries to reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases produced from burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal, the new partnership -- known as AP6 -- has ruled out setting any enforceable targets. US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman told reporters ahead of the conference that the "world community must seriously consider using nuclear power if it is to make any serious inroads into greenhouse gas emissions". World demand for electricity was set to increase by 50 percent over the next 20 years and there were obvious problems in using only fossil fuels to meet the need, he said. "Nuclear power, it seems to me, is an obvious requirement" for the future, Bodman said. "We're even getting in our country support from the environmental community, whose members are now much more supportive of our efforts to rejuvenate the nuclear industry." The US energy secretary laid the responsibility for reducing greenhouse gases firmly on the private sector, while saying governments should work to make their task as easy as possible. "It's the private sector, the companies that own the assets, that make the potential allocations (towards reducing greenhouse gases) that are ultimately going to be the solvers of the problem," he said. The conference is expected to press the private sector to find billions of dollars to finance programmes to reduce pollution. Bodman said it was not up to governments to coerce industry and he believed top executives would act voluntarily. "The people who run the private sector, who run these companies -- they too have children, they too have grandchildren, they too live and breathe in the world and they would like things dealt with effectively and that's what this is all about," he said. Australia's Industry and Resources Minister Ian MacFarlane said that if all countries adopted "clean" fossil fuel burning technology then greenhouse gas emissions would be reduced by three times the level that would be achieved under the Kyoto Protocol. The US accounts for 25 percent of carbon emissions while Australians produce more carbon dioxide per person than any other country, but they say the Kyoto pact is unfair as it does not commit developing nations to reducing emissions. Critics of the conference, including Australia's opposition Labor Party, say it will be nothing more than a talk shop for some of the biggest producers and consumers of fossil fuels. "The national government of Australia and the US are actually trying to get around the Kyoto Protocol," said Bob Debus, the state environment minister in Labor-controlled New South Wales. "They have called this conference today as something of a smokescreen to avoid making a commitment." http://uk.news.yahoo.com/11012006/323/major-polluters-launch-controversial-global-warming-talks.html
Sea Levels Likely to Rise Much Faster Than Was Predicted (Moderator)	posted 2/21/06 2:05 PM     Sea Levels Likely to Rise Much Faster Than Was Predicted by Steve Connor Global warming is causing the Greenland ice cap to disintegrate far faster than anyone predicted. A study of the region's massive ice sheet warns that sea levels may - as a consequence - rise more dramatically than expected. Scientists have found that many of the huge glaciers of Greenland are moving at an accelerating rate - dumping twice as much ice into the sea than five years ago - indicating that the ice sheet is undergoing a potentially catastrophic breakup. The implications of the research are dramatic given Greenland holds enough ice to raise global sea levels by up to 21ft, a disaster scenario that would result in the flooding of some of the world's major population centres, including all of Britain's city ports. Satellite measurements of the entire land mass of Greenland show that the speed at which the glaciers are moving to the sea has increased significantly over the past 10 years with some glaciers moving three times faster than in the mid-1990s. Scientists believe that computer models of how the Greenland ice sheet will react to global warming have seriously underestimated the threat posed by sea levels that could rise far more quickly than envisaged. The latest study, presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in St Louis, shows that rather than just melting relatively slowly, the ice sheet is showing all the signs of a mechanical break-up as glaciers slip ever faster into the ocean, aided by the "lubricant" of melt water forming at their base. Eric Rignot, a scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said that computer models used by the UN's International Panel on Climate Change have not adequately taken into account the amount of ice falling into the sea from glacial movements. Yet the satellite study shows that about two-thirds of the sea-level rise caused by the Greenland ice sheet is due to icebergs breaking off from fast-moving glaciers rather than simply the result of water running off from melting ice. "In simple terms, the ice sheet is breaking up rather than melting. It's not a surprise in itself but it is a surprise to see the magnitude of the changes. These big glaciers seem to be accelerating, they seem to be going faster and faster to the sea," Dr Rignot said. "This is not predicted by the current computer models. The fact is the glaciers of Greenland are evolving faster than we thought and the models have to be adjusted to catch up with these observations," he said. The Greenland ice sheet covers an area of 1.7 million sq km - about the size of Mexico - and, in places, is up to 3km thick. It formed over thousands of years by the gradual accumulation of ice and snow but now its disintegration could occur in decades or centuries. Over the past 20 years, the air temperature of Greenland has risen by 3C and computer models suggested it would take at least 1,000 years for the ice sheet to melt completely. But the latest study suggests that glaciers moving at an accelerating rate could bring about a much faster change. "The behaviour of the glaciers that dump ice into the sea is the most important aspect of understanding how an ice sheet will evolve in a changing climate," Dr Rignot said. "It takes a long time to build and melt an ice sheet but glaciers can react quickly to temperature changes. Climate warming can work in different ways but, generally speaking, if you warm up the ice sheet, the glacier will flow faster," he said. The ice "balance sheet" of Greenland is complex but - in simple terms - it depends on the amount of snow that falls, the amount of ice that melts as run-off and the amount of ice that falls directly into the sea in the form of icebergs "calving" from moving glaciers. Satellites show that the glaciers in the south of Greenland are now moving much faster than they were 10 years ago. Scientists estimate that, in 1996, glaciers deposited about 50 cubic km of ice into the sea. In 2005 it had risen to 150 cubic km of ice. Details of the latest study, published in the journal Science, show that Greenland now accounts for an increase in global sea levels of about 0.5 millimetres per year - compared to a total sea level rise of 3mm per year. When previous studies of the ice balance are taken into account, the researchers calculated that the overall amount of ice dumped into the sea increased from 90 cubic km in 1996 to 224 cubic km in 2005. Dr Rignot said that there are now signs that the more northerly glaciers of Greenland are beginning to adopt the pattern of movements seen by those in the south. "The southern half of Greenland is reacting to what we think is climate warming. The northern half is waiting, but I don't think it's going to take long," he said. © 2006 Independent News and Media Limited http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0217-06.htm
The Revenge of Gaia (Moderator)	posted 2/22/06 4:19 AM     Life on Earth, but for how much longer? We ignore James Lovelock's apocalyptic vision of the future, The Revenge of Gaia, at our peril, says Robin McKie Sunday February 12, 2006 The Observer The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock There is a classic short story by Robert Sheckley, the American science-fiction author, which tells of a group of settlers who land on a distant planet. There they begin their work: levelling mountains, changing the atmosphere and ploughing up wild places to make new homes for mankind. Then things go wrong. Overnight, the land rises up and swallows their great earth-moving machines. Storms destroy their newly installed chemical plants. Chains of volcanoes erupt. The planet fights back. In panic, the settlers contact Earth, only to find their own home world, and all the other planets mankind has colonised, are being similarly assailed. Nature has suffered enough indignities at our hands. Humanity is getting the heave-ho. Sheckley, who died a few weeks ago, was a sci-fi satirist and his tale was merely meant as a joke, albeit a pointed one. Yet I found images of those startled colonists continually popping into mind on reading James Lovelock's latest diagnosis of the state of planet Earth. Just like those sci-fi settlers, humanity is about to get the elbow, it seems. Carbon dioxide is being pumped into the atmosphere at such rates that a point of no return, 'a tipping point', will be reached in a decade or so and global temperatures will abruptly soar. And that will be that, says Lovelock. Icecaps will disappear and, without their reflectivity to bounce the Sun's rays back into space, temperatures will rise even faster. Methane and carbon dioxide, currently trapped in frozen tundra, will then be released, leading to further warming. Dozens of other feedback cycles will be disrupted. Our planet will burn like a crisp and, along with it, civilisation. Humanity, returned to its former ape-man status, will be lucky to hang on, grunting in the odd, deep cave. 'The world is fighting back,' says Lovelock. 'Like the Norns in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, we are at the end of our tether, and the rope, whose weaves define our fate, is about to break.' It is grand, biblical stuff, like an evangelical preacher cursing his wayward congregation. Miserable ecological sinners, we are all doomed. 'The bell has started tolling to mark our ending,' Lovelock tells us. 