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7 December 2011
Doubling virtual carbon dioxide provides insight into atmospheric interactions
It’s an environmentalist’s nightmare: What would happen if the amount of carbon dioxide doubled overnight? Yutian Wu asked just that question.
6 December 2011
AGU 2 – Simon Winchester
At lunchtime today I went along to the Presidential Forum on the topic of Science and Society, which featured a talk by the author Simon Winchester. On the face of it Simon was a great choice as he has written a number of earth science facing popular science books – and indeed I have even read two of them. On the other hand I suspect that his presence raised a …
16 March 2011
LPSC 2011 – Day 1: Cryospheres and Making Moons
Greetings from Texas, loyal readers! As you may have noticed, this year’s Lunar and Planetary Science Conference came and went with barely a peep here on the blog. This is because, unlike some members of the planetary science community, I do need to sleep occasionally, and I spent almost all of my time at LPSC either in sessions or working on my never-ending paper. Yeah, remember the one that I …
20 December 2010
Spurred by climate change, plant die-offs could wreak havoc on Tibetian lifestyle
For thousands of years the traditional herders of Tibet have lived among mountains, lakes and grasslands. Their livelihood– raising yak, sheep, and goats on the largest and highest plateau on the planet–is a precarious one.
As the planet warms, seasons that are normally dry on the Tibetan Plateau–winter and spring–are forecast to turn wet. At this elevation, the precipitation would fall as snow. Kelly Hopping, a graduate student in Ecology at Colorado State University, is worried this snow may disrupt the traditional life of these Tibetans.
17 December 2010
Communicating climate change: How to win over the public
An overflowing room of AGU Fall Meeting attendees learned they must lose their jargon and have a clear message to most effectively communicate about climate change science. The Tuesday workshop, organized by AGU’s Public Information Office, featured author Chris Mooney, climate communications trainer Susan Joy Hassol, and climate researcher and professor Richard Somerville.
Abrupt climate change: New data from lakes
Abrupt climate change is a provocative topic. How fast does it happen? How does it shift so quickly? What are the effects of climate swings on life?
It turns out that scientists are still teasing apart the details of if and when abrupt climate change happens. In yesterday’s Emiliani Lecture, session PP41C, David Hodell from the University of Cambridge presented his analysis of lake sediment samples and what they tell us about abrupt climate change during the last ice age, about 10,000-20,000 years ago.
16 December 2010
Careful! Sudden increase in stress could cause major eruptions
We’ve all had times when a sudden pile of stress makes us ready to explode at any minute. Volcanoes might react the same way–a new hypothesis presented in Wednesday morning’s poster session suggests that rapid changes in the amount of stress on the Earth’s crust might explain a cyclical pattern of volcanic activity over the last million years. These cycles could ultimately be triggered by periodic cycles of Earth’s climate.
A Climate Carol: Scientists as the Spirits of Climates Past
Although people may not feel particularly overheated after this week’s Midwestern snowstorm, data from NASA show that the 12-month period from November 2009 to November 2010 was the warmest on record since 1880. Glaciers worldwide are retreating, and studies are beginning to forecast the likelihood of specific glaciers disappearing entirely. Just how hot is it going to get?
One way to predict the future is to first look back in time. During sessions yesterday, scientists played the role of the Spirit of Climates Past.
15 December 2010
Global climate change threatens the much-envied California lifestyle
The allure of an active, outdoorsy existence filled with every variety of incredible fresh food and peerless wine drew me to California. All of this could be lost, I learned yesterday at the linked afternoon sessions H23M and H24F. Global climate change may eliminate much of the good life in the Golden State.
11 December 2010
Why It’s Raining in Greenland & Eastern North America Is Going Into A Deep Freeze
If you live anywhere from the Mississippi Valley to the East Coast in America, you are about to get cold. Real cold. A major Arctic blast is on it’s way south. The leading edge of the cold air (The Arctic front) will reach South Florida by Sunday night. There will be tons of lake effect snow, and flurries as far south as Birmingham and Atlanta. In the meantime, way up north …
1 December 2010
Why is the UK’s weather so cold and snowy?
The weather in the UK is unusually cold and snowy right now. Anyone in cold climes may laugh, but Britons are panic-buying milk. The snow is the UK‘s heaviest and most widespread for November since 1993 and the deepest since 1965, according to the UK’s Meteorological Office. After a bit of investigation, I *think* I’ve nailed the culprit behind the bad weather. Oddly enough, it looks like it’s a ‘blocked jet …
29 November 2010
Getting the word out: Helping scientists engage with the media
Guest post by Jeff Taylor, postdoctoral fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and project manager of AGU’s Climate Q&A Service . More than 700 AGU scientists have volunteered to take part in this year’s Climate Q&A Service which was created to quickly provide answers to questions about climate change that journalists might have. It was launched last year just before the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15), …
31 October 2010
Whales turn oceanographer
The latest weapon in an oceanographer’s arsenal? Whales tagged with thermometers. A US team recently published a study into whether narwhals – a medium-sized Arctic whale – can venture where research ships struggle to go.
28 October 2010
Warning! Climate change is a fire hazard
Here’s some bad news. Wildfires triggered by heat waves – like those that swept through Russia this summer – could dominate the coming century. Research by NASA’s Dr Olga Pechony and Dr Drew Shindell suggests hotter weather could take over from people as the controlling force behind the world’s blazes. Firefighters and governments may need to adapt.
26 September 2010
Good news about climate change… for oil rig operators
We’re used to hearing how climate change will lead to wilder weather like this summer’s devastating Pakistan floods or Russia’s record heat wave. So here’s a rare surprise from a recent paper in Nature: Our results provide a rare example of a climate change effect in which a type of extreme weather is likely to decrease, rather than increase Sounds like good news. But, unfortunately, the main beneficiaries would be… North …
21 September 2010
Tiny plants and hurricanes: a question
Anne Jefferson (@highlyanne) who blogs at Highly Allochthonous had a question about my recent blogpost “Can tiny marine plants steer some of the world’s biggest storms?“, which reviewed a paper published in the academic journal Geophysical Research Letters.
19 September 2010
Can tiny marine plants steer some of the world's biggest storms?
Phytoplankton – microscopic marine plants – may be small, but they could have a big impact on the routes hurricanes take across the North Pacific. Incredible to think plants less than five millimetres across could change the paths of storms perhaps 500km wide, but the phytoplanktons’ secret is their vast numbers.
12 September 2010
Why was last winter so cold? And is this a problem for climate change?
The winter of 2009/2010 was unusually cold across most of the Northern Hemisphere, leading to deaths and traffic chaos. Newspapers told lurid tales of planes sliding off icy runways, home-going revellers found frozen to death, and heavy snow and icy roads trapping motorists in their cars all night – and that was just in Britain. Needless to say, some climate skeptics seized upon the record snowfalls and cold snaps as evidence …
