Back to the subject of coal-fired power plants once again.......

The only coal-fired power plant in the state of Oregon and also the state's largest single emitter of carbon dioxide has started a small pilot project that uses algae to turn some of its CO2 emissions into biodiesel, ethanol and livestock feed.

Supporters say that when the project goes full scale in 2.5 years it could reduce emissions by 60% during daylight hours. If this ends up working, I wonder if we would see this project expand across the country to other power plants?

You can read the story from Gas 2.0 to find out how this works. There are other links about algae fuel near the bottom of the article as well.

Here is an excellent unrelated YouTube video showing how algae is being used by a power station in Arizona.

Researchers at the University of Calgary in Canada have developed a simple machine that directly pulls carbon dioxide from the air.

Professor David Keith.

The project is led by climate change scientist David Keith, who is also the director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy’s (ISEEE) Energy and Environmental Systems Group and a professor of chemical and petroleum engineering. Keith is also Canada's Research Chair in Energy and Environment.

Air capture is different than the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology which is a key part of the Alberta and federal governments’ strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CCS involves installing equipment at, for example, a coal-fired power plant to capture carbon dioxide produced during burning of the coal, and then pipelining this CO2 for permanent storage underground in a geological reservoir.

Air capture, on the other hand, uses technology that can capture – no matter where the capture system is located – the CO2 that is present in ambient air everywhere, according to the University of Calgary press release.

Keith and his team have shown that they can capture more CO2 than the energy needed to run the machine, which is very important.

There are still some major issues with this project.........

--Where would the captured CO2 be stored? One possibility would be Alberta's oil sands tar fields.
--Potential high costs for the commercialization of this project.

Nevertheless, the relatively simple, reliable and scalable technology that Keith and his team developed opens the door to building a commercial-scale plant.

By the way, there is a link to the technical details of the project at the bottom of the press release.

The British Met Office just issued a new warning about climate change. This warning from the Hadley Centre is likely to cause widespread concern, especially as the Met Office has a reputation for taking a cautious approach, according to the Guardian.

Vicky Pope, the head of the Met Office Centre for climate change research says that drastic action needs to be taken within two years in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change. You can read her own letter to the Guardian right here.

What is that drastic action? Cutting emissions by 3% a year from 2010 offers the only hope of avoiding a global temperature rise of more than two degrees celsius.

Even if the cuts begin in 2010 (unlikely) and quickly reach 3% a year, the most likely forecast temperature rise would be two degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100, but even with that two degree rise the following would occur, according to the Met Office......

--One-fifth of species would be at risk for extinction.
--Two billion people would suffer from rising sea levels and a shortage of fresh water.
--The melting of the Greenland ice sheet would be irreversible, but it could take 3,000 years, according to Pope.

Contrast that with a world where no action is taken to curb global warming. Then, temperatures could rise as high as 7C above pre-industrial values by the end of the century. This would lead to significant risks of severe and irreversible impacts, said Pope.

For your viewing pleasure I found a YouTube video of Vicki Pope from September of 2007, warning about the changes that would occur with each degree of warming.

Much is made of the potential warming in the arctic regions, which may lead to melting permafrost, glaciers, and arctic sea ice. This, theoretically at least, leads to increased warming as the albedo is decreased and vast supplies of methane and carbon dioxide are released into the atmosphere, thus in theory contributing to further warming, that causes further melting, that leads to more warming, etc. Basically, a positive feedback mechanism. However, this discovery
by researcher Duane Froese of the University of Alberta's earth and atmospheric science department says not so fast, permafrost is more "stubborn" than first believed when exposed to warmer temperatures, thus slower to melt and release the stored carbon. In part, he bases this theory on his discovery of a "cone-shaped wedge of ice" near Dawson City in the Yukon of Canada that is dated to be 700,000 years old. This chunk of ice has survived warmer periods than what the earth is now. For example, the article states that 120, 000 years ago, the earth was several degrees warmer than it is now, yet this ice survived.

-Does this bode well for permafrost?

-Can it survive warmer temperatures? Mr. Froese says yes it can, especially the deeper layers, which are insulated from the warmth of the atmosphere.

This discovery of that old ice, and thus Mr. Froese's theory, may put a dent in the run-away global warming thoughts due to carbon dioxide and methane being released when vast areas of permafrost melt. Maybe deep permafrost being "stubborn" is a way that "mother earth" regulates her temperature? One point that the researcher points out that this study deals with deep permafrost, while other studies have studied only the shallow layer of permafrost. This is why we hear about permafrost melting rapidly, as this is the shallow layer they are talking about.

-Mr. Froese also mentions that deep layers of permafrost are a reservoir for much more carbon than the shallow top layers that are prone to melting.

-In conclusion, the researcher says that this deep permafrost's ability to resist melting and thus not release vast amounts of carbon may cause global warming to occur at a slower pace than expected.

Image below is courtesy of UCAR, The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research.

Blog post by Mark Paquette.

A West Antarctic Ice Core.

Geo-scientists from the Oregon State University recently analyzed West Antarctic ice core samples taken in the 1960's and ocean deposits going back 20,000 to 100,000 years ago and found some interesting results, according to Environmental Research letters.

The ice samples were carefully crushed, releasing gases from bubbles that were frozen within the ice cores. The gas samples were then tested to measure the levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in each one.

The geo-scientists then compared the CO2 levels from the samples with climate data from Greenland and Antarctica that reflected the approximate temperatures when the gases were trapped. The samples were also compared with ocean sediments, according to ScienceDaily.

"The most interesting findings are firstly that atmospheric carbon dioxide is strongly correlated with Antarctic temperature and secondly that it begins to increase a few thousand years prior to large abrupt warming events in Greenland," researchers Jinho Ahn and Edward Brook told environmentalresearchweb. "We also see some links between increases in carbon dioxide and changes in ocean circulation that might release carbon dioxide from the deep ocean."

Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) just released their global temperature anomalies for September. RSS uses microwave instruments on satellites to measure the temperatures in the lower troposphere (lowest 7-12 miles of the atmosphere). Here is an image showing the global temperature anomalies for September 2008.

My first impression of the image is that it looks fairly normal overall, but here are the actual numbers.............

Global Land and Sea temperature anomalies for September:

Globally (70 degrees south through 82.5 degrees north latitude): +0.211 Kelvin

Northern Hemisphere: +0.290 K

Southern Hemisphere: +0.129 K

Continental United States: -0.147 K

Arctic Polar region (60 degrees north through 82.5 degrees north): +0.942 K
Note: The last time this Arctic Polar region was below normal for a month was in
April of 2006 and then again in December of 2004.

You can see the complete RSS data set right here.

Acknowledgement:
MSU/AMSU data are produced by Remote Sensing Systems and sponsored by the NOAA Climate and Global Change Program. Data are available at www.remss.com.

Two images showing the Gulkana, AK Glacier retreat fromm 1910-1952. Image from USGS.

A new book from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) reports that 99% of Alaska's large glaciers are retreating, but there are still a handful that are advancing. This is from a USGS press release.

Five percent of Alaska's area (more than the state of West Virginia) are covered by more than 100,000 glaciers, according to a related article from LiveScience.

The study used satellite images, aerial photos and maps to document the retreat, which began as early as the mid-18th century in some cases. You can also compare some of the glaciers over more recent time by looking at the photos at the bottom of the USGS release.

The last two decades saw "significant retreat", according to the new book "Glaciers in Alaska".

The University of Alabama at Huntsville released their September 2008 temperature anomaly data for the lower troposphere (lowest ~ 8-12 miles of the atmosphere and a fairly similar method to the RSS data that I posted a couple days ago).

Here are the September temperature anomaly results.......

Global: +0.161 K

Northern Hemisphere: +0.219 K

Southern Hemisphere: +0.102 K

The past 12 months globally: +0.044 K

The decadal trend is slightly upward at +0.128 K

I will post the NCDC results when we get them, which is usually around mid-month.

It appears that the sharp, beautiful colors of autumn are slowly being blurred out across parts of Europe and the Northeast United States and some scientists are blaming global warming.

According to the Telegraph article, the Italian Meteorological Society has observed less gold, red and copper colored foliage across the nation's woodlands. Similar developments have been noted elsewhere in Europe and in the northern Hemisphere.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has just started funding a study into claims that the northern states fall colors are also fading away with climate change.

"Something is clearly happening to make the colours less vivid. The wood is a living organism that tries to adapt to the climate, and change in climate is the cause. We really need to study and understand what's happening, said Dr. Giustino Mezzalira, an Italian forest expert. "But I think that, as in the United States, the colours are fading because the temperature difference between night and day is getting smaller and smaller."

Botanists believe that brilliant leaf colours associated with autumn are promoted by cold nights followed by warm, sunny days; in the absence of such conditions, the trees probably continue to produce the green pigment chlorophyll as if it were still summertime.

How would you rate the fall foliage over the past few seasons compared to normal? Assuming you live in an area where there is annual color change.

Over the past few years there has been countless references to global warming alarmists and global warming deniers within the comment section of this blog. We even conducted a survey of our readers as to how they characterized themselves. A vast majority saw themselves as a skeptic.

Anyway, I recently came across these two critical viewpoints of the alarmist and denier scientist. I thought both views were interesting and would generate some good comments.

The first opinion was actually written a couple years ago by Richard Lindzen (Alfred Sloan) who is noted as a professor of atmospheric science at MIT. In his Wall Street Journal Op-ed, Lindzen stresses that global warming alarmists use intimidation to silence the dissenting scientists.

An exerpt from the Lindzen piece below:

......It is that they (alarmists) are trumpeting catastrophes that couldn't happen even if the models were right as justifying costly policies to try to prevent global warming.

You can read the Lindzen op-ed right here.

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The second, more recent opinion is from the Greenfyre blog. In the blog, Greenfyre questions the credibility of global warming denying scientists.

An excerpt from Grennfyre's blog below:

.........After you discard the obvious frauds, cull out the names that are made up, the ones who are not scientists, the ones who are dead, the real scientists who are not actually Deniers, etc, you are invariably left with a handful who do seem to be scientists and really are Climate Deniers.

You can read the rest of it right here.

Blog written by Mark Paquette........

With the recent active hurricane seasons, a question one has to ponder is how would these tropical dynamos be affected if (notice I say if!!!) the temperature of the earth increases? Most people would assume that if the earth's temperature rises, that in turn leads to warmer tropical waters (again, that is open to debate as well!), which in turn leads to more numerous and more powerful hurricanes. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), as well as other federal agencies and universities, will attempt to answer this question with the help of various computer models, according to this artice
from Ft. Myers News Press.

-If global warming is occurring, most scientists agree that there will be LESS numerous hurricanes, however, they will be more powerful.

- There maybe fewer hurricanes because the disturbances that are needed to spawn them may be less numerous as global rainfall patterns may shift.

-The more powerful hurricanes are due to warmer sea surface temperatures, the theory goes. Sea surface temperature, as well as the coriolis force, moist air, and low wind shear throughout the bottom half or so of the atmosphere, are key ingredients in forming and strengthening hurricanes.

-This study hopes to help give government and other emergency agencies, as well as oil companies in the Gulf of Mexico, an idea how future hurricane seasons may unfold.

Hopefully, this and other studies will help people who decide things such as how strong to build levees, how close to the ocean can a person build a house, and other questions at least an idea about how future hurricane seasons may be different than the ones we experience now.

Some environmental policy experts now believe that the U.S. can help solve the world financial crisis and create an engine for growth by quickly shifting toward a clean energy economy and shifting our investments toward it.

The reorientation must include limits on emissions of climate-warming carbon in the US, said Cathy Zoi, chief executive officer of the Alliance for Climate Protection: "Unless we take action at home, we're not going to be able to have much influence in the international arena about what gets done."

It is unlikely that any law to mandate a program to cap and trader carbon emissions will get passed before President Bush leaves office in January, but plenty of debate in Congress is expected next year, and the next president (either McCain or Obama) will be more in favor of requiring reductions in greenhouse emissions, according to the NewScientist article.

I don't know if this shift to a clean energy economy will solve the world's financial hole, but I certainly see the benefits of this investment, even if you feel that man is not in any way responsible for global warming.

Benefits.....

--Cleaner air and water
--Reduced dependence on foreign energy
--Solid Job creation at home in developing the new technology
--lower costs down the road to the consumer (initial costs may be high)

What do you think?

