
This is for science news NOT braindead conspiracy theories.

When he shows that graph to audiences, says Mann, "I often hear an audible gasp." In this sense, the hockey stick does indeed matter—for it dramatizes just how much human irresponsibility, in a relatively short period of time, can devastate the only home we have.
good read....snip
Indeed, two just-published studies support the hockey stick more powerfully than ever. One, just out in Nature Geoscience, featuring more than 80 authors, showed with extensive global data on past temperatures that the hockey stick's shaft seems to extend back reliably for at least 1,400 years. Recently in Science, meanwhile, Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University and his colleagues extended the original hockey stick shaft back 11,000 years[HILITE]. "There's now at least tentative evidence that the warming is unprecedented over the entire period of the Holocene, the entire period since the last ice age," says Mann.[/HILITE]
It's too late.Scrumple wrote: “We have already passed critical thresholds. Even if we stop emissions now, acidification will last tens of thousands of years. It is a very big experiment.”
Hawaii to suffer most as global sea levels rise, study says
NASA
The Hawaiian Islands, seen from space, are the most vulnerable to uneven global sea level rise due to melting glaciers and ice sheets.
By John Roach, Contributing Writer, NBC News
Melting ice in Greenland, Antarctica and elsewhere will push up seas unevenly around the world, according to a new study that finds some of the highest waters will inundate Honolulu, Hawaii.
At the poles, sea levels will actually fall because of the way sea, land and ice interact. For example, the sheer mass of water held in ice in Greenland and Antarctica generates a gravitational field that pulls in the surrounding water. As ice there melts, the gravitational pull weakens and the water is redistributed.
In addition, the melting ice on Antarctica and Greenland will lighten the load on the land beneath it, allowing the land to rebound up and the seafloor to drop a corresponding amount.
"Meaning that as the seafloor deepens, there is another component of sea-level fall, ironically, around these piles of ice," Charles Fletcher, a geologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, explained to NBC News.
Fletcher was not involved in the new study but is familiar with its findings, particularly the vulnerabilities of Hawaii — and, more broadly, tropical islands in the Pacific Ocean — to global sea-level rise.
Modelling glacier wastage
The research was co-led by Giorgio Spada, a professor of Earth physics at the University of Urbino in Italy. It is "the first study to examine a regional pattern of sea-level changes using sophisticated model predictions of the wastage of glaciers and ice sheets over the next century," he told NBC News via email.
He and colleagues used the model to investigate sea level under two future scenarios of sea-level rise: a mid-range, likely-to-happen one and one closer to the upper limit of what’s plausible. Under both, maximum sea-level rise is expected at Honolulu, the researchers reported Feb. 13 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
In the mid-range scenario, worst-affected equatorial oceans could see as much as two feet of sea-level rise, when the fact that water expands as it warms is taken into account. Under the high end, the rate of sea-level change in Honolulu will exceed 0.3 inches a year during the second half of this century.
Sea-level rise will also be greater than average in Western Australia and throughout the atolls and islands in the tropical Pacific Ocean. In Europe, sea levels will rise, but will likely be lower than the global average given the continent’s proximity to Greenland and the dropping sea levels there.
Incomplete picture
But the picture is far from complete, cautioned Fletcher.
"What this paper and other models have not been able to do because, ultimately, it is too chaotic, is to predict what the winds will be doing," he explained.
For example, enhanced trade winds associated with a phenomenon called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation are pushing the Pacific Ocean surface westward. As a result, annual sea-level rise in Hawaii is currently about half the global average rate of about 0.1 inch a year, while in the western Pacific the rate is more than 0.3 inch a year.
This may, or may not, change with the next phase of the oscillation, noted Fletcher, whose own research recently highlighted how groundwater beneath land rises with sea levels and could breach the surface, causing severe flooding in places such as Honolulu.
"Overall, the (new) paper is one more twig in the bundle of concerns that low-lying coastal cities, and especially Pacific islands, are highly vulnerable to this problem of sea-level rise," he said, adding that "these Pacific islands have contributed almost nothing to the problem of global warming."
