Joshua S. Hill - More Than 15,000 Warm Temperature Records Broken in Warm March

March 2012 was remarkable not simply because it was the warmest March on record for the contiguous United States, nor is it remarkable for the more than 15,000 warm temperature records broken in March, the early March tornado outbreak, or the fact that it contributed to the warmest first quarter on record; March was remarkable because all of those things happened.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center released their monthly State of the Climate report for March, highlighting all the records and near-record breaking temperatures that dominated the eastern to-thirds of the U.S.

The average temperature of 51.1°F was 8.6 degrees above the 20^th century average for March and 0.5°F warmer than the previous warmest March in 1910. Of the more than 1,400 months (117+ years) that have passed since the U.S. climate record began, only one month, January 2006, has seen a larger departure from its average temperature than March 2012.

Read More:

http://planetsave.com/2012/04/09/more-than-15000-warm-temperature-records-broken-in-warm-march/

Bill McKibben - It’s Time for Interfaith Moral Action on Climate Change

There are lots of types of people who have been taking action on climate change over the last several years: environmentalists (of course), students and young people, community-based groups, labor activists, indigenous peoples, Appalachian and Gulf Coast residents, ranchers and more. Also, importantly, have been people from the many different denominations that make up the broad religious community in the United States.

It was personally inspiring to me when several dozen people of faith took action last August, getting arrested at the White House protesting the Keystone XL pipeline. And it is inspiring that some of those people, as well as many more, have joined together to organize five days of faith-based activities calling for action on climate change in Washington, D.C. April 22-26. The Interfaith Moral Action on Climate (http://www.interfaithactiononclimatechange.org) is playing a key role in organizing and connecting these activities.

It’s very important that an interfaith voice— Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Baha’I, Hindu, and Native American—is taking action in this way. A spiritual voice is urgently needed to underline the fact that global warming is already causing human anguish and mortality in our nation and abroad, and much more will occur in the future without rapid action. There is an urgent need to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, dramatically reduce wasted energy and significantly shift our power supplies from oil, coal and natural gas to wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable energy sources.

Read More:

http://www.interfaithactiononclimatechange.org/bill-mckibben-its-time-for-imac.html

Fertilizer use responsible for increase in nitrous oxide in atmosphere

University of California, Berkeley, chemists have found a smoking gun proving that increased fertilizer use over the past 50 years is responsible for a dramatic rise in atmospheric nitrous oxide, which is a major greenhouse gas contributing to global climate change.

Climate scientists have assumed that the cause of the increased nitrous oxide was nitrogen-based fertilizer, which stimulates microbes in the soil to convert nitrogen to nitrous oxide at a faster rate than normal.

The new study, reported in the April issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, uses nitrogen isotope data to identify the unmistakable fingerprint of fertilizer use in archived air samples from Antarctica and Tasmania.

"Our study is the first to show empirically from the data at hand alone that the nitrogen isotope ratio in the atmosphere and how it has changed over time is a fingerprint of fertilizer use," said study leader Kristie Boering, a UC Berkeley professor of chemistry and of earth and planetary science.

Read More:

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Fertilizer_use_responsible_for_increase_in_nitrous_oxide_in_atmosphere_999.html

Thawing permafrost may have led to extreme global warming events

Scientists analysing prehistoric global warming say thawing permafrost released massive amounts of carbon stored in frozen soil of Polar Regions exacerbating climate change through increasing global temperatures and oceanacidification.

Although the amounts of carbon involved in the ancient soil-thaw scenarios was likely much greater than today, the implications of this ground-breaking study are that the long-term future of carbon deposits locked into frozen permafrost of Polar Regions are vulnerable to climatewarming caused as humans emit the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by burning fossil fuels for energy generation.

Researchers in centres across America, Italy and the University of Sheffield, analysed a series of sudden, and extreme, global warming events - called hyperthermals - that occurred about 55 million years ago, linked to rising greenhouse gas concentrations and changes in Earth's orbit, which led to a massive release of carbon into the atmosphere, ocean acidification, and a five degrees.

Read More:

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Thawing_permafrost_may_have_led_to_extreme_global_warming_events_999.html

West Antarctic Ice Shelves Tearing Apart at the Seams

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.

The most extensive record yet of the evolution of the floating ice shelves in the eastern Amundsen Sea Embayment in West Antarctica shows that their margins, where they grip onto rocky bay walls or slower ice masses, are fracturing and retreating inland. As that grip continues to loosen, these already-thinning ice shelves will be even less able to hold back grounded ice upstream, according to glaciologists at The University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics (UTIG).

Read More:

http://www.jsg.utexas.edu/news/?p=3471

Roberta Seldon - Climate Change Denial is About Maintaining Control of the Wealth

Last month, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) told Fox News Radio's Alan Colmes that "the bureaucratic dream is to control carbon," he said in reference to the notion that global warming is merely a hoax. Liberals want government to control our lives, and "if you control carbon, you control life," he added.