'Only a handful of the teeming billions now alive will survive.' Thus science meets the Book of Isaiah. Such rhetoric, turned up to regulo eight throughout the book, might tempt the odd snigger, if it wasn't also so hideously convincing and appalling in its implications. After all, Lovelock is one of our most distinguished ecologists, the environment movement's sanest pontificator and a scientist of considerable distinction. We should take note of his words, for all their fire and brimstone. Lovelock is renowned for his development, with biologist Lynn Margulis, in the early 1970s of the idea of Gaia, 'the dynamical physiological system that has kept our planet fit for life for more than three billion years'. According to the theory, all breathing things, from algae to elephants, are locked in self-regulating cycles of reproduction and behaviour which optimise conditions for life's sustenance. Or as Lovelock puts it: 'Life on Earth actively keeps the surface conditions always favourable for whatever is the contemporary ensemble of organisms.' The concept of Gaia was initially greeted with scepticism by researchers who thought it suggested Earth was a living entity. Indeed, many greenies still think (wrongly) of Gaia this way. In fact, a better analogy is that of a giant self-regulator valve, like those used by engineers to control machine outputs. Used this way, the idea went on to help scientists sharpen their predictive powers, particularly over climate change. Today Gaia is mainstream. Unfortunately, just as we have come to accept the notion, it has become plain that we are battering Gaia so badly she simply cannot take any more. Soon, she will switch to red-hot mode, as has happened before, and, by the time she has recovered, the works of man will have been turned to dust. Such a future is not inevitable. Lovelock is at pains to suggest escape routes, most controversially by calling for the rapid expansion of nuclear energy programmes, the one large-scale, carbon-free type of power generation we possess. In general, however, he is gloomy to the point of near suicide. But given the rate at which we are rushing pell-mell to disaster, I cannot blame Lovelock. Kyoto, as he says, was a mere act of appeasement to polluters. We are a 'plague of people', he says, an infestation that has wrecked Earth. Very soon, we will pay the reckoning. http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/scienceandnature/0,,1707789,00.html
NASA MISSION DETECTS SIGNIFICANT ANTARCTIC ICE MASS LOSS (Moderator)	posted 3/5/06 10:48 AM     NASA MISSION DETECTS SIGNIFICANT ANTARCTIC ICE MASS LOSS NASA Press Release March 2, 2006 The first-ever gravity survey of the entire Antarctic ice sheet, conducted using data from the NASA/German Aerospace Center Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace), concludes the ice sheet's mass has decreased significantly from 2002 to 2005. Isabella Velicogna and John Wahr, both from the University of Colorado, Boulder, conducted the study. They demonstrated for the first time that Antarctica's ice sheet lost a significant amount of mass since 2002. The estimated mass loss was enough to raise global sea level about 1.2 millimeters (0.05 inches) during the survey period, or about 13 percent of the overall observed sea level rise for the same period. The researchers found Antarctica's ice sheet decreased by 152 (plus or minus 80) cubic kilometers of ice annually between April 2002 and August 2005. That is about how much water the United States consumes in three months (a cubic kilometer is one trillion liters; approximately 264 billion gallons of water). This represents a change of about 0.4 millimeters (.016 inches) per year to global sea level rise. Most of the mass loss came from the West Antarctic ice sheet. "Antarctica is Earth's largest reservoir of fresh water," Velicogna said. "The Grace mission is unique in its ability to measure mass changes directly for entire ice sheets and can determine how Earth's mass distribution changes over time. Because ice sheets are a large source of uncertainties in projections of sea level change, this represents a very important step toward more accurate prediction, and has important societal and economic impacts. As more Grace data become available, it will become feasible to search for longer-term changes in the rate of Antarctic mass loss," she said. Measuring variations in Antarctica's ice sheet mass is difficult because of its size and complexity. Grace is able to overcome these issues, surveying the entire ice sheet, and tracking the balance between mass changes in the interior and coastal areas. Previous estimates have used various techniques, each with limitations and uncertainties and an inherent inability to monitor the entire ice sheet mass as a whole. Even studies that synthesized results from several techniques, such as the assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, suffered from a lack of data in critical regions. "Combining Grace data with data from other instruments such as NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite; radar; and altimeters that are more effective for studying individual glaciers is expected to substantially improve our understanding of the processes controlling ice sheet mass variations," Velicogna said. The Antarctic mass loss findings were enabled by the ability of the identical twin Grace satellites to track minute changes in Earth's gravity field resulting from regional changes in planet mass distribution. Mass movement of ice, air, water and solid earth reflect weather patterns, climate change and even earthquakes. To track these changes, Grace measures micron-scale variations in the 220-kilometer (137-mile) separation between the two satellites, which fly in formation. Grace is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. The University of Texas Center for Space Research has overall mission responsibility. GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ), Potsdam, Germany, is responsible for German mission elements. Science data processing, distribution, archiving and product verification are managed jointly by JPL, the University of Texas and GFZ. The results will appear in this week's issue of Science. For information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/home For more information about Grace on the Web, visit: http://www.csr.utexas.edu/grace http://www.gfz-potsdam.de/grace For University of Colorado information call Jim Scott at: (303) 492-3114. JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Informant: NHNE http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/1648911/
