The Global Carbon Project’s recent analysis on current carbon dioxide emissions published in the latest issue of Nature Climate Change underscores the necessity for action in emission reduction. The commentary’s authors concluded that the rapid growth in fossil fuel emissions makes a global average temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) inevitable. It…
Polar Ice Melting Fast
A new study published in Science on 11/30/2012 shows that the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are losing more than three times as much ice each year as they were in the 1990s. The melting of ice, two thirds of which has occurred in Greenland, has raised sea levels by 11.1 millimeters since 1992. The study is the combined work…
Sea Levels Rising 60% Faster Than IPCC Projections
New research published yesterday, 11/28/2012, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, reports that sea levels are actually rising at a rate of 3.2 mm a year compared to the best estimate of 2 mm a year in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) fourth assessment report (AR4). The study’s focus was to analyze…
Ocean Acidification and Climate Change
A news item caught my interest recently – a National Public Radio (NPR) news segment of 11/23/2012 on whether shellfish can adapt to increasingly acidic oceans (NPR shellfish link). Because UN Climate Talks opened in Doha, Qatar today, I thought it would be an appropriate time to talk about ocean acidification trends. As noted by…
Alaska’s Continuing Clash of Resources
The Bristol Bay watershed in southwest Alaska is the site of an ongoing clash between mining and conservation interests. On the mining side is Northern Dynasty Minerals of British Columbia and Anglo American, an international corporation headquartered in London. Together these companies form the Pebble Partnership, and their proposed mine is known as the Pebble…
The Global Energy Map Is Changing
The 2012 edition of the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook (WEO) was released on 11/12/2012. The changes in the global energy map will alter outlooks on how various countries, regions and fuels interact in the global energy system in the foreseeable future. According to the WEO, North America leads the change in the…
Home Heating With Volcanic Heat
Volcanic heat from Icelandic volcanoes may end up heating British homes. The UK government has signed a memorandum of understanding with Iceland to further study this option. The project would be technically challenging. Electricity produced from the geothermal energy would go to the UK via an underwater cable that would be at least 620 miles…
Hurricane Sandy – A Predicted Event of Climate Change
Earlier this year, a peer-reviewed paper, Physically based assessment of hurricane surge threat under climate change, (PDF bypasses Nature’s paywall) was published in the journal Nature Climate Change. The authors predicted more frequent storm surges for New York City due to the changing climate. The abstract from the paper follows: Storm surges are responsible for…
Anthropocene: Is there a new human-based geological age?
Geologists are well known for separating the geologic time scale into many time units. The most recent time division, the Holocene, has now lasted about 11,700 years, during which time the climate has been fairly stable. However, at several recent geological meetings, geologists have discussed the premise that because human activity has so irrevocably changed…
U.S. Coal Exports
For those concerned about coal use and the environment, the U.S. Energy Administration recently released information on U.S. coal exports. A brief summary follows: “U.S. 2012 coal exports, supported by rising steam coal exports, are expected to break their previous record level of almost 113 million tons, set in 1981. Exports for the first half…
Climate Change – Northern Rockies
Last Friday (11/9/2012), the Northern Rockies Climate Change Workshop was held in Missoula, Montana. Researchers used data such as forest fire records, snow-depth logs, frost dates, spring run-off peaks, plant inventories, and wildlife surveys from the past century to obtain weather patterns. Penny Morgan, a fire ecologist, said “There’s strong evidence for changing climate that will…