Global Warming & Climate Change: The Phenomenon

[crunchy5]

Is it just me or is it odd that the standard tv news ,and I include sky and news 24, don't seem to be covering the early season tornadoes that in the past day or two have killed at least 27 in the US or the huge multi country floods in Europe. :? :?:

 

[Peripart]

Nice, well-argued article here from Sunday Telegraph, 9/4/06. Of course, since it tries to counter the worldwide hysteria on the subject and dares to suggest that any climate change which is occurring may not be man-made, and may instead be part of a greater cycle of events, many will choose not to read it.

Consider the simple fact, drawn from the official temperature records of the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, that for the years 1998-2005 global average temperature did not increase (there was actually a slight decrease, though not at a rate that differs significantly from zero).

Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society's continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say "how silly to judge climate change over such a short period". Yet in the next breath, the same person will assure you that the 28-year-long period of warming which occurred between 1970 and 1998 constitutes a dangerous (and man-made) warming. Tosh. Our devotee will also pass by the curious additional facts that a period of similar warming occurred between 1918 and 1940, well prior to the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1965, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate.

Does something not strike you as odd here? That industrial carbon dioxide is not the primary cause of earth's recent decadal-scale temperature changes doesn't seem at all odd to many thousands of independent scientists. They have long appreciated - ever since the early 1990s, when the global warming bandwagon first started to roll behind the gravy train of the UN Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - that such short-term climate fluctuations are chiefly of natural origin. Yet the public appears to be largely convinced otherwise. How is this possible?

He doesn't sound like a nutter, so what's really going on here?

 

[crunchy5]

Nice, well-argued article here from Sunday Telegraph, 9/4/06. Of course, since it tries to counter the worldwide hysteria on the subject and dares to suggest that any climate change which is occurring may not be man-made, and may instead be part of a greater cycle of events, many will choose not to read it.
here?

Here's what is billed as a response to that article, which I read and was very interested by.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2006/04 ... ousand.php

And here's something else that will interest folk


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... rming.html

 

[crunchy5]

New lovelock pronouncement from the indy

http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserv ... ethod=full

quote

Lovelock: The Point of No Return is Behind Us

Environment in crisis: 'We are past the point of no return'



Thirty years ago, the scientist James Lovelock worked out that the Earth possessed a planetary-scale control system which kept the environment fit for life. He called it Gaia, and the theory has become widely accepted. Now, he believes mankind's abuse of the environment is making that mechanism work against us. His astonishing conclusion - that climate change is already insoluble, and life on Earth will never be the same again.



The Independent (U.K.) Jan. 16, 2006



The world has already passed the point of no return for climate change, and civilisation as we know it is now unlikely to survive, according to James Lovelock, the scientist and green guru who conceived the idea of Gaia - the Earth which keeps itself fit for life.



In a profoundly pessimistic new assessment, published in today's Independent, Professor Lovelock suggests that efforts to counter global warming cannot succeed, and that, in effect, it is already too late.

 

[ElishevaBarsabe]

Lovelock: The Point of No Return is Behind Us

Environment in crisis: 'We are past the point of no return'

Yeah. I watched "Dimming the Sun" last night, and, now, I'm depressed and not a bit terrified.
See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/about.html
and
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/dimming.html

One scientist gave us (that is, the human inhabitants of Earth) less than one decade to get the green-house effect under control -- but he wasn't all that convincing since it was somewhat obvious that he thought the point-of-no-return had been passed.

Frozen methane being released from the ocean is not one of the thoughts I needed to contemplate.

What do you think Summer 2006 is going to be like in Europe?

We've had unusual rain on the central California coast; now, we're having -- I don't what -- late spring? early summer? We'll have 71 degrees F today, April 18. By true summer, we'll be roasting. I've lived in the desert, and, let me tell you, the sky today is a desert sky.

Back in university, my then-BF had a book by someone who postulated that the entire solar system was set up as an intelligence test -- a pre-Matrix thinker, obviously. If there's any chance that that theory is true, maybe a chunk of comet really will hit on May 25th; maybe some unknown entity has its "finger" posed over the bird-flu-leaps-to-humans button; maybe some person will click with the math for warping space, and humans will leave here.

All I can hope for is that somewhere, some agency is working to undo this catastrophe.

