Before I get to the post, I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I took over this blog back in January of 2007 and have truly enjoyed the experience. I have personally learned a great deal about climate change by researching many stories and studies, watching Katie's videos and the of course by reading your comments. I look forward to another year! Thank you!

Now on to some bad news........

I do not watch 60 minutes that much anymore, there is just too much other good stuff that is on Sunday evening. My parents used to watch it all the time, and with one TV that is what I watched as well. Anyway, the show just happened to still be on when I came into the living room and a story about western wildfires was just starting, so I stayed and watched.
The story focused on the recent increase in mega-fires across the forests of the western United States. Typical fires during the burn season are a common part of nature and are necessary in many cases. Forests and wildlife usually recover fairly quickly from these fires as most of the undergrowth is burned away while the large, older trees are able to survive. Unfortunately, fire ecologists have seen a marked increase in mega-fires across the West recently and are blaming global warming, since the warming has allowed logs, branches and tree needles to dry out faster and for a longer period of time. These mega-fires are huge and can "kill" a forest. The larger flames and higher heat from these fires can kill the large, old-growth trees and lead to sterile soil conditions, which prevent new growth after the fire.

"The fire season in the last 15 years or so has increased more than two months over the whole western U.S., said Tom Swetnam, fire ecologist at the University of Arizona. "So actually 78 days on average longer fire season in the last 15 years compared to the previous 15-20 years."

The strongest impact on me from the 60 Minutes story was the interview with Tom Boatner, the federal governments chief of fire operations, who has worked the fire lines for 30 years and has seen the change first hand. "We're seeing century-old forests that had never sustained these kinds of fires before, being razed to the ground," said Boatner.

The increase in mega-fires might not be all due to the warming. Forest fire management policy over the past 100 years has been to stop even small to moderate-size fires as fast as possible, which has resulted in a very large amount of forest undergrowth. The availability of this dry, undergrowth has added a lot more potential fuel than normal to these fires, increasing the chances of mega-fires.

Swetnam says that there is a reasonable chance that more than half of the region's forests could be claimed by fire within some decades to a century as we continue to get large-scale fires.

I know many of our readers are already aware that 2007 was on pace to become the 5th warmest on record globally, while in the contiguous U.S., 2007 was going to make the top-ten list, according to NOAA. This preliminary data will be updated later this month as the rest of the December data is incorporated into the set. The official results for 2007 will not be finalized until spring.

Here is a more detailed look at the early NOAA estimates as listed by the ScienceDaily article.......

1. Globally

--The combined land/ocean surface annual temperature is expected to be near 58 F, which would make 2007 the 5th warmest since records began in 1880.

--Assuming the above is correct, this will make 7 of the 8 warmest years on record to have occurred since 2001 and the ten warmest will have all occurred since 1997.

--The rate of warming since 1976 has been about 3 times faster than the century-scale trend.

--The largest warm anomalies were from eastern Europe to central Asia.

--The greatest warming during 2007 was in the northern latitudes of the northern hemisphere.

--2007 continued the trend of end-of-summer Arctic sea ice extent reductions of about 10% per decade since 1979. Actually, 2007 set a new record.

2. Contiguous U.S.

--The annual average temperature will be near 54.3 F or 1.5 degrees above the 20th century average, making 2007 the 8th warmest on record.

--U.S. residential energy demand was 3% less in the winter which is good news, but it was 8% higher than average in the summer.

I thought some of our readers may get a kick out of these local reports from Florida this morning, especially since several of our regular commentators are getting in the constant habit of posting localized daily weather observations, which really mean very little, if anything, when you are looking at overall global climate trends, and I know most of you are fully aware of that already.

The reports are courtesy of the National Weather Service.......

PRELIMINARY LOCAL STORM REPORT...SUMMARY
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MELBOURNE FL
1009 AM EST THU JAN 03 2008

..TIME...........EVENT...........CITY LOCATION...........LAT.LON...
..DATE............MAG............COUNTY LOCATION..ST........SOURCE......REMARKS..

