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Global Warming & Climate Change: The Phenomenon

A message from the melting slopes of Everest
The sons of Hillary and Tenzing speak out about climate change: "Believe us, it's a reality"
By Cahal Milmo and Sam Relph
Published: 06 July 2007

Fifty-four years after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to scale Everest, their sons have said the mountain is now so ravaged by climate change that they would no longer recognise it.

On the eve of the Live Earth concerts this weekend, Peter Hillary and Jamling Tenzing yesterday issued a timely warning that global warming is rapidly changing the face of the world's highest mountain and threatening the survival of billions of people who rely on its glaciers for drinking water.

The base camp where Sir Edmund and Norgay began their ascent is 40 metres lower than it was in 1953. The glacier on which it stands, and those around it, are melting at such a rate that scientists believe the mountain, whose Nepalese name, Qomolangma, means Mother of the World, could be barren rock by 2050.

Up to 40,000 Sherpas who live at the base of the Himalayas face devastation if vast new lakes formed by the melted ice burst and send a torrent of millions of tons of water down the slopes.

Mr Hillary, who has himself twice reached Everest's summit, said: "Climate change is happening. This is a fact. Base camp used to sit at 5,320 metres. This year it was at 5,280 metres because the ice is melting from the top and side. Base camp is sinking each year. For Sherpas living on Mount Everest this is something they can see every day but they can't do anything about it on their own."

The warning came as a survey revealed that most Britons remain unconvinced about the extent of climate change and that terrorism, crime, graffiti and even dog mess are more pressing issues for the UK. The Ipsos-Mori poll found that 56 per cent of people believe scientists are still debating whether human activity is contributing to climate change. In reality, there is virtual consensus that it is.

Just over half of people, 51 per cent, believe climate change will have little or no effect and more than one-third admitted they were taking no action to reduce their carbon emissions.

Speaking before the seven Live Earth concerts, which organisers hope will be a catalyst for action on global warming, Jamling Tenzing, who has also climbed Everest, said the mountain was serving as an early warning of the extent to which it is already changing the planet.

The glacier where Sir Edmund and Norgay pitched their base camp before eventually reaching the summit at 29,000ft on 29 May 1953 has retreated three miles in the past 20 years. Scientists believe that all glaciers in the Himalayas, which are between half a mile and more than three miles in length, will be reduced to small patches of ice within 50 years if trends continue.

Mr Tenzing said: "The glaciers have receded a great deal since my father's time. There are many things he wouldn't recognise today. The glacier on which base camp sits has melted to such a degree that it is now at a lower altitude. I think the whole face of the mountains is changing."

The glacial retreat presents a double peril for those who live in the Himalayas and the populations of India and China, where the water flowing from the mountains accounts for 40 per cent of the world's fresh water.

The rapid increase in the rate of glaciers melting - from 42 metres a year in the 40 years to 2001 to 74 metres a year in 2006 - has resulted in the formation of huge lakes in the space of a few years.

A United Nations study of the 9,000 glacial lakes in the Himalayas found that more than 200 are at risk of "outburst floods", unleashing thousands of cubic metres of water per second into an area where 40,000 people live. In 1985, Lake Dig Tsho in the Everest region released 10 million cubic metres of water in three hours. It caused a 10-metre-high wall of water which swept away a power station, bridges, farmland, houses, livestock and people up to 55 miles downstream. Scientists estimate that the most dangerous lakes today are up to 20 times bigger. One of those, Imja Tsho, did not exist 50 years ago and lies directly above the homes of 10,000 people.

The worst-case scenario according to Nepalese scientists is a cascade effect whereby one overflowing lake empties into another, starting a chain reaction which would kill thousands and wipe out agriculture for generations.

Peter Hillary said: "I've seen the result of glacial lakes bursting their banks and it's just catastrophic. It's like an atomic bomb has gone off. Everywhere is rubble. The floods of the past are unfortunately nothing compared with the size of what we are currently threatened with."

In the longer term, scientists believe the depletion of the glaciers will drastically reduce the flow of water into the nine major rivers fed by the Himalayan glaciers.

Defra recruits critic of Bush

An outspoken critic of President George Bush's approach to combating global warming has been appointed to advise the British Government on climate change.

Bob Watson was voted out of his job chairing the United Nations-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) five years ago after incurring the wrath of the Bush administration. He will take over as chief scientific adviser at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) in September. The appointment was approved by Gordon Brown.

His recruitment, a week after Mr Brown took over as Prime Minister, will be seen as further evidence the Government is trying to distance itself from Mr Bush. Last week, he caused consternation at the White House when he appointed Sir Mark Malloch Brown, a strong critic of US foreign policy, as minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations.

Dr Watson, a British-born expert on atmospheric pollution, advised former US President Bill Clinton on the environment and worked at the World Bank before becoming the IPCC's chairman. The US began manoeuvring to remove him shortly after President Bush's inauguration in 2001. A year later, he was replaced by Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian scientist.

Environmental groups uncovered a memo from the US oil corporation ExxonMobil, a major contributor to Mr Bush's election campaign, asking the White House to unseat Dr Watson because he had an "aggressive agenda". At the time, Dr Watson acknowledged the US government's intervention was an "important factor" in the campaign to oust him.

A Defra spokeswoman said: "He was the unanimous choice out of all the candidates."

Nigel Morris

http://environment.independent.co.uk/cl ... 739751.ece
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6276576.stm

DNA reveals Greenland's lush past
BBC News Online. 6 July 2007

Armies of insects once crawled through lush forests in a region of Greenland now covered by more than 2,000m of ice.

DNA extracted from ice cores shows that moths and butterflies were living in forests of spruce and pine in the area between 450,000 and 800,000 years ago.

Researchers writing in Science magazine say the specimens could represent the oldest pure DNA samples ever obtained.

The ice cores also suggest that the ice sheet is more resistant to warming than previously thought, the scientists say.

"We have shown for the first time that southern Greenland, which is currently hidden under more than 2km of ice, was once very different to the Greenland we see today," said Professor Eske Willerslev from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and one of the authors of the paper.

"What we've learned is that this part of the world was significantly warmer than most people thought," added Professor Martin Sharp from the University of Alberta, Canada, and a co-author of the Science paper.

