ARCTIC CHANGING FASTER THAN EXPECTED

Climate-change is transforming the Arctic environment faster than expected and accelerating the disappearance of sea ice, reports the biggest-ever study of Canada's changing north, which involved more than 370 scientists from 27 countries. Collectively they spent 15 months, starting in June 2007, aboard a research vessel above the Arctic Circle, the first time a ship has stayed mobile in Canada's high Arctic for a whole winter.

'(Climate change) is happening much faster than our most pessimistic models expected,' says David Barber, a professor at the University of Manitoba and the study's lead investigator.

Models predicted only a few years ago that the Arctic would be ice-free in summer by the year 2100, but the increasing pace of climate change now suggests it could happen between 2013 and 2030, Barber said.

The cost of the Arctic's rapid melt will be $US2.4 trillion by 2050 as the region loses its ability to cool the global climate, says the U.S.-based Pew Environment Group, which released a report showing the Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the planet.

Full report in NewsDaily.

2000 TO 2009 WARMEST DECADE SAYS NASA

NASA says the average global temperature for the last ten years are the warmest decade on record (since 1880), reports ScienceDaily.

CLIMATE WIZARD SHOWS WHAT IS COMING

Climate Wizard, makes rapid visual sense of climate models or a combination of some of all of sixteen of the leading ones.

Read the report on ScienceDaily.

MAN-MADE CLIMATE-CHANGE IRREFUTABLE FACT

Those who say that the changes in climate, average global-temperature, and weather are not man-made are dead wrong. The facts are irrefutable, the reasoning from them is irrefutable, and therfore the conclusion is irrefutable. The argument is so simple it is beyond denial, even for the worst prat-headed denial-addict on the planet.

A mixture has the characteristics of its components. The behaviour of a mixture is determined by its components and their proportions. Every cook on the planet knows that. Change the ingredients or change the proportions of the ingredients and the outcome will be different. The mixture will behave differently; its internal activity will be different.

The atmosphere is a mixture. That is undeniable. We have changed the characteristics of the mixture by putting in components that were not there before and changing the proportions of existing components, in particular carbon-dioxide. That is undeniable. For two hundred years we have been busily putting back into the sky massive amounts of carbon that were taken out of it many millions of years ago and put deep into the ground in the form of nice safe coal and oil. That is undeniable. We know how much carbon-dioxide we are pumping into the sky; it is a simple calculation--at present over 9 billion tonnes a year. That is undeniable. Before we started using the sky as an open sewer for the waste gases from coal and oil, carbon-dioxide was 280 parts per million. Now it is 390ppm. That is undeniable. That is a massive change--about 40%--in the proportions of a very important ingredient. That is undeniable. The ingredient we have increased is one that traps heat, like the glass of a greenhouse. That is undeniable. After 4.5 billion years the Earth had reached a perfect equilibrium, and for the past 10,000 years it had not gone outside a one-degree band. Now it has. Before we changed the atmosphere the same amount of heat was being reflected back into space as was being received from the Sun. Now ~0.8 watts per square metre more is coming in than going out. Therefore the atmosphere is warming up, the average global temperature is rising, the polar ice is melting. That is all undeniable. The rise in temperature has been compounding at 1.5% per annum; the rise in carbon-dioxide has been compounding at 1.5% per annum. The correlation is no accident. That is undeniable.

In short, it is undeniable that human beings have changed the mixture called the atmosphere. We have therefore changed its characteristics and its behaviour, its internal activity. Weather is the short-term behaviour of the atmosphere; global climate is its long-term behaviour. We have caused a fundamental change in those behaviours.

That is undeniable.

QED.

For the latest data off the satellites, and records going back to 1880, click here.

NASA UNVEILS CO2 SATELLITE MAPPING TOOL

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite is proving a precise and sophisticated tool for tracking carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, and its effect on climate in conjunction with water vapour, reports ScienceDaily.

The new data, which span the seven-plus years of the AIRS mission, measure the concentration and distribution of carbon-dioxide in the mid-troposphere--the region of Earth's atmosphere located between 5-12 kilometers (3-7 miles), above Earth's surface. They also track its global transport. The product represents the first-ever release of global carbon-dioxide data based solely on observations. The data have been extensively validated against both aircraft and ground-based observations.

In another major finding, scientists using AIRS data have removed most of the uncertainty about the role of water vapour in atmospheric models. The data are the strongest observational evidence to date for how water vapour responds to a warming climate.

"AIRS temperature and water vapour observations have corroborated climate model predictions that the warming of our climate produced as carbon-dioxide levels rise will be greatly exacerbated--in fact, more than doubled--by water vapour," said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas.

