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.