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Yes, climate change has a hand in the California drought
Posted by Ars Technica: Scott K. Johnson on August 25th, 2015
Ars Technica: The California drought may have put water in short supply, but debate about it is in surplus. Water use has come under even greater scrutiny as Californians struggle to deal with the current and future reality. Groundwater overuse during the drought has reached epic proportions, with the land surface in some locations sinking almost two inches per month as a result. In addition to arguing over how to use the little water they have, people are also debating the question of whether humans are partly...
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New IPCC report on climate change focuses on managing risks
Posted by Ars Technica: Scott K. Johnson on March 31st, 2014
Ars Technica: A few months ago, we covered the release of the first section of the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which dealt with the physical science of climate and climate change. After one last meeting in Yokohama, Japan, the authors of the section on climate “Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability” have released the final draft of their work. (One additional section will be released in just a couple of weeks, with a synthesis report and the full, official release due at the end...
Antarctic glacier shrank quickly in the past
Posted by Ars Technica: Scott K. Johnson on February 21st, 2014
Ars Technica: We recently covered some research on Greenland’s Jakobshavn Ice Stream, the world’s fastest glacier. While nothing on Antarctica can match that speed, the continent has ice streams of its own. Many have been shrinking, too--retreating and thinning as melting at the coast pulls continental ice out to die in the sea.
Of particular note is the Pine Island Glacier (PIG, for short). This massive glacier flows into the Amundsen Sea, and was the source of the 35km wide iceberg that made news last November....
Methane burned vs. methane leaked: Fracking’s impact on climate change
Posted by Ars Technica: Scott K. Johnson on February 13th, 2014
Ars Technica: Fracking--the use of hydraulic pressure to crack layers of shale that hold oil and natural gas--is controversial. That’s one thing we know about a debate that mainly focuses on what we don’t know. The most common concern is the contamination of drinking water, either by the chemicals used in the fracking fluid or by liberated natural gas. And this issue has entered the public consciousness through media like the film Gasland and its imagery of flaming faucets--though almost 40 percent of people in...
Melting Arctic sea ice could be altering jet stream
Posted by Ars Technica: Scott K. Johnson on December 11th, 2013
Ars Technica: The rapidly warming Arctic isn’t noteworthy only for its own sake. Changes there affect the rest of the planet in a number of ways. Recently, there has been a lot of interest in whether the dwindling Arctic summer sea ice could be weirding the weather in the mid-latitudes.
There have been a number of recent summer extremes--Russia’s hellish summer in 2010, the drought in the US last summer, a very wet 2011 in Korea and Japan, plus a streak of soggy summers in the UK. There have been suggestions...