Permafrost meltdown may bog down global warming, for awhile

When permafrost thaws, microbes convert ancient organic matter in the frozen soil into climate-warming gases, like carbon dioxide and methane, potentially triggering a positive feedback loop that further melts the Arctic.

But the once-barren soil also spouts new—and larger—shrubs that can act as a carbon sink, and scientists have wondered what the net effect of permafrost thawing would be on atmospheric carbon balance. A new study published this week in Nature suggests that changing landscape can counterbalance the release of permafrost carbon—but only for a little while.

"The greening of the Arctic will not compensate for the huge amount of permafrost carbon that will be released," says lead author Ted Schuur, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Click here for the article in the latest edition of Scientific American.

Paint the world white to fight global warming

(stock photo of Palm Springs, California, where many rooftops are painted white to reflect more of the sun's radiant energy, keeping homes cooler, reducing the need for air conditioning).

As a weapon against global warming, it sounds so simple and low-tech that it could not possibly work. But the idea of using millions of buckets of whitewash to avert climate catastrophe has won the backing of one of the world’s most influential scientists.

Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white. A global initiative to change the colour of roofs, roads and pavements so that they reflect more sunlight and heat could play a big part in containing global warming, he said yesterday.

Speaking at the opening of the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, for which The Times is media partner, Professor Chu said that this approach could have a vast impact. By lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the colour of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world’s cars off the roads for 11 years, he said.

(I laughed when I first read this headline, but the more I looked into it the more sense it made. At the very least you'll cut down on your summer air conditioning bills and save some cash! To read the article in the UK's Times Online click here).

Sea's rise may prove greater in the northeast

In the debate over global warming, one thing is clear: as the planet gets warmer, sea levels will rise. But how much, where and how soon? Those questions are notoriously hard to answer.

Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colo., are now adding to the complexity with a new prediction. If the melting of Greenland’s ice sheets continues to accelerate, they say, sea levels will rise even more in the northeastern United States and Maritime Canada than in other areas around the world.

The researchers, Aixue Hu and Gerald A. Meehl, based their predictions on runoff data from Greenland and an analysis of ocean circulation patterns.

The complete New York Times article is here.

MIT model predicts accelerating warming trends

Hotter and Hotter

If an unusually detailed computer simulation at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has it right, global warming in this century is on track to be about twice as bad as predicted six years ago.

The MIT model is said to be the only one that incorporates among its variables possible changes in economic growth and other human activities and draws on peer-reviewed science on the climatic effects of atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems.

After running the model 400 times with slight variations in the inputs, the new predictions are for surface temperatures to warm by 6.3 to 13.3 degrees Fahrenheit. The prediction is for a 9.4-degree increase in the median temperature, more than double the 4.3 degrees predicted in a 2003 simulation.

Ronald Prinn, co-author of a paper in the Journal of Climate describing the results, said the higher numbers are due to several factors, including better economic modeling, new data showing a lower probability of low-emission scenarios in the future, and better accounting for the effects of past volcanoes and soot emissions.

The simulations also examined what is likely to happen under various policy scenarios. Without strong policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the changes in the computer model "stacked up so they caused more projected global warming," Prinn said in a statement. With drastic steps to curb emissions buildup, however, there was less change from the earlier projections.

-- Nils J. Bruzelius

Climate change confusion

A recent survey found that Americans lack consensus on global warming. Americans fall into six distinct groups regarding their climate change beliefs, attitudes and behaviors, according to a new report, Global Warming’s Six Americas, by researchers at Yale and George Mason universities.

The researchers, who surveyed 2,129 American adults, found that 18% of Americans are ‘Alarmed’ about climate change and believe it is happening, 33% are ‘Concerned’ and believe global warming is a serious problem but find it less important and urgent than the ‘Alarmed’ category. Another 19% of the people surveyed are ‘Cautious’ and somewhat convinced that global warming is happening but say they could change their minds.

That’s the good news.

