Lake level products from the NASA/USDA/FAS. Topex/Poseidon (blue), Jason-1 (red), and Jason-2 (purple) radar altimeters. The lakes reside in the USA (Michigan), Argentina (Chiquita), Iran (Urmia), Tanzania (Rukwa), and China (Hulun). State of the Climate in 2009, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Climatic Data Center, as appearing in the June 2010 issue (Vol. 91) […]
Climate change is likely to expand and intensify “dead zones,” areas where bottom water is depleted of dissolved oxygen because of nitrogen pollution, threatening living things. More spring runoff and warmer coastal waters will increase the seasonal reduction in oxygen resulting from excess nitrogen from agriculture. Coastal dead zones in places such as the northern […]
By Timothy NoahPosted Friday, Sept. 3, 2010, at 3:06 PM ET In 1915, a statistician at the University of Wisconsin named Willford I. King published The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. The United States was displacing Great Britain as the world’s […]
By Marcia GoodrichSeptember 7, 2010 12:23 PM September 2, 2010 — Something has been eating Charlie Kerfoot’s doughnut, and all fingers point to a European mollusk about the size of a fat lima bean. No one knew about the doughnut in southern Lake Michigan, much less the mollusk, until Michigan Technological University biologist W. […]
The filling of Lake Mead (green) was initiated in 1935, and that of Lake Powell (blue) in 1963. In 1999, the lakes were nearly full, but by 2007, the lakes had lost nearly half of their storage water after the worst drought in 100 years. The Colorado River system supplies water to over 30 million […]
Palo Alto, CA—By integrating satellite mapping, airborne-laser technology, and ground-based plot surveys, scientists from the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, with colleagues from the World Wildlife Fund and in coordination with the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment (MINAM), have revealed the first high-resolution maps of carbon locked up in tropical forest vegetation and emitted […]
This paper explores how climate change has affected Vermont in recent decades using long-term datasets: specifically the impact on freeze dates, the length of the growing season, the frozen duration of its small lakes, and the onset of spring. The freeze period in Vermont has got shorter, and the growing season for frost-sensitive plants has […]
During the past 50 years, sea level has risen up to 8 inches or more along some coastal areas of the United States, and has fallen in other locations. The amount of relative sea-level rise experienced along different parts of the U.S. coast depends on the changes in elevation of the land that occur as […]
By Rhett A. Butler, www.mongabay.comAugust 31, 2010 Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon is down significantly since last year, according to preliminary estimates released by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and Imazon, a Brazil-based NGO that tracks forest loss and degradation across the Amazon. Analysis of NASA MODIS data by Imazon found some 1,488 […]
By David BielloSep 1, 2010 06:00 AM For decades, apocalyptic environmentalists (and others) have warned of humanity’s imminent doom, largely as a result of our unsustainable use of and impact upon the natural systems of the planet. After all, the most recent comprehensive assessment of so-called ecosystem services—benefits provided for free by the natural world, […]
