According to an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, several ornithological researchers suspect global warming is leading to changes in bird behavior, namely in regards to bird distribution, population and migratory patterns.

The American Bird Conservancy predicts doom for more than half of the migrating species in the Great Lakes region if warming continues at its current pace from a report issued in its publication titled "A Birdwatcher's Guide to Global Warming."

Here is just a sampling of some of the behavioral changes that are being noticed in the Midwest.......

--The Northern Mockingbird, more of a southern bird, has expanded far into the upper Midwest.
--Mississippi Kites nested in southern Ohio recently, which is the farthest north ever recorded.
--Cerulean Warbler population is down 70% over the past 25 years.
--Orioles and Black-Capped Chickadees are becoming much more common in northern areas, while diminishing on the southern end of their normal range.

Question to the readers......Have you noticed any changes in bird behavior or population where you live over the past several years?

Not everyone is buying into this belief. Kenn Kaufmann, a birding author feels some of these predictions are extreme. He suspects several factors such as available food sources, increasing availability of insects and vegetation changes have contributed to a natural ebb & flow.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has been studying these behavioral changes, but still does not have any direct answer. "It's not just climate change, although that certainly is having an effect," said Cornell Spokeswoman Patricia Leonard.

Check out the initialized 00-hour MRF model temperature data across the northern hemisphere polar region from earlier today in degrees celsius. I know it is not that easy to read, but if you look closely you can see a rather large pocket of higher temperatures compared to surrounding areas over the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia and Alaska, which correlates well to the large ice free region that we continue to see on the latest ice cover map at the bottom from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. In this situation, I do believe that the open water is indeed having some amount of warming influence on the surface temperatures in the region. Normally at this time of year, much of this region outlined by the purple line is covered in ice, but there was a record (recorded history) melt this year. The ice covered areas over far northern Canada are much colder. Some of this difference may also be due to the current weather pattern in the arctic, but not all in my opinion. Keep in mind, this is just a one day observation that my fellow meteorologist Jim Andrews pointed out, but we thought it was interesting. Very soon this region will ice over once again has we go through autumn.

Temperature analysis from earlier today in celsius (Alaska is near the center of the map)

Unfortunately, it is hard to compare the two maps as they are on two different scales and looking at different directions.

Image courtesy of the NSIDC

In here latest video, Katie discusses the impact of global warming on the wine industry and talks about snow melt in Antarctica.

In part two of her interview with AccuWeather.com's expert senior Meteorologist Ken Reeves, Katie gets Ken's opinion on mass-produced, genetically altered trees, man-made wetlands and a way to insulate glaciers.

If you would like to comment on some of these ideas, feel free to do so in our comment section.

A few of our commentators on this blog found this story earlier today and I thank them.

Anyway, in a news release from NASA Monday, a group of scientists have determined that unusual winds caused the rapid decline (23% loss) in winter perennial ice over the past two years in the northern hemisphere. This drastic reduction is the primary cause of this summer's fastest-ever sea ice retreat in recorded history which has lead to the smallest extent of total Arctic coverage on record.

According to the NASA study, the perennial ice shrunk by an area the size of Texas and California combined between the winter of 2005 and the winter of 2007. What they found was the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia and Alaska was dominated by thinner seasonal ice that melts faster compared to the thicker ice confined to the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. The thinner ice is more easily compressed and responds more quickly to being pushed out of the Arctic by winds.

"Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," said Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and leader of the study. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

What about these unusual wind patterns. Well, the article does not go into that too much, but I must believe some of this is due to changes in the Arctic Oscillation (AO) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) which are large atmospheric circulations which have major impacts on the weather in certain parts of the world.

If you look at the two graphics below, you will notice that both the AO and the NAO have been predominately in the positive phase (red) between 1989-1995 and again from 1999 to current. The positive phase of the (AO) typically leads to milder than normal winters over Scandinavia and Siberia, while colder than normal conditions prevail across Greenland. The positive phase of the NAO again leads to colder conditions over Greenland, while much of the eastern U.S. is warmer than normal in general.

NRG Energy Inc. CEO David Crane said Tuesday that cutting emissions from coal-fired power plants needs to be at the center of addressing global climate change. "The centerpiece of any global warming effort has to be getting carbon out of coal," said Crane. Certainly not the type of statement you would expect to hear from someone whose own direct interests are with these same coal-fired power plants, but actions speak much more than words, as the saying goes.

Crane told a group of students that if they could find a method of removing carbon from flue gas they could end up saving the world with the added benefit of becoming a billionaire. Flue gas is a post-combustion gas emitted from pipes and chimneys, according to the article from Reuters.

Crane said it's the U.S. government that has to take the leading role in promoting research and development for technology that would cut carbon emissions.

In addition to being a strong advocate of "clean coal" technology, Crane and NRG are looking to build two nuclear energy plants in Texas and develop wind farms in Texas and California. He is even testing technology that uses algae to capture CO2 emissions at fossil fuel plants as stated in an earlier piece from CNNMoney.com

By the way, NRG Energy has plans to build another traditional coal-fired power plant in Texas, but the company does not feel "overly good" about it.

A new study co-authored by Nobel Prize winning chemist Paul Crutzen argues that growing some of the most common biofuel crops, including corn bioethanol, releases around two times the amount of the potent greenhouse gas Nitous Oxide (N2O) than earlier studies supported, which, according to the study, would erase any benefits from not using fossil fuels.

"What we are saying is that growing many biofuels is probably of no benefit and in fact is actually making the climate issue worse," said co-author Keith Smith from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

According to the article from Chemistry World, some previous estimates had suggested that biofuels could cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40 per cent.

Not everyone agrees with the results of this study. Simon Donner, a nitrogen researcher from Princeton University is critical of the study and says there is little evidence to show the nitrous oxide yield from fetilized plants is really as high as 3 to 5%. He believes Crutzen's basic assumption that pre-industrial nitrous oxide emissions are the same as natural nitrous oxide emissions is "probably wrong."

In her new video, Katie Fehlinger interviews Dr. Richard Alley, an Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Penn State University. Alley has traveled to Greenland on many occasions and discusses the impact of global warming on the ice sheet.

Some of her other stories deal with the effects of climate change on Australia and blueberries.

A MODIS satellite composite taken of the Arctic sea ice on September 15th/16th, 2007. You can see the open waters of the Northwest Passage on the lower left of the picture.

Image courtesy of the NSIDC

The average Arctic sea ice extent for the month of September was 1.65 million square miles (4.28 million square kilometers), the lowest September on record (records kept since 1979) which crushed the previous record for the month set back in 2005 by a whopping 23%. At the end of the melt season, the September 2007 sea ice was 39% below the long-term average from 1979 to 2000.

The graph below shows the September ice extent from 1979-2007. An average decrease of 10% per decade.

Image courtesy of the NSIDC

According to the press release from the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), one factor that contributed to this fall’s extreme decline was that the ice was entering the melt season in an already weakened state. NSIDC Research Scientist Julienne Stroeve said, "The spring of 2007 started out with less ice than normal, as well as thinner ice. Thinner ice takes less energy to melt than thicker ice, so the stage was set for low levels of sea ice this summer.”

NSIDC Research Scientist Walt Meier also said that an unusual atmospheric pattern, with persistent high pressures over the central Arctic Ocean and lower pressures over Siberia was another factor in the acceleration of ice melt this season. This pattern of warm winds and clearer than normal skies promoted strong melt.

The scientists also noted that the date of lowest sea ice extent continues to be pushed back, resulting in a longer melt season. From 1979 to 2000 the average date of the lowest sea ice extent has been September 12. This year it happened on September 16th. "As the system warms up, spring melt will tend to come earlier and utumn freezing will begin later," said NSIDC Senior Scientist Ted Scambos.

Just as we set a new record in the northern hemisphere for minimum sea ice area in September, the southern hemisphere has officially set a new record for maximum sea ice area. According to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Polar Research Group the southern hemisphere sea ice area reached 16.17 million square kilometers, narrowly breaking the old record of 16.03 million square kilometers. The record data goes back to 1979.

Image courtesy of the NSIDC

Keep in mind, even though this is indeed a record, it is not nearly as significant as the minimum record which was just set in the northern hemisphere, in which the sea ice extent was 23% less than the previous record set back in 2005. This new record in the southern hemisphere is not even 1% greater than the old record maximum, and it barely sticks out on the graph of southern hemispheric sea ice area since 1979. Overall, the graph seems to show little variation since 1979. One thing I will say, the maximum sea ice area has ended up higher each year for the past 5 years.

Sir John Holmes, a British diplomat who is also known as the UN's under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said dire predictions about the impact of global warming on humanity were already coming true, according to an article in the Guardian. A record number of floods, droughts and storms around the world this year amount to a climate change "mega disaster", warned Holmes.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) has issued 13 emergency "flash" appeals so far this year, which is already 3 more than the previous record set back in 2005.

According to the UN, only half of the international disasters two years ago dealt with by Ocha had anything to with climate, while this year all but one of 13 emergency appeals is climate related. Here I go again, while the UN could eventually end up being correct in their viewpoint, I feel that we need more weather data and other evidence to compare over a much longer period to establish a trend in order to prove that many of these individual disasters were indeed directly related to climate change and not just a rare, extreme weather event or an ongoing atmospheric circulation. They may be on to something, but it is just too early in the ballgame to be that certain about it in my opinion. What do you think?

Archaeological researchers have concluded through a study of sediment and fossil samples that climate change, in the form a very long term drought, explained early mankind's exodus from Africa to other parts of the world.

According to the article from the Timesonline, researchers believe a prolonged drought between 90,000 and 135,000 years ago created such stresses on Homo sapiens that the population had crashed. This could help explain why mankind is thought to be descended from a relative handful of people in Africa.

