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Burning Amazon forests and a rain-drenched Calif. are likely to come with El Niño – researchers
Posted by ClimateWire: Gayathri Vaidyanathan on December 17th, 2015
ClimateWire: The Amazon forests of Central and South America are at increased risk of fires in 2016 due to the ongoing El Niño, according to NASA scientists.
This El Niño, which has helped trigger more than 100,000 fires in Indonesia and spewed an estimated 1.75 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents into the atmosphere, will next threaten tropical forests in Southeast Asia and in southern Mexico, Guatemala and other countries in Central America, said James Randerson, an Earth system scientist at...
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Bad news for the climate as methane leaks far surpass previous estimates
Posted by ClimateWire: Gayathri Vaidyanathan on December 9th, 2015
ClimateWire: Emissions of methane from the oil and gas industry vastly exceed federal government estimates, according to a definitive study published yesterday. The study finds that daily leaks of the potent greenhouse gas from oil and gas wells in Texas' Barnett Shale matched the annual emissions of 8,000 cars.
Meanwhile, in California's Aliso Canyon, a natural gas storage site has leaked at least 800,000 metric tons carbon dioxide equivalents of methane since Oct. 23, equal to the annual emissions from 168,421...
Exposing a small part of a forest to the heat of 2100
Posted by ClimateWire: Gayathri Vaidyanathan on November 24th, 2015
ClimateWire: "Oops!" She places a hand over her mouth and looks around surreptitiously. Wood, 40, is responsible for the daily operations of this first-of-its-kind experiment, where scientists are cranking up the heat by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) to see what happens to the saplings of palm and tabonuco and small plants growing here. This is as hot as our planet may be in 2100 if nations emit carbon dioxide at present-day rates. The scientists want to see whether tropical forests will thrive...
Runaway global warming becomes concern permafrost melts
Posted by ClimateWire: Gayathri Vaidyanathan on November 20th, 2015
ClimateWire: In a fragile landscape where footsteps leave an imprint for years, Jennifer Baltzer stood and surveyed the surrounding bog of green sphagnum moss. Black spruce trees tilted here and there like drunkards.
Using a metal rod, Baltzer, an ecologist with Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, pierced the ground near a spruce.
"You are jamming into ice there," she said. Without that freeze, the unstable spruce trees would entirely lose their footing and drown.
Goose Lake is at the knife's...
Which oil and gas companies are leaking the most methane?
Posted by ClimateWire: Gayathri Vaidyanathan on June 29th, 2015
ClimateWire: Over the years, ConocoPhillips -- an energy company so rich that it earns as much in a year as Croatia -- has positioned itself as a good guy among its peers when it comes to greenhouse gas pollution. It is a member of a U.N.-led initiative to reduce emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is the primary component of natural gas. In the United States, it is a longtime participator in U.S. EPA's voluntary program to curb methane leaks. In January, Ryan Lance, CEO of ConocoPhillips, said...
Fixing ‘bugs’ in climate models: Accounting for melting permafrost
Posted by ClimateWire: Gayathri Vaidyanathan on April 10th, 2015
ClimateWire: Abrupt climate change within a decade triggered by runaway melting of Arctic permafrost is extremely unlikely, according to a study published in Nature yesterday. Rather, the permafrost, or frozen ground, in the Northern Hemisphere will take decades or centuries to melt and release the carbon stored in the soil. The release will not trigger a catastrophe per se but will exacerbate global warming. "These are large and significant releases, so, over a century, we are going to release 100 billion...
Epic drought in California unlikely to ease
Posted by ClimateWire: Gayathri Vaidyanathan on June 21st, 2014
ClimateWire: California will remain in the stranglehold of drought at least until September, even as a climate system in the tropical Pacific Ocean that would have brought rainfall to the parched state appears to be weakening, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's monthly climate update released yesterday.
Weather watchers had been hoping that an El Niño, which occurs when an area of the tropical Pacific Ocean warms by at least 0.5 degrees Celsius above normal, would bring moisture...