The authors of Freakonomics have an interesting take on economics and global warming, explaining how the late 21st century may bring increased agricultural production (at least for some areas) but also the potential for increased mortality.

I found that interesting, but I also link the article because of the examples of the weather's ties to social issues like crime. Who knew nineteenth century Bavaria could be so interesting?

You know, climate isn't just about temperature. It's also about rainfall, weather patterns, stuff like that. There's a new study from the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research out of the UK's Met Office which warns that drought could double or more by the end of the century. And that's the figure for moderate drought. Extreme drought could increase 10-fold, from 3 percent to 30 percent of the Earth's land surface, and severe drought could increase from 8 percent to 40 percent of land. Moderate drought currently affects 25 percent of Earth's land surface, and that is forecast to increase to 50 percent. If you are a subscriber to the American Meteorological Society's Journals Online, you can read about this study here.

Increased drought will mean increased wildfires, and this fire season has been the most severe on record in the western states. If that trend continues, we can expect to see changes in the ecology of the West with the potential for extinction of plant and animal species. In addition, wildfires emit tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, adding yet another layer of feedback into the climate picture.

University of Texas biologist Camille Parmesan has summed up some 866 scientific studies in the December, 2006 issue of the journal Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. You can read the abstract online for free, but to read the full study, you must be a subscriber.

Scientists are surprised at how quickly species are being forced to change to adapt to alterations in their environments, an article on CNN.com noted. I find it interesting to note that CNN.com, FoxNews.com and MSNBC.com all feature pictures of polar bears in their stories. People love polar bears.

Speaking of extinctions - here's an interesting article I found on MSNBC.com today about some new research on what happened in the oceans following a mass extinction 250 million years ago. It's not related to global warming, of course, but I include it to remind people that the Earth's biosphere is not a static thing. Changes, sometimes large, sudden, dramatic changes have occurred in the past and will occur again.

Oh, and another link from MSNBC.com while I'm at it. Seems California bird watchers had an extremely rare - as in "never before" rare - treat recently when a gull native to the Arctic was seen 100 miles east of San Diego. This was the first time this species has ever been seen in California, and to see it within 50 miles of the Mexican border is really amazing. I'm sure that's a sign that the new ice age is right around the corner, right?

The UN's World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) consulted with 125 researchers and forecasters and reached the conclusion that there is no definite link between global warming and the intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones. This according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
No link between global warming and cyclones

Tropical cyclone damage has increased dramatically over the last 15 years, but much of that is due to rising populations and the related infrastructure in coastal regions.

In the wake of my post on trees yesterday, it seems appropriate today to post a link to the Washington Post's article this morning on climate change and trees. The National Arbor Day Foundation has just released an updated hardiness zone map - the first since 1990.

Now, even the most skeptical of the skeptics isn't questioning that the Earth is warming. The questions that remain are how much is due to human activity and how much is due to natural variability. The unseasonable warmth recently in the Northeast can be laid at least partially at the doorstep of El Niño, for example. A peek at the Arbor Day Foundation's animation of the changes in hardiness zones from 1990 to 2006 is pretty dramatic.

The warming that has occurred may increase stress on some species of trees, although many will continue to flourish. The purpose of the hardiness zone map is to help people determine which trees are best to plant in their particular location.

After I posted yesterday on the drought in Australia, I got to thinking more about the article and in particular this paragraph:

Australia is the world's biggest exporter of coal and its reliance on the fossil fuel is the major reason the nation of 20 million ranks among the world's biggest carbon polluters per capita.

If you read the story, that paragraph may have stood out to you the way it did to me. Why reference coal in a story about drought? Oh, that's right! To strengthen the connection between the drought and global warming.

On another note, commenter Emiliana Peralta made an excellent point regarding the possibility that Australia's drought has more to do with the El Niño than it does with global warming.

The island of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, has been obliterated by rising seas. The island, located in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, is the first inhabited island to be wiped off the map.

A second populated island in the area, Ghoramara, is two-thirds underwater. Refugees from Lohachara and Ghoramara have fled to Sagar, but that island is also losing land to the sea.

