Earth ChangesS


Sun

The sun's cooling down - so what does that mean for us?

Laura Spinney
The Guardian
Thu, 23 Apr 2009 14:38 UTC
Image
© NASA/Getty ImagesRegion 486 that unleashed a record flare on the sun.
The sun's activity is winding down, triggering fevered debate among scientists about how low it will go, and what it means for Earth's climate. Nasa recorded no sunspots on 266 days in 2008 - a level of inactivity not seen since 1913 - and 2009 looks set to be even quieter. Solar wind pressure is at a 50-year low and our local star is ever so slightly dimmer than it was 10 years ago.

Sunspots are the most visible sign of an active sun - islands of magnetism on the sun's surface where convection is inhibited, making the gas cooler and darker when seen from Earth - and the fact that they're vanishing means we're heading into a period of solar lethargy.

Comment: Recent 'hikes'?

Two years of cooling has destroyed global warming consensus

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Bizarro Earth

Flashback Arctic Volcanoes Found Active at Unprecedented Depths

Kimberly Johnson
National Geographic News
Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:24 UTC
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© Photograph by Adam Soule and Claire Willis/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Map courtesy of Martin Jakobsson/Stockholm University, Robert Reves-Sohn and Adam Soule/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and the AGAVE science team. Glassy, granular fragments of seafloor basalt (right) are a key piece of evidence that volcanoes along the Arctic Ocean's Gakkel Ridge (left) have exploded violently, and at unprecedented depths, according to a June 2008 study.
Buried under thick ice and frigid water, volcanic explosions are shaking the Arctic Ocean floor at depths previously thought impossible, according to a new study. Using robot-operated submarines, researchers have found deposits of glassy rock - evidence of eruptions - scattered over more than 5 square miles (15 square kilometers) of the seabed.

Explosive volcanic eruptions were not thought to be possible at depths below the critical pressure for steam formation, or 2 miles (3,000 meters). The deposits, however, were found at seafloor depths greater than 2.5 miles (4 kilometers).

"This kind of implosive seismicity is rare anywhere on Earth," said study author Robert Sohn, a geophysicist at the Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The study appears today in the Journal Nature.
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Propaganda

Flashback Global warming in the Arctic: Doesn't anyone just report the facts anymore?


Symon Sez...
Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:11 UTC
I posted the other day all about the Volcano Under the North Pole. The story had been out for some time but word started getting spread on June 27. On that same day came the headline "This Summer We May See the First Ice-Free North Pole" from the Associated Press. The story is based on a report from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. That report came out on June 3, yet the Associated Press waited to report on it until June 27. Makes you say...hmmmmm. The first sentence in the article quotes a leading scientist with his guess that there is a 50-50 chance that the North Pole becomes ice-free this summer. Later, you find that it says slightly less than 50-50 chance. Let's don't let a little adverb get in the way of a catchy first sentence. Later, you find a leading scientist who puts the odds at 1 in 4. Why wasn't he the first guy mentioned? Why was he buried in the story? Why wasn't that the headline? BTW...the 50-50 stuff isn't found in the NSIDC report either...only the AP story.
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Magnify

Flashback Global Warming in the Arctic - Or Simply Massive Under Sea Volcanoes?


The Strata Sphere
Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:29 UTC
One of the disconnects the Church of Al Gore/IPCC has yet to address regarding so-called Global Warming is why is it the Arctic ice extent is receding (thus all the chicken-little screams) while the Antarctic ice extent is growing at historic rates. Given the fact CO2 levels are ubiquitous across the Earth, if this was really a global climate driver we should see higher temperatures (and less ice) across the globe, adjusted for latitude and the amount of land vs sea surface area. Here is the Northern ice extent plots from NOAA:

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And here is the southern ice extent plots:

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Mr. Potato

Australia's Environment Minister withdraws claim of 6m rise in sea levels

Greg Roberts
The Australian
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 08:17 UTC
Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett has moved to water down his claim that sea levels could rise by 6m as a result of the melting of Antarctic ice. Mr Garrett has also been forced to qualify his suggestion that ice across the whole of the Antarctic continent is melting.

He made the claims while being interviewed by the ABC's Lateline program on April 6 about the reported break-up of parts of the Wilkins ice shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula.

The Weekend Australian reported that while some ice-shelf melting is under way on the peninsula and in other parts of west Antarctica that may be related to global warming, ice shelves in east Antarctica remain intact.

