Worsening Weather, Earthquakes, Vortices, Volcanoes, CMEs ... What's Up?

[space otter]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/melting-arctic-ice-precipitation_56796ffde4b014efe0d6c7fa

Here's Yet Another Alarming Effect Of Melting Arctic Sea Ice
Scientists reveal why the influence melting sea ice has on precipitation could be bad.

? 12/23/2015 10:53 am ET
Jacqueline Howard
Associate Science Editor, The Huffington Post

Scientists have long known that the melting sea ice in the Arctic leads to more heat being absorbed by our planet, which can disturb the ecosystem.

However, according to a new study, published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,  there is yet another effect that vanishing ice has on our planet: The disappearing sea ice is linked to more precipitation in the Arctic.

This could impact the environment in a way that's comparable to doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere, Ben Kopec, a Ph.D candidate in Dartmouth College's Department of Earth Sciences and lead author of the study, told The Huffington Post.

"As sea ice is reduced, ocean water is exposed to the atmosphere, leading to increased evaporation, and ultimately more precipitation," Kopec said. "The impacts of changing precipitation on the global climate system are significant."

The researchers collected measurements of the precipitation at six sites across the Arctic from 1990 to 2012. They took a close look at the chemical makeup of the precipitation samples to establish how sensitive the precipitation was to ice melt, the Christian Science Monitor reported.

Then, the researchers empirically compared that data to how the sea ice changed during the same time period.

The researchers found that as the sea ice shrunk 38,610 square miles, the percentage of moisture in the atmosphere increased by 18.2 percent in the Canadian Arctic and 10.8 percent in the Greenland Sea regions.

The findings not only confirm a link between ice melt and precipitation, but they also correspond with other findings that show that the environment may be adapting to warming temperatures, according to the researchers.

If the increased moisture in the atmosphere leads to snow, Kopec said, then the snowfall may have the potential to reflect more sunlight and actually reduce the amount of heat absorbed. But problems may arise if the moisture leads to rainfall. Not only would rain melt even more snow and ice in the Arctic but it could also stall the onset of autumn snow, which would lead to additional warming.

"Sea ice is declining at an alarming rate, so it is important to understand the consequences of the climate feedbacks caused by these changes," Kopec said in a statement. "We show that the loss of sea ice will likely increase precipitation, which will impact communities and ecosystems around the Arctic. The change of precipitation, depending on the seasonal distribution, may impact the energy balance on the same order of magnitude as the feedbacks associated with doubling carbon dioxide."

The new study supports the growing consensus that melting sea ice, caused by climate change, results in increased Arctic precipitation, Julienne Stroeve, senior research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder, told the Associated Press.

"At least statistically there's a correlation between less sea ice and more precipitation in certain parts of the Arctic," she said.

[space otter]

ah what irony...and cool brrrrrrr

http://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/amid-global-warming-north-america-has-a-new-glacier/ar-AAg2ozR?li=BBnbfcL
Condé Nast Traveler
Ken Jennings
11 hrs ago

Amid Global Warming, North America Has a New Glacier

© Alamy


Many of the world's glaciers are shrinking today at unprecedented rates, say climate scientists. Glaciers that have been there for millions of years, and the ice that's been flowing through them for tens of thousands of years, are now melting. Glacier National Park in Montana may be entirely glacier-free within a decade. But let me introduce you to the world's newest glacier, which is still getting bigger every year. It's an oddity on a warming earth.

The eruption of Mt. St. Helens killed 57 people—and 12 glaciers.

It may seem surprising that there's a growing baby glacier in Washington State, but its location is even more surprising: inside the steaming caldera of Mt. St. Helens itself! When St. Helens was still a placid Fuji-like cone, it was covered with a dozen small glaciers, but that all ended on May 18, 1980, when the top 1,300 feet of the mountain were blown off in a massive eruption of rock and lava. It was the largest landslide in recorded human history.

A new glacier rises from the ashes.

When the dust settled, the summit of Mt. St. Helens was a horseshoe-shaped ridge, a shadow of its former self. But speaking of shadows: the new horseshoe opens to the north, which means a lot of the crater is well-shaded from the sun. By 1988, there was snow and ice in the crater year-round, and by 1996 it was carving crevasses into the crater rim—making it, by definition, a glacier. The flowing layers of ice and rock were soon 660 feet deep.

Glaciers can grow even amid an active volcanic inferno.

In 2004, a second, slower eruption began at Mt. St. Helens, and geologists assumed that the new ice field would melt, causing new mudslides. In fact, the opposite happened. Amazingly, the hot magma pushed up a 900-foot-high dome inside the crater, shielding the baby glacier even more effectively. All winter, snow and ice slides down the crater rim into the glacier, so it's still expanding—though recent hot summers have slowed its growth somewhat.