"Tropical Africa was extraordinarily dry about 100,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence shows relatively few signs of human occupation during the mega-drought period," said Professor Andrew Cohen, of the University of Arizona. A study of sediment core samples from Lake Malawi, one of the worlds deepest lakes (now 2,316 ft), indicated that the water level dropped by at least 1,986 feet, making it only 410 feet deep during that mega-drought period. During that period, the area around the lake would have turned into a semi-desert, greatly limiting the resources for primates.

The scientists believe that the period for the human expansion out of equatorial Africa would have been between 90 and 70 thousand years ago.

ADDED CORRECTION

By the way, Dr. Joe Sobel has a new post in the global warming center on the October heat wave, and is this evidence of climate change?

A new study suggests that man-made global warming is making a large portion of the planet more humid. That should not be too much of a shocker since warmer air can hold more moisture, but there is more to this story from the China Post.

According to the study, which was published in the journal Nature, the amount of moisture in the air near the surface increased 2.2% between 1973 and 2002 and that computer models suggest the only explanation is man-made global warming. Unfortunately, I did not see anything in the article about what happened between 2002 and 2006.

"The humidity change is an important contribution to heat stress in humans as a result of global warming," said Nathan Gillett of the University of East Anglia in Britain and co-author of the study.

Co-author Katharine Willett from Yale University stated that the humidity during the study period increased over most of the globe, but the western U.S., South Africa and parts of Australia were drier.

Gillett ran several computer simulations which would predict what the humidity would be based on three different scenerios. The three scenerios were an atmosphere with no man-made greenhouse gases, one with just man-made greenhouse gases and finally one with a combination of natural conditions and man-made greenhouse gases. There was no match to the actual data with the first two scenerios while the third scenerio (the combination of natural conditions and man-made greenhouse gases) was nearly identical to the year-by-year increase in humidity.

Finally, according to Gillett, moisture in the air increases by about 6% with every degree celsius (1.8F) and based on IPCC projections, that would mean a 12-24% increase in humidity by 2100. Yuck!

This story from the BBC News has been out for a little over a week, but there has not been too much mention of it. Anyway, if you have not heard already, the giant Ayles Ice Island in the Canadian Arctic region broke in half a little over a month ago, as indicated by satellite imagery below. The ice island was originally the size of Manhattan as it broke away from the Ayles Ice Shelf in 2005.

All images courtesy of the Canadian Space Agency.

This first image shows the location of the Ayles Ice shelf

This image shows a closeup of the 2005 fracture location and the track of the ice island through September 2007.

These next two images show the ice island just as it is beginning to split (top image) and totally separated (bottom) in a matter of three days during early September 2007.

The below image from September 14th shows the two pieces moving south and farther away from each other.

The September 16th shot shows the two large ice islands getting closer to Amund Ringnes Island.

The September 23rd image shows one piece going into Hassel Sound and the other going into Massey Sound.

The latest image from September 30th shows the two large pieces of ice on opposite sides of Amund Ringnes island.

One piece of the island has been moving south at nearly 61 miles a week. According to Luke Copland of the University of Ottawa, it is relatively unusual for an ice island to drift so far south so quickly, but he believes this happened this year due to the small extent of sea ice. This recent major split occurred much earlier than scientists expected and Dr. Copland believes it will break up even faster since it has moved farther south into slightly warmer temperatures. "I'd be surprised if it lasted more than a decade or so," said Copland, unlike ice islands which in the past might have lasted in the Arctic ocean for 50 years or more.

David Schnare, a senior environmental Fellow at the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy doesn't really care whether global warming is man-made or a natural cycle, all he knows is that the temperature is going up and we need to find a way to fix the problem. In an article from the Washington Times, Schnare and others believe that geo-engineering can fix the problem much cheaper than efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Schnare, a geo-engineering method of using aerosols to put small reflective particles into the troposphere would stabilize global temperatures just enough to prevent melting glaciers and thus prevent a rise in ocean levels. Nature has a similar way of cooling the planet with major volcanic eruptions and the ash they send high into the atmosphere.

Other scientists fear geo-engineering schemes may do more harm than good and widespread drought is a big concern. Past large volcanic eruptions such as Mount Pinatubo (1991, remember those brilliant red skies in the evening?) caused a substantial global decrease in precipitation over land, a record decrease in runoff and river discharge into the oceans, according to Kevin Trenberth and Aiguo Dai of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

What do you think? Is it worth the risk?

Update*****David Schnare responds to the Accuweather,com Global Warming Center,,,,,,,,,

I'm not an AGW or anything else in particular, although I have a PhD in environmental science and happen to be burdened with a law degree too. I started out as a chemist. In any case, I simply begin with the apparency that temperatures are going up and that if you adopt the assumption that it is caused by GHG, then you also have to accept the fact that the world is not acting quickly enough to reduce GHGs to the degree necessary to reduce global temperatures before melting of the greenland ice sheet (all according to the models and assumptions used by those concerned with GHGs).

As for undesirable effects of using particulates in the stratosphere (not the troposphere), Ken Caldeira (Standford) took a very hard look at this and concluded that if the particulates are placed above the arctic (where they would be needed to prevent ice sheet melt), there is no discernable change in local weather patterns elsewhere on the planet and apparently not much change in the arctic.

All this does not imply we should do nothing about moving away from carbon based fuels. Just that we don't need to do so in some kind of crisis mode. David Schnare.

In the courts..........

Also, an update on an ongoing court issue. A parent in England has failed through legal action to prevent Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth from being shown in English schools, according to the Guardian Unlimited, but the high court said the film must be distributed with new guidance notes for students/teachers to prevent any promotion of partisan political views.

A probe is sent down into a moulin. Image courtesy of NASA

A moulin is the name for a giant hole in a glacier in which millions of gallons of melt water can cascade through to the rocky surface underneath the glacier during the melt season.

Why am I bringing this up now? Well, on a recent trip to Greenland a group of scientists and journalists were alarmed at the size and number of these moulins that they saw on the Greenland ice cap. Some of the moulins in Greenland run on the scale of Niagra Falls and are helping the glaciers to move at three times the rate that they did previously.

Scientists say the acceleration of melting and subsequent speeding up of giant glaciers could be catastrophic in terms of sea level rise and make previous predictions published this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) far too low, according to the article from AlterNet, which is a progressive news website.

Professor Robert Correll, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment said that newly invented ice penetrating radar showed that the melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a melt water lake 500 metres deep causing the glacier "to float on land. "These melt water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic." Correll stated that one particular glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one day to provide drinking water for a city the size of New York for a year.

Correll believes that the estimates of a 20 to 60 centimeter sea level rise this century from the IPCC report in February had been "conservative" and feels that it would be at the upper end of this range at a minimum. Some scientists fear that number could be 2 metres (200 centimeters), which would obviously have catastrophic effects for European and U.S. coastlines.

Al Gore and the U.N's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have jointly won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, which does not come as too much of a surprise, as there have been hints of this for a little while now. Their efforts to make the world aware of man-made climate change and to lay the framework to fight it earned them the prestigious award. Congratulations to Mr. Gore and those involved with the U.N. panel.

I would love to hear your comments on this story. Do you think that Gore and the IPCC are deserving of the award? What are your reasons for why they should or should not have been selected.

A Pentagon-chartered report says that space-based solar power (SBSP) has the potential to help the United States mitigate global warming and avoid future conflicts over oil by harnessing the sun's power through space platforms, which would essentially provide and inexhaustible supply of clean energy, and reduce the need for greenhouse gas producing power plants. I found this story on Space.com.

How would this work? Huge satellites would be built in Earth orbit to gather sunlight and convert it to electricity and beam the energy to earth using microwaves, according to Al Globus from Space.com. Read his article for greater details on this idea.

Although the U.S. military would reap tremendous benefits from space-based solar power on the battlefield, U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Paul Damphousse said the Pentagon is unlikely to fund development and demonstration of the technology. That role, he said, would be more appropriate for NASA or the Department of Energy, both of which have studied SBSP in the past.

Damphousse, however, cautioned that the private sector will not invest in space-based solar power until the United States buys down some of the risk through a technology development and demonstration effort at least on par with what the government spends on nuclear fusion research and perhaps as much as it is spending to construct and operate the international space station, as stated in the Space.com article.

While the upfront costs are steep, former NASA technologist John Mankins and others said space-based solar power's potential to meet the world's future energy needs is huge.

In part two of the interview, Dr. Richard Alley, lead author of the 4th Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, talks to Katie Fehlinger about the challenges and the criticisms of writing the report and the compromises that were made.

Barack Obama also talks about his proposed energy plan to combat global warming.

Using probes stuck high (up to 1,500 feet) on two towers to measure greenhouse gases, a group of scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California are trying to judge how accurately air experts have estimated emissions from power plants, farms, factories and automobiles. The California Greenhouse Gas Emissions Project (CALGEM), as it is called, was funded by the California Energy Commission.

The group determined in 2003 that greenhouse gases produced from burning fossil fuels could be measured regionally, which may help determine how much of the pollution can be blamed on humans according to the article in the San Francisco Chronicle..

How does it work? Twice a day the devices suck in air, which travel down a tube to the ground where CO2 and methane are analyzed.

Baseline data collected today will help scientists judge how the level of gases change over time, said Gene Zastrow, vice president and general manager of the Sutro Tower. Inc., which is one of the towers used in the study. According to Zastrow, part of the challenge is to determine how much of the gases are human created and how much are from natural fluctuations. Once they figure that out they can take current estimates of greenhouse gas emissions and use models and monitoring data to determine if those estimates are correct.

The scientists would eventually like to have measuring devices employed at up to 10 California sites at a cost of $10 million dollars to set up and $2 million a year to operate.

Here is a link to the project's website.

The combined global land and ocean surface temperature for September 2007 was the 5th warmest on record, according to scientists at NOAA;s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Also, the global ocean surface temperature for September 2007 was the 2nd warmest since records began in 1880. There is nothing in the press release about the global land temperature departure by itself, I guess it was not significant, but it would be nice to know.

In the United States, September 2007 was the 8th warmest on record with a temperature departure of 2.1 F (1.2 C) above the 20th century mean. Records kept since 1895.

Other U.S. highlights.........

-- 1000 daily high records were broken
-- 38 of 48 states were warmer than average, 10 were near average and 0 cooler than average.
-- 12th warmest September on record for Alaska.
-- Drought impacted 46% of the nation.
-- Lake Superior was at its lowest level on record for this time of year.

I know, I know, there goes Brett with more political stuff. But I think this is important, and as much as most of us hate it, you just cannot completely separate solutions to global warming from politics. That's my opinion from what I have seen and heard.

Now to the post....

The Republican presidential contenders are nearly unanimous in recognizing the threat of global warming and all agree that nuclear power should be greatly expanded, according to an article from the New York Times, which was posted on MSNBC.com.

Not all of the contenders are mentioned in the article, but here is a breakdown of what some of the republican candidates would like to do to combat global warming.....

Rudi Giuliani and Mitt Romney both agree that independence from foreign oil is important for our national security and want to push for clean coal and other alternative energy methods. Giuliani has also said that ethanol and biodiesel need to be expanded 10 to 20 percent. In addition to the above, Romney supports offshore drilling and drilling in ANWR.

Fred Thompson has recently stated that climate change is real and suggests a measured approach. He favors further development of renewable and alternative energy sources.

John McCain seems to have talked the most about this subject and believes that there should be a cap on greenhouse gas emissions and that higher fuel economy standards should be set. McCain opposes a carbon tax and favors a cap and trade system, in which corporations are basically rewarded for deep cuts in harmful emissions. McCain also supports the development of a car battery that can travel 150-200 miles without a charge.

According to the article, two candidates appealing to religious conservatives, former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas and Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, call for strong actions to ease the effects of people on the climate, at times casting the effort in spiritual terms just as some evangelical groups have taken up the cause.

Ron Paul believes that it it the state's role and not the federal government, to determine CO2 emissions reductions.

Duncan Hunter believes that we need to become energy independent and develop more alternative energy sources.

Tom Tancredo favors nuclear energy and alternative fuels.

Which candidate's view do you favor? Which ones do you disagree with?

Just to bring you up to date, about a week a ago a UK High Court Judge ruled that Al Gore's climate film "An Inconvenient Truth" would be allowed to be shown in British classrooms as long as the film was accompanied by guidance giving the other side of the argument. But, the judge also pointed out that 9 statements made in the film were not supported by mainstream scientific consensus. Here is a link to the nine statements in question, and the judge's response to each one.

The Washington Post Fact Checker has allowed Gore's spokeswoman and environmental adviser Kalee Kreider to respond to the criticisms of the UK judge. The article lists Kreider's response to each of the nine points at issue.

Were the judge's concerns valid? Are you satisfied with Kreider's response?

In the final part of this interview, Dr. Richard Alley, a lead author of the IPCC Report on Climate Change, explains his personal views on global warming with our own Katie Fehlinger.

Katie also has a segment on Al Gore and the impact of global warming on the Alps.

Next week, Katie will be interviewing AccuWeather.com's expert senior meteorologist and long range specialist Joe Bastardi.

Update 10/21/07: I am posting this at the top once again. We have received some excellent questions, but I am sure there some more out there. Brett

On October 25th, The Allegheny Institute for Public Policy and the Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy of Duquesne University will be holding a debate about whether or not human activity is causing global warming. The guest speakers are Dr. Fred Singer, a renowned skeptic and President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project and Dr. Charles Keller, an internationally known scientist specializing in atmospheric conditions and climate change.

Katie Fehlinger plans to interview both individuals after the debate and now it is your turn to provide the questions that she will ask. Please keep the questions short and to the point. Keep in mind, due to time contraints, Katie may not be able to use all of the questions. Katie has more details in her video post below.

The world's oceans are one of the two major carbon "sinks" for CO2 emissions, while the other is the land biosphere. The two combined typically absorb 1/2 of the CO2 into the atmosphere, but a 10-year study by researchers from the University of East Anglia showed that the uptake of CO2 by the North Atlantic Ocean halved between the mid 1990's and 2002-2005, which could accelerate global warming. There was also evidence of this trend in the southern Ocean, but not as great or as sudden, according to the Reuters article

The findings surprised lead authors Dr. Ute Schuster and Professor Andrew Watson. "We expected that the uptake would change only slowly because of the ocean's great mass," said Schuster.

The data for the study was collected by specifically equipped merchant ships.

The scientists are still not sure why this is happening, but according to Professor Watson it could be partly a natural oscillation or a response to recent rapid global warming.

One proposal to increase the ocean's ability to absorb CO2 is to create a network of pipes to improve circulation of water far below the surface, but Professor Watson was skeptical of the long-term impact of this particular proposal.

The idea of fertilizing the oceans with iron in order to reduce greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere is actually growing in popularity because of the market demand for carbon offsets, but some scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts have their doubts about the process, according to an article from the Cape Cod Times.

I did a blog not too long ago on this same subject, and if you do not remember, adding iron in the ocean would increase the growth of phytoplankton and other CO2 reducing plants, which in turn could reduce CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere.

Scott Doney, a WHOI senior scientist of marine chemistry and Hauke Kite-Powell, a research specialist at WHOI's Marine Policy Center told a group that environmental concerns, the lack of long-term testing and the dangers of moving forward based solely on commercial interests were some of the cons. "Once the carbon is sequestered in the deep ocean, it is dispersed and impossible to audit, said Doney.

WHOI biologist goes further and believes this (iron fertilization) could just be another money-making scam without regard for the health of the planet since there is no way to hold companies accountable for the actual removal of carbon from the atmosphere.

Kind of a slow day in the global warming department, so I figured I would do a post on the 10-year trend of the world's surface water temperature departures. The data is based on satellite measurements taken over the past 10 years. I am comparing data taken from the third week of October for each year. The reds and oranges are above normal surface water temperatures, while the blues are colder than normal. See if you can find any trends. Also, can you tell which years there was an El Nino or a La Nina? Hint: El Nino is the unusual warming of the eastern and central equatorial Pacific surface waters, while a La Nina is the opposite (cool phase). I will start with 1997 and end with our most recent image from yesterday. Images are courtesy of NOAA.

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

A research team from the University of York has studied the relationship over the past 520 million years between earth climate and extinctions. According to the press release, evidence shows that global biodiversity is relatively low during warm "greenhouse" phases and extinctions are relatively high. The reverse is true in cooler phases. How did they come to that conclusion? Using fossil records, the team matched data sets of marine and terrestrial diversity against temperature estimates during the 520 million year period.

The study was done by York student Gareth Jenkins and supervised by Dr. Peter Mayhew and University of Leeds Professor Tim Benton, who are population ecologists.

According to the study, four out of the five mass extiction events were associated with greenhouse phases. The largest mass extinction event of all, the End-Permian, occurred during one of the warmest ever climatic phases with an estimated extinction of 95% of animal and plant species. A new 'mass extinction event', where over 50% of animal and plant species would be wiped out could occur if global temperature predictions over the coming centuries come true.

"If our results hold for the current warming, the magnitude of which is comparable with the long-term fluctuations in earth climate, it suggests that extinctions will increase," said Dr. Mayhew.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, who is the Director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) testified in front of a Senate hearing Tuesday that climate change "is anticipated to have a broad range of impacts on the health of Americans." A majority of her testimony supposedly was on the CDC's preparation, with very little on what effects climate change could have on the spread of disease.

Her testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee had much less information on health risks than a much longer draft version Gerberding submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review in advance of her appearance, as the AP article reported.

A CDC official familiar with both versions said the draft was "eviscerated" after the review process. The CDC official said that while it is customary for testimony to be changed in a White House review, these changes were particularly "heavy-handed," with the document cut from its original 14 pages to four. It was six pages as presented to the Senate committee.

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said that the testimony went through an interagency review process and that the Office of Science and Technology Policy did not believe that science in the testimony matched the science that was in a report by the IPCC.

Tuesday night Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said that the Bush Administration "should immediately release Dr. Gerberding's full, uncut statement because the public has a right to know all the facts about the serious threats posed by global warming. But, CDC spokesman Tom Skinner played down the White House changes, saying Gerberding's appearance was "very productive" and she addressed the issues she wanted.

I would be curious to see what was said in the uncut version, and I agree with Boxer that it should be released. What do you think about all this? Do you think the unedited version may have been too "alarming" for the public to handle? Sort of like one of those movies you see on the Sci-Fi Channel.

UPDATE............

BrooklineTom has provided us with a link to the original version. Looks like the stuff that was edited out is highlighted. Thanks Tom.

In part one of her interview, Katie Fehlinger sits down with our own expert senior Meteorologist and hurricane specialist Joe Bastardi, who has strong opinions on climate change. We would also like to hear your feedback. Do you agree or disagree with what Joe is saying?

Katie also discusses a new climate change bill that might have a chance of getting through Congress.

UPDATE........

In Joe Bastardi's column from Wednesday night he voices his frustration about the idea that global warming is being blamed for so many disasters lately. An interesting read....here it is

It's simply astounding how when anything out of the ordinary happens,
global warming is blamed. That leaders of this nation can, within a
period of 24 hours, make such pronouncements about the wildfires ought
to instantly call into account their reasons for such things. How can
you come so quickly to such a conclusion? Have you researched all
this?

For instance the hidden reason for the SoCal drought may be because
the water is so darn cold off SoCal this year, much below normal, it
is leading to large-scale sinking that is retarding precip. The amount
of cold water showing up in the Pacific now certainly is helping tip
the balance away from the warmth over land in the means. So we are
dealing with a case of anomalously cold water leading to the dryness
that can set this up.

Perhaps, with arson suspected in some of these fires, we will blame
global warming for driving people to such things, setting fires.

Let's take the problem with Delaware River flooding that seems to be
more common. Global warming is being blamed by many of the people on
the river, and they seem to be perfectly happy with ignoring the
change in damming policies of lakes in the watershed. We now dam the
lakes up, and for good reason, to make sure that there is water in dry
times, not likely to occur in sustained fashion anyway in the
Northeast in warm cycles of the AMO. But the fact is, the lakes are
never almost parched as they were sometimes in previous years. They
are dammed up; it takes much less water to cause them to rise to
levels where water has to be released. A 10-inch rainstorm now, is
like a 20-inch rainstorm before as far as what can happen on the
river. Why, the water is there to be released much quicker, because it
was dammed up and preserved.

Is this global warming? Yet no one wants to seem to bring this up as a
reason for such things, but instead the finger is pointed at the
bogeyman that like many, may not exist, or if it does, not be the
monster in the closet that people seem to want to portray. What could
be the possible reason for hiding facts like this from you? Facts like
the idea it's the COLD WATER that may lead to more drought and set the
stage for wildfire, or that the change in water conservation methods
(in the case of wildfires, even forest management may be in there)
that is helping with it. Yes, man may be the cause, but not for the
reasons that are being pushed.

What happens in a week to 10 days if a hurricane is hitting Florida
at the end of the month or early November? Who will say this has
happened before, or not as extreme as Kate, later and stronger in '85?
No one, but you know what the blame will be, and the conclusions will
be almost instant.

And that people get upset when deductive reasoning is used as a way to
argue the other point of view, should speak volumes as to who is
opened-minded in this crucial societal debate, which sadly is
political now, and who is not. People will scream, "Stick to the
weather!" Well, the weather has been invaded by something I never
dreamed would intrude upon my peaceful little world: politics.

It's funny, in days gone by, complex answers required long, thoughtful
process, and debate and very, very hard work. Those days are leaving,
and will soon be gone, never to return. Somehow the words of Margaret
Mitchell may apply as far as thinking about the kind of hard work that
was needed to solve problems: "Look for it only in books, for it is no
more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.

A report in the journal Nature states that the Kyoto protocol has failed to bring about any significant action on climate change and should be ditched.

Professor Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Raynor from Oxford state in their report that the Kyoto Protocol has not delivered cuts in global emissions that continue to soar, and that it was always the wrong tool for the job.

According to the article in the National Post, Kyoto was fashioned after treaties for dealing with stratospheric ozone, acid rain and nuclear weapons. "Kyoto's architects assumed that climate change would be best attacked directly through global emissions controls, treating tonnes of carbon dioxide like stockpiles of nuclear weapons to be reduced via mutually verifiable targets and timetables," said Prins and Rayner. The article states that the protocol failed because climate change is so complex and rooted in the globally interlaced supply system of fossil energy.

Prins and Rayner believe that the delegates going to the Climate Summit in Bali this December need to radically rethink climate policy. Here is some of what they would like to see......

--Emissions reductions concentrated on the biggest emitters, since less than 20 of 194 countries in the world are responsible for 80% of the world's emissions.

--Forget carbon taxes and cap/trade systems, as they think these are not capable of stimulating the level of action required.

--Need a massive spending increase on clean energy technology and devote as much money to this challenge as they currently spend on military research.

A new study out of the University of Washington states that even the most powerful climate change models can never give a precise prediction of how greenhouse gases will warm the earth, and you shouldn't expect these temperature predictions to ever get any better.

According to the article from NewScientist, the problem lies with the feedbacks in the climate system. For example, positive feedback, such as when the temperature increases the snow melts, less snow means less sunlight being reflected back to space, which means more warming. These positive feedbacks accelerate global warming and also introduce uncertainty into estimates of climate sensitivity, say Gerard Roe and Marcia Baker of the University of Washington in Seattle. The team also found that more powerful computer models or better observational data will not do much to reduce that uncertainty.

"......the uncomfortable reality – for climate modellers – that finite research dollars invested in ever more sophisticated climate models offer very little marginal benefit to decision makers, said Roger Pielke, a climate policy expert at the University of Colorado.

James Lovelock, scientist, pro-nuclear environmentalist and inventor of the Gaia theory says that a rapid cutback in greenhouse gas emissions could accelerate global warming. By the way, the Gaia theory states that the earth behaves like a single, super organism.

Lovelock says that current global warming is being offset by global dimming, in which aerosol particles from industrial pollution are causing 2-3 degrees of cooling.

Keep in mind, this is all assuming that global emissions are stopped suddenly, something that in my opinion is highly unlikely to ever occur, unless the whole world gets nuked, and then it wouldn't really matter would it.

Prof Lovelock believes that even the gloomiest predictions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are underestimating the current severity of climate change because they do not go into the consequences of the current burden pollution in the atmosphere which will last for centuries, according to the article from the Telegraph.

Lovelock argues that we have set off a vicious cycle of "positive feedback" in the earth system whereby extra heat in the atmosphere, no matter what the source, is amplified, causing yet more warming. There's that that word "positive feedback" once again! (from the previous post).

Lovelock says that the IPCC's climate models fail to take into account that the earth is a living system where life in the oceans and land takes an active part in regulating the climate. If the models included the whole earth system in their equations they would show the global temperature becoming stable once again after the global temperature suddenly rises 6 celsius after the CO2 in the air exceeds 500 ppm. This contrasts with the current IPCC models that predict that temperature rises and falls smoothly with increasing or decreasing CO2.

Professor Lovelock still argues that greenhouse gas emissions should be cut and that deforestation needs to be lessened even though he feels that the changes are inevitable.

Do you agree with Lovelock's analysis?

A short time back I posted the last seven years or so of the global sea-surface temperature anomalies. A reader asked if I could do a post on the global surface temperature anomalies. Well, here it is, courtesy of the NCDC. The maps only go back to 2000. But, I think it is easier to visualize it than look at pages of numbers. If you want to see the raw, numerical global land temperature anomaly data going back to 1880 here it is.

2000 world surface temperature anomalies (All images courtesy of the National Climatic Data Center)

2001 world surface temperature anomalies

2002 world surface temperature anomalies

2003 world surface temperature anomalies

2004 world surface temperature anomalies

2005 world surface temperature anomalies

2006 world surface temperature anomalies

Longer term global surface anomaly (black line) and trend (black dotted) since the 1950's.

And just for fun, here is the global precipitation anomaly chart going back to 1900. Not too many trends here, other than the dryness early in the century and the wet period mid-century.

What do make of all this?

The accelerated thawing of the Arctic Basin, which by the way has a stockpile of natural resources, including oil and natural gas reserves could soon cause a rush of nations across the globe to advance their undersea borders and resource claims, states an article from the International Herald Tribune

It is estimated that discovered oil and natural gas reserves totaling 233 billion barrels of oil or its equivalent can be found in the Arctic Basin, with potential additional resources estimated at 166 billion barrels of oil equivalent. Right now, with the cost of a barrel of crude oil being so high, we are talking about a lot of $$$$ potential here.

The study, "The Future of the Arctic," found that natural gas accounted for 80 percent of all available reserves, and that 69 percent of it belonged to Russia.

According to David Parkinson, a consultant at Wood Mackenzie, the study focused on the continental shelf, within defined jurisdictions. Most of what the study found is exploitable. "The technology is there" he said. There is also speculation that additional reserves may exist farther out at sea.

Earlier this summer a titanium Russian Federation flag was planted on the floor of the Arctic Sea and some of Russia's Arctic neighbors saw this as an attempted land grab.
Russian denied this and said that it is just trying to prove that its continental shelf "stretches up to the North Pole"

Three other countries, Norway, Denmark and Iceland have also made claims, and if the Continental Shelf Commission agrees that a continuous continental shelf extends in the area then the three countries would have overlapping claims to sort out.

It looks to me that this could easily end up as one big political mess that may never really get solved.

The ozone hole over the southern hemisphere reached its annual peak on September 13th, according to NASA. The size of the hole was pretty average compared to the last 15 years, but very big when compared to the 1970's, when the hole did not yet exist.

From the NASA Earth Observatory News: The reason the ozone hole peaks in size during early Southern Hemisphere spring is that chemical reactions that create ozone-destroying chemicals like chlorine gas (two joined chlorine atoms) occur on the surface of droplets in polar stratospheric clouds, and these clouds form mostly during the dark, frigid polar winter. When sunlight returns to the Southern Hemisphere in spring, ultraviolet light splits the chlorine gas molecules into single chlorine atoms. Each single atom can catalyze the destruction of thousands of ozone molecules. As spring advances, wind patterns change. Air from lower latitudes mixes into the polar region, the chlorine gas disperses, and the ozone layer stabilizes until the next spring.

Even though the production of ozone-destroying CFC's has stopped, there is a lag in the recovery of the ozone, since atmospheric CFC's have a lifetime of 40-100 years, so full recovery is not expected till 2070, but that is far from certain, especially when things such as global warming may have to be factored in.

What impact could global warming have on the ozone hole? Well, it seems that I found two differing opinions on this. According to the NASA Earth Observatory story, warming over the South Pole could speed up the recovery. Now are they talking about warming in the stratosphere or troposphere? They are not specific. Assuming they are talking about the stratosphere means that the troposphere would be getting colder, which is opposite of global warming. I found a couple of other links which state the global warming will increase ozone depletion. Ozone depletion gets worse when the stratosphere (where the ozone layer is) gets colder. Global warming traps heat underneath in the troposphere, while at the same time less heat reaches the stratosphere, making it colder, and therefore more condusive to ozone destruction. This second argument makes more sense and is much clearer to the reader.