A new report released by a groups of over 50 US government scientists asserts that the rapid pace at which modern climate change is occurring is almost definitely driven by human activity — making for a blunt contradiction of the stance taken by many members of the current administration of President Donald Trump. In particular,
The USGS estimates that 10 million tons of CO2 was released over the 9 hour eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980. That’s a pretty huge number, but passenger vehicles in the USA alone emit as much CO2 as a Mt St. Helens eruption happening somewhere in America every 3 days.
Bob Walker, a senior Trump adviser, says the new administration will slash funding for NASA to study climate change. He says half of all climate scientists doubt climate change is real.
The world is waiting to hear what President-elect Donald Trump has in mind for governing the U.S. Among the biggest questions is what will happen to the budget for climate and energy-related activities.
Climate change has many components — rising sea levels, alterations in rainfall patterns, and an increase in severe storm activity, among others. Communities around the world are faced with the need to plan for climate change but don’t have the information available to do so effectively. Two such communities are Sonoma, California, and Caldas, Colombia.
Permanently protecting nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and mountains, the first national marine monument in the Atlantic Ocean was designated by President Barack Obama on September 15, 2016. Formed millions of years ago by extinct volcanoes and sediment erosion, seamounts and sea canyons are some of the oldest and most mysterious locations on
Reprinted from our sister publication, CleanTechnica. For the first time since people started tracking carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere, the global average concentration of CO2 has surpassed 400 parts per million for an entire month. Says Pieter Tans, lead scientist of NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, about the record carbon dioxide level: “It
Warm ocean temperatures in the tropical Indian and Pacific Oceans could be bringing major coral bleaching events to reefs around the world in 2015, according to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) latest forecast. Coming fresh on the heels of 2014’s severe coral bleaching events, this prediction doesn’t bode well for one of the
January-October 2014 is the hottest such period (January through October) on record, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). When talking about “hottest” what were referring to is the global average temperature over land and ocean surfaces. NOAA also noted that October 2014 was the hottest October since records began back in
It may not be something that you’ve ever given any thought to, but there are literally thousands of fishing traps that are lost or simply abandoned every year in US waters — what happens to these traps after being abandoned? It should go without saying, they continue to catch and kill sea-life (fish, turtles, carbs,
Underwater habitat at Aquarius Reef Base (photo provided to Flickr courtesy of Stephen Frink, www.stephenfrink.com/) On July 2, 2014, ocean scientists who have spent the last 31 days living in an ocean-floor habitat 63 feet underwater will decompress and return to the surface. They’ve been down there on “Mission 31” intensively studying ocean acidification and climate
Fabien Cousteau, ocean explorer and grandson of famed Jacques-Yves Cousteau, began a historic subsea mission on Sunday. He’s studying ocean impacts of climate change (especially acidification, which occurs as the sea absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide), effects of plastic and other pollution on marine life, and overfishing of marine resources, which diminishes the ocean’s biodiversity. You
There are the good wildfires, and there are the bad. Unfortunately, the latter often overwhelm the beneficial ones. We’ll go on with stories from San Diego in a minute—it’s a long story of an actually short time—but here’s a word about the bright side first. Whoopi Goldberg had a thought that’s worth repeating: When you
I’d like to be / under the sea / in an octopus’s garden/ in the shade Well, we may never get to live out Ringo’s maritime fantasy, but we can still share in the wonders and beauty of the world’s coral reef’s…thanks now to the Global Reef Record — a survey of the world’s most
The Inquisition of Climate Science by James Lawrence Powell is an essential literary resource for understanding how modern climate science is conducted, and equally, for understanding how climate change denialism has evolved and continues to undermine the public interest, to its great peril. Powell’s title smartly preempts the spurious notion of a “fair and balanced”
The 2013 Amazon forest fire season is shaping up to be a devastating one according to researchers from NASA and the University of California, Irvine. Their predictions warn of a 2013 fire season that will be considerably more severe than either the 2012 or 2011 seasons were, for many of the forests of the Amazon.
Ocean-surface temperatures along the Northeastern coast of the US are higher now than at any time since record keeping began 150 years ago, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This isn’t a surprise of course, “high sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are the latest in a trend of above average temperature seen during
When I first saw the news that the 2012 US drought probably wasn’t caused by global warming, I knew the global warming misinformers confusionists would blow the story and get caught up in all kinds of anti-science conspiracy theories. Naturally, that’s what they’ve done. Of course, NOAA was quite haphazard with this report, knowing full well
Two separate reports issued in early April by different US agencies predicted significant increases in major wildfires and in major rain storms (“precipitation events”) within the next few decades due to the atmospheric effects of expected greenhouse gas emissions. A study by the US Department of Agriculture said that wildfires in the US will be at
A new study led by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has found that as the planet warms further as a result of increasing levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, the more moisture in the warmer atmosphere will make the already extreme precipitation events more intense. The study further showed that a 20%
Nearly 40% of the US population is concentrated in counties directly on the shoreline, according to a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with input from the US Census Bureau. On top of that, US coastal populations are set to grow from 123 million people as it stands today, to 134 million
Understanding the implications of climate change is a tricky business at best, as each year we see how far and wide it’s scope has grown as we continue researching: the further we study and investigate, the more we begin to realise just how little we know and how complex our planet’s climate really is. However,
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) has released their latest State of the Climate, “a collection of monthly summaries recapping climate-related occurrences on both a global and national scale.” The title for the January 2013 summary reads “Contiugous US warmer and wetter than average for January”, noting that
A new report authored by leading scientists and experts explains that the effects of climate change are going to continue threatening the health of coastal communities throughout the United States. The report emphasises the need for increased coordination and planning to protect US coastal communities in the face of a continually changing climate. “[Hurricane] Sandy
