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climate change

Climate Change Updates

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The Arctic’s Most Stable Sea Ice Is Vanishing Alarmingly FastAfter climate change melts the Arctic Ocean’s year-round ice cover, only the region’s oldest, thickest ice will remain … or will it? A new study offers a dire warning that even this ice is at risk. Known as the “Last Ice Area,” this icy zone extends more than 1,200 miles (2,000 kilometers) from Greenland’s northern coast to the western part of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. The enduring ice here is at least 5 years old — older than in neighboring regions — and measures about 13 feet (4 meters) thick.https://www.livescience.com/arctic-ice-refuge-vanishing.html Venice … Read more

CLIMATE CHANGE: The Fire Age, and Much More

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Here’s our periodic round-up of climate-change news: California Wildfires Signal the Arrival of a Planetary Fire Agehttps://www.livescience.com/earth-has-entered-pyrocene-fire-age.htmlAnother autumn, more fires, more refugees and incinerated homes. For California, flames have become the colors of fall. Free-burning fire is the proximate provocation for the havoc, since its ember storms are engulfing landscapes. But in the hands of humans, combustion is also the deeper cause. Modern societies are burning lithic landscapes – once-living biomass now fossilized into coal, gas and oil – which is aggravating the burning of living landscapes. The World’s Fastest-Thinning Glacier Identifiedhttps://www.livescience.com/fastest-thinning-glacier-andes.htmlA glacier in Patagonia that has lost half its … Read more

CLIMATE CHANGE: Antarctica, World Map; Ozone; Birds; & More

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‘Upside-Down Rivers’ of Warm Water Are Carving Antarctica to PiecesEarth’s frozen places are losing ground fast. In Antarctica, melted ice spills into the ocean at rate of about 155 billion tons (140 billion metric tons) per year — an amount so confoundingly huge that it’s easier just to call it “chilling” and “unprecedented,” as a recent U.N. report did. Those numbers will only increase as humans continue polluting the air with record amounts of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.https://www.livescience.com/antarctica-ice-shelf-upside-down-rivers.html Scientists Want to Make a 3D Map of the Entire World Before Climate Change Ruins ItEarth is changing faster than anyone can comprehend. … Read more

Climate Change Updates

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September ties as the hottest month on record globally CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar reports on newly released data showing that September tied 2016 for the hottest global average temperature in September. Full Story Fall Begins – With Record Snowfall, a Heat Wave, and a Cat 5 Hurricane The first few days of the season haven’t felt much like fall at all for many across the United States. From snow storms to heat waves — hello? Did we miss something? What happened to mild temperatures and colorful leaves? Here’s a look at three wild weather events that marked the start of season. … Read more

CLIMATE CHANGE: How Much Time Do We Have?

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Are we running out of time to stop climate change? Nearly a year has passed since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that limiting global warming to the 1.5-degree Celsius (2.6 degrees Fahrenheit) mark by the end of the century — a goal set to stave off the worst impacts of climate change — “would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” Some politicians and writers have thrown their hands up in the air and argued that it’s too late, and that human civilization is simply not up to the task. Others, meanwhile, took … Read more

CLIMATE CHANGE: Greenland Melting; July Heat; Fracking

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Here are some of the latest climate change stories to keep you up-to-date: Greenland Loses 11 Billion Tons of Ice – In One DayAfter months of record temperatures, scientists say Greenland’s ice sheet experienced its biggest melt of the summer on Thursday, losing 11 billion tons of surface ice to the ocean — equivalent to 4.4 million Olympic swimming pools. Greenland’s ice sheet usually melts during the summer, but the melt season typically begins around the end of May; this year it began at the start. It has been melting “persistently” over the past four months, which have recorded all time … Read more

CLIMATE CHANGE: We Need to Plant Trees

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Want to help save the world from climate change? Then grab some seeds, or some seedlings, and start planting trees like there’s no tomorrow. At least 1 trillion of them, and fast. That may sound like a lot of trees, but the Earth has room for their gnarled bows and branches. In a new study that excluded cities and agricultural areas, researchers found that the planet has nearly 3.5 million square miles (9 million square kilometers) to spare for trees. Such newly planted trees could cut carbon (a part of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide) in the atmosphere by nearly … Read more

CLIMATE CHANGE: This Is the Most pressing Issue of Our Time

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Think climate change is a far-off thing affecting only future generations? Think again. Check out these headlines from just the last TWO DAYS: Today’s Climate Change Is Worse Than Anything Earth Has Experienced in the Past 2,000 Years The global climate is changing faster now than it has at any point in the past 2,000 years. That’s the conclusion of a trio of papers published July 24 in the journals Nature and Nature Geoscience that examined the global climate over the past two millennia. The researchers showed that none of the past fluctuations — that is, not the Little Ice … Read more

CLIMATE CHANGE: Has it Been Hotter Than This Before?

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Short Answer – yes. And almost everything died. Would you ever go on vacation to the North Pole? Unless you like subzero temperatures and Nordic-ski treks, probably not. But if you lived 56 million years ago, you might answer differently. Back then, you would have enjoyed balmy temperatures and a lush green landscape (although you would have had to watch out for crocodiles). That’s because the world was in the middle of an extreme period of global warming called the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when the Earth was so hot that even the poles reached nearly tropical temperatures. But was the … Read more

CLIMATE CHANGE: The Danger of “Fire Ice”

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There’s a giant trove of frozen methane, or “fire ice,” locked beneath our ocean’s surface. If released, it could trigger tsunamis, landslides and release huge amounts of carbon into our already-warming atmosphere. But we have almost no idea how much there is or where to find it. That’s in part because frozen methane on our planet takes many more forms than we previously thought, and we are only now beginning to recognize some of them, Ann Cook, an associate professor in the School of Earth Sciences at The Ohio State University said during a presentation yesterday (June 25) here at … Read more