2007-05-30

Close to Tipping Point

NASA, Columbia U.
Lead Author: James Hansen
Where published: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Human-made greenhouse gases have brought the Earth’s climate close to critical tipping points, with potentially dangerous consequences for the planet.
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Significant Ice Loss in Greenland

NASA
Lead author: Bill Krabill
Greenland has experienced a significant loss of ice ... a continuing trend of ice loss on the island.
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2007-05-21

CO2 Emissions Accelerating

Global Carbon Project
Lead author: Michael Raupach
Where published: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
CO2 emissions from cars, factories, and power plants grew at an annual rate of 1.1 percent during the 1990s, according to the Global Carbon Project, which is a data clearinghouse set up in 2001 as a cooperative effort among UN-related groups and other scientific organizations. But from 2000 to 2004, CO2 emissions rates almost tripled to 3 percent a year – higher than any rate used in emissions scenarios for the reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

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2007-05-20

Plants Less Able to Absorb Carbon

Bristol University
Lead author: Wolfgang Knorr
Where published: Geophysical Research Letters

We find that the remarkable feature of the 2002-03 anomaly seems to be that climate fluctuations - not only related to El NiƱo and occurring across all latitudes - acted together to create an unusually strong out-gasing of CO2 of the terrestrial biosphere.

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2007-05-17

Ocean Losing Ability to Absorb CO2

U.E. Anglia, British Antarctic Survey, Planck Institute
Lead author: Corinne Le Quere
Where published: Science

...four-year study concluded that an increase in winds over the Southern Ocean is preventing it from absorbing more carbon and is causing the sea to release some of the gas that it had stored ... This is serious. All climate models predict that this kind of 'feedback' will continue and intensify during this century

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2007-05-11

Plants Reduce Less Carbon Dioxide

University of Minnesota
Lead author: Peter B. Reich
As fossil fuel burning continues to pump carbon dioxide (CO2) into the air, the world's land plants will be unable to absorb as much of it as had been predicted ... limitations on the availability of nitrogen, a necessary nutrient, will likely translate to limitations on the ability of plants to absorb the extra CO2.
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2007-05-09

Dams Emit Methane

Brazil National Institute for Space Research
Where published: Springer Netherlands
Lead author: Ivan Lima
global large dams annually release about 104 million metric tons of methane to the atmosphere through reservoir surfaces, turbines and spillways ... calculations imply that the world's 52,000 large dams contribute more than four percent of the total warming impact of human activities.

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2007-05-01

Arctic Ice Melting Faster Than Expected

US National Snow and Ice Data Center
Lead author: Ted Scambos
Where published: Geophysical Research Letters
The Arctic icecap is melting much faster than expected and is now about 30 years ahead of predictions made by a UN climate panel, a US ice expert says.

This means the ocean at the top of the world could be free or nearly free of summer ice by 2020, three decades sooner than the global panel's gloomiest forecast of 2050 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
...
no doubt that this is caused in large part by greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
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