Biggest news you’ve never heard: Earth isn’t warming
By Patrik Jonsson | 10.10.09
How do you reconcile the early snow in Minneapolis, ski resorts already opening in Nevada, and that August chill in North Dakota with expert warnings about a warming climate?
You don’t. Why? The Earth isn’t warming right now, is why. It may even be cooling down somewhat.
Five major climate centers around the world agree that average global temperatures have not risen in the past 11 years, according to the BBC. In fact, in eight of those years, global average temperatures dipped a tad.
Yes, there have been several record heat spikes during that time period. The Southern Hemisphere this summer saw the highest land and water temperatures ever recorded, for instance. But overall? Steady as she goes.
Reasons cited range from a slightly cooling Pacific — a major global heat trap — as well as renewed questions about the sun’s role in warming (about which there is much debate). Also, it’s possible, some say, that warming itself causes CO2 levels — which are associated with warming — instead of the other way around.
As a result, “The depth of the cold of the coming winters will change the social and political climate in ways that only nature can orchestrate,” predicts meteorologist Art Horn.
To be sure, it’s way too early to close one’s ears to those who predict more global warming and sea level rises. The UN’s climate agency predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record, which was 1998. And as most of us know, the Earth warmed at historic rates in the latter half of the 20th century, leading to ice cap melts and ecological implications around the globe.
But the warming stall, some experts say, is giving at least some credence to the contrarian (and not always scientifically sound) notion that it may be natural and solar forces contributing as much, or more, than man-made CO2. At the very least, a delay in warming even as total CO2 emissions increase, throws some doubt on the cause-and-effect relationship between mankind’s activities and mean global temperatures.
Climate specialists say their models incorporate all this, and insist their predictions for continued warming will still hold true. (Here’s some data from the Guardian about why the “global warming is taking a break” theme may be off-base.)
Meteorologists at the UK’s Hadley Centre, for instance, point out that global temperatures aren’t linear, and that all data sets — including solar phenomenon and ocean temperatures — indicate that warming will soon pick up again.
But as Paul Hudson, the BBC’s environment reporter, points out, Mojib Latif, a member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, agrees that the Earth may, in fact, continue to cool for another 10 to 20 years. Mr. Latif says that doesn’t make him a climate change skeptic, just a scientist. Eventually, he says, “the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself,” according to the BBC.
Obviously, climate change has global ecological and political implications. The cap-and-trade bill and new auto emissions rules in the US are direct responses to climate implications of CO2. December’s Copenhagen climate conference will try to seek renewed global commitment to CO2 reduction.
Taken together, what does it all mean?
“Climate change — no matter how benign or severe a course it takes — makes legislating during the 21st century one of the most complicated and complex tasks for elected officials in human history,” writes Morgan Josey Glover in the Greensboro, N.C., News-Record newspaper.
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NASA moon bombing successful. Did we find water?
By Pete Spotts | 10.09.09
NASA did it. NASA bombed the moon.
Its LCROSS mission punched two new craters in the moon this morning, and only about a minute behind schedule (see video below).
As for whether LCROSS kicked up evidence for water on the moon (the object of the exercise), the jury is still out.
It will take scientists a couple of weeks to figure out if the shadowed area of Cabeus crater holds any water ice. Visually, not much seemed to happen. Michael Bicay, the science director a NASA’s Ames Research Center said: “It’s hard to tell what we saw here.”
But if the science team does find water? How do you get at it, especially if it’s covered with moon dust? Just nuke it in a microwave!
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Asteroid ‘Apophis’ will miss us this time; but 2068? Stay tuned
By Pete Spotts | 10.08.09
The asteroid Apophis is very unlikely to smack Earth in 2036. That’s the good news from a large group of planetary scientists meeting this week in Puerto Rico (nice gig if you can get it!).
Astronomers discovered the asteroid in 2004. At the time, it looked as if it had a 2.7 percent chance of hitting us in 2029. Additional tracking enabled scientists to refine their calculations of the asteroid’s orbit. Those calculations ruled out a smack-down in 2029, but left Apophis with a 1 in 45,000 chance of connecting with Earth in 2036.
New numbers released yesterday, however, now put the odds for an impact in 2036 at 1 in 250,000. As astronomers continue to track the asteroid, they say they expect the odds to shrink further.
