Published on Aug 9, 2013 by NASA: This animation shows the projected increase in potential evaporation through the year 2100, relative to 1980, based on the combined results of multiple climate models. The maximum increase across North America is about 1 mm/day by 2100. This concept, potential evaporation, is a measure of drying potential or…
Published on Aug 8, 2013 by NASA: With climate change, certain areas of the United States, like the great Plains and Upper Midwest, will be at a greater risk of burning by the end of the 21st-century. Areas like the Mountain West that are prone to burning now will see even more fires than they…
By Brigid Fitzgerald / Earth Policy Institute first published May 12, 2011. As the world continues to add close to 80 million people each year, high population growth is running up against the limits of our finite planet, threatening global economic and political stability. To stay within the bounds of the earth’s natural resources, the…
NASA: The average temperature across the continental U.S. could be 8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer by the end of the 21st century under a climate scenario in which concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide rise to 800 parts per million. Current concentrations stand at 400 parts per million, and are rising faster than at any…
PIK June 20, 2013: Day-to-day rainfall in India might become much more variable due to climate change – potentially putting millions of poor farmers and the country’s agricultural productivity at risk. The Indian monsoon is a complex system which is likely to change under future global warming. While it is in the very nature of…
Unusually high frequency points to human influence | NASA climatologist James Hansen made headlines during the US heatwave of 1988, declaring in testimony to Congress and during interviews on prime-time television that a build-up of greenhouse gases was increasing the probability of weather extremes. Now, as much of the United States sizzles through another torrid…
A key uncertainty is the fraction of carbon that might be decomposed under anaerobic conditions – resulting potentially in methane emissions to the atmosphere. Given the high warming potential of methane, the overall magnitude of the permafrost-carbon feedback will depend strongly on this fraction. Thawing of permafrost and the associated release of carbon constitutes a…
We calculate that the sub-Antarctic hydrate inventory could be of the same order of magnitude as that of recent estimates made for Arctic permafrost. Once thought to be devoid of life, the ice-covered parts of Antarctica are now known to be a reservoir of metabolically active microbial cells and organic carbon. The potential for methanogenic…
Science Daily – May 14, 2013 — The life span of cloud-forming sulfate particles in the air is shorter than had been assumed due to a sulfur dioxide oxidation pathway which has been neglected in climate models so far. Sulfur dioxide is as antagonist of greenhouse gases less effective than previously assumed. It forms sulfate…