Almost no one can visit the glacier, and no one knows what to call it.

The glacier is still off-limits to hikers, except for those who pay a hefty fee for a guided tour to its base. Geologists from the U.S. Geological Survey are the only ones who get the real fun: the chance to rappel down 90 feet through the glacier's "Godzilla Hole" into a maze of tunnels where ice is sculpted into eerie shapes by hot volcanic gas venting from below. Washington (the state) still calls the glacier "Tulutson," using a local Indian word for ice, while Washington (the federal government) has officially (but boringly) dubbed it Crater Glacier. Let's hope the glacier sticks around long enough to have to settle this question of its name at some point.

[space otter]

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/weather/the-storm-that-will-unfreeze-the-north-pole/ar-BBo2Bxy?li=BBnb7Kz

The Atlantic
Robinson Meyer
8 hrs ago

The storm that will unfreeze the North Pole

The sun has not risen above the North Pole since mid-September. The sea ice — flat, landlike, windswept, and stretching as far as the eye can see—has been bathed in darkness for months.

But later this week, something extraordinary will happen: Air temperatures at the Earth's most northernly region, in the middle of winter, will rise above freezing for only the second time on record.

On Wednesday, the same storm system that last week spun up deadly tornadoes in the American southeast will burst into the far north, centering over Iceland. It will bring strong winds and pressure as low as is typically seen during hurricanes.

That low pressure will suck air out of the planet's middle latitudes and send it rushing to the Arctic. And so on Wednesday, the North Pole will likely see temperatures of about 35 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius. That's 50 degrees hotter than average: It's usually 20 degrees Fahrenheit below zero there at this time of year.

Winter temperatures have only snuck above freezing at the North Pole once before. Eric Holthaus, Slate's meterologist, could not find an Arctic expert who had witnessed above-freezing temperatures at the pole between December and early April.

2015 is the warmest year ever recorded. Thirteen of the top 14 warmest years on the books have happened this century. And here in the United States, it has been a hot, strange month. Many cities across the northeast smashed their Christmas and Christmas Eve temperature records not at midday, but at the stroke of midnight. For the hundred-plus years that New York temperatures have been recorded, the city has never been warmer than 63 degrees Fahrenheit on a December 24. Yet at 1 a.m. on Christmas Eve of this year, the thermometer measured 67 degrees.

Some of this North American heat is a regular feature of every El Niño. (Indeed, I wrote about this El Niño-associated heat a few weeks ago.) But in the Arctic, this level of warmth is unprecedented. In order for this huge, hot storm to reach Iceland on Wednesday, it's punching  right through the Jet Stream, the atmospheric "river" that brings temperate weather to Europe. Yet El Niño should typically reinforce this current, explains the climate writer Robert Scribbler—for the Jet Stream to weaken is a sign that something else is going on.

While institutional science will take years, if not decades, to confirm a correlation between human-forced climate change and strong North Atlantic storms, Scribbler believes that Wednesday's insane warmth at the pole resembles the southern incursions of the "polar vortex" that have been seen in recent winters. These changes are related to human-forced climate change, he writes: a sign that something in the atmosphere has gone "dreadfully wrong."

[zorgon]

Yeah I saw this the other day  I have a map  hang on,,,


This storm in the far North Atlantic is the same storm that caused two tornado outbreaks and widespread flooding in the United States. Now, it's pushing temperatures at the North Pole well above average. (earth.nullschool.net)

This story has been updated to include buoy measurements that confirm the North Pole temperature climbed above 32 degrees on Wednesday.

A powerful winter cyclone — the same storm that led to two tornado outbreaks in the United States and disastrous river flooding — has driven the North Pole to the freezing point this week, 50 degrees above average for this time of year.

From Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning, a mind-boggling pressure drop was recorded in Iceland: 54 millibars in just 18 hours. This triples the criteria for "bomb" cyclogenesis, which meteorologists use to describe a rapidly intensifying mid-latitude storm. A "bomb" cyclone is defined as dropping one millibar per hour for 24 hours.

NOAA's Ocean Prediction Center said the storm's minimum pressure dropped to 928 millibars around 1 a.m. Eastern time, which likely places it in the top five strongest storms on record in this region.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2015/12/30/freak-storm-has-pushed-north-pole-to-freezing-point-50-degrees-above-normal/

[space otter]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/north-pole-warm-temperature_5684152ee4b014efe0d9cb7d?utm_hp_ref=science&ir=Science&section=science

12/30/2015 02:58 pm ET | Updated 4 days ago 
Michael McLaughlin
Reporter, The Huffington Post

North Pole Temperature Jumps Above Freezing From Bizarre Storms
It's unusually warm for being the North Pole.

Update (December 31, 2015): There has been some debate about how warm it actually got near the North Pole on Wednesday. One buoy maintained by the International Arctic Buoy Program recorded a high temperature of about 33-degrees Fahrenheit. But Dr. Jamie Morison, principal investigator for the North Pole Environmental Observatory, said in a statement that a buoy closer to the North Pole recorded a high temperature of only about 16-degrees Fahrenheit, which is still much hotter than average in winter.

"So in summary, the forecast warming was qualitatively pretty good even though temperatures at the Pole didn't reach up to the freezing point," he said.


The Washington Post, however, reports that data from the Global Forecast System (GFS) forecast model showed high temperatures at a latitude of 90 degrees North "for at least a brief moment" exceeding the melting point.

---

A combination of rare and powerful weather conditions were predicted to raise temperatures at the North Pole to more than 50 degrees Fahrenheit above average on Wednesday.

The forecast appeared correct as a reading on a weather buoy drifting in ice near the pole climbed above the freezing point -- an almost unthinkable temperature for the Arctic in the middle of winter considering there's no daylight for weeks.

If the reading was accurate, it was warmer there than in some cities, such as Moscow and Chicago, The Guardian reports.

The bizarre, and in some cases cataclysmic, weather reached across other regions of the North Atlantic on Wednesday. Forecasts said hurricane-force winds would blast Iceland.

In fact, the storm threatened to be one of the most powerful on record in the North Atlantic.

One feature of the weather is a sudden and severe loss of barometric pressure. If it drops fast enough, it could unleash a phenomenon ominously called a "bomb cyclone," according to The Washington Post.

The low-pressure system disturbing the normal Arctic conditions is the same behemoth that produced devastating cyclones in the southern United States and triggered flooding along the Mississippi River in recent days.

Called Storm Frank in the United Kingdom, the heavy rain and strong winds are looming over the U.K., which is reeling from severe flooding there over the weekend.
Temperatures above freezing could halt, at least temporarily, the growth of winter ice, the BBC reported. Diminishing ice coverage is associated with rising sea levels and can be hazardous to low-lying coastal communities.

The Arctic is experiencing a period of rapid warming, according to a recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The region is heating up twice as fast as anywhere in the world, the 2015 Arctic Report Card notes, and its average temperature is 5.2 degrees higher than it was in 1900.


embedded links and tweets with  photos at article

[space otter]

with all of this warning I would move back from the waters edge if I lived  there



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/greenland-ice-melting-study_568c0e60e4b0b958f65d20ea?utm_hp_ref=science&ir=Science&section=science

01/05/2016 05:10 pm ET
Lydia O'Connor


Greenland's Melting Ice Problem May Be Far Worse Than We Realized
A new study shows climate change can undercut nature's way of protecting the ice.


Greenland's massive ice sheet may be in more serious peril from climate change than scientists previously thought, a new study has found.

Studies agree that rising global temperatures are causing the ice sheet that covers most of the world's largest island to shrink. If the entire ice sheet were to melt, global sea levels could increase by as much as 23 feet.

But in a study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, researchers found that global warming is also undermining the ability of Greenland's "firn" to limit the effects of climate change.

The firn is the sponge-like snow pack atop the ice sheet, which traps and stores melting water that would otherwise run off into the oceans. It thereby helps to maintain the ice sheet in the face of the usual summer's warmer temperatures.

Past studies had concluded that the firn's storage capability was largely undiminished. But Greenland endured exceptionally warm summers in 2010 and 2012 -- in the latter year, it experienced "the largest observed melt extent" on record.

Now the latest study has found that the firn has become denser and less porous, making it far less absorbent
What happened? The researchers found that the greater amounts of meltwater from those warmer summers filled up the firn's pores and hardened into an impenetrable layer of ice. Consequently, meltwater in the following years couldn't be absorbed by the firn and "instead drained along the ice sheet surface toward the ocean."

As study author and York University researcher William Colgan explained in a press release, that finding "overturned the idea that firn can behave as a nearly bottomless sponge to absorb meltwater. Instead, we found that the meltwater storage capacity of the firn could be capped off relatively quickly."

The study is a reminder that we don't know all the ways that climate change is affecting our world.

"Basically our research shows that the firn reacts fast to a changing climate," said Horst Machguth, the lead researcher from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

[zorgon]

with all of this warning I would move back from the waters edge if I lived  there

Well the last time all the ice melted  THIS was the USA I would look up your state and decide if you need to invest in a rubber Dinghy... just in case

[space otter]

iron..hummmmmmmm 




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/icebergs-climate-change_5695453be4b09dbb4bacc6f7?utm_hp_ref=science&ir=Science&section=science


? 01/12/2016 08:33 pm ET
Jacqueline Howard
Associate Science Editor, The Huffington Post

How Melting Giant Icebergs May Help Slow Climate Change (Just A Little)
Who knew?