Well, Inhofe was certainly right about one thing -- the debate over global warming/climate change is about control; but not government control. It's about the 1 percent maintaining control over the country's wealth.

According to KCET -- the nation's largest independent public television station -- Inhofe and two other senators known for their stance against addressing climate change "received a large chunk of their campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry."

Read More:

http://securityandsustainabilityforum.org/climate-change-denial-is-about-maintaining-control-of-the-wealth

Effective World Government Will Be Needed to Stave Off Climate Catastrophe

Almost six years ago, I was the editor of a single-topic issue on energy for Scientific American that included an article by Princeton University’s Robert Socolow that set out a well-reasoned plan for how to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below a planet-livable threshold of 560 ppm. The issue came replete with technical solutions that ranged from a hydrogen economy to space-based solar.

If I had it to do over, I’d approach the issue planning differently, my fellow editors permitting. I would scale back on the nuclear fusion and clean coal, instead devoting at least half of the available space for feature articles on psychology, sociology, economics and political science. Since doing that issue, I’ve come to the conclusion that the technical details are the easy part. It’s the social engineering that’s the killer. Moon shots and Manhattan Projects are child’s play compared to needed changes in the way we behave.

A policy article authored by several dozen scientists appeared online March 15 in Science to acknowledge this point: “Human societies must now change course and steer away from critical tipping points in the Earth system that might lead to rapid and irreversible change. This requires fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions toward more effective Earth system governance and planetary stewardship.”

Read More:

http://crisisboom.com/2012/03/22/effective-world-government-will-be-needed-to-stave-off-climate-catastrophe/

Earth Sends Climate Warning by Busting World Heat Records

Accelarated climate change, driven by human activity, has led to soaring temperatures around the world and the decade between 2001 and 2010 was the warmest ever recorded in all continents of the globe, according to a new report released by the World Meteorological Organization.

Additionally, an 'unprecedented' heatwave in the United States "has set or tied more than 7,000 high temperature records" across the country, according to a report from Climate Central. "This heat wave is essentially unprecedented," said the media and research orgnanization's Heidi Cullen told Reuters. "It's hard to grasp how massive and significant this is."

The increase in global temperatures since 1971 has been “remarkable” according to the WHO's assessment. Atmospheric and oceanic phenomena such as La Niña events had a temporary cooling influence in some years, the report says, but did not halt the overriding warming trend.

Read More:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/03/24-2

Bill McKibben - 90 Degrees in Winter: This Is What Climate Change Looks Like

The National Weather Service is kind of the anti-Mike Daisey, a just-the-facts operation that grinds on hour after hour, day after day. It’s collected billions of records (I’ve seen the vast vaults where early handwritten weather reports from observers across the country are stored in endless rows of ledgers and files) on countless rainstorms, blizzards, and pleasant summer days. So the odds that you could shock the NWS are pretty slim.

Beginning in mid-March, however, its various offices began issuing bulletins that sounded slightly shaken. “There’s extremes in weather, but seeing something like this is impressive and unprecedented,” Chicago NWS meteorologist Richard Castro said. “It’s extraordinarily rare for climate locations with 100+ year long periods of records to break records day after day after day,” the office added in an official statement.

Read More:

http://www.thenation.com/article/166917/90-degrees-winter-what-climate-change-looks

Global sea level likely to rise as much as 70 feet for future generations

Even if humankind manages to limit global warming to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recommends, future generations will have to deal with sea levels 12 to 22 meters (40 to 70 feet) higher than at present, according to research published in the journal Geology.

The researchers, led by Kenneth G. Miller, professor of earth and planetary sciences in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University, reached their conclusion by studying rock and soil cores in Virginia, Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific and New Zealand. They looked at the late Pliocene epoch, 2.7 million to 3.2 million years ago, the last time the carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere was at its current level, and atmospheric temperatures were 2 degrees C higher than they are now.

"The difference in water volume released is the equivalent of melting the entire Greenland and West Antarctic Ice Sheets, as well as some of the marine margin of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet," said H. Richard Lane, program director of the National Science Foundation's Division of Earth Sciences, which funded the work. "Such a rise of the modern oceans would swamp the world's coasts and affect as much as 70 percent of the world's population."

"You don't need to sell your beach real estate yet, because melting of these large ice sheets will take from centuries to a few thousand years," Miller said. "The current trajectory for the 21st century global rise of sea level is 2 to 3 feet (0.8 to1 meter) due to warming of the oceans, partial melting of mountain glaciers, and partial melting of Greenland and Antarctica."

Read More:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-03/ru-gsl031912.php