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Hunter Cutting

Troubling ice melt in East Antarctica - 0 views

www.sciencemag.org/...1630

climate change impact Antarctica glacier ice melt ice sheet East Antarctica global

shared by Hunter Cutting on 25 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Hunter Cutting on 25 Jun 10
     
    Report in Science: "Three studies, using different remote-sensing methods, show that East Antarctica has already begun to lose ice. A survey of laser altimetry data from the ICESat satellite, published in Nature in October 2009, found ice thinning in several spots along the East Antarctic coast at annual rates as high as nearly 2 meters. Another study, published in Nature Geoscience in November 2009, used the gravity-sensing GRACE satellites and found two areas along the East Antarctic coast each losing about 13 km3 of ice per year. A 2008 study in Nature Geoscience that compared ice flux off the edges of the continent with new accumulation of snow in the interior found a loss of about 10 km3 of ice per year at two areas." "Three studies, using different remote-sensing methods, show that East Antarctica has already begun to lose ice. A survey of laser altimetry data from the ICESat satellite, published in Nature in October 2009, found ice thinning in several spots along the East Antarctic coast at annual rates as high as nearly 2 meters. Another study, published in Nature Geoscience in November 2009, used the gravity-sensing GRACE satellites and found two areas along the East Antarctic coast each losing about 13 km3 of ice per year. A 2008 study in Nature Geoscience that compared ice flux off the edges of the continent with new accumulation of snow in the interior found a loss of about 10 km3 of ice per year at two areas." "It's too early to know what the ice loss in East Antarctica really means, says Isabella Velicogna, a remote-sensing specialist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "What is important is to see what's generating the mass loss," she says. Reductions in snowfall, for example, might reflect short-term weather cycles that could reverse at any time. But thinning caused by accelerating glaciers-as seen in West Antarctica-would warrant concern."
Hunter Cutting

Global warming makes climbing Everest harder: eyewitness account - 0 views

www.google.com/...0AQAUS82q3qfbTR3q8efQD9FTNL780

climate change impact Nepal Everest snow melt Himalayas

shared by Hunter Cutting on 25 May 10 - Cached
  • A Nepalese Sherpa who climbed Mount Everest for a record 20th time said Tuesday that the melting of glacier ice along its slopes due to global warming is making it increasingly difficult to climb the peak."The rising temperature on the mountains has melted much ice and snow on the trail to the summit. It is difficult for climbers to use their crampons on the rocky surfaces," Apa told reporters after flying to Katmandu on Tuesday.
  • Apa said when he first began climbing Everest, there was hardly any rocky surface on the trail to the summit. Now, he says, the trail is dotted with bare rocks.
    • eanrvth
      eanrvth on 25 May 10
       
      testing
  • Hunter Cutting on 25 May 10
     
    as reported by the Associated Press
Hunter Cutting

Arctic sea ice at record low on summer solstice - 0 views

www.climatecentral.org/...summer_solstice_arctic_ice

climate change impact Arctic Arctic sea ice

shared by Hunter Cutting on 21 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Based on satellite measurements taken during a baseline period from 1980-2000, the ice covering the Arctic Ocean ranges from an average late winter peak of about 6 million square miles (more than twice the area of the lower 48 states), to a typical late summer minimum of well less than half of that. The melt is in full swing by the summer solstice each year, when the baseline ice extent averages about 4.6 million square miles. But this year, according to NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center , the melt-back reached that level by June 1, three weeks early, and since that time, has been at record low levels for the period. This is particularly remarkable because throughout April, daily ice extents hovered very close to average baseline levels (as noted at the time by some commentators eager to suggest the globe is not warming). In other words, the ice retreated with exceptional speed this May — a speed close to the average melt rate of July.
Hunter Cutting

Melting glaciers in Iceland increase hydropower - 0 views

wpparty.com/...-on-global-warmings-front-line

Iceland glacial melt glacier climate change impact hydropower

shared by Hunter Cutting on 16 Jul 10 - Cached
  • global warming is also having a profound effect on Iceland economically — and in many ways the effects have actually been beneficial. Warmer weather has been a boon to Iceland’s hydroelectric industry, which is producing more energy than before as melting glaciers feed its rivers.
  • There are more immediate signs of climate change, though, and these are worrying Iceland’s residents. This winter, Reykjavik experienced double-digit swings in temperature, as the normally sub-zero conditions suddenly turned balmy. the capital was flooded. “I don’t think it’s even a question,” said Asta Gisladottir, asked whether the freak weather was caused by global warming. “We’re so close to the North Pole,” the 36-year-old hotel worker said. “It’s just in our backyard.” Gisladottir recalled winters during her childhood in the village of Siglufjordur, on the island’s north, as very different. then there was snow from November to April. Now, it is mostly rain. Geophysicist Johannesson, who has studied climate change since the early 1990s, said the evidence was not just anecdotal.
  • “What we see here is an overall warming from a rather cold 19th century,” he said. “As a general rule, this is sufficient for us to have many significant changes in the environment.”
Hunter Cutting

