longislandpress.com - June 12th 2016 - Rich Murdocco
The 2016 Atlantic hurricane season may have officially begun June 1, but there’s already been significant activity. Recently making waves, Colin was the third named tropical storm to churn up the coast before going out to sea, marking an early record.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted that 10 to 16 named storms will form this year, with four to eight of them becoming hurricanes. (VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)
WASHINGTON -- The amount of man-made heat energy absorbed by the seas has doubled since 1997, a study released Monday showed.
Scientists have long known that more than 90 percent of the heat energy from man-made global warming goes into the world's oceans instead of the ground.
And they've seen ocean heat content rise in recent years. But the new study, using ocean-observing data that goes back to the British research ship Challenger in the 1870s and including high-tech modern underwater monitors and computer models, tracked how much man-made heat has been buried in the oceans in the past 150 years.
Increased use of low-carbon energy sources instead of fossil energy sources is making it easier for countries to decouple economic growth from greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/Reuters
New report from green think tank Heinrich Boll shows OECD countries grew their economies 16% in last decade – and cut greenhouse gas emissions 6.4%
theguardian.com - by Bruce Watson - September 26, 2015
As the world works out how to avoid catastrophic climate change, one of the biggest questions remaining is whether we can continue to grow economically without also increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
Image: The Svalbard Global Seed Vault was opened on Feb. 26, 2008. Carved into the Arctic permafrost and filled with samples of the world's most important seeds, it's a Noah's Ark of food crops to be used in the event of a global catastrophe. AFP/Getty Images
npr.org - September 23rd, 2015
A tall rectangular building juts out of a mountainside on a Norwegian island just 800 miles from the North Pole. Narrow and sharply edged, the facility cuts an intimidating figure against the barren Arctic background. But the gray building holds the key to the earth's biodiversity. (VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)
Peconic Institute is committed to promoting a sustainable and resilient future. It is our mission to be an International Center of Excellence that communicates information and encourages new thinking. The Institute’s desire is to enhance the local environmental, social, and economic systems by moving toward a more sustainable and resilient future.
pubs.usgs.gov - by Benjamin T. Gutierrez, Nathaniel G. Plant, and E. Robert Thieler - November 2011
Abstract
During the 21st century, sea-level rise is projected to have a wide range of effects on coastal environments, development, and infrastructure. Consequently, there has been an increased focus on developing modeling or other analytical approaches to evaluate potential impacts to inform coastal management. This report provides the data that were used to develop and evaluate the performance of a Bayesian network designed to predict long-term shoreline change due to sea-level rise. The data include local rates of relative sea-level rise, wave height, tide range, geomorphic classification, coastal slope, and shoreline-change rate compiled as part of the U.S. Geological Survey Coastal Vulnerability Index for the U.S. Atlantic coast. In this project, the Bayesian network is used to define relationships among driving forces, geologic constraints, and coastal responses. Using this information, the Bayesian network is used to make probabilistic predictions of shoreline change in response to different future sea-level-rise scenarios.
More than 8 million people live in areas at risk of coastal flooding. Along the U.S. Atlantic Coast alone, almost 60 percent of the land that is within a meter of sea level is planned for further development, with inadequate information on the potential rates and amount of sea level rise.
huffingtonpost.com - by Dr. James Hansen - July 27, 2015
. . . 2°C global warming, rather than being a safe "guardrail," is highly dangerous. . . .
. . . My conclusion, based on the total information available, is that continued high emissions would result in multi-meter sea level rise this century and lock in continued ice sheet disintegration such that building cities or rebuilding cities on coast lines would become foolish. . . .
. . . A startling conclusion of our paper is that effects of freshwater release onto the Southern Ocean and North Atlantic are already underway and 1-2 decades sooner in the real world than in the model (Fig. 2).
By William Yardley, LA Times, June 23, 2015 | Photo: Jim Cole, Associated Press
EPA report cites benefits of reducing emissions, including at power plants, and of limiting climate change. This coal-fired plant is Merrimack Station in Bow, N.H. (Jim Cole / Associated Press)
Reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change could prevent tens of thousands of deaths and hundreds of billions in economic losses in the United States, according to a new study by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Escalators to the South Ferry Whitehall St. subway station in the financial district of Manhattan are shown flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. A new study finds that without human-caused global warming, the New York subways might not have been flooded. Photograph: HANDOUT/Reuters
The paper finds that global warming is putting extreme weather on steroids
One of the hottest areas of climate research these days is on the potential connections between human emissions, global warming, and extreme weather. Will global warming make extreme weather more common or less common? More severe or less severe?
New research, just published today in Nature Climate Change helps to answer that question by approaching the problem in a novel way.