Ice-locker

The ancient boreal forests were thought to cover southern Greenland during a period of increased global temperatures, known as an interglacial.

Temperatures at the time were probably between 10C in summer and -17C in winter.

When the temperatures dropped again 450,000 years ago, the forests and their inhabitants were covered by the advancing ice, effectively freezing them in time.

Studies suggest that even during the last interglacial (116,000-130,000 years ago), when temperatures were thought to be 5C warmer than today, the ice persevered, keeping the delicate samples entombed and free from contamination and decay.

At the time the ice is estimated to have been between 1,000 and 1,500m thick.

"If our data is correct, then this means that the southern Greenland ice cap is more stable than previously thought," said Professor Willerslev. "This may have implications for how the ice sheets respond to global warming."

Research by Australian scientists has suggested that a 3C rise in global temperatures would be enough to trigger the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

In 2006, research conducted by researchers at Nasa suggested that the rate of melting of the giant ice sheet had tripled since 2004.

While in February 2006, researchers found that Greenland's glaciers were moving much faster than before, meaning that more of its ice was entering the sea.

And in 1996, Greenland was losing about 100 cubic km per year in mass from its ice sheet; by 2005, this had increased to about 220 cubic km.

A complete melt of the ice sheet would cause a global sea level rise of about 7m; but the current picture indicates that while some regions are thinning, others are apparently getting thicker.


Plant-life

The new results were obtained from the sediment rich bottom of ice cores.

The 2km-long Dye 3 core was drilled in south-central Greenland, whilst the 3km-long Greenland Ice Core Project (GRIP) core was taken from the summit of the Greenland ice sheet.

Samples from other glaciers, such as the John Evans Glacier on Ellesmere Island, in northern Canada, were used as a control, to verify the age of the samples and to confirm that the DNA was from plants that grew in southern Greenland, rather than from plant matter carried by wind or water from elsewhere in the world.

Although the ice contained only a handful of pollen grains and no fossils, the researchers were able to extract DNA from the organic matter held in the silt.

Comparisons with modern species show that the area was populated by diverse forests made up of alders, spruce, pine and members of the yew family.

Living in the trees and on the forest floor was a wide variety of insect life including beetles, flies, spiders, butterflies and moths.

The discovery pushes forward the date when the last forests were known to exist in Greenland by nearly two million years.

Previously, the youngest fossil evidence of a native forest in the region came from fossils found in the Kap Kobenhavn Formation in northern Greenland. There, the fossils date from around 2.4m years ago.

...
 
London's small but relentless dip
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News

A new assessment of land and sea level changes in London and the Thames estuary has been made by scientists.
Their study - based on tide gauge, GPS, gravity, and satellite measurements - shows a general pattern of subsidence of 1-2mm a year.

With waters rising in the region by about 1mm a year, the combined effect is a 2-3mm a year rise in sea level with respect to the land.

The study has been conducted for the Environment Agency.

The information is critical to the planning of London's sea defences in the face of climate-driven ocean rise. The region is home to 1.3 million people and has a property value put at more than £80bn.

These numbers are set to increase substantially as the capital, together with the estuary counties of Kent and Essex, look to expand development ahead of, and beyond, the 2012 Olympics.

The 300km of tidal defences including embankments, walls, gates and barriers will, at some stage, have to be adapted or moved, or new types of defences created that make better use of the natural floodplain.

London's key defensive installation, the Thames Barrier at Woolwich, also faces upgrading.

The new housing and business developments in the tidal floodplain, behind those defences, are also challenged to be located, designed and built to manage the increasing risk of flooding.

Engineers would like to know where improvements should be prioritised and on what timescale. "Monitoring of the estuary will give us a really good understanding of the likely trajectory in terms of risk," said Owen Tarrant, from the Environment Agency's TE2100 Project.

"The way that risk evolves through the century will not only affect the timing of the implementation of the options, but it will also affect the identification of the preferred options," he told BBC News.

The new assessment of land and sea level changes has been led by Dr Richard Bingley, from the Institute of Engineering Surveying & Space Geodesy at the University of Nottingham.

He has recruited researchers from a range of institutions and disciplines.

The team's intention has been to draw together data sets from different measurement approaches, to get a fuller picture of how the Thames region is moving over time.

Dr Bingley's own area of expertise is with the UK's scientific Global Positioning System (GPS) stations, which can, after much processing and analysis, sense millimetric changes in land movement.

Their data has been combined with readings from the absolute gravimeters run by the Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory to give detailed point trends. And this information has then been further combined with an InSAR analysis by Nigel Press Associates (NPA) of radar measurements from Europe's Envisat and ERS satellites.

The result is a broad picture of land deformation across the Thames region as whole.

The investigation confirms geologic studies that show the Earth's crust is still responding to the loss of the heavy ice sheet which covered much of Britain more than 10,000 years ago - with southeast England, including London, slowly sinking.

"Britain as a whole was already quite well understood," explained Dr Bingley. "We knew the north was rising and the south was subsiding; but without the work we've done we'd only have had a single figure for the Thames Estuary.

"Through the use of InSAR we can extrapolate from a few scattered GPS stations to almost a million points spread throughout the region so we see things on a much finer scale; we can show domains of movement and how - in some respects - they are restricted to quite close to the estuary, but of course that's where the flood defences are going to be."

The land subsidence - of the order of one or two millimetres per year - has to be combined with the measurements taken by tide gauges to give a true picture of sea level rise. Dr Bingley and colleagues have now done this for the Thames - and it equates to a year-on-year 2-3mm increase.

The new maps of land movement have been analysed by geologists to assess which rocks and sediments are likely to experience further descent. Some are relatively easily explained, such as the continued settlement of recent, or Holocene, deposits that line the river.

Some dips relate to water extraction by pumping stations, and it is even possible to see the settlement of land above underground construction projects such as the Jubilee Tube line extension and an electricity tunnel between Battersea and Putney.

But there are also some surprises, with a land rise evident in particular around Northolt in the northwest of London.

"London lies at the junction of three deeply-buried geological terrains," explained Dr Don Aldiss from the British Geological Survey.