Overlooking the village of Ilulissat, Greenland.

The Toledo Blade's Tom Henry is writing a three-part series about global warming impacts on the residents of Greenland. In part one of this series, Henry discusses the positive and negative impacts of the warming from direct conversations with the locals. Henry visited the fishing community of Ilulissat, which has a population of 4,500 people and is located at 69 degrees north latitude.

Positives

--Summer fishing season is longer.
--Crops are being grown in areas that were never thought possible. It did not specify what types of crops.
--Increasing hydropower potential (glacier meltwater) is attracting many new projects, which could lead to more jobs.
--Beer! Supposedly, Greenland beer tastes great with that pristine water from melted inland ice.

Negatives

--Lack of sea ice is making winter passage between settlements much more difficult, especially since sled dogs are primary transportation.
--Ice fishing is more treacherous (fishing is the #1 industry).
--Famous Greenland halibut are becoming more elusive and swimming deeper.
--More whales are coming in toward the coast and acting as vacuum cleaners, sucking up large numbers of small fish.

Ove Rosbach, who has fished the Arctic for decades, blamed the decline on warmer ocean currents flowing to the north. He said a similar phenomenon occurred in the 1950s.

Halibut returned when the ocean current cooled in the 1970s, but Mr. Rosbach said things feel different now. Even when the sun is not shining, it's still very warm,' he said. "The sun is warmer than normal now."

The article by Henry is fairly long, but there are also some videos about the scientific work being done at the Byrd Polar Research Center. Henry also took some nice photos of the visit.

A plot of global land/sea September temperature anomalies going back to 1880.

The National Climatic Data Center has just released the September temperature anomalies for the globe. Globally, September 2008 was the ninth warmest on record.

Records go back to 1880 and the temperature data is measured against the 1961-1990 mean. The data is based on the Smith and Reynolds analysis. Here are the September numbers.......

Global (land/sea combined): +0.44 C (+0.79 F)

Northern Hemisphere: +0.48 C (+0.86 F)

Southern Hemisphere: +0.40 C (+0.72 F)

By the way, the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) was basically neutral for September.

Here is our favorite dot map, the red's dominate again.

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Compare these results to the Microwave temperature data for the lower troposphere (lowest 8 km/5 miles) as retrieved by satellite......

University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH): +0.16 C

Remote Sensing Systems (RSS): +0.21 C

The Vaughn Lewis Glacier, Juneau Icefield. Image courtesy of the USGS.

A few of our commentators directed me to this Alaska story, which is related to a story I blogged about on October 8th.......

The Anchorage Daily News posted an interesting story a couple of days ago about the impact of the 2007-2008 winter on some of the glaciers across the state.

High snowfall during the winter followed by a cool summer resulted in the largest buildup of snow on the Juneau Icefield since 1946. It was a similar situation on a lot of other glaciers as well, according to the article.

"It's been a long time on most glaciers where they've actually had positive mass balance," said Bruce Molina, a glaciologist from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Mass balance is the difference between how much snow falls every winter and how much snow fades away each summer. For most Alaska glaciers, the summer snow loss has for decades exceeded the winter snowfall.

One cool summer that leaves 20 feet of new snow still sitting atop glaciers come the start of the next winter is no big deal, Molnia said.

Ten summers like that?

Well, that might mark the start of something like the Little Ice Age.

Climate is constantly shifting. And even if the past year was a signal of a changing future, Molnia said, it would still take decades to make itself noticeable in Alaska's glaciers.

NASA scientists have released the first global satellite maps of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth's mid-troposphere (5 miles above the surface) using data going back to 2002 which was collected by an Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on NASA's Aqua Spacecraft.

The sounder measures the infrared light emitted by CO2 to produce the maps.

The study shows how CO2 is distributed in the atmosphere and how it moves around the globe.

The distribution of CO2 was found to be influenced by the following.....

--Major surface sources of CO2.
--Large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns (jet stream, high and low pressure areas).

There were major differences in CO2 concentration from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere (much more ocean area).

Here are some July images going back to 2003, and you can see the steady increase in CO2. Just for fun, I also included the RSS (microwave sounding) temperature anomaly maps for July of that particular year.