I have to go to my part-time job that pays less than unemployment now. Right.

 

[austen27]

What do you think Summer 2006 is going to be like in Europe?

We have had a very late spring after a cold winter this year. For the past few years spring has been creeping earlier and earlier - perhapse this is some sort of natural compensation.

 

[crunchy5]

I've read in the Times that the Atlantic conveyor current is 25% weaker this year prob as a result of the fresh water flowing into the Arctic ocean and North Atlantic. In the English Midlands the trees are just about getting their leaves let alone blossom. Central Europe is having major flood problems already with much worse predicted when the Russian thaw really gets going. I haven't ventured out without a coat yet though perhaps today I could've

 

[ramonmercado]

Giant ozone hole may be forming over Tibet, experts warn


Ozone hole above the North Pole
Chinese scientists have warned a 2.5-million-square-kilometer (one-million-square-mile) ozone hole may be forming over the Tibetan plateau.

While it does not yet qualify as a regular ozone hole, like the ones over the two poles, the area has seen a dramatic drop in ozone density in recent years, the Xinhua news agency said on Thursday, citing China's Scientific Report journal.

The decrease in ozone over the plateau was caused by atmospheric air movements rather than the global greenhouse effect, Xinhua quoted the journal as saying.

"When low-ozone air currents in the lower layer enter the upper air layer, the overall ozone density is reduced."

Scientists have known about the thinning of the ozone density in the area at least since early this decade, but the report in the journal offers the most solid scientific evidence so far.

The article is based on comprehensive research and analysis of data from both ground monitoring and the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, a satellite-borne instrument used to measure global ozone levels.

Ozone, a molecule of oxygen, exists in a thin layer in the stratosphere, where it helps to filter out ultra-violet light from the sun. It was ravaged by chemicals such as those used as refrigerants and aerosol propellants in the 20th century.

Without the ozone layer, plant and human DNA can be damaged, causing destruction of crops and initiating skin cancer.

The Chinese findings came as a study published Thursday in the British journal Nature said optimism that the ozone layer may be restored within the next couple of decades was premature.

Recent assessments that suggest ozone erosion had now permanently stabilized fail to take into account the potential for volcanic eruptions, solar storms and other natural phenomena to distort the picture, the Nature report said.


http://www.physorg.com/printnews.php?newsid=65940791

 

[Rubyait]

[/b]No winner in future climate league

FLASH floods in the Mediterranean, more snow for north-eastern Europe and irregular weather patterns across eastern North America. That's the forecast for later this century, according to the most recent climate-change predictions.

Using the latest data from 20 global climate simulations, Filippo Giorgi of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, has calculated which parts of the world will have experienced the biggest swings in climate by the end of this century. Based on projected changes in precipitation, temperature and climate variability, he developed a climate-change index that he used to rank regions according to the severity of change they will experience.

The Mediterranean and north-eastern Europe came out top of the list of climate-change extremes (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2006GL025734). The Med can expect less rainfall overall but more variability in summer rain, making both droughts and flash floods more likely. North-eastern Europe looks set to have much more snow. Eastern North America was also high up on the list, with a variety of changes in different locations.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1 ... eague.html

 

[crunchy5]

A brand new desert

http://news.independent.co.uk/environme ... 362549.ece

Global warming is rapidly melting the ice-bound roof of the world, and turning it into desert, leading scientists have revealed.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences - the country's top scientific body - has announced that the glaciers of the Tibetan plateau are vanishing so fast that they will be reduced by 50 per cent every decade. Each year enough water permanently melts from them to fill the entire Yellow River.

They added that the vast environmental changes brought about by the process will increase droughts and sandstorms over the rest of the country, and devastate many of the world's greatest rivers, in what experts warn will be an "ecological catastrophe".

The plateau, says the academy, has a staggering 46,298 glaciers, covering almost 60,000 square miles. At an average height of 13,000 feet above sea level, they make up the largest area of ice outside the polar regions, nearly a sixth of the world's total.

The glaciers have been receding over the past four decades, as the world has gradually warmed up, but the process has now accelerated alarmingly. Average temperatures in Tibet have risen by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 20 years, causing the glaciers to shrink by 7 per cent a year, which means that they will halve every 10 years

 

[crunchy5]

And a brand new hole

http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read/11155

Giant ozone hole may be forming over Tibet, experts warn
Reader count for this story: 4646



BEIJING, May 4, 2006 (AFP) - Chinese scientists have warned a 2.5-million-square-kilometer (one-million-square-mile) ozone hole may be forming over the Tibetan plateau, state media reported Thursday.