East Antarctica is four times the size of west Antarctica.
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Bug

Drowned Spiders Come Back From The Dead

Michael Reilly
msnbc
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:03 UTC
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© Sonia Dourlot Pictures of the marsh spider, Arctosa fulvolineata during an experiment. In the first image (a) the drowning begins, in (b) the spider becomes nonreactive (see the reduced air storage), in (c) the spider has entered a coma and in (d) it is recovered four hours after the end of submersion.
When Julien Petillon wanted to see how long a salt marsh-dwelling wolf spider could survive underwater, he did the logical thing - he submerged them, and waited until they died.

Spiders are known for their resilience to being underwater, so it was no surprise to him that the dozens of Arctosa Fulvolineata in the experiment took almost 24 hours to grow still. What did surprise him is the dead-still spiders then came back to life.

As they lay drying in Petillion's laboratory at the University of Rennes in France, something odd happened: the 'dead' spiders began to twitch. First one small movement, then another - before long the salt marsh spiders were skittering about as though nothing had happened.
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Fish

Predators starve as we plunder oceans

Geoffrey Lean
The Indepedent
Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:51 UTC
Marine giants go hungry as fleets scoop up their prey for our fish suppers.

Starving sea life - from whales to puffins, tuna to seals - is being found all over the world's oceans, as the food on which it depends is being fished out, startling new evidence shows. And much of the depletion, ironically, is caused by raising captive fish - for the table.
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Bulb

Natural Cycle Linked to Past and Present Global Warming Cycles: Earth Now Entering Global Cooling for the Next 180 Years


PRWeb
Thu, 16 Apr 2009 06:19 UTC
New global warming research released in the book "Global Warming - Global Cooling, Natural Cause Found," can now be downloaded free. Research illustrated within the book links the Moon's recurring gravitational cycles as the primary driving force causing 2200 global warming events during the past half million years, including the earth's current warming cycle which is now ending. It also links these natural cycles to the 50 percent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels seen during the past 8 thousand years, not just the past 150 years. Due to the significance of these findings, Meteorologist and climate researcher David Dilley of Global Weather Oscillations, is now offering the book free to download on the website http://www.globalweathercycles.com. His book is written in non technical language so everyone from middle school to college professors can understand these important findings concerning the earth's natural cycles.
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Sun

UK: Warm April set fair for weather record

Lucy Cockcroft
The Telegraph
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:58 UTC
warm weather in London
© PAJess Vant, 22, and Sky Anderson, 21, enjoy the warm weather in Hyde Park, London
TS Eliot said it was "the cruellest month" but this April is proving rather kind, with forecasters saying it could be the warmest for a decade.

The Met Office has logged temperatures of several degrees above the average so far this week, and its experts predict the good weather is set to stay.

Last Wednesday saw temperatures reach 22 degrees (72F) in East Malling, Kent - the hottest day of the year so far, and in London yesterday it was 21C (70F) with the north and Midlands enjoying 20C (68F).

Temperatures are expected to approach the low-20s in the south east by the end of this week and the next few days should be generally warm and dry, with occasional showers in the west.
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Bizarro Earth

Satellites Show How Earth Moved During Italy Quake


Space Mart
Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:14 UTC
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© IREA-CNRAn Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) interferogram over the L'Aquila area in central Italy showing the deformation pattern caused by the seismic events in early April 2009. This interferogram was generated by Italy's Istituto per il Rilevamento Elettromagnetico dell' Ambiente (IREA-CNR) in Naples, Italy just a few hours after Envisat's acquisition on 12 April 2009. It combines that acquisition with a pre-seismic acquisition on 1 February 2009, with an estimated baseline (separation between the two Envisat orbital positions) of about 154 m. The satellite's right-looking angle is 23 degrees. Each fringe of the interferogram, corresponding to a colour cycle, is equivalent to an Earth surface displacement of 2.8 cm along the satellite direction.
Studying satellite radar data from ESA's Envisat and the Italian Space Agency's COSMO-SkyMed, scientists have begun analysing the movement of Earth during and after the 6.3 earthquake that shook the medieval town of L'Aquila in central Italy on 6 April 2009.

Scientists from Italy's Istituto per il Rilevamento Elettromagnetico dell' Ambiente (IREA-CNR) and the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV) are studying Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data from these satellites to map surface deformations after the earthquake and the numerous aftershocks that have followed.

The scientists are using a technique known as SAR Interferometry (InSAR), a sophisticated version of 'spot the difference'. InSAR involves combining two or more radar images of the same ground location in such a way that very precise measurements - down to a scale of a few millimetres - can be made of any ground motion taking place between image acquisitions.
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