By Monte Morin12 February 2013 (Los Angeles Times) – Ancient plant and animal matter trapped within Arctic permafrost can be converted rapidly into climate-warming carbon dioxide when melted and exposed to sunlight, according to a new study. In a report published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of environmental […]
By Philip Bump8 February 2013 (Grist) – “We live in a world in which the climate is changing.” This statement from the EPA, the first line in its draft “Climate Change Adaptation Plan” [PDF] released today, is basic. But that the EPA is saying it is important. For two reasons. The first is that the […]
By dana198130 January 2013 A paper recently published in Global Environmental Change by Brysse, et al., (2012) examined a number of past predictions made by climate scientists, and found that that they have tended to be too conservative in their projections of the impacts of climate change. The authors thus suggest that climate scientists […]
By Brian Bienkowski, Environmental Health News18 January 2013 (Scientific American) – As United Nations delegates end their mercury treaty talks today, scientists warn that ongoing emissions are more of a threat to food webs than the mercury already in the environment. At the same time, climate change is likely to alter food webs and patterns […]
By Larry O’Hanlon 6 December 2012 This year’s record ice melts in Greenland and the Arctic ocean aren’t flukes, but confirmation that the Arctic is racing ahead into a new and unknown climate state, said top US climate scientists today. The announcement came with the release today of the 2012 Arctic Report Card, which calls […]
Doha, 27 November 2012 (UNEP) – Permafrost covering almost a quarter of the northern hemisphere contains 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon, twice that currently in the atmosphere, and could significantly amplify global warming should thawing accelerate as expected, according to a new report released today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Warming permafrost can also radically […]
By Damien Gayle26 November 2012 As much as 44 billion tons of nitrogen and 850 billion tons of carbon could be released into the environment as permafrost thaws over the next century, U.S. government experts warn. The release of carbon and nitrogen in permafrost could make global warming much worse and threaten delicate water systems […]
By Michael Marshall21 October 2012 If we have to hack the planet, we could at least do it with some finesse. Some of the problems with geoengineering could be fixed by targeting specific regions of the planet, rather than cooling everywhere equally. A rough modelling study published in Nature Climate Change offers a crude blueprint […]
Contact Kim Fulton-Bennett, kfb@mbari.org, (831) 775-1835 21 September 2012 Chasing gas bubbles in the Beaufort Sea In the remote, ice-shrouded Beaufort Sea, methane (the main component of natural gas) has been bubbling out of the seafloor for thousands of years. MBARI geologist Charlie Paull and his colleagues at the Geological Survey of Canada are trying […]
By Michael D. Lemonick 11 September 2012 The official end of the Arctic Ocean melt season could come any time now, but the sea ice that covers the North Polar region has already smashed the previous record low for end-of-summer ice area set in 2007. Back then, a combination of warm temperatures and ice-dispersing winds […]