While it does not yet qualify as a regular ozone hole, like the ones over the two poles, the area has seen a dramatic drop in ozone density in recent years, the Xinhua news agency said, citing China's Scientific Report journal.

The decrease in ozone over the plateau was caused by atmospheric air movements rather than the global greenhouse effect, Xinhua quoted the journal as saying.

"When low-ozone air currents in the lower layer enter the upper air layer, the overall ozone density is reduced."

Scientists have known about the thinning of the ozone density in the area at least since early this decade, but the report in the journal offers the most solid scientific evidence so far.

The article is based on comprehensive research and analysis of data from both ground monitoring and the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer, a satellite-borne instrument used to measure global ozone levels

 

[ramonmercado]

Web address: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 143818.htm

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: American Geophysical Union

Posted: May 15, 2006

Fabled Equatorial African Icecaps To Disappear

Fabled equatorial icecaps will disappear within two decades, because of global warming, a study British and Ugandan scientists has found. In a paper to be published 17 May in Geophysical Research Letters, they report results from the first survey in a decade of glaciers in the Rwenzori Mountains of East Africa. An increase in air temperature over the last four decades has contributed to a substantial reduction in glacial cover, they say.


Speke Glacier bounded by steep scarps within the Rwenzori Mountains National Park (Uganda) in June 2003. (Photo: Richard Taylor / Department of Geography, University College London)The Rwenzori Mountains--also known as the Mountains of the Moon--straddle the border between the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Uganda. They are home to one of four remaining tropical ice fields outside of the Andes and are renowned for their spectacular and rare flora and fauna. The mountains' legendary status was set during the second century, when the Greek geographer Ptolemy made a seemingly preposterous but ultimately accurate statement about snow-capped mountains at the equator in Africa: "The Mountains of the Moon whose snows feed the lakes, sources of the Nile."

The glaciers were first surveyed a century ago when glacial cover over the entire range was estimated to be 6.5 square kilometers [2.5 square miles]. Recent field surveys and satellite mapping of glaciers conducted by researchers from University College London, Uganda's Makerere University, and the Ugandan Water Resources Management Department show that some glaciers are receding tens of metres [yards] each year and that the area covered by glaciers halved between 1987 and 2003. With less than one square kilometer [half a square mile] of glacier ice remaining, the researchers expect these glaciers to disappear within the next twenty years.

Richard Taylor of the University College London Department of Geography, who led the study, says: "Recession of these tropical glaciers sends an unambiguous message of a changing climate in this region of the tropics. Considerable scientific debate exists, however, as to whether changes in temperature or precipitation are responsible for the shrinking of glaciers in the East African Highlands that also include Kilimanjaro [in Tanzania] and Mount Kenya." Taylor and his colleagues found that in the Rwenzori Mountains since the 1960s, there are clear trends toward increased air temperature without significant changes in precipitation.

A key focus of the research is the impact of climate change on water resources in Africa. Glacial recession in Rwenzori Mountains is not expected to affect alpine river flow, the scientists say, due to the small size of the remaining glaciers. It remains unclear, however, how the projected loss of the glaciers will affect tourism and local traditional belief systems that are based upon the snow and ice, known locally as "Nzururu."

"Considering the continent's negligible contribution to global greenhouse-gas emissions, it is a terrible irony that Africa, according to current predictions, will be most affected by climate change," added Taylor. "Furthermore, the rise in air temperature is consistent with other regional studies that show how dramatic increases in malaria in the East African Highlands may arise, in part, from warmer temperatures, as mosquitoes are able to colonize previously inhospitable highland areas."

The research was funded by The Royal Geographical Society and The Royal Society.

 

[Rubyait]

A good source of information...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/clima ... haos.shtml

 

[Cavynaut]

Did anyone watch the Attenborough programme this evening?

The graph at the end which showed how carbon emissions closely matched the rise in temperature, while natural variations wandered away from the rise, was truly terrifying. I'm not much of a scientist, but the whole thing left me convinced that the current anomalies are not the result of natural variations, but are man made.

