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Warming Fuels Rise in Methane Threat
Posted by Climate News Network: Alex Kirby on January 7th, 2016
Climate News Network: There is fresh concern among scientists over the rises they are detecting in one of the chief greenhouse gases, methane.
A team of researchers from universities in Sweden and the US says methane is increasing in the atmosphere fast enough for emissions of the gas possibly to rise by between 20% and 50% before the end of the century.
Over a century, methane is 25 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the main gas contributing to global warming. But over a 20-year period,...
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World’s Glaciers Melting at Record Rate
Posted by Climate News Network: Alex Kirby on August 5th, 2015
Climate News Network: The world’s glaciers are melting fast—probably faster than at any time in recorded history, according to new research. Measurements show several hundred glaciers are losing between half and one meter of thickness every year—at least twice the average loss for the 20th century—and remote monitoring shows this rate of melting is far more widespread. The World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS), based at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, has compiled worldwide data on glacier changes for more...
Climate change imperils an entire UK ecosystem
Posted by Climate News Network: Alex Kirby on August 3rd, 2015
Climate News Network: The UK may still be fairly well sheltered from the impacts of climate change, but British scientists now say the increasingly warm trend is threatening an entire eco-system.
They have found that several rare upland bird species are at risk, together with other ecosystem functions, because of the effects of climate change on the UK’s blanket bogs - the peat bogs found mainly in the wetter western and northern uplands of Britain.
Following their study of uplands from mid-Wales to northern England,...
Record torrential rainfall linked warming climate
Posted by Climate News Network: Alex Kirby on July 13th, 2015
Climate News Network: If you think you’re getting an unusually hard soaking more often when you go out in the rain, you’re probably right. A team of scientists in Germany says record-breaking heavy rainfall has been increasing strikingly in the last 30 years as global temperatures increase. Before 1980, they say, the explanation was fluctuations in natural variability. But since then they have detected a clear upward trend in downpours that is consistent with a warming world. The scientists, from the Potsdam Institute...
Climate Change Threatens Peru’s Economic Progress As Amazon Becomes Net Emitter of CO2
Posted by Climate News Network: Alex Kirby on December 26th, 2013
Climate News Network: Peru is the country chosen to host the 2014 United Nations (UN) climate conference, a key meeting for trying to advance an ambitious plan to rein in greenhouse emissions which is planned for agreement in 2015.
Scientists think Peru`s role reversal from being a carbon sink to a net emitter of CO2 in 2012 is result of droughts in the western Amazon. Photo credit: tadd_debbie /Flickr
But the country has recently earned a rather more dubious distinction. In 2012, for the first time, the Peruvian...
Warmer seas may raise mercury in fish
Posted by Climate News Network: Alex Kirby on October 6th, 2013
Climate News Network: Scientists in the US say they have found evidence suggesting that warmer sea surface temperatures may increase the ability of fish to accumulate mercury.
This could present a risk to the health of some consumers of seafood as the mercury rises up the marine food chain.
The scientists, based at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, report their research in the journal PLOS ONE (Public Library of Science ONE).
Until now science has known little about how global warming may affect mercury accumulation...
Food Waste Worsens Greenhouse Gas Emissions: FAO
Posted by Climate News Network: Alex Kirby on September 22nd, 2013
Climate News Network: The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates the direct cost to producers of food that goes to waste is currently $750 billion annually, a figure that excludes wasted fish and seafood.
But the FAO says the waste not only causes huge economic losses but is also doing very significant damage to natural resources -- climate, water, land and biodiversity.
Without accounting for greenhouse gas emissions from land use change, the carbon footprint of food produced and not eaten is estimated...
Unprecedented climate extremes marked last decade, says UN
Posted by Climate News Network: Alex Kirby on July 3rd, 2013
Climate News Network: If you think the world is warming and the weather getting nastier, you're right, according to the United Nations agency committed to understanding weather and climate. The World Meteorological Organization says the planet "experienced unprecedented high-impact climate extremes" in the ten years from 2001 to 2010, the warmest decade since the start of modern measurements in 1850. Those ten years also continued an extended period of accelerating global warming, with more national temperature records...
Warmer Climate Threatens Africa’s Vital Cassava Crop
Posted by Climate News Network: Alex Kirby on May 11th, 2013
Climate News Network: A plant which is a staple food crop for millions of people across Africa is at risk from disease as regional temperatures rise, scientists say.
The plant, cassava, is a significant source of food and income, and is an important industrial crop, and there is concern that serious food shortages may result and poverty worsen.
Experts say the spread of the disease could halve cassava production and threaten the diets of 300 million people.
Experts say the spread of the disease could halve cassava...
Research Finds Drier Climate Will Spread Diarrhea
Posted by Climate News Network: Alex Kirby on April 1st, 2013
Climate News Network: Diarrhea, which kills 1.5 million children annually, is likely to become more prevalent in many developing countries as the climate changes, a report says. But the authors found an unexpected twist in the way the climate is likely to affect the disease.
Kathleen Alexander, an associate professor of wildlife at Virginia Tech's College of Natural Resources and Environment, says climate drives a large part of diarrhea and related disease, increasing the threat which a changing climate poses to vulnerable...