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Climate: Land areas storing more water, slowing sea level rise
Posted by Summit County: Bob Berwyn on February 13th, 2016
Summit County: As crucial as it is for the future of humanity, calculating the rate of sea level rise has never been easy, and new measurements by NASA satellites have added a new twist to the equation. Careful study of the data from NASA`s twin NASA`s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites helped show how climate-driven increases of liquid water storage on land have affected the rate of sea level rise.
In the past decade, Earth`s land masses have soaked up an extra 3.2 trillion tons of water...
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Study suggests clearcutting and ‘snow farming’ as global warming mitigation
Posted by Summit County: Bob Berwyn on February 23rd, 2014
Summit County: Snow farming is nothing new for ski area operators, who have long been cultivating the white stuff to help keep their slopes covered. Now, a recent study by researchers at Darthmouth College suggests that snow farming could also make sense on a larger scale, in the context of climate-change mitigation.
In a novel look at forests and snow, their report says that replacing forests with snow-covered meadows may provide greater climatic and economic benefits than if slow-growing trees are left standing...
Global warming is changing soil chemistry, to the detriment of plant growth in the world’s dry regions
Posted by Summit County: Bob Berwyn on November 4th, 2013
Summit County: After studying soil samples at more than 200 sites worldwide in a networked research projects, scientists say global warming is likely to change the balance of soil nutrients in drylands -- to the detriment of plant growth.
Drylands cover about 41 percent of the earth’s surface. The study suggests that people -- about 20 percent of the world`s population -- who depend on those ecosystems for crops, livestock forage, fuel and fiber will find their resources increasingly restrained.
The findings...
Global warming to pinch Salt Lake City water supply
Posted by Summit County: Bob Berwyn on November 2nd, 2013
Summit County: By now it’s no secret that global warming will have a significant impact on water supplies in parts of the world, and regions where water is already scarce will be first to feel the pinch That includes the interior West, where winter snowpack provides critical water storage. Already, projections show that spring runoff is coming much earlier than just a few years ago, and that, in many areas, more of the total annual precipitation is falling as rain. In a new study, a team of researchers tried...
Can dams help buffer global warming impacts?
Posted by Summit County: Bob Berwyn on September 27th, 2013
Summit County: For all the environmental mayhem they`ve caused in the past, dams may help buffer some aquatic ecosystems from future global warming impacts, according to a new study from Oregon State University.
Specifically, the researchers said dams could provide “ecological and engineering resilience” to climate change in the Columbia River basin.
“The dams are doing what they are supposed to do, which is to use engineering – and management – to buffer us from climate variability and climate warming,”...
Global warming to affect North American monsoon
Posted by Summit County: Bob Berwyn on January 6th, 2013
Summit County: Global warming result in a significant shift of the North American monsoon, with less rain during the early part of the season, in June and July, and more rain later in the summer and early autumn. The trend toward a later start to summer precipitation has already started, but will become more pronounced — and easier to distinguish from the background “noise” of natural variability — during the next few decades, according to researchers with NASA and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory....