gear Push settings
The inevitable 2012 title was ‘Human population reaches 7 billion‘, surpassing anything anyone could have imagined 100 years ago. Now, we’re approaching a very worrying milestone – CO2 levels in the air will reach 400 ppm (parts per million), for the first time in human existence. CO2 levels have risen at a quick, steady pace […]
By observing several indicators, a team of researchers from Oregon State University’s College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences concluded that in as few as 87 years from now, temperatures are expected to be bigger than anytime in the existence of the human species. Paleoclimatic research is providing a more detailed look on how the […]
Within the next 50 years, numerous lizard species could become extinct due to global warming, a research by Daniel Pincheira-Donoso, from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Lincoln (UK) concludes. Not all lizards lay eggs – some are viviparous, and develop their embryos inside the mother’s body as opposed to an egg. […]
Here’s another consequence of global warming: our planet’s increasingly hot, wet climate has cut the amount of work people can do by 10% in the past 6 decades. Basically, hotter air tends to retain more humidity, and as anyone who’s worked in high humidity conditions can tell you – that’s not pleasant. When it’s not […]
Everything is connected on our planet; things you do on one side have completely unexpected but related effects on the other, and there is nothing truly isolated. Here’s a good example of just that: For most of the year, the Arctic is frozen. Hard ice and tundra is all you’re going to see there most […]
Why would the El Niño be important for the rest of us that don’t live in the western part of South America? Well because it also influences the climate in North America, Asia, Australia, Africa, even Europe perhaps.. so that basically means the whole world. The El Niño-the southern oscillation or ENSO is a sort of a […]
I’ve received lots of emails from you people regarding climate change; as it turns out, some of you are mad at us because we accept that man-caused global warming is a scientific reality. I’d like to express my thoughts in a simple pie chart: Bear in mind, peer-reviewed articles are the absolute standard for a […]
It was a warm, drought plagued year – in July 2012, farmers in the U.S. Midwest and Plains regions watched crops wither and falter, after a series of unusually high temperatures and low precipitations. However, as the lack of rain continued to make its mark scientists observed another indication of drought in data from NASA […]
The entire Indian population depends on good crops to survive, and good crops depend on the monsoon; according to a research conducted by a Potsdam University team, the monsoon could fail frequently and catastrophically over the next 200 years – as a result of global warming. There is already a noticed 40 to 70 average […]
Some 12,900 years ago, a massive flood of melted freshwater in the Arctic caused a 1,200-year-long chill nicknamed the “Big Freeze.” During this time much of the Northern Hemisphere was engulfed by centuries of cold, which caused the extinction of most great mammals, like mammoths, as well as the Clovis people. For decades, scientists have […]
In the wake of the Sandy hurricane, which is currently still sweeping through North America’s east coast, weather forecasting has suddenly become a subject of major interest. It shouldn’t take natural disasters, which are getting more and more frequent unfortunately, to spark interest in this matter of grave importance. Despite this, funding for space geosciences, […]
Hurricane Sandy continues to ravage North America, going strong at 150 km/h winds, and is expected make landfall near the New Jersey-Delaware border Monday night, threatening the entire Eastern Seaboard, with numerous people already being evacuated or preparing for this dire event. Before discussing matters further, I’d just like to express my entire sympathy to […]
Scientists have found hints that methane deposits, tucked away in seabed sediments, have began to breakdown from their frozen state. The shifting of the Gulf Stream from colder to warmer waters is to blame, the researchers note. While a significant greenhouse gas influx into the atmosphere might occur, the researchers conclude, based on their models and […]
We are living in a period with a significant trend of global warming – not natural at all, despite what many people would have you believe. Global warming and cooling are indeed natural phenomena, but when they happen either in geologic time (by far the most common), or due to some catastrophic event (say a […]
Though a barren, life-intimidating landscape, Mars still has the most resembling weather to Earth compared to the other planets in our solar system. Recent measurements beamed by the Curiosity rover, which touched down on the martian surface a few weeks ago, have confirmed the scientists’ theories of extreme pressure swings. According to observations, pressure variations can be […]
Yes, we’re living it. For the 330th consecutive month, it’s been hotter than the 20th century average. The National Climatic Data Center released some concerning data, to say the least. The globally-averaged land surface temperature for August 2012 was the second warmest August on record, at 0.9° Celsius above average, while ocean averaged ocean surface […]
As I was explaining in a previous article, Arctic ice is thinning and is expected to totally collapse in just a few years. But instead of investing and finding ways to deal with this problem, global powers such as China, the US and Russia are trying to get their hands on resources made available by […]
