Climate Change Information Project

[Pete Wirth]

Hi,

I'm involved with the Climate Change Information Project with GreeningUSA. The focus of the project is to get scientific based articles relating to climate change issues disseminated to a broader public. Currently, most of these articles tend to stay within the scientific community.

We are looking for interested individuals and organizations that want to receive articles on climate change. How you use them is up to you. For example, The Westcott Community Center, ( www.westcottcc.org ) in Syracuse started a new section on their web page New Feature; THE SCIENCE OF CLIMATE CHANGE.

Syracuse First (Think Local, Buy Local, www.syracusefirst.org) uses the articles in their blog postings.

GreeningUSA posts them in their GreeningUSA News Digest and an upcoming blog being developed for their web site.

Some suggestions for using them as an individual are: pass the articles onto your friends, use the material as a resource if you want to write a letter to the editor, send the material to a local reporter, refer to them in your own blog postings, put them on your facebook site etc. We all can play a role, large or small in affecting public opinion on this important issue.

Most of the material comes from a web site, www.sciencedaily.com I've enclosed some examples of article from their web site at the end of this e-mail. Each month there are a few articles relating to climate change. When an article comes in I ll send one email with two formats: Title, brief excerpt, sources and link, and entire article with title, sources and link.

You decide if you want to use that particular article and if so, in what fashion. That's all it involves.

Our goal is to slowly, over time affect local public opinion to shift to a point where climate change or whatever you want to call it will be seen as something that needs to be addressed in a serious, systematic fashion.

Hope you are interested in being part of the Climate Change Information Project. If so, just sendan e-mail to pwi...@verizon.net and I'll add your name to the list of individuals/organizations to receive articles. If you have any questions feel free to contact me via e-mail or call 637-0331. Thanks.

Pete Wirth

pwi...@verizon.net

U.S. Records Warmest March; More Than 15,000 Warm Temperature Records Broken

ScienceDaily (Apr. 10, 2012) Record and near-record breaking temperatures dominated the eastern two-thirds of the United States and contributed to the warmest March on record for the contiguous United States, a record that dates back to 1895. More than 15,000 warm temperature records were broken during the month. For full story http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120410114021.htm

2010 Spike in Greenland Ice Loss Lifted Bedrock, GPS Reveals

ScienceDaily (Dec. 9, 2011) An unusually hot melting season in 2010 accelerated ice loss in southern Greenland by 100 billion tons -- and large portions of the island's bedrock rose an additional quarter of an inch in response.

That's the finding from a network of nearly 50 GPS stations planted along the Greenland coast to measure the bedrock's natural response to the ever-diminishing weight of ice above it.

Ocean Acidification Linked to Larval Oyster Failure

ScienceDaily (Apr. 11, 2012) Researchers at Oregon State University have definitively linked an increase in ocean acidification to the collapse of oyster seed production at a commercial oyster hatchery in Oregon, where larval growth had declined to a level considered by the owners to be "non-economically viable."

A study by the researchers found that elevated seawater carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, resulting in more corrosive ocean water, inhibited the larval oysters from developing their shells and growing at a pace that would make commercial production cost-effective. As atmospheric CO2 levels continue to rise, this may serve as the proverbial canary in the coal mine for other ocean acidification impacts on shellfish, the scientists say. For full story http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120411132219.htm

West Antarctic ice shelves tearing apart at the seams

Science Daily (March 27, 2012)

A new study examining nearly 40 years of satellite imagery has revealed that the floating ice shelves of a critical portion of West Antarctica are steadily losing their grip on adjacent bay walls, potentially amplifying an already accelerating loss of ice to the sea. ... For full story http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120327134356.htm

Extreme Weather of Last Decade Part of Larger Pattern Linked to Global Warming

ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2012) The past decade has been one of unprecedented weather extremes. Scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany argue that the high incidence of extremes is not merely accidental. From the many single events a pattern emerges. For full story http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120325173206.htm

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Full length version:

Extreme Weather of Last Decade Part of Larger Pattern Linked to Global Warming

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120325173206.htm

ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2012) The past decade has been one of unprecedented weather extremes. Scientists of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany argue that the high incidence of extremes is not merely accidental. From the many single events a pattern emerges. At least for extreme rainfall and heat waves the link with human-caused global warming is clear, the scientists show in a new analysis of scientific evidence in the journal Nature Climate Change. Less clear is the link between warming and storms, despite the observed increase in the intensity of hurricanes.

In 2011 alone, the US was hit by 14 extreme weather events which caused damages exceeding one billion dollars each -- in several states the months of January to October were the wettest ever recorded. Japan also registered record rainfalls, while the Yangtze river basin in China suffered a record drought. Similar record-breaking events occurred also in previous years. In 2010, Western Russia experienced the hottest summer in centuries, while in Pakistan and Australia record-breaking amounts of rain fell. 2003 saw Europe s hottest summer in at least half a millennium. And in 2002, the weather station of Zinnwald-Georgenfeld measured more rain in one day than ever before recorded anywhere in Germany -- what followed was the worst flooding of the Elbe river for centuries.

A question of probabilities

"The question is whether these weather extremes are coincidental or a result of climate change," says Dim Coumou, lead author of the article. "Global warming can generally not be proven to cause individual extreme events -- but in the sum of events the link to climate change becomes clear." This is what his analysis of data and published studies shows. "It is not a question of yes or no, but a question of probabilities," Coumou explains. The recent high incidence of weather records is no longer normal, he says.

"It s like a game with loaded dice," says Coumou. "A six can appear every now and then, and you never know when it happens. But now it appears much more often, because we have changed the dice." The past week illustrates this: between March 13th and 19th alone, historical heat records were exceeded in more than a thousand places in North America.

Three pillars: basic physics, statistical analysis and computer simulations

The scientists base their analysis on three pillars: basic physics, statistical analysis and computer simulations. Elementary physical principles already suggest that a warming of the atmosphere leads to more extremes. For example, warm air can hold more moisture until it rains out. Secondly, clear statistical trends can be found in temperature and precipitation data, the scientists explain. And thirdly, detailed computer simulations also confirm the relation between warming and records in both temperature and precipitation.

With warmer ocean temperatures, tropical storms -- called typhoons or hurricanes, depending on the region -- should increase in intensity but not in number, according to the current state of knowledge. In the past decade, several record-breaking storms occurred, for example hurricane Wilma in 2004. But the dependencies are complex and not yet fully understood. The observed strong increase in the intensity of tropical storms in the North Atlantic between 1980 and 2005, for example, could be caused not just by surface warming but by a cooling of the upper atmosphere. Furthermore, there are questions about the precision and reliability of historic storm data.

Overall, cold extremes decrease with global warming, the scientists found. But this does not compensate for the increase in heat extremes.

Climatic warming can turn an extreme event into a record-breaking event

"Single weather extremes are often related to regional processes, like a blocking high pressure system or natural phenomena like El Ni quot; says Stefan Rahmstorf, co-author of the article and chair of the Earth System Analysis department at PIK. "These are complex processes that we are investigating further. But now these processes unfold against the background of climatic warming. That can turn an extreme event into a record-breaking event."

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Journal Reference:

Dim Coumou, Stefan Rahmstorf. A decade of weather extremes. Nature Climate Change, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1452

http://www.peterwirth.net