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800,000 Years of Abrupt Climate Variability: Earth’s Climate Is Capable of Very Rapid Transitions
ScienceDaily (Sep. 8, 2011) — An international team of scientists, led by Dr Stephen Barker of Cardiff University, has produced a prediction of what climate records from Greenland might look like over the last 800,000 years.
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Climate in the Past Million Years Determined Greatly by Dust in the Southern Ocean
ScienceDaily (Sep. 1, 2011) — A group of scientists led by researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zürich) has quantified dust and iron fluxes deposited in the Antarctic Ocean during the past 4 million years. The research study published in Nature evidences the close relation…
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Pacific Walruses Studied as Sea Ice Melts
ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2011) — USGS Alaska Science Center researchers, in cooperation with the Native Village of Point Lay, will attempt to attach 35 satellite radio-tags to walruses on the northwestern Alaska coast in August as part of their ongoing study of how the Pacific walrus are responding to reduced sea ice conditions in late…
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Scientists Report Dramatic Carbon Loss from Massive Arctic Wildfire
ScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — In a study published in this week’s issue of Nature, Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) senior scientist Gauis Shaver and his colleagues, including lead author Michelle Mack of the University of Florida, describe the dramatic impacts of a massive Arctic wildfire on carbon releases to the atmosphere. The 2007 blaze on…
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Loss of Top Animal Predators Has Massive Ecological Effects
ScienceDaily (July 14, 2011) — “Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth,” a review paper that will be published on July 15, 2011, in the journal Science, concludes that the decline of large predators and herbivores in all regions of the world is causing substantial changes to Earth’s terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems. The paper claims that…
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Soil Microbes Accelerate Global Warming
ScienceDaily (July 13, 2011) — More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes soil to release the potent greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide, new research published in this week’s edition of Nature reveals. “This feedback to our changing atmosphere means that nature is not as efficient in slowing global warming as we previously thought,” said…
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What Will Climate Change and Sea Level Rise Mean for Barrier Islands?
ScienceDaily (June 15, 2011) — A new survey of barrier islands published earlier this spring offers the most thorough assessment to date of the thousands of small islands that hug the coasts of the world’s landmasses. The study, led by Matthew Stutz of Meredith College, Raleigh, N.C., and Orrin Pilkey of Duke University, Durham, N.C.,…
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Climate Projections Don’t Accurately Reflect Soil Carbon Release
A new study concludes that models may be predicting releases of atmospheric carbon dioxide that are either too high or too low, depending on the region, because they don’t adequately reflect variable temperatures that can affect the amount of carbon released from soil.
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Brown Recluse Spider: Range Could Expand in N. America With Changing Climate
ScienceDaily (Apr. 23, 2011) — One of the most feared spiders in North America is the subject a new study that aims to predict its distribution and how that distribution may be affected by climate changes. When provoked, the spider, commonly known as the brown recluse (Loxosceles reclusa), injects powerful venom that can kill the…
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Earth Recovered from Prehistoric Global Warming Faster Than Previously Thought
ScienceDaily (Apr. 21, 2011) — Earth may be able to recover from rising carbon dioxide emissions faster than previously thought, according to evidence from a prehistoric event analyzed by a Purdue University-led team. When faced with high levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide and rising temperatures 56 million years ago, Earth increased its ability to pull…