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Here is the NCDC (National Climatic Data Center) plot of global land/sea temperatre anomalies, going back to 1880.

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The new (AIRS) maps reveal enhanced concentrations of carbon dioxide south of the northern hemisphere jet stream, in a band between 30 and 40 degrees north latitude. These enhanced concentrations correspond to a well-documented belt of pollution in the northern hemisphere mid-latitudes.

"Carbon dioxide is difficult to measure and track," said Moustafa Chahine from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "No place on Earth is immune from its influence. It will take many independent measurements, including AIRS, to coax this culprit out of hiding and track its progress from creation to storage."

Images are courtesy of NASA.

Acknowledgement......

MSU/AMSU data are produced by Remote Sensing Systems and sponsored by the NOAA Climate and Global Change Program. Data are available at www.remss.com.

Blog post by Mark Paquette:

As mentioned before, I would consider myself a novice when it comes to the subject of global warming. Being said, I've done some reading, a little learning (trying to catch up to you guys and gals!) and I came across an interesting subject dealing with global warming. This subject is what role does a "quiet" sun sun have to do with the change in amount of low clouds (via cosmic rays) and how does this change affect global warming? This article
I found while the browsing the web piqued my interest.

A few basic questions I had:

-What does an active or inactive sun have to do with cosmic rays?

-How does these rays influence low clouds?

-How does an increase/decrease in low clouds influence the climate?

-What "phase" is our sun going into?

-What does this all mean for our climate?

This article answered some of these questions for me, and I thought I'd share with you this information. Even though some of the information may be old news, it was new to me and I would like to read some of your comments and philosophies on this subject.

Photo courtesy of www.friendsofscience.org

We still have a blank sun. Image from earlier today, courtesy of SOHO.

As you can see from the image above, the sun remains very inactive in terms of sunspot activity. This has been a common image of the sun for quite some time now.

The chart below shows the individual years over the past century with the highest total of spotless days. This particular chart was dated in late September, so 2008 in now solidly in fifth place all by itself.

Great pictures!

Last week, the Boston Globe online posted a series of spectacular images and movies of the sun. Some of the pictures are amazing, even though some of them are a few years old. You can check it out right here.

Sunset over the Arctic.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released their report card for the Arctic environment.

According to NOAA, the report card, which is produced annually, is introduced as a means of presenting clear, reliable and concise information on recent observations of environmental conditions in the Arctic, relative to historical time series records.

The report card focuses on six key parts of the Arctic Environment.......
--Atmosphere
--Sea ice
--Biology
--Ocean
--Land
--Greenland

This year, three of the six categories received the "mixed signals" grade, while the remaining
three received the "warming" grade, which means that those particular categories showed strong enough evidence of warming. This year, Greenland changed to a "warming" grade.

You can compare this year's report card to the one from 2007.

The report card is prepared by an international team of scientists and is peer reviewed.

Growing up in the Northeast in the 1970's and early 80's, the big environmental concern that I (Brett) recall being disussed on a regular basis was acid rain, and how it was destroying our forests. Now, this new study from Michigan's Technological University comes out with this........

According to the ScienceDaily article, the research team found that moderate increases in temperature and nitrogen from atmospheric pollution (results in acid rainfall) actually improve forest productivity.

The testing took place at four different sites and has been ongoing since 1987.

Andrew Burton, an associate professor at Michigan Tech and head of the National Institute for Climatic Change Research's Midwestern Regional Center found that the trees grow faster at higher temperatures and store more carbon at greater concentrations of nitrogen, a chemical constituent of acid rain, providing there is sufficient moisture.

The team also determined that the rise in temperature has extended the growing season in Michigan by 10 to 11 days on average, which is significant in that region.

The research, which started out as an acid rain study in 1987, has grown into one of the longest continuous research studies supported by the National Science Foundation. A new five-year grant of $151,628 will fund the research through 2012.

By the way, there has been a steady decline in nitrogen oxide emissions this decade.

I have a question, though. This may very well be the case in Michigan, but from what I recall, the concentrations of acid rain have been typically higher in the upper Ohio Valley and into the Northeast and the sensitivity of the forests to acid rain in the Northeast have usually been higher as well, so, could the results of this study not be valid in the Northeast? Brett.

