Fewer April Showers for U.S. Southwest as Climate Changes

Things could get uglier for desert flowers looking to bloom in May--and for the region's water supply, year-round

by David Biell, Scientific American, August 20, 2008

STORM TRACKER: The jet stream that carries moisture from Pacific storms over the U.S. has shifted north in recent decades, making the arid Southwest even drier. COURTESY OF STEPHANIE MCAFEE/UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA/2008
The already parched U.S. Southwest is drying up even more, at least in early spring, because of climate change. A new study in Geophysical Research Letters shows that since 1978, the jet stream that brings rainstorms from the Pacific over the western U.S. has been shifting northward—and so has the rain and snow.

"That northward shift in the storm track is tied to reduced early spring precipitation, especially over the southwest U.S.," says atmospheric scientist Stephanie McAfee of the University of Arizona (U.A.) in Tucson, who led the research identifying the loss of a few storms per season. "It looks like the northern Great Plains seem to get a little bit more rain."

The total amount is only a fraction of an inch, McAfee notes, drawing on precipitation and storm data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration. But this is lengthening "the dry season in parts of the country that are already quite arid," she says.

Greenhouse gases emitted by burning fossil fuels are piling up in the atmosphere, warming its lowest layer. At the same time, human-produced chemicals have eaten holes in the ozone layer over the poles, ultimately cooling the uppermost part of the atmosphere. This temperature differential creates pressure differences that have been shifting the powerful high-altitude winds known as jet streams in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres closer to the poles since the 1980s. "It's man-made either way you look at it," says U.A. biogeochemist Joellen Russell, senior author of the study.

Climate change has arrived in the Southwest in the form of an earlier seasonal shift to summerlike weather, bringing an end to April showers in the lowlands and spring snowfalls in the mountains. "The change so far in total precipitation is pretty small," Russell notes. But "we expect that this may continue or even get worse."

The Southwest is already suffering through an extended drought that has lowered water levels in Lake Mead and threatens agriculture. McAfee says the climatic shift may also decrease the mountain snowpack that provides water for cities as well as dry out soils, thereby starting fire season earlier in the year, although she has no data on those phenomena yet. "People are going to need to change a little bit in their expectations of what a season is going to be like," adds McAfee, who is now looking at how this is impacting area vegetation. "If we keep doing this, the climate response becomes more extreme."

Link to article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=fewer-april-showers-for-southwest

U.S. Court of Appeals rejects E.P.A. limits on emissions rules

by Felicity Barringer, New York Times, August 19, 2008

A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out an Environmental Protection Agency rule limiting the ability of states to require monitoring of industrial emissions.

The 2-to-1 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is the most recent in a series of judicial setbacks to the Bush administration’s efforts to reshape federal policies under the Clean Air Act.

Under 1990 amendments to the original Clean Air Act, states were allowed to issue permits limiting pollution emissions from industrial facilities, like refineries or utilities. To ensure compliance, Congress required states to set more stringent monitoring requirements if they deemed federal requirements inadequate.

The E.P.A. gave states this leeway until 2006, when it reversed course and prohibited the states from requiring new monitoring. Environmental groups challenged the agency, saying that the new rule kept public agencies from gathering and making available the best data about industrial contributions to air pollution.

“E.P.A.’s about-face means that some permit programs do not comply” with federal law, Judge Thomas B. Griffith wrote in the majority opinion. He added that thousands of permits allowing the operation of industrial facilities might not comply with the law “because their monitoring requirements are invalid.”

Judge David B. Sentelle joined Judge Griffith’s opinion.

The ruling by the court, which has jurisdiction over most federal agency rules, was another judicial rebuke to the E.P.A.’s recent policies, leaving few of its major initiatives on air pollution intact.

The suit, brought by the Sierra Club, was opposed by the environmental agency and several industry groups, including the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute.

“I think it is fair to say that the D.C. Circuit has repudiated the vast bulk of the Bush administration’s clean-air regulatory reforms, which were the administration’s most notable and significant (if not always wise) environmental policy initiatives,” Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, commented on the case on a legal affairs blog, The Volokh Conspiracy. In an interview, Professor Adler said the agency “was giving business a bit of a break; was saying to states: You can’t do more.”

But he added, “One of the ways states experiment is not only being more protective but being more protective more cheaply. They win if they figure out a way to make environmental controls less costly.”

Keri N. Powell, a lawyer with Earthjustice who argued the case for the environmental groups, said the 1990 law was designed to give states power to fill any gaps left by the federal government and provide the public with data about industrial emissions.

“The idea was to make this information accessible to public and to state governments,” Ms. Powell said. “States are the front lines. They issue the permits.”

She added that, with the 2006 rule, “what they did was ban monitoring.”

“They did it,” she said, “even though the E.P.A. admitted that existing monitoring wasn’t good enough.”

Ms. Powell concluded, “That was just outrageous and defied the plain language” of the law.

Representatives of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers and the American Petroleum Institute did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

In his dissent, Judge Brett A. Kavanagh, like his colleagues, made reference to a famous dictum from Justice Felix Frankfurter. “I strongly align myself with the majority’s quotation from Justice Frankfurter about the best tool of statutory interpretation: 1) Read the statute. 2) Read the statute. 3) Read the statute!” Judge Kavanagh wrote.

And, he added, the relevant parts of the Clean Air Act support the E.P.A.

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/20/washington/20air.html

9 Polar Bears Spotted on Risky Open Ocean Swims

Thursday, August 21, 2008

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Nine polar bears were observed in one day swimming in open ocean off Alaska's northwest coast, an increase from previous surveys that may indicate warming conditions are forcing bears to make riskier, long-distance swims to stable sea ice or land.

The bears were spotted in the Chukchi Sea on a flight by a federal marine contractor, Science Applications International Corp.

It was hired for the Minerals Management Service in advance of future offshore oil development. The MMS in February leased 2.76 million acres within an offshore area slightly smaller than Pennsylvania.

Observers Saturday were looking for whales but also recorded walrus and polar bears, said project director Janet Clark. Many were swimming north and ranged from 15 to 65 miles off shore, she said.

Department of Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne in May declared polar bears a threatened species because of an alarming loss of summer sea ice and forecasts the trend will continue.

