Global Warming •

Cloud Patterns Change with Warming Climate

July 18, 2016 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

The changing cloud patterns may be another proof of global warming.

The scientists observe a change in cloud patterns that might be driven by climate change.

The satellite images that were collected over a period of 26 years showed that clouds are migrating toward the Earth’s poles, and they are also rising higher into the atmosphere.

The change in cloud patterns may indicate that the mid-latitude zones are expanding, which makes the tropics go beyond the 20 to 30 degrees latitude. The scenario was previously predicted by climate change models. However, there was no actual proof until now that the situation might be real and happening during our lifetime.

The fact that the clouds rise high into the atmosphere shows that the barrier is thicker than before, and the thermal radiation is kept on Earth instead of escaping out into space. The phenomenon could explain the change in climate and the continuous increase in temperatures all over the globe.

The scientists discovered that Earth is, therefore, maintaining 98% of the thermal radiation which comes with the sun rays.

The temperature rise also makes the clouds reach high altitudes, as the low layer becomes warm and the top layer becomes cold. The radiation is no longer traveling through the cloud blanket to warm it up.

One of the researchers that contributed to the study explains that this might be one of the clearest proofs that the climate change is altering our planet during our lifetime, and it is not something of the future but a modification that impacts our lives.

While other climate change models have predicted that such a change in the atmosphere might occur, clouds are very difficult to be studied. The present study would be the first one to confirm that the models were correct, and the warming temperatures indeed change our planet.

There are two factors that might have influenced the cloud patterns. One is linked to human activity, and the second one is connected to volcanic eruptions. Scientists have yet to discover which one is the most dangerous, and in what percentage our behavior may help the process to stop.

Clouds are very difficult to study as the satellites are designed to take measurements that would help the short-term weather predictions. Previous analysis of the data had multiple flaws that could have been due to orbit shifts and instrument degradation.

The present study made a special point of trying to correct these inadequacies, and the authors of the research collaborated with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Colorado State University to ensure the quality of their analysis.

The study raises a new question for scientists. As there is now no doubt that climate change is affecting our planet while we speak, the even more severe problem would be to measure the magnitude of these phenomena. The following research will deal with this issue.

Image Source: Pixabay

Sea Levels Are Rising Faster Than Any Time In Past 2800 Years

February 26, 2016 By Jason Leathers Leave a Comment

Sea levels will rise between 22 to 52 inches this century if global warming is not curbed.

A study just published in the Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences reveals that the Earth’s sea levels are rising faster than any time in past 2800 years. The research is the first global statistical analysis of several individual studies of the history of global sea level going back more than 2,500 years.

Rise in sea level is but one of the repercussions of global warming. First, shrinking land ice, such as mountain glaciers and polar ice sheets, is releasing water into the oceans. Second, as ocean temperatures rise, the warmer water expands. Trapped within a basin bounded by the continents, the water has nowhere to go but up.

In some parts of the world, especially low-lying river deltas, local land is sinking (known as subsidence), making sea levels that much higher. The consequences of sea level rise include threats to coastal communities and saltwater intrusion (saltwater intrudes into groundwater drinking supplies, contaminates irrigation supplies, or overruns agricultural fields).

However, our planet’s ocean levels have changed over time even before global warming became an alarming situation, but this fluctuation has been gradual such that the sea rose by only 3 inches in 27 centuries. This means that the increase would be around 1 inch per century.

Moreover, the figure spiralled up to 5.5 inches in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. Thereafter, the rise has been happening at unprecedentedly high rates. Given the current situations, the rise would be equivalent to a foot every 100 years. According to estimates, the sea will have risen by 52 inches by 2100.

The new findings show that the increase in the 20th century has been the fastest in 3,000 years. The study focused on historical records, modern testing, and statistics to evaluate the fluctuating sea levels throughout the years.

The lead author of this paper, Bob Kopp from Rutgers University, explains that the 20th century having known great use of fossil fuel witnessed a high rate of temperature increase which caused the sea level rise.