I got a lot of comments on the story of the calving of the Ayles Ice Shelf, including a very informative one from Mauri Pelto, a glaciologist at Nichols College. I sent an e-mail to Dr. Luke Copland, an assistant professor of geography at the University of Ottawa. Dr. Copland was quoted in the article I linked and he was kind enough to respond. Here's the text of the e-mail:

Hi Laura,

Thanks for the good question - there have been many breakups of ice shelves across northern Ellesmere Island over the last century so. When these ice shelves were first discovered in about 1900, they were a total of about 10,000 sq km in area. Today they have reduced in size by about 90%, to about 1000 sq km in area. The Ayles Ice Shelf loss was the largest breakup in at least 25 years, but it is part of the long-term trend of loss over the last century.

The important point to note with all of these losses is that they are essentially permanent. There is no longer enough glacier ice flowing off the land to replace the ice that is being calved into the ocean. Hence these 3000+ year old shelves are now gone forever.

You might also be interested in looking at a media page that we've put together:
http://www.geomatics.uottawa.ca/copland/

Regards,
Luke

Perhaps the loss of these ice shelves is simply due to being in the midst of an interglacial period. Or maybe we're speeding up the process.

Pretty much everyone has noticed the weather is wacky, right? Almost all of North America has had temperatures well above normal so far this winter. I had to look at places in the Rockies to find anyone below normal in the lower 48 - in a quick perusal - and to Alaska to find some significantly cold air. It's 29 below zero (F) as I write this. The normal high is -7. That air will be on the move over the next few days, but won't really drive into the lower 48 as we'd normally see in January. Why? Because we're still dominated by the Pacific jet stream. Arctic air is trapped. And we're not alone. I read an article yesterday which included some recent record warmth in Tibet.

An article from NBC news today asks the question "What's global warming got to do with it?" While the article does support something of a link between our current weather pattern - as Dr. Stephen Schneider of Stanford University says:

"Whatever the natural causes are, they are riding on top of the warming trend that has been induced by humans using the atmosphere as a free place to dump our tailpipe waste."

But overwhelmingly, this year's El Niño is blamed for our bizarro-world weather. It produces a stronger-than-normal southern jet stream, which prevents cold air from moving south.

Last week I wrote an entry about the rare middle ground on global warming - how it doesn't really help to paint a picture so dismal and gloomy that it causes people to give up. As Mike Hulme of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research wrote in a BBC Editorial:

The language of fear and terror operates as an ever-weakening vehicle for effective communication or inducement for behavioural change.

I was reminded of these things today when I read a piece in The Canadian, which bills itself as "Canada's new socially progressive and cross-cultural national newspaper." The headline grabbed my attention - stating that "Over 4.5 Billion people could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012." Pause for a minute. Think about that. The world's current population is a few ticks over 6.5 Billion, so this author is claiming that in a mere 5 years, almost three quarters of the world's population will have succumbed. Heck, if that's the case, I might as well go right down to the GM dealership and buy a Hummer. What difference will that make?

A quick read of the article finds it to have some significant holes. First of all, the author is citing a rapid climate warming due to the release of methane caused by the melting of permafrost. This, he says is a "weeks old" scientific theory - which is simply not true. I touched on it back in November, referencing a RealClimate.org entry from October, and methane hydrates were also addressed at RealClimate in December of 2005.

The author then goes on to state that methane in the atmosphere oxidizes into atmospheric carbon dioxide (true) which "lasts for hundreds of thousands of years." Oh really? I thought it stayed in the atmosphere 50-200 years.

If I gave an award for global warming hysteria, this would be the winner.

Had a number of comments on yesterday's entry on Warming and Weather. First of all, commenter Dion linked Monday's RealClimate entry on El Niño, Global Warming, and Anomalous U.S. Winter Warmth. The folks at RealClimate point out that in an ordinary El Niño winter, the amplitude of warming across the northern half of the U.S. averages about 1 degree C (2F). This year's warming is roughly 5 times that amount. They also point out that last winter was also anomalously warm, despite a weak La Nina. That warmth was most striking in January of 2006. They conclude that it's impossible to determine what role each factor is playing in our current warmth.

In reality, the individual roles of deterministic factors such as El Nino, anthropogenic climate change, and of purely random factors (i.e. "weather") in the pattern observed thusfar th