Atmospheric

Nationals MP George Christensen told Parliament that the hot temperatures of 1896 have been "wiped from the official record". It's a bit more complicated than that. AAP Image/Lukas Coch By Neville Nicholls, Monash University “How could it be getting hotter … if it was really hotter 118 years ago? It’s relatively simple: the early years are simply wiped from the official record.” – Nationals MP George Christensen, House of Representatives, October 29th. The Federal Member for Dawson is the latest to call for an inquiry into the Bureau of Meteorology’s climate data, joining others who have…

A new index to measure the magnitude of heat waves finds that under the worst climate scenario of temperature rise, estimated to be as much as 8.6 degrees Fahrenheit, extreme heat waves might become the norm by the end of the century. They project that heat waves like the one that hit Russia in summer 2010, the strongest in recent decades, could occur as often as every two years. The Heat Wave Magnitude Index is the first to try comparing heat waves over space and time. It takes into account both the duration and intensity of heat waves and can serve as a benchmark for evaluating the impacts…

Air pollution is harming India's wheat farmers. EPA By Zongbo Shi, University of Birmingham Researchers have long known that man-made climate change will harm yields of important crops, possibly causing problems for the world’s food security. But new research shows air pollution doesn’t just harm crops indirectly through climate change; it seems to harm them directly. Pollution from soot and ozone has caused a major decrease of crop yields in India, with some densely populated states experiencing 50% relative yield losses. To ensure the world has enough food, we need to look directly at air…

Tropical Cyclone Nilofar is closing in on the border between Pakistan and northwestern India and NASA's Terra satellite caught it while it passed overhead from space. Wind shear continued to affect the storm and from their image it looks more like a comet than a tropical cyclone. The MODIS or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a visible image of Nilofar on Oct. 30 at 06:35 UTC (2:35 a.m. EDT). Nilofar was still being affected by southwesterly wind shear, which was blowing the clouds and showers to the northeast. In the…

A recent study shows plants may absorb more carbon than we thought. Jason Samfield/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA By Pep Canadell, CSIRO Through burning fossil fuels, humans are rapidly driving up levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which in turn is raising global temperatures. But not all the CO2 released from burning coal, oil and gas stays in the air. Currently, about 25% of the carbon emissions produced by human activity are absorbed by plants, and another similar amount ends up in the ocean. To know how much more fossils fuels we can burn while avoiding dangerous levels of climate change,…

NOAA's GOES-East Satellite captured the birth of Tropical Depression Nine formed over the western Bay of Campeche, Gulf of Mexico and is forecast to make a quick landfall on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. The clouds associated with the depression stretched over the Yucatan Peninsula and into the western Caribbean Sea were captured on Oct. 22nd at 1600 UTC (12 p.m. EDT). A Tropical Storm Warning was placed in effect from Celestun to Frontera, Mexico. The National Hurricane Center noted that the center of tropical depression nine (TD9) was located near latitude 19.4 north and longitude 92.4 west.…

Children with autism spectrum disorder, a range of conditions characterized by social deficits and communication difficulties, were more likely to have been exposed to higher levels of certain air toxics during their mothers' pregnancies and the first two years of life compared to children without the condition, according to preliminary findings presented today at the American Association for Aerosol Research annual meeting in Orlando. Other epidemiologists have linked everything from living near farms to organic food to autism, and such studies don't actually measure anything, they just…

How much more glacial melting can the planet stand? NASA By Micheal Mann, Pennsylvania State University and Lawrence Torcello, Rochester Institute of Technology Industrial civilization must become technologically, economically, politically, and morally sustainable to hold the earth’s temperature below 2°C (3.6°F) higher than its preindustrial average. The problem is not insurmountable. It is possible, then, that we’ll benefit in the long run from having to deal with human-caused global warming, by being forced to mature politically and ethically. As of yet, however, the world has largely…

At 2 AM local time in Hawaii, Tropical Storm Ana was just below hurricane strength with maximum sustained winds near 70 mph. NOAA's Central Pacific Hurricane Center expects it to weaken before it intensifies again. The center of tropical storm Ana was located near latitude 20.6 north and longitude 162.6 west. That puts the center of Ana about 225 miles (360 km) west-southwest of Lihue Hawaii and about 325 miles (525 km) southeast of French Frigate Shoals. Ana is moving toward the west near 9 mph (15 kph) and is expected to gradually turn to the northwest.   NASA's Terra satellite…

Better get our heads out of the sand and run. Credit: Peter Byrne/PA By Erik Bichard, University of Salford The consistent message from those who would seek to exploit shale gas is that it has three distinct advantages over existing forms of fossil fuel energy: it is cheap, it has a lower influence on global warming, and it reduces the reliance in foreign imports. In the United Kingdom the ability of shale gas to replace substantial amounts of other energy sources is unproven. The International Energy Agency (IEA) says even high levels of shale gas extraction by the middle of the century…