Eastcott Momatiuk via Getty Images

Water dripping off of icebergs in the Antarctic Ocean contains nutrients for phytoplankton, which can help absorb carbon dioxide.
 


Melting icebergs may be fighting against the very forces that cause them to melt, a new study suggests.

Water dripping off icebergs and into the Antarctic Ocean, also known as the Southern Ocean, contains iron and other nutrients, according to research published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience. These nutrients fertilize phytoplankton, the microscopic marine life that plays a key role in oceanic ecosystems, and help the tiny plants absorb carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as they grow into plumes.

In other words, there might be even more carbon dioxide in our atmosphere if it weren't for the help of phytoplankton, said Dr. Grant Bigg, professor of earth system science at the University of Sheffield in England and lead author of the study.

"Previous research had shown that there was a fertilizing effect from iceberg meltwater but no one had looked at the giant icebergs in a systematic way before," he said. "The extent, and strength, of the fertilized phytoplankton plume was the big surprise."



Planet Observer via Getty Images

Satellite image of the Earth centered on Antarctica, showing the surrounding Antarctic Ocean.


For the study, Bigg and his colleagues analyzed 175 satellite images taken between 2003 and 2013 that show ocean water and at least 18-kilometer-long icebergs in the remote Antarctic Ocean. A greenish color of the water indicated high levels of phytoplankton productivity.

They noticed the colorful phytoplankton plumes in the photos extended hundreds of kilometers from giant icebergs and persisted for at least a month after the iceberg passed by. The researchers concluded that this biological process involving meltwater and phytoplankton may be responsible for up to 20 percent of the carbon that's stored in the deep Antarctic Ocean.

"The research is important as it has shown that there is more carbon stored in the Southern Ocean than previously calculated, which will have knock-on consequences for the global carbon budget," Bigg said. "It also demonstrates an unusual negative feedback on climate -- even if it is a secondary one and merely slowing climate change."

But this does not mean that meltwater and phytoplankton will save us from climate change, many scientists caution.

"I would hate for somebody to look at this and say, see it's a negative feedback, we can do whatever we want and it's not going to have an effect," Dr. Ronald Kaufmann, a marine and environmental scientist at the University of San Diego who was not involved in the study, told The Christian Science Monitor.

"This is moving the needle back in the other direction, there's no question about that," he said. "But...I don't think this is going to offset the burning of coal, for example."

After all, the relationship between the ocean and atmosphere remains complicated. Carbon dioxide may be absorbed by meltwater, but it can be released by seasonal warming of the water as well.

A separate team of scientists led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, plans to further investigate this month just how much excess carbon dioxide the Antarctic Ocean's icy waters are able to absorb.

"If we want to better predict the temperature in 50 years, we have to know how much carbon dioxide the oceans and terrestrial ecosystems are going to take up," Dr. Britton Stephens, a scientist at the center, said in a statement. "Understanding the Southern Ocean's role is important because ocean circulation there provides a major opportunity for the exchange of carbon between the atmosphere and the vast reservoir of the deep ocean."


.................................


http://www.dw.com/en/giant-icebergs-slow-global-warming/a-18973873

Giant icebergs slow global warming
Researchers have found that the plume of cold water released from massive icebergs increases carbon storage in the seas - far more than previously thought. This negative feedback loop significantly slows climate change.





Phytoplankton blooms in the wake of icebergs in the South Atlantic Ocean

It seems a paradox: giant icebergs, a symbol of climate change, can actually slow down warming of the Earth.

This is possible because the cold, mineral-rich water melting icebergs leave in their wakes nourishes phytoplankton. These tiny marine organisms take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and when they die, sink to the ocean floor to create a literal carbon bank.

"When phytoplankton grow, they give off fecal matter and die, and some of that material sinks deep in the ocean, where it stays for centuries or millennia," explained study author Grant Bigg, an Earth systems professor at the University of Sheffield in England.

Particularly giant icebergs - that is, those at least 18 kilometers long - have this effect, due to the area covered.

Research for the paper, published in "Nature Geoscience," analyzed satellite images of giant icebergs in the Southern Ocean around the Antarctic, measuring the intensity of the color of chlorophyll produced by phytoplankton.

This "plume of productivity extends five to 10 times from the iceberg," Bigg said - meaning "the net carbon storage is much larger than suspected."

"It's essentially slowing the rate at which carbon dioxide is remaining in the atmosphere," Bigg told DW.

