Researchers at Stanford and Oregon State Universities have determined that ocean fertilization may not be an effective method of reducing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, contrary to earlier beliefs. Adding iron and other nutrients to produce large algae blooms in the ocean, which would absorb carbon dioxide has been a well known possible solution to global warming and has been talked about on this blog several times. According to the ScienceDaily article, this process only reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide if the carbon absorbed into the algae sinks to deeper waters, which scientists call the "biological pump." The theory of the process is that the more algae in bloom the more carbon is transported from the atmosphere to the deep ocean, via the "biological pump."

Here's where it gets interesting, during the process of testing the theory the researchers determined that there are clear seasonal patterns in both algal abundance and carbon sinking rates. But one thing about this relationship caught the research team by surprise, and it was that less carbon was transported to deep water during summertime bloom than the rest of the year!

"This discovery is very surprising", said lead author Dr. Michael Lutz, now at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. "If, during natural plankton blooms, less carbon actually sinks to deep water than during the rest of the year, then it suggests that the Biological Pump leaks.

More material is recycled in shallow water and less sinks to depth, which makes sense if you consider how this ecosystem has evolved in a way to minimize loss", said Lutz. "Ocean fertilization schemes, which resemble an artificial summer, may not remove as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as has been suggested because they ignore the natural processes revealed by this research."

The study concludes that greatly enhanced carbon sequestration should not be expected no matter the location or duration of proposed large-scale ocean fertilization experiments.

This study is no doubt a win for environmentalists, who had major concerns about a large-scale project such as this. Maybe even some taxpayer relief as well!

This widely popular video, which has been out for a while, but I had not seen it, is titled on YouTube as the "Most terrifying video you'll ever see." The video has had nearly 3 million hits and no, it is not about Britney Spears, but it is about global warming. The reason it has 3 million hits is all in the title obviously, which he cleverly came up with, and not because he talks about global warming. But the man in the video makes a very easy to understand presentation about the risk and reward to the world in taking or not taking action to lessen the impact of global warming. The video has also been talked about in the Canadian press this weekend. If you have not seen the video already here is the link below.

"Most terrifying video you'll ever see"

What did you think of his presentation and conclusion? Which "lottery ticket" would you buy?

One of my co-workers here at AccuWeather.com sent me this link. It is titled, "A complete list of things caused by global warming" and wow is this some list! The site provides all these links to stories that have related certain things to global warming. Some of the links are broken, but you get the idea.

Some examples.......invasion of cats, lawyer's income increased, gingerbread houses collapse, suicide and food poisoning.

Feel free to offer some of your favorites in the comment section.

Research by a NOAA scientist and colleagues has determined that the Earth's tropical belt (area between the tropic of Cancer and the tropic of Capricorn) has widened over the past 25 years as the planet warmed. The team compared upper-air measurements and computer model simulations to come this conclusion. Some observational studies have already found a widening of the tropics by several degrees latitude since 1979, according to the NOAA article.

"We looked at how certain aspects of the structure and circulation of the atmosphere have been altered over the past few decades and how models predict they may change as the climate changes in the future,” said Dian Seidel, lead author and research meteorologist with NOAA’s Air Resources Laboratory in Silver Spring, Md. “We are seeing indications that a warming climate is associated with expansion of the tropical region toward the poles, and the rate of expansion that has occurred in recent decades is greater than projected by climate models to occur in the 21st century."

Keep in mind, there are still a lot of unanswered questions as to what specific global warming mechanisms are causing this expansion. Some of those possibilities are warming sea surface temperatures, stratospheric ozone depletion and even changes in the El Nino Southern Oscillation system.

The findings of this study were just published in Nature Geoscience.

Seasonal melting this year in the higher altitudes of the Greenland Ice Sheet rose 150% above the 19-year average, according to a news release from NASA. Melting also took place on 25-30 more days than the average.

The large image on the link shows the melt anomaly of Greenland for 2007. The anomaly is measured as the difference between the number of days on which melting occurred in 2007 compared to the average annual melting days over the last 19 years. The red colors indicate more melt days than normal, while the blue is obviously less than normal. The image was made using microwave-frequency data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.