At some 0.27 kilometers (about 0.2 miles) across, the object would be capable of widespread destruction on a regional scale, according to calculations made by scientists at the Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M.
“The refined orbital determination further reinforces that Apophis is an asteroid we can look to as an opportunity for exciting science and not something that should be feared,” notes Don Yeomans, who heads the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
What about 2068? Astronomers are now keeping a close eye on the asteroid for any potential 2068 encounter. At the moment, they’re giving it one chance in 3 million of nicking the third rock from the sun.
But University of Hawaii astronomer David Tholen says there’s an interesting difference in the 2068 encounter.
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Dust storm in Australia turns Sydney into Mars
By Pete Spotts | 09.23.09
When dust storms blow through Australia’s outback, it’s par for the course. When they turn Sydney into a Mars look-alike, it’s time to sit up and take note.
A swath of eastern Australia labored Wednesday (Aussie time) under the worst dust storm in more than 70 years. Check out this photo gallery we put together.
Any way you look at it, the event is pretty extraordinary. According to Reuters, the storm carried an estimated 5 million tons of dust from the continent’s interior to the east coast. A fair bit of that is priceless farm topsoil, according to the report. At one point, the storm was dumping an estimated 75,000 tons an hour into the Pacific off Sydney.
The country’s eastern portion, particularly the farmland watered (at least at one time) by the Murray and Darling Rivers, is in its 12th year of severe drought. And forecasters say that it is likely to continue as El Nino strengthens through the rest of the year.
As for the virtually inevitable global-warming question: Researchers and forecasters are loathe to attribute any single storm to climate change. But the storm does represent one kind of weather phenomenon that is expected to become more frequent as the climate warms.
Once it’s kicked up, the dust itself has effects on regional and local climate. The particles reflect sunlight back into space, cooling temperatures underneath it somewhat. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., published a study two years ago suggesting that dust-triggered cooling over the North Africa and the eastern Atlantic can affect sea-level air pressure and temperatures thousands of miles away. Others have noted that North African dust storms can retard hurricane formation in the Atlantic because its parasol effect keeps the ocean surface cooler than it might otherwise be.
Northeastern Asia, with dry regions such as the Gobi Desert, represent another big source of atmospheric dust. North Africa sends dust out across the Atlantic, over the Caribbean, and into the eastern Pacific Ocean. In the United States, the single largest source for mineral dust smaller than 10 microns is eastern California’s Owens Lake, according to the US Geological Survey. Los Angeles emptied the lake, once criss-crossed by steamboats, during the first half of the 20th century.
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Arctic continues to skate on thin ice
By Pete Spotts | 09.18.09
The Arctic Ocean’s summertime sea-ice melt season is ending, and the ice’s expanse fell to the third lowest level since satellites began tracking sea-ice conditions in 1979.
Scientists with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., noted this week that this year’s retreat of summer sea ice was not as bad as last year’s for two reasons: The summer there was cooler this year than last, especially so in a couple of specific regions; and wind patterns favored a smaller loss of summer ice.
Good news? Signs that global warming is over, if it ever was happening in the first place? Not so fast, scientists say. Yes, 2009 is shaping up to be the second year in a row where summer sea-ice extent has grown compared with the previous year — following its satellite-record low in 2007. You can find the trends plotted on the second image in the series of images at the top of the page.
But before anyone breaks out the confetti or wags an I-told-you-so finger, the peak extent this summer is still some 24 percent below the 1997-2000 average. And it’s 20 percent below the 1979-2008 average.
Moreover the ice that’s there consists mostly of relatively thin ice rather than the thick multi-year ice that is less vulnerable to a complete meltdown during the summer. NASA’s ICESat satellite has been tracking those trends. You can see the results in the third of the series of images at the top of the page.
Why does the ice matter? From a climate standpoint, all that white reflects sunlight back into space. If ice covers less ocean surface during the summer, the 24/7 sunlight heats more of the ocean. That heat content slows the return of ice in the fall and can continue to thin the remaining ice from underneath.
And while the water is exposed, the oceans warmth can take the chill off well inland (think about the Gulf Stream’s moderating effect on temperatures during European winters). Researchers are increasingly concerned that this moderating effect from warmer coastal waters could reinforce the melting of permafrost on land, releasing methane — molecule for molecule, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