X

Rising global temperatures are causing more icebergs to calve from ice sheets and ice fields

The concentration of atmospheric carbon is currently around 400 parts per million, and is increasing by roughly 2 ppm each year. "Giant icebergs have slowed that increase by 5 to 10 percent," Bigg said.

Antarctica is warming faster than other world regions, which is causing the ice sheet to melt and contributing to sea level rise. Warming there is often understood in terms of a positive feedback loop, where warming causes more ice to melt, thus accelerating further warming.

Some research indicates that warming in Antarctica has already reached a tipping point for melting, from which there would be no return.

The finding that melting icebergs can slow global warming was a surprise, as the scale of the phenomenon hadn't before been known.

"We still don't fully understand the climate system - I wouldn't be surprised if there were further both negative and positive feedback that could possibly accelerate or slow down global warming," Bigg concluded.



WWW links
"Nature Geoscience" paper on giant icebergs and marine productivity
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ngeo2633.html

[space otter]

get your fans ready...

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/planet%e2%80%99s-heat-record-shattered-%e2%80%94-and-2016-likely-to-be-even-warmer/ar-BBou0Xw?li=BBnbcA1
San Francisco Chronicle
By Kurtis Alexander
7 hrs ago

Planet's heat record shattered — and 2016 likely to be even warmer

© Noaa, NOAA Last year was the planet's hottest since record-keeping began in 1880, according to NASA and NOAA.


Last year was far and away the hottest the planet has seen since at least 1880 when record-keeping began -- and 2016 is likely to be even warmer, federal scientists said Wednesday.

The historic heat, confirmed by both NASA and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, continues an alarming trend that climatologists say is driving shifts in worldwide weather with places like California saddled with less snow, rising seas and potentially more wildfires.

The NOAA data show average global temperature shattered the previous high set in 2014 by 0.29 degrees, a seemingly small bump but significant considering that increases have continued over several decades and show little sign of ceasing.

The planet'??s average surface temperature --?? 58.62 degrees last year -- is up about 1.8 degrees since the late 19th century, with most of that warming occurring in the past 35 years. Fifteen of the 16 hottest years have been observed since 2001.

Scientists cite greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels and deforestation as the primary cause of the heat. Last year also got a bump from El Niño, a cyclical warming of the Pacific Ocean that can lead to balmier temperatures elsewhere.

The same drivers are in play this year.

"??Because it's starting with a very strong El Niño and will kind of build during the year, 2016 is expected to be an exceptionally warm year and perhaps a record,"? said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.



© Handout, AFP / Getty Images This illustration obtained from NASA on January 20, 2016 shows that 2015 was the warmest year since modern record-keeping began in 1880, according to a new analysis by NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies...
NASA and NOAA independently track temperatures at thousands of weather stations on land and water, from buoys in tropical seas to field equipment at the Earth'??s poles, and each analyzes the differences over time.

Both of the agency'??s data point to a roughly 0.25 degree rise in temperature in each of the past five decades.

In December, world leaders meeting in Paris reached a first-ever agreement to limit the planet's warming temperatures -- to 2.7 degrees, or 1.5 degrees Celsius, above pre-industrial levels. The new data show just how difficult that goal is.

"We don'??t have very far to go to reach 1.5," said Thomas Karl, director of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information.

Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.E-mail: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander

[zorgon]

get your fans ready...

No such thing as global warming

[space otter]

No such thing as global warming

..
you are so right..bwhahahahahahaha..it's just the normal earth changes that we are only seeing cause we are at the point of movement....maybe we humans  make it - then it will only be history

http://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/disappearance-of-bolivias-no-2-lake-a-harbinger/ar-BBov6km?li=BBnb7Kz

Associated Press
By CARLOS VALDEZ, Associated Press
8 hrs ago


14 pics at link




UNTAVI, Bolivia — Overturned fishing skiffs lie abandoned on the shores of what was Bolivia's second-largest lake. Beetles dine on bird carcasses and gulls fight for scraps under a glaring sun in what marshes remain.

Lake Poopo was officially declared evaporated last month. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people have lost their livelihoods and gone.

High on Bolivia's semi-arid Andean plains at 3,700 meters (more than 12,000 feet) and long subject to climatic whims, the shallow saline lake has essentially dried up before only to rebound to twice the area of Los Angeles.

But recovery may no longer be possible, scientists say.

"This is a picture of the future of climate change," says Dirk Hoffman, a German glaciologist who studies how rising temperatures from the burning of fossil fuels has accelerated glacial melting in Bolivia.

As Andean glaciers disappear so do the sources of Poopo's water. But other factors are in play in the demise of Bolivia's second-largest body of water behind Lake Titicaca.