Kopp and his team analysed 24 coastlines, marshes, and archipelagos across the globe. They also examined 66 tide-gauge records that went as far back as 1700.

They found that sea levels were even decreasing before the Industrial revolution – that trend might have persisted if not for the human activities that ensued from then on. According to their results, sea levels will rise between 22 to 52 inches this century if global warming is not curbed; otherwise, the ocean level will only rise to a lesser extent.

I think we can definitely be confident that sea-level rise is going to continue to accelerate if there’s further warming, which inevitably there will be.

declared Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

There is no evidence yet of large numbers of coastal homes and developments disappearing into the surge due to the rising sea level.

However, there have been some reports of related flooding in low-lying areas, causing many nuisances and problems, such as standing salt water disrupting traffic in neighborhoods, dying lawns, polluted fresh water supplies and clogged drains.

Furthermore, another paper from Climate Central, argues that around 75% of tidal floods on the East Coast are the result of rising sea levels, and human activities. In a statement to The Times, its lead author, Dr. Benjamin H. Strauss, states that the problem is neither the tide nor the wind, but us.

Image Source: crainsnewyork.com.

Earth’s Day Has Lengthened Because Of Global Warming

December 16, 2015 By Germaine Hicks Leave a Comment

Global warming is slowing Earth’s rotation, according to a team of researchers at Harvard University who managed to solve a scientific mystery dating back twenty years.

In a paper – published December 11 in the journal Science Advances – researchers wrote that the melting glaciers will impact Earth’s rotation, slowing it.

Over the past 100 years, the duration of a day on planet Earth has lengthened by a millisecond, according to the researchers at Harvard. As the melted ice from the poles gets into the ocean, it shifts the weight of Earth’s water from the planet’s axis to the Ecuador. This causes the rotation of planet Earth to wobble and slow. The days get longer as Earth’s rotation slows, researchers say.

Jerry X. Mitrovica, lead author of the study and a Professor of Geophysics at Harvard University, said that when glaciers melt – which are tipically located at high latitudes – they redistribute all that water to lower latitudes. Earth’s rotation rate is thus slowed.

Because the glaciers will not melt symmetrically, and water will move more to some parts of the planet than others, Earth’s rotation will also wobble, Mitrovica explained.

Dr. Walter Heinrich Munk – a famous physical oceanographer (sometimes called the “Einstein of the oceans”) who holds the Secretary of the Navy/Chief of Naval Operations Oceanography Chair at Scripps Institution of Oceanography – suggested that the melting glaciers would change Earth’s rotation.

However, he predicted that the glacial melt would make the duration of Earth’s days shorter and not longer. But Dr. Munk did not account for the liquid core of the planet, which is important in slowing Earth’s rotation, and his estimate of sea level rise over the 20th century was 30 percent higher than the actual rise.

Mitrovica says that although the change is far from being significant at this point, it should not be overlooked, because it will only accelerate in time as the melting of the polar ice caps increases. Even if it is only an extra millisecond, it still adds further confirmation that global warming is truly impacting our planet, he added.

By 2100, scientists estimate that about 18 to 85 percent of the Earth’s glaciers will be lost, and Earth’s rotation will slow even more.

Image Source: humanevents

COP21 Paris Talks Might Bring the End of Fossil Fuel Subsidies

December 7, 2015 By Rebecca McGhee Leave a Comment

Views like this might become rare in the near future, because of the high cost of construction and maintenance these pumps require. Without government funding, these oil pumps might even be completely extinct.

The threat that the COP21 Paris talks might bring the end of fossil fuel subsidies is starting to loom over the head of big fossil fuel dependent companies. As the conference starts its second week since it began last Monday, November 30^th, it seems apparent that all the political parties involved want to cut greenhouse gas emissions completely.

