Ocean News

The projected timing of abrupt ecological disruption from climate change

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see also: Climate change could cause sudden biodiversity losses worldwide

 

Stanford researcher reveals influence of global warming on extreme weather events has been frequently underestimated

A new Stanford study reveals that a common scientific approach of predicting the likelihood of future extreme weather events by analyzing how frequently they occurred in the past can lead to significant underestimates – with potentially significant consequences for people’s lives.

Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh found that predictions that relied only on historical observations underestimated by about half the actual number of extremely hot days in Europe and East Asia, and the number of extremely wet days in the U.S., Europe and East Asia....

 

World’s ‘Longest Animal’ Discovered in Australia’s Deep Ocean

The string-like creature, a genus of siphonophore called Apolemia, which was introduced to the internet by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, is estimated to have an outer ring 154 feet long — the size of an 11-story building — and a possible total length of more than 390 feet.....

 

Changes to drylands with future climate change

While drylands around the world will expand at an accelerated rate because of future climate change, their average productivity will likely be reduced, according to a new study. These regions, which primarily include savannas, grasslands and shrublands, are important for grazing and non-irrigated croplands. They are also a critical part of the global carbon cycle and make up 41% of Earth's land surface and support 38% of its population.

 

The Limits of Clean Energy

If the world isn’t careful, renewable energy could become as destructive as fossil fuels.

....In 2017, the World Bank released a little-noticed report that offered the first comprehensive look at this question. It models the increase in material extraction that would be required to build enough solar and wind utilities to produce an annual output of about 7 terawatts of electricity by 2050. That’s enough to power roughly half of the global economy.....

For neodymium—an essential element in wind turbines—extraction will need to rise by nearly 35 percent over current levels....

Silver extraction will go up 38 percent and perhaps as much as 105 percent.

Demand for indium, also essential to solar technology, will more than triple and could end up skyrocketing by 920 percent....

for battery production, 40 million tons of lithium—an eye-watering 2,700 percent increase over current levels of extraction....

for electric car production:
Global annual extraction of neodymium and dysprosium will go up by another 70 percent,
annual extraction of copper will need to more than double,
cobalt will need to increase by a factor of almost four—all for the entire period from now to 2050.

 

A crash course on climate change, 50 years after the first Earth Day

 

Meteorologists say 2020 on course to be hottest year since records began

 

A Satellite Lets Scientists See Antarctica’s Melting Like Never Before

New data from space is providing the most precise picture yet of Antarctica’s ice, where it is accumulating most quickly and disappearing at the fastest rate, and how the changes could contribute to rising sea levels.


Using their elevation data, the researchers found that Greenland is losing about 200 billion tons of mass each year on average. That’s enough to raise sea levels by about eight millimeters, or a third of an inch, over the study period.

 

European State of the Climate 2019

European temperature
Over the last four decades, temperatures in Europe have shown a clear warming trend. In 2019, the annual temperature for Europe was the highest on record, though closely followed by 2014, 2015 and 2018. It was warmer than average over almost the whole of Europe. Central and eastern areas saw the most above-average temperatures; it was cooler than average only over a very small part of northern Europe....

European wet and dry conditions
There is no clear trend in annual precipitation for Europe, and 2019 values were close to average. The number of precipitation days was up to 30 days more than average in the north, west and south, whereas central and eastern Europe saw below-average values.In winter, spring and summer, precipitation was below average in the southwest, however, this changed during autumn and December when for large parts of this region it became much above average.

European Arctic
The European sector of the Arctic has seen an upward trend in temperature and a downward trend in sea ice cover over the last 40 years. 2019 saw surface air temperatures over sea and land at 0.9°C above average. However, as the 14th warmest in the 41-year dataset, the year was relatively cold compared to recent years, with the lowest annual temperature since 2010.

 

Greenland’s ice sheet melts by record amount due to climate change, study shows

 

Billions Could Live in Extreme Heat Zones Within Decades, Study Finds

 

Potentially fatal bouts of heat and humidity on the rise, study finds


Humidity is more dangerous than dry heat alone because it impairs sweating – the body’s life-saving natural cooling system.

The number of potentially fatal humidity and heat events doubled between 1979 and 2017, and are increasing in both frequency and intensity, according to the study published in Science Advances.

 

The earth has only warmed seven tenths of a degree celsius in the past hundred years, if you believe a hundred years ago, they could measure the temperature of the whole earh to average it. Yes, we are in a warming cycle for the past three hundred years coming out of the little ice age. panic is unthinking hysteria! Calm yourself. Good to be back.

 

G'day Mr Barnacle, I thought the Singh pirates might have got you !

 

nope, I retired, then, my wife got cancer, so i went back to work. Afterwards, I retired again, but govrtnment said I had to repay a whole years SS benefit, and cut my check by a third for three years running. My computer fried and hadn't the money to replace it. Everything is better now, financially. glad to be back.