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Rise In CO2 Could Restrict Growing Days for Crops
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on June 20th, 2015
Climate News Network: The positive consequences of climate change may not be so positive. Although plants in the colder regions are expected to thrive as average global temperatures rise, even this benefit could be limited.
Some tropical regions could lose up to 200 growing days a year, and more than two billion rural people could see their hopes wither on the vine or in the field. Even in temperate zones, there will be limits to extra growth.
Plants quicken, blossom and ripen as a response to moisture, warmth and...
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Earth Wins Time as Land & Seas Absorb More Carbon
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on May 17th, 2015
Climate News Network: Half of all the carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels remain in the atmosphere. The good news is that only half remain in the atmosphere, while the rest have been taken up by the living world and then absorbed into the land, and the ocean. That is, as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have risen, so also has the planet’s capacity to soak up atmospheric carbon.
The implication is that what engineers call “positive feedback”-in which global warming triggers the release of yet more greenhouse...
Droughts, Floods and Heatwaves: Blame It on Climate Change
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on May 17th, 2015
Climate News Network: As temperatures soar to record heights, blame it on global warming—but only about three-quarters of the time. And when the rain comes down by the bucketful, you can attribute one downpour in five to climate change. Yet another team of research scientists has looked at the probabilities, and has linked extremes of weather with global warming. Extremes have always happened and are, by definition, rare events. So, for the last 30 years, climate scientists have carefully explained that no particular...
Scientists weigh up new evidence on Antarctic ice melt
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on May 8th, 2015
Climate News Network: Antarctica has been losing its ice cover at an average rate of 92 billion tons a year since at least 2003, according to new research. And while the scientists can’t yet say for certain that human-made climate change is the main cause, they warn that the ice loss has the potential to have serious impacts on sea level rise. The southern continent is the Earth’s largest store of fresh water, but is also its least studied area, having had no known human visitors until the late 18th century. So while...
Prices Fail to Reflect Fossil Fuels’ Real Costs
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on March 8th, 2015
Climate News Network: Forget the price of petrol at the pumps. The true cost of any fossil fuel is much greater if social costs are factored in, according to new research.
A climate scientist in the US reports in Climatic Change journal that American motorists get a gallon of gasoline for at least $3.80 less than it really costs, and the price of coal-fired electricity would quadruple if consumers had to pay the real price. In contrast, solar and wind power are much cheaper than they might seem.
Professor Drew Shindell,...
Extremes concern as planet gets hotter and colder
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on December 19th, 2014
Climate News Network: Global average temperatures continue to rise, but new research shows that the extremes of heat and cold are rising even faster.
Scientists report that heat waves have got hotter and cold snaps have got colder at a more extreme rate – and that continuing greenhouse gas emissions will mean that, in another two decades, Europe could experience once every two years the sort of lethal heat waves that occurred once in a thousand years.
Scott Robeson, professor of geography at Indiana University Bloomington...
Science Offers New View of Hopes for Human Survival
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on November 16th, 2014
Climate News Network: Two American scientists have just sought to find a way of answering the ultimate global warming question: how long can any species last once it has discovered how to exploit fossil fuels and change the conditions under which it first evolved?
In doing so, they have sidestepped the great challenge of astrobiology. This is that all thinking about life in the universe is handicapped by a simple problem: because there is only one so-far identified instance of life in the universe, it is impossible...
How Diet and Climate Change Are Intrinsically Linked
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on September 14th, 2014
Climate News Network: The news is enough to make climate campaigners choke on their high-fibre breakfast cereal: If Americans adopted the dietary guidelines suggested by their own Department of Agriculture, greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) would actually go up by 12 percent. And even if Americans did what dietary campaigners urge and restricted themselves to a healthier 2000 calories a day, GHGs would not fall significantly. Martin Heller and Gregory Keoleian, scientists at the University of Michigan’s Centre for Sustainable...
Coastal Warning Issued for Vital Atlantic Habitats
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on June 29th, 2014
Climate News Network: Rising temperatures, increasingly acidic seas and human destruction will drastically change the nature of the coastal seas of the north-east Atlantic over the next century, scientists predict.
According to new research in the journal Ecology and Evolution, it will completely alter the forests of kelp and the maerl beds of coralline algae that serve as shelter and nurseries for baby cod and juvenile scallops. These are some of the most productive habitats on Earth -- habitats that also soak up...
Frequency of Flooding Across Europe May Double by 2050
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on March 9th, 2014
Climate News Network: The catastrophic floods that soaked Europe last summer and the United Kingdom this winter are part of the pattern of things to come. According to a new study of flood risk in Nature Climate Change annual average losses from extreme floods in Europe could increase fivefold by 2050. And the frequency of destructive floods could almost double in that period.
About two thirds of the losses to come could be explained by socio-economic growth, according to a team led by Brenden Jongman of the University...