If this goal will eventually be brought to fruition, the second-largest industry on the planet, the fossil fuel one, will find that its government subsidies have been officially cut. This is due to the fact that fossil fuels are the biggest greenhouse gas emitters on Earth, making their use very likely to be prohibited in the near future.

This news will most likely make companies either plan ahead and focus on cleaner energy sources or they might actually attempt to boycott the pledge signed at the COP21. This signed agreement expects the parties involved to basically remove their greenhouse gas emissions almost completely, thus making the fossil fuel market extremely unstable. An emphasis on renewable and clean energy production is also highly advisable.

Steps towards the cut of government subsidies have already been made back in 2009, with the signing of an agreement between 20 nations. This agreement focused on phasing out subsidies and during that year, over $150 billion have been saved.

These payments made by governments towards fossil fuel companies helps in keeping the regular gas prices fairly low so that normal everyday consumers will still be able to use their cars.

The fact that in the US, the oil and fossil fuel industry has experienced a massive boom in the past years, alongside an increased investment from the government, will likely make US oil companies rethink their policies. Movements from different parties in order to quell the growing oil industry have already been seen.

For example, states residing on the US East Coast have proposed a bill in order to stop the offshore drilling planned to take part in the Atlantic ocean due to the fear of potential environmental disasters that may occur if an oil spill happens.

Repercussions from the elimination of government subsidies, if it occurs at some point in the near future, will boost gas prices by a fairly large amount. This might even make people completely give up on using their cars for travel due to the high cost.

The question if the COP21 Paris talks might bring the end of fossil fuel subsidies will more than likely be answered in the coming week. If the 200 nations will reach a common agreement, this might bring the end of the fossil fuel market as we know it.

Image source:www.pixabay.com

Studies Revealed CO2 Discharged By Plants In Winter Contributes To Global Warming

November 22, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee 19 Comments

In the course of recent decades, agriculture has encountered an enormous move in crop production. We have essentially figured out how to create more crop for every section of land, making production more proficient. Josh Gray, Assistant Professor at Boston University says “We realize that crops have expanded in efficiency over this time period and they were in the opportune spot to be impacting this.”

On the opposite side of this, however, it also creates the impression that an increase in crop production has likewise changed the environment of the planet, as yields ingest Co2 in the plant respiration process of photosynthesis, amid the summer, and afterward discharge the Co2 they have stocked when they die in the winter. This presentation of winter Co2 influences the worldwide season changes.

Gray added, “We did the math and it turns out—amazing to me—they really represent a considerable measure of that increment. This is an immediate result of rigorous management of these ecosystems. The still prevailing impact with connection to environmental change is identified with this long haul rise in emissions. Just about everything is linked to atmosphere.”

Two studies have been directed to take in more about this wonder. It is both great and terrible that both of these studies, mostly reach accurately the same conclusion.

Ning Zeng, atmospheric science professor at the University of Maryland remarks that both of these studies essentially disputes the same thing, simply reaching at the same conclusion via two different mechanisms. “Essentially, we depend on, to a large degree, a model and climatic Co2 surveillance, and their study [Gray’s] dissected in more detail the particular agrarian change down to particular crop species Underlying our investigation, we did a similar thing. It’s extremely empowering.”

“Changes in the way we deal with the land can truly change the breathing of the biosphere,” Zeng added.

Volcano Eruptions Can Pause Global Warming

November 20, 2014 By Deborah Nielsen Leave a Comment

Volcanic eruptions from Iceland to Alaska play a vital role in the reduction of global warming.

A recent study demonstrated that small volcanic eruption expelled a large amount of sulfur dioxide gases into the top layer of Earth’s atmosphere. This particular action has decreased considerable amount of global warming in the last few decades.

Earlier, researchers proposed that minor outburst plays a less part in the global warming hiatus. The Global warming hiatus is a time period in which average surface temperatures experience a slight change. Generally, this phenomenon is known as global warming pause or global warming slow down.

However, latest ground, air and satellite measurements propose that the last volcanic eruption have averted almost twice the amount of solar radiation.