Running on empty (Moderator)	posted 3/15/06 7:31 AM     Running on empty The world's rivers are drying up. Fred Pearce has been on a five-year journey across the planet to find out why, and to assess whether Britain's favoured solution of building more reservoirs is the right response Wednesday March 1, 2006 The Guardian Every time there is a drought, water companies can be found dusting off their plans for new reservoirs. After another dry winter, 2006 is unlikely to be an exception. Thames Water is preparing plans for the largest man-made structure in Britain - a £700m reservoir covering 10 sq km, with banks rising as high as a church tower above the flat farmland near Abingdon in Oxfordshire. The scheme, designed to store water from the Thames in winter and release it downstream in summer, was due to be unveiled next week. Thames Water had booked the local village hall, but then cancelled. The company denies the story, but many believe that the delay is because Thames Water has been put up for sale by its German owners. Even so, it has pencilled in a public inquiry for 2008 and, if it gets its way, the Vale of the White Horse will be under water by 2020. The alternative could be standpipes in the capital, say the company's engineers. But few of those engineers will be aware that 30 years ago, before Thames Water was privatised, an economic study by their public sector predecessors concluded that saving water by plugging leaks in water mains and installing new valves for every toilet cistern in London would be cheaper and just as effective. Britain is a modest user of water. We consume a sixth as much per head as Egyptians, for instance. This is mainly because our moderate temperatures, reasonable rainfall and cloudy skies ensure that our crops mostly grow without artificial irrigation. But our water engineers share with their colleagues the world over an obsession with dams and pipes and concrete. They want to supply ever more water, and are deaf to calls for investment in demand management. And, as I have discovered in a five-year investigation of the world's water, this supply-side fixation is creating a global hydrological crisis that threatens the survival of some of the world's largest rivers. The world atlas no longer tells the truth. Today, dozens of the greatest rivers are dry long before they reach the sea. They include the Nile in Egypt, the Yellow River in China, the Indus in Pakistan, the Rio Grande and Colorado in the US, the ancient Oxus that once fed the Aral Sea in Central Asia, the Murray in Australia, and the Jordan, which is emptied before it can even reach the country that bears its name. The biggest demand on the world's water is irrigated farming, which takes two-thirds of all the water abstracted from rivers and underground reserves. This is largely due to the green revolution. The "high-yielding" plant varieties that have kept the world fed as populations have doubled over the last 30 years turn out to be high-yielding only when measured against land area. Measured against water use, they are generally worse than the crops they replaced. They produce less crop per drop. Binding constraint As a result, the world grows twice as much food as it did a generation ago, but abstracts three times as much water to do it. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation says that on at least a third of the world's fields today, "water rather than land is the binding constraint" on production. This profligacy is present in every supermarket trolley. The amount of water needed to grow our everyday food is staggering. To grow a kilo of rice takes between 2,000 and 5,000 litres of water - more than many households use in a week. It takes 20,000 litres to fill a kilo jar of coffee, up to 4,000 litres to grow the fodder that will deliver a litre of cow's milk, and up to 11,000 litres to make a quarter-pound hamburger. In such ways, I reckon I indirectly consume a hundred times my own weight in water every day. US environmentalist and agriculturalist Lester Brown talks of a "food bubble" - a world awash with food grown using water that will never be replaced. One day, he says, the bubble will burst. And everywhere I went, I saw why. I stood on the banks of the Rio Grande at Presidio, on the US-Mexico border, with Terry Bishop, bankrupt despite owning a large chunk of prime Texas farmland. His problem is that - thanks largely to over-abstraction by upstream irrigators - his legal entitlement to the river's water is useless. There is no water in the river. In fact, the mighty Rio Grande is now two rivers. The main US arm, rushing out of the Rockies, gives out just past El Paso, 1,000km from the Gulf of Mexico. Its bed is then dry for 300km until, just past Presidio, an old tributary, the Rio Conchos, brings relief from Mexico. In much of India, the rivers have long-since dried up, and the only water is underground. In the last decade, more than 20 million farmers have bought drills and cheap Yamaha pumps to bring water to the surface and irrigate their crops. As a result, water tables that were until recently only a few metres from the surface are now hundreds of metres down. The pumping bonanza is "a colossal anarchy, a one-way trip to disaster," says Tushaar Shah, of the International Water Management Institute, whose HQ is in Gujarat. He reckons farmers are taking from underground 100 cubic km of water more every year than the rains replace. India's green revolution is living on borrowed water and borrowed time... more at link · Fred Pearce's new book, When The Rivers Run Dry, is published by Eden Project Books (£18.99). To order a copy for £17.99 with free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875 http://society.guardian.co.uk/societyguardian/story/0,,1719848,00.html