"In the northwest, deep under Northolt, is part of what we call the Midlands Microcraton. These are among the oldest rocks in England. The uplift around Northolt is not massive - less than half a millimetre per year - but it's real. It seems to be some kind of edge effect or bulging where the rocks from the south meet the microcraton."

Tracing the millimetric trend in land movement has been an extremely challenging task, especially given the far larger day-to-day movements that can occur.

London itself will rock by 10mm, twice a day, with loading from ocean tides. The seasons also alternately load and unload the ground, making the Earth's crust "breathe" up and down over a longer period.

All of these confounding variables have to be taken into account - something that has proved especially testing when using GPS to sense millimetric changes in land movement.


"Within the GPS data you have to model loading effects and also account for atmospheric effects on the GPS signals. We have done this and have not only reduced the errors, but we now understand better what's in those error bars," explained Dr Norman Teferle from the University of Nottingham.

The full scientific report (including the images presented here) has been published as Defra/Environment Agency Joint R&D FCERM Programme R&D Technical Report FD2319/TR and can be downloaded from the Defra/EA Joint R&D FCERM Programme website (see internet links).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6231334.stm

Pics, diags, maps, etc on page.
 
According to the BBC and the science magazine, Nature, Humans 'affect global rainfall'.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6912527.stm

Humans 'affect global rainfall'

BBC News Online. 24th July 2007

Human-induced climate change has affected global rainfall patterns over the 20th Century, a study suggests.

Researchers said changes to the climate had led to an increase in annual average rainfall in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

But while countries such as Canada, Russia and northern Europe had become wetter, areas including India and parts of Africa had become drier, they added.

The findings will be published in the scientific journal Nature on Thursday.

Climate models have, for a number of years, suggested that human activity has led to changes to the distribution of rain and snow across the globe.

However, the computer models have been unable to pinpoint the extent of our influence, partly because drying in some regions have cancelled out moistening in others.

Making the link

The team of scientists from Canada, Japan, the UK and US used the patterns of the changes in different latitude bands instead of the global average.

They compared monthly precipitation observations from 1925-1999 to those generated by complex computer models to see if they could identify if human activity was affecting rainfall patterns.

"We show that anthropogenic forcing has had a detectable influence on observed changes in average precipitation within latitudinal bands," the researchers wrote in the paper.

"These changes cannot be explained by internal climate variability or natural forcing."

They added that natural factors, such as volcanic eruptions, had contributed to shifts in the global rainfall patterns but to a much lesser extent.

One of the paper's co-authors, Nathan Gillett of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK, said the team's findings helped clear up any uncertainty.

"This study shows that there has been a significant human effect on global rainfall patterns, with human influence causing a decrease in rainfall in some regions, and an increase in rainfall in others."

However, Dr Gillett said it was not possible to make a direct link between the recent floods in the UK and human-induced climate change.

"While our study shows a human influence on rainfall at the global scale, the role of human influence in the UK flooding remains uncertain.

"Climate models generally predict that the UK will become wetter in winter and drier in summer," he explained.

"In the UK we have seen a trend towards more extreme rainfall in the winter but no clear trend in summer extreme rainfall."
So, still the odd straw for the Climate Change Deniers to clutch at, as they're swept along by the rising tide of history.
 
We're still all gonna drown (but not the way we thought)... 8)

Melting glaciers will dominate sea-level rise
19:00 19 July 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Phil McKenna

Ice melt from small glaciers and ice caps will be the dominant cause of sea-level rise this century, according to new research. Scientists have previously suggested that the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland would be most responsible for rises as the Earth warms, as they hold the overwhelming majority of the world's frozen water.

Now an international team led by Mark Meier at the University of Colorado in Boulder, US, has found that glacial melt and the "calving" of icebergs into the ocean will account for 60% of all sea-level rise attributed to melting ice (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1143906. That is equivalent to an estimated 10 to 25 centimetre rise by 2100.

This calculation does not include the expansion of warming ocean water, which could double the estimate, says Meier.

The findings are surprising as glaciers and ice caps – smaller ice sheets generally covering a mountainous area – contain just 1% of the water found in ice sheets. Yet despite their relatively small size, glaciers contain enough water to raise sea levels by nearly a metre if they were to melt away entirely.

IPCC 'underestimation'
"We think the International Panel on Climate Change substantially underestimated the contribution of small glaciers and ice caps, and may have overestimated the contribution of the Greenland ice sheet," says Meier, of a comprehensive IPCC report on the impacts of climate change (PDF), published in early 2007.

The report predicted that sea levels worldwide will most probably rise between 21 and 47 cm by 2100, taking the averages of the six scenarios considered. Using the new figures on small glaciers, Meier calculates the rise to be between 27 and 97 cm.

"This is an appreciable adjustment," Meier says. He notes that more than 100 million people live within one meter of the current sea level.

Glaciers and ice caps, according to Meier, are particularly susceptible to large decreases in size because "they're thinner, warmer, and more delicate" than large ice sheets. (See time-lapse video of the Columbia Glacier, Alaska, right.)

Retreat rate
Meier's team came to their conclusion by analysing satellite, aircraft, and ground-based data from glaciers and ice caps worldwide, as well as the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. They calculated present and future rates of ice loss based on figures for snow and ice accumulation, glacier size, thickness, mass, and rates of thinning and retreat.

They then used a mathematical "scaling" process to derive estimates for more glaciers in remote areas, where data is scarce. These estimates included volume and thickness, and factored in data like altitude, climate, and geography.

"What they are trying to study is very difficult because of gaps in the data," says William Harrison of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

According to Harrison, less than half of present day ice cover in Alaska has been mapped to see how it compares to comprehensive mapping surveys done in the 1950s and 1960s. "I think they've done an excellent job of recognizing that uncertainty and trying to fill in those gaps," he says.

Martin Sharp, a glaciologist at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, says the study reduces some of the uncertainties that were associated with sea-level rise. But, he takes issue with claims made in the study that glacier and ice cap contributions will continue to be more important relative to ice sheet contributions after 2100.

"We have no real understanding of the likely dynamic responses of the large ice sheets to ongoing warming," Sharp says. "They could be right, but they could equally well be wrong."