Drought caused by the recurrent El Nino meteorological phenomenon is considered the main driver. Authorities say another factor is the diversion of water from Poopo's tributaries, mostly for mining but also for agriculture.

More than 100 families have sold their sheep, llamas and alpaca, set aside their fishing nets and quit the former lakeside village of Untavi over the past three years, draining it of well over half its population. Only the elderly remain.

"There's no future here," said 29-year-old Juvenal Gutierrez, who moved to a nearby town where he ekes by as a motorcycle taxi driver.

Record-keeping on the lake's history only goes back a century, and there is no good tally of the people displaced by its disappearance. At least 3,250 people have received humanitarian aid, the governor's office says.

Poopo is now down to 2 percent of its former water level, regional Gov. Victor Hugo Vasquez calculates. Its maximum depth once reached 16 feet (5 meters). Field biologists say 75 species of birds are gone from the lake.

While Poopo has suffered El Nino-fueled droughts for millennia, its fragile ecosystem has experienced unprecedented stress in the past three decades. Temperatures have risen by about 1 degree Celsius while mining activity has pinched the flow of tributaries, increasing sediment.

Florida Institute of Technology biologist Mark B. Bush says the long-term trend of warming and drying threatens the entire Andean highlands.

A 2010 study he co-authored for the journal Global Change Biology says Bolivia's capital, La Paz, could face catastrophic drought this century. It predicted "inhospitable arid climates" would lessen available food and water this century for the more than 3 million inhabitants of Bolivia's highlands.

A study by the German consortium Gitec-Cobodes determined that Poopo received 161 billion fewer liters of water in 2013 than required to maintain equilibrium.

"Irreversible changes in ecosystems could occur, causing massive emigration and greater conflicts," said the study commissioned by Bolivia's government.

The head of a local citizens' group that tried to save Poopo, Angel Flores, says authorities ignored warnings.

"Something could have been done to prevent the disaster. Mining companies have been diverting water since 1982," he said.

President Evo Morales has sought to deflect criticism he bears some responsibility, suggesting that Poopo could come back.

"My father told me about crossing the lake on a bicycle once when it dried up," he said last month after returning from the U.N.-sponsored climate conference in Paris.

Environmentalists and local activists say the government mismanaged fragile water resources and ignored rampant pollution from mining, Bolivia's second export earner after natural gas. More than 100 mines are upstream and Huanuni, Bolivia's biggest state-owned tin mine, was among those dumping untreated tailings into Poopo's tributaries.

After thousands of fish died in late 2014, the Universidad Tecnica in the nearby state capital of Oruro found Poopo had unsafe levels of heavy metals, including cadmium and lead.

The president of Bolivia's National Chamber of Mining, Saturnino Ramos, said any blame by the industry is "insignificant compared to climate change." He said most of the sediment shallowing Poopo's tributaries was natural, not from mining.

In hopes of bringing it back, Morales' government has asked the European Union for $140 million for water treatment plants for the Poopo watershed and to dredge tributaries led by the Desaguadero, which flows from Lake Titicaca.

Critics say it may be too late.

"I don't think we'll be seeing the azure mirror of Poopo again," said Milton Perez, a Universidad Tecnica researcher. "I think we've lost it."

___

Associated Press writer Frank Bajak contributed to this report from Lima, Peru.

.............


but hey no worries the money guys are already  checking out future money making spots



........................


http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-world-has-discovered-a-dollar1-trillion-ocean/ar-BBowEny?li=BBnbfcL
Bloomberg
Eric Roston
2 hrs ago

The world has discovered a $1 trillion ocean

As chairman of investments at Guggenheim Partners, Scott Minerd thought he had a realistic view on how big an economic challenge climate change poses.

Then, at a Hoover Institution conference almost three years ago, he met former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz. Minerd recalled him saying: "Scott, imagine that you woke up tomorrow morning, and the headline on the newspapers was, 'The World Has Discovered a New Ocean.'" The opening of the Arctic, Shultz told him, may be one of the most important events since the end of the ice age, some 12,000 years ago.

And while Shultz's spokesman couldn't confirm the conversation, there's no doubting the melting of the Arctic ice cap, and the unveiling of resources below, presents mind- boggling opportunities for energy, shipping, fishing, science, and military exploitation. Russia even planted its flag on the sea floor at the North Pole in 2007.



Energy and shipping have been first up. Norway made its national fortune drilling in northern waters, and Arctic fossil fuel exploration has become a more prominent part of U.S. energy policy. Melting ice means that in summer months, cargo can travel approximately 5,000 km from Korea to New York, rather than the 12,000 km it takes to pass through the Panama Canal. Warming waters also open up access to commercial fish stocks, making the Arctic a growing source of food.