David Ridley, the lead author of the study informed that the impact of smaller volcanoes is a natural solution to the warming hiatus. Nowadays, these eruptions occur more regularly as compared to the previous decades.

The year 1998 is marked as the warmest year in the history. Nonetheless, current years are relatively warmer than the 1998 but still the unreasonable global warming descended to a great extent.

The decrease in temperature has really baffled climate scientists. A few researchers believed that the Atlantic and Southern Oceans absorbed the heat, which was responsible for global warming.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted this study. Later on, the report is printed in the American Geophysical Union

Global Warming Might Cause More Lightning Strikes

November 14, 2014 By Germaine Hicks 8 Comments

Recently, climate researchers conducted a new study stating, “If global warming continues, then the lightning strikes should be expected to become more recurrent. Within an extreme scenario where temps go up by 4 levels, the rise may be as much as 50%.”

David Romps, Climatology professor at Berkeley said, “Thunderstorms become more explosive with global warming. It is related to water vapor that is the fuel for explosive deep convection within the atmosphere. Global warming causes there to become more water vapor within the atmosphere, and when you’ve more fuel lying around, when you get explosion, it can go big time.”

Romps and the co-workers make their conjecture on the way forward of lightening by considering a factor referred to as CAPE – convective available potential energy – that is measured through the radiosonde balloons usually released over the USA to watch the weather.

“CAPE is actually a way of measuring how potentially explosive the atmosphere is, that’s, how buoyant a parcel of air could be if you got it convecting, should you first got it to punch through overlying air into the free troposphere,” states Romps. “We hypothesized the product of precipitation and CAPE would predict lightning … I was amazed by how amazingly well that worked out.”

These techniques produced the following results;

Normally, the models conjectured an 11% rise in CAPE within the United States per degree Celsius increase in global average temperature by the end of the twenty-first century. Since the models envisage little average precipitation increase countrywide over this era, the product of CAPE and precipitation gives in regards to a 12 % increase in cloud-to-ground lightning strikes per degree within the neighboring United States, or perhaps a roughly 50 % increase by 2100 if Earth sees the expected 4-degree Celsius increase (7 levels Fahrenheit) in temperature.

Lots of people think that global temps can and really should be avoided from growing any more than 2 levels Celsius, in which scenario there’d simply be one fourth rise in lightning strikes. Others would explain that there’s really been no warming during the last 15 years and more, so maybe there won’t be much of it this century and lightning strikes will stay in their current level.

However, presuming Romps and the co-workers are right and you will see 50% more lightning around 2100, what would that mean?

Well, the present possibility of an individual being struck by lightning in the United States is one in 700,000 in a year: that’s 0.0000014. Growing this by 50% brings it up to roughly 0.000002.

The study is published in major boffinry mag Science.

U.N Report: Climate Change Dangers Are ‘Higher Than Ever’

November 2, 2014 By Rebecca McGhee 1 Comment

According to a report released by a United Nation Panel on Sunday, “Pollution and climate change due to human influence is ‘clear’, and the observed effects are ‘unprecedented.’”

The 116-page report prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the 5^th since 1990. The environmental scientists arrived at new conclusions by synthesizing the findings of the previous four reports. The last report was released in 2007.

The report concludes, “Economic and population growth have contributed to greenhouse emissions, which are ‘higher than ever,’ and caused the earth to warm.”

“The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen,” the report said, adding that this has caused extreme weather all over the world. “It is very likely that heat waves will occur more often and last longer, and that extreme precipitation events will become more intense and frequent in many regions.” The risks that these extreme weather conditions present affect a wide range of people but are most devastating to disadvantaged populations, the report said.

Moreover, the report has recommended to allocate finances to encourage people and governments to come up with new ideas to tackle climate change. Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice chairman of IPCC wrote on Twitter that ‘ordinary people’ can make choices that reduce climate change, ‘but lawmakers have liability to facilitate.’