0730 AM.......SNOW...........DAYTONA BEACH.............29.21N 81.03W
01/03/2008 E0.0 INCH.......VOLUSIA............FL......BROADCAST MEDIA

SNOW FLURRIES REPORTED FROM PORT ORANGE NORTH TO DAYTONA
BEACH AND ORMOND BEACH. SEVERAL REPORTS RECEIVED OF
FLURRIES STARTING APPROXIMATELY 730 AM IN ORMOND BEACH
AND STILL BEING OCCURRING AS OF 0905 AM IN PORT ORANGE.
REPORTS RECEIVED FROM OBSERVER...SPOTTERS AND VIA NEWS
CHANNEL 13.

0900 AM.......SNOW............2 NNW SCOTTSMOOR........28.79N 80.89W
01/03/2008....E0.0 INCH..........VOLUSIA ...........FL.....CO-OP OBSERVER

SNOW FLURRIES REPORTED AT APPROXIMATELY 9 AM IN NORTHERN
BREVARD COUNTY NEAR THE TOWN OF SCOTTSMOOR.

0930 AM......SNOW............SHARPES.................28.43N 80.77W
01/03/2008 E0.0 INCH.........BREVARD.............FL.....PUBLIC

SNOW FLURRIES REPORTED NORTH OF COCOA IN SHARPES AT
APPROXIMATELY 930 AM.

Low temps this morning around central Florida...

Daytona Beach 32
Leesburg 30
Orlando 31
Vero Beach 33
Apopka 27
Avalon 29
Ft. Pierce 33
Fort Myers 32

I suspect the citrus crop came out OK, but probably not for some vegetables.

The last time I was down in Florida (DisneyWorld), which was Nov of 2006, there were reports of flurries just north of Orlando. That was the same day when we went to Sea World and practically froze. I thought Sea World was over hyped.

By the way, I am going skiing with my 11 year old daughter after work later this afternoon. I figure the conditions will be about as good as they can get here in central PA before the big warm up begins this weekend and into next week.

Forecasters from the UK's Met Office and experts from the University of East Anglia predict that 2008 will be another top-ten warmest year globally since records began in 1850, but it will be cooler than recent years.

These cyclical influences can mask underlying warming trends with Prof. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, saying: "The fact that 2008 is forecast to be cooler than any of the last seven years (and that 2007 did not break the record warmth set on 1998) does not mean that global warming has gone away. What matters is the underlying rate of warming - the period 2001-2007 with an average of 0.44 °C above the 1961-90 average was 0.21 °C warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000."

Here are some of the details from their 2008 forecast..............

-- Global average temperatures for 2008 would be 0.37 celsius (0.66 F) above the 30-year average of 14 celsius (57.2 F) from 1961-1990.

--2008 will be the coolest year globally since 2000.

--The forecast took into account the strengthening La Nina, which, according to the forecasters would limit the warming trend. Rising atmospheric greenhouse gases, solar variations and changes in ocean currents were also considered when making the forecast.

By the way, the Met Office forecast for 2007 from last January predicted that 2007 would be the warmest year on record. It was not. Here is the link to their forecast for 2007.

The appearance of sunspot # 10,981 late Thursday in the sun's northern hemisphere is a harbinger of new Solar Cycle 24, according to NOAA scientists.

The small bright patch in the upper half, just left of center is the spot.

According to solar physicist Douglas Biesecker of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center, the sunspot is an early omen of solar storms that will gradually increase over the next few years.

Last April, experts predicted Solar Cycle 24 would start in March 2008 (+/- 6 months), and they were evenly split between those predicting a strong or weak cycle. All agreed that the sooner the new cycle takes over the waning cycle (becomes dominant), the more likely it would be a strong season with many sunspots and major storms. Some studies have shown a correlation between oscillations in solar activity with oscillations in global mean temperature on earth. The greater the solar activity and luminosity, the warmer our climate is.

The new sunspot, according to the NOAA press release, is the latest visible spot to appear since NOAA began numbering them on January 5, 1972. Its high-latitude location at 27 degrees North, and its negative polarity leading to the right in the Northern Hemisphere are clear-cut signs of a new solar cycle, according to NOAA experts. The first active regions and sunspots of a new solar cycle can emerge at high latitudes while those from the previous cycle continue to form closer to the equator.

Solar Cycle 24 is not dominant yet, as many more spots with Cycle 24 traits must appear.

Here is an image of the sun from today (below), showing the tiny sunspot in the northern hemisphere of the sun (labeled as #981). Image courtesy of NASA.

Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin, a Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences says that Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells, which according to him, is a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases. According to Sorokhtin's article from the Russian News and Information Agency, data obtained from Habibullah Abdusamatov, who is the head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, shows that a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012, but real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or longer.

Sorokhtin also notes.....

Carbon dioxide is not to blame for global climate change. Solar activity is many times more powerful than the energy produced by the whole of humankind. Man’s influence on nature is a drop in the ocean.

Earth is unlikely to ever face a temperature disaster.

The principal is Earth’s reflective power, which regulates its temperature. A warm period, as the present, increases oceanic evaporation to produce a great amount of clouds, which filter solar radiation and so bring heat down. Things take the contrary turn in a cold period.

You can read the full article here.

I tried to find out more specific information about Dr. Sorokhtin and Abdusamatov, but all I found was similar links to this particular story, and let me say, there were a large number of links to this story on the web.

Researchers from the Oregon State University (OSU) Hatfield Marine Science Center have journeyed to the Antarctic region over the past 3 years to deploy hydrophones into the deep waters surrounding the western Antarctic Peninsula.The hydrophones are highly sensitive microphones encased in titanium and lowered on three-quarters of a mile of cable to listen to the rumble of undersea earthquakes.

Quotes taken from the Oregonian article......

"When an earthquake occurs, it makes a distinct sound, and we can locate that," says Robert Dziak, 44, OSU associate professor of marine geophysics and expedition leader. "Earthquakes and magma spewing on the seafloor go hand in hand, and what we are seeing is, there are new heat sources right off the coast of Deception Island that no one was aware of before.

"It's the only place on the planet where active seafloor and subaerial (above sea level) volcanoes are near large icebergs and ice sheets."

Dziak is hoping to learn more about how the sea floor volcanoes and earthquakes contribute to the breakup of ice in the region. The most significant find from the research so far has been the discovery of thermal vents on the seafloor.

An underwater thermal vent.

"Since three-quarters of the Earth is covered by ocean, the vast majority of volcanic activity on Earth is occurring without our knowledge undersea." So it's unknown how much heat and chemicals the underwater volcanoes spew into the ocean and atmosphere, affecting global ocean temperatures and climate, said Dziak.

According to Haru Matsumoto, research associate at OSU, scientists know that the air temperature around the Western Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by 4 degrees Fahrenheit during the past 40 years and that noise levels in the waters nearby have increased about 10 decibels in the past 30 years.

The article states that Matsumoto's sound research has shown that the waters off Antarctica are quieter in the winter, when ice seals the water from external sounds, and noisier in the summer. He says the louder noise levels of the past four decades may be the result of global warming, and that ultimately could impact marine life.

A field of soybeans

Scientists from the University of California at Irvine believe that they have come up with an idea to slow global warming. The research team says that growing shinier crops could reduce maximum daytime temperatures by as much as 1.9 celsius (3.4 F) in agricultural regions.

Growing more reflective plants will increase the amount of sunlight reflected back from land. which could offset the damaging effects of the loss of Arctic sea ice, according to the article from the Guardian Unlimited.

The California team, led by Chris Doughty in the department of earth system science, told the American Geophysical Union Conference: "Slowing or reversal of regional warming trends may be achieved by manipulation of land surface albedo. This approach is most feasible in agricultural and forestry areas, where the land surface is already under significant human influence."

One example of this idea is the creation of the extra-hairy variety of soy bean to fight pests. This particular variety reflects about 5% more sunlight than normal.

More details about this research will be published in an academic journal later this year.

The story also notes that other scientists have proposed similar ideas (higher reflectivity) to cool the planet, such as growing broadleaf varieties of trees instead of conifers and painting roads, roofs and car parks white. I don't know about that idea of replacing conifers, supposedly conifers absorb a high amount of CO2, and those white roads would get awfully dirty looking pretty quickly! I guess that would keep the road sweeping crews very busy throughout the year.

Lester Brown, one of the U.S.'s most respected environmentalists and the president of the Earth Policy Institute, a Washington-based environmental think tank believes that civilization is in trouble due to our overpopulated and overconsuming world. He blames an economic system that rewards production without regard for environmental impact.

In the Time.com article, Brown lays out an alternate path that could save us from the worst consequences of climate change, and he calls it Plan B. Here is a sampling of Brown's Plan B..........

1. Winding down our dependence on coal and eventually phase it out.
2. Reduce global carbon dioxide emissions 80% by 2020.
3. Improve energy efficiency.
4. Develop renewable sources of power.
5. Expand the Earth's forest cover.
6. Build new wind turbines with the same urgency that the U.S. produced
tanks and bombers during World War II and we could generate 3 million
megawatts of wind power by 2020, enough to meet 40% of the world's
energy needs.
7. Utilize more geothermal energy, which according to Brown is 50,000 times
more powerful than all of our oil or natural gas.
8. Phase in a worldwide carbon tax at $20 per ton each year between
2008-2020, topping out at $240 per ton.

How much would all of this cost? Brown estimates that the coast of his Plan B
would cost the world an additional $190 billion per year. He compares this to
the global military budget, which is more than $1.2 trillion.

Brown feels that all we have to do is find the political and popular will to
implement the plan, but that will be a tough sell, as the real battle over climate change is now political, not technological, and it's one that too many environmentalists tend to discount, according to the article.

There is also a podcast about Brown and his new book on the Time.com link.

This in the final part of Katie's one-on-one interview with lead NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen. Dr. Hansen talks about the weather and climate. There is also an interesting link between Dr. Hansen and Seinfeld.

Katie also discusses the latest news on the the protection of the polar bear and the bicycle explosion in Australia.

John Tierney, a columnist for the Science Times section of the New York Times posted an article which compares recent actual global temperature trends, using different methods, with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) prediction for the 2000-2007 period. Seven years is not very much when you are looking at climate, but it is interesting when when you compare everything on a graph, which is displayed in Tierney's column.

In his column, Tierney raised a question originally posed by Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr. (professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado)......Are there any indicators in the next 1,5, 10 years that would be inconsistent with the consensus view on climate change?

A climate scientist suggested comparing what has happened since 2000 with the predictions made by the IPCC. There are many different versions of what has happened with the global temperatures over the past 7 years, as many of our readers are well aware of. There are different groups doing the measuring and some of the measurements are based on satellite data, while others are based on surface data.

Thanks to Pielke, you can compare the IPCC forecast with the actual temperature records of the four different measurements. You can see that the GISS temperature (courtesy of NASA and Dr. James Hansen) is the only one that is still recently within the IPCC range of uncertainty forecast, while the other three have fallen below the IPCC range . Over the past two years, the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) data has trended the farthest away (cooler) from the IPCC forecast.

Pielke Jr. goes further with a recent post on his Prometheus site, and he shows you the same graph going back to 1990.

Tierney makes a good point here........If scientists can't even agree on what has happened in the past, imagine how much more difficult it is to figure out the future.

A study just released Sunday suggests that the Antarctic Ice Sheet is shrinking at a rate that increased dramatically from 1996 to 2006.

The research project, led by Dr. Eric Rignot of the Radar Science and Engineering section at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab found that the ice mass loss increased by 75% over the 10 year period. There was a net loss of 196 billion tonnes of ice in 2006 compared to 112 billion tonnes in 1996. The ice loss in 2006 raised sea levels about a 1/2 millimeter. The biggest losses were in West Antarctica and along the Antarctic Peninsula, while East Antarctica was fairly stable and has seen a slight increase in mass. According to the GlobeandMail.com article, the figures were calculated by deducting the amount of ice losses on the continent from the amount of snow computer models indicate it receives.The figures were based on satellite data on ice thickness and the speeds at which glaciers are flowing into the ocean.

Dr. Rignot said the shrinkage can be attributed to upwelling of warm waters along the Antarctic coast, which is causing some glaciers to flow more rapidly into the ocean. He suspects the trend is due to global warming and not a normal natural fluctuation.

Some experts have even speculated that global warming might lead to increases in ice accumulation in Antarctic's interior due to more snowfall. However, many experts say that this effect is unlikely to offset Antarctica's contribution to sea level rise because of the rapid melting of coastal glaciers, as the article explains.

"The concept that global warming will increase precipitation in Antarctica and mitigate sea level rise is a lullaby," Dr. Rignot said. The main driver for mass balance is the rate of glacier flow to the sea, not the precipitation rate, since other recent studies showed that there has not been a significant change in the actual precipitation rate.

The results of the study appear in the current issue of Nature Geoscience.