With the close of the year these days we can generally expect to see any number of climate institutions across the planet report on just what the year gone provided us. 2012 is no different and according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 2012 was the warmest and second most extreme year on
For many parts of the United States, the heat has been unbearable this year. As a matter of fact, the U.S. is on track for 2012 being the hottest year ever (well, since the modern record-keeping begun back in the 1800’s anyway). With the current trend over the past 10 months, weather experts are predicting
The Atlantic hurricane season has already gotten off to a flyer, with six named storms already, and according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, may have a pretty hectic second half as well. As a result, the NOAA have updated their hurricane season outlook. The updated outlook still indicates a 50 percent chance of
Apparently, an Animal Planet program — ‘Mermaids: The Body Found’ — has confused a number of people and convinced them that mermaids once existed. I haven’t seen the program from the Discovery Network branch, but apparently it got so much attention that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) felt compelled to put out a statement
On the global scale, 2011 was the coolest year since 2008, but temperatures were still considerably above the 30 year average, according to the 2011 State of the Climate report released online today by NOAA. “The peer-reviewed report, issued in coordination with the American Meteorological Society (AMS), was compiled by 378 scientists from 48 countries
NOAA recently released its latest data on US temperatures. The highlights (i.e. lowlights)? The lower 48 states “experienced record warm year-to-date and twelve-month periods,” 2012 was the hottest Spring on record, and May was the second hottest on record. Additionally, we just wrapped up the hottest 12-month period on record. And the Spring’s record high
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last Thursday their predictions for the upcoming hurricane seasons for the Eastern Pacific, Atlantic, and Central Pacific regions, and if their predictions hold up, it could be a very normal season.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of America has released maps and other data concerning the world’s coasts, continental shelves, and deep ocean available for anyone to view online. The information has been available to scientists for a long time, but viewing the data was restricted by the need for specialised software and a scientific
March 2012 was remarkable not simply because it was the warmest March on record for the contiguous United States, nor is it remarkable for the more than 15,000 warm temperature records broken in March, the early March tornado outbreak, or the fact that it contributed to the warmest first quarter on record; March was remarkable
No surprise here — the U.S. is just wrapping up its 4th-warmest winter on record (at least, for the 48 contiguous states that NOAA focuses on). In addition to the near-record warmth, it was also drier than average, especially in the West and Southwest. The average temperature across the contiguous 48 states of the
[UPDATE: March 10, 2012; see below] Late yesterday morning, two massive X-class solare flares erupted form our sun’s surface. These are amongst the most powerful class of ‘solar storm’. One of these flares ranked an X 5.4 which makes it the most powerful flare so far this year, and one of the most powerful in
If you follow climate science, you probably are well aware of the fact that even after you turn of the fossil fuel spicket, it takes awhile for the effects of the greenhouse gases to go away. All the more reason to act now, before things get completely out of control. Now, if you aren’t very aware of this issue above, this full post below by Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters of WunderBlog should bring the point home:
[Updated Jan. 25, 2012, added link to latest Aurora Photos] Early this morning (GMT), January 22, a huge solar flare erupted from the highly active sunspot region 1402. NASA scientists have classified the flare as a M9 flare which makes it just slightly less powerful than an X-class flare (the strongest category; C-class flares are
The prestigious BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award will be presented to Isaac Held, Ph.D., a senior research scientist with the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J., at a ceremony in Madrid, Spain, in June of this year for his scientific contributions that have improved our understanding of climate change and atmospheric circulation systems.
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) both released their final evaluations of global temperatures in 2011 yesterday. They provide two of the longest-standing and most reliable annual evaluations of the climate, using data from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and National Climatic Data Center
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are tracking the path of debris pulled out to sea in the wake of the Japanese tsunami that took place in March of 2011, predicting that locations in Hawaii and the West Coast could see debris wash up over the next three years. “We’re preparing for the best
The month of November and the overall September to November autumn season were warmer than average across the contiguous United States according to scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center. Not only were they warmer, but precipitation totals across the country were also above average during November, though the totals
Researchers have combined five separate leading temperature datasets to prove that global warming is not showing any signs of slowing down in the near future. The researchers, statisticians, and climate experts came from Tempo Analytics and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Their study was published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Research Letters. They
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration measures the direct climate influence of many greenhouse gasses through the Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, also known as the AGGI, and it showed that a rise in greenhouse gasses between 2009 and 2010. Started in 2004 the AGGI does not provide exact details as to what the temperature increases
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released this handy video on what to do so that you can survive a hurricane.
Well, actually, I’ve got a few images I think Rick Perry should see, but this first one is the one that inspired me to write this post.
Following some strange migratory pattern of its own design, and emitting a plaintive call-song that is never answered, a solitary whale roams the depths of the northeastern Pacific Ocean. The call-song has been tracked through NOAA’s underwater, sound surveillance system since 1989, when a research team out of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute noticed “whale-like” sounds occurring in the 51.75 Hertz band of the radio spectrum. Amongst the scientists who have faithfully tracked the song since, the mystery whale is known as ’52 Hertz’, but popularly, “she” is known as Alice.
Last August, Planetsave reported on voluntary changes made by maga-wholesaler Costco to its seafood procurement practices. Most notably, in response to a letter from concerned share-holders, Costco ceased the sale of seven types of fish currently at risk of collapsing from over-fishing (the Atlantic cod, Atlantic halibut, Chilean sea bass, orange roughy, shark, swordfish, and
Reporting her results from a fifth Gulf of Mexico expedition ending this past December, University of Georgia marine scientist Samantha Joye has been to the bottom and back, and her findings are anything but optimistic. Her team has found numerous expanses of oil and soot covered sea floor that were “chemically finger-printed” as deriving from
