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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (16621)	10/2/2007 10:36:28 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 36917

Some climate news from Nature, that lovely journal that we love to quote when we agree with the article, and love to demean when we don't. Nature 445, 581 (8 February 2007) \| doi:10.1038/445581a Climate change 2007: Data keep flooding in Michael Hopkin The studies that came too late for the IPCC report. The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) represents the work of thousands of researchers, compiled and summarized by hundreds of climatologists. Nominally, the cut-off for inclusion in the assessment was the end of 2005, allowing a year for the panel to make sense of the vast tracts of data. But notable research arising after that date will not have escaped attention. Here is a round-up of some of the most prominent studies. N. COBBING/STILL PICTURES Greenland ice is melting faster than before. Greenland ice Greenland is losing ice at an ever-increasing rate, according to data from the GRACE gravity-measuring satellite (J. L. Chen, C. R. Wilson & B. D. Tapley Science 313, 1958–1960; 2006). Antarctic air Weather balloons reveal that the troposphere above Antarctica has warmed by 0.5–0.7 °C per decade over the past 30 years, although it is not clear why (J. Turner, T. A. Lachlan-Cope, S. Colwell, G. J. Marshall & W. M. Connolley Science 311, 1914–1917; 2006). Established forests Old forests keep soaking up atmospheric carbon long after they reach maturity, according to measurements from China. Soil carbon in a forest reserve in Guangdong increased by 68% in 25 years (G. Zhou et al. Science 314, 1417; 2006). Atlantic currents The Gulf Stream, which brings heat from the tropics to the North Atlantic, weakened by 10% between 1200 and 1850, during the cold spell known as the Little Ice Age. The authors suggest that this demonstrates the link between this ocean current and temperatures in northern Europe (D. C. Lund, J. Lynch-Stieglitz & W. B. Curry Nature 444, 601–604; 2006). Atlantic hurricanes Rising sea-surface temperatures correlate strongly with the observed increase in the number of category 4 and 5 Atlantic hurricanes between 1970 and 2004. Other factors that affect hurricane formation, such as wind shear, do not seem to have increased in line with the upward trend (C. D. Hoyos, P. A. Agudelo, P. J. Webster & J. A. Curry Science 312, 94–97; 2006). River runoff More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to plants losing less water by transpiration, a model suggests. This could affect the amount of fresh water available for human use. (N. Gedney et al. Nature 439, 835–838; 2006). Polar temperatures Bubbles dating back 150,000 years in an Antarctic ice core show that warming events have tended to seesaw back and forth between the poles (EPICA Community Members Nature 444, 195–198; 2006). Ocean temperatures The upper layers of the oceans cooled, on average, between 2003 and 2005. Factoring in this downturn, the rate of warming in these layers between 1993 and 2005 was equivalent to 0.33 watts per square metre over the whole of the planet's surface (J. M. Lyman, J. K. Willis & G. C. Johnson Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, L18604; 2006). Sea levels If the rate of sea-level rise is proportional to the global rise in temperature since pre-industrial times, sea levels could rise by up to 1.4 metres by 2100 (S. Rahmstorf Science 315, 368–370; 2007).