Nitrogen Oxide emissions on the decline up through 2003. I did not find a more recent chart.

The most sensitive regions to acid rainfall.

Since I have been doing this blog over the past couple of years there has been a fair amount of criticism (some of it justified) within the comment section of this blog against climate modeling and its accuracy. Here is a new study that could restore lost confidence in temperature modeling, at least in the tropics. Brett.

Computer model simulated changes in surface temperature and sea-ice extent from 1919-2099.
Image courtesy of LLNL.

Using state-of-the-art observational datasets and results from computer model simulations archived at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, LLNL researchers and colleagues from 11 other scientific institutions have refuted a recent claim from last year that simulated temperature trends (modeling) in the tropics are fundamentally inconsistent with observations.

LLNL's Benjamin Santer and his international team of scientists found that there is no fundamental discrepancy between modeled and observed trends in tropical temperatures.

There are two main reasons for this reconciliatation, as reported by NASA's Earth Observatory article...........

First, the analysis that reported disagreement between models and observations had applied an inappropriate statistical test, which did not account for the statistical uncertainty in observed warming trends. This uncertainty arises because the human-caused component of recent temperature changes is not perfectly known in any individual observed time series – it must be estimated from data that are influenced by both human effects and the "noise" of natural climate variability. Examples of such "noise" include large El Niño and La Niña events, which have pronounced effects on the year-to-year variability of tropical temperatures.

The second reason for the reconciliation of models and observations was the availability of new and improved observational datasets, both for surface and tropospheric temperatures. The developers of these datasets used different procedures to identify and adjust for biases (such as those caused by changes over time in the instruments and platforms used to measure temperature).

Here is a link to the new study abstract, which will be posted in the International Journal of Climate. I was unable to find the link to the previous study which stated that the modeling was inconsistent with the observations.

Update: It has been pointed out to me that Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit has been ripping into Santer's study. Here is the link. It is very technical and difficult to follow, unless you are great with statisical analysis and equations.

Time for a laugh

I realize this has been out for a while, but I just found this Frank Caliendo impersonation of Al Gore and his movie on YouTube. If you haven't seen it, check it out. I think it's pretty funny!

Katie Fehlinger is back with Headline Earth. In this week's video Katie finds out about El Nino.

Speaking of El Nino/La Nina (El Nino Southern Oscillation), here is an update on the status of the ENSO......

As of right now, the ENSO is still considered in a neutral state. There has been some recent cooling of the equatorial Pacific surface waters east of 150 degrees west, but that might stop or reverse a bit over the next couple of weeks.

The oceanic Nino Index for the latest 3-month period (Jul,Aug,Sep) was 0.0 or right on neutral.

Here is the latest global sea surface temperature anomaly as of yesterday. As you can see, if you combine much of the equatorial Pacific it looks fairly neutral. Also note the concentrated pocket of abnormally cool water just south of Alaska and west of BC.

Here is a chart showing the recent history of the oceanic nino index. You can see the signatures of the strong el nino's (unusual warming of the equatorial Pacific sea surface) of 1982 and 1998. Image courtesy of the International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate and Society.

Here is the latest ENSO ensemble forecast from IRI that goes into next year. The overall consensus seems to support the idea of near neutral conditions into at least early 2009.

Here are the IRI ENSO probabilities through December 2008......

90% chance of neutral conditions
8% chance of La Nina conditions
2% chance of El Nino conditions

By the way, the CFS model (for what it's worth) predicts weak La Nina conditions for early 2009.

With the buzz at AccuWeather about the HUGE Ohio State/Penn State recent football game slowly dying down, I came across this short and quasi-humorous article from the Detroit Free Press. Seems like we here at Accuweather are not the only people obsessed with beating Ohio State in football!!

Seriously, though, this, like I mentioned above, quasi-humorous article brings up a point near and dear to many of us with many of us being nature-lovers, how does wildlife adjust to global warming? (Assuming that global warming does/is occurring of course).

-Though Michiganites are "worried" about the Buckeye tree moving north and "invading" Michigan, there are legitimate concerns about how other wildlife adjusts to changing temperature and precipitation patterns. I think many of us have heard about the plight of polar bears starving to death and having to swim longer distances than they have had to in the past to find food due to the shrinkage of the polar ice cap.