Polar bears spend most of their lives on sea ice, which they use as a platform to hunt their primary prey, ringed seals. Shallow water over the continental shelf is the most biologically productive for seals, but pack ice in recent years has receded far beyond the shelf.

Conservation groups fear that one consequence of less ice will be more energy-sapping, long-distance swims by polar bears trying to reach feeding, mating or denning areas.

Steven Amstrup, senior polar bear scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey in Anchorage, said the bears could have been on a patch of ice that broke up northwest of Alaska's coast.

"The bears that had been on that last bit of ice that remained over shallow shelf waters, are now swimming either toward land or toward the rest of the sea ice, which is a considerable distance north," he said in an e-mail response to questions.

It probably is not a big deal for a polar bear in good condition to swim 10 or 15 miles, Amstrup said, but swims of 50-100 miles could be exhausting.

"We have some observations of bears swimming into shore when the sea ice was not visible on the horizon," he said. "In some of these cases, the bears arrive so spent energetically, that they literally don't move for a couple days after hitting shore."

Only further research can tell the effect of greater swimming distances on polar bear populations, he said.

"Polar bears can swim quite well, but they are not aquatic animals," he said. "Their home is on the surface of the ice."

Satellite data Saturday showed the main body of pack ice about 400 miles offshore with one ribbon about 100 miles off Alaska's coast, said Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Clark said the animals' origin and destination could not be known without radio collar monitoring.

"To go out there and say they were going from this point to this point would be complete speculation," Clark said.

Observers have no indication of the fate of the nine polar bears observed Saturday.

Link to article: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,408502,00.html

Expansion of oxygen-minimum zones in the oceans

Oxygen Depletion: A New Form of Ocean Habitat Loss

Scientists confirm computer model predictions that oxygen-depleted zones in tropical oceans are expanding, possibly because of climate change

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, Calif., U.S.A., May 1, 2008

An international team of physical oceanographers including a researcher from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego has discovered that oxygen-poor regions of tropical oceans are expanding as the oceans warm, limiting the areas in which predatory fishes and other marine organisms can live or enter in search of food.

Janet Sprintall (standing, fourth from left) aboard an April 2007 CLIVAR cruise aboard R/V Roger Revelle. Sprintall contributed data from the cruise to a new study describing declining oxygen levels in tropical oceans.

The new study is led by Lothar Stramma from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR) in Kiel, Germany, and is co-authored by Janet Sprintall, a physical oceanographer at Scripps Oceanography and others. The researchers found through analysis of a database of ocean oxygen measurements that levels in tropical oceans at a depth of 300-700 m (985-2,300 ft.) have declined during the past 50 years. The ecological impacts of this increase could have substantial biological and economical consequences.

"We found the largest reduction in a depth of 300-700 m (985-2,300 ft.) in the tropical northeast Atlantic, whereas the changes in the eastern Indian Ocean were much less pronounced," said Stramma. "Whether or not these observed changes in oxygen can be attributed to global warming alone is still unresolved. The reduction in oxygen may also be caused by natural processes on shorter time scales."

Sprintall said the oxygen-poor areas have the potential to move into coastal areas via currents that flow from the mid-depth tropical oceans, where the oxygen changes were observed, and along the west coast of continents.

Mean dissolved oxygen concentrations in the world's oceans at a depth of 400 m (1,312 ft.) with blue contours representing the lowest concentrations. Boxed areas represent ocean regions analyzed in the study. Image courtesy of AAAS/Science.

"The width of the low-oxygen zone is expanding deeper but also shoaling toward the ocean surface," said Sprintall, a specialist in observing changes of fluxes in ocean properties such as heat distribution.

Sprintall contributed data to the study gathered during recent cruises undertaken as part of the Climate Variability and Predictability (CLIVAR) program, a long-running study operated by the World Climate Research Programme that seeks to understand climate through ocean-atmosphere interactions.

The study, "Expanding Oxygen-Minimum Zones in the Tropical Oceans," appears in the May 2 edition of the journal Science. The research team includes Stramma, Sprintall, NOAA scientist Gregory Johnson, and Volker Mohrholz from the Institute for Baltic Sea Research in Warnemünde, Germany.

The team selected ocean regions for which they could obtain the greatest amount of data to document the decline in oxygen. Some of the more recent data came from oxygen sensors which have been added to about 150 of the profiling floats used in Argo, a worldwide network of sensors that track basic ocean conditions such as temperature and salinity. There are more than 3,000 Argo floats operating in the world's oceans, and Sprintall said the quality of the data gathered by the Argo floats suggests that more units in the network should be outfitted with oxygen sensors.

Lisa Levin, a biological oceanographer at Scripps Oceanography who studies oxygen-minimum zones that intercept the seafloor, said an expansion of oxygen-minimum zones in the oceans could lead to diminished biodiversity and to the expanded distributions of organisms that have adapted to live in hypoxic, or oxygen-poor waters.

During an April 2007 CLIVAR cruise, researchers collected water samples from the Indian Ocean to measure their oxygen content. An international team incorporated the results into an analysis of global oxygen-minimum zone expansion.

"I think it's uncharted territory," said Levin, who was not affiliated with the study. "Thicker oxygen minimum zones could affect nutrient cycling, predator-prey relationships and plankton migrations. Where the expanding oxygen-minimum zones impinge on continental margins, we could see huge ecosystem changes."

The results of the study are an important milestone for the ongoing work of the new Collaborative Research Centre (SFB 754) "Climate: Biogeochemistry Interactions in the Tropical Ocean" funded by the German Research Foundation, which started its first phase in January 2008 in close cooperation with the University of Kiel. The SFB aims to better define the interactions between climate and biogeochemistry on a quantitative basis.

Link to article: http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=905

Jeremy B. C. Jackson: Ecological extinction and evolution in the brave new ocean (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.)