I think the case has been all but proven. Dot the 'i's and cross the 't's. We're in uncharted waters.....and that could be taken literally. :cry:

 

[Rubyait]

Yes it was very interesting. I have been very cautious not to make my mind up regarding the level of impact Humans have on the global enviroment but its looking more and more likely that not only we have an impact (this is pretty obvious) but the level of disruption to the natural enviroment seems to grow the more we know. We all knew that we change the enviroment around us but to throw the natural cycle off so much is frankly terrifying.

London looks to count its carbon

London could soon have a network of scientific stations to monitor the great city's carbon "footprint".

The system would deploy instruments to track flows of gases such as carbon dioxide to get an idea of the capital's true contribution to climate change.

The proposal comes from researchers at King's College London.

The project's data could be used to guide future development decisions, ensuring London's carbon footprint is kept as small as possible.

"We know that cities are a major source of carbon but we don't understand the detail; there are very few studies," said KCL Professor Sue Grimmond.

Those that have been done in places such as Tokyo, Rome, Marseille and Copenhagen, show - not unexpectedly - that downtown areas produce large amounts of carbon, especially in winter months and in drive times when the roads are full of vehicles pumping out CO2.

Less well understood are the carbon contributions of the leafy suburbs of cities.

Professor Grimmond has been working on a project known as the Baltimore Ecosystem Study. It is a model for the type of monitoring she would now like to repeat in London.

Tree priority

In the Cub Hill district of the US city, instruments have been mounted on a 45m-high tower. They measure the movement of air and sample its concentration of carbon dioxide.

Three years of data show how the carbon footprint of this heavily treed, residential area varies through the year. In winter months, it is a source of carbon; but in summer months the large numbers of plants in its gardens and park areas actually take enough CO2 out of the atmosphere to make Cub Hill a "sink" for carbon.

Nonetheless, overall, the Baltimore suburb is a net contributor. And for Grimmond, this has lessons for city planners.

"As we put in new residential developments or new estates, if there is any way to preserve trees we should be trying to do it; and we should be encouraging people who have gardens to grow trees because they will sequester carbon," she said.

"Today, about 50% of the world's population live in urban areas. These areas only account for 2% of the Earth's surface but they are the major sources of carbon dioxide. We're expecting these urban areas to increase so that obviously has significant implications for CO2 sources."

Professor Grimmond was detailing her Baltimore work here at the American Geophysical Union Joint Assembly.

She told the BBC she now intended to set up similar experiments in London, probably at first instance in a central location close to KCL.

She envisages the capital eventually having an urban atmospheric observatory, which would link a network of monitoring sites to look at a range of environmental indicators.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5014770.stm

 

[Anonymous]

I was reading in the latest new scientist on the way to work and it was saying how climate change would cause more volcanic activity. Page 32 if I recall correctly (I left it at work).



Link here but I think you will need member access to read it all

Climate change: Tearing the Earth apart?
New Scientist 27 May 2006


.... The climate interacts with the Earth's crust via the changing mass of water and ice that is shifted around the planet. The pressure of water and ice on the crust is considerable: 1 cubic metre of water weighs 1 tonne, while the same volume of ice weighs slightly less, up to 0.9 tonnes. With this in mind, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the loading and unloading of the Earth's crust by ice or water can trigger seismic and volcanic activity and even landslides. Dumping the weight of a kilometre-thick ice sheet onto a continent or removing a deep column of water from the ocean floor will inevitably affect the stresses and strains on the underlying rock.

I wont post the whole article as I am sure NewScientist wouldnt approve and might cancel my access to their site.


My understanding is that greater volcanic activity could cool the earth if it pumped small particles of dust into the atmosphere blocking out the sun. This would cool us down but possibly ruin crops worldwide therefore starving millions of humans (natures revenge). However if the volcanic dust particles were too large they would have the opposite effect and trap the heat in.

Either way what humans have done could well result in the deaths of millions (with any luck billions) of humans.

 

[crunchy5]

That makes common sense about the weight distribution, and I sort of agree with your end sentiment except I can easily think of a couple of hundred folk I would want to survive, definitely me my sons their mother and my girl friend and I bet every other mofo on this sick little planet feels exactly the same. :?

