Fire is the most ubiquitous form of landscape disturbance, and has important effects on climate through the global carbon cycle and changing atmospheric chemistry. There has been a significant increase in large-scale wildfires in all regions of the world during the past decade. This has triggered an interest in knowing how fire has changed in […]
by Richard Harris All Things Considered, January 26, 2009 · Climate change is essentially irreversible, according to a sobering new scientific study. As carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise, the world will experience more and more long-term environmental disruption. The damage will persist even when, and if, emissions are brought under control, says study author […]
Death Rates Have Doubled, Researchers Find By Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post Staff Writer The death rates of trees in western U.S. forests have doubled over the past two to three decades, driven in large part by warmer temperatures and water scarcity linked to climate change, a new study spearheaded by the U.S. Geological Survey has […]
By Jasmin Melvin WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Sea levels on the United States’ mid-Atlantic coast are rising faster than the global average because of global warming, threatening the future of coastal communities, the Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday. Coastal waters from New York to North Carolina have crept up by an average of 2.4 to […]
Study estimates a million birds were lost on two key islands Lovelace, the rockhopper penguin that answers life’s questions in the animated film Happy Feet, probably would be just as stumped as the researchers who reported Friday that the population of his northern relatives has declined by 90 percent over the last 50 years. […]
Via Ocean Acidification: Increasing atmospheric CO2 is likely to cause a corresponding increase in oceanic acidity by lowering pH by 0.2-0.5 pH units by the end of the 21st century [Royal Society, 2005]. In light of increasing acidity, there are growing concerns about the future health of a variety of marine organisms, particularly shellfish, which […]
By Adrianne Appel BOSTON, Dec 31 (Tierramérica) – Warm ocean currents may have confused some 2,500 penguins from Argentina’s Patagonia region that washed up — dead and alive — on Brazil’s northern coast. About half the penguins that were found on Brazilian beaches in October were dead, and the others were starving and in very […]
WARMER temperatures and earlier melting of sea ice are causing polar bears to go hungry. The number of undernourished bears has tripled in a 20-year period. Seth Cherry of the University of Alberta, Canada, and colleagues monitored the health of polar bears in the ice-covered Beaufort Sea region of the Arctic during April and May […]
Via Climate Progress: Climate change is happening more rapidly than anyone though possible, the German government’s expert, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, warned in an interview. The threats posed by climate change are worse than those imagined by most governments, warned Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the scientist who heads the Potsdam Institute for Research on Global Warming Effects […]
The thawing of permafrost in northern latitudes, which greatly increases microbial decomposition of carbon compounds in soil, will dominate other effects of warming in the region and could become a major force promoting the release of carbon dioxide and thus further warming, according to a new assessment in the September 2008 issue of BioScience. The […]
