Earth ChangesS


Bizarro Earth

Unexpected Discovery Could Impact on Future Climate Models


PhysOrg
Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:46 UTC
Unexpected
© NASA/NOAADust plumes blowing off the coast of Western Sahara over the Atlantic Ocean.
Astronomers have made an unexpected find using a polarimeter (an instrument used to measure the wave properties of light) funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), that has the potential to affect future climate models.

University of Hertfordshire astronomers were making observations of the stars in search of new planets after mounting the 'PlanetPol' (polarimeter they designed and constructed to take extremely sensitive readings) on the William Herschel Telescope (part of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes) in La Palma in the Canary Islands, when their measurements became affected by a layer of dust.

The presence of the dust itself, which satellite images and modelling of the dust's movement show had originated from the Sahara and the Sahel, was not a surprise, but its behaviour was. Scientists normally assume that aerosols, including mineral dust, have random orientation in the atmosphere, but the team members say the polarizing affect the dust was having on the light could only be the result of dust particles being vertically aligned.
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Better Earth

Taking a Time Machine Ride Back to the 1960s or 1800s?

Joseph D'Aleo
IceCap
Tue, 10 Feb 2009 22:01 UTC
PDO cycle
© unknown

There are signs our weather is taking a time machine ride back to the regimes of the 1960s or even the late 1700s early 1800s. Our climate operates in cycles, which favors different regimes of weather. We have come out of a few decades that thanks to a warm Pacific resulted in a dominance of El Ninos and its typical southern storm tracks and warm, dry western North America.

The Pacific has cooled and now favors La Ninas, which have dominated the last two winters. This has resulted in a more northern storm track (and as we reported in earlier stories (here and here and here), record monthly or seasonal snows).
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Document

Best of the Web: That famous consensus on global warming

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:22 UTC
Penguins
© unknown

Yet another example of the 'research' masquerading as science that is used to reinforce the man-made global warming fraud. One of the difficulties the green zealots have had is that Antarctica has been not warming but cooling, with the extent of its ice reaching record levels. A few weeks ago, a study led by Professor Eric Steig caused some excitement by claiming that actually West Antarctica was warming so much that it more than made up for the cooling in East Antarctica. Warning bells should have sounded when Steig said:
What we did is interpolate carefully instead of just using the back of an envelope.
To those of us who have been following this scam for the past two decades, 'interpolate carefully' makes us suck our teeth. And so it has proved. Various scientists immediately spotted the flaw in Steig's methodology of combining satellite evidence since 1979 with temperature readings from surface weather stations. The flaw they identified was that, since Antarctica has so few weather stations, the computer Steig used was programmed to guess what data they would have produced had such stations existed. In other words, the findings that caused such excitement were based on data that had been made up.
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Bulb

New Antarctic 'Warming' study is a guesstimate that defies the known facts


Inhofe EPM Press Blog
Wed, 21 Jan 2009 19:08 UTC
The whole thing is based on "estimates" and "reconstructions" of Antarctic temperatures, not on actual measurements! How surprising that the authors come up with "estimates" that confirm their well-known beliefs! Excerpts from one commentary below. See the original for links. First however, see below an amusing graph taken from the home page of one of the authors of the new "study". It is a graph of actual warming and shows -- wait for it -- that Antarctica COOLED. These crooks cannot even keep their own story straight! I'm saving a copy of the graph in case they delete it.
Surface Temperature Trends graph
© NASA
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Heart

Koala rescued from Australia's wildfire wasteland

Rohan Sullivan
Associated Press
Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:07 UTC
Image
© APLocal CFA firefighter David Tree shares his water with an injured Australian Koala at Mirboo North after wildfires swept through the region on Monday, Feb. 9, 2009.

Sydney - It was a chance encounter in the charred landscape of Australia's deadly wildfires: A koala sips water from a bottle offered by a firefighter. David Tree noticed the koala moving gingerly on scorched paws as his fire patrol passed. Clearly in pain, the animal stopped when it saw Tree.

"It was amazing, he turned around, sat on his bum and sort of looked at me with (a look) like, put me out of my misery," Tree told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "I yelled out for a bottle of water. I unscrewed the bottle, tipped it up on his lips and he just took it naturally.

"He kept reaching for the bottle, almost like a baby."

The team called animal welfare officers to pick up the koala Sunday, the day after deadly firestorms swept southern Victoria state.
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Bizarro Earth

Birds Shifting North as Planet Warms

Dina Cappiello
Discovery News
Tue, 10 Feb 2009 10:20 UTC
Finch
© iStockPhotoAn Audubon Society study found that more than half of 305 birds species in North America are spending the winter about 35 miles farther north than they did 40 years ago.
When it comes to global warming, the canary in the coal mine isn't a canary at all. It's a purple finch.

As the temperature across the U.S. has gotten warmer, the purple finch has been spending its winters more than 400 miles farther north than it used to.

And it's not alone.

An Audubon Society study to be released Tuesday found that more than half of 305 birds species in North America, a hodgepodge that includes robins, gulls, chickadees and owls, are spending the winter about 35 miles farther north than they did 40 years ago.

The purple finch was the biggest northward mover. Its wintering grounds are now more along the latitude of Milwaukee, Wis., instead of Springfield, Mo.
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Bell

Drought-hit China to divert waters from two longest rivers: report


Agence France-Presse
Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:44 UTC
China will divert water from its two longest rivers to help farmers hit by the country's worst drought in decades, state media said Sunday.

Water from the Yangtze River, the country's longest, will be diverted to the northern areas of eastern Jiangsu Province, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing Zhang Zhitong, a senior Ministry of Water Resources emergency official.

The announcement came after Beijing last week raised its drought emergency to the highest level for the first time and sent relief supplies and technical specialists to eight major drought-hit regions.

Floodgates will also be opened in Inner Mongolia along the Yellow River, the country's second longest river, to increase water supply for central Henan and eastern Shandong provinces, Zhang according to the report.

China has released more than five billion cubic meters (177 cubic feet) of water from the Yellow River to fight the drought that has hit most of its north since November, Xinhua said.

The drought is also affecting central and southwestern rice-growing provinces.
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Bell

Texas Drought Conditions Becoming Historic


Texas A&M University Press Release
Fri, 06 Feb 2009 19:38 UTC
Heard the one about the Texas farmer whose land was so dry, his cow was giving powdered milk? The lack of rain in the state is quickly becoming no laughing matter as a drought has a firm grip on most of Texas and there appears to be little or no relief in sight, contends a Texas A&M University professor who says conditions could even get worse.
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Bell

Drought: "Australia is where America could be in a few years"

David Beasley
GlobalAtlanta
Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:29 UTC
Atlanta, Georgia - Paul Dalby traveled to Atlanta from Australia with stories of a drought so severe that rivers stop flowing, lakes turn toxic and farmers abandon their land in frustration. Dr. Dalby's message, delivered as metro Atlanta struggles to map strategies for coping with severe water shortages, focused on his country's past and America's future.

"Australia is where America could be in a few years," said Dr. Dalby, a consultant with an Australian-funded institute, the International Center of Excellence in Water Resource Management.


To read more see the original article on the Global Atlanta website.
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Bell

California water watchers cast a wary eye

Matt Weiser
The Sacramento Bee
Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:23 UTC
Water experts are having a hard time finding the right words to describe what lies ahead, after recording a dismally dry January in California.

"Scary," "grim," and possible "conservation mandates" are offered up.

Yet it's easy for the experts to sound out a clear warning: This may become, simply, the worst drought California has ever seen.

"Our worst fears appear to be materializing," said Wendy Martin, drought coordinator at the state Department of Water Resources. "It's going to be a huge challenge."
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