 

[Cavynaut]

Yeah, the melting of the ice sheets would cause isostatic uplift which would surely result in some seismic stress.

One interesting point that the Attenborough programme brought to mind was the fact that water expands as it becomes warmer. Sounds daft, but I hadn't considered that before...I mean, I knew it as a physical fact, but hadn't taken it into consideration when it came to the global warming question.

 

[WhistlingJack]

Mission to target highest clouds

By Jonathan Amos

BBC News science reporter, in Baltimore

A Nasa satellite mission will be launched this year to study the highest and most mysterious clouds on Earth.

Noctilucent, or "night-shining", clouds appear as thin bands in twilight skies, some 80km (50miles) above the surface.

Recent records suggest they have become brighter, more frequent and are being seen at lower latitudes than usual.

Scientists cannot say for sure but they suspect human activity may be altering the conditions in the mesosphere that drive the clouds' formation.

"Noctilucent clouds were first seen in 1885 by a British amateur astronomer, Robert Leslie," explains James Russell from Hampton University, Virginia, US.

"They're very beautiful. They have distinctive features - bands, and ripples we call billows - and form right on the edge of space."

Russell is the principal investigator on the AIM (Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere) spacecraft, which will be lofted to 600km (370 miles) to make a detailed study of the clouds.

The 195kg (430lb) satellite will be put in space by a Pegasus rocket launched from beneath the wing of an aircraft.

AIM's three instruments will investigate the recipe needed to make the clouds - cold temperatures, the presence of water vapour, and small dust particles around which the water can condense and freeze out to create ice crystals.

Scientists think most of the dust comes not from below but from above - from space. It is extremely hard for dust in the lower atmosphere to be pulled so high, while meteoritic dust is known to be settling onto the planet all the time as rocky space debris falls to Earth.

If this has stayed reasonably stable over time, then the explanation for the observed changes in the occurrence and properties of the clouds will have to be sought in the satellite's temperature and water/ice data.

The mesosphere is already very cold, down to about -125C and more, but researchers say it is getting even colder.

Although the extra carbon dioxide (CO2) put into the atmosphere by human activities has warmed the air near the Earth's surface, it is thought to have had the opposite effect in the middle and upper atmosphere by radiating heat more efficiently into space.

"In addition to CO2, methane has been increasing in the atmosphere," added Dr Russell. "Once methane makes it into the high atmosphere, the sun breaks down the molecule and forms water - so, that's another source for water vapour in addition to the water vapour coming from below.

"These are all likely causes for the changes we are seeing. Our mission will collect the data that can be put into the models to help us get to sound conclusions about what is really going on."

AIM is a US space agency Small Explorer mission. It has a number of partner organisations, including the British Antarctic Survey.

James Russell gave details of the mission here at the American Geophysical Union Joint Assembly.


[email protected]

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2006/05/26 17:48:34 GMT

© BBC MMVI

 

[Cavynaut]

Hopefully mother nature will sort that out for us. If she does not bother I am sure we will do it to ourselves at some point. Its just a shame that so many other species that do no harm to the planet would be wiped out in the process.

"C'mon bird flu find some human flu to swap RNA with and make it snappy"

Thing is, we're not actually seperate from 'mother nature' are we? Whether you like it or not, we are the pinnacle of the evolutionary process.

Drawing a false distinction between the human race and the rest of the biosphere is at the root of the problem.

 

[crunchy5]

Looks like it could get windy out.

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnatu ... nsity.html

Kerry Emanuel sparked a debate among his colleagues last year when he published a paper that linked global warming to the trend of increasingly stronger Atlantic Ocean hurricanes observed in recent decades.

In a study to be published soon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology climatologist will make another bold claim: The cycling of hurricane activity from high to low, which some scientists have attributed to a natural cycle in global weather patterns, is in fact caused by the rise and fall of pollution released by humans.

Furthermore, Emanuel, along with Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, contend that the microscopic aerosol particles, which reflect sunlight and cool the atmosphere, have been masking the effect of global warming on Atlantic Ocean hurricanes for several decades. The researchers say that it is only in recent decades, as aerosol emissions from North America and Europe have declined due to clean air standards, that the full impact of greenhouse gas emissions on hurricane strength has been realized.

Meanwhile, other new research by Purdue University scientists supports Emanuel’s original finding and extends it to the entire globe.

Together, the two new studies suggest that hurricanes, known as cyclones elsewhere, are getting stronger all over the planet and that humans play a role in the change.

Stronger cyclones worldwide

Research done by Matthew Huber and Ryan Sriver at Purdue University in Indiana independently verifies and expands upon Emanuel’s 2005 study, which showed that hurricanes in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans had increased in duration and intensity by about 50 percent since the 1970s. Emanuel linked the trend to rising sea surface temperatures, or SSTs, caused in part by global warming.

There's more after that and good links throughout.

 

[Anonymous]

I wonder if this relates in any way to the weakening of the earth's magnetic field?

 

[ElishevaBarsabe]

While temperatures have since cooled in some parts of the country, California is bracing itself for more hot weather this week.

Forecasters predicted on Monday high temperatures in central and Northern California of up to 44C (111F).


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5209276.stm

California is big and its climate varies widely. At the central coast here, we're having high temperatures in the 70's and lows in the 60's, plus a great deal of fog (which is the reason for the low temperatures).

Nevertheless, I'm sure that global warming is real, and I'm more than a little terrified.

 

[bazizmaduno]

I'm running the BBC Climate Model program, and it's up to 2051.

It would appear that the temperature of Greenland is continually no longer below 0C.

There's been masses of storms raging throughout the equatorial region for the last few years now. I can't tell if the Atlantic Conveyor/Gulf Stream has stopped, but there seems to be a persistent high pressure zone over the mid-North Atlantic.

I know each model has a slightly different set of parameters, but... :shock:

ps - must get some mud to wallow in!

 

[Rubyait]

Paintings reveal pollution clues

Monet's paintings could shed light on pollution in London at the turn of the 20th Century, say scientists.
University of Birmingham researchers have pinpointed the dates and times of depicted scenes by analysing the position of the Sun in the sky.

The research also revealed the French painter's vantage point: a second floor terrace at St Thomas's Hospital.

The paintings give an accurate record of Victorian London's urban atmosphere, they write in a Royal Society journal.

Dr John Thornes, from the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, said they had demonstrated that Monet's paintings contain accurate quantitative information.

"We are confident that these paintings show an accurate visual record of the urban atmosphere of Victorian London," he said.

Great fogs

Monet is known for his series of impressionist paintings showing the London skyline obscured by smog.

London's "great fogs" reached a peak in the late 1880s, then gradually declined, but very little is known about the nature and causes of air pollution at the time.

The great French painter made three trips to London in the autumn of 1899 and the early months of 1900 and 1901 to paint his London series.

They were finished at his studio in Giverny, France, after his final trip, but it is not known whether the canvasses brought back from London were almost or partially complete and whether they were based on real-life observations.

The scientists studied the position of the Sun in Monet's series of paintings of the Houses of Parliament begun on his second visit in 1900.

The towers and spires of the Parliament skyline provided markers for working out the position of the Sun in the paintings, giving accurate dates and times.

These were then compared to historical records of the dates Monet was in London.

Atmospheric clues

"Monet's letters state that he observed the Sun on at least four separate occasions and these coincide with the main dates we have attributed to the paintings," said Dr Jacob Baker.

"We know that it would have been quite difficult to see the Sun due to cloud and pollution so Monet had to be very patient for the sun to appear.

"Using the information we have gleaned in this study, we can now go on to assess the information that Monet's paintings may provide on the atmospheric state and pollution of Victorian London."

They hope further detective work on Monet's famous paintings might yield clues to the scattering of light in the atmosphere and the particles that made up the fogs.

The research by the University of Birmingham pair is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

The Thames Below Westminster 1871 can be seen in the National Gallery's "Manet to Picasso" free exhibition, on display 22 Sept 2006 - 20 May 2007.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5256950.stm

 

[James_H]

Are those the ones where he did the same scene repeatedly, at different times of day?

 

[rynner2]

Greenland ice cap may be melting at triple speed
19:00 10 August 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Kelly Young

The world's second largest ice cap may be melting three times faster than indicated by previous measurements, according to newly released gravity data collected by satellites.

The Greenland Ice Sheet shrank at a rate of about 239 cubic kilometres per year from April 2002 to November 2005, a team from the University of Texas at Austin, US, found. In the last 18 months of the measurements, ice melting has appeared to accelerate, particularly in southeastern Greenland.