Link*

*EDIT: Link shortened by WhistlingJack
 
Asia's Brown Clouds 'Warm Planet'

Asia's brown clouds 'warm planet'

th_49536__44033859_browncloud203nasa_122_935lo.jpg
th_49539__44033863_craft203scripps_122_623lo.jpg


Clouds of pollution over the Indian Ocean appear to cause as much warming as greenhouse gases released by human activity, a study has suggested.

US researchers used unmanned aircraft to measure the effects of the "brown clouds" on the surrounding area.

Writing in Nature, they said the tiny particles increased the solar heating of the lower atmosphere by about 50%.

The warming could be enough to explain the retreat of glaciers in the Himalayas, the scientists proposed.

The clouds contain a mixture of light absorbing aerosols and light scattering aerosols, which cause the atmosphere to warm and the surface of the Earth to cool.

The main sources of the pollutants came from wood burning and fossil fuels, the team added.

Aerosols, also known as particulates, cool the land or sea below because they filter out light from the Sun.

While this process, known as "global dimming", is fairly well understood, the effect aerosols have on the surrounding atmosphere is still unclear.

The scientists, from the University of California San Diego and the Nasa Langley Research Center, said there remained a degree of uncertainty because, until now, estimates had largely been derived from computer models.

For their study, the team of researchers used three unmanned aircraft, fitted with miniaturised instruments that were able to measure aerosol concentrations, soot amounts and the flow of energy from the Sun.

The crafts flew over the polluted region of the Indian Ocean at varying heights between 500m (1,640ft) and 3,000m (9,840ft).

"During 18 flight missions, the three unmanned aerial vehicles were flown with a separation of tens of metres or less and less than 10 seconds (apart), which made it possible to measure the atmospheric solar heating rates directly," they wrote.

"We found that atmospheric brown clouds enhanced lower atmospheric solar heating by about 50%.

"[The pollution] contributes as much as the recent increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gases to regional lower atmospheric warming trends," they suggested.

"We propose that the combined warming trend of 0.25 Kelvin per decade may be sufficient to account for the observed retreat of the Himalayan glaciers."

Seasonal glacier and snow melt from the mountain range feeds rivers that supplies water to about 40% of the world's population.

The United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), in its latest Snow and Ice Outlook report, said the ice sheets in the region could retreat by up to 81% by the end of the century.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2007/08/01 18:34:48 GMT

© BBC MMVII
 
Climate Change Worries For Bird

Climate change worries for bird

th_59356__44034654_ringouzel203rspb_122_449lo.jpg


A rare mountain bird is to be radio tracked following concerns that its numbers are declining because of climate change.

Ring ouzels could be struggling because warmer weather is drying out soil making it harder for them to catch earthworms, according to RSPB Scotland.

Fledglings in the Cairngorms National Park are to be monitored in a project backed by other organisations.

Also known as mountain blackbirds, they winter in Spain and Morocco.

Innes Sim, RSPB research biologist and the project leader, said the decline was not thought to be linked to poor breeding.

He said: "We think that the main problems may occur after the breeding season once all the chicks fledge.

"Very little is known about what the birds do in this period and before they migrate to south-east Spain and Morocco where they spend the winter."

Tracking the latest batch of Cairngorms birds represents the second of a three-year effort to monitor them.

This year the project will focus on nests in Braemar and is co-funded by Scottish Natural Heritage and supported by the Cairngorms National Park Authority.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2007/08/02 09:58:44 GMT

© BBC MMVII
 
Ten-year climate model unveiled

Scientists say they have developed a model to predict how ocean currents, as well as human activities, will affect temperatures over the next decade.
By including short-term natural events, such as El Nino, a UK team says it is able to offer 10-year projections.

Models have previously focused on how the globe will warm over a century.

Writing in Science, Met Office researchers project that at least half of the years between 2009 and 2014 are likely to exceed existing records.

However, the Hadley Centre researchers said that the influence of natural climatic variations were likely to dampen the effects of emissions from human activities between now and 2009.

But over the decade as a whole, they project the global average temperature in 2014 to be 0.3C warmer than 2004.

Currently, 1998 is the warmest year on record, when the global mean surface temperature was 14.54C (58.17F).

Doug Smith, a climate scientist at the Hadley Centre, explained how the new model differed from existing ones.

"On a 10-year timescale, both natural internal variability and the global warming signal (human induced climate change) are important; whereas looking out to 2100, only the global warming signal will dominate."

The latest assessment from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said that human activity was "very likely" causing the world to warm, and predicted the global average temperature were probably going to increase by 1.8-4.0C (3.2-7.2F) by the end of the century.

"It is the same model as used in the latest IPCC report's predictions for the coming century, but the difference is that it starts from the real observed status of the ocean and the atmosphere," Dr Smith, the paper's lead author, explained.

"Greenhouse gases and aerosols are also included, but it is really trying to predict any [natural] variability on top of that.

"We start with the present state of the ocean, and we try to predict how it is going to evolve," he told BBC News.

Better understanding

The model, called the Decadal Climate Prediction System (DePreSys), is based on a well established climate model already used by Hadley Centre scientists.

But in order to offer a projection for the coming decade rather than a century ahead, it also assesses the current state of the oceans and atmosphere.

This allows the researchers to predict how natural shifts, such as the El Nino phenomenon in the eastern Pacific and the North Atlantic Oscillation, will affect the global climate system.

They hope this data, when combined with projections of greenhouse gas and aerosol emissions from fossil fuels and volcanic eruptions, will present one of the most detailed outlooks to date.

"One reason why the 10-year projection has not been done before is because the ocean has traditionally had very poor observational coverage," Dr Smith said.

"They been very sparse and a little bit "noisy" so they have been difficult to interpret what the real temperatures were over large parts of the ocean."

However, recent improvements in data collection from satellites and in-situ instruments have allowed climatologists to improve their understanding of how ocean dynamics influence the climate system.

He added that decadal outlooks would provide businesses and politicians with meaningful information.

"Nearly all businesses have to make decisions on that sort of timescale; they plan for the next five to ten years.

"The climate has already changed, and it is continuing to change; people need the best information available to help them adapt to these changes."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6939347.stm?lsm
 
Another canary...

Caribbean fish found off Cornwall

A fish that normally lives in the Caribbean has been caught by a fisherman in Cornish waters.
The Almaco Jack was caught just off Crantock in north Cornwall by Newquay fisherman Phil Trebilcock.

Marine experts believe the catch, believed to be only the fifth Almaco Jack in British waters, is another sign of global warming.

Last week a Porbeagle Shark, normally confined to south coast, was caught by North Sea trawlermen.

David Waines of Newquay's Blue Reef Aquarium, which is looking after the fish, said it was extremely unusual for this particular species to turn up in British waters.

He said: "As far as we're aware it's only the fifth specimen ever recorded in British waters and the first to have been kept alive.

"Sea temperatures around Cornwall peak at around this time of year at around 16-17C so it's perfectly possible for warmer water species to survive.

"However in winter they drop back by 10-12C and therefore exotic fish only have a relatively small window of opportunity to survive."

He said more warm water fish such as trigger fish and couches bream were being spotted in waters off the south west coast.

"The sea in the South West is becoming a real mixing pot," he said.

"It's an effect of the warming of the oceans and we are going to see more examples of warm water fish coming in."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/6978510.stm
 
Something else to worry about...

Melting ice cap triggering earthquakes
· Estimates of sea-level rise out of date, say scientists
· Religious leaders pray for planet at Greenland glacier
Paul Brown in Ilulissat The Guardian Saturday September 8 2007

The Greenland ice cap is melting so quickly that it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break off.

Scientists monitoring events this summer say the acceleration could be catastrophic in terms of sea-level rise and make predictions this February by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change far too low.

The glacier at Ilulissat, which supposedly spawned the iceberg that sank the Titantic, is now flowing three times faster into the sea than it was 10 years ago.

Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Ilulissat yesterday: "We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 metres an hour on a front 5km [3 miles] long and 1,500 metres deep. That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one year to provide drinking water for a city the size of London for a year."

He is visiting Greenland as part of a symposium of religious, scientific, and political leaders to look at the problems of the island, which has an ice cap 3km thick containing enough water to raise worldwide sea levels by seven metres.

Yesterday Christian, Shia, Sunni, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist and Jewish religious leaders took a boat to the tongue of the glacier for a silent prayer for the planet. They were invited by Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.

Dr Corell, director of the global change programme at the Heinz Centre in Washington, said the estimates of sea level rise in the IPCC report were based on data two years old. The predicted rise this century was 20-60cm (about 8-24ins) , but it would be at the upper end of this range at a minimum, he said, and some believed it could be two metres. This would be catastrophic for European coastlines.

He had flown over the Ilulissat glacier and "seen gigantic holes in it through which swirling masses of melt water were falling. I first looked at this glacier in the 1960s and there were no holes. These so-called moulins, 10 to 15 metres across, have opened up all over the place. There are hundreds of them."

This melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a lake 500 metres deep which was causing the glacier "to float on land. These melt-water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic."

The glacier is now moving at 15km a year into the sea although in surges it moves even faster. He measured one surge at 5km in 90 minutes - an extraordinary event. :shock:

Veli Kallio, a Finnish scientist, said the quakes were triggered because ice had broken away after being fused to the rock for hundreds of years. The quakes were not vast - on a magnitude of 1 to 3 - but had never happened before in north-west Greenland and showed potential for the entire ice sheet to collapse.

Dr Corell said: "These earthquakes are not dangerous in themselves but the fact that they are happening shows that events are happening far faster than we ever anticipated."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... matechange

Which European city will be evacuated first? Rotterdam? London? Antwerp?...
 
Arctic Ice Island Breaks In Half

Arctic ice island breaks in half

By David Shukman

BBC science and environment correspondent


The giant Ayles Ice Island drifting off Canada's northern shores has broken in two - far earlier than expected.

In a season of record summer melting in the region, the two chunks have moved rapidly through the water - one of them covering 98km (61 miles) in a week.

Their progress has been tracked amid fears they could edge west towards oil and gas installations off Alaska.

The original Manhattan-sized berg (16km by five km; 10 miles by three miles) broke off the Ayles Ice Shelf in 2005.

I joined a team that landed on the ice island in May to carry out the first scientific investigation into what many see as a key indicator of global warming.

It is an unsettling thought that the very ice we landed on - and filmed on - for several hours has since ripped apart.

One of the scientists on that mission was Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, and he told BBC News that the fact that the island had headed south was significant.

"The island became more vulnerable to breaking up with the warmer temperatures in more southerly latitudes, together with having less protection from the smaller amounts of surrounding sea-ice.

"It's relatively unusual for the ice island to drift so far south so quickly - many ice islands in the past have stayed within the Arctic Ocean, or within the northern parts of the Queen Elizabeth Islands."

Dr Copland said that the island had travelled so far south because of the small extent of Arctic ice this summer, influenced in turn by warmer conditions.

"The low sea-ice conditions this year have played a role. The sea-ice normally blocks ice inflow into the Queen Elizabeth Islands, but with less ice this year it has made it easier for the Ice Island to make its way in."

And his conclusion is clear: unlike ice islands which in the past might have lasted in the Arctic Ocean for 50 years or more, this one is destined to be shorter-lived.

"Ultimately, the ice island should break up faster because of the warmer temperatures - I'd be surprised if it lasted more than a decade or so."

The team which landed on the Ayles ice block in May found it to have an average thickness of 42-45m (138-148ft) - the equivalent of the height of a 10-storey building. The great mass of ice has now split apart.

Arctic sea-ice shrank to the smallest area on record this year, as measured by satellite.

The US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) was reached on 16 September.

The figure shattered all previous satellite surveys, including the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km measured in 2005.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2007/10/01 18:14:53 GMT

© BBC MMVII
 
Well, it seems we can't do right for doing wrong...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/oct/01/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange
The results will feed into the scientific study of a phenomenon called global dimming, which is caused by air pollution blocking sunlight. Some experts believe this has acted as a brake on global warming, and that climate change could accelerate as air pollution from industry is reduced.
 
Oceans are 'Soaking Up Less CO2'

Oceans are 'soaking up less CO2'

The amount of carbon dioxide being absorbed by the world's oceans has reduced, scientists have said.


University of East Anglia researchers gauged CO2 absorption through more than 90,000 measurements from merchant ships equipped with automatic instruments.

Results of their 10-year study in the North Atlantic show CO2 uptake halved between the mid-90s and 2000 to 2005.

Scientists believe global warming might get worse if the oceans soak up less of the greenhouse gas.

Researchers said the findings, published in a paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research, were surprising and worrying because there were grounds for believing that, in time, the ocean might become saturated with our emissions.

BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin said: "The researchers don't know if the change is due to climate change or to natural variations.

"But they say it is a tremendous surprise and very worrying because there were grounds for believing that in time the ocean might become 'saturated' with our emissions - unable to soak up any more."

He said that would "leave all our emissions to warm the atmosphere".

Of all the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere, only half of it stays there; the rest goes into carbon sinks.

There are two major natural carbon sinks: the oceans and the land "biosphere". They are equivalent in size, each absorbing a quarter of all CO2 emissions.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2007/10/20 04:50:45 GMT

© BBC MMVII
 
'Warm Wind' Hits Arctic Climate

'Warm wind' hits Arctic climate

The Arctic is being hit by melting ice, hotter air and dying wildlife, according to a US government report on the impact of global warming there.


A new wind circulation pattern is blowing more warm air towards the North Pole than in the 20th Century, scientists found.

Shrubs are now growing in tundra areas while caribou herds are dwindling in Canada and parts of Alaska.

The report stresses that the fate of the Arctic affects the entire planet.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) report found that in 2007 winter and spring temperatures were "all above average throughout the whole Arctic and all at the same time" unlike in previous years.

"This is an unusual feature and it looks like the beginning of a signal from global warming," the Noaa's James Overland told reporters.

Scientists have expected polar regions to feel the first impacts of global warming, and the 2006 US State of the Arctic report provided a benchmark for tracking changes, the Associated Press news agency notes.

Wednesday's report was the first update on it.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2007/10/18 04:08:03 GMT

© BBC MMVII
 
Climate Threat to Biodiversity

Climate threat to biodiversity

Global temperatures predicted for the coming centuries could trigger a mass extinction, UK scientists have warned.


The temperatures are within the range of greenhouse phases early in the Earth's history when up to 95% of plants and animals died out, they say.

Experts examined the link between climate and diversity over 520 million years, almost the entire fossil record.

They found that global diversity is high during cool (icehouse) periods and low during warm (greenhouse) phases.

"Our results provide the first clear evidence that global climate may explain substantial variation in the fossil record in a simple and consistent manner," said Dr Peter Mayhew, one of the paper's co-authors.

"If our results hold for current warming, the magnitude of which is comparable with the long-term fluctuations in the Earth's climate, they suggest that extinctions will increase."

The study by researchers from the Universites of York and Leeds, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, compared data sets on marine and land diversity against estimates of sea surface temperatures for the same period.

They found that four out of the five mass extinction events on Earth are associated with greenhouse phases (warmer, wetter conditions) rather than icehouse phases (cold, dry conditions).

These include Earth's worst mass extinction 251 million years ago when some 95% of all species were lost.

"We could - at worst - be experiencing that in the next century - only a few human generations down the line," Dr Mayhew told BBC News.

"We need to know why temperatures and extinctions are linked in this way."

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2007/10/24 07:34:02 GMT

© BBC MMVII
 
New UK record of inspect species

An insect species normally found off the African coast has been spotted in the UK for the first time in Cornwall, conservationists have said.
The species of barkfly (Atlantopsocus adustus) is normally only found in Madeira and the Canary Islands.

The discovery was made at National Trust sites on the south Cornish coast.

A trust spokeswoman said the finds showed non-native species from warmer climes were now able to survive in the UK as a result of global warming.

The barkfly species was found during wildlife survey work at Lansallos, Bosigran, Godrevy, Chapel Porth and Treluggan.

The National Trust says the findings have shown the species appears to be widespread on these stretches of coast.

The trust says the species could have arrived on plants imported from Madeira or the Canary Islands by collectors or may have been blown into the Britain on southerly winds from the Atlantic.

A total of 99 species of barkfly have so far been recorded in Britain.

It lives on the bark of trees and shrubs where it eats lichens and algae.

Six new species to Britain were noted in the National Barkfly Recording Scheme in the last eight years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/7086007.stm

Somehow, the existance of a National Barkfly Recording Scheme in the UK reassures me that we British are truly barking mad! :D
 
But this looks more serious:

Deep ice tells long climate story
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, Norwich

Carbon dioxide levels are substantially higher now than at any time in the last 800,000 years, the latest study of ice drilled out of Antarctica confirms.

The in-depth analysis of air bubbles trapped in a 3.2km-long core of frozen snow shows current greenhouse gas concentrations are unprecedented.

The East Antarctic core is the longest, deepest ice column yet extracted.

Project scientists say its contents indicate humans could be bringing about dangerous climate changes.

"My point would be that there's nothing in the ice core that gives us any cause for comfort," said Dr Eric Wolff from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).

"There's nothing that suggests that the Earth will take care of the increase in carbon dioxide. The ice core suggests that the increase in carbon dioxide will definitely give us a climate change that will be dangerous," he told BBC News.


The Antarctic researcher was speaking here at the British Association's (BA) Science Festival.

Slice of history

The ice core comes from a region of the White Continent known as Dome Concordia (Dome C). It has been drilled out by the European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica (Epica), a 10-country consortium.

The column's value to science is the tiny pockets of ancient air that were locked into its millennia of accumulating snowflakes.

Each slice of this now compacted snow records a moment in Earth history, giving researchers a direct measure of past environmental conditions.

Not only can scientists see past concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane - the two principal human-produced gases now blamed for global warming - in the slices, they can also gauge past temperatures from the samples.

This is done by analysing the presence of different types, or isotopes, of hydrogen atom that are found preferentially in precipitating water (snow) when temperatures are relatively warm.

'Scary' rate

Earlier results from the Epica core were published in 2004 and 2005, detailing the events back to 440,000 years and 650,000 years respectively. Scientists have now gone the full way through the column, back another 150,000 years.

The picture is the same: carbon dioxide and temperature rise and fall in step.