Paul Yeager, who is our western weather expert here at Accuweather.com has an interesting post which is titled "Global Warming Debate". Paul takes a look at the people who enter the global warming debate, such as the ones who contribute to the comment section of this blog. Paul believes there are four groups within this debate, and they are listed below.....

1. The Apathetic group

2. The Deniers

3. AGW Proponents (Anthropogenic or Man-made Global warming)

4. The Skeptic

I encourage you to read Paul's blog so you can see how he defines each group. If you wish, let us know which group you think you fall into. Maybe I will take a vote if we get enough responses. If you respond please do so in the global warming blog comment section. You can also email Paul with any comments in regards to his post right here at yeager@accuweather.com

I took a poll of the responses from the previous blog just for fun. This is clearly not a scientific poll and far from it! Keep in mind the polls are still open. Here's a running count..........

Wednesday morning update, looks like AGW has nudged ahead of the deniers. Polls will close
this evening.

Skeptics.................69 votes........77%
AGW Proponents.....11 votes.........12%
Deniers....................10 votes.........11%
Apathetics................0 votes......... 0%

Second place still undecided...

It's official, the combined global land/ocean surface temperature for 2007 was the fifth warmest on record, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. Also, 2007 was the tenth warmest on record for the contiguous U.S.. As we mentioned in an earlier post, NOAA had estimated in December that 2007 was on pace to be the eighth warmest on record for the U.S., but colder temperatures in December put an end to that.

Global Highlights for 2007.....

--Global land/ocean surface temperature was 5th warmest on record.
--Global land surface temperature was the warmest on record.
--Global ocean surface temperature was 9th warmest on record.
--7 of the 8 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001.
--The rate of warming in global temperatures over the past 3 decades has
been three times greater than the century scale trend.

Contiguous U.S. Highlights for 2007....

--The average temperature for 2007 was 54.2 F, which is 1.4 F warmer than
the 20th century mean of 52.8 F.
--Temperatures over the past three decades have risen an average of 0.6 F per decade.

Here is the 2007 global annual report from NOAA

Here is the report for December 2007

Older, multi-year sea ice in the Arctic is giving way to younger, thinner ice which is much more susceptible to record summer sea-ice lows like the one that occurred in 2007, according to a new study from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The study concluded the following......

--There was a nearly complete loss of the oldest, thickest sea ice.

--58% of perennial ice is only 2-3 years old and is thin. In the mid-1980's, that figure was 35%.

--Ice that was older than 7 years made up 21% of the multi-year Arctic Ice cover in 1988, that figure fell to only 5% in 2007.

Excerpts taken from SpaceRef.com

"This thinner, younger ice makes the Arctic much more susceptible to rapid melt," James Maslanik said. "Our concern is that if the Arctic continues to get kicked hard enough toward one physical state, it becomes increasingly difficult to reestablish the sea ice conditions of 20 or 30 years ago." Professor Maslanik is the lead author of the study.

The replacement of older, thicker Arctic ice by younger, thinner ice, combined with the effects of warming, unusual atmospheric circulation patterns and increased melting from solar radiation absorbed by open waters in 2007 all have contributed to the phenomenon, said Sheldon Drobot. "These conditions are setting the Arctic up for additional, significant melting because of the positive feedback loop that plays back on itself."

The research team used passive microwave, visible infrared radar and laser altimeter satellite data from NOAA, NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense along with buoy data to track and measure the sea ice going back to 1982.

The study appears in the Jan 10th issue of the Geophysical Research Letters. Here is the link to the abstract.

In this week's video Katie Fehlinger visits the Hearst Tower in New York City. The Hearst Tower is one of the greenest buildings in Manhattan. Check out her video below.....

Katie also talks about the major impact of global warming on the Kootenay region of British Columbia.

Earth observing satellite under construction

A high-level meeting hosted by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) last week garnered unanimous support for the enhanced use of satellites to monitor climate change and weather.

Space agencies from Japan, China, Brazil, India along with NASA and the European Space Agency agreed to use their next generation of satellites to help monitor climate change by constantly recording parameters such as sea level and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere over the next 20 years, according to the Reuters article

Climate change monitoring requires very long-term continuous measurement, according to Jerome Lafeuille, who heads the space-based observing system division of WMO's space program. Satellites are essential to this, because they give a global picture of changes in the oceans, on land and in the atmosphere.