Not long after that Hoover conference, Minerd joined a World Economic Forum advisory council. Its task? Develop guidelines for those nations looking to do business at the top of the world. That framework is to be released Thursday, in Davos.

"The history of economic development in regions of the world has really been fraught with a mass of mistakes," said Minerd, who before Guggenheim worked at Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley. "It really seems that someone needed to start developing a minimum standard, as a guide for economic development in the region."

The Arctic Investment Protocol, developed by a 22-member WEF "global agenda council," puts forward sustainability principles similar to initiatives developed for mature economies in recent years. The focus is long-term: tap the expertise of indigenous communities and treat them as commercial partners, protect ecosystems (even as rising temperatures change them before our eyes), and prevent corruption while encouraging international collaboration. The Arctic nations include Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the U.S., so there is a lot of collaboration to be had.

The WEF protocol seeks to address a region changing dramatically, and rapidly. Guggenheim, the first financial services firm to endorse the protocol, started its Arctic research about five years ago. That's when Minerd made his first trip up north. Growing up in Pittsburgh, he saw first-hand how investment can help develop a community, and then just as quickly leave it to rust. The trick will be to avoid having the same thing happen to the Arctic.


Guggenheim has long provided infrastructure finance, because it's an area that can offer long-term, stable returns. That's partly why the firm was drawn to the Arctic. From there, researchers started looking into just what the region needed to become networked into the global economy.

The financial measure of opportunities available there is difficult to estimate, but $1 trillion may be a solid first- pass.


That's the figure Guggenheim says may be needed to get the Arctic up and running in a manner that won't deplete it in the long run. The figure is based on a list of public and private infrastructure projects already being planned. Not all of those efforts will even need outside investment, particularly in the energy sector.

The list isn't meant to be an investment blueprint, but a research-driven assessment of what's needed, Minerd said. Its purpose is to provoke discussion—and hopefully reasoned investment—in the region.

The Arctic guidelines are voluntary, like many other sustainable investment initiatives, including the Principles for Responsible Investment or even the WEF's own work on "sustainable competitiveness."


How does anyone expect to protect the Arctic environment in such a gold rush? The project is designed to complement the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and while the green earth is littered with do-good business pledges, the notion received a shot in the arm recently.


In December, almost 200 nations agreed in Paris to adhere to the first-ever universal climate goals. How nations contribute to progress toward them is their call, since there are no binding demands to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The Paris agreement will work—if it works at all—by relying on the soft power of international political consensus to encourage change, in business and government. Laying waste to the Arctic would seem to contradict that.

The next step for the protocol, Minerd said, is to encourage national and local governments, and financiers, to sign on. If those responsible for infrastructure-permitting and investment are on board, perhaps there's a chance to develop the Arctic without destroying it.

Such an effort will require significant scientific observation, especially given how little data there is, and how few have ever lived north of 66 degrees.Jan-Gunnar Withner, director of the Norwegian Polar Institute and a member of the WEF group, said increases in shipping, mining or other natural resource harvesting will be at the mercy of a fast melting ice cap. The retreat of ice sheets has created a shifting seascape of shipping channels. Melting glaciers are spawning more pesky icebergs that can wreak havoc on container ships and drilling platforms.

The Arctic is warming faster than any other part of the globe, Winther says: "These changes are like nothing we have seen. We don't have anything to compare with in history."





 

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http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/02/03/atlantic-ocean-now-acidifying-at-a-rapid-rate?cmpid=tp-ptnr-huffpost&utm_source=huffpost&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=tp-traffic
Feb 3, 2016
Emily J. Gertz is an associate editor for environment and wildlife at TakePart

The Atlantic Ocean Is Acidifying at a Rapid Rate

A new study finds it's absorbing 50 percent more carbon than it was a decade ago, and that could have dire consequences for dolphins, whales, and other marine life.

Over the past 10 years, the Atlantic Ocean has soaked up 50 percent more carbon dioxide than it did the decade before, measurably speeding up the acidification of the ocean, according to a new study.

The paper, published Saturday in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles,
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015GB005248/pdf
"shows the large impact all of us are having on the environment," Ryan Woosley of the University of Miami said in a statement. "Our use of fossil fuels isn't only causing the climate to change but also affects the oceans by decreasing the pH."

The burning of oil, coal, and natural gas for energy and the destruction of forests are the leading causes of the carbon dioxide emissions driving climate change. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 355 parts per million in 1989 to just over 400 ppm in 2015.

Decreasing pH in seawater can harm the ability of shelled organisms, from microscopic coccolithophores to the oysters and clams that show up on our dinner plates, to build and maintain their bony exteriors.