Death of the World's Rivers (Moderator)	posted 3/20/06 3:19 AM     Death of the World's Rivers Disaster warning from UN as investigation reveals half of the planet's 500 biggest rivers are seriously depleted or polluted by Geoffrey Lean The world's great rivers are drying up at an alarming rate, with devastating consequences for humanity, animals and the future of the planet. The Independent on Sunday can today reveal that more than half the world's 500 mightiest rivers have been seriously depleted. Some have been reduced to a trickle in what the United Nations will this week warn is a "disaster in the making". From the Nile to China's Yellow River, some of the world's great water systems are now under such pressure that they often fail to deposit their water in the ocean or are interrupted in the course to the sea, with grave consequences for the planet. Adding to the disaster, all of the 20 longer rivers are being disrupted by big dams. One-fifth of all freshwater fish species either face extinction or are already extinct. The Nile and Pakistan's Indus are greatly reduced by the time they reach the sea. Some, such as the Colorado and China's Yellow River, now rarely reach the ocean at all. Others, such as the Jordan and the Rio Grande on the US-Mexico border, are dry for much of their length. Even in Britain, a quarter of the country's 160 chalk rivers and steams - such as the Kennet in Wiltshire, the Darent in Kent, and the Wylye in Wiltshire - are running out of water because too much is being abstracted for homes, industry and agriculture. This week an influential UN report will officially warn the world's governments of an "alarming deterioration" in the planet's rivers, lakes and other freshwater systems. Klaus Toepfer, the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme, told the IoS yesterday that the state of the world's rivers is "a disaster in the making". The UN's triennial World Water Development Report, compiled for an international conference in Mexico City which opens on Thursday, warns that "we have hugely changed the natural order of rivers worldwide", mainly through giant dams and global warming. Some 45,000 big dams now block the world's rivers, trapping 15 per cent of all the water that used to flow from the land to the sea. Reservoirs now cover almost 1 per cent of land surface. The UN report says that demand for them "will continue to increase", but recommends that they should be barred from the world's remaining, undammed "free-flowing" rivers. The United States has dismantled 465 dams in recent years, mainly for environmental reasons. But last week, in an abrupt U-turn, it signalled that it was about to embark on its biggest dam-building campaign in decades, when the Washington State legislature passed a bill to allow the federal government to build a series of dams on the Columbia, the West's largest river. Global warming is endangering even the rivers that have largely escaped damming. The relatively untamed Amazon was hit by its most serious drought on record last autumn. And salmon are dying in Alaska's Yukon River - the world's longest undammed watercourse - because its waters are getting too hot. On Tuesday an international day of action will see demonstrations across the globe to draw attention to rivers' plight. © 2006 Independent News and Media Limited http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0312-04.htm
Ice-capped roof of world turns to desert - pt1 (Moderator)	posted 5/14/06 2:12 PM     Ice-capped roof of world turns to desert Scientists warn of ecological catastrophe across Asia as glaciers melt and continent's great rivers dry up By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor Published: 07 May 2006 http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article362549.ece Global warming is rapidly melting the ice-bound roof of the world, and turning it into desert, leading scientists have revealed. The Chinese Academy of Sciences - the country's top scientific body - has announced that the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau are vanishing so fast that they will be reduced by 50 per cent every decade. Each year enough water permanently melts from them to fill the entire Yellow River. They added that the vast environmental changes brought about by the process will increase droughts and sandstorms over the rest of the country, and devastate many of the world's greatest rivers, in what experts warn will be an "ecological catastrophe". The plateau, says the academy, has a staggering 46,298 glaciers, covering almost 60,000 square miles. At an average height of 13,000 feet above sea level, they make up the largest area