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#Post#: 743--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: January 30, 2014, 6:13 pm
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HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lV8PI4R5nI4&feature=player_embedded
#Post#: 755--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: February 6, 2014, 10:26 pm
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[img width=640
height=280]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-060214232233.png[/img]
Exploring CRUTEM4 with Google Earth
Filed under: Climate Science Instrumental Record — group @
4 February 2014 -
See more at:
HTML http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2014/02/exploring-crutem4-with-google-earth/#sthash.KazZ5CWj.dpuf
#Post#: 802--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: February 26, 2014, 1:12 pm
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"False springs" lethal to vulnerable plants, animals
Why You Shouldn’t Hope for an Early Spring
Increasingly common false spring events are leaving crops and
plants vulnerable to subsequent freezes, creating a cascade of
consequences for ecosystems
www.ensia.com, Feb, 2014
February 10, 2014 — Observers in Massachusetts and Wisconsin
reported that flowering came earlier than it had since Henry
David Thoreau took note of when plants began to bloom near
Walden Pond in the 1850s or since Aldo Leopold observed
flowering times at “The Shack” in Sauk County inThe spring of
2012 was the earliest recorded across the United States since
1900. In many states, signs of spring arrived almost three to
four weeks earlier than expected. Unseasonable warmth prompted
unusually early blooms, particularly on fruiting trees in the
Northeast and Great Lakes regions. the 1930s and ’40s.
Then, in what has come to be recognized as a characteristic of
climate change — unusual variability — the exceptionally early
warm temperatures were followed abruptly by a hard freeze.
“We thought 2010 was weird. But 2012 was really weird,” says
Jake Weltzin, executive director of the USA National Phenology
Network.
Unusually early warming, known as “false spring,” is becoming
increasingly common as climate changes. Its effects are also
prompting increasing concern. For when warm temperatures awaken
dormant plants and animals prematurely, they can throw the
timing of seasonal events crucial to an entire ecological food
web off kilter. The results can cause devastating harm to both
wild and cultivated species. False spring events have caused
enormous losses in U.S. fruit crops, damaged large swaths of
forest and decimated sensitive California butterfly populations.
Distinct Trend
Naturalists and scientists, farmers and gardeners have long
taken note of when plants leaf out and bud each year — part of
the study of seasonal events known as phenology. Scientists and
more casual backyard observers alike have noted an ongoing shift
toward earlier springs across North America over the past 50 to
100 years. At the same time, a growing number of scientific
studies have documented the advancing emergence of buds, blooms
and hibernating animals.
Since the early 1900s, about two-thirds of the species studied
have shifted toward earlier spring blooming, breeding or
migrating. This is true for every major group of species
studied, including amphibians, birds, fish, invertebrates and
mammals as well as trees, nonwoody plants, corals and plankton.
These changes have been observed on every major continent and
ocean, according to Camille Parmesan, a professor at the
University of Texas at Austin, whose research focuses on the
biological impacts of climate change.
Early buds and blooms killed by a hard frost can mean failure to
flower and fruit for the rest of that year. :P :( The USA
National Phenology Network, which gathers leaf-out and bloom
data along with information about when species migrate and
reproduce from across the U.S., has helped confirm that the
advancing onset of spring and precipitous shifts between warm
and cold temperatures are part of ongoing trends. While the
network was officially established in the mid-2000s,
observations recorded by its contributing scientists and
volunteers date back to the 1950s. Some of the longest running
records, which chronicle first leaf growth of honeysuckle and
lilacs across the lower 48 states, show a noticeable shift
toward earlier dates since the 1980s. Like the temperatures
recorded as part of climate change research, the leaf-out dates
show great variability from year to year but the trend is
distinct — earlier warmer temperatures and earlier first buds
and blooms.
While occasional false springs are not new, what is new in
recent years is the combination of increasingly warmer springs
and extreme temperature swings, overall shorter times throughout
fall and winter of below-freezing temperatures, and the altered
precipitation patterns associated with global climate change.
The fall and winter warm spells in both 2010 and 2012, for
example, were longer than others. This phenomenon increases the
likelihood that plants will emerge from dormancy prematurely,
producing young leaves, buds and blooms. When unusually mild
temperatures and subsequent plant growth are followed by
freezing temperatures, early buds and blooms killed by a hard
frost can mean failure to flower and fruit for the rest of that
year. And, in addition to the acute impacts on fragile plant
parts, early warming can also cause problems by truncating the
winter cooling period many plant seeds need for proper
germination, plants need for budding and blooming, and
hibernating animals need to complete their yearly cycles in good
health.
Ripple Effect
The prospect of a freeze after a crop has leafed out, bloomed or
set fruit presents obvious problems for farmers. The 2007 false
spring, for example, hit agricultural crops and deciduous trees
in the U.S. Midwest to Southeast and Mid-Atlantic regions
particularly hard, causing crop damage — particularly to fruit
trees and berries — that prompted a request for a disaster
declaration in North Carolina. In 2012, losses in fruit tree
crops in Michigan due to the false spring bloom and freeze
cycles were estimated at half a billion dollars.
The timing of leaf and flower development has effects that
ripple throughout an ecosystem because these changes prompt the
flow of sap, nectar and nutrients within plants and so affect
the availability of shelter and sustenance for other organisms.
False spring can harm not only the plants that put forth early
sprouts, leaves or blooms, but other species and entire
ecosystems. The timing of leaf and flower development has
effects that ripple throughout an ecosystem because these
changes prompt the flow of sap, nectar and nutrients within
plants and so affect the availability of shelter and sustenance
for other organisms. This can have profound consequences,
particularly when species emerge from hibernation or during
migration.
Desynchronization of seasonal events has been reported around
the world, from the American Southeast to New England, and the
Rockies to the Tibetan Plateau and across Europe. Rocky Mountain
marmots have emerged to find the plants they rely on for food
buried beneath not yet fully melted snow. Butterflies in
California’s Sierra Nevada have wriggled out of their cocoons in
what seemed like spring warmth, only to be felled by the freeze
that followed.
Another disturbing effect of false spring is the damage it can
cause to plant and tree cover. If a false spring freeze
substantially reduces the success of trees’ summer leaf cover
across wide swaths of landscape as it did in the U.S. Southeast
in 2007, it can also reduce the amount of carbon and other
nutrients those trees can process. This can lead to impaired
soil health and also jeopardize the health of insects and other
organisms that rely on plants’ nutrient cycling. And depending
on which plants a false spring freeze affects, such events could
also alter the balance of under- and overstory plants, thus
introducing other potential ecosystem disruptions.
Anthony Barnosky, University of California, Berkeley professor
of integrative biology and author of Heatstroke: Nature in the
Age of Global Warming — a 2009 book that examines the effects of
climate change on various species in the wild — says when trying
to understand global warming’s implications, including those
related to the false spring phenomenon, it’s important to
consider how different affected species interact. “There are all
sorts of complexities we need to be looking at in more detail,”
he says.
Trying to Adjust
“Species’ primary response to climate change is to move around
the landscape and try to reclaim their climate space,” Barnosky
explains. In other words: they try to find conditions that
replicate those of the places where they had previously thrived.
Indeed, University of Texas at Austin’s Parmesan reported in
2013 that a summary of numerous research studies conducted
around the world over the past 10 years shows that since the
early 1900s, approximately half of all species studied have
shifted their ranges closer to the poles — between about 30 and
995 miles poleward — or upwards in altitude, as much as about
1,300 feet, seeking cooler temperatures.
From a food production standpoint, farmers around the world are
trying to adjust to the growing likelihood of false springs by
planting in ways that accommodate both early warming and
temperature and moisture extremes, says Sharon Muzli Gourdji,
postdoctoral fellow in energy and environment at Stanford
University. Varieties of wheat are being bred for heat tolerance
and other variables that come with climate change so they can
endure warming temperatures in the tropical regions of Asia,
Africa and South America as well as the challenges of both
warming and extreme variability in the Northern Hemisphere.
“Farmers are adapting,” says Parmesan.
Meanwhile, wild species are on the move in search of conditions
suitable for their entire life cycle under increasingly
unpredictable circumstances. But when success at a particular
life stage depends on a steady transition from one season’s
conditions to the next — a progression false spring disrupts —
that’s when many species are now beginning to encounter
difficulties. “The phenology issue could be a really big
problem,” says Barnosky.
The consensus among scientists studying climate change is that
the disruptions in what have been considered normal patterns of
seasonal temperature and precipitation set in motion by the
build-up of greenhouse gases are with us for some time to
come.According to Parmesan, we “don’t have any evidence yet of
any evolutionary changes of the kind that would suggest species
are adapting” to extreme temperature swings despite the fact
that some species may already be capable of dealing with such
extremes. Some species are responding to or accommodating these
changes, she explains, but that does not necessarily mean an
evolutionary adaptation. Weltzin, at the USA National Phenology
Network, uses the term “adjustment.”
The consensus among scientists studying climate change is that
the disruptions in what have been considered normal patterns of
seasonal temperature and precipitation set in motion by the
build-up of greenhouse gases are with us for some time to come.
Even if there were a precipitous decrease of such emissions
worldwide, what’s now in the atmosphere would continue to affect
global climate patterns for years to come. Given this reality,
early and false springs are also likely to become increasingly
familiar phenomena. So among scientists’ next steps are to learn
not only more about how species are responding to these events
but also how to predict them.
While predicting false springs can’t help wild species in the
same ways it can agriculture — or solve the root causes of the
problem — it may point the way to conservation efforts that
could help protect some vulnerable species. As Parmesan said of
farmers’ adaptive strategies, “It may be very important to get
that right.”
HTML http://ensia.com/features/why-you-shouldnt-hope-for-an-early-spring/
#Post#: 836--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: February 28, 2014, 7:03 pm
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Satellite data reveal the rapid darkening of the Arctic
Forty-five years after scientists hypothesized that global
warming would make Arctic Ocean surfaces darker, Scripps team
determines how much the planet’s albedo has diminished
Feb 17, 2014
The retreat of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean is diminishing
Earth’s albedo, or reflectivity, by an amount considerably
larger than previously estimated, :o according to researchers
at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego.
As the sea ice melts, its white reflective surface is replaced
by a relatively dark ocean surface. This diminishes the amount
of sunlight being reflected back to space, causing the Earth to
absorb an increasing amount of solar energy.
The Arctic has warmed by 2° C (3.6° F) since the 1970s. The
summer minimum Arctic sea ice extent has decreased by 40 percent
during the same time period. These factors have decreased the
region’s albedo.
Scripps graduate student Kristina Pistone and climate scientists
Ian Eisenman and Veerabhadran Ramanathan used satellite
measurements to calculate changes in the albedo of the Arctic
region associated with the changing sea ice cover. Albedo is
measured as a percentage. A perfectly black surface has an
albedo of zero percent and a perfectly white surface has an
albedo of 100 percent. The albedo of fresh snow is typically
between 80 and 90 percent whereas the albedo of the ocean
surface is less than 20 percent. Clouds and other factors also
influence the albedo of the Earth.
The researchers calculated that the albedo of the Arctic region
fell from 52 percent to 48 percent between 1979 and 2011.
“It’s fairly intuitive to expect that replacing white,
reflective sea ice with a dark ocean surface would increase the
amount of solar heating,” said Kristina Pistone. “We used actual
satellite measurements of both albedo and sea ice in the region
to verify this and to quantify how much extra heat the region
has absorbed due to the ice loss. It was quite encouraging to
see how well the two datasets – which come from two independent
satellite instruments – agreed with each other.”
The National Science Foundation-funded study appears in the
journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 45 years
after atmospheric scientists Mikhail Budyko and William Sellers
hypothesized that the Arctic would amplify global warming as sea
ice melted.
The Scripps study is the first to use direct satellite
measurements to assess the changes in albedo associated with
retreating sea ice. Previous studies have relied on computer
models. The Scripps team used NASA’s CERES satellite instruments
as well as observations of sea ice cover made with other
satellites.
The researchers found that the magnitude of surface darkening
has been two to three times as large as that found in previous
studies. They also compared their results to model simulations
to assess the capability of computer models to portray and
forecast albedo changes.
“Scientists have talked about Arctic melting and albedo decrease
for nearly 50 years,” said Ramanathan, a distinguished professor
of climate and atmospheric sciences who has previously conducted
similar research on the global dimming effects of aerosols.