"This is a good study which confirms that indeed the Greenland ice sheet is losing a large amount of mass and that the mass loss is increasing with time," says Eric Rignot, from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, US, who led a separate study that reached a similar conclusion earlier in 2006 (See Greenland's glaciers are speeding to the ocean). His team used satellites to measure the velocity of glacier movement and calculate net ice loss.

Yet another technique, which uses a laser to measure the altitude of the surface, determined that the ice sheet was losing about 80 cubic kilometres of ice annually between 1997 and 2003. The newer measurements suggest the ice loss is three times that.

"Acceleration of ice mass loss over Greenland, if confirmed, would be consistent with proposed increased global warming in recent years, and would indicate additional polar ice sheet contributions to global sea level rise," write the University of Texas researchers in the journal Science.

Identical twins
The satellites that provided the new data are results the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) pair. These identical US and German satellites fly 220 kilometres from one another. They use a microwave ranging system and Global Positioning System to measure precisely the distance between one another. Tiny changes in that distance reflect changes in the Earth's gravity field, which in turn is a measure of the density of part of the Earth.

"The gravity data are spectacular in providing precise information about what is happening to the ice sheets," says NASA climatologist James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, US. "They provide the net effect of mass change, due to both melting and snowfall changes. It confirms our expectation that the warming climate will cause Greenland ice to shrink."

Based on the glaciology of the region, Rignot says he does not think that the north-eastern part of Greenland's ice cap has lost as much ice as the Texas team suggests - 74 cubic kilometres annually.

Other factors could account for the discrepancy, acknowledges Clark Wilson, one of the University of Texas team. For instance, scientists do not fully understand the ocean tides in the Arctic Ocean, and there are not a lot of weather stations to monitor air pressure there. GRACE only measures changes in gravity due to changing mass - it cannot tell if that results from changes in air, water, rock or ice.

So to find changes due to ice loss alone, the researchers have to subtract the estimated contribution of water and air. If that is not well known, it results in higher uncertainties in the interpretation.

"We're hoping as time goes on, we'll have improved tide models, improved atmospheric pressure estimates and also better ways to use the GRACE data themselves," Wilson told New Scientist.

Thwarted plans
The Greenland Ice Sheet holds about 2.85 million cubic kilometres of ice - 10% of the world's ice mass. If it all melted, it would raise the average sea level about 6.5 metres.

This is not GRACE's first measurement of an ice sheet. Another team at the University of Colorado, Boulder, US, similarly used the GRACE system to show that the Antarctic ice sheet was losing about 152 cubic kilometres annually from 2002 to 2005 (See Gravity reveals shrinking Antarctic ice).

"We should be making plans for the next generation of gravity satellites, but with the cutback in NASA funding for Earth science, this is not happening," says Hansen, who earlier in 2006 accused officials at NASA headquarters of trying to stop him from speaking out on greenhouse gas emissions (See Top climatologist accuses US of trying to gag him).

http://tinyurl.com/ml879

If I was living in London or any other low-lying city, I'd be pretty worried by this.

In fact, I'm worried anway, as I work in a shop just above sea level, and it has flooded before with big tides and adverse weather.

But at my age I may not live long enough to see real disaster scenarios develop. Bad luck for me if I do, because the old, sick and weak will be the first casualties in a civilization melt-down...

 

[rynner2]

I've just had a tiny foretaste of civilization meltdown - we had a power cut here lasting about an hour. No computer, no radio, no TV. Read a book, make a coffee..? No, no kettle. Do some housework? Vacuum cleaner won't work.

And power would be one of the first things to go if there were a catastophic sea-level rise, because many power stations are by coasts or river. Without power for the pumps, there'd be no running water in your homes, and sewage systems would also cease to work. Most of the railway system would grind to a halt too. Radio and TV broadcasting would fail, leaving people bereft of information about whatever measures were being taken to handle the increasing number of crises.

Modern container ships and supertankers can only be handled in specialised ports, but with these ports under water the vessels would be unable to dock, so much of world trade would grind to a halt.

Each problem would have knock-on effects, so a rapid rise in sea-level would be bad news for most people, even if they live in the unflooded areas.