The article in www.greenmuze.com and a link to the complete 140 page pdf document is here.

Five weather events worth chatting about

Visitors gather under the famous sign welcoming motorists on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip during a rare snowstorm December 17, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Several inches of snow were expected to accumulate in and around Las Vegas.

(The following is reprinted with permission from www.wsj.com and www.mentalfloss.com).

Usually, the weather is a subject for polite, uneventful conversation with people you don't know very well. But sometimes the weather is weird, or even downright scary. Here are a few examples of weather events that gave neighbors more than enough to awkwardly discuss.

1. Dramatic Changes

Midwesterners are accustomed to using both their heat and air conditioning in the same day due to dramatic temperature changes and unseasonable weather. The "Great Blue Norther" of 1911 was the most dramatic cold snap ever recorded—several cities set record high and low temperatures on the same day. On November 11, 1911 (yes, 11/11/11) a massive storm system separated warm air from arctic air, yielding violent wind and storms. Kansas City, Missouri reached a high temperature of 76° F (24 °C), and by midnight, the temperature plunged to 11° F (-11 C°). The 65 degree difference was replicated in Oklahoma City and Springfield, Missouri.

The complete article in wsj.com is here.

Hubble's final servicing mission

(Bad weather over Cape Canaveral is delaying the landing of the Space Shuttle Atlantis - Florida has seen drought-busting, almost biblical rains this last week, some towns near Orlando have been inundated by 24" of water since last weekend). Boston.com did a wonderful job providing background, beautiful images and solid explanations about this, the final repair mission for the Hubble Space Telescope, which seemed to go very well, from all the reports I've heard. Mr. Fix-It would be proud of the 7 astronauts and their efforts to tinker and tweak, while floating more than 230 miles above the planet. Pretty amazing when you stop and think about what they're doing!)

On Monday, May 11, after months of delays and preparation, NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the final servicing mission to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. The seven crew members left Florida for low Earth orbit at 2:01 pm, for a scheduled 11-day mission, including 5 days of Extra-vehicular activity (EVAs) to work on the Hubble. So far the repairs appear to be going very well - the final EVA is scheduled for today, and the landing planned for May 22nd. I was fortunate enough to attend the launch at Banana Creek viewing area, and wish to extend my gratitude to all the people at NASA.

Click here to check out photographer Alan Taylor's excellent (and visual) story in Boston.com

3 Body Scatter Spike

(when you see a "finger" jutting out of a thunderstorm on Doppler radar, there's a good chance that particular cell is producing large, potentially damaging hail, ping-pong to softball size. This artifact, this electronic signature is produced when the radar beam interacts with large hailstones within a thunderstorm updraft, creating a surge of energy, a "spike" on the edge of the thunderstorm. The top image shows VIL Density, a measure of hail volume within the cell. The lower image is Storm Relativy Velocity, showing motion of raindrops and hail stones. Green returns are moving away from the radar site, the red returns are moving toward the site, indicating strong rotation within this severe "mesocyclone". These violent, spinning thunderheads are most likely to spawn large, damaging hail and on occasion: tornadoes.)

From Wikipedia:

A three body scatter spike or TBSS is an artifact on a weather radar display indicative of large hail. They are identified by a spike of weak reflectivity echos that extend out from a thunderstorm, and away from the radar site.

Cause

Also known as hail spikes, these are the result of energy from the radar hitting hail and being deflected to the ground, where they deflect back to the hail and then to the radar. Because of the energy hitting the ground at least once and the hail multiple times, it has a weaker return echo than the energy that went from the radar to the hail and back to the radar. The spike occurs where the energy took more time to go from the hail to the ground and back as opposed to the energy that went direct from the hail to the radar. This results in the radar picking up the energy at a later time which puts the echo further away from the radar than the actual location of the hail on the same radial path. Since hail cores are most intense at higher elevations, hail spikes only appear at the levels aloft that accompany the most intense hail. Because of this, hail spikes are usually not seen at lower elevations.

