As warm temperatures due to climate change encroach winter, bees and plants keep pace. An analysis of bee collection data over the past 130 years shows that spring arrives about 10 days earlier than in the 1880s, and bees and flowering plants have kept pace by arriving earlier in lock-step.
In a new article published in the December 11, 2011, online edition of the journal Nature Climate Change, researchers from Stony Brook University (NY, USA) demonstrate that “the fish are okay” belief ignores an important knowledge gap – the possible effects of CO2 during the early development of fish eggs and larvae.
An unusually hot melting season in 2010 accelerated ice loss in southern Greenland by 100 billion tons – and large portions of the island’s bedrock rose an additional quarter of an inch in response.
New research shows accelerated melting of two fast-moving glaciers that drain Antarctic ice into the Amundsen Sea Embayment is likely in part the result of an increase in sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean.
Two talks at a scientific conference this week will propose a common root for an enormous deluge in western Tennessee in May 2010, and a historic outbreak of tornadoes centered on Alabama in April 2011. Both events seem to be linked to a relatively rare coupling between the polar and the subtropical jet streams, says Jonathan Martin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.
The sharp decrease in global carbon dioxide emissions attributed to the worldwide financial crisis in 2009 quickly rebounded in 2010.
The ranges of species will have to change dramatically as a result of climate change between now and 2100 because the climate will change more than 100 times faster than the rate at which species can adapt, according to a newly published study focusing on rattlesnakes.
Global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have surged to record levels following the 2008-09 global financial crisis, when a stagnant economy resulted in a temporary decline in emissions.
Scientists at South Dakota State University will help subsistence livestock owners in West Africa respond to climate change and emerging land use patterns with USAID and National Science Foundation funding.
Computational modeling that examines evidence of how hominin groups evolved culturally and biologically in response to climate change during the last Ice Age also bears new insights into the extinction of Neanderthals. The complex modeling was done at Arizona State University and the University of Colorado Denver. Published in Human Ecology.
A new report published by an independent global commission of eminent scientists states that the world’s food system needs an immediate transformation to meet current and future threats to food security and environmental sustainability.
A recent study confirms that forests, and the products made from them, has long-term benefits for the environment.
Temperatures in both hemispheres and the tropics dropped through October as a new La Niña Pacific Ocean cooling event strengthened in the ocean west of Ecuador, Peru and Colombia.
NCAR today announced that IBM will install major components of a petascale supercomputing system at the new NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center. The system, known as Yellowstone, will advance the nation’s research capabilities for severe weather, climate change, and other critical areas of the geosciences.
In the eastern US, ants are integral to plant biodiversity because they help disperse seeds. But ants' ability to perform this vital function, and others, may be jeopardized by climate change, according to Nate Sanders, Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Sanders and his colleagues are testing the effects of climate change on ants by heating up patches of forest and tracking how the ants respond. Sanders observed that, on average, the ants foraged for about ten hours a day at normal temperatures. When temperatures were raised just a half a degree, the ants stayed in their nests underground and foraged just an hour. The absence of ants' seed dispersal and nutrient cycling could have profound influence on biodiversity.
Bats in North America are under attack. Since 2006, more than a million have been killed. Little has been done to save them, because there has not been enough evidence to implicate the suspect—until now. A study has discovered that the fungus Geomyces destructans is the causal agent of White-nose Syndrome (WNS), the fungal disease decimating the bat population.
Did climate change or humans cause the extinctions of the large-bodied Ice Age mammals (commonly called megafauna) such as the woolly rhinoceros and woolly mammoth? Scientists have for years debated the reasons behind the Ice Age mass extinctions.
The impacts of climate change on the world’s land and sea will become more pronounced in the years to come. According to the authors of a new book, the impacts of this change will fall hardest on poor communities that are highly dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods, but much can be done to protect the environment and maintain human well-being in the face of climate change.
North American forests appear to have a greater capacity to soak up heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas than researchers had previously anticipated.
New research indicates that simple life in the form of photosynthetic algae could have survived a "snowball Earth" event, living in a narrow body of water with characteristics similar to today’s Red Sea.
September 2011 was the fifth warmest September in the past 34 years — fifth warmest globally and in both hemispheres. Last winter’s La Niña Pacific Ocean cooling event has faded and a new one appears to be forming, the tropics continue to be warmer than seasonal norms.
What caused water levels to drop in immense yet long-vanished Lake Agassiz? Research by a University of Cincinnati geologist suggests that conditions 12,000 years ago encouraged evaporation.
After the last ice age peaked about 18,000 years ago, levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide rose about 30 percent. Scientists believe that the additional carbon dioxide---a heat-trapping greenhouse gas---played a key role in warming the planet and melting the continental ice sheets. They have long hypothesized that the source of the gas was the deep ocean.
People head to the beach to escape the stress of everyday life, but a new study out of the Brown School at Washington University In St. Louis finds that there are peak times to reap the restorative benefit. “Mild temperature days and low tides offer the most restorative environments when visiting the beach,” says J. Aaron Hipp, PhD, environmental health expert and assistant professor at the Brown School.
