Constantine Alexander's blog

Our Sea, Our Life!

I am always star struck when I look at nature. Perhaps this is because we are all made from stardust forged in the heart of a star and infused with a whisper of celestial wisdom.

Like so many others, I have come to realize that our lives are completely dependent on nature that provides us with clean water, fruits, vegetables, grains, fuel, fresh air, seasonal climates, coastal protection, recreation and scenic landscapes around the world that will take your breath away. It is no wonder then that nature has been immortalized for centuries by poets, musicians, artists and explorers who have appreciated that which has too often been overlooked by others.

In spite of the extent to which we have unwittingly disturbed so many terrestrial and marine ecosystems in our quest for what is often termed as progress, nature in its infinite wisdom has so far been resilient against our unnatural and often toxic incursions, adaptable, forgiving and regenerative except in some localized areas which are experiencing an unnatural species extinction rate. This degradation signals to us that nature’s strength alone cannot endure the unnatural incursions that are increasingly reaching areas of the world previously thought to be impenetrable by man such as 1,500 meter depths at which fishermen can now trawl for orange roughy and areas beneath the blue-white Antarctic ice from which tons of krill on which whales feed are now being harvested for sport fishing bait, aquarium feeds and aquaculture.

After hearing from people all over the world who share a passion and concern for the preservation of life’s necessities as well as gifts from nature, this blog was launched to share with you international wildlife news, exciting environmental research activities, political action or inaction, and what each of us can do to ensure that the wisdom of nature endures for the benefit of us all as we are mere caretakers of nature for future generations of all species which have a right to thrive in and contribute to a healthy and beautiful world.

Constantine Alexander

Front-row seats to climate change

Amphibians and climate change

By day, insects provide the white noise of the South, but the night belongs to the amphibians. In a typical year, the Southern air hangs heavy from the humidity and the sounds of wildlife.

The Southeast, home to more than 140 species of frogs, toads and salamanders, is the center of amphibian biodiversity in our nation. If the ponds and swamps are the auditorium for their symphonic choruses, the scientists of the U.S. Geological Survey's Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative, or ARMI, have front-row seats.

Amphibians, which rely on water for part or all of their life cycle, must adjust to often atypical weather. Some years bring heavy deluges, such as the region's notorious hurricanes, and others bring the transformations that come with drought. Amphibians around the world seem to be experiencing the worst declines documented among vertebrates. While habitat loss is the number one reason for population declines, research suggests that disease, invasive species, contaminants and perhaps other factors contribute to declines in protected areas.

And then there's climate change, another stressor for amphibians to contend with. Climate change projections indicate that rainfall will increasingly come in pulses, with greater deluges and longer periods of drought. Scientists have long suspected that climate change is an important factor in amphibian declines, and resource managers are asking whether conservation measures might help species persist or adapt in a changing climate. Three recent U.S. Geological Survey studies offer some insight into the issue.

Why amphibians?

Amphibians, which are declining throughout the world, play an important role in ecological systems. They eat small creatures, including mosquitos, and they are food themselves for larger creatures, such as birds and snakes. Because amphibians are the middle of the food chain -- and sensitive to environmental disruption because of their aquatic or semi-aquatic lives -- their existence is often used as an indication of ecosystem health.

Scientists in ARMI, a program started by Congress in 2000 in response to concerns about amphibian declines, have been working to unravel the ups and downs of amphibian populations to support effective conservation and resource management decisions. To do this, ARMI scientists and field crews monitor the status of amphibians, research the causes of declines, and scientifically evaluate projects undertaken to sustain these species and their habitats across the country.

Pond life – it's not easy being green!

ARMI scientists looked at a range of amphibian species found in the Southeast and posed the question, "What will happen to their populations under a scenario of changes in rainfall patterns – more deluges alternating with droughts - which is being predicted by current climate models?"

It turns out that understanding how climate affects amphibians requires "thinking like the ponds" in which they live. Amphibians have unique life cycles – most alternate between living in water as juveniles, to maturing and dispersing on land, then returning to water again as adults to mate and lay eggs.

When USGS scientists reviewed what was known about amphibian responses to rainfall, it turned out that both extremes in rainfall – drought and heavy rainfall events – can decrease the number of amphibians. The amphibians' response depends on a balance between these two key factors. If ponds dry up while aquatic juveniles are developing, survival of the next generation is lowered. However, if a deluge occurs at that time, nearby pools that often contain fish will be physically connected with the pools containing juvenile amphibians, and the fish will eat the juveniles.

In essence, the study showed that extreme rainfall events are key to predicting amphibian responses to climate, because such events affect the amount and timing of water in ponds that they depend on. The full review of species' responses was published in March 2013 edition of the journal Biology.

Drought and declining salamanders

Knowing that each species responds to droughts and deluges based on the particulars of their biology, scientists set out to test just how these dynamics played out in the southeastern U.S. by looking at larval mole salamanders in small isolated ponds in St. Mark's National Wildlife Refuge, Florida.

Larval mole salamanders have a similar life cycle to the flatwoods salamander, a federally threatened species found on the refuge. Because it is difficult to study the flatwoods salamander directly, and mole salamanders are ecologically similar, scientists study the mole salamander instead, knowing that whatever affects them will likely impact the flatwoods salamander as well.

In the four years of the study, drought consistently decreased salamander occupancy in ponds. To support young salamanders, rain has to fill a pond during the breeding season and then the pond has to stay filled long enough for larvae to transform into the next life stage. Therefore, scientists confirmed that drought did indeed cause short-term declines in mole salamanders – suggesting that the listed flatwoods salamander may face a similar fate under climate change.

The results of the mole salamander study are published in the April 2013 edition of the journal Wetlands.

Can habitat conservation make a difference for frogs and toads?

To answer this question, USGS scientists examined whether the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service Wetlands Reserve Program was helping address the problem. The Wetlands Reserve Program is a voluntary USDA program offering landowners the opportunity to protect, restore, and enhance wetlands on their property. To assess the potential benefit of WRP restoration to amphibians, in this case, frogs and toads, USGS scientists surveyed 30 randomly selected WRP sites and 20 nearby agricultural sites in the Mississippi Delta in northwest Mississippi.

The scientists found that WRP sites had more kinds of species and was home to more numbers of amphibians than the agricultural sites studied. The restoration of wetland hydrology appeared to provide the most immediate benefit to the animals.

The study can be found in the March 2013 edition of the journal Restoration Ecology.

What's next?

With multiple studies pointing to the synergistic role of climate change, disease, habitat change, and other factors in amphibian declines, USGS and its partners are continuing their research to provide information which resource managers can use in making decisions that can help arrest or reverse declines. Additionally, a new study that provides the first-ever broad assessment of amphibian populations in the United States, and the first quantitative estimate of trends for amphibian populations at a continental scale, will be published later in May.

For more information, visit  the USGS Amphibian Monitoring website.

Contact: Hannah Hamilton
hhamilton@usgs.gov
703-648-4356
United States Geological Survey

The genome sequence of Tibetan antelope sheds new light on high-altitude adaptation

Why Tibetan antelope can live at elevations of 4,000-5,000m on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau? In a collaborative research published in Nature Communications, investigators from Qinghai University, BGI, and other institutes provide evidence that some genetic factors may be associated with the species' adaption to harsh highland environments. The data in this work will also provide implications for studying specific genetic mechanisms and the biology of other ruminant species.

The Tibetan antelope (Pantholops hodgsonii) is a native of the high mountain steppes and semi-desert areas of the Tibetan plateau. Interestingly, it is the only member of the genus Pantholops. Tibetan antelope is a medium sized antelope with the unique adaptations to against the harsh high-altitude climate. For non-native mammals such as humans, they may experience life-threatening acute mountain sickness when visiting high-altitude regions.

In this study, researchers suggest that Tibetan antelopes must have evolved exceptional mechanisms to adapt to this extremely inhospitable habitat. Using next-gen sequencing technology, they have decoded the genome of Tibetan antelope and studied the underlying genetic mechanism of high-altitude adaptations.

Through the comparison between Tibetan antelope and other plain-dwelling mammals, researchers found the Tibetan antelope had the signals of adaptive evolution and gene-family expansion in genes associated with energy metabolism and oxygen transmission, indicating that gene categories involved in energy metabolism appear to have an important role for Tibetan antelope via efficiently providing energy in conditions of low partial pressure of oxygen (PO2).

Further research revealed that both the Tibetan antelope and the highland American pika have signals of positive selection for genes involved in DNA repair and the production of ATPase. Considering the exposure to high levels of ultraviolet radiation, positive selective genes related to DNA repair may be vital to protect the Tibetan antelope from it.

Qingle Cai, Project manager from BGI, said, "The completed genome sequence of the Tibetan antelope provides a more complete blueprint for researchers to study the genetic mechanisms of highland adaptation. This work may also open a new way to understand the adaptation of the low partial pressure of oxygen in human activities."

Contact: Jia Liu
liujia@genomics.cn
BGI Shenzhen

BGI was founded in 1999 with the mission of being a premier scientific partner to the global research community. The goal of BGI is to make leading-edge genomic science highly accessible through its investment in infrastructure that leverages the best available technology, economies of scale, and expert bioinformatics resources. BGI, which includes both private non-profit genomic research institutes and sequencing application commercial units, and its affiliates, BGI Americas, headquartered in Cambridge, MA, and BGI Europe, headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, have established partnerships and collaborations with leading academic and government research institutions as well as global biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, supporting a variety of disease, agricultural, environmental, and related applications. 

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton & Harrison Ford Lead Provocative Conversation on Conservation

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Harrison Ford on stage for Conservation International. Credit: Conservation International

Conservation International Board member Harrison Ford and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton took the stage May 15 at Conservation International's 16th Annual New York Dinner to discuss the urgent need to preserve our natural capital. The conversation, which ranged from illegal wildlife trade in Africa to the effects of a changing climate on the Arctic, underscored the direct connection between conservation and our economic and security interests.

 

Research into carbon storage in Arctic tundra reveals unexpected insight into ecosystem resiliency

The US Arctic LTER greenhouse in peak autumn and early winter. Credit: Sadie Iverson (autumn), and Josh Schimel (winter)

When UC Santa Barbara doctoral student Seeta Sistla and her adviser, environmental studies professor Josh Schimel, went north not long ago to study how long-term warming in the Arctic affects carbon storage, they had made certain assumptions.

"We expected that because of the long-term warming, we would have lost carbon stored in the soil to the atmosphere," said Schimel. The gradual warming, he explained, would accelerate decomposition on the upper layers of what would have previously been frozen or near-frozen earth, releasing the greenhouse gas into the air. Because high latitudes contain nearly half of all global soil carbon in their ancient permafrost –– permanently frozen soil –– even a few degrees' rise in temperature could be enough to release massive quantities, turning a carbon repository into a carbon emitter.

"The Arctic is the most rapidly warming biome on Earth, so understanding how permafrost soils are reacting to this change is of major concern globally," Sistla said.

To test their hypothesis, the researchers visited the longest-running climate warming study in the tundra, the U.S. Arctic Long-Term Ecological Research site at Toolik Lake in northern Alaska. This ecosystem-warming greenhouse experiment was started in 1989 to observe the effects of sustained warming on the Arctic environment.

What they initially found was typical of Arctic warming: low-lying, shallow-rooted vegetation giving way to taller plants with deeper roots; greater wood shrub dominance; and increased thaw depth. What they weren't expecting was that two decades of slow and steady warming had not changed the amounts of carbon in the soil, despite changes in vegetation and even the soil food web.

The answer to that mystery, according to Sistla, might be found in the finer workings of the ecosystem: Increased plant growth appears to have facilitated stabilizing feedbacks to soil carbon loss. Their research is published in the recent edition of the journal Nature.

"We hypothesize that net soil carbon hasn't changed after 20 years because warming-accelerated decomposition has been offset by increased carbon inputs to the soil due to a combination of increased plant growth and changing soil conditions," Sistla said.

The increased plant productivity, caused by the warmer temperatures –– on average 2 degrees Celsius in the air and 1 degree in the soil to the permafrost –– has increased plant litter inputs to the soil. Unexpectedly, the soils in the greenhouse experiment developed higher winter temperatures, while the summer warming effect declined.

"These changes reflect a complicated feedback," Sistla said. "Shrubs trap more snow than the lower-lying vegetation, creating warmer winter soil temperatures that further stimulate both decomposers and plant growth. Shrubs also increase summer shading, which appears to have reduced decomposer activity in the surface soil by reducing the greenhouse effect during the summer."

The increased plant growth and deeper thaw, meanwhile, also may have enabled increased carbon availability in the deeper mineral layer that overlies the permafrost. In fact, the researchers found the strongest biological effects of warming at depth, a "biotic awakening," with mineral soil decomposers showing more activity, along with the increased carbon stock at that level. "It's a surprising counterbalance," said Schimel. "It may be that those soil systems are not quite as vulnerable to warming as initially expected."

However, whether or not this phenomenon –– no net loss of soil carbon despite long-term warming –– is a transient phase that will eventually give way to increased decomposition activity and more carbon release, is not yet known. Future studies will include investigation into the mineral soil to determine the age of the carbon, which may in turn yield clues into how the carbon cycle is changing at depth, where the majority of tundra soil carbon is stored.

Funding for this study came from the National Science Foundation Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program, DOE Global Change Education Program Graduate Fellowship, a Leal Anne Kerry Mertes scholarship, and Explorer's Club.

According to Sistla and Schimel, this research paradigm validates the NSF LTER program's commitment to supporting long-term experiments, because it creates opportunities for younger scientists to observe effects and condition decades after experiments are established –– results that could not have been foreseen when the experiments were started.

Researchers participating in this study include John C. Moore and Rodney T. Simpson from Colorado State University, Fort Collins; Laura Gough from the University of Texas at Arlington; and Gaius R. Shaver from the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Mass.

Contact: Sonia Fernandez
sonia.fernandez@ia.ucsb.edu
805-893-4765
University of California - Santa Barbara

Sea level: One-third of its rise comes from melting mountain glaciers

The Aletschglacier in Switzerland is a typical valley glacier and the largest one in the Alps. Its volume loss since the middle of the 19th century is well visible from the trimlines to the right of the image. Credit: Frank Paul, UZH

How much all glaciers contribute to global sea-level rise has never been calculated before with this accuracy. An international group of researchers involving two geographers from the University of Zurich has confirmed that melting of glaciers caused about one third of the observed sea-level rise, while the ice sheets and thermal expansion of sea water account for one third each. So far, estimates on the contribution of glaciers have differed substantially. Now 16 scientists from nine countries have compared the data from traditional measurements on the ground with satellite data from the NASA missions ICESat (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite) and GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment).

Combined with a glacier inventory that is available globally for the first time, the researchers were able to determine the glacier mass changes all over the world much more accurately than before. «The extrapolations of local field measurements to large regions and entire mountain ranges traditionally applied sometimes overestimated the ice loss», describes UZH geographer Frank Paul the findings from the satellite measurements. And his fellow colleague Tobias Bolch adds: «We are well aware of the weaknesses of the individual satellite methods. However, in highly glacierized regions the results obtained using the two different methods agree well. With the mix of methods that have now been tested and applied, we have come a major step closer to determining glacier mass loss with higher precision.»

Meltwater pounded at surface in accumulation zone, Columbia Glacier, Alaska, July 2008. Credit: W. Tad Pfeffer

 

Earlier estimates should be corrected

The results show that almost all glacier regions lost mass in the years 2003 to 2009, most of all in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and in the Himalayas. By contrast, the glaciers in Antarctica – smaller ice masses that are not connected to the ice sheet – made scarcely any contribution to sea-level rise during this period. This finding deviates significantly from previous estimates, saying that the Antarctic glaciers caused around 30% of the global ice loss in the period from 1961 to 2004. «However, neither the periods nor the data basis are directly comparable here», adds Bolch, «so we shouldn't make any premature conclusions in this respect.»

The results published in «Science» have important consequences for past studies: Bolch and Paul conclude by recommending that «Earlier global estimates on the contribution of glaciers to sea-level rise should be revised again».

Citation: Alex S. Gardner, Geir Moholdt, J. Graham Cogley, Bert Wouters, Anthony A. Arendt, John Wahr, Etienne Bertier, Regine Hock, W. Tad Pfeffer, Georg Kaser, Stefan R. M. Ligtenberg, Tobias Bolch, Martin J. Sharp, Jon Ove Hagen, Michiel R. van den Broeke, Frank Paul. A Reconciled Estimate of Glacier Contributions to Sea Level Rise: 2003 to 2009. Science. May 17, 2013. Doi: 10.1126/science.1234532

The UZH geographers Tobias Bolch and Frank Paul contributed important basic data for the study: digital glacier outlines for the global glacier inventory from different regions in the world for which no precise data were previously available. For example for Alaska, Baffin Island, Greenland, the Alps, high-mountain Asia including the Himalayas as well as own calculations on the mass loss in Greenland and in high-mountain Asia.

Contact: Tobias Bolch
tobias.bolch@geo.uzh.ch
41-446-355-236
University of Zurich

Who's your daddy?

Infidelity and paternity in reed warblers

Depending on the species, males have different strategies. They may try to ensure paternity by increased surveillance and fighting off the competition, or by having more frequent sex with their long-term partners. Others react by physically punishing unfaithful females or by reducing parental care once the – potentially unrelated – offspring has arrived. Herbert Hoi and colleagues of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, together with scientists from the Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, carried out experiments with reed warblers to see how a situation of potential infidelity affects later paternal investment in the chicks and whether it does in fact lead to extra-pair mating. They found that the males aggressively try to chase off competitors and to keep potentially "double-dealing" females in line. But whether or not they manage, they turn out to be caring fathers once the babies are born. The findings were published in April 2013 in the online journal PLOS ONE.

Reed warblers are socially monogamous, defend their territory, and both parents care for the offspring. Scientists of the Konrad-Lorenz-Institute of Ethology of the Vetmeduni Vienna for the first time tried to experimentally test the behaviour of reed warblers (Acrocephalus scirpaceus) after a potential act of "cheating" by the female. How does the male treat a competitor, and how does an "affair" affect care for the brood? To answer these questions they simulated an increased risk of adulterous behaviour in female reed warblers by briefly introducing a caged extra male to 31 reed warbler pairs during the female´s fertile period. In addition they played back recorded songs of randomly selected warbler males from the area. The scientists then observed nest building activity and feeding of offspring, and determined chick paternity through DNA analyses.

When the going gets tough

From previous observations it was known that male territory owners will aggressively try to chase away intruders (conspecific males) as soon as they detect them. This territorial behaviour is interpreted as a paternity guard. Herbert Hoi and his colleagues observed that all males tried to attack and chase away the caged intruder. When the female appeared to show interest in the intruder, the male behaved considerably more aggressively, both to the intruder and to his female partner. Almost half of the females did not even approach the newcomer. Herbert Hoi explains, "We think that the males are more aggressive when their partners are watching because first, it only pays for the male to show off when the "babe" is watching him, and second, he certainly has more reason to fear being cuckolded or even losing his partner when the newcomer approaches his female."

A "cuckoo" in the nest

Hoi and colleagues found that many nests housed nestlings fathered outside the pair-bond. This was the case both in the experimental and in the control group. Those females that had been observed to show interest in the intruder were also later found to be more likely to have extra-pair chicks in their nest. In addition, the results suggest that larger females seem to be more promiscuous.

Cuckolded males are caring fathers

The researchers then looked at whether offspring care was affected by paternity uncertainty. The results were surprising: Males seem to readily procure food for the chicks, regardless whether they are their own or not. Females, however, cared significantly less for their young if they had been faced with the simulated intruder. Perhaps the female´s potential infidelity had no effect on the male´s subsequent feeding investment because he cannot distinguish his own from an extra-pair chick. On the other hand, females who perceived their males as unable to repel an intruder quickly enough and therefore as a "weakling", then invest less in the joint offspring. The only chance a male has to ensure successful paternity seems to be to quickly get rid of potential competitors.

Citation: Hoi H, Krištofík J, Darolová A (2013) Experimentally Simulating Paternity Uncertainty: Immediate and Long-Term Responses of Male and Female Reed Warblers Acrocephalus scirpaceus. PLoS ONE 8(4): e62541. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062541

Contact: Dr. Herbert Hoi
Herbert.Hoi@vetmeduni.ac.at
43-148-909-15824
University of Veterinary Medicine -- Vienna

NOAA issues measures to protect marine mammals during Shell’s proposed oil and gas exploratory programs in the Arctic

NOAA’s Fisheries Service is issuing two incidental harassment authorizations to Shell for energy exploration activities in shallow waters in the Arctic during a limited period this summer. The authorizations specify measures to protect marine mammals and the subsistence interests of Alaskan Natives, and are informed by the latest science as well as lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

While the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) has primary responsibility to authorize exploratory activities on the Outer Continental Shelf, DOI’s conditional approvals of two Shell exploration plans for activities beginning in 2012 in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas each required Shell to seek incidental harassment authorizations under the Marine Mammal Protection Act from NOAA as one of a series of conditions prior to commencing any activity.

“We’re issuing these authorizations to Shell after conducting extensive scientific review and considering public comments,” said Sam Rauch, acting assistant administrator for NOAA’s Fisheries Service. “Shell will be required to put in place a number of mitigation measures that reduce or eliminate direct impacts to these animals and any negative effects on the ability of Alaskan Natives to conduct subsistence hunts for marine mammals.”

NOAA’s role in granting incidental harassment authorizations is to ensure that authorized activities do not harm or kill marine mammals, such as bowhead whales, beluga whales, and ice seals. Upon review of Shell’s application, NOAA does not expect Shell’s exploratory drilling activities to result in serious injury or death to marine mammals if mitigation measures are implemented. Additionally, NOAA does not expect these activities to alter the availability of marine mammals for Alaska Native subsistence hunters.

Under the authorization, Shell is required to follow measures to minimize effects to marine mammals, including:

• Using trained observers to monitor and record animal behavior.

• Lowering ship speeds when marine mammals are spotted during aerial surveys or by observers on deck, and flying helicopters at higher altitudes to minimize noise.

• Communicating with Alaskan Native communities about exploratory activities and vessel routes.

• Suspending operations in certain areas during certain times, so Native subsistence hunters can conduct their hunts.

These measures are intended to minimize the potential for marine mammals to be harmed and to significantly reduce the number of marine mammals exposed to activities that could adversely affect their behavior. Additionally, NOAA will review Shell’s monitoring results to use new information to modify mitigation or monitoring measures in future authorizations.

More information on the authorizations, the federal register notice and the biological opinions, is available online.

Study reveals scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change

A comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed articles on the topic of global warming and climate change has revealed an overwhelming consensus among scientists that recent warming is human-caused.

The study is the most comprehensive yet and identified 4000 summaries, otherwise known as abstracts, from papers published in the past 21 years that stated a position on the cause of recent global warming – 97 per cent of these endorsed the consensus that we are seeing man-made, or anthropogenic, global warming (AGW)

Led by John Cook at the University of Queensland, the study has been published today, Thursday 16 May, in IOP Publishing's journal Environmental Research Letters.

The study went one step further, asking the authors of these papers to rate their entire paper using the same criteria. Over 2000 papers were rated and among those that discussed the cause of recent global warming, 97 per cent endorsed the consensus that it is caused by humans.

The findings are in stark contrast to the public's position on global warming; a 2012 poll* revealed that more than half of Americans either disagree, or are unaware, that scientists overwhelmingly agree that the Earth is warming because of human activity.

John Cook said: "Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary.

"There is a gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception. It's staggering given the evidence for consensus that less than half of the general public think scientists agree that humans are causing global warming.

"This is significant because when people understand that scientists agree on global warming, they're more likely to support policies that take action on it."

In March 2012, the researchers used the ISI Web of Science database to search for peer-reviewed academic articles published between 1991 and 2011 using two topic searches: "global warming" and "global climate change".

After limiting the selection to peer-reviewed climate science, the study considered 11 994 papers written by 29 083 authors in 1980 different scientific journals.

The abstracts from these papers were randomly distributed between a team of 24 volunteers recruited through the "myth-busting" website skepticalscience.com, who used set criteria to determine the level to which the abstracts endorsed that humans are the primary cause of global warming. Each abstract was analyzed by two independent, anonymous raters.

From the 11 994 papers, 32.6 per cent endorsed AGW, 66.4 per cent stated no position on AGW, 0.7 per cent rejected AGW and in 0.3 per cent of papers, the authors said the cause of global warming was uncertain.

Co-author of the study Mark Richardson, from the University of Reading, said: "We want our scientists to answer questions for us, and there are lots of exciting questions in climate science. One of them is: are we causing global warming? We found over 4000 studies written by 10 000 scientists that stated a position on this, and 97 per cent said that recent warming is mostly man made."

Visitors to the skepticalscience.com website also raised the funds required to allow the study to be accessible to the public.

Daniel Kammen, editor-in-chief of the journal Environmental Research Letters, said: ""This paper demonstrates the power of the Environmental Research Letters open access model of operation in that authors working to advance our knowledge of climate science and to engage in a public discourse can guarantee all interested parties have the opportunity to review the same data and findings."

Citation: 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs and Andrew Skuce 2013 Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024

Contact: Michael Bishop
michael.bishop@iop.org
01-179-301-032
Institute of Physics

H1N1 discovered in marine mammals

Northern Elephant Seal (Mirounga angustirostris), Piedras Blancas, San Simeon, CA. Photo by Michael "Mike" L. Baird

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, detected the H1N1 (2009) virus in free-ranging northern elephant seals off the central California coast a year after the human pandemic began, according to a study published today, May 15, in the journal PLOS ONE. It is the first report of that flu strain in any marine mammal.

"We thought we might find influenza viruses, which have been found before in marine mammals, but we did not expect to find pandemic H1N1," said lead author Tracey Goldstein, an associate professor with the UC Davis One Health Institute and Wildlife Health Center. "This shows influenza viruses can move among species."

UC Davis researchers have been studying flu viruses in wild birds and mammals since 2007 as part of the Centers of Excellence in Influenza Research and Surveillance program funded by National Institutes of Health. The goal of this research is to understand how viruses emerge and move among animals and people.

Between 2009 and 2011, the team of scientists tested nasal swabs from more than 900 marine mammals from 10 different species off the Pacific Coast from Alaska to California. They detected H1N1 infection in two northern elephant seals and antibodies to the virus in an additional 28 elephant seals, indicating more widespread exposure.

Neither infected seal appeared to be ill, indicating marine mammals may be infected without showing clinical signs of illness.

The findings are particularly pertinent to people who handle marine mammals, such as veterinarians and animal rescue and rehabilitation workers, Goldstein said. They are also a reminder of the importance of wearing personal protective gear when working around marine mammals, both to prevent workers' exposure to diseases, as well as to prevent the transmission of human diseases to animals.

H1N1 originated in pigs. It emerged in humans in 2009, spreading worldwide as a pandemic. The World Health Organization now considers the H1N1 strain from 2009 to be under control, taking on the behavior of a seasonal virus.

"H1N1 was circulating in humans in 2009," said Goldstein. "The seals on land in early 2010 tested negative before they went to sea, but when they returned from sea in spring 2010, they tested positive. So the question is where did it come from?"

When elephant seals are at sea, they spend most of their time foraging in the northeast Pacific Ocean off the continental shelf, which makes direct contact with humans unlikely, the report said.

The seals had been satellite tagged and tracked, so the researchers knew exactly where they had been and when they arrived on the coast. The first seal traveled from California on Feb. 11 to southeast Alaska to forage off the continental shelf, returning to Point Piedras Blancas near San Simeon, Calif., on April 24. The second seal left Ano Nuevo State Reserve in San Mateo County, Calif., on Feb. 8, traveling to the northeast Pacific and returning on May 5. Infections in both seals were detected within days of their return to land. The report said exposure likely occurred in the seals before they reached land, either while at sea or upon entering the near-shore environment.

The research, led by scientists Goldstein and Walter Boyce at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine's One Health Institute, was conducted with collaborators Nacho Mena and Adolfo Garcia-Sastre at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, who sequenced the virus isolates and characterized their phenotypic properties.

"The study of influenza virus infections in unusual hosts, such as elephant seals, is likely to provide us with clues to understand the ability of influenza virus to jump from one host to another and initiate pandemics," said Garcia-Sastre, professor of microbiology and director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine.

The research was funded primarily through the Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance, a program supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and the Tagging of Pacific Predators program, a project of the Census of Marine Life.

Contact: Tracey Goldstein
tgoldstein@ucdavis.edu
530-752-0412
University of California - Davis

UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine: As a top veterinary school internationally, and a leader in preventive medicine and wildlife health, UC Davis has an extensive research and training record in the fields of epidemiology, surveillance, zoonotic diseases, comparative medicine, diagnostics, wildlife pathogens and conservation, food safety, disease prevention and outbreak response. The school has trained more than 800 international veterinarians from 75 countries, including hot spots in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Its One Health Institute and Wildlife Health Center manage One Health programs for people and animals ranging from the Pacific Northwest to Africa's Congo Basin and Rift Valley.

Canada must addess real climate-change challenge

Agreeing on provincial share of overall reduction target

One of the most alarming effects of global climate change is the melting of the ice caps, which threatens to flood many coastal areas all over the world. Credit: Canadian Space Agency

To reach Canada's goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 17 per cent below the 2005 level by the year 2020, federal and provincial governments, led by the Prime Minister and provincial premiers, must reach agreement on what portion of the total GHG reduction will be provided by each province say researchers from the University of Toronto's School of the Environment. Their report is being sent to all Canadian federal and provincial governments, opposition parties and other participants in the climate policy dialogue.

"Canadian governments have always known that allocation of reductions was their greatest challenge, but have refused to face that fact because they believed it was too divisive," said lead author Douglas Macdonald. "But experiences in other jurisdictions such as the European Union show that effective policy is impossible unless the federal and provincial governments stand up to that challenge."

This is because analysis by Environment Canada and the former National Round Table on Environment and Economy shows that current federal and provincial programs will only achieve half of the target by 2020. To reach the full target, governments must double their efforts. According to the researchers, that is impossible in the absence of a coordinated national policy, because each of the 11 federal and provincial governments is acting alone to implement its own climate change policy. "No single government will double its effort knowing that it alone cannot achieve the Canadian goal and with no guarantee other governments will also act," said Macdonald.

The basic problem which governments refuse to face is that GHG reduction imposes much higher costs upon the oil-producing provinces, in particular Alberta and Saskatchewan, than upon other provinces explains Macdonald. Understandably, the oil-producing provinces are less motivated than others, which mean their rising emissions will undercut action taken by other provinces or the federal government. But in the absence of any system for developing coordinated national climate policy it is impossible to reach agreement on how to share emission reduction costs and so ensure effective action in all provinces.

The U of T report draws on studies of the allocation problem in Canada and other jurisdictions to recommend that Canadian federal and provincial governments:

1. Establish a federal-provincial process of coordinated climate-change policy development, led by First Ministers
2. Use that process to reach agreement on an equitable sharing of the over-all cost, using mechanisms such as differing provincial targets or financial assistance for those affected
3. Set the new post-2020 target, as Canada has agreed to do under the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change 2011 Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, at home with full agreement of the provinces including agreement on GHG reduction allocation, rather than having the target set by the federal government alone at an international conference.

"The present system is not working," said Macdonald. "We need to do things differently and the EU, and to a lesser extent Australia and Germany, offer models for addressing Canada's need to share the cost of GHG reductions in a way in which those in all parts of the country believe is fair and reasonable. We need leadership from the Prime Minister and all provincial Premiers. They have to start working together."

The executive summary and the full report Allocating Canadian greenhouse gas emission reductions amongst sources and provinces: learning from the EU, Australia and Germany are available at uoft.me/allocate

The report is the result of a three-year study done by faculty and graduate students at the University of Toronto, Technische Universitat Darmstadt, Germany and Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Funding was provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. "We hope to start a badly needed conversation in Canada," Macdonald said.

Contact: Kim Luke
kim.luke@utoronto.ca
416-978-4352
University of Toronto

Emotional response to climate change influences whether we seek or avoid further information

People with negative feelings toward climate change seek out more information, study finds

Sixty-two percent of Americans now say they believe that global warming is happening, but 46 percent say they are "very sure" or "extremely sure" that it is not. Only 49 percent know why it is occurring, and about as many say they're not worried about it, according to the April report of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication.

Because information about climate change is ubiquitous in the media, researchers at the University at Buffalo and the University of Texas, Austin, looked at why many Americans know so little about its causes and why many are not interested in finding out more.

The study, "What, Me Worry? The Role of Affect in Information Seeking and Avoidance" was conducted by Z. Janet Yang, PhD, assistant professor of communication at UB, and Lee Ann Kahlor, PhD, associate professor of public relations and advertising at UT Austin. It was published in the April 2013 issue of the journal Science Communication and is available at this address.

Yang says, "Our key variables of interest were 'information seeking' and 'information avoidance.'

"We found that emotions have different impacts on both behaviors and that those with whom we socialize also are an important influence on our communication behaviors."

In particular, according to Yang, the study found:

• Those who had negative feelings toward climate change – feelings marked by states of fear, depression, anxiety, etc., – actively sought more information about climate change. They also saw climate change as having serious risks, and considered their current knowledge about it insufficient.
• Those driven by a positive affect toward climate change – an emotional state marked by hopefulness, excitement, happiness, etc. – actively avoided exposure to additional information on the issue. They also said climate change presented little risk to nature and humans, and they viewed their knowledge about climate change as sufficient.
• Our social environment has the potential to strongly influence whether we seek or avoid climate change information. This, the researchers say, may be because we are most often around people who agree with us about important issues, reinforce our perception of risk and support or discourage further action.

The study involved an online survey of 736 undergraduates from two large U.S. universities (61.3 percent female, 62.5 percent white, median family income, $90,000).

The research survey was developed and executed using Qualtrics software and was designed to ascertain:

• The subjects' general affect in relation to climate change – positive (excited, hopeful, happy) or negative (concerned, worried, anxious)
• How much information about climate change they thought they had and how much more they thought they needed
• How severe they found the threat of climate change to be to themselves and to nature, and its impact around the world
• How valuable they thought seeking information on the subject would be to them
• How much they valued others' opinions toward seeking information about climate change
• The confidence each had in his or her ability to find information about climate change

"Earlier research in social psychology has found that emotion, both positive and negative, is motivational and involves action tendency and action readiness," Yang explains.

"Those with a negative affect may seek out information, even if it includes negative predictions, in order to reduce their uncertainty and perhaps reassert control over the situation," says Yang.

"On the other hand, those with a positive affect who say they avoid seeking information may do so because they want to maintain their uncertainty – and their emotional equilibrium – from negative information that might upset them as well as contradict the attitudes of their social support group."

The researchers say the study results present several ways to improve the communication of risk information related to climate change. They say the data on subjects' reported information sufficiency suggests that risk communication about climate change might benefit from these approaches:

• Arousing a sense of curiosity and debunking false beliefs about ecological risks so people are not complacent about what they already know
• Highlighting potential negative consequences and fostering a positive attitude toward learning about climate change
• Monitoring the audience's social environment and its perceived ability for finding and understanding information about climate change
• Promoting optimism that human action, such as reducing greenhouse gas, could actually combat the consequences of climate change.

Yang conducts research centered on the communication of risk information related to science, health and environmental issues, and on social cognitive variables that influence information seeking and processing, health decision making and public perception of environmental and health risks.

Kahlor's research is centered on health and environmental risk communication with an emphasis on mass communication of complex science and information seeking.

Contact: Patricia Donovan
pdonovan@buffalo.edu
716-645-4602
University at Buffalo

"Fish thermometer" reveals long-standing, global impact of climate change

Credit: The Pew Ocean Science Division of The Pew Charitable Trusts

Climate change has been impacting global fisheries for the past four decades by driving species towards cooler, deeper waters, according to University of British Columbia scientists.

In a Nature study published this week, UBC researchers used temperature preferences of fish and other marine species as a sort of "thermometer" to assess effects of climate change on the world's oceans between 1970 and 2006.

They found that global fisheries catches were increasingly dominated by warm-water species as a result of fish migrating towards the poles in response to rising ocean temperatures.

"One way for marine animals to respond to ocean warming is by moving to cooler regions," says the study's lead author William Cheung, an assistant professor at UBC's Fisheries Centre. "As a result, places like New England on the northeast coast of the U.S. saw new species typically found in warmer waters, closer to the tropics.

"Meanwhile in the tropics, climate change meant fewer marine species and reduced catches, with serious implications for food security."

"We've been talking about climate change as if it's something that's going to happen in the distant future – our study shows that it has been affecting our fisheries and oceans for decades," says Daniel Pauly, principal investigator with UBC's Sea Around Us Project and the study's co-author. "These global changes have implications for everyone in every part of the planet."

• Download "Warming Oceans Are Reshaping Fisheries" (PDF)

Contact: William Cheung
w.cheung@fisheries.ubc.ca
778-837-7252
University of British Columbia

Fall warming on Antarctic Peninsula driven by tropically forced circulation

The German research vessel, Polarstern, is shown off the Rothera station on the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. Rothera is one of eight stations that provided temperature data for this research. Credit: Hannes Grobe/Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research

The eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula, a finger of the southern polar continent that juts toward South America, has experienced summer warming of perhaps a half-degree per decade – a greater rate than possibly anywhere else on Earth – in the last 50 years, and that warming is largely attributed to human causes.

But new University of Washington research shows that the Southern Hemisphere's fall months – March, April and May – are the only time when there has been extensive warming over the entire peninsula, and that is largely governed by atmospheric circulation patterns originating in the tropics.

The autumn warming also brings a notable reduction in sea ice cover in the Bellingshausen Sea off the peninsula's west coast, and more open water leads to warmer temperatures on nearby land in winter and spring (June through November), said Qinghua Ding, a UW research associate in Earth and space sciences. In fact, the most significant warming on the west side of the peninsula in recent decades has occurred during the winter.

"Local northerly wind pushes warmer air from midlatitudes of the Southern Ocean to the peninsula, and the northern wind favors warming of the land and sea ice reduction," said Ding.

He is the lead author of a paper explaining the findings, published online this month in the Journal of Climate. Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences, is co-author. The work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

The scientists analyzed temperature data gathered from 1979 through 2009 at eight stations on the Antarctic Peninsula. The stations were selected because each has reliable monthly data for at least 95 percent of the study period. They also used two different sets of data, one from Europe and the other from NASA, that combine surface observations, satellite temperature data and modeling.

The Antarctic Peninsula (in box) extends northward from the main part of the continent toward South America. Credit: CIA World Factbook

The researchers concluded that the nonsummer Antarctic Peninsula warming is being driven by large-scale atmospheric circulation originating in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. There, the warm sea surface generates an atmospheric phenomenon called a Rossby wave train, which reaches the Antarctic Peninsula and alters the local circulation to warm the region.

The sea-surface temperature trend in the tropical Pacific is related to natural phenomena such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (El Niño and La Niña) and cycles that occur on longer timescales, sometimes decades. But it is not clear whether human causes play a role in that trend.

"We still lack a very clear understanding of the tropical natural variability, of what that dynamic is," Ding said.

He said that in the next two or three decades it is quite possible that natural variability and forcing from human factors will play equivalent roles in temperature changes on the Antarctic Peninsula, but after that the forcing from human causes will likely play a larger role.

"If these trends continue, we will continue to see warming in the peninsular region, there is no doubt," Ding said.

Reference: Temperature change on the Antarctic Peninsula linked to the tropical Pacific
Qinghua Ding and Eric J. Steig.Journal of Climate 2013 ; doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00729.1

Contact: Vince Stricherz
vinces@uw.edu
206-543-2580
University of Washington

UCLA study shows warming in central China greater than most climate models indicated

China's Loess Plateau. Credit: Gaojun Li

Temperatures in central China are 10 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit hotter today than they were 20,000 years ago, during the last ice age, UCLA researchers report — an increase two to four times greater than many scientists previously thought.

The findings, published today in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could help researchers develop more accurate models of past climate change and better predict such changes in the future.

"Previously, we could only infer temperature on land through changes in climate archives like tree rings or pollen over time," said lead author Robert Eagle, a UCLA researcher in the department of Earth and space sciences. "This is the first time that temperature has been determined accurately on land at the time of the last ice age."

To make their temperature measurements, the scientists used a technique known as clumped isotope thermometry, which detects subtle atomic differences in calcium carbonate, a compound commonly found in rocks, snail shells and wind-blown dust deposits known as loess. The method is the most accurate land-based temperature-determination tool available today.

"We can now tell what temperatures were on land 20,000 years ago with more accuracy than was ever previously possible," said senior author Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

Tripati and Eagle chose to study the Loess Plateau in central China, a 250,000-square-mile agricultural region some 500 miles southwest of Beijing, because of its wide expanses of loess, the silty sediments that give the area its name and which contain deposits from the last ice age.

"We can calculate temperatures and reconstruct the chemistry of rainwater from the past ice age, then compare this to the present day climate in specific regions," Eagle said. "We can then use this information to validate current climate models and study atmospheric processes."

The researchers collected two unique ice age sample types from the Loess Plateau region: fossilized land-snail shells and soil deposits. While snails calcify quickly over just a few years, soil carbonates grow over longer time periods, ranging from a few hundred to thousands of years. Eagle and Tripati used clumped isotope thermometry to determine the temperature at which these samples formed roughly 20,000 years ago.

"One of the most important aspects of the study was showing that we could get the same result from such different types of carbonates," said Tripati, who is also a member of UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. "Even though these materials integrate over very different time frames, they gave us the same result."

Comparing the findings with climate models

When Eagle and Tripati matched their findings against climate models predicting the change in temperature in central China from the previous ice age to the present, they found that those models that took into account atmospheric processes tended to be more accurate.

"The climate models that did the best job of resolving temperature changes in this region were the ones that accurately depicted very large-scale atmospheric processes, such as patterns of winds in the atmosphere, the position of the jet stream and various atmospheric fronts," Tripati said. "The models that didn't resolve these atmospheric phenomena tended to do a poorer job of predicting temperature.

"It's so important to have models that accurately depict regional climates on land for the study of past and future climate change. We were surprised at how poorly most climate models predicted temperature change in central China and also surprised at how sensitive this region has been to changes in climate forcing."

Since the last ice age, numerous factors have influenced changes in global wind and precipitation patterns in Earth's atmosphere. Atmospheric processes move in relation to a standing, stationary wave, which is an oscillating reference point that wraps around our planet like an invisible piece of string. The position of that wave around our planet has changed over time. Contributing factors have been a rise in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, changes in incoming solar radiation and changes in the amount of ice covering the Earth's surface.

For example, ice sheets can deflect the stationary waves so that winds and precipitation patterns fall more frequently in certain locations on the planet. But as ice has melted over the last 20,000 years, the stationary waves have shifted, influencing the circulation of the atmosphere.

"Clumped isotope thermometry has allowed us to say with more confidence how temperatures have warmed in central China, and how the chemistry of rainfall has changed. The climate models that did the best job of simulating temperature changes seemed to also be the ones to give the best depiction of changes in water cycling in this region," Tripati said. "Our results suggest that in this region, temperature, water cycling and winds are very sensitive to changing climate forcing. Rises in greenhouse gas levels, melting ice sheets and changes in solar radiation can all affect not only temperature but precipitation and winds as well."

"We have not dissected out the specific role of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, in this study, but they are certainly a contributing factor to temperature change and ice-sheet extent," Eagle said.

The climate model developed by researchers at France's Institut Pierre Simon Laplace des sciences de l'Environnement Global (the IPSL model) closely matched the data for this region in this study, but it has traditionally been one of the less frequently used climate models for predicting future climate change.

"That is quite extraordinary," said Eagle, "because while more commonly used models have simulated a very small amount of temperature change in the region, that prediction was not validated by our data."

Types of sediment similar to that found in central China exist in the Midwestern U.S., ranging from Mississippi to Nebraska, and they are currently being studied by scientists at UCLA.

"One of the things we're doing is measuring samples from the loess deposits in the Midwestern U.S. to see how climate has changed in these regions," Tripati said. "These deposits were also formed at the time of the last ice age and contain similar types of snail and soil carbonates that we analyzed in central China. It will be interesting to repeat a similar investigation in this region."

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation. Significant contributions to the research were made by Eagle and Tripati at UCLA; Gaojun Li, a faculty member at Nanjing University in China; UCLA collaborators Jonathan L. Mitchell, Ulrike Seibt and David Neelin; and Camille Risi, a research scientist at the Laboratory of Dynamic Meterology (LMD/IPSL) at the Center for National Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, France.

Contact: Stuart Wolpert
swolpert@support.ucla.edu
310-206-0511
University of California - Los Angeles

UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of more than 40,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer 337 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Six alumni and six faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.

Scientists find extensive glacial retreat in Mount Everest region

A new study finds a decline in snow and ice on Mount Everest (second peak from left) and nearby mountains. Credit: Pavel Novak

Researchers taking a new look at the snow and ice covering Mount Everest and the national park that surrounds it are finding abundant evidence that the world's tallest peak is shedding its frozen cloak. The scientists have also been studying temperature and precipitation trends in the area and found that the Everest region has been warming while snowfall has been declining since the early 1990s.

Members of the team conducting these studies will present their findings on May 14 at the Meeting of the Americas in Cancun, Mexico - a scientific conference organized and co-sponsored by the American Geophysical Union.

Glaciers in the Mount Everest region have shrunk by 13 percent in the last 50 years and the snowline has shifted upward by 180 meters (590 feet), according to Sudeep Thakuri, who is leading the research as part of his PhD graduate studies at the University of Milan in Italy.

Glaciers smaller than one square kilometer are disappearing the fastest and have experienced a 43 percent decrease in surface area since the 1960s. Because the glaciers are melting faster than they are replenished by ice and snow, they are revealing rocks and debris that were previously hidden deep under the ice. These debris-covered sections of the glaciers have increased by about 17 percent since the 1960s, according to Thakuri. The ends of the glaciers have also retreated by an average of 400 meters since 1962, his team found.

The researchers suspect that the decline of snow and ice in the Everest region is from human-generated greenhouse gases altering global climate. However, they have not yet established a firm connection between the mountains' changes and climate change, Thakuri said.

He and his team determined the extent of glacial change on Everest and the surrounding 1,148 square kilometer (713 square mile) Sagarmatha National Park by compiling satellite imagery and topographic maps and reconstructing the glacial history. Their statistical analysis shows that the majority of the glaciers in the national park are retreating at an increasing rate, Thakuri said.

To evaluate the temperature and precipitation patterns in the area, Thakuri and his colleagues have been analyzing hydro- meteorological data from the Nepal Climate Observatory stations and Nepal's Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. The researchers found that the Everest region has undergone a 0.6 degree Celsius (1.08 degrees Fahrenheit) increase in temperature and 100 millimeter (3.9 inches) decrease in precipitation during the pre-monsoon and winter months since 1992.

In subsequent research, Thakuri plans on exploring the climate- glacier relationship further with the aim of integrating the glaciological, hydrological and climatic data to understand the behavior of the hydrological cycle and future water availability.

"The Himalayan glaciers and ice caps are considered a water tower for Asia since they store and supply water downstream during the dry season," said Thakuri. "Downstream populations are dependent on the melt water for agriculture, drinking, and power production."

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Water Research Institute-Italian National Research Council are funding this research.

Contact: Sarah Charley
scharley@agu.org
202-777-7516
American Geophysical Union

Cooling ocean temperature could buy more time for coral reefs

Coral reef in the Red Sea. Photo by Elena Couce ©

Limiting the amount of warming experienced by the world's oceans in the future could buy some time for tropical coral reefs, say researchers from the University of Bristol.

The study, published by the journal Geophysical Research Letters, used computer models to investigate how shallow-water tropical coral reef habitats may respond to climate change over the coming decades. Elena Couce and colleagues found that restricting greenhouse warming to three watts per square metre (equivalent to just 50-100 parts per million carbon dioxide, or approximately half again the increase since the Industrial Revolution) is needed in order to avoid large-scale reductions in reef habitat occurring in the future. Shallow-water tropical coral reefs are amongst the most productive and diverse ecosystems on the planet. They are currently in decline due to increasing frequency of bleaching events, linked to rising temperatures and fossil fuel emissions.

Elena Couce said: "If sea surface temperatures continue to rise, our models predict a large habitat collapse in the tropical western Pacific which would affect some of the most biodiverse coral reefs in the world. To protect shallow-water tropical coral reefs, the warming experienced by the world's oceans needs to be limited."

Coral reef in the Red Sea. Photo by Elena Couce ©

The researchers modelled whether artificial means of limiting global temperatures – known as solar radiation 'geoengineering' – could help. Their results suggest that if geoengineering could be successfully deployed then the decline of suitable habitats for tropical coral reefs could be slowed. They found, however, that over-engineering the climate could actually be detrimental as tropical corals do not favour overly-cool conditions. Solar radiation geoengineering also leaves unchecked a carbon dioxide problem known as 'ocean acidification'.

Elena Couce said: "The use of geoengineering technologies cannot safeguard coral habitat long term because ocean acidification will continue unabated. Decreasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the only way to address reef decline caused by ocean acidification."

Dr Erica Hendy, one of the co-authors, added: "This is the first attempt to model the consequences of using solar radiation geoengineering on a marine ecosystem. There are many dangers associated with deliberate human interventions in the climate system and a lot more work is needed to fully appreciate the consequences of intervening in this way."

Reference: 'Tropical coral reef habitat in a geoengineered, high-CO2 world' by E. Couce, P.J. Irvine, L. J. Gregorie, A. Ridgwell and E.J. Hendy in Geophysical Research Letters

Contact: Philippa Walker
philippa.walker@bristol.ac.uk
44-117-928-7777
University of Bristol

The Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol carries out fundamental and responsive research on risks and uncertainties in a changing environment. Its interests include natural hazards, food and energy security, resilience and governance, and human impacts on the environment. Its research fuses rigorous statistical and numerical modelling with a deep understanding of interconnected social, environmental and engineered systems – past, present and future.

Sulfate aerosols cool climate less than assumed

Life span of cloud-forming sulfate particles in the air is shorter than assumed due to a sulfur dioxide oxidation pathway which has been neglected in climate models so far

Measurement Station Schmücke: HCCT 2010 (Hill Cap Cloud Thuringia 2010). Credit: Dr. Stephan Mertes/TROPOS

In their role as condensation nuclei, aerosol particles are an important trigger for the formation of clouds. As humidity accumulates on the particles droplets are formed, which later develop into clouds. Within the clouds, however, the chemical composition of these aerosol particles changes.

In order to find out exactly what happens within the clouds, Eliza Harris and Bärbel Sinha from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, together with other scientists form Mainz and further research institutes, investigated different air parcels. The special feature of their experiments was that they investigated a cloud which formed on top of a mountain. The scientists could therefore trace how the aerosol particles changed while the cloud was forming.

Eliza Harris' main focus was the analysis of sulfur compounds. She investigated their composition in air samples which were collected at different times: Before the parcels entered the cloud, while they were in the cloud, and after they left the cloud.

The sulfur compounds in the samples differed in the distribution of sulfur isotopes. Isotopes are atoms of the same elements differing in the number of neutrons in the core and thus can be differentiated with the help of a mass spectrometer. The NanoSIMS ion microprobe, a highly sensitive mass spectrometer, enabled Harris to look into the chemical processes. "The relative reaction rates of isotopes are like fingerprints, which tell us how the sulfate was formed from the sulfur dioxide", Eliza Harris explains her method, which was part of her doctoral research in the group of Peter Hoppe at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry.

Harris' measurements showed that sulfate in clouds forms mostly through the oxidation of sulfur dioxide (SO2) by oxygen (O2). This reaction is catalysed by so-called transition metal ions (TMI) like iron, manganese, titanium or chromium. In addition, sulfate production mostly occurred in cloud droplets which formed on large mineral dust particles, the most important source of transition metal ions. Much less often the trail led to the oxidation of SO2 by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and ozone (O3). "As my colleagues and I compared the basic assumptions of climate models with my results we were very surprised, because only one of twelve models considers the role of transition metal ions in the formation of sulfate", says the scientist, who is now working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the USA. Instead, most of the models used the alternative pathways of sulfur dioxide oxidation by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), ozone (O3) and the hydroxyl radical (OH).

Sulfate produced catalytically through transition metal ions are formed on relatively large mineral dust particles, making them bigger than those formed through the reaction with hydrogen peroxide. Due to their size, they fall from the air at a faster rate – by force of gravity. The time frame for climate cooling by sulfate particles could therefore be shorter than has been believed.

Eliza Harris assumes that the models have overestimated the climate cooling effect of sulfate aerosols. So far it is not quantifiable to what degree Harris' discovery will impact climate prognoses. However, future models should consider the TMI catalysis reaction as an important pathway for the oxidation of sulfur dioxide, says the scientist. She thinks that the impact on climate models of European regions might probably be low, as mineral dust concentrations in the air are small and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions are declining. "In India and China, however, where sulfur dioxide emissions are expected to rise in the near future, combined with significantly higher concentrations of mineral dust in the air, the effect could be stronger", assumes Harris. Future studies will show.

The study, which has been published in the journal Science (Vol…), was conducted in collaboration with the following institutes: the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, the Leibniz Institute for Tropospheric Research in Leipzig, the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University, the Earth System Science Research Centre at the Institute of Geosciences at the University of Mainz, and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Mainz.

Eliza Harris was recently awarded the Dieter Rampacher Prize as youngest doctoral candidate of the Max Planck Society in 2012.

Contact: Dr. Baerbel Sinha
baerbel.sinha@mpic.de
91-950-114-3967
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Why Bears? (Video)

Credit: Emmanuel Keller (CC)

"What if we could preserve wild spaces simply by protecting one family of animals?"

This film is for teachers, scientists, non-profits and people interested in bears and preserving wild spaces. This film was made possible by an anonymous donation and was produced in partnership with Wildlife Media.

What's good for bears is good for people and the planet.

Written by Chris Morgan & Aaron Straight.

Why Bears

 

Carbon Dioxide at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory reaches new milestone: Tops 400 ppm

NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory after a snowstorm. Courtesy of Mary Miller, Exploratorium

On May 9, the daily mean concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of Mauna Loa, Hawaii, surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since measurements began in 1958. Independent measurements made by both NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have been approaching this level during the past week. It marks an important milestone because Mauna Loa, as the oldest continuous carbon dioxide (CO2) measurement station in the world, is the primary global benchmark site for monitoring the increase of this potent heat-trapping gas.

Carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by fossil fuel burning and other human activities is the most significant greenhouse gas (GHG) contributing to climate change. Its concentration has increased every year since scientists started making measurements on the slopes of the Mauna Loa volcano more than five decades ago. The rate of increase has accelerated since the measurements started, from about 0.7 ppm per year in the late 1950s to 2.1 ppm per year during the last 10 years.

“That increase is not a surprise to scientists,” said NOAA senior scientist Pieter Tans, with the Global Monitoring Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo. “The evidence is conclusive that the strong growth of global CO2 emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas is driving the acceleration.” 

Before the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, global average CO2 was about 280 ppm. During the last 800,000 years, CO2 fluctuated between about 180 ppm during ice ages and 280 ppm during interglacial warm periods. Today’s rate of increase is more than 100 times faster than the increase that occurred when the last ice age ended.

It was researcher Charles David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, who began measuring carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa in 1958, initiating now what is known as the “Keeling Curve.” His son, Ralph Keeling, also a geochemist at Scripps, has continued the Scripps measurement record since his father’s death in 2005.

“There’s no stopping CO2 from reaching 400 ppm,” said Ralph Keeling. “That’s now a done deal. But what happens from here on still matters to climate, and it’s still under our control. It mainly comes down to how much we continue to rely on fossil fuels for energy.”

NOAA scientists with the Global Monitoring Division have made around-the-clock measurements there since 1974. Having two programs independently measure the greenhouse gas provides confidence that the measurements are correct.

Moreover, similar increases of CO2 are seen all over the world by many international scientists. NOAA, for example, which runs a global, cooperative air sampling network, reported last year that all Arctic sites in its network reached 400 ppm for the first time. These high values were a prelude to what is now being observed at Mauna Loa, a site in the subtropics, this year. Sites in the Southern Hemisphere will follow during the next few years. The increase in the Northern Hemisphere is always a little ahead of the Southern Hemisphere because most of the emissions driving the CO2 increase take place in the north.

Once emitted, CO2 added to the atmosphere and oceans remains for thousands of years. Thus, climate changes forced by CO2 depend primarily on cumulative emissions, making it progressively more and more difficult to avoid further substantial climate change. 

Related Links:

• NOAA carbon dioxide data

• Scripps Institution of Oceanography carbon dioxide data

• NOAA’s Maua Loa Observatory

Time history of atmospheric carbon dioxide from 800,000 years ago until January, 2012.

 

Black vulture returns to East Balkans

A black vulture (Aegypius monachus) has been spotted in the Eastern Balkan Mountains for the first time for more than 30 years. A photo-trap set up at the vulture supplementary feeding site in the area of the Sinite Kamani Nature Park captured a young black vulture in April, together with a group of foraging griffons. The pictured bird was released as part of the LIFE project, 'Vultures Return in Bulgaria'.

The vulture probably originated from Serbia and was recorded along with several wild, non-tagged young and sub-adult griffon vultures (Gyps fulvus).

Black vulture was once widely distributed across the country, mostly in the plain areas but also in hilly areas and the broad-leaved forest belt – namely, the Dobrudzha, Ludogorie, Shumen and Provadija plateaus, the Danube plain, the slopes of Sakar, Vitosha, the mountains surrounding Sofia, the Rhodopes and south-eastern Bulgaria.

However, the use of poison, traps and poachers led to the complete extinction of the black vulcan as a nesting species. The last confirmed nest of the species was found by the Green Balkans team in the area of the Studen Kladenets Reservoir in 1997 and since then no nesting has been confirmed.

But the country is often visited by black vultures, which still nest in the Dadia Reserve in northern Greece and cross the border in search of food. They often use the supplementary feeding sites that have been maintained by Green Balkans and the BSPB for the past 25 years.

The siting of the black vulture at the supplementary feeding site represents a huge success for the project. Griffon vulture is an indicator species, which it is hoped confirms the improved conditions of the Balkan Mountains.