Arctic ice, a key indicator for global climate status, has reached another record low, lower than in computer estimates, hinting at a major disaster. A new record Researchers from the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center announced reached its lowest point on September 16, when it will cover approximately 1.32 million square miles (3.42 […]
Growing populations of hungry sea otters can become one of our powerful allies in the fight against global warming; why? Because they like to eat sea urchins. Global warming is reaching new records, ice caps continue to melt at an alarming rate, and measures taken by authorities are as rare as they are questionable. But […]
Scientists from Britain have found a remote ice rift valley, up to one mile deep, under the ice in Antarctica. The rift is similar in size and depth to the Grand Canyon and because it is direct contact with the warming ocean, it’s been found that it has a significant contribution to the unusual ice sheet melting […]
Researchers at the University of Delaware and the Canadian Ice Service recently reported that an ice island, whose surface is twice that of Manhattan, broke off from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier, one of the two largest glaciers left in Greenland connecting the great Greenland ice sheet with the ocean via a floating ice shelf. The 46-square-mile giant iceberg broke […]
A raging issue at the moment, in both government bureaus and bar chats alike, is global warming. Is it just a natural occurring event, part of the Earth’s climate cycle or, indeed, human-induced? Most scientists have repeatedly claimed, backed by scientific evidence, that the ever rising global temperature levels, along with various calamities sparked by a chain reaction, are […]
A groundbreaking climate change study, which contains data 2,500 times more detailed than previous studies, predicts weather patterns from 2041 to 2060 in the Los Angeles region. Findings show that the region is expected to heat by an average of 4 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of this century. This implies tripling the number of […]
NASA announced a truly unexpected phenomena, observed under the shrinking Arctic ice: a massive algae bloom under the ice. Not long ago, the life of this crucial plant seemed to suffer greatly, a worrying phenomena, as algae produces much of the world’s oxygen. The same year that NASA researchers launched the Icescape expedition to the […]
Yesterday marked the 40th Global Environment day, and this year’s theme was ‘Green economy’ – a sector in which, by far, Europe leads the way. When it comes to green energy and reducing the impact industry has on the environment, Denmark and Scotland stand out, by far – just think about Samso, the world’s ‘greenest […]
Typically, in the tundras, tree growth is hindered by very low temperatures, and usually, in the tundra, vegetation comprises of dwarf shrubs, sedges and grasses, lichens, etc. However, according to a recent study, plants and shrubs which colonized the Arctic tundra are starting to turn into small trees, a process which will accelerate global warming […]
A new source of methane, a gas which is many times more destructive for the environment than CO2 has been identified by scientists over vast areas of the Arctic, especially over the areas where the sea has melted. Researchers found massive amounts of methane being released in the atmosphere from the ocean through cracks in […]
A recently published study suggests that the Earth might have been visited by a giant space rock 13,000 years ago, an event which might have sparked an unusual cold period in the planet’s climate history. The Younger Dryas, also known as the Big Freeze, was a brief period of cold climatic conditions and drought which occurred […]
A recent study performed by a team of American/Chinese scientists shows that there’s a direct link between the progressive shrinking ice in the Arctic and in the increasingly harsher snowy winters in the US, Europe and China. In the year 2007, the level of Arctic sea ice hit a record low, which hasn’t recovered to this day. […]
For decades, classrooms were caught in a debate between creationism and evolution, and now, teachers will once again be caught in a somewhat similar discussion regarding climate change. Planting the seeds of ignorance Recently leaked documents from The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, revealed plans to pay a non-climate scientist to create school curricula […]
US-based scientists have successfully managed to engineer a microbe that reacts with seaweed to produce ethanol, and thus making it a new source of biofuel, an alternative to coal and oil. If the research can be applied at an economically feasible scale, it could finally set biofuels usage on an exponentially growth path, as seaweed […]
Apparently, parts of Greenland‘s southern bedrock rose by as much as three quarters of an inch after glaciers and ice sheets above its surface melted during 2010. In figures, 100 billion tons of ice melted that year according to Professor Michael Bevis who presented his findings at a conference in San Francisco this past Friday. The data […]
A new independent study conducted by researchers from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, has concluded that natural climate variability is highly unlike to have contributed more than a quarter of the total dramatic temperature increase the Earth has faced since the 1950s. The study concludes that man made activities resulting in greenhouse […]
Antarctica is the most the arid place on Earth. Its climate is so rough, so hazardous that no permanent human populace can live there, however just a few million years ago the harsh plains of the south and north poles had a subtropical climate – a paradise for life. During a transition period of just 100,000 years, […]
Researchers lately pointed out that delaying measures against climate change will make them more expensive and less effective; however, countries most vulnerable to global warming are startled by recent proposal received from rich or major emerging economies to delay a global deal to curb greenhouse gases until at least 2020. With the Herculean task of […]
If the current pledges under the UN flag to cut carbon emissions are not improved, then it is estimated that the cost of meeting the world’s targets regarding global warming will rise by half, according to OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Basically, these things have to be done, sooner or later, until it […]
Ulan Bator is a weird town; while some people live in skyscrapers, or big fancy villas, some still live in tents in the city outskirts. But they have plants to get even weirder: they want to keep the city cool by creating an enormous urban glacier. What they want to do is capture some of […]
Using a pair of satellites that monitor the Earth, NASA recorded over 10.000.000 fires throughout the planet; they then took the recorded material and created an animation with it, as can be seen below. The animation also includes vegetation, snow cover, cloud cover, surface temperatures, and more. Africa was by far the ‘hottest’ continent, being […]
For the first time, king crabs have been found on the edge of Antarctica, probably as a result of global warming, which has made this environment suitable for them, researchers claim. They suggest the crabs were washed in during an upsurge of warmer water, and that this can be extremely damaging to the local ecosystem […]
Studying the immense 2007 Anaktuvuk River fire, which burned 401 square miles and becoming the largest tundra fire on record, scientists have found that more carbon was spewed into the air in a few months than the entire Arctic tundra ecosystem normally absorbs in an average year. For the past 10,000 years tundra fires have been […]
According to a new study released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), tiny solid and liquid particles in the atmosphere, resulting from human and natural pollution, have kept the Earth from warming at the estimated level. The reduction of global warming effects by stratospheric aerosols has been significant for the past dozen years, […]
In the past decade, it seems that greenhouse has emissions have remained constant each year, despite no important improvements were made – on the contrary CO2 levels have increased dramatically. The reason, reports a team of academicians who sought to explain the bafflement, after tweaking a statistical model to include sulfur emissions, is that coal […]
There isn’t any news for anyone, I hope, that the Earth is on the heater right now, and as time passes and gas emissions in the atmosphere rise, you should be thinking about ordering that air conditioning faster. Yes, glaciers are melting, and like I mentioned before scientists have projected an increase in sea levels […]
Global warming is not an abstract element, it’s not harmless, and it doesn’t apply only to polar caps; it affects the entire world, including you and me. Taking a look at food prices Even though mundane things tend to become cheaper and cheaper, food has become more and more expensive in the past few years, […]
Late this Monday, the Mississippi crested in at 47.8 feet (14.5 meters), just less than a foot below the city’s record, set in 1937. As the river reaches nearby city neighborhoods and Shelby County suburbs, nature has “put the pin back in the grenade,” said county spokesperson Steve Shular. Floods are really nasty, but for […]
It is no longer a question if multi-meter sea level rises will happen, but only of when. According to the latest estimate from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme it seems the accelerated climate change in the Arctic including a thaw of Greenland’s ice could raise world sea levels by up to 1.6 meters by […]
By means of a new mathematical model, scientists have been able to calculate the displacement of ice in glaciers along the years. This was achieved by using the spread of glacier debris and the lines where vegetation starts on the mountainsides to create a series of calculations determining the amount of ice that has melted […]
It’s another bad omen for life on Earth, as a colony of imperial penguins from the Antarctica peninsula has disappeared, probably due to the warming of ice caused by global warming. It was expected that penguins would greatly suffer from the warming, but this is the first documented case ever of the disappearance of a […]
Despite the obvious differences, Venus has a lot in common with our Mother Earth, and we can learn a lot from our neighboring planet that can be really useful in the future; such is the case with the high-altitude layer of sulphur dioxide discovered by ESA’s Venus Express. This was a mystery that caused quite […]
When Al Gore’s famous documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” was released it was intended to sensify the public towards the impeding danger of global warming. What it did in turn was to sprout panic and institute panic worldwide by stating that only an immediate, draconian response will save our planet from almost certain doom. Of […]