Ecological extinction and evolution in the brave new ocean

1. Jeremy B. C. Jackson*

1. Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0244; and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Box 2072 Balboa, Republic of Panama

Abstract

The great mass extinctions of the fossil record were a major creative force that provided entirely new kinds of opportunities for the subsequent explosive evolution and diversification of surviving clades. Today, the synergistic effects of human impacts are laying the groundwork for a comparably great Anthropocene mass extinction in the oceans with unknown ecological and evolutionary consequences. Synergistic effects of habitat destruction, overfishing, introduced species, warming, acidification, toxins, and massive runoff of nutrients are transforming once complex ecosystems like coral reefs and kelp forests into monotonous level bottoms, transforming clear and productive coastal seas into anoxic dead zones, and transforming complex food webs topped by big animals into simplified, microbially dominated ecosystems with boom and bust cycles of toxic dinoflagellate blooms, jellyfish, and disease. Rates of change are increasingly fast and nonlinear with sudden phase shifts to novel alternative community states. We can only guess at the kinds of organisms that will benefit from this mayhem that is radically altering the selective seascape far beyond the consequences of fishing or warming alone. The prospects are especially bleak for animals and plants compared with metabolically flexible microbes and algae. Halting and ultimately reversing these trends will require rapid and fundamental changes in fisheries, agricultural practice, and the emissions of greenhouse gases on a global scale.

Footnotes

• *E-mail: jbjackson@ucsd.edu

• Author contributions: J.B.C.J. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper.

• The author declares no conflict of interest.

• © 2008 by The National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A.

Link to abstract: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/08/08/0802812105.abstract

Scripps scientist Jeremy Jackson warns of mass extinctions and "Rise of Slime"

Oceans on the Precipice: Scripps Scientist Warns of Mass Extinctions and 'Rise of Slime'

Threats to marine ecosystems from overfishing, pollution and climate change must be addressed to halt downward trends

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, Calif., U.S.A., August 13, 2008

Human activities are cumulatively driving the health of the world's oceans down a rapid spiral, and only prompt and wholesale changes will slow or perhaps ultimately reverse the catastrophic problems they are facing.

Such is the prognosis of Jeremy Jackson, a professor of oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, in a bold new assessment of the oceans and their ecological health. Publishing his study in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Jackson believes that human impacts are laying the groundwork for mass extinctions in the oceans on par with vast ecological upheavals of the past.

Jeremy Jackson, Scripps Professor of Oceanography

BLOGGER'S NOTE: go to the link at the bottom of this post to get to the web page with the video cast of the interview of Prof. Jackson.

He cites the synergistic effects of habitat destruction, overfishing, ocean warming, increased acidification and massive nutrient runoff as culprits in a grand transformation of once complex ocean ecosystems. Areas that had featured intricate marine food webs with large animals are being converted into simplistic ecosystems dominated by microbes, toxic algal blooms, jellyfish and disease.

Jackson, director of the Scripps Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, has tagged the ongoing transformation as "the rise of slime." The new paper, "Ecological extinction and evolution in the brave new ocean," is a result of Jackson's presentation last December at a biodiversity and extinction colloquium convened by the National Academy of Sciences.

"The purpose of the talk and the paper is to make clear just how dire the situation is and how rapidly things are getting worse," said Jackson. "It's a lot like the issue of climate change that we had ignored for so long. If anything, the situation in the oceans could be worse because we are so close to the precipice in many ways."

In the assessment, Jackson reviews and synthesizes a range of research studies on marine ecosystem health, and in particular key studies conducted since a seminal 2001 study he led analyzing the impacts of historical overfishing. The new study includes overfishing, but expands to include threats from areas such as nutrient runoff that lead to so-called "dead zones" of low oxygen. He also incorporates increases in ocean warming and acidification resulting from greenhouse gas emissions.

Jackson describes the potently destructive effects when forces combine to degrade ocean health. For example, climate change can exacerbate stresses on the marine environment already brought by overfishing and pollution.

"All of the different kinds of data and methods of analysis point in the same direction of drastic and increasingly rapid degradation of marine ecosystems," Jackson writes in the paper.

During a recent research expedition to Kiritimati, or Christmas Island, Jeremy Jackson and other researchers documented a coral reef overtaken by algae, featuring murky waters and few fish. The researchers say pollution, overfishing, warming waters or some combination of the three are to blame. Photo credit: Jennifer E. Smith.

Jackson furthers his analysis by constructing a chart of marine ecosystems and their "endangered" status. Coral reefs, Jackson's primary area of research, are "critically endangered" and among the most threatened ecosystems; also critically endangered are estuaries and coastal seas, threatened by overfishing and runoff; continental shelves are "endangered" due to, among other things, losses of fishes and sharks; and the open ocean ecosystem is listed as "threatened" mainly through losses at the hands of overfishing.

"Just as we say that leatherback turtles are critically endangered, I looked at entire ecosystems as if they were a species," said Jackson. "The reality is that if we want to have coral reefs in the future, we're going to have to behave that way and recognize the magnitude of the response that's necessary to achieve it."

To stop the degradation of the oceans, Jackson identifies overexploitation, pollution and climate change as the three main "drivers" that must be addressed.

"The challenges of bringing these threats under control are enormously complex and will require fundamental changes in fisheries, agricultural practices and the ways we obtain energy for everything we do," he writes.

"So it's not a happy picture and the only way to deal with it is in segments; the only way to keep one's sanity and try to achieve real success is to carve out sectors of the problem that can be addressed in effective terms and get on it as quickly as possible."

The research described in the paper was supported by the William E. and Mary B. Ritter Chair of Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Link to article: http://scrippsnews.ucsd.edu/Releases/?releaseID=920

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- A U.S. scientist predicts continued overfishing will lead to the extinction of the Earth's edible species of fish and affect other levels of the food chain.

But Jeremy Jackson, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, says just the enforcement of fishery regulations would help prevent such extinctions.

Jackson says certain steps, if taken immediately, might reverse the demise of the Earth's ocean species. Those measures include establishing marine reserves, eliminating subsidies for fertilizer use and limiting fossil fuel consumption.

In addition to the extinction of edible fish species, he said without the immediate implementation of ocean-protection measures, larger dead zones and toxic algal blooms may form along the coastal zones of all of the world's continents, increasing disease outbreaks and inhibiting vertical mixing of ocean waters.

"Some may say that it is irresponsible to make such predictions pending further detailed study to be sure of every point," said Jackson. "However, we will never be certain about every detail, and it would be irresponsible to remain silent in the face of what we already know."