Researchers reported last year that acidification is also threatening to wipe out large populations of phytoplankton, the tiny ocean plants at the base of food webs that support fish, dolphins, whales, and other marine life.

Climate change is altering ocean chemistry in other ways as well. Scientists announced on Tuesday that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet is not only releasing huge amounts of freshwater into the Atlantic Ocean—slowing down an important heat-carrying ocean current—but may also be carrying about 441,000 tons of phosphorous into coastal waters.

The meltwater picks up the mineral as it flows along the bedrock at the base of the ice sheet, which is continually pulverized by the weight and movement of the ice.

"We find annual phosphorus input (for all of Greenland's outlet glaciers) are at least equal to some of the world's largest rivers, such as the Mississippi and the Amazon," Jon Hawkings, a researcher at the University of Bristol, said in a statement.

This phosphorous flow could increase as the great melt of the Greenland ice sheet continues, Hawkings and his colleagues believe—and that matters because the mineral is a crucial nutrient in food webs.
They speculate that a richer supply of phosphorous in the Arctic Ocean could lead to increased plankton populations, which could help support more fish, birds, whales, and other marine mammals in both the Arctic and the subarctic.

Those regions, however, are acidifying along with the rest of the world's oceans.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction 2/4/16: An earlier version of the photo caption in this article misstated the location of Gloucester Harbor. It is in Massachusetts.

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http://www.climatecentral.org/news/study-reveals-acceleration-of-sea-level-rise-20055
Published: February 22nd, 2016
By John Upton

Study Reveals Stunning Acceleration of Sea Level Rise

The oceans have heaved up and down as world temperatures have waxed and waned, but as new research tracking the past 2,800 years shows, never during that time did the seas rise as sharply or as suddenly as has been the case during the last century.

The new study, the culmination of a decade of work by three teams of farflung scientists, has charted what they called an "acceleration" in sea level rise that's triggering and worsening flooding in coastlines around the world.

The findings also warn of much worse to come.

The scientists reported in a paper published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have greater than 95 percent certainty that at least half of more than 5 inches of sea level rise they detected during the 20th century was directly caused by global warming.







"During the past millennia, sea level has never risen nearly as fast as during the last century," said Stefan Rahmstorf, a physics professor at Potsdam University in Germany, one of 10 authors of the paper. "That was to be expected, since global warming inevitably leads to rising seas."

By trapping heat, rising concentrations of atmospheric pollution are causing glaciers and ice sheets to melt into seas, lifting high tides ever higher.

Globally, average temperatures have risen about 1°C (nearly 2°F) since the 1800s. Last year was the hottest recorded, easily surpassing the mark set one year earlier. The expansion of warming ocean water was blamed in a recent studyfor about half of sea level rise during the past decade.

Changes in sea level vary around the world and over time, because of the effects of ocean cycles, volcanic eruptions and other phenomenon. But the hastening pace of sea level rise is being caused by climate change.

"The new sea level data confirm once again just how unusual the age of modern global warming, due to our greenhouse gas emissions, is," Rahmstorf said. "They also demonstrate that one of the most dangerous impacts of global warming, namely rising seas, is well underway."

Were it not for the effects of global warming, the researchers concluded that sea levels might actually have fallen during the 20th century. At the very least, they would have risen far less than was actually the case.

A report published by Climate Central on Monday, the result of an analysis based in part on the findings in Monday's paper, concluded that climate change was to blame for three quarters of the coastal floods recorded in the U.S. from 2005 to 2014, mostly high tide floods. That was up from less than half of floods in the 1950s.

"I think this is really a first placing of human fingerprints on coastal floods, and thousands of them," said Ben Strauss, vice president for sea level and climate impacts at Climate Central. Strauss led the analysis, which also involved government and academic researchers.

Governments and communities have been slow to respond to the crisis of rising seas, though efforts to adapt to the changes underway are now being planned around the world.

"There's a definite recognition among people who weren't talking about sea level rise 5 years ago that it's something to be concerned about," said Laura Tam, a policy director at SPUR, which is an urban planning think-tank based in San Francisco. "And something that needs to be planned for."


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A high-profile effort to track long-term changes in sea levels was based on analysis of sediment layers at a single location in North Carolina. Published in 2011, that study produced a chart of sea levels that bounced up and down over time, changing with global temperatures, and then ticked sharply upward as industrialization triggered global warming.

"North Carolina basically showed us that this could be done," said Andrew Kemp, a sea level scientist at Tuft's University. He was a co-author of both Monday's paper and the paper published in 2011.

Monday's paper combined the data from North Carolina with similar analyses from 23 other locations around the world plus data from tide gauges.

Rob DeConto, a professor at UMass Amherst who researches prehistoric climates, and who was not involved with the study, described the report as a "nