Sea levels are rising faster than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted and new work presented at a meeting of The Geological Society of America suggests that previously ignored climate feedbacks, such as groundwater use, are to blame. The last official IPCC report in 2007 projected a global sea level rise of 0.2 […]
Archive | Climate Change
Food security emerging as major climate change issue
A new report looking into how climate change will affect food production and food security warns that nothing less than a “complete recalibration” of where specific crops are grown and livestock are raised will be required if the world is to be fed. The report was compiled by the Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security […]
Arctic ice shrinks, Antarctic grows
While the dramatic decline in Arctic sea ice cover over the last three decades has been well documented, NASA climatologists say something more complex is happening at the other end of the planet. Their study shows that from 1978 to 2010 the total extent of sea ice surrounding Antarctica in the Southern Ocean grew by […]
Smaller fish on the menu as oceans warm
Warmer and less-oxygenated waters could see many fish species reduce in size by up to 20 percent over the next few decades, according to computer modeling carried out by University of British Columbia (UBC) scientists. Their study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, included more than 600 species of fish from around the world. […]
Forests set to return to Canada’s extreme north
University of Montreal scientists studying the fossilized remains of an ancient forest inside the Arctic circle think that our warming climate could soon see the return of hickory, oak, spruce and willow to this hostile environment. The fossilized forest, located on Bylot Islandin Nunavut, is between 2.6 and 3 million years old according to paleomagnetic […]
Psychopaths revealed via smell test
Psychopathic tendencies appear to be associated with an impaired sense of smell, say Australian scientists who believe inefficient processing in the front part of the brain is to blame. Details of the experiments, conducted by Mehmet Mahmut and Richard Stevenson, from Macquarie University, appear in the journal Chemosensory Perception. Past studies have shown that people […]
Climatologists estimate extreme rainfall events in tropics
Thunderstorm complexes, flood-inducing monsoonsand wide-sweeping cyclones will all become more likely in the tropics; suggest MIT projections that show 10 percent heavier rainfall extremes for every 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature. The new estimates, appearing in the journal Nature Geoscience, are based on model simulations and decades of observations. Most of the possible consequences […]
South American glacial thinning sharply accelerates
Thinning of the largest icefields in the southern hemisphere (excluding Antarctica) has accelerated sharply, with a new study showing Patagonian glaciers are losing ice faster than ever before. The collaborative study, penned by scientists from Cornell University and the Center for Scientific Studies in Chile, appears in Geophysical Research Letters. Earlier studies determined that between […]
Biodiversity backflip on warming climate
The notion that the planet’s warming climate will result in widespread extinctions has been challenged by a new study that suggests that biodiversity on Earth generally increases as the planet warms. The study, by scientists from the Universities of York, Glasgow and Leeds, involved the analysis of fossil and geological records going back 540 million […]
Urbanization wild-card in warming estimates
Scientists studying the impact of urban expansion on climate have found that average summertime temperatures in one US area could increase by as much as 4 degrees Celsius over the next few decades. The findings, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, show that warming from urbanization can be as significant as projected warming due […]