of ice outside the polar regions, nearly a sixth of the world's total. The glaciers have been receding over the past four decades, as the world has gradually warmed up, but the process has now accelerated alarmingly. Average temperatures in Tibet have risen by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 20 years, causing the glaciers to shrink by 7 per cent a year, which means that they will halve every 10 years. Prof Dong Guangrong, speaking for the academy - after a study analysing data from 680 weather stations scattered across the country - said that the rising temperatures would thaw out the tundra of the plateau, turning it into desert. He added: "The melting glaciers will ultimately trigger more droughts, expand desertification and increase sand storms." The water running off the plateau is increasing soil erosion and so allowing the deserts to spread. Sandstorms, blowing in from the degraded land, are already plaguing the country. So far this year, 13 of them have hit northern China, including Beijing. Three weeks ago one storm swept across an eighth of the vast country and even reached Korea and Japan. On the way, it dumped a mind-boggling 336,000 tons of dust on the capital, causing dangerous air pollution. The rising temperatures are also endangering the newly built world's highest railway, which is due to go into operation this summer. They threaten to melt the permafrost under the tracks of the £1.7bn Tibetan railway, constructed to link the area with China's northwestern Qinghai province. Perhaps worst of all, the melting threatens to disrupt water supplies over much of Asia. Many of the continent's greatest rivers - including the Yangtze, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong and the Yellow River - rise on the plateau. In China alone, 300 million people depend on water from the glaciers for their survival. Yet the plateau is drying up, threatening to escalate an already dire situation across the country. Already 400 cities are short of water; in 100 of them - including Beijing - the shortages are becoming critical. Even hopes that the melting glaciers might provide a temporary respite, by increasing the amount of water flowing off the plateau - have been dashed. For most of the water is evaporating before it reaches the people that need it - again because of the rising temperatures brought by global warning. Yao Tandong, head of the academy's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Research Institute, summed it up. "The full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau regions will eventually lead to an ecological catastrophe," he said. Global warming is rapidly melting the ice-bound roof of the world, and turning it into desert, leading scientists have revealed. The Chinese Academy of Sciences - the country's top scientific body - has announced that the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau are vanishing so fast that they will be reduced by 50 per cent every decade. Each year enough water permanently melts from them to fill the entire Yellow River. They added that the vast environmental changes brought about by the process will increase droughts and sandstorms over the rest of the country, and devastate many of the world's greatest rivers, in what experts warn will be an "ecological catastrophe"... End Part 1 see part 2 http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/1929708/
Ice-capped roof of world turns to desert - pt2 (Moderator)	posted 5/14/06 2:25 PM     from part 1 above - The plateau, says the academy, has a staggering 46,298 glaciers, covering almost 60,000 square miles. At an average height of 13,000 feet above sea level, they make up the largest area of ice outside the polar regions, nearly a sixth of the world's total. The glaciers have been receding over the past four decades, as the world has gradually warmed up, but the process has now accelerated alarmingly. Average temperatures in Tibet have risen by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 20 years, causing the glaciers to shrink by 7 per cent a year, which means that they will halve every 10 years. Prof Dong Guangrong, speaking for the academy - after a study analysing data from 680 weather stations scattered across the country - said that the rising temperatures would thaw out the tundra of the plateau, turning it into desert. He added: "The melting glaciers will ultimately trigger more droughts, expand desertification and increase sand storms." The water running off the plateau is increasing soil erosion and so allowing the deserts to spread. Sandstorms, blowing in from the degraded land, are already plaguing the country. So far this year, 13 of them have hit northern China, including Beijing. Three weeks ago one storm swept across an eighth of the vast country and even reached Korea and Japan. On the way, it dumped a mind-boggling 336,000 tons of dust on the capital, causing dangerous air pollution. The rising temperatures are also endangering the newly built world's highest railway, which is due to go into operation this summer. They threaten to melt the permafrost under the tracks of the £1.7bn Tibetan railway, constructed to link the area with China's northwestern Qinghai province. Perhaps worst of all, the melting threatens to disrupt water supplies over much of Asia. Many of the continent's greatest rivers - including the Yangtze, the Indus, the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong and the Yellow River - rise on the plateau. In China alone, 300 million people depend on water from the glaciers for their survival. Yet the plateau is drying up, threatening to escalate an already dire situation across the country. Already 400 cities are short of water; in 100 of them - including Beijing - the shortages are becoming critical. Even hopes that the melting glaciers might provide a temporary respite, by increasing the amount of water flowing off the plateau - have been dashed. For most of the water is evaporating before it reaches the people that need it - again because of the rising temperatures brought by global warning. Yao Tandong, head of the academy's Qinghai-Tibet Plateau Research Institute, summed it up. "The full-scale glacier shrinkage in the plateau regions will eventually lead to an ecological catastrophe," he said. Informant: Teresa Binstock http://freepage.twoday.net/stories/1929708/
Study: Global Warming Fueled 2005 Hurricanes (Moderator)	posted 6/24/06 12:22 AM     Study: Global Warming Fueled 2005 Hurricanes Ker Than LiveScience Staff Writer LiveScience.com Fri Jun 23, 12:00 PM ET Global warming, and not natural variations in ocean temperature, provided most of the fuel for last year's unusually strong hurricane season, scientists said this week. ADVERTISEMENT The finding, detailed in the June 27 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, raises the risk of active hurricanes seasons in coming years, the researchers said. Last year's North Atlantic hurricane season featured a record 27 named storms, so many that the World Meteorological Organization had to use letters from the Greek alphabet. The 2005 season also featured the most intense Atlantic storm ever recorded (Wilma), the most intense storm in the Gulf of Mexico (Rita) and the most damaging storm on record (Katrina); all three were Category 5 hurricanes at some point. Beyond normal variations The researchers, Kevin Trenberth and Daniel Shea of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), focused on rising sea surface temperatures, or SSTs. When the ocean is warm, more water evaporates, providing fuel for a developing storm. Other studies have linked rising SSTs in the Atlantic to a near doubling in the number of intense Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide, from 10 a year in 1970 to about 18 a year since 1990. During much of the 2005 season, SSTs in the Atlantic where hurricanes typically originate were 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 1901 to 1970 average. Some scientists attribute the rising SSTs to global warming, but others, including hurricane experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), have consistently argued that the increase can be fully explained by natural ocean cycles such as El Nino and the decades-long Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), both of which produce fluctuations in SSTs. The study details Using worldwide SST data since the early 20th century, Trenberth and Shea calculated the individual contributions of global warming and the AMO to Atlantic SSTs. They subtracted the irregular Atlantic temperatures from the temperature patterns in the rest of Earth's tropical and mid-latitude waters. Their calculations show that about half, or 0.81 degrees Fahrenheit, of the Atlantic SST increase was due to global warming, while only 0.2 degrees owed to the AMO. The remainder of the increase could be explained by the aftereffects of the 2004-2005 El Nino and normal year-to-year variations in temperatures. "We found the much hyped Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is important [to hurricane activity] but did not really contribute much to 2005," Trenberth told LiveScience. "Any addition to the overall body of scientific know is important, but since we haven't had a chance to review the document, we really can't give a reaction to it," said NOAA spokesman Kent Laborde. Another finding The results also showed that the AMO is actually much weaker now than it was in the 1950s, during the last active hurricane period. The study does not discount the AMO's effect on hurricane activity, however, and finds that it contributed to the lull in Atlantic hurricane activity from about 1970 to 1990. The researchers say that warming SSTs will raise the baseline for hurricane activity for coming years. This does not mean that each year will set new records for hurricanes, though. Every year will be different because the effects of natural temperature variations and other natural cycles will vary. Rainfall in parts of Africa and high-level wind patterns can also fuel or throttle hurricane formation in a given season. The bottom line, Trenberth said, is that "the fuel for hurricanes from water vapor from the evaporation from the ocean, which is greater when SSTs are high, is increasing in general, raising the risk of active hurricane seasons henceforth." http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060623/sc_space/studyglobalwarmingfueled2005hurricanes
Ozone Hole Biggest Yet	posted 10/26/06 2:25 AM     Ozone Hole Biggest Yet By Phil Berardelli ScienceNOW Daily News 20 October 2006 The hole in Earth's ozone layer has grown to its biggest dimensions yet, according to scientists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The gap--observed last month over Antarctica--was nearly three times the size of the continental United States and about 1% larger than the previous record. The ozone hole has appeared every Antarctic winter since scientists began taking measurements in 1985. It signals the continued action of ozone-destroying compounds, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), in the atmosphere, which are magnified by the effect of colder winter temperatures on the fragile gas. Because ozone blocks DNA-damaging rays from the sun, scientists are concerned that a weakening of this protective layer could lead to a higher incidence of cancer and infertility among people living in the southern hemisphere. In 1987, an international agreement known as the Montreal Protocol banned the release of CFCs (once common in refrigerators and air conditioners) into the atmosphere; however, their effect can persist for decades. At the current rate of recovery, scientists estimate it could take another 60 years for the planet's ozone layer to mend completely. The record-setting ozone hole was observed from 21 September to 30 September by NASA's polar-orbiting Aura satellite, as well as from instrument-laden balloons launched by polar research stations. Scientists calculated the gap at 27.4 million square kilometers, says Paul Newman, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, which manages Aura. The biggest previous gap was 27.1 million square kilometers, he says, seen in 2003. In addition, the readings showed nearly all of the ozone had been destroyed between eight and 13 miles above Earth's surface. "These numbers mean the ozone is virtually gone in this layer of the atmosphere," says David Hofmann, director of the Global Monitoring Division at NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado. "It appears that the 2006 ozone hole will go down as a record-setter." A record-setter perhaps, but not necessarily meaningful, says atmospheric scientist Michael Newchurch at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. He notes that colder-than-normal temperatures over Antarctica this year accounted for the expansion--a trend that's not guaranteed to continue. On the other hand, Newchurch says, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are increasing, which could lead to a cooler stratosphere. So "we may not have seen the biggest ozone hole, but soon the effect of declining [CFCs] will overcome the cooling temperatures, and the size of the hole will diminish," he says. Related sites Aura Earth Observing Mission Rutgers University Ozone Research Center NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/1020/1
Greenhouse gases hit record high	posted 11/4/06 2:14 AM     Greenhouse gases hit record high Rising levels of greenhouse gases are blamed for climate change The steady rise in atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gases blamed for climate change shows no signs of abating, a UN agency has announced. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide rose by about half a percent in 2005, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said. It said levels were likely to keep rising unless emissions of CO2, methane and nitrogen oxides were slashed. The announcement comes on the eve of UN climate negotiations in Nairobi. "There is no sign that N2O (nitrous oxide) and CO2 are starting to level off," Geir Braathen, a senior scientist at the WMO, told reporters. To make CO2 level off we will need more drastic measures than are in the Kyoto Protocol today "It looks like it will just continue like this for the foreseeable future." Scientists say the accumulation of such gases - generated by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas - traps energy coming originally from the Sun, causing global temperatures to rise. This is expected to lead to melting of polar ice caps and glaciers, rising sea levels and more extreme weather events such as storms and floods. 'Drastic measures' The WMO said concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) were measured at 379.1 parts per million (ppm), up 0.53% from 377.1 ppm in 2004. Concentrations of nitrous oxide (N2O) reached 319.2 ppm in 2005, an annual increase of 0.2%. Levels of methane, another greenhouse gas, remained stable, it said. The trend of growing emissions from industry, transport and power generation is set to continue despite international agreements on regulating them, the UN agency warned. "To really make CO2 level off we will need more drastic measures than are in the Kyoto Protocol today," Geir Braathen explained. "Every human being on this globe should think about how much CO2 he or she emits and try to do something about that." Compulsory caps The Kyoto Protocol sets limits for emissions of six greenhouse gases for the richer countries of the world which have ratified it. The period for which targets exist runs until 2012. World seeks climate compact The US and Australia have rejected the compulsory cap. China has ratified the Protocol, but as a developing nation, it is not required to reduce its emissions - despite its booming economy. A report by former World Bank economist Sir Nicholas Stern this week warned of severe problems if global warming was ignored. Governments involved in the United Nations climate convention and the Kyoto Protocol are due to meet in Nairobi from Monday to examine their future path in combatting global warming. The latest data were gathered from monitoring stations, ships and aircraft around the world and are published in the WMO's second annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6114250.stm

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