Relatively accurate predictions for summer sea ice extent in the Arctic can be made the previous autumn, but forecasting more than five years into the future requires understanding of the impact of climate trends on the ice pack.
An international team of researchers will begin gathering in the Indian Ocean next month to study an atmospheric pattern that affects weather worldwide. The six-month field campaign, supported in part by NCAR, will help improve long-range weather forecasts and computer models of climate change.
The Warming Papers, a book co-edited by geophysical sciences professors David Archer and Ray Pierrehumbert, contains 32 classic scientific papers that laid the foundations of global-warming science, starting with Joseph Fourier’s 1824 work establishing what later was named the greenhouse effect.
The planet’s deep oceans at times may absorb enough heat to flatten the rate of global warming for periods of as long as a decade even in the midst of longer-term warming, according to a new analysis led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
David W. Wolfe, professor of plant and soil ecology and co-author of the upcoming NYSERDA study focused on preparing New York for climate change, talks about the security of food, water and city subways at the next Inside Cornell media luncheon.
Averaged globally, August 2011 was the third warmest August in the past 34 years. The Southern Hemisphere saw its second warmest August in that time, while it was the fourth warmest August in the Northern Hemisphere.
Boston University researchers have estimated the impact near term increases in global-mean temperatures will have on summertime temperatures here in the U.S. and around the globe.
Although the burning of natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, a new study by an NCAR researcher concludes that a greater reliance on natural gas would fail to significantly slow down climate change. Coal releases more carbon dioxide, but it also releases particles that cool the planet.
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have designed and built a mobile research facility to trace and identify the origin of greenhouse gases. In addition to pinpointing the chemicals’ location, the unique mobile facility can help researchers learn whether the gases are biogenic (coming from plant sources) or anthropogenic (coming from man-made sources). This is important when officials look at ways to mitigate emission impacts in their communities, regions, or states.
A three-year series of research flights from the Arctic to the Antarctic has produced an unprecedented portrait of greenhouse gases. The HIPPO project, led by NCAR, Harvard, and NOAA, is enabling researchers to generate the first detailed mapping of the global distribution of gases and particles that affect Earth’s climate.
Land area under exceptional drought hit record levels in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas amid concerns about how long the conditions may persist, the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said.
Clouds only amplify climate change, says a Texas A&M University professor in a study that rebuts recent claims that clouds are actually the root cause of climate change.
Scientists this month are wrapping up a three-year series of missions from the Arctic to the Antarctic aboard an advanced research aircraft, having successfully made the most extensive airborne measurements of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and particles to date. Mission scientists will discuss preliminary findings and describe the mission in detail.
Even after many decades of studying ozone and its loss from our atmosphere miles above the Earth, plenty of mysteries and surprises remain, including an unexpected loss of ozone over the Arctic this past winter.
Globally, irrigation increases agricultural productivity by an amount roughly equivalent to the entire agricultural output of the U.S., according to a new University of Wisconsin-Madison study.
Geologists recently descended into caves on a small island in the middle of the South Pacific to try and gain a better understanding of weather patterns occurring as far back as 10,000 years ago.
New University of Washington research indicates that even if Earth warmed enough to melt all polar sea ice, the ice could recover if the planet cooled again.
The cisco, a key forage fish found in Wisconsin’s deepest and coldest bodies of water, could become a climate change casualty and disappear from most of the Wisconsin lakes it now inhabits by the year 2100, according to a new study.
Tennessee Tech University civil engineering professor Faisal Hossain recently went to Washington, D.C. to present his research about dams' effects on local climate. He went at the invitation of policymakers who were looking to learn about the need for more flexibility when building large dams.
Marine researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society and other groups have created a map of the world’s corals and their exposure to stress factors, including high temperatures, ultra-violet radiation, weather systems, sedimentation, as well as stress-reducing factors such as temperature variability and tidal dynamics.
Although Arctic sea ice appears fated to melt as the climate continues to warm, the ice may temporarily stabilize or somewhat expand at times over the next few decades, new research indicates.
According to a new analysis of plants in grasslands around the world, 84 percent of plant species are important to their ecosystem. Brian Wilsey and Stanley Harpole, both in Iowa State University's Department of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, are authors of a study on plant diversity published in today's issue of the journal Nature. The study's lead author, Forest Isbell, is a former graduate student of Wilsey who now works at McGill University, Canada.
The aging forests of the Upper Great Lakes could be considered the baby boomers of the region’s ecosystem.
American University’s Matthew Nisbet featured in American Journal of Public Health.
New computer modeling work shows that by 2100, if society wants to limit carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to less than 40 percent higher than it is today, the lowest cost option is to use every available means of reducing emissions.
Aerosol particles, including soot and sulfur dioxide from burning fossil fuels, essentially mask the effects of greenhouse gases and are at the heart of the biggest uncertainty in climate change prediction. New research from the University of Michigan shows that satellite-based projections of aerosols' effect on Earth's climate significantly underestimate their impacts.
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