-Personally, one huge interest of mine, besides meteorology obviously, is the study of herpetology which is the study of amphibians and reptiles. I have a particular interest in snakes, and getting more particular, rattlesnakes. How does climate change affect these animals home range? Are they able to slowly expand north into areas where they are not found now? How does this affect the people that live there?

-We can ask this not only about animals, but of plants as well. Plants can not migrate north or south, obviously, so how do they adjust to a changing climate? Do plants benefit from a longer growing season? Or do some areas become drier and plants don't do as well there? Do deserts and other climate zones move? (ie. the Sahara moving south in Africa)

-Often times we think about how climate change may affect human beings, and not think much about how other living things may be affected. These were just a few thoughts I thought I would share with you in my weekly post. Thanks for reading and sorry for such a "light" topic.

Mark Paquette

Thanks to www.ohio-nature.com for this image of the fruit of the Ohio Buckeye Tree

Notrogen Trifluoride. Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Researchers from California being funded by NASA have found that a powerful greenhouse gas, which is used in the production of LCD panels and microcircuits is four times more prevalent in the atmosphere than earlier estimates.

The gas, nitrogen trifluoride (sounds pretty nasty) is actually 17,000 times more effective at warming the earth's atmosphere compared to our old friend carbon dioxide.

But, don't get too worried yet, even with these new results, carbon dioxide is still much more prevalent in the atmosphere compared to nitrogen trifluoride, making CO2 the king of man-made greenhouse gases.

Unfortunately, nitrogen trifluoride is increasing at a rate of 11% per year, but current emissions of the gas only contribute about 0.04% of the total global warming effect contributed by man-made emissions, according to the LiveScience article.

"From a climate perspective, there is a need to add nitrogen trifluoride to the suite of greenhouse gases whose production is inventoried and whose emissions are regulated under the Kyoto Protocol, thus providing meaningful incentives for its wise use," said study leader Ray Weiss of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif.

By the way, I'm still planning on getting our first LCD TV next year. Brett

The image above shows the ozone hole over the Antarctic region on September 12th, 2008 when it reached its peak in size. At that time, the hole covered about 27 million sq/km making it larger than last year's peak, but smaller than the record size set back in 2006.

The ozone hole forms every spring (August-October) in the far southern hemisphere when sunlight returns after months of darkness. During the Antarctic summer the ozone levels begin to rebuild. You can read more about how this happens from the NASA .

The destruction of ozone has caused the Antarctic stratosphere to be cooler than it would normally be in the summer and fall. Models and observations indicate that the cooling intensifies the vortex of winds that isolate frigid Antarctic air from warmer air from lower latitudes. Ozone-hole-related cooling may be the reason why interior Antarctica has not warmed up as fast as most of the rest of the planet due to global warming, according to the article.

The article also links to a previous study that I blogged about a ways back that tries to connect ozone recovery to Antarctic warming.

Evidence of a permafrost landslide in the Yukon Territory.

The Washington Times reports that Canadian researchers have been recently studying 700,000 year old ice wedges buried in soil 10 feet underground in the Yukon Territory. According to professor Duane Froese of the University of Alberta, these ice wedges are the oldest in North America and have been able to survive earlier periods of global warming. How do they know that? Froese and his team were able to fisson date it since the ice was buried under a layer of volcanic ash. This means the ice was older than the ash and older than the previous record holder - 120,000-year-old ice wedges found in Alaska.

"The fact that this ice survived the interglacials about 120,000 and 400,000 years ago, which we think were warmer than present, really illustrates how stubborn permafrost can be in the face of climate warming," Mr. Froese said.

How did this particular permafrost ice survive the hundreds of thousands of years of warming, cooling and warming? Brian Moorman, professor of geography at the University of Calgary suggests that the ash covering and shadows protected the ice from the thaw.

Mr. Moorman said that global warming models and grids do not take into account all the complexities of regional variations on the planet, but they are improving. However, the professor notes that 2007 and 2008 have shown a slight reduction in global temperature averages and that low sunspot activity also point to near-term cooling periods, according to the Times.