"Ice cores reveal the Earth's natural climate rhythm over the last 800,000 years. When carbon dioxide changed there was always an accompanying climate change. Over the last 200 years human activity has increased carbon dioxide to well outside the natural range," explained Dr Wolff.

The "scary thing", he added, was the rate of change now occurring in CO2 concentrations. In the core, the fastest increase seen was of the order of 30 parts per million (ppm) by volume over a period of roughly 1,000 years.

"The last 30 ppm of increase has occurred in just 17 years. We really are in the situation where we don't have an analogue in our records," he said.


Natural buffer

The plan now is to try to extend the ice-core record even further back in time. Scientists think another location, near to a place known as Dome A (Dome Argus), could allow them to sample atmospheric gases up to a million and a half years ago.

Some of the increases in carbon dioxide will be alleviated by natural "sinks" on the land and in the oceans, such as the countless planktonic organisms that effectively pull carbon out of the atmosphere as they build skeletons and shell coverings.

But Dr Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia and BAS, warned the festival that these sinks may become less efficient over time.

We could not rely on them to keep on buffering our emissions, she said.

"For example, we don't know what the effect will be of ocean acidification on marine ecosystems. There is potential for deterioration," she explained.

More CO2 absorbed by the oceans will raise their acidity, and a number of recent studies have concluded that this will eventually disrupt the ability of marine micro-organisms to use the calcium carbonate in the water to produce their hard parts.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5314592.stm

Looks like Deep Ice says we are in Deep Sh*t.... :(
 
Interesting back-up from history:

War has historic links to global climate change
22:00 19 November 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Catherine Brahic

Climate change and conflict have gone hand-in-hand for the past 500 years, a study reveals.

It is the first time that a clear link between war and changing global temperatures has been identified in historical data, according to the researchers involved. The results are also significant because some experts predict that current and future climate change may result in widespread global unrest and conflict.

Most recently, the secretary general of the United Nations, Ban Ki- Moon, wrote in an article published in The Washington Post that the on-going conflict in Darfur, Sudan was "a conflict that grew at least in part from desertification, ecological degradation, and a scarcity of resources".

Other experts are concerned that rising sea levels will create a new type of refugee – referred to as the "climate refugee" – by displacing millions of people who currently live in low-lying coastal regions.

A recent study linked climate change to 1000 years of conflict in China, but until now, few studies have looked at whether long-term climate change in the past has been accompanied by increased conflict on a global scale.

Violent conflict
"Our basic model is that deviations in temperature can hamper crop production," says Peter Brecke of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, US. This, in turn, has three effects: increasing food prices, a greater risk of death from starvation, and increased social tension, which leads to violent conflict.

Brecke and colleagues in Hong Kong, China, and the UK scanned worldwide historical records on food prices, population levels and conflicts and compared this data with long-term temperature records. The data extended as far back as 1400.

"We found that anecdotes [of climate changes leading to conflict] seem to fit a broader pattern," says Brecke.

Most notably, Brecke and his team noticed a relatively peaceful period between the early 1700s and the early 1800s, compared to the previous 250 years. They first noticed the pattern in Europe, then found that it held true in China as well.

The 100 year period came just before the end of Little Ice Age, which lasted from 1450 to the late 1800s. When the researchers looked at temperature records, they found that it corresponded to a short term 100-year warming period.

Food shortages
Brecke acknowledges that temperature is not the only factor that causes wars, but believes it can exacerbate the conditions. The researchers believe that cooler temperatures during the Little Ice Age caused a drop in crop yields which exacerbated conflicts.

The 100-year warming period would have briefly relieved social tensions, he says. But, from the early to mid-1800s, temperatures dropped again, and conflicts resumed.

Although the world is now predicted to get warmer, not cooler, the researchers point out that forecasts suggest global warming will lead to long-term food shortages much as cooling did during the Little Ice Age, by disrupting global water cycles.

"Modern societies have more mechanisms to cope with these problems," says Brecke. But he cautions that the mechanisms may fail if society is forced to cope with a whole slew of environmental problems at the same time, as is predicted by several major environmental reports.

"If other problems emerge that impede our ability to address [food shortages] we may well see warfare erupt, and it should not be that big a surprise," he told New Scientist.

Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0707304104)

http://environment.newscientist.com/art ... ef=dn12936
 
Ronson8 said:
So once again we see that climate change is nothing new! :roll:
It never was.

But now we understand CC (and its causes, and subsequent dangers) much better than before, and we should be in a better position to counteract it....

should be...


Life (now it's well established) will probably survive most climate changes, but that doesn't necessarily include human life, or human civilization....
 
Here is the other side of the coin. I have not done a ton research, but I do know that glaciers are retreating. Although the majority are growing and shedding old ice. Antarctica is twice the size of the continental United States and it is growing. I acknowledge the fact that temps worldwide are rising a little
bit and we may have a small factor, which is near impossible to prove. Earth has been here a hell of a lot longer than us and she knows how to heal Herself.

We really only hear the side that is sold to us. (A.G.,carbon credits,gov,more taxes ,etc...) I see it as another way that "they" are trying to get their grubby hands on my loot and treasure.

Here is a smattering sites.

http://www.iceagenow.com/Growing_Glaciers.htm

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

http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-001-03/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... matechange

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=20073

:p
 
I haven't the time to read all those articles in full, but the trend seems to be that some glaciers are bucking the trend and growing, because of particular local conditions, eg, increased snowfall in parts of the Himalayas, but these weather changes are yet another response to global warming.

And some of those sites have a distinctly anti-global-warming agenda, fighting a rearguard action against the consensus opinion of the International Panel on Climate Change!

However, the USGS site says
"Calving Glaciers are Unresponsive to Climate

Hubbard Glacier is defying the global paradigm of valley or mountain glacier shrinkage and retreat in response to global climate warming. Hubbard Glacier is the largest of eight calving glaciers in Alaska that are currently increasing in total mass and advancing. All of these glaciers calve into the sea, are at the heads of long fiords, have undergone retreats during the last 1,000 years, calve over relatively shallow submarine moraines, and have unusually small ablation areas compared to their accumulation areas."