He explained that most of the warming caused by carbon-dioxide does not come directly from it but from effects known as feedbacks. Water vapour is a particularly important feedback. As the climate warms, the atmosphere becomes more humid. Since water is a greenhouse gas, it serves as a powerful positive feedback to the climate system, amplifying the initial warming. AIRS measurements of water vapour reveal that water greatly amplifies warming caused by increased levels of carbon-dioxide. Comparisons of AIRS data with models and re-analyses are in excellent agreement.

"The implication of these studies is that, should greenhouse gas emissions continue on their current course of increase, we are virtually certain to see Earth's climate warm by several degrees Celsius in the next century, unless some strong negative feedback mechanism emerges elsewhere in Earth's climate system," said Dressler.

NEW IGBP INDEX PROVES CLIMATE-CHANGE

A new index prepared by the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), which reduces solid climate-change data to a simple index, rather like a stock-market index, once again proves that human activity is the cause. Full report in ScienceDaily.

STUDY PREDICTS SEA WIL RISE UP TO 1.9M

A careful new study shows that the global oceans will rise may rise anywhere between 0.75 metres and 1.9 metres, reports ScienceDaily. ~The latter figure is consistent with another study that predicted up to 2.0 metres.

EARTH MORE SENSITIVE TO CO2 THAN THOUGHT

A detailed study of paleoclimatological data, reported by ScienceDaily, shows that the Earth's temperature may be 30-50% more sensitive to the carbon-dioxide than previously thought. There are facts not factored into our models.

Oh dear!

OCEANS NOW ABSORBING CO2 MORE SLOWLY

A new study, reported in ScienceDaily has for the first time used hard data to measure the level at which the oceans are absorbing carbon-dioxided, and found a significant reduction.

"Researchers have used climate models that suggest the oceans have been absorbing less CO2, but this is the first study to quantify the change directly using observations," said the author of the study, Jeffrey Park, who is professor of geology and geophysics and director of the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studiesthe Park. "It strengthens the projection that the oceans will not absorb as much of our future CO2 emissions, and that the pace of future climate change will quicken."

He used data collected from atmospheric observing stations in Hawaii, Alaska and Antarctica to study the relationship between fluctuations in global temperatures and the global abundance of atmospheric CO2 on interannual time scales (one to 10 years). A similar study done 20 years ago found a five-month lag between interannual temperature changes and the resulting changes in CO2 levels. Park found that the lag has increased to at least fifteen months, a surprisingly large change, which indicates that the ability of the oceans to absorb carbon-dioxide is much reduced.

NASA SEES UNEXPECTED ANTARCTIC ICE-LOSS

ScienceDaily reports satellite measurements by NASA showing an unexpected, and large, loss of ice in East Antarctica, an area that holds 90% of the world's fresh water, and was previously thought stable.

West Antarctica is losing 132 gigatonnes of ice a year. Now East Antarctica is estimated to be losing 57 gigatonnes a year. (A gigatonne is a billion metric tons.)

CARBON-DIOXIDE EMISSIONS UP 29 PERCENT

A report in ScienceDaily says that atmospheric CO2 emissions have risen 29% since 2000 and 41% between 1990 and 2008. 1990 is the reference year for the Kyoto Protocol...

Another report, on a study that has for the first time measured the greenhouse-strength of a range of other chemicals, some of which last for thousands of years in the atmosphere, found that they have far greater heat-trapping power than carbon-dioxide.

HOTTER AMERICA AND GREENLAND MELTING FASTER

Two reports from ScienceDaily show that the Greenland icesheet is losing mass at an accelerating rate, and that record high temperatures across the United States are far outpacing lows.

MULTI-YEAR ARCTIC ICE ALL GONE

ScienceDaily reports that an Arctic expert who recently surveyed the region says that the thick, hard multi-year ice in the Arctic has in effect all vanished, leaving only 'rotten' ice that can easily be sailed through.

MUD SAYS WARMING IS NOT NATURAL

Sediment at the bottom of a remote Artctic lake shows that the warming in the late twentieth century was unlike anything caused by natural events during the last 200,000 years, reports ScienceDaily.

15M YEARS AGO C02 WAS THIS HIGH

New research, reported in ScienceDaily shows that the last time carbon-dioxide was at its present 387 parts per million was 15 million years ago. The research uses a new method of calculating carbon-dioxide levels that enables data to be extracted back to about 20 million years. It checks against data extracted from ice-cores going back 800,000 years, which was the previous limit.

15 million years ago the planet was radically different, which suggests that we have put it on an inelectable path to an environment inimical to our civilisation.

TWO-METRE RISE IN OCEANS UNSTOPPABLE

ScienceDaily News reports that experts have told a climate conferene at Oxford University that a rise of at least two metres in the world's sea levels is now almost unstoppable.

'The crux of the sea level issue is that it starts very slowly but once it gets going it is practically unstoppable,' said Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at Germany's Potsdam Institute and a widely recognised sea level expert. 'There is no way I can see to stop this rise, even if we have gone to zero emissions.'