 

[crunchy5]

And it gets worse Rynner check this out, it's all getting faster.


http://tinyurl.com/rgqty

The vast ice cap that covers Greenland nearly three miles thick is melting faster than ever before on record, and the pace is speeding year by year, according to global climate watchers gathering data from twin satellites that probe the effects of warming on the huge northern island.

The consequence is already evident in a small but ominous rise in sea levels around the world, a pace that is also accelerating, the scientists say.

According to the scientists' data, Greenland's ice is melting at a rate three times faster than it was only five years ago. The estimate of the melting trend that has been observed for nearly a decade comes from a University of Texas team monitoring a satellite mission that measures changes in the Earth's gravity over the entire Greenland ice cap as the ice melts and the water flows down into the Arctic ocean.

"We have only been watching the ice cap melt during a relatively short period," physicist Jianli Chen said Thursday, "but we are seeing the strongest evidence of it yet, and in the near future the pace of melting will accelerate even more."

The same satellites tracking Greenland's ice cap also are monitoring the melt rate of Antarctica's ice cover, and there too the melting is adding to the global rise in sea level, according to another team of scientists.

Next to Antarctica, Greenland is the largest reservoir of fresh water on Earth and holds about 10 percent of the world's supply. The increasing flow of fresh water -- most of it from glaciers melting on Greenland's eastern coast -- is already beginning to change the composition of the ocean's salt water currents flowing past Northwestern Europe, the scientists say

It carries on in the same vein.

 

[rynner2]

'More disasters' for warmer world

Rising temperatures will increase the risk of forest fires, droughts and flooding over the next two centuries, UK climate scientists have warned.
Even if harmful emissions were cut now, many parts of the world would face a greater risk of natural disasters, a team from Bristol University said.

The projections are based on data from more than 50 climate models looking at the impact of greenhouse gas emissions.

The study appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers gathered results from 52 computer simulations to calculate the risks from climate-induced changes to the world's key ecosystems.

They then grouped the results according to the amount of global warming: less than 2C (3.6F); 2-3C (3.6F-5.4F); and more than 3C (5.4F).

For each of the temperature ranges, the team assessed the probability of changes in forest cover, the frequency of wildfires and changes to freshwater supplies over the next 200 years.

'Dangerous climate change'

Marko Scholze, from the University of Bristol's Department of Earth Sciences, and the paper's lead author, said the findings revealed a direct link between rises in global temperature and damage to ecosystems.

"We show the steeply increasing risks, and increasingly large areas affected, associated with higher warming levels," he told BBC News.

"The United Nations says we should limit greenhouse gas emissions so we do not have dangerous climate change. So the question is 'what is dangerous climate change?'.

"In this paper we define the level we think is dangerous and see how likely it will come true."

Richard Betts, manager of Climate Impacts at the Met Office's Hadley Centre, welcomed the findings.

"This makes an important new contribution to the debate on the effects of climate change," he said.

"We already knew that we cannot rely on just one model, as different models give different answers.

"This work helps us go beyond that vague statement, as it shows how much the models agree on particular levels of impact and how much they disagree."

He said the research was an important first step towards quantifying the risks of damaging impacts associated with particular levels of global warming.

The findings showed areas that would experience the worst forest loss would include Eurasia, eastern China, Canada and the Amazon.

Areas of western Africa, southern Europe and eastern US states were at most risk from dwindling freshwater supplies and droughts as a result of rising temperatures.

The data also showed that any temperature increase of more than 3C (5.4F) could result in land "carbon sinks" releasing their stored carbon into the atmosphere, exacerbating the problem of global warming.

Dr Scholze hoped the collated data would answer some of the concerns among more sceptical members of the scientific community who questioned the accuracy of climatic modelling.

"That is exactly why we did this study," he said. "We used as many models as we could and did not rely on any one study.

"We looked at 52 simulations and the probabilities of dangerous climate change these models showed."

Dr Betts agreed: "Of course it is risky to make these projections when models are continuously being changed, but we do have to make decisions on climate change now so if we wait for the perfect model we will be too late.

"The models give the best encapsulation of current understanding of the climate system, and are the only way of assessing physically plausible futures."

Dr Scholze said he hoped the findings would be used in debates on dangerous climate change and the measures needed to avoid it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4791257.stm