“This is the first time this darkening effect has been
documented on the scale of the entire Arctic.”
“Based on our results, the albedo forcing from Arctic sea ice
retreat is quite large,” said Eisenman, an assistant professor
of climate dynamics. “Averaged over the entire globe, it’s
one-fourth as large as the direct radiative forcing from CO2
during the same period. This suggests that Arctic sea ice
retreat has been an important player in the global warming that
we’ve observed during recent decades. Although more work is
needed, a possible implication of these results is that the
amplifying feedback of Arctic sea ice changes on global warming
is larger than previously expected.”
News Category: News
Note to broadcast and cable producers: University of California,
San Diego provides an on-campus satellite uplink facility for
live or pre-recorded television interviews. Please phone or
email the media contact listed above to arrange an interview.
About Scripps Institution of Oceanography Scripps Institution of
Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, is one
of the oldest, largest, and most important centers for global
science research and education in the world. Now in its second
century of discovery, the scientific scope of the institution
has grown to include biological, physical, chemical, geological,
geophysical, and atmospheric studies of the earth as a system.
Hundreds of research programs covering a wide range of
scientific areas are under way today on every continent and in
every ocean. The institution has a staff of about 1,400 and
annual expenditures of approximately $170 million from federal,
state, and private sources. Scripps operates robotic networks
and one of the largest U.S. academic fleets with four
oceanographic research ships and one research platform for
worldwide exploration. Birch Aquarium at Scripps serves as the
interpretive center of the institution and showcases Scripps
research and a diverse array of marine life through exhibits and
programming for more than 425,000 visitors each year. Learn more
at scripps.ucsd.edu.
HTML https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news
#Post#: 837--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: February 28, 2014, 7:07 pm
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Research Highlight: Scripps and NOAA Researchers Take Flight to
Observe Atmospheric River
Precipitation provided partial relief to drought-stricken West
Feb 25, 2014
Nice graphic at link: 8)
HTML https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/research-highlight-scripps-and-noaa-researchers-take-flight-observe-atmospheric-river
#Post#: 841--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: March 1, 2014, 12:42 pm
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HTML http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/map-percentile-mntp/201401.gif
[quote]During January 2014, most of the world's land areas
experienced warmer-than-average temperatures, with the most
notable departures from the 1981–2010 average across Alaska,
western Canada, Greenland, Mongolia, southern Russia, and
northern China, where the departure from average was +3°C
(+5.4°F) or greater. Meanwhile, parts of southeastern Brazil and
central and southern Africa experienced record warmth with
temperature departures between 0.5°C to 1.5°C above the
1981–2010 average, contributing to the highest January Southern
Hemisphere land temperature departure on record at 1.13°C
(2.03°F) above the 20th century average. This was also the
warmest month for the Southern Hemisphere land since September
2013 when temperatures were 1.23°C (2.21°F) above the 20th
century average.
Some locations across the globe experienced departures that were
below the 1981–2010 average. These areas include the eastern
half of the contiguous U.S., central Canada, and most of
Scandinavia and Russia. The most notable cold anomalies were in
Russia, where in some areas the departure from average was 5°C
(9°F) below average. Overall, the Northern Hemisphere land
surface temperature was 1.17°C (2.11°F) above average—the
warmest January since 2007 and the fourth warmest since records
began in 1880.[/quote]
HTML http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/
#Post#: 842--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: March 1, 2014, 12:51 pm
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HTML http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/extremes/201401.gif
HTML http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/service/global/extremes/201401.gif
#Post#: 872--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: March 26, 2014, 9:30 pm
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HTML http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZt0OS12ty0&feature=player_embedded<br
/>
#Post#: 873--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: AGelbert Date: March 27, 2014, 12:44 am
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HTML https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMgOTQ7D_lk&feature=player_embedded
#Post#: 888--------------------------------------------------
Re: 🚩 Global Climate Chaos ☠️
By: guest16 Date: April 2, 2014, 4:02 pm
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Crisis of civilisation is a great documentary that offers a
holistic viewpoint to our predicament and because of that I
showed this to some family members.
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