It isn’t official yet, but 2014 appears to have been the hottest year on the world temperature record. In December, during the U.N. climate talks in Lima, Peru (COP20), the World Meteorological Organization announced in a provisional statement that this conclusion about 2014 weather and climate was virtually certain. WMO bases its report on datasets
The White House released a report this morning from the Council of Economic Advisers that shows the consequences of not doing something about climate change NOW. Our sister publication, CleanTechnica, has the full story, along with a word from noted Penn State climatologist Michael E. Mann. One important section of the report discusses a number of
March 22, 2014, killer landslide near Seattle (photo: Kings County Sheriff’s Office). Last Saturday’s horrific mudslide 55 miles northeast of Seattle may unfortunately herald the shape of landmass movements to come, if climate change has its way with us. A new study in the European Alps elaborates. In a draft article for Elsevier’s Science of
A team of scientists from Britain, Russia, Mongolia, and Switzerland have released a report which finds that evidence obtained from Siberian caves suggest that a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius could result in permanently frozen ground end up thawing across a massive swathe of Siberia, threatening a release of carbon dioxide. Such a
Permafrost covers almost a quarter of the northern hemisphere, and according to recent calculations contains 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon – that’s an amount twice what is currently in our atmosphere. A new report released by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) entitled ‘Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost’ warns that the release of this permafrost carbon could seriously amplify
To be honest, this is not a surprise to me — I’ve read many hints of this for years, and most climate science predictions, in general, seem to be too conservative (i.e. end up modeling slower warming than actually occurs). But, this new study has made the rounds on major media sites and blogs around
in 2007, the largest fire ever recorded in the Arctic swept across the Alaskan Northern Slope region, releasing an estimated 2.1 teragrams (2.3 million tons) of carbon into the atmosphere. Researchers estimate that the release of carbon was equivalent to a year’s worth of carbon storage for the entire Arctic tundra biome. Climate warming in the Arctic may lead to a greater frequency of such large fires, putting permafrost at risk of thawing and releasing more CO2.
• The last five years have been the warmest since 1880 when monitoring began
• Tree ring data suggest that the summer temperatures over the past few decades have been the highest in 2000 years
• Snow cover in May and June has decrease by close to 20%
• The winter season in the Arctic has been shortened by almost two weeks
• There is worry about the decrease in snow and ice cover in the Arctic that will decrease the amount of solar radiation reflected back out into the atmosphere
• Warming is only expected to continue
• Sea level rise by 2100 is expected to be between 0.9 and 1.6 metres, approximately twice what was predicted by the UN panel on climate change
Forests are supposed to reduce carbon dioxide levels, but new research shows that the increase in fires and their tendency to burn larger areas of forest are converting forests into generators of carbon. “Since the proliferation of black spruce, Alaskan soils have acted as huge carbon sinks,” says Evan Kane, a research assistant professor in
Here’s a great video from Greenpeace on this important topic. As it notes: “the melting permafrost not only affects the way of life of the indigenous nomadic Nenets people, but also adds burden on climate change due to massive release of methane and carbon dioxide due to decomposion in the defrosting soil.” “Melting Siberian permafrost
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBtlCUUO7xk From the YouTube page: “Christopher Burn, a canadian geographer, tells us that global warming is causing the permafrost in western arctic and Yukon to melt.” h/t Climate Denial Crock of the Week
The release of methane from underneath Arctic ice is expected to be a major issue in coming years as permafrost melts (if we don’t act to stop climate change soon). Methane is about 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than CO2 over a 100-year time period and about 72 times more potent over a 20-year
Methane (CH4) is the main constituent of natural gas, and is the result of natural decomposition processes. Although its lifetime in the atmosphere as a free gas is much shorter than CO2, it is 23 times more potent in terms of its heat trapping ability. This past month, there has been a flurry of news,
Besides posing threats to structures and landscapes on a local scale, melting permafrost emits carbon dioxide and methane, according to the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), making permafrost a threat on a global scale.