I know a number of the commentators on this blog have had concerns about the accuracy and human interpretation of the satellite data in the past, especially when it comes to global temperatures. Hopefully, this step will put some of those concerns to rest.

Image courtesy of NASA.

Last week, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) announced that 2007 tied 1998 for the Earth's second warmest year in a century. If you remember, I recently blogged about NOAA's annual temperature report, which stated that 2007 was the 5th warmest on record globally.

The research team, led by Dr. James Hansen, who was recently interviewed by AccuWeather.com, used temperature data from weather stations on land, satellite measurements of sea ice temperature since 1982 and for earlier years ship data.

GISS Global temperature anomaly graph compared to the 1951-1980 mean temperature.

Image courtesy of NASA

According to the GISS report, the greatest warming in 2007 occurred in the Arctic, and neighboring high latitude regions as the loss of snow and ice leads to more open water, which absorbs more sunlight and warmth (positive feedback).

James Hansen on 2008........

"It is unlikely that 2008 will be a year with truly exceptional global mean temperature," said Hansen. "Barring a large volcanic eruption, a record global temperature clearly exceeding that of 2005 can be expected within the next few years, at the time of the next El Nino, because of the background warming trend attributable to continuing increases of greenhouse gases."

Dr. Hansen notes on his website that the Southern Oscillation and the solar cycle have significant effects on year-to-year global temperature change. Since both of these natural effects were in their cool phases in 2007, the unusual warmth of 2007 is all the more notable.

The report also notes that the data processing error found in the GISS temperature analysis in early 2007 does not affect the present analysis.

2007 global and U.S. temperature anomalies with and without the data processing flaw.

Here is the link to a more detailed breakdown of the 2007 GISS temperature analysis.

Here is the link to the GISS history and analysis method.

Paul Yeager and the Global Warming comment section received a tremendous amount of feedback recently in response to Paul's Global Warming Debate column from last week.

In response to some of that feedback, Paul offers some observations and clarification about his initial intentions for that original post right here.

Researchers from the Australian National University, Newcastle University and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization have found a way to map past climate patterns by harnessing limestone cave stalagmites as ancient rain gauges, according to an article from The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia.

The research teams suspect that rainwater dripping into caves to grow stalagmites during dry years would seep in slowly enough to have time to pick up trace metals and natural isotopes from the soil. During wet years, the water would move through too fast to leach out the elements. If their theory is correct, the varying levels of isotopic and trace metal concentrations in stalagmites should indicate droughts and deluges in Australia going as far back as 500,000 years ago!

In order for this work, the scientists needed to find a way to accurately age the cave formations. The solution came by finding minute traces of radioactive fallout from the bomb tests of the 1950's and 1960's within the stalagmites.

Dr Ed Hodge, a carbon-dating specialist, said the scientists' research showed stalagmites could be used to reveal past weather patterns. "One stalagmite in Western Australia, known to be 81 years old, showed a 20 per cent decrease in annual precipitation since 1965," closely matching official weather records.

The scientists are now confident they can date stalagmites up to 500,000 years old by dating not man-made fallout but their ratios of natural uranium and thorium. This information can then also be used to help scientists understand climate changes over the same period of time.

I would assume that similar information could be gathered throughout the many limestone caves across the world, not just Australia.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections from 2007 predict a global sea-level rise somewhere between 28 and 43 centimeters (11 to 17 inches) by the end of the century. In this blog I am not going to get into how those predictions were made, that's another post, but rather the tools that are currently used to measure fluctuations in ocean levels. The BBC News had a nice article from Tuesday which touched on the subject.

One project that has been in operation since 1994 is the South Pacific Sea Level and Climate Monitoring Project (SPSLCMP). The project involves the use of 12 sea-level fine resolution acoustic measuring equipment (seaframe) monitoring stations scattered among small south Pacific island nations.

The stations are fitted with continuous global positioning system (CGPS) technology, which can measure whether the elevation of the equipment is sinking or rising up out of the water.

Another tool which can give a real-time global view of the world's oceans is the radar altimeter on a satellite. The satellite radar altimeter can detect ocean levels to the millimeter.

It gets even better, Jason-2, set to launch in June 2008 is a low-orbit satellite fitted with the latest generation altimeter, called Poseidon-3. This altimeter will be able to map 95% of the ice-free oceans' topography every 10 days, monitor ocean circulation, climate change and of course, the slightest change in sea levels.

This is a link to the EUMETSAT Jason-2 site.

In this week's video segment, Katie Fehlinger goes back into the Hearst Tower in New York City and shows us how their employees can enjoy a daily eco-experience while at work!

How would you rate the environment at your workplace? Keep in mind, I am not talking about fellow employees and your boss.

Diatoms are a key ocean organism which takes carbon dioxide out of the earth's atmosphere. They are a major group of Eukaryotic Algae, which is a common type of phytoplankton. Scientists are currently trying to figure out how much of the diatom's ability to take out the atmospheric CO2 will be affected by global climate change.

Diatoms, most of which are far too tiny to see without magnification, are incredibly important in the global carbon cycle, says Thomas Mock, a University of Washington postdoctoral researcher in oceanography and lead author of the paper. During photosynthesis, diatoms turn carbon dioxide into organic carbon and, in the process, generate oxygen. They are responsible for 40 percent of the organic carbon produced in the world's oceans each year, according to the ScienceDaily article

Diatoms are encased with a cell wall (shell) made of silica, called a frustle. When they die in the oceans, the heavier weight of the shell causes them to sink, taking the carbon out of the surface waters and to the ocean floor.

During their research, scientists discovered that under low-iron conditions, the diatoms grew more slowly and individual diatoms tended to clump together, making them even heavier and more likely to sink. Many studies, some of which we have previously discussed here, have suggested iron fertilization of the oceans to offset global warming, since diatoms become more numerous and thus absorb more CO2, but based on the results of this current research, more iron could mean the shells will be less likely to sink, and would remain in the upper ocean where the carbon they contain might be released back into the atmosphere when they die.

"Iron increases primary production by diatoms but our study adds another concern about the efficiency of iron fertilization," Mock says.

Scientists are also looking into manipulating the diatome genes responsible for the silica production in the shells in order to produce even smaller lines of computer chips.

Jet contrails over the Southeastern U.S.

A Canadian physicist says that he has found no evidence to support a U.S. finding that jet condensation trails act like clouds, cooling the earth during the day and keeping it warmer at night. Jet condensation trails have been widely quoted as a prime example of short-term human impact on climate, according to the Toronto Star article.

A 2002 study by U.S. researchers had concluded that the temperature spread between day and night over the lower 48 states increased by 1.5C over long-term averages between Sept. 11 and 14 in 2001, when commercial air flights were mostly grounded over North America. Canadian flights were completely grounded for 48 hours following the attacks.

Professor William Van Wijngaarden looked at Canadian temperature records for the contrail-free days immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001 and was unable to find any significant changes in the diurnal temperature range (span between daytime highs and nighttime lows) which ended up falling well within the long-term average from 1977 to 2005.

The York University researcher said he decided to double-check the U.S. findings because the claimed temperature rise was so large, almost equal to the global average temperature increase from greenhouse warming, according to the Star.

But when he examined the spread between day and night temperatures from 112 weather stations across Canada for Sept. 8 to 17 in 2001, there wasn't a spike during the no-fly period.

The lead researcher on the original U.S. study told the Star that the negative results from Canada don't necessarily undermine his group's findings. "It's possible that Canada simply doesn't have a high enough density of jet traffic for contrails to make any difference," said David Travis, a geography professor at the University of Wisconsin in Whitewater.

I figure this is as good a time as any for my semi-annual checkup on the world's sea-surface temperature anomalies. What I usually like to do is show you the latest image from NOAA and then compare that to the previous years, focusing around the same day of the year, which in this case is January 28th.

The sea-surface temperature anomaly data is retrieved by infrared radiometers on earth orbiting satellites. According to NOAA, the resolution of the image is down to 50 kilometers. Also, areas with at least 15% coverage of sea-ice are shown in white. Darker blue and purple areas indicate below-normal sea surface temperatures, while the darker yellow/orange areas are above-normal.

January 28th, 2008 (You can clearly see the pronounced blue region extending along the equatorial Pacific which is indicative of the moderate La Nina going on.)

January 30th, 2007

January 27th, 2006

January 29th, 2005

January 27th, 2004

January 28th, 2003

January 29th, 2002

January 30th, 2001

January 29th, 2000

January 27th, 1998 (Note: the bright orange in the eastern equatorial Pacific which is the strong El Nino)

Graphic courtesy of CICERO

Road traffic is the number one contributor of atmospheric greenhouse gases in the transportation sector and has led to two-thirds of the warming caused by all transportation emissions, while aviation placed second, according to a report from the Environmental News Network.