The study appears in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Bob Tisdale on the Thermohaline Circulation and SSTs

For those of you who understand these things:

http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2008/06/thermohaline-circulation-upwelling-area.html

and

http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003308.html

'Clock ticking' on global warming: UN climate chief

August 21, 2008

ACCRA (AFP) — Time is running out in the fight against global warming, the UN's top climate change official warned as a new round of UN talks got started here Thursday.

"There is little time left to get a solid negotiating text on the table. Clearly the clock is ticking," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"People in a burning house cannot afford to lose time in an argument," he said, citing an Ashanti proverb.

The Accra gathering must strive to "reach agreement on the rules and tools" that developed countries will use to cut greenhouse gas emissions, he told more than 1,600 delegates from 160 nations.

Ghana's President John Kufuor echoed the sense of urgency in his opening remarks, noting that his country was already suffering the consequences of global warming.

Rainfall in Ghana has decreased by 20 percent in three decades, and 1,000 square kilometres (400 square miles) of fertile agricultural land in the upper Volta Delta will be lost to rising sea levels and flooding if temperatures rise at their current pace, he said.

The expert-level meeting, which runs through August 27, is the third UN climate change conference since nations committed to adopting a binding climate accord no later than December 2009.

It is the last meeting ahead of a ministerial summit in Poznan, Poland in December where rich countries will be under intense pressure to nail down near-term commitments for reducing greenhouse gases.

The Group of Eight industrialised powers pledged to halve emissions by 2050, but critics say intermediate goals are needed.

"The real political commitment is short- and medium-term," Connie Hedegaard, the Danish Minister for Climate and Energy, told delegates.

"We have to speed up the pace. The negotiations here in Accra must deliver concrete results" about what technologies will be used to cut emissions, she said.

Africa is arguably the continent most vulnerable to the potential ravages of climate change, which range from extreme drought to violent storms to rising sea levels.

De Boer challenged delegates to be "ambitious," and said if they failed Africa would continue, in terms of climate change, to be the "forgotten continent".

He insisted that rich countries step up financial assistance to help Africa with global warming.

African produces the fewest emissions, he pointed out, but will likely well pay the heaviest price.

De Boer and Kufuor underlined the threat of deforestation, which is destroying one of nature's most powerful natural buffers against global warming.

The world's forests -- which are disappearing at a rate of about 30 million hectares (74 million acres) per year -- soak up more than 20 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

"Governments need to focus on reducing emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation," and on how to reward countries that protect forests, said de Boer.

The problem is particularly acute in Amazonia, central Africa and Indonesia, experts note.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an environmental group, called on the Accra meeting to adopt the Olympic motto of "faster, higher, stronger."

"Progress on substance ... must be swifter, the level of ambition by both developed and developing countries higher, and the measures to reduce CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions stronger," said Kim Carstensen, director of the WWF's Global Climate Change Initiative.

Link to article: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5isWchF3RS1ANEuNQHhuyL-_te_FA

At top of Greenland, new worrisome cracks in ice

BLOGGER'S NOTE: SEE ALSO THESE POSTS WITH SATELLITE PHOTOS OF THE BREAKUP, CRACKS, AND JAKOBSHAVN GLACIER:

http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2008/08/northern-greenlands-petermann-glacier.html

http://climatechangepsychology.blogspot.com/2008/08/jakobshavn-glacier-retreats-to-new.html

by Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer, 21 August 2008

WASHINGTON — In northern Greenland, a part of the Arctic that had seemed immune from global warming, new satellite images show a growing giant crack and an 11-square-mile chunk of ice hemorrhaging off a major glacier, scientists said Thursday.

And that's led the university professor who spotted the wounds in the massive Petermann glacier to predict disintegration of a major portion of the Northern Hemisphere's largest floating glacier within the year.

If it does worsen and other northern Greenland glaciers melt faster, then it could speed up sea level rise, already increasing because of melt in southern Greenland.

The crack is 7 miles long and about half a mile wide. It is about half the width of the 500 square mile floating part of the glacier. Other smaller fractures can be seen in images of the ice tongue, a long narrow sliver of the glacier.

"The pictures speak for themselves," said Jason Box, a glacier expert at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University who spotted the changes while studying new satellite images. "This crack is moving, and moving closer and closer to the front. It's just a matter of time till a much larger piece is going to break off.... It is imminent."

The chunk that came off the glacier between July 10 and July 24 is about half the size of Manhattan and doesn't worry Box as much as the cracks. The Petermann glacier had a larger breakaway ice chunk in 2000. But the overall picture worries some scientists.

"As we see this phenomenon occurring further and further north — and Petermann is as far north as you can get — it certainly adds to the concern," said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Center for the Study of Earth from Space at the University of Colorado.

The question that now faces scientists is: Are the fractures part of normal glacier stress or are they the beginning of the effects of global warming?

"It certainly is a major event," said NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally in a telephone interview from a conference on glaciers in Ireland. "It's a signal but we don't know what it means."

It is too early to say it is clearly global warming, Zwally said. Scientists don't like to attribute single events to global warming, but often say such events fit a pattern.

University of Colorado professor Konrad Steffen, who returned from Greenland Wednesday and has studied the Petermann glacier in the past, said that what Box saw is not too different from what he saw in the 1990s: "The crack is not alarming... I would say it is normal."

However, scientists note that it fits with the trend of melting glacial ice they first saw in the southern part of the massive island and seems to be marching north with time. Big cracks and breakaway pieces are foreboding signs of what's ahead.

Further south in Greenland, Box's satellite images show that the Jakobshavn glacier, the fastest retreating glacier in the world, set new records for how far it has moved inland.

That concerns Colorado's Abdalati: "It could go back for miles and miles and there's no real mechanism to stop it."

Ohio State University images and data: http://bprc.osu.edu/MODIS/

Link to article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080821/ap_on_sc/sci_greenland_glaciers



BLOGGER'S NOTE: rather than adding a new post, I am just pasting in a new bit here:

The scientists also said that the margin of the massive Jakobshavn glacier has retreated inland further than at any time in the past 150 years of observation.

They believe, moreover, that it has not retreated so far inland "in at least the last 4,000 to 6,000 years."

Jakobshavn's northern branch has broken up in the last several weeks and the glacier has lost at least 10 square kilometers (three square miles) since the end of the last melt season, the researchers said.

About one-tenth of Greenland's icebergs come from Jakobshavn, making it the island's most productive glacier.

The glacier lost 94 square kilometers (36 square miles) of ice field betwen 2001 and 2005, a phenomenon that drew international attention to the impact of global warming on glaciers, the scientists said.

Meanwhile, the roof of an ice tunnel in Argentina's gigantic Perito Morena glacier, 60 meters high and weighing thousands of tonnes, suddenly collapsed July 8, a phenomenon unheard of in the dead of the southern hemisphere winter.

Scientists blamed global warming for the collapse.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080821/sc_afp/usenvironmentclimategreenland_080821233046

Northern Greenland's Petermann Glacier front breakup, July-August 2008

SATELLITE IMAGES SHOW CONTINUED BREAKUP OF TWO OF GREENLAND’S LARGEST GLACIERS, PREDICTED NEAR-FUTURE CONTINUED DISINTEGRATION »

Petermann Glacier front breakup, July-August 2008

A 29 sq. km (11 sq. mi.) area of the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland (80˚N, 60˚W) broke away between July 10th and by July 24th, 2008.

Petermann has a floating section 16 km (10 mi.) wide and 80 km (50 mi.) long, that is, 1295 sq. km (500 sq. mi.), the longest floating glacier in the Northern Hemisphere.

Here is an animation of the breakup

This 2008 breakup is actually not the largest observed. Between 2001 and 2000, 86.8 sq. km (33.5 sq. mi.) broke away from the Petermann front. However, more breakup is imminent in the next year, for a large crack has widened while moving toward the calving front.

ASTER image courtesy of Ian Howat showing Petermann Glacier crack.

Here is an annual (2001-2007) animation Ian Howat made of the crack flowing toward the glacier front while widening.

If the Petermann glacier breaks up back to the upstream rift, the loss would be as much as an additional 160 sq. km (60 sq. mi), a loss of one-third of the massive Petermann ice tongue.

The Petermann glacier thins from 600 m thickness at the grounding line to 70 m at the terminus, see [1]. The crack is advancing to a point where a massive breakup seems imminent, in which case, the area of break-up would be 56-60 sq. mi. (147-160 sq. km).

Animations:

• Petermann front breakup: small (480×480), large (720×720)
• End of summer 2000-2008: small (720×405), large (960×540)
• Annual (2001-2007) animation Ian Howat made of the crack flowing toward the glacier front while widening.

Figures:

• Initial breakup 1: small (638×826), large (1276×1650)
• Initial breakup 2: small (975×413), large (1950×825)
• Glacier front position 2007-25 July 2008: small (720×540), large (1420×1080)

Work Cited

1. Rignot, E., and K. Steffen (2008). Channelized bottom melting and stability of floating ice shelves, Geophys. Res. Lett., 35, L02503; doi:10.1029/2007GL031765

Contact:

• Earle Holland (media relations), +1 614 292 8384; Holland.8@osu.edu

Link to article: http://bprc.osu.edu/MODIS/?p=25

APA psychologists rally to fight climate change fatalism

by Andy Coghlan, NewScientist Environment, 20 August 2008

FEELING blue about climate change? Don't despair. Psychologists say they can switch our mindset from fatalism to "can-do" optimism, making a unique and vital contribution to the fight against global warming.

On 15 August at the American Psychological Association meeting in Boston, Massachusetts, delegates vowed to expose, and help overcome, the psychological barriers individuals face. "It's so easy to feel overwhelmed and think: 'What can little me do?'," says David Uzzell of the University of Surrey, U.K.

Most people now accept that global warming is real and caused by human activity. Uzzell cites surveys carried out by the U.K. government this year showing that 80% of Brits are at least "fairly concerned" about climate change. A Stanford University poll conducted this August shows that 75% of Americans believe warming can only be reduced if individuals change their lifestyles. So why aren't we doing more?

A key deterrent, says Paul Stern of the U.S. National Research Council, is a lack of guidance on which actions would have the greatest positive impact. "Seeing a list of 50 things you can do to save the planet paralyses people," he says. "The usual behavioural reaction is to do nothing or pick a step you can do easily, such as switching out the lights when you leave a room. While alleviating people's anxiety, the actual effect of this is negligible."

To prompt people to take more effective steps, Stern has created a more manageable list of just 17 actions that have the biggest impact on energy use (http://tinyurl.com/59k2qo). These include changes to car use, which accounts for about 40% of a U.S. household's energy consumption, and indoor heating and cooling, which together make up 25%.

Equally crucial is telling those who take the plunge how much they are saving. "Instant feedback is really important," says Uzzell. "People need to see that their actions have effects that are local, immediate and concrete." Stern advocates energy monitoring devices that make savings more visible.

An under-appreciated barrier to action is the status conferred by some energy-guzzling products, such as large cars. "They're often sold as part of an image of masculinity," says Uzzell. "You're selling something larger than the product itself."

Though not at the meeting, Susie Burke of the Australian Psychological Society (APS) agrees. "One of the most vital things psychology can do is to help change social norms, so it becomes fashionable to recycle, for example," she says. "It's not brainwashing, it's acknowledging that humans like to behave in a socially acceptable way.

“It's not brainwashing, it's acknowledging that humans like to behave in socially acceptable ways.”

This week, Stern, Uzzell and others are drafting a global policy for applying psychology to climate change, building on a similar initiative last year from the APS.

From issue 2670 of New Scientist magazine, 20 August 2008, page 11.

Link to article:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19926702.900-psychologists-rally-to-fight-climate-change.html

Peak temps may rise twice as fast as average temps

NewScientist Environment, August 20, 2008

PEAK temperatures may rise twice as fast as average temperatures as climate change hots up. By 2100 Australia and north-east India can expect peak temperatures of 50 °C, while southern Europe and the U.S. Midwest could exceed 40 °C.

So say Andreas Sterl at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and his colleagues. They used an ensemble of climate models to calculate the peak temperatures the world can expect until 2100, given plausible future greenhouse gas emissions.

The team conclude that peak temperatures will rise twice as fast as average temperatures, resulting in increasingly frequent heatwaves. In particular, they say that by 2100, any point within 40° latitude of the equator will have a 10% chance of peaking at over 48°C each decade (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2008G034071).

Besides agricultural and environmental consequences, such heat will have serious health implications, especially for elderly people and those with cardiovascular disease.

During the summer of 2003, when temperatures climbed into the forties in Europe, 35,000 people are thought to have died as a result of the heat. Sterl and his colleagues predict that such tolls will become commonplace if people fail to adapt.

"At those temperatures you just don't go outside and you have to have air conditioning. Farmers might have to start harvesting their crops at night," says Tom Dowling of the Stockholm Environment Institute in Sweden.

From issue 2670 of New Scientist magazine, 20 August 2008, page 17.

Link to article:
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19926704.100-summer-scorchers-outpace-global-warming.html

Jakobshavn Glacier Retreats to New Minimum

Jakobshavn Glacier Retreats to New Minimum

MODIS image of Jakobshavn Glacier with lines indicating continued retreat.

The Jakobshavn Glacier front retreated 14 sq. km (5 sq. mi.) between 6-15 August 2008. [BLOGGER'S NOTE: Obviously, there is something wrong either with the sentence just above or with the notes on the photo. The conservative guess would be to say that the glacier has retreated 5 sq. mi. in the past year, not in just 9 days, although, on one occasion a glacier was seen to rush out at a speed of over a kilometer per hour.]

Jakobshavn Glacier is the world’s fastest continuously flowing glacier and the main outlet from the vast 1.69 million sq. km Greenland ice sheet. Jakobshavn drains 6.5% of the ice sheet, producing 35–50 cubic km of icebergs per year.

The 2008 retreat is to a position further inland than any time over the past 150 years of direct observation and likely is further back than during any time since the Holocene Thermal Maximum 4-8 thousand years before present, because the interim period ends with the Little Ice Age c. 1250 AD - 1850 AD glacier advance.

Of distinction from a retreat trend mainly at the faster southern branch of Jakobshavn Glacier since 2001, is the northern branch has retreated in the past weeks. Repeat altimeter measurements show the northern branch thinning in recent years at an accelerated rate (Ian Howat, personal communication).

Image with end of summer positions indicated. We measure interannual changes using end of summer images because glaciers reach a seasonal minimum at the end of summer.

Between 2001 and 2005, a collapse of the Jakobshavn Glacier floating tongue removed 94 sq. km (36 sq. mi.).

Additional Figures:

• End of summer 2000-2008: small (720×540), large (1420×1080)
• End of summer 2007-2008: small (720×540), large (1420×1080)

Animations:

• End of summer 2000-17 July 2008: (720×405) (960×540)
• 2008 movement: (480×480), (720×720)

Page Constructed by Jason Box, Russ Benson, and David Decker, Byrd Polar Research Center.

Contact:

• Earle Holland (media relations), +1 614 292 8384; Holland.8@osu.edu

Link to article: http://bprc.osu.edu/MODIS/?p=24

Zager and Evans: "In the Year 2525"

Link to YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQB2-Kmiic

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find

In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do and say
Is in the pill you took today

In the year 4545
You ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing to chew
Nobody's gonna look at you

In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine's doing that for you

In the year 6565
You won't need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube

In the year 7510
If God's a-coming, He oughta make it by then
Maybe He'll look around Himself and say
"Guess it's time for the judgement day"

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake His mighty head
He'll either say "I'm pleased where man has been"
Or tear it down, and start again

In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing

Now it's been ten thousand years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what, he never knew
Now man's reign is through

But through eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday

Parts of British coast may be "abandoned to the sea"

BBC, 18 August 2008

Lord Smith said coastal erosion was his agency's most difficult issue

Some parts of the British coastline are so badly eroded they are not worth protecting from the sea, the new head of the Environment Agency has said.

Lord Smith of Finsbury said work was already under way to identify areas of the east and south coast most at risk.

He told the Independent that the UK faced hard choices over which coasts to defend and which to leave to the sea.

Lord Smith said parts of north-east Norfolk and Suffolk were in the most immediate danger of collapse.

'Huge issue'

The former culture secretary said it would not be possible to save all coastal homes from sea erosion, but that the agency would do its "level best" to protect places where there were significant numbers of properties.

"This is the most difficult issue we are going to face as an agency," he said.

We are almost certainly not going to be able to defend absolutely every bit of coast Lord Smith Environment Agency chairman

"We know the sea is eating away at the coast in quite a number of places, primarily - but not totally exclusively - on the east and south coasts.

"It's a particularly huge issue in East Anglia, but in quite a number of other areas as well."

Lord Smith called on the government to assist families whose home will be lost, as ministers would not always be able to rely on insurance companies to cover them.

'Particular threats'

He added: "We are almost certainly not going to be able to defend absolutely every bit of coast. It would simply be an impossible task both in financial terms and engineering terms.

"We will publish next year details of the work that's been done, where we think the particular threats are, where we think there is current defence in place.

"We will begin to talk with communities where we think defence is not a viable option."

Lord Smith also said the government was not taking the environment seriously in several major proposals.

These included a third runway at Heathrow, a new generation of coal-fired power stations, and the Severn barrage tidal energy project.

Link to article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7567385.stm

Global Temperatures of the Last Five Centuries

Henry N. Pollack, Shaopeng Huang and Po-Yu Shen Summary Pollack et al. recently generated a global temperature reconstruction using a totally different paleoclimate proxy than those used in the other studies discussed on this set of web pages. In this study, underground temperature measurements were examined from a database of over 350 bore holes in eastern North America, Central Europe, Southern Africa and Australia. Using this unique approach, Pollack et al. found that the 20th century to be the warmest of the past five centuries, thus confirming the results of earlier multi-proxy studies. The geophysical methods used to generate bore hole temperature reconstructions do not permit annual or decade resolution, but only the century-scale trend in temperatures over the last several centuries. Nonetheless, this record, totally independent of data and methods used in other studies, shows the same thing: the Earth is warming dramatically. The instrumental record of global temperature change is also shown (in blue) for comparison.