Use in forecasting

Because of their observed accuracy in indicating large hail aloft, TBSS's are used operationally by the National Weather Service to identify thunderstorms that could likely produce large, severe hail. This would warrant the issuance of a severe thunderstorm warning or mention of large hail in a tornado warning.

A cross-Section of a Three body spike from an Anti-Cyclonic Thunderstorm.

Climate change odds much worse than thought

ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that. The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well - such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.

The complete article in Science Daily is here.

As Alaska glaciers melt, it's land that's rising

JUNEAU, Alaska — Global warming conjures images of rising seas that threaten coastal areas. But in Juneau, as almost nowhere else in the world, climate change is having the opposite effect: As the glaciers here melt, the land is rising, causing the sea to retreat. Morgan DeBoer, a property owner, opened a nine-hole golf course at the mouth of Glacier Bay in 1998, on land that was underwater when his family first settled here 50 years ago.“The highest tides of the year would come into what is now my driving range area,” Mr. DeBoer said.Now, with the high-tide line receding even farther, he is contemplating adding another nine holes. “It just keeps rising,” he said.

The complete text of the New York Times article is here.

Antarctic Voyage: climate change upfront

"Our square sails are braced right now for the changing wind that we expect ahead as we cross Drake Passage, between Cape Horn and Antarctica," says Mike Stewart, the boatswain of the Dutch tall ship Europa. Surging along the crests of 20-foot, slate-gray waves, the Europa is taking 15 crew members and 40 sail trainees to the Antarctic Peninsula.

The wind moans in the rigging, setting every brass hook and teak panel clanking, rattling, shivering, and heaving. Regularly thrown off balance, the men and women on board are willing to put up with discomfort to see the effects of climate change in Antarctica firsthand.

The impending collapse of the 5,600-square-mile Wilkins Ice Shelf adds a sense of urgency to the voyage. The Antarctic Peninsula, which stretches 750 miles north from the continent into Drake Passage, is arguably undergoing the fastest rate of climate change of any region on earth.

For the complete article from ABC's web site click here.

First tropical storm of the season?

Image courtesy of Ham Weather, based in Atlanta. This is a tremendous source of graphics, weather loops and severe storm information. A considerable amount of weather data is free, but true weather enthusiasts may want to consider a data plan. For a very modest monthly fee you can gain access to unlimited global data, and tap thousands of maps for your own web site. It's one of the best weather sites on the web. Click here for a link to Ham Weather.

TROPICAL STORM ANA?

Computer models are consistently hinting at a significant tropical depression brewing near Cuba strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico, soaking much of Florida with torrential rains. There's at least a 1 in 3 chance the storm will intensify over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico (although there's considerable wind shear, which is less than ideal for rapid development). That said, we may be looking at Tropical Storm Ana forming by midweek.

Here is some interesting information about the naming of hurricanes, including the official list of hurricane names for 2009. (Courtesy: NOAA)

For every year, there is a pre-approved list of names for tropical storms and hurricanes. These lists have been generated by the National Hurricane Center since 1953. At first, the lists consisted of only female names; however, since 1979, the lists alternate between male and female.

Hurricanes are named alphabetically from the list in chronological order. Thus the first tropical storm or hurricane of the year has a name that begins with "A" and the second is given the name that begins with "B." The lists contain names that begin from A to W, but exclude names that begin with a "Q" or "U."

There are six lists that continue to rotate. The lists only change when there is a hurricane that is so devastating, the name is retired and another name replaces it.

2009 Hurricane Names

Ana
Bill
Claudette
Danny
Erika
Fred
Grace
Henri
Ida
Joaquin
Kate
Larry
Mindy
Nicholas
Odette
Peter
Rose
Sam
Teresa
Victor
Wanda

Amateur video: close encounter with a tornado on May 13, 2009

"At first I got within a hundred yards and that was enough, but it was hard to judge its movement and later it caught up to me and passed over the car! This was in Novinger Missouri around 5:50pm 13 MAY 2009. I shouldn't have followed that cop to pull over...I didn't see behind me how close it was and it was too late." Click here for the most amazing video you'll see in a long time!