Researchers from CICERO (Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo) calculated each sub-sectors contribution to global warming by looking at the radiative forcing (RF) caused by transportation emissions. RF is the warming effect in the unit watt per square meter (w/m2). 15% of RF caused by man-made emissions come from the transportation sector, while transportation can be blamed for a 30% contribution of tropospheric ozone (O3).

According to the report, shipping (which placed fourth) has a short-term cooling effect on the climate since it emits large portions of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, which have cooling effects, but in the long run shipping will have a slight warming effect since sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide do not live as long in the atmosphere compared to carbon dioxide.

By the way, rail transportation placed third with a very small warming effect.

Surprise! A new NOAA study based on observations, instead of computer models, has found that warming global sea-surface temperatures is associated with a sustained, long-term increase in vertical wind shear in the main development region for Atlantic hurricanes, which may be reducing the number of hurricanes that landfall in the U.S.. In general, vertical wind shear hinders the development of tropical cyclones by removing thunderstorms from the center of circulation and disrupting the overall circulation of the storm in the mid and upper levels of the atmosphere.

"Using data extending back to the middle nineteenth century, we found a gentle decrease in the trend of U.S. landfalling hurricanes when the global ocean is warmed up. This trend coincides with an increase in vertical wind shear over the tropical North Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, which could result in fewer U.S. landfalling hurricanes," said Chunzai Wang, a physical oceanographer with NOAA. Observations from 1854-2006 show a warming of sea-surface temperature occurring almost everywhere over the global ocean, according to the study.

Where the global warming occurs is important for determining the vertical wind shear in the Atlantic huricane main development region between 10 and 20 degrees north latitude from west Africa to Central America. Warmer waters in the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans increased vertical wind shear in the Atlantic hurricane main development region, while warming in the North Atlantic decreased vertical wind shear. Overall, the warming of the tropical Pacific and Indian Oceans had a much greater impact than the North Atlantic.

What do you make of this study? You can't blame the computer models on this one.

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

Dr. Wang responds to critics who said his study was based on poor data.

Geologists from the University of Leicester in the UK propose that humans have altered the earth to a point that the Holocene epoch has ended and we have now entered a new epoch in earth's history called the Anthropocene epoch.

According to the ScienceDaily report, human impact has..........

--Transformed sediment erosion and deposition patterns worldwide.
--Caused major disturbances to the carbon cycle and climate change.
--Led to wholesale changes to the planet's animals and plants.
--Created ocean acidification

The scientific team analysed a 2002 proposal by Nobel Prize winning chemist Paul Crutzen in which he suggested that the earth had already started the Anthropocene era.

The researchers state: "Sufficient evidence has emerged of stratigraphically significant change (both elapsed and imminent) for recognition of the Anthropocene--currently a vivid yet informal metaphor of global environmental change--as a new geological epoch to be considered for formalization by international discussion."

Here is the link to the University of Leicester press release

Hurricane Katrina, courtesy NOAA

I must say, the hurricane studies are coming out fast and furious now, remember the recent NOAA study I blogged about on landfalling Atlantic hurricanes in the U.S.. Now, we have new research from University College London and published in the Journal Nature which shows that just a 0.5 degree celsius (0.9 F) rise in the Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperature can fuel a 40% increase in Atlantic basin hurricane activity compared to the 50-year average (1950-2000). The study shows that the warming is directly linked to frequency, strength and duration of hurricanes. The interaction of greenhouse gases on ocean water temperatures was not considered in this study, according to the Guardian Unlimited article.

Adam Lea and Mark Sanders, the scientists who co-led the study built a statistical model (yes, we are back to models again) based on local sea-surface temperature and wind to replicate hurricane activity over the past 40 years. This statistical model then allowed the researchers to remove the effects of wind to determine the sole impact of sea-surface warming on Atlantic basin hurricanes.

By the way, I will be attending the Focus The Nation National Teach-In today at Penn State. I felt it would be something that I should check out. This is the largest teach-in event in U.S. history and is taking place at over 1400 venues. I will be taking notes from the Penn State teach-in and will hopefully get enough stuff for a few interesting blogs over the next week or so.