For larger viewing version of these graphs please click on the graphs themselves. Link to Pollack Data and information... On to... "Paleo Data Before 2000 Years Ago" Back to... "Paleo Data of the Last 2000 Years"

Link to article: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/pollack.html

James Hansen: "We need politicians with the guts to say that..."

The current: Coal in the crossfire

by Bill McAuliffe, Star Tribune, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, August 14, 2008

The nation's leading climate scientist had a pointed suggestion for policymakers interested in reducing carbon dioxide emissions: no more coal plants.

"We need politicians with the guts to say that, but I don't see that," said James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who was in town this week for a speech at the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul. They "say the right words and set goals to reduce emissions, but their actions prove they don't mean it."

Coal is the largest remaining source of carbon-based fuel, so the solution is either to leave it in the ground or figure out how to store the gas emissions, Hansen said.

Hansen, who has claimed his findings were tempered by officials in the Bush administration, accepted the invitation to speak from Will Steger, a polar explorer and activist calling attention to the impact of global warming.

In an interview, Hansen said tax- or market-driven efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will be too little and too late to slow the chief cause of global warming. Half of the CO₂ emitted to the atmosphere today will be absorbed, largely by oceans, in 25 years, but it would take 1,000 years to absorb the rest, said Hansen.

Many states and several regional groups, such as the Midwest Governors Association, are working to set up "cap and trade" systems to establish declining emissions limits over decades, primarily for industries. Participants could buy and sell emissions credits.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty has been a driving force behind a regional cap-and-trade system, and both major-party presidential candidates also favor the cap-and-trade strategy. Fresh Energy, a St. Paul-based group that advocates cap-and-trade and other market-driven responses to climate change, was one of the sponsors of Hansen's appearance.

J. Drake Hamilton, science policy director for Fresh Energy, downplayed the different perspectives. "The really crucial thing here is that one of the world's leading scientists is drawing attention to the need for strong, bold action," she said.

Hansen, who first spoke about global warming to Congress 20 years ago, said he doesn't "give a lot of talks. I'm trying to maintain my credibility as a scientist."

Link to article: http://www.startribune.com/business/26967594.html

Atmospheric Scientists Map Pollution Decrease

[BLOGGER'S NOTE: this article is from last year, but it is full of good information that is still pertinent.]

What's In Our Air?
Atmospheric Scientists Map Pollution Decrease

Science Daily, May 1, 2007 — Spectroscopic images from remote-sensing satellites of the Ohio River Valley over 10 years have revealed a decreasing concentration of nitrogen oxides and nitric acid, precursors to ozone.

Scientists at NOAA confirmed pollution controls put in place 10 years ago are impacting us today. Now, the scientists say, with certainty, the "Clean Air Act" regulations that went into effect in 1999 are working today. Gregory Frost, a NOAA atmospheric scientist in the Chemistry Science Division in Boulder, Colo., says, "The air is cleaner in the regions where we have reduced emissions of a key pollutant."

The remote-sensing satellites work by taking images of nitrogen oxides, or NOx every three days. These pollutants are from coal-burning power plants. For example, the scientists took images from over the Ohio River Valley where there were hotspots of pollution. The 10 years of before-and-after data revealed a 40% reduction in pollution. Frost says the air over the Ohio River Valley is much cleaner now.

Frost says, "Our study is a really good example to the whole world that we can improve our air quality by our own activities." The study will now expand westward to individual power plant in the western United States. Next, the scientists hope to measure the reduction in ozone in the air we breathe.

The American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society contributed to the information in the TV portion of this report.

BACKGROUND: New satellite observations mark the first time space-based instruments have detected the regional impact of pollution controls first put into place in the 1990s. Locally, we can see results from actions taken less than 20 years ago. The new study focuses on the Ohio River Valley, but the results of the research impact the entire planet.

ABOUT THE STUDY: The Ohio River Valley is home to many large power plants, and the region produced a third of all US nitrogen oxide emissions from power plants during the 1990s. Those emissions drift downwind, producing ozone in urban areas hundreds of miles away. Utility companies, especially coal-burning power plants, started controlling their pollution in response to new regulations by the nation's Environmental Protection Agency in 1999. The satellites located above the valley contain remote sensing instruments that detect reflected light, and then analyze the colors of the reflected light to determine which chemical elements are present -- this is a process called spectroscopy.

WHAT THEY FOUND: High-precision instruments aboard European satellites have detected a 38% decline in nitrogen dioxide in the Ohio River Valley and nearby states between 1999 and 2005, even though electricity production increased during this period. Nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxides are two gases that form a group of pollutants known as nitrogen oxides, which are produced by burning fossil fuels. When combined with other gases and sunlight, they form ozone, a major air pollutant in smog. Ground-level ozone is harmful to human health.

The new data indicate that there should be lower ozone pollution across much of the eastern United States. The NOAA study is the first to verify from space that these single-point reductions have had a measurable impact on the atmosphere across the entire region. The study found much smaller decreases in satellite measurements of atmospheric nitrogen dioxide in the northeastern states, where the primary source is fossil fuel combustion in cars and other vehicles. The highest nitrogen dioxide levels were found in areas with combined urban, industrial and power plant sources, such as Chicago, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Toronto, Atlanta, Dallas and Houston.

ABOUT OZONE: Ozone is a rare element in our atmosphere; there are about three molecules of ozone per every 10 million air molecules, and yet it plays a vital role in human health. Most ozone (90%) can be found in an upper layer of the earth's atmosphere called the stratosphere. It is beneficial because it absorbs most of the damaging ultraviolet sunlight, which can cause skin cancers, among other conditions. The remaining 10% of ozone can be found in a lower region called the troposphere. Here, it reacts with other molecules to produce smog, which has toxic effects on crops, forest growth, and human health.

Link to article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0511-whats_in_our_air.htm

Climate Change Threatens One In Five Plant Species In Germany

A loser of climate change: Common spruce (Picea abies) is adapted to cool and humid conditions which are projected to prevail in smaller areas of Germany in the future. Water stress can increase the susceptibility of the tree species to pests and storms. (Credit: Tilo Arnold/UFZ)

ScienceDaily, Aug. 18, 2008 — One in five of Germany’s plant species could lose parts of its current range, a study by scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the French Laboratoire d’Ecologie Alpine reveals.