It is never too late to panic.Făkünamę wrote:It's too late.Scrumple wrote: “We have already passed critical thresholds. Even if we stop emissions now, acidification will last tens of thousands of years. It is a very big experiment.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 174811.htmScientists Find Extensive Glacial Retreat in Mount Everest Region
Members of the team conducting these studies will present their findings on May 14 at the Meeting of the Americas in Cancun, Mexico -- a scientific conference organized and co-sponsored by the American Geophysical Union.
Glaciers in the Mount Everest region have shrunk by 13 percent in the last 50 years and the snowline has shifted upward by 180 meters (590 feet), according to Sudeep Thakuri, who is leading the research as part of his PhD graduate studies at the University of Milan in Italy.
Glaciers smaller than one square kilometer are disappearing the fastest and have experienced a 43 percent decrease in surface area since the 1960s. Because the glaciers are melting faster than they are replenished by ice and snow, they are revealing rocks and debris that were previously hidden deep under the ice. These debris-covered sections of the glaciers have increased by about 17 percent since the 1960s, according to Thakuri. The ends of the glaciers have also retreated by an average of 400 meters since 1962, his team found.
The researchers suspect that the decline of snow and ice in the Everest region is from human-generated greenhouse gases altering global climate. However, they have not yet established a firm connection between the mountains' changes and climate change, Thakuri said.
He and his team determined the extent of glacial change on Everest and the surrounding 1,148 square kilometer (713 square mile) Sagarmatha National Park by compiling satellite imagery and topographic maps and reconstructing the glacial history. Their statistical analysis shows that the majority of the glaciers in the national park are retreating at an increasing rate, Thakuri said.
To evaluate the temperature and precipitation patterns in the area, Thakuri and his colleagues have been analyzing hydro-meteorological data from the Nepal Climate Observatory stations and Nepal's Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. The researchers found that the Everest region has undergone a 0.6 degree Celsius (1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in temperature and 100 millimeter (3.9 inches) decrease in precipitation during the pre-monsoon and winter months since 1992.
In subsequent research, Thakuri plans on exploring the climate-glacier relationship further with the aim of integrating the glaciological, hydrological and climatic data to understand the behavior of the hydrological cycle and future water availability.
"The Himalayan glaciers and ice caps are considered a water tower for Asia since they store and supply water downstream during the dry season," said Thakuri. "Downstream populations are dependent on the melt water for agriculture, drinking, and power production."
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2 ... eaths.htmlClimate change will push up New York's heatwave deaths
* 18:10 21 May 2013 by Michael Marshall
* For similar stories, visit the Climate Change Topic Guide
The Big Apple is cooking: climate change will increase the number of temperature-related deaths within decades.
A warmer climate means more extremely hot days in summer, and fewer extremely cold days in winter, meaning people are more likely to die in summer than they used to be, and less so in winter.
Radley Horton of Columbia University in New York and colleagues have now calculated the net effect. They matched daily temperature data for Manhattan with death rates between 1982 and 1999 to estimate how sensitive the city's population is to temperatures, then used future temperature forecasts to estimate future death rates. In all their 16 models, temperature-related deaths increased almost immediately (Nature Climate Change, doi.org/mkc).
Death tolls rose by roughly six per cent by 2020, by 10 to 15 per cent by 2050, and up to 30 per cent by 2080.
The biggest increases occurred in May and September. According to Horton's calculations, death tolls could roughly double by 2080 during these months. "Today New York doesn't think about heatwaves in those months, but in the future they may be part of the summer," says Horton.
New York is already taking action to protect its citizens from extreme heat, as part of a broader initiative called PlaNYC that aims to protect the city from climate change. The city is planting extra trees, painting roofs white and creating "cooling centres" where people can escape the worst of the heat. Many other mid-latitude cities will need to adapt, says Horton. "Efforts under way in New York City are a valuable example."
Green areas like parks act as "oases of cool" where people can go to escape the heat, says Andrew Pullin of Bangor University, UK. One recent study (Urban Forestry & Urban Greening, doi.org/b7fxbh) suggests that the cooling effect of a park extends a few hundred metres into the surrounding built-up area, so parks might help keep the entire city cool.
Journal reference: Nature Climate Change, doi.org/mkc
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