Marco Tedesco, a scientist at the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology also calculated a melting index. The index is determined by multiplying the number of days that melting took place by the area where melting occurred. The melting insex in the lower altitude ice sheet areas of Greenland during 2007 was 30% higher than average. Taking into account the entire Greenland Ice Sheet, the melting index for 2007 was the 5th highest on record, following 2005, 2002,1998 and 2004.

In a debate before an Institute of Medicine Panel on Global Health, top climate change scientists argued Tuesday whether or not there is concrete evidence linking global warming to the spread of infectious disease.

In the Boston Globe article written by John Donnelly, Mr. Donald S. Burke, dean of Pittsburgh's Graduate School of Public Health, noted that a 2001 study found that weather fluctuation and seasonal variability may influence the spread of infectious disease. But he believes that such conclusions should be interpreted with caution. "There are no apocalyptic pronouncements," Burke said. "There's an awful lot we don't know." Burke said he is not convinced that climate change can be proven to cause the spread of many diseases, specifically naming dengue fever, influenza, and West Nile virus.

On the other hand, you have Paul R. Epstein, associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, who said clusters of disease outbreaks spread by water, mosquitoes, and rats could clearly be traced to global warming. Epstein said those who "just look at specific diseases can miss the broader picture. If you look at ecological systems, water systems, the extreme weather, the range of wildlife . . . or more profoundly everything that supports a health system, then you can see the linkages. Scope is really important when you look at this."

An example of a documented link of disease to a chnaging weather pattern was exhibited by an earlier outbreak of chikungunya fever along Kenya's coast. Weather patterns caused by La Nina led to drought in east Africa during 2004. Because there was a shortage of fresh water, people rarely emptied buckets around their homes, giving mosquitoes an ideal breeding ground of standing water.

"An outbreak like that is from a convergence of factors, and climate is one of them," said Jean-Paul Chretien, who is the Defense Department's coordinator of overseas laboratories.

Image courtesy of NASA. You can track sunspot activity on a daily basis right here.

After a period of very high solar activity (high numbers of sunspots) in the 20th century, our sun has suddenly gone exceptionally quiet, according to astronomer Dr. David Whitehouse.

We are currently at the end of one cycle of activity and astronomers keep waiting for the sunspots to return and mark the start of the next cycle 24, but so far there has been no sign of that returning anytime soon.

Excerpts taken from Dr. Whitehouse's article, which was posted on the online version of The Independent...........

Sunspots - dark magnetic blotches on the Sun's surface - come and go in a roughly 11-year cycle of activity first noticed in 1843. It's related to the motion of super-hot, electrically charged gas inside the Sun - a kind of internal conveyor belt where vast sub-surface rivers of gas take 40 years to circulate from the equator to the poles and back. Somehow, in a way not very well understood, this circulation produces the sunspot cycle in which every 11 years there is a sunspot maximum followed by a minimum. But recently the Sun's internal circulation has been failing. In May 2006 this conveyor belt had slowed to a crawl – a record low. Nasa scientist David Hathaway said: "It's off the bottom of the charts... this has important repercussions for future solar activity." What's more, it's not the only indicator that the Sun is up to something.

During the 17th century Maunder Minimum, when sunspots were rare, it was also the period of time when the earth's northern hemisphere was sent into what scientists call the "Little Ice Age."

Studies show that by the end of the 20th century the Sun's activity may have been at its highest for more than 8,000 years. Other solar parameters have been changing as well, such as the magnetic field the Sun sheds, which has almost doubled in the past century. But then things turned. In only the past decade or so the Sun has started a decline in activity, and the lateness of cycle 24 is an indicator. The first stirrings of cycle 24 were supposed to arrive a year ago, then NOAA predicted it for March 2007, now they say March of 2008. The first indications that the Sun is emerging from its current sunspot minimum will be the appearance of small spots at high latitude. They usually occur some 12-20 months before the start of a new cycle. These spots haven't appeared yet so cycle 24 will probably not begin to take place until 2009 at the earliest, according to Whitehouse. The longer we have to wait for cycle 24, the weaker it is likely to be. Such behaviour is usually followed by cooler temperatures on Earth.