Montana farmers witness extreme climate fluctuations - 0 views

billingsgazette.com/...09-11df-8b56-001cc4c002e0.html

Montana farmers drought climate change impact USA agriculture

shared by Hunter Cutting on 04 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Baker farmer Wade Sikorski said he and other independent farmers from around Montana have seen declining snowfall and extreme temperature fluctuations in their lifetimes that will damage farm production beyond the point of profitability if changes continue. “There’s definitely a difference between what I’ve seen as a child and what I’m seeing now,” said Sikorski, 54. “As a child, I remember incredible winters in the 1960s, snow in the fall that didn’t thaw until spring. The melt would come in a rush and fill the irrigation project. That’s not happening this year.”
  • This year’s snowmelt didn’t wash the gullies, Sikorski said. Instead, the Eastern Montanan’s farm ground, which never got cold enough to freeze deeply, soaked up the melting snow.
Hunter Cutting

Numerous meltwater lakes forming in Greenland - 0 views

hot-topic.co.nz/its-grim-up-north-2

Arctic Greenland ice sheet ice melt

shared by Hunter Cutting on 14 Jun 10 - Cached
  • From NASA’s eyes in the sky, this is a view of the west coast of Greenland downloaded earlier today, looking down on the Ilulissat Icefjord — the outlet for the Jakobshavn Isbrae, the biggest outlet glacier in Greenland and the largest in the northern hemisphere.
  • I’m posting it to show the numerous large lakes of glacial meltwater that have appeared on top of the ice sheet over recent weeks. At the edge of the ice sheet, the winter snow has melted revealing the greyer ice underneath, but as you climb up the ice away from the coast you get back up into unmelted snow (bottom right). And there are lakes like this a very long way up the west coast, all primed to deliver their water down through moulins to the base of the sheet and thence out to sea, or over the surface in glacial rivers.
Hunter Cutting

Polar heat pushing jet stream south, bringing Harder Winters for U.S./E.U./Japan - 0 views

www.ipsnews.net/news.asp

climate change impact Arctic sea ice Arctic jet stream snowmaggedon snow USA Japan Europe winter

shared by Hunter Cutting on 17 Jun 10 - Cached
  • Last winter's big snowfall and cold temperatures in the eastern United States and Europe were likely caused by the loss of Arctic sea ice, researchers concluded at the International Polar Year Oslo Science Conference in Norway last week.Climate change has warmed the entire Arctic region, melting 2.5 million square kilometres of sea ice, and that, paradoxically, is producing colder and snowier winters for Europe, Asia and parts of North America. "The exceptional cold and snowy winter of 2009-2010 in Europe, eastern Asia and eastern North America is connected to unique physical processes in the Arctic," said James Overland of the NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in the United States. "In future, cold and snowy winters will be the rule rather than the exception" in these regions, Overland told IPS.
  • Temperatures in January were -2C over the water, while the land was -25C, making conditions far windier and producing more snowfall than normal. Heavy snow on the remaining ice insulates it from the cold air, preventing it from thickening during the long winter.
  • This huge mass of warmer air over the Arctic in the late fall not only generates more wind and snow locally, several studies have now documented the impacts on global weather patterns. The winter of 2005-6 was the coldest in 50 years in Japan and eastern Eurasia, reported Meiji Honda, a senior scientist with the Climate Diagnosis Group at Japan's Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology. Honda's studies show that the air over the Arctic was quite warm in the fall of 2005, which altered normal wind patterns, pushing the jet stream further south and bringing arctic cold to much of Eurasia and Japan. He also documented the same mechanism for the colder winters of 2007-8 and 2009-10, he told participants. In eastern North America, the same conditions of 2007-8 produced increased precipitation and colder temperatures in the winter. As the sea ice declines, big impacts are likely to be seen in this region, said Sara Strey of the University of Illinois.
Hunter Cutting

Snowcover footprint in U.S. at record low for May - 0 views

www.noaanews.noaa.gov/...20100608_maystats.html

climate change impact USA snow cover snow melt precipitation

shared by Hunter Cutting on 10 Jun 10 - Cached
  • For the second consecutive month, the snowcover footprint over North America was the smallest on record for the month. A record-small snow footprint was also observed over Eurasia and the Northern Hemisphere as a whole.
  • Hunter Cutting on 10 Jun 10
     
    NOAA State of the Climate report for May 2010
Hunter Cutting

Aspen sunflowers populations failing as climate shifts - 0 views

www.grist.org/...bloom-times-and-climate-change

Aspen Colorado Rocky Mountains species sunflowers USA climate change impact

shared by Hunter Cutting on 25 Jun 10 - Cached
  • The changes in bloom times are glaring in Inouye's Rocky Mountain plots. "Just 10 years ago, this project was perfectly timed with the academic calendar," he explains. In mid-May, as soon as Inouye wound up his teaching duties at the University of Maryland, he would head out to his beloved mountains just in time to track wildflower blooms. But now some of the flowers he studies begin blooming by mid-April. To continue his research, Inouye has had to pay assistants to track flowering that occurs before he is able to arrive on site.
  • The careful tracking of bloom times over many years provides an important indicator of climate change. But Inouye's research also shows that bloom times are part of an intricate and often delicate natural dance that is in many cases disrupted by climate change. Inouye is an expert on pollinators like bees and butterflies, and his research has shed light on a growing problem known as "phenological mismatches," in which plants and pollinators adapt at different rates to a changing climate.
  • In the case of the Aspen sunflower (Helianthella quinquenervis), for instance, global warming has led to smaller snow packs in the mountains, which means earlier snow melts -- an important cue for wildflower blooms. Paradoxically, as the Aspen sunflowers are triggered to bloom earlier each year, it becomes more likely that they will be damaged by exposure to late spring frost. Inouye's research shows that from 1992 to 1998, such frosts on average killed about a third of the Aspen sunflower buds in his plots. Between 1999 and 2006, however, the typical percentage doubled, with nearly three-quarters of all buds being killed by frost in an average year. Inouye says he has seen whole fields of this particular flower (shown in the photograph) decimated by frost. "Given the rate of global warming, we'll see some wildflower extinctions," he says. "There is little doubt about that."
Hunter Cutting

Last Pacific glacier now pounded by rain, not snow - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...AR2010070100394_pf.html

climate change impact Indonesia glacier

shared by Hunter Cutting on 01 Jul 10 - Cached
  • The 3-mile- (4,884-meter-) high glacier was pounded by rain every afternoon during the team's 13-day trip, something the American scientist has never encountered in three decades of drilling ice cores. He lay awake at night listening to the water gushing beneath him. By the time they were ready to head home, ice around their sheltered campsite had melted a staggering 12 inches (30 centimeters). "These glaciers are dying," said Thompson, one of the world's most accomplished glaciologists. "Before I was thinking they had a few decades, but now I'd say we're looking at years."
  • The mountain has lost about 80 percent of its ice since 1936 - two-thirds of that since the last scientific expedition in the early 1970s. Thompson says he thinks temperatures are rising twice as fast in high altitudes as at the earth's surface, which, if true, could have broad implications on people who depend on glaciers for water during the dry season, such as in the Himalayas.
  • Geoffrey Hope, a professor at Australian National University who took part in the 1971 expedition to Puncak Jaya, noted that Papua has the wettest mountain region in the world, so high precipitation levels didn't come as a great surprise. Still, his own experience was markedly different. "The roof of our marque tent fell in on many evenings due to the weight of the snow," he recalled, "and all water coming from the glacier would freeze by 8 p.m. each night."
Hunter Cutting

Climate changes worst in western states - 0 views

esciencenews.com/...grets.approach.climate.warming

climate change impact Southwest USA drought water supply temperature snow melt

shared by Hunter Cutting on 25 Jun 10 - Cached
  • In their overview of shifting climate in the region, Overpeck and Udall cite published findings of prevalent signs of change: rising temperatures, earlier snowmelt, northward-shifting winter storms, increasing precipitation intensity and flooding, record-setting drought, plummeting Colorado River reservoir storage, widespread vegetation mortality and more large wildfires. "The West, and especially the Southwest, is leading the nation in climate change – warming, drying, less late-winter snowpack and drought – as well as the impacts of this change," said Overpeck, a UA professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences and co-director of the Institute of the Environment. In the past 10 years, temperatures in almost all areas in western North America have surpassed the 20th century average, many by more than 1 or even 2 degrees Fahrenheit. The warming has decreased late-season snowpack, which serves as a water reservoir, as well as the annual flow of the Colorado River, the researchers said.
  • Those reductions, combined with the worst drought observed since 1900, haven't helped matters; water storage in Lakes Powell and Mead, the largest southwestern water reservoirs, fell nearly 50 percent between 1999 and 2004 and has not risen significantly since.
  • In addition to water, vegetation is feeling the effects of climate change. Work by UA's David Breshears and colleagues have already showed that more than 1 million hectares of piñon pine have died in the Southwest in the last few decades from a lethal combination of record-high temperatures and uncommonly severe drought. In addition, the frequency of large wildfires has increased as snowpack has decreased.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • While researchers are confident that the higher temperatures and resulting changes in snowpack, Colorado River flow, vegetation mortality and wildfires are human-caused, they don't know whether the drought that has plagued the West for the last 10 years – the worst since record-keeping began – is because of humans, Overpeck said.
Hunter Cutting

Arctic ice melt in June fastest ever - 0 views

news.discovery.com/...tic-warming-amplification.html

climate change impact Arctic sea ice

shared by Hunter Cutting on 28 Jun 10 - Cached
  • "June is going to be a new record low (for sea ice extent)," said Julienne Stroeve of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. The rate ice has been receding is also faster than any other June on record, she said, as was May.
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