Scientists chasing killer tornadoes across Midwest

(I accompanied the original "Vortex" tornado chasers - most of them professional Phd scientists based mostly in Oklahoma - on two separate expeditions, in 1985 and again in 1995, while working at WBBM-TV in Chicago. In '85, after 2 long, boring weeks of hail and rainbows, we finally encountered a tornado near Ardmore, Oklahoma. I videotaped a special series for KARE-TV, and in a stroke of pure luck, was on the only chase where the portable weather instrument [nicknamed "Toto"] was brushed by an F-2 twister, knocking it into a nearby ditch, winds clocked at 80-90 mph along with a sharp pressure spike as the tornado passed overhead. The footage of that particular chase was sent to Kathleen Kennedy, a producer for the movie "Twister" as part of her research. To this day I have no idea if the video inspired some of the story line of the movie, but there are some amazing parallels and coincidences. In 1995 I went chasing again, tagging along with the professionals in storm vans. In northern Texas a small, fast-moving tornado passed between the lead chase van and our rental vehicle, almost hitting the scientists in front of us. The twister had to be moving at close to 50 mph, pointing out the inherent dangers of chasing in a fast-moving storm pattern. In these conditions it's almost impossible to surround a tornadic storm, launch weather balloons and successfully intercept a "supercell" thunderstorm capable of spawning a tornado).

(CNN) -- It sounds like something from the movie "Twister" -- teams of scientists in vans, armed with high-tech measuring equipment, barreling across the Oklahoma plains in search of tornadoes. But these scientists are colleagues, not rivals, and these storms aren't Hollywood digital wizardry but the real thing.

Welcome to VORTEX2, or V2 for short, the largest and most ambitious field experiment ever devoted to studying tornadoes. Now under way through June 13 in Oklahoma and surrounding states, the project brings together almost 100 scientists and students from 16 universities and research institutes.

VORTEX2 kicked off Sunday, and its teams didn't have to wait long to find the targets of their research. Violent storms tore through four Midwestern states Wednesday, killing three people in northern Missouri, according to Kansas City affiliate KMBC. The storms damaged dozens of homes and left thousands without power.

(To learn more about VORTEX2 and the current round of chasing going on over the Plains click here. BTW, they are trying to keep their exact location a secret, to avoid weather paparazzi and and traffic jams, literally in the middle of nowhere. On a big chase day hundreds, perhaps THOUSANDS of amatuer chasers converge on the Plains, hoping to see a tornado, trying desparately to get the "money shot" of a tornado touching down. I'm convinced that the biggest sport in Oklahoma, second only to Sooner college football, is tornado chasing!)

America's most polluted cities

This time of year, many Americans are concerned with sunburns. In some areas, they should pay more attention to smog.

The reason? Though it's often invisible, air pollution is a threat to 186 million Americans, according to a new report released by the American Lung Association.

The annual report--State of the Air 2009--found that six in 10 Americans live in counties where ozone or particle pollution has reached dangerous levels. Both types of pollution can be deadly and have been linked to worsening respiratory conditions like asthma, emphysema and bronchitis, and there is evidence that particle pollution increases risk of heart attacks and strokes.

How does your city rank, for particulant pollution and ozone? All the details in Forbe's in-depth article can be found here.

Global warming called the greatest health threat of the 21st century, experts say

Public health officials call on their own to tackle issue

WEDNESDAY, May 13 (HealthDay News) -- The warming of planet Earth is "the biggest global health threat of the 21st century," a varied group of experts warned Wednesday.

Their report is one of the latest to expound on the deepening environmental crisis, and one of the first to focus on the potential role of health-care professionals in ameliorating the problem.

