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The Best of the IPCC Climate Report Leaks
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on September 20th, 2013
LiveScience: With 800 volunteer reviewers, the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the international body that assesses the state of the science on climate change — was bound to leak. The first full version of the draft report was posted online in December 2012 by a climate change skeptic who was part of the volunteer review army. Now, as the report's Sept. 27 release date nears, final drafts are circulating among journalists. This latest version of the IPCC's summary of...
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As West Warms, Wildfires Expected to Double by 2050
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on September 10th, 2013
LiveScience: Yosemite National Park's Rim Fire dashed the plans of many campers over Labor Day weekend. The iconic views of Half Dome and Yosemite Valley's sheer granite walls disappeared behind a sudden influx of thick smoke the night of Aug. 30, just before most visitors arrived for the holiday. The air quality was deemed to be unhealthy for outdoor activities, according to California air quality officials. Smoke from the still-burning fire continues to cause unhealthy air quality levels for sensitive people...
Giant sequoia trees threatened by Yosemite fire
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on August 27th, 2013
LiveScience: A raging forest fire sweeping toward Yosemite National Park in California may threaten giant sequoia trees. The massive Rim Fire is an intense "crown" fire, meaning it is burning and leaping in the tops of trees instead of crawling along the ground. The National Park Service has closed two of Yosemite's three giant sequoia groves to work on preventive fire efforts, a park service statement said. The Merced and Tuolumne groves are about 4 miles (6 kilometers) from the edge of the Rim Fire, which...
New Clues to Greenland’s Hidden Plumbing
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on August 15th, 2013
LiveScience: What happens under Greenland's ice sheet, where water, ice and rock meet, is key to predicting how its glaciers will react to global warming.
Turns out, beneath the island's mysterious middle, where the ice is thick and the bottom bedrock difficult to reach, meltwater flows through channels and voids that open when flowing ice travels over rough ground, a new study finds. The passageways are spaces between the rock and the overlying ice. The results, based on computer modeling and fieldwork observations...
Warm and buttery: Greenland’s ice flow speeding up
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on July 18th, 2013
LiveScience: Greenland's massive ice sheet is accelerating its slide toward the ocean because bigger surface melts in recent years are softening the interior of the ice like a stick of butter, a new study finds. For more than a decade, scientists have reported rapid melting and shrinking at many of Greenland's outlet glaciers, which snake into the ocean. Studies suggest warmer ocean water and rising atmospheric temperatures contribute to the melting ice. The new study finds the interior ice sheet also speeded...
Burning Question: How Will Climate Change Impact Western Wildfires?
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on July 3rd, 2013
LiveScience: Climate change will dramatically alter wildfire patterns in the western United States before the century ends, studies show.
Experts are reluctant to paint a broad picture of future fire risk because fires vary so drastically among regions -- a forest fire in high-elevation Colorado, for example, is vastly different than coastal, chaparral-fed flames in California. But many fire scientists agree the doomsday scenario of massive fires that wreak death and destruction can be quashed through smarter...
Criteria for ‘Red List’ of Endangered Ecosystems Released
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on May 8th, 2013
LiveScience: With many of the world's ecosystems threatened or endangered by human activities like logging and urbanization, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) published its criteria for a new "Red List" of endangered ecosystems today (May 8) in the journal PLOS ONE.
The list, which measures an ecosystem's risk of collapse, will be similar to the group's authoritative Red List of Endangered Species, which created internationally accepted criteria for assessing extinction risk.
"The...
Sahara Went from Green to Desert in a Flash
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on April 5th, 2013
LiveScience: From lakes and grasslands with hippos and giraffes to a vast desert, North Africa's sudden geographical transformation 5,000 years ago was one of the planet's most dramatic climate shifts.
The transformation took place nearly simultaneously across the continent's northern half, a new study finds. The results will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
The findings come from analyses of dust blown west from Africa and dropped into the Atlantic Ocean....
Tropical Ice Reveals Rare Climate Record
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on April 4th, 2013
LiveScience: A new and rare ice core record of tropical temperatures highlights changes in the enfants terribles of world climate, the El Niño/La Niña–Southern Oscillation.
The climate record comes from Peru's stunning Cordillera Oriental mountain range, home to Quelccaya, the world's largest tropical ice cap. Researchers trekked to an altitude of more than 18,000 feet (5,600 meters) to probe the ice.
The two ice cores (or cylinders of ice) drilled from the Quelccaya hold 1,800 years of climate history,...
Climate Change Threatens Spectacular Hawaiian Plant
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on January 17th, 2013
LiveScience: One of Hawaii's iconic plants is again at risk.
The striking and rare Haleakal? silversword, found only on the high volcanic slopes of Maui, is on the decline, scientists report today (Jan. 15) in the journal Global Change Biology.
First, the plant was nearly killed off by cows and collectors starting in the 1880s, then conservationists made it a success story after the 1930s. Now climate change is bringing about a new collapse.
The culprit is shifting weather patterns, which have made the...