The tardiness of cycle 24 indicates that we might be entering a period of low solar activity that may counteract man-made greenhouse temperature increases. Some members of the Russian Academy of Sciences say we may be at the start of a period like that seen between 1790 and 1820, a minor decline in solar activity called the Dalton Minimum. They estimate that the Sun's reduced activity may cause a global temperature drop of 1.5C by 2020. This is larger than most sensible predictions of man-made global warming over this period.

Again, you can read the whole story here. Also at the end, Dr. Whitehouse has a list of the past seasons of the sun going back 1000 years.

A Purdue University led study determined that the number of days favorable for severe thunderstorms could more than double in some parts of the United States by the end of the century because of global warming.

The research team used climate models to examine future weather conditions favorable to the formation of severe thunderstorms, according to the ScienceDaily article.

"Areas close to the main sources of humidity, primarily the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, show the most significant increases in potential for storms," said Robert Trapp, the Purdue associate professor of earth and atmospheric sciences who led the research team.

"We know from the past that extremes in weather and individual severe storms can be devastating. This study makes a strong statement that a few degrees of global warming could make these severe events much more common than they are today," said Noah Diffenbaugh from Purdue's Climate Change Research Center.

Individual storms were not examined in this study because they are too small for the current climate models to analyze, and also a trigger is needed to initiate a storm, according to team member Harold Brooks from the Severe Storms Laboratory.

Research suggested global warming would lead to an increase in humid air that fuels severe thunderstorms, however, it also suggested global warming would reduce strong winds that contribute to the storms. "The result was a general increase in days more favorable to storm creation. It appears that the increase in warm, humid air near the surface outweighs the reduction in strong winds higher in the atmosphere," said Diffenbaugh.

The results of the study also showed a strong seasonal and regional variation in the effects of climate change, which should not be a surprise.

There has been a lot going on recently in regards to to the global warming or if you prefer, climate change topic. We have the big U.N. Conference on Climate Change still going on in Bali, Indonesia. They just had the Lieberman-Warner Climate Change bill go to a committee vote last week, and by the way it passed 11-8, but it still has a long way to go and no further action (congressional vote) will not be taken until next year. The Seattle Times had an interesting article about climate language, and specifically the terms climate change and global warming. When it comes to talking about, well you know......., we get two versions, climate change or global warming from particular people or organizations. Here's a sampling........

Mainstream media.....global warming, they love that term!
Scientists......climate change, believe it or not!
IPCC (large group of scientists)......climate change. Hey, it's the CC in IPCC.
Democrats....global warming. I agree with the Seattle Times.
Republicans......climate change. Seems about right.
Environmentalists.........global warming. That's obvious.
Auto Industry........climate change.
Hollywood.........global warming.
NOAA..........global warming.
EPA..........climate change.
NASA.......both climate change and global warming.
Department of Energy......climate change
Accuweather.com......global warming....It's the Global Warming Center.
President Bush.....seems to go both ways now (does this count as flip-flopping?)
Al Gore........global warming.......preferred phrase.

A new one gaining steam is global climate change.

What term do you prefer? I'll take a vote. Also, feel free to add to the list.

After a 16-month investigation, a new report from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee came to the "inescapable" conclusion that "the Bush Administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science, mislead policy makers and the public about the dangers of global warming." The committee is chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Republicans on the committee called the report a "political attack" and their findings question the democrat's conclusion and investigative methods. The White House called the allegations untrue, according to the ABC News article.

According to the report, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) controlled which government scientists could respond to media inquiries, thereby suppressing dissemination of scientific views that could conflict with administration policies. Scientists who denied a link between stronger hurricanes and global warming were given approval by CEQ over scientists who suggested a link. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, White House approval for interviews with journalists became more prevalent. The committee obtained 27,000 documents from the CEQ during the investigation.

The report also stated that the White House minimized the signs of climate change by editing government climate change reports and editing scientific testimony to Congress.

"Claims that the administration interfered with scientists and with science are false." said CEQ chairman James Connaughton.

"A thorough investigation would have sought further evidence to complete the record before drawing conclusions based on the uncorroborated statements of one individual," the Republican report said.

Here is the link to the entire report (pdf file).

Update (12/12/07)........

In a follow up to this story, ABC News has a report in which Max Mayfield, the former director of the National Hurricane Center denies the committee's report that he was politically pressured to downplay the link between global warming and hurricanes during congressional testimony. Here is the link to the story.

As a kid growing up along the Rhode Island coast I was fortunate enough to be able to go to the beach and swim on a regular basis during the summer months. I hated sun bathing, so my place was in the water. Other than a thunderstorm and those dreaded crabs, the one thing that could ruin a nice swim in the bay was the seaweed. That stuff would just magically appear from out of the blue and just surround you, and by that time I was done for the day. I also remember throwing the stuff at my older sister and she would start screaming, which was funny at the time. Anyway, speaking of seaweed, a group of scientists at the Climate Conference in Bali believe that seaweed could be a potent weapon against global warming by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere at rates similar to the largest rain forests, according to an AP article. The seaweed's rapid rate of photosynthesis is the main factor in its effectiveness in carbon absorption.

While most of the recent focus to carbon sinks have been on the forests, seaweed scientists (I still can not get over that title! Imagine your dad asking "What do you want to be when you grow up?" "I want to be a seaweed scientist daddy!") believe the world should look to the sea, where nearly 8 million tons of seaweed and algae are cultivated every year, especially in Asia. The scientists believe that more efficient cultivation methods could make this work. Seaweed can also produce clean-burning bio-fuels.

On the other hand, skeptics say seaweed is cultivated and harvested in cycles of only months compared to trees, which are more effective at carbon storage since they can last for years. Floating seaweed farms could also complicate fishing and shipping activities.

Update........

Oh, I almost forgot, If you were wondering what happened to part 2 of the Fred Singer video interview last week it will be posted either tomorrow or Friday. Katie was unable to finish editing the Singer video last week since she was in New York City doing a number of interviews for Headline Earth. One of those interviews was with the famous Dr. James Hansen, and you will be able to see part one of her three-part, one-on-one interview with Dr. Hansen starting next week.

Natural climate variations, which tend to involve localized changes in sea surface temperature, may have a larger effect on hurricane activity than the more uniform patterns of global warming, a new study suggests.

Warmer oceans due to global warming are generally assumed to provide a more favorable environment for hurricane development and intensification, but according to the study from the journal Nature, other factors such as atmospheric temperature and moisture come into play, which in my opinion is fairly obvious to a meteorologist. Anyway, Dr. Gabriel Vecchi from NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) and Brian J. Soden from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science went further and explored the relationship between changes in sea surface temperature and tropical cyclone "potential intensity", which is a measure that provides an upper limit on cyclone (hurricane) intensity.

Excerpts taken from the Science Daily article.........

They found that warmer oceans do not alone produce a more favorable environment for storms because the effect of remote warming can counter, and sometimes overwhelm, the effect of local surface warming. "Warming near the storm acts to increase the potential intensity of hurricanes, whereas warming away from the storms acts to decrease their potential intensity," Vecchi said.

Their study found that long-term changes in potential intensity are more closely related to the regional pattern of warming than to local ocean temperature change. Regions that warm more than the tropical average are characterized by increased potential intensity, and vice versa. "A surprising result is that the current potential intensity for Atlantic hurricanes is about average, despite the record high temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean over the past decade." Soden said. "This is due to the compensating warmth in other ocean basins." "If the Atlantic warms more slowly than the rest of the tropical oceans, we would expect a decrease in the upper limit on hurricane intensity," Vecchi added.