“Global Warming by the end of the 21^st century, even with adaptation will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally,” the report warned.

John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of State said Sunday in response to the report, “We can’t prevent such a massive disaster if we don’t notice this kind of hard science. The longer we are stuck in a debate over ideology and politics, the more the costs of inaction grow and grow.”

Fracking Won’t Stem Global Warming Scientists Say

October 15, 2014 By Deborah Nielsen 2 Comments

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The use of natural gas from fracking isn’t going to slow climate change say scientists in a new study just released.

It was thought that the increased use of natural gas from the fracking process would slow down climate change but the scenarios say otherwise. Figures pointing to the probability of the use of gas rising as high a much as 170% by 2050 would lead to a 2% decrease to an 11% leap in carbon emissions. The results were published in the journal Nature.

Another concern is that cheaper gas might shove cleaner energy sources to the side.

Nico Bauer, a co-author of the study and from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research stated that the hopes of natural gas helping in the reduction of global warming due to technical superiority to fules like coal are wrong due to market effects dominating.

Thanks to the techniques of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing aka fracking, the access to new supplies of natural gas from shale formations has made the U.S. The now world’s largest natural gas producer. Natural gas is cleaner than burning coal.

The researchers, international in scope, used computer models which all corroborated the data. Five teams of researchers gathered this information using their various simulations.

Since they claim the increased use of natural gas won’t reduce the amounts of greenhouse gasses, it’s time for science and industry and government to come up with another set of plans.

The other concerns are with solar, wind, and other clean energy producing technologies. Each has grown multi-fold over the past few years generating new revenue as well as jobs.

With cheap and plentiful gas about it could change the face of many industries. Experts in finance and related issues have their own conclusions which aren’t in that much conflict with the results of this latest study.

It will take these experts, all of them to pool their research resources together to get a plan that meets the present challenge and that of challenges ahead before it’s too late.

Antarctic Ice Reaches The Peak Level, Is Global Warming The Only Reason?

October 10, 2014 By Brian Galloway 1 Comment

After breaking all earlier records since 1970, the level of sea ice in Antarctic region has crossed the range of 7.70 million square miles on 20th September this year. The global warming is being blamed for the shift of sea ice from Arctic to Antarctic. It points out towards the face saving of global warming because scientists suggest that climate change still has an active role in this matter.

Scientists from NASA- National Aeronautics & Space Administration also attempted to explain the phenomenon of this shifting of poles. According to the statement of Claire Parkinson who is a lead researcher at U.S space agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the overall level of sea ice is decreasing but it cannot imply at the same extent to all the sea water ice throughout the world in the same way of global warming.

Parkinson stated, “The Antarctic sea ice is one of those areas where things have not gone entirely as expected. It’s really not surprising to people in the climate field that not every location on the face of Earth is acting as expected – it would be amazing if everything did”.

Walt Meier who is also a scientist at Goddard also suggested blamed warming climate for the changes which are occurring in weather of different places throughout the world. Therefore the increasing of the sea ice level can be associated to the cold air on the oceans which stimulates the process of freezing of sea water which results in rising levels of the sea ice.

Therefore all apparent conditions of increasing sea ice indicate the involvement of other factors rather than blaming only global warming. Meier also thinks that there are no natural barriers around the ice in Antarctica. They are only divided for our convenience as the divisions are based on geometry and geography only. The frozen sea water covers a large area around continents. Due to the availability of large space, the sea ice is expanding in presence of favorable conditions without any constraints.

According to NSIDC-National Snow and Ice Data center also blamed wind patterns for the rapid ice growth in Antarctica because they think those areas exhibit upward trend in ice extent. The melted ice also decreases water density which stimulates ice formation.

According to their statement, “While the change in saltiness is too small to significantly affect the freezing temperature, the increase in slightly less dense water surrounding Antarctica inhibits mixing, creating conditions that favor ice growth”.

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