Archive | Climate Change

arctic_antarctic

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 […]

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fishingboat

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. […]

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bylot_island2

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 […]

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smell

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 […]

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earth_storms3

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 […]

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glacier_patagonia

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 […]

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endangered_species

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 […]

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sun_corridor

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 […]

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