Climate News

• Jun 12 - Are we reaching the irreversible permafrost tipping point?

  The Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment (CARVE) is a five-year NASA-led field campaign studying change in the Arctic's carbon cycle. CARVE Project Manager Steve Dinardo of JPL and the CARVE science team are monitoring the tundra with airborne spectrometers and measuring emissions of carbon dioxide and methane from thawing permafrost. Current climate models need to account for the impact of climate change on permafrost and how its degradation may affect regional and global climate but observations are scarce for calibration. When conditions get warmer and drier, scientists expect most of the carbon to be released as carbon dioxide but if conditions get warmer and wetter, most will be in the form of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. CARVE observations are already showing different patterns from what models have suggested might happen. Miller said. "We saw large, regional-scale episodic bursts of higher-than-normal carbon dioxide and methane in interior Alaska and across the North Slope during the spring thaw, and they lasted until after the fall refreeze. To cite another example, in July 2012 we saw methane levels over swamps in the Innoko Wilderness that were 650 parts per billion higher than normal background levels. That's similar to what you might find in a large city." The 5 year research project should produce valuable information for the climate modelers and arctic researchers.
  

• Jun 5 - Madagascar coral reefs affected more by deforestation than climate change

  An international team including the UWA Oceans Institute, the Australian Institute of Marine Science, Macquarie University, the Institute for Environmental Studies at the VU University Amsterdam (Netherlands) and the Wildlife Conservation Society in the US, found that preventing soil erosion and sediment pollution arising from human activities such as deforestation are crucial to reef survival. The study looked at four watersheds near coral reef ecosystems in Madagascar, which has different climate zones that mimic most of the world's coral reef climate and a range of different land uses. Curbing sediment pollution to coral reefs is one of the major recommendations to buy time for corals to survive ocean warming and bleaching events in the future.
  
  Source: Joseph Maina, Hans de Moel, Jens Zinke, Joshua Madin, Tim McClanahan, Jan E. Vermaat. Human deforestation outweighs future climate change impacts of sedimentation on coral reefs. Nature Communications, 2013; 4 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2986

• Jun 4 - It's all about messaging

• May 31 - New bibliography on vulnerability assessment

• May 27 - Extreme Temperatures in China due to human influence