Species distributions will be rearranged as a result of climate change; this could have a dramatic impact particularly on the vegetation in south-western and eastern Germany. The researchers have modelled and recorded how the ranges of a total of 845 European plant species will shift under three different future scenarios.

Even moderate climate change and limited land use changes could have an adverse impact on flora, the researchers write in the current edition of Biology Letters. The research shows how important it is to limit global warming to two degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level in order to preserve broad biodiversity in plant species.

Sven Pompe and his colleagues from UFZ evaluated the potential impact of climate change on the distribution of 845 European plant species, 550 of which are currently found in Germany. The research team, which included Franz Badeck from PIK, used climate and land use scenarios up to 2080 based on possible temperature increases of 2.2, 2.9 or 3.8 degrees Celsius.

The impacts of climate change will result in local losses of flora. The reduction in the ranges of plants is a general trend, although some central and southern European species move in which were not previously recorded in Germany. The impacts will vary locally, with the greatest reduction in species richness likely to take place in northeastern and southwestern Germany. The effects in the simulations become greater as the temperature increases. With moderate warming of about 2.2 C, about 7% of species will lose more than two-thirds of their current ranges. This increases to 11% at a warming of 2.9 C and 20% at 3.8 C. The fact that the extent of change increases disproportionately to the projected increase in temperature argues in favour of the European Union's stabilization target of 2 C in order to protect biodiversity.

Saarland, Rhineland Palatinate and Hesse and the lowland plains of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony could suffer particularly high species losses. In contrast, the researchers expect the number of species in the low mountain ranges of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Thuringia and Saxony to increase slightly, with some plants moving in. However, for this to happen these species would actually have to reach these areas: climate change could take place too quickly for most plant species to adapt or migrate in line with the shifts in ranges -- polewards or to higher altitudes.

"Many plant species could lose their niches in habitats such as mountains or moors,“ Sven Pompe from UFZ explains. Migrating species from southern Europe could not compensate for these losses in the models. The marsh marigold (Caltha palustris), for example, is one of the losers to climate change. The changes in the environmental conditions in the scenarios will result in this species disappearing locally from the low-lying areas of Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony. In contrast, the common walnut (Juglans regia), originally introduced north of the Alps by the Romans, would find more areas with suitable conditions and could extend into eastern Germany.

This research was funded by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) with funds from the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety and as part of the European Union’s ALARM, MACIS and ECOCHANGE research projects. Impacts of climate change on biodiversity are being researched by UFZ and PIK in the joint projects "Protected Areas in Germany under Global Change -- Risks and Policy Options” and ALARM.

Journal reference:

1. Pompe et al. Climate and land use change impacts on plant distributions in Germany. Biology Letters, 2008; 1 (-1): -1 DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0231

Adapted from materials provided by Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.

Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres. "Climate Change Threatens One In Five Plant Species In Germany." ScienceDaily 18 August 2008.

Link to article: http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=579549341020421678

Climate Changes Creating Green And Flowering Mountains in Sweden

Young sapling of elm (Ulmus glabra) stablished close to the local birch treeline. (Credit: Leif Kullman, Umeå University)

Sweden's mountains are growing greener. At the border between woods and bare mountain, trees that require warm temperatures, such as oak, elm, maple, and black alder, have become established for the first time in 8,000 years. This is shown in current studies led by Leif Kullman, professor of physical geography at Umeå University in Sweden.

Over the last century, the temperature has risen by more than one degree. The cooling trend over several thousand years is broken, and this has triggered changes in flora, fauna, and landscapes. In important respects, the present state is similar to what occurred directly after the latest ice age.

“Most noticeable, alongside the melting of glaciers, is an elevating of the timberline by 200 meters. Bare alpine areas are shrinking, and typical Nordic mountain birch forests are losing ground to spruce and pine, which are more competitive in a warmer and drier climate,” says Leif Kullman.

The alpine landscape is becoming generally greener and more inviting. Many mountain plants have produced profuse blossoms as well as prodigious amounts of seeds and fruits in the last few years.

Plants that were previously limited to the borderline between woods and bare mountain are now rapidly climbing alpine slopes.

“The changes are so rapid that plants like fireweed (rose bay) and rowan have even taken root in the gravel up on melting glaciers. Even wood anemones are appearing higher up the mountain,” says Leif Kullman.

The alpine flora and biodiversity are thus burgeoning dramatically. More and more plants are migrating to the high mountains since the warmer climate is conducive to them, including contorta pine and cembra pine, which are not native to Scandinavia.

The distribution of the mountain landscape’s various plant communities is in flux. Certain plants, such as mosses and low-growing herbs, are adapted to a short growing period after the snow melts. As the snow thaws earlier and earlier, these plants have been replaced by brush and grass heaths, which has lent the mountain slopes a steppe-like appearance. Mountain fens are drying up, which means that sedge and grass vegetation is growing denser, new species are migrating in, and in some places glorious alpine meadows are appearing. At the highest elevations, formerly the domain of sterile gravel and boulders, fens are occurring.

Changes in flora impact the conditions for the mountain fauna. Leif Kullman has observed new bird and butterfly species, such as wrens and admirals, at ever higher elevations.

The knowledge generated by the current monitoring system is a precondition for models that describe the development of a possibly warmer future.

“The alpine world is evincing truly major changes despite the modest increase in temperature. Present prognoses of a temperature increase of three degrees by 2100 will entail considerably more sweeping changes. We can expect fewer bare mountain areas, even more lush vegetation, and a richer flora,” says Leif Kullman.

The studies were carried out primarily in Sweden’s southern mountain regions in the provinces of Jämtland, Härjedalen, and Dalarna. Data from more than 200 sites have been recorded at various times since 1915. There is no other series of this scope in the world.

---

ScienceDaily (May 18, 2008)
Adapted from materials provided by Umeå University, via AlphaGalileo.

Umeå University. "Climate Changes Creating Green And Flowering Mountains." ScienceDaily 18 May 2008. 17 August 2008 <http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/05/080516121650.htm>.