He said the best outcome was that after temperatures stabilised, sea-levels would only rise at a steady rate 'for centuries to come,' and not accelerate.

Most scientists expect at least 2 degrees Celsius warming as a result of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, and probably more. The world warmed 0.7-0.8 degrees last century.

Rahmstorf estimated that if the world limited warming to 1.5 degrees then it would still see a two-metre rise in sea-levels over a period of centuries, causing some island nations to disappear. His best guess was a one-metre rise this century, assuming three degrees warming, and up to five metres over the next 300 years.

'There is nothing we can do to stop this unless we manage to cool the planet. That would require extracting the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. There is no way of doing this on the sufficient scale known today' he said.

Scientists say that ice melt acquires a momentum of its own--for example warming the air as less ice reflects less heat, warming the local area.

'Once the ice is on the move, it's like a tipping point which reinforces itself,' said Wageningen University's Pier Vellinga, citing various research.

He thinks that above a two-degree rise in global average temperature there is a 50% chance that the Greenland ice-sheet will disintegrate, which 'will result in about a seven-metre sea-level rise, and the time frame is about 300-1000 years.'

Speakers in Oxford used history to back up their arguments on rising seas. They said that three million years ago the planet was 2-3 degrees warmer and the sea 25-35 metres higher, and 122,000 years ago 2 degrees warmer and 10 metres higher.

FAST-MELTING ICE AT POLES MAPPED

The most comprehensive picture of the rapidly thinning glaciers along the coastline of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets has been created using satellite lasers, marking an important step forward in the quest to make more accurate predictions for future sea level rise.

Researchers from British Antarctic Survey and the University of Bristol describe how analysis of millions of NASA satellite measurements from both of these vast ice sheets shows that the most profound ice loss is a result of glaciers speeding up where they flow into the sea.

The scientists compared the rates of change in elevation of both fast-flowing and slow-flowing ice. In Greenland, for example, they studied 111 fast-moving glaciers and found 81 thinning at rates twice that of slow-flowing ice at the same altitude. They found that ice loss from many glaciers in both Antarctica and Greenland is greater than the rate of snowfall further inland.

In Antarctica some of the fastest thinning glaciers are in West Antarctica (Amundsen Sea Embayment) where Pine Island Glacier and neighbouring Smith and Thwaites Glacier are thinning by up to 9 metres per year.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

DRAMATIC ARCTIC RESPONSES TO GLOBAL OVERHEATING

'The Arctic as we know it may soon be a thing of the past,' says Eric Post, associate professor of biology at Penn State University, who led a large international team that carried out wide-ranging studies in 2008 of the biological responses to Arctic warming.

The paper by Post's research team shows that the effects of Arctic warming have been dramatic so far, especially considering that the warming amounts to only about 1-degree Celsius over the last 150 years. He said it is difficult to predict what will happen with the anticipated 6-degree warming over the next century.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

LESS SUN BUT ARCTIC IS GETTING WARMER

Detailed research into the Arctic climate has revealed that although it has been receiving progressively less energy from the sun for the past 8000 years, a decline that will not reverse for another 4000 years, and which means it should be getting cooler, it suddenly started warming round about 1900 and has since been warming at an accelerating rate.

It is now 1.2 degrees Celsius warmer than it was in 1900, higher than it has been for two thousand years. Till the twentieth century it had been cooling 0.2 degrees Celsius per thousand years.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

MODELS AGREE: WE ARE MAKING AIR WETTER

An exhaustive study of climate models has found the unmistakable fingerprint of human activity is the cause of the inexorable rise of the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere--it has been rising at 0.4kg/cu.m per decade since 1988.

Full report in ScienceDaily.

WARMER ARCTIC MELTING METHYL HYDRATE

The warming of an Arctic current over the last thirty years has triggered the release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from methane hydrate stored in the sediment beneath the seabed, reports ScienceDaily.
Scientists at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Birmingham, Royal Holloway London and IFM-Geomar in Germany have found that more than 250 plumes of bubbles of methane gas are rising from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin in the Arctic, in a depth range of 150 to 400 metres.

Methane released from gas hydrate in submarine sediments has been identified in the past as an agent of climate change. The likelihood of methane being released in this has been widely predicted.

ANTARCTIC GLACIER THINNING MUCH FASTER

The Pine Island Glacier is losing ice four times faster that it was ten years ago. If melting continues at that rate it will vanish in a hundred years, a sixth the time that was previously estimated, reports ScienceDaily.

The 5,400 square kilometre region now affected is big enough to impact the rate at which sea-levels will rise around the world. It contains enough ice to almost double the IPCC's best estimate of the rise this century, so how it will respond to the accelerated thinning of great concern.