"This is a bad diagnosis not just for children in different lands. It's for our children and grandchildren," Anthony Costello, a professor of international child health and director of the Institute for Global Health at University College London, said during a Wednesday teleconference. "Even the most conservative estimates are profoundly disturbing and demand action. Climate change raises an important issue of intergenerational justice, that we are setting up a world for our children and grandchildren that may be extremely frightening and turbulent."

The complete article at Forbes.com is here.

Storms turn severe over southeastern MN

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN LA CROSSE HAS ISSUED A

* SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING FOR...
EASTERN WABASHA COUNTY IN SOUTHEAST MINNESOTA...
BUFFALO COUNTY IN WEST CENTRAL WISCONSIN...

* UNTIL 545 PM CDT

* AT 505 PM CDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A
SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING QUARTER SIZE HAIL...AND
DAMAGING WINDS IN EXCESS OF 60 MPH. THIS STORM WAS LOCATED NEAR
KELLOGG...OR NEAR ALMA...MOVING EAST AT 50 MPH.

Climate change cutting Washington Cascade snowpack

By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS

Associated Press Writer

SPOKANE, Wash. —

Climate change appears to be cutting the winter snowpack in Washington's Cascade Range by at least 20 percent, according to a researcher at the University of Washington. Rising temperatures mean more of the snow falls with a high water content, and melts and washes away long before it is needed by users in spring and summer months, the research found.

"All things being equal, if you make it one degree Celsius warmer, then 20 percent of the snowpack goes away for the central Puget Sound basin, the area we looked at," said Joseph Casola, a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences.

His research looked at records from the annual April 1 measurement of the winter snowpack, and then used different methods to try and estimate how water content might have changed as a result of climate change. Average temperatures in Washington rose about 1.5 degrees during the past century, according to the UW's Climate Impacts Group. That meant more winter precipitation fell as rain or melted more quickly. Ideally, snow that falls in the winter melts slowly in the spring and summer months, filling reservoirs in the Cascades. The water is released gradually to supply drinking water, water for fisheries and hydropower and irrigation water for farms.

The complete AP report is here.

Climate change driving Michigan mammals north

(There is growing evidence that climate patterns have shifted at least 100-150 miles north in the last 30 years. The Twin Cities are now in climate zone #5, things are growing locally that weren't growing here a generation ago. I can tell you from first-hand observation that black maple trees are growing like weeds up in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area - in the past it's been consistently too cold for this species of maple trees to grow in the BWCA. It will be interesting to see if there is evidence of Minnesota mammals migrating north, but the fact that this is happening 2 states to our east is interesting and potentially relevant. I keep telling people not to look out their window at their thermometer for signs of climate change, but to look out the window and make a note of new species of plants, flowers, birds and other animal life in your yard that weren't there 30-40 years ago).

ScienceDaily (May 13, 2009) — Some Michigan mammal species are rapidly expanding their ranges northward, apparently in response to climate change, a new study shows. In the process, these historically southern species are replacing their northern counterparts.

The finding, by researchers at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Ohio's Miami University, appears in the June issue of the journal Global Change Biology.

"When you read about changes in flora and fauna related to climatic warming, most of what you read is either predictive—they're talking about things that are going to happen in the future—or it's restricted to single species living in extreme or remote environments, like polar bears in the Arctic," said lead author Philip Myers, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at U-M. "But this study documents things that are happening right now, here at home."

The complete article in ScienceDaily is here.

Climate change has begun, but hardly anyone has noticed

Rising sea levels have eroded much of the coastlines of the low-lying Carteret Islands situated 50 miles from Bougainville Island, in the South Pacific. Photograph: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert /Greenpeace

Journalists – they're never around when you want one. Two weeks ago a momentous event occurred: the beginning of the world's first evacuation of an entire people as a result of manmade global warming. It has been marked so far by one blog post for the Ecologist and an article in the Solomon Times*. Where is everyone?

The Carteret Islands are off the coast of Bougainville, which, in turn, is off the coast of Papua New Guinea. They are small coral atolls on which 2,600 people live. Though not for much longer. The complete text of the article in the Guardian is here.