By Michael Marshall19 June 2011 The UN is failing to accurately measure the global climate benefits of preserving forests. As well as providing homes for many species, trees store carbon dioxide that would otherwise warm the planet. With this in mind, the UN set up the REDD programme (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) […]
By PETER SALTER, Lincoln Journal Star 17 June 2011 […] This is the headwaters of the Missouri River — and the source this summer of so much Nebraska pain. But this isn’t where the flood begins. The flood begins higher up, at places like Dark Horse Lake in the Bitterroots, where another 2 inches of […]
By Ugo Bardi17 June 2011 […] Gaia herself, poor lady, might not emerge unscathed from the fight. She may be robust, but she is not eternal. Look at this graph [above], from a paper by Franck, Bounama and Von Bloh. As you see, the earth’s biosphere, Gaia, peaked with the start of the Phanerozoic age, […]
By Kim DeRose, kderose@support.ucla.edu 16 June 2011 Fluctuations in climate can drastically affect the habitability of marine ecosystems, according to a new study by UCLA scientists that examined the expansion and contraction of low-oxygen zones in the ocean. The UCLA research team, led by assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences Curtis Deutsch, used a specialized […]
By Ker Than14 June 2011 Hundreds of archaeological sites are under threat from a weeks-old, still raging wildfire in eastern Arizona. (See Arizona-fire pictures.) Since it began in late May, the so-called Wallow Fire—the biggest in Arizona’s history—has burned at least 733 square miles (1,900 square kilometers), and has now crossed the state line into […]
By Jeremy Lovell, E&E European correspondent13 June 2011 LONDON — One of the driest spring seasons on record in northern Europe has sucked soils dry and sharply reduced river levels to the point that governments are starting to fear crop losses and France, in particular, is bracing for blackouts as its river-cooled nuclear power plants […]
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer15 June 2011 WASHINGTON — The fires searing parts of the West are an eerie echo of the past, a frightening reminder of a once terrible danger that had been held largely at bay for decades. The number of large wildfires has been rising for roughly the past 25 […]
By COCO LIU of ClimateWire14 June 2011 SHANGHAI — It is an annual tradition for Chinese to race dragon boats at the end of each spring, but this year, the tradition has run aground. Many streams and lakes along the Yangtze River have almost dried up. The world’s third-largest river — stretching from the Himalayas […]
By Chip Ward 16 June 2011 Arizona is burning. Texas, too. New Mexico is next. If you need a grim reminder that an already arid West is burning up and blowing away, here it is. As I write this, more than 700 square miles of Arizona and more than 4,300 square miles of Texas have […]
Predicted patterns of Indus flows above Tarbela with changes in snow-melt patterns and volume under climate change (World Bank Pakistan Country Water Assistance Strategy, 2005, quoting Rees and Collins, 2006) Forward predictions, as shown in the graph, should see a mid-term increase in annual average runoff (consistent with mass balance) and/or an increase in groundwater […]
