RSS Feed
Archive for September 30th, 2014
Climate detectives reveal handprint of human caused climate change in Australia
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 30th, 2014
ScienceDaily: Australia's hottest year on record in 2013 along with the accompanying droughts, heat waves and record-breaking seasons of that year was virtually impossible without the influence of human-caused global warming.
New research from ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science (ARCCSS) researchers and colleagues, over five different Australian papers in a special edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS), has highlighted the powerful influence of global warming...
Posted in 
World’s wildlife declined by 50% in 40 years
Posted by Blue and Green: Ilaria Bertini on September 30th, 2014
Blue and Green: The number of wild animals living on the planet has halved over the past four decades because of unsustainable consumption and reckless human activities that have destroyed habitats, according to the latest figures from WWF and the Zoological Society of London.
The Living Planet Index (LPI) measures the state of the world`s biological diversity based on population trends. In the 2014 report, the two organisations have urged a shift to more sustainable ways of consumption and living, to reverse...
Greenland Ice Sheet more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 30th, 2014
ScienceDaily: A new model developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge has shown that despite its apparent stability, the massive ice sheet covering most of Greenland is more sensitive to climate change than earlier estimates have suggested, which would accelerate the rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities worldwide.
In addition to assessing the impact of the increasing levels of meltwater created and spilled into the ocean each year as the climate continues to warm, the new model also...
California drought link greenhouse gases, climate change
Posted by San Jose Mercury News: Lisa M. Krieger on September 30th, 2014
San Jose Mercury News: The stubborn high-pressure systems that block California rains are linked to the abundance of human-caused greenhouse gases that heat the oceans, according to a major paper released Monday by Stanford scientists.
But two other new studies disagree -- saying there's no evidence that warming ocean waters are to blame for our drought.
The dispute comes at the end of the state's official "water year," which closes Tuesday with less than 60 percent of average precipitation. California's major reservoirs...
Stanford scientists say greenhouse gases worsen California drought
Posted by Reuters: Joaquin Palomino on September 30th, 2014
Reuters: California’s catastrophic drought has most likely been made worse by man-made climate change, according to a report released Monday by Stanford University, but scientists are still hesitant to fully blame the lack of rain on climate change.
The research, published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society as part of a collection of reports on extreme weather events in 2013, is one of the most comprehensive studies linking climate change and California's ongoing drought, which has...
Australia ranked 13 by WWF for ecological footprint
Posted by Guardian: Oliver Milman on September 30th, 2014
Guardian: Australians require a huge ecological “footprint” in order to sustain their lifestyles, with just 12 nations in the world using up more arable land and carbon-burning generation, according to new figures.
WWF’s Living Planet Index, which is conducted once every two years, has found that Australia requires 6.25 global hectares per person per year. A global hectare is a unit which averages out what productive land and ocean, such as cropland, forests and fishing grounds, can generate over the course...