(My italics)

The beeb has this article on research on another Alaskan glacier, one that doesn't run into the sea (much of the article is in fact about working conditions on the glacier, so I've snipped it):

McCall melt links the Arctic eras
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website, Alaska

.......
There is one glacier that has proved irresistible to two generations of Alaskan glaciologists - the McCall Glacier in the far northeast, in the Brooks Range on what is termed the North Slope.

It is close to the Arctic Ocean; but, importantly, it ends well short of the coastline.

The McCall is one of a handful of North American glaciers with a scientific history going back half a century. And at a time when glaciers are widely seen as canaries in the climate coalmine, the foresight of Dr Benson's forebears in setting up research bases there is proving something to applaud.

Looking back

The McCall came into scientific reckoning in 1957, when scientists were looking for glaciers to study as part of International Geophysical Year (IGY), also known as the third International Polar Year (IPY).

"The McCall is a better place to look than coastal glaciers, because there the ice goes into tidewater and signs of changes in the glacier can be masked by changes at the coast," says Gerd Wendler.

...............

The main scientific objective has always been to determine the glacier's mass balance - whether it is gaining or losing ice over time, whether the accumulating snowfall during the winter is more or less than the summertime melting.

The methodology is surprisingly straightforward - "rude and crude," as Matt Nolan labels it.

"You take a steam drill, bore a hole between three and nine metres in depth, and put in a stake - in fact we sometimes use pieces of electrical conduit.

"You measure how much of the stake is exposed when you put it in, then you go back at a later time and see whether more or less is now exposed."

And you do it all over the glacier, to take account of the different conditions at various altitudes, and combine the readings to derive a trend for the entire ice body.

In 1998, Professor Echelmeyer showed that the McCall had been shrinking ever since the first measurements were taken in 1957, and that the rate of loss had increased.

The glacier thinned each year between 1972 and 1993 by an average of 33cm. Subsequently, the rate nearly doubled.

Meanwhile, the average annual air temperature has risen by more than 1C.
"I think another key thing is the equilibrium line - the line dividing the upper accumulation zone, where more snow falls than melts, and the lower ablation zone, where more melts than falls," says Dr Nolan.

"Over the last 50 years, it's increased in elevation to the point at which in some years it's higher than the top of the glacier itself, so in some years there's no accumulation."

The McCall is signalling clearly that the local climate is changing, and a significant Alaskan temperature rise in the mid-1970s has been well documented.

But how much that is down to natural cycles, the Arctic Oscillation and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and how much to rising greenhouse gas levels is a matter for some discussion, complicated by the fact that Alaska contains three distinct climatic regions.

"The last three decades in Alaska are some of the warmest on record," says Gerd Wendler, "but over those three decades there has been absolutely no temperature increase whatsoever except in the North Slope.

"The warmest temperature every recorded in Fairbanks dates back to 1926."

Another half century?

The details of the McCall have intrigued researchers since study began here half a century ago.

It is a polythermal glacier - the temperature varies from 0C down to what Matt Nolan terms "very cold".

Water percolates down through the upper levels, lubricating the ice flow. And beyond the snout, runoff water accumulates and freezes again - aufeis, as it is called - and unusually, it persists through the summer.

But for how much longer will the glacier itself endure the summers, if North Slope temperatures continue to rise? Assuming there is another IPY in 50 years' time, will there be anything left of the McCall for the next generation of glaciologists to study?

"If things continue on the same trend - and we don't know whether that will happen or not - I'd say it's within the realm of possibility that the bulk of the glacier will be gone in 50 years," is Matt Nolan's assessment.

Which would be a shame, given the long history of science on the McCall, and what it has told successive generations of glaciologists about the workings of glaciers and about climate change in this corner of the Arctic.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6906280.stm

(A pair of photos compare the glacier's state in 1958 and 2003.)
 
If glaciers didn't shrink from time to time I wouldn't be living where I do.
Would you?
 
Scunnerlugzz said:
If glaciers didn't shrink from time to time I wouldn't be living where I do.
Would you?
I might be!

But most people in Britain wouldn't be, since the last Ice Age covered most of the country.

That Ice Age was ended by a period of Global Warming which cleared the ice fields, but submerged large tracts of inhabited land under rising sea levels (North Sea, English Channel, etc.).

And it could happen again....
 
Yes it could, and probably will.

King Canutes of the World rise up...Get your deckchairs here...roll up, roll up.
 
rynner said:
That Ice Age was ended by a period of Global Warming which cleared the ice fields, but submerged large tracts of inhabited land under rising sea levels (North Sea, English Channel, etc.).

And it could happen again....
So what caused it at that time? perhaps it was an earlier industrial revolution that was swept away by floods.
 
Warning on rising Med Sea levels

The level of the Mediterranean Sea is rising rapidly and could increase by up to half a metre in the next 50 years, scientists in Spain have warned.
A study by the Spanish Oceanographic Institute says levels have been rising since the 1970s with the rate of increase growing in recent years.

It says even a small rise could have serious consequences in coastal areas.

The study noted that the findings were consistent with other investigations into the effects of climate change.

The study, entitled Climate Change in the Spanish Mediterranean, said the sea had risen "between 2.5mm and 10mm (0.1 and 0.4in) per year since the 1990s".

If the trend continued it would have "very serious consequences" in low-lying coastal areas even in the case of a small rise, and "catastrophic consequences" if a half-metre increase occurred, the study warned.

Global climate change

Scientists noted that sea temperatures had also risen significantly by 0.12 to 0.5C since the 1970s.

Sea level rise is a key effect of global climate change. There are two major contributory effects: the melting of ice, and expansion of sea water as the oceans warm.

Last month, a study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said the world's sea levels could rise twice as much this century as UN climate scientists had previously predicted.

The Nobel Prize-winning IPCC predicted a maximum sea level rise of 81cm (32in) this century.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7197379.stm
 
Ronson8 said:
And... if you had been following the debate, in these very webpages, you'd know that if the North Atlantic Conveyor ceases to roll, then the North Atlantic could cool catastrophically.

Not good news.

Global Warming means that the Global temperature is increasing, it follows that what has been the fairly stable norm could suddenly switch into a radically different and unstable period of change, until a new equilibrium is reached.

Think woolly mammoths quick frozen into the permafrost, with a ancient High Summer's crop of herbs and plants still in their stomachs. :(
 
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