Atmospheric

An analysis of noble gases dissolved in groundwater finds that the low-to-mid latitude land surfaces at low elevation cooled on average by 11 degrees Fahrenheit during the Last Glacial Maximum - the ice age. Prior to modern times, ice ages were about 90,000 of every 100,000 years. Since it has been 12,000 years since the last one, prior to concern about global warming there was concern about global cooling happening again. Yet 11 degrees is less than some notable marine and low-elevation terrestrial studies that have relied on various proxies to reconstruct past temperatures.  A well in…

A new paper finds that greenhouse gas emissions from standing dead trees in coastal wetland forests are not properly accounted for when assessing the environmental impact of so-called "ghost forests." Ghost forests are what is left of former forests in coastal regions where changes led to shifts in the height of land. As salt water moves in, dead, white, trees are created. North Carolina has some that can even be seen from space. The new analysis used portable gas analyzers to measure what are colloquially called "tree farts"; gases emitted by snags and from soils in ghost forests.…

Antarctica’s fourth largest ice shelf, the Larsen C Ice Shelf located on the Antarctic Peninsula, risks collapse due to mountain winds, according to a recent presentation at annual meeting of the European Geophysical Union. The Larsen C Ice Shelf currently experiences the highest surface melt rates across Antarctica. And scientists speculate that melt rates have been increasing in response to strengthening circumpolar winds that result from ozone depletion and increasing greenhouse gas concentrations. Yet ozone has plummeted since the 1980s and western nations have all reduced emissions, so…

COVID-19 has been worse than the coronavirus pandemics of 2012 and 2003 yet the air is cleaner than ever, so a new op-ed claiming that 'virtual' pollution - so small you can't see it without an electron microscope - is the reason SARS-CoV-2 has been so bad comes across as silly, and bordering on deceptive. Even sillier, they claim that 91 percent of planet earth lives in unsafe air. It's scientific nonsense - our air quality is better than at any time in the last 100 years - but the authors of the editorial have a fallback; that 91 percent number comes from the World Health Organisation, the…

It's become increasingly hypocritical for wealthy countries to declare a hard stop on CO2 emissions before poor countries even have centralized energy for cooking and water, but a new simulation finds that Draconian caps on quality of life in developing nations may not be needed. The greenhouse effect may be impacted by sulfate aerosols, often produced by fossil fuels and wood. While fossil fuels are going out of fashion in Europe those countries have increasingly been importing and burning wood pellets for fuel, where thanks to Paris agreement rules they wrote they are charging the climate…

In 2013, the U.S. government told the World Bank they would not help fund centralized energy in developing nations unless it used their pet projects, wind and solar. Which developing nations could not use much less afford. We set back sanitation and hygiene in places that need it most and forced them to continue doing what they had been doing; burning wood and dung for energy, including in home for cooking. Billions of people still do that because they lack centralized energy and the environmental costs are enormous. Even if those people had been allowed to switch to coal, emissions would…

A billion people still use wood for cooking and heating - and western countries are to blame. In the last decade, centralized energy production for developing countries was derailed unless they used solar or wind - neither of which are viable on their own. That leave families cutting and burning wood or dried dung for fuel, both of which are far worse for the environment than coal.  Yet there are other obstacles that even prevent people from even switching to local Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) - a belief that local firewood increases "wellbeing" for their families. It may not seem like…

In 1996 (or thereabouts) the new Meteorology building was opened at the University of Reading. The inaugural lecture was given by Ed Lorenz, widely regarded as the father of modern Chaos Theory. In this biography from the National Academy of Sciences, Edward Norton Lorenz, one reads At one point, in 1961, Ed had wanted to examine one of the solutions in greater detail, so he stopped the computer and typed in the 12 numbers from a row that the computer had printed earlier in the integration. He started the machine again and stepped out for a cup of coffee. When he returned about an hour…

Once upon a time, there were six different species of early humans. That's not science fiction, and they all belonged to the genus Homo, but only we Homo sapiens have survived. What killed  H. habilis, H. ergaster, H. erectus, H. heidelbergensis, and H. neanderthalensis? Nature exists to kill and birth so that seems a more likely culprit than conquest, and a new paper points the blame at one aspect of nature that dominated science media before the coronavirus pandemic - climate change. The authors combined climate modeling and conclude that climate change and inability to adapt to either…

Did you read a paper saying we can prevent ocean damage under climate change scenarios by dumping iron into water to spur phytoplankton growth? Germans did, and were so convinced they began doing illegal live experiments.  The model used a best-case scenario, which any entry-level chess player knows is a bad idea - they forgot to falsify their own hypothesis in their zeal to do something. A new paper notes that many ambitious climate action plans rely on climate engineering technologies where the risks are unknown. They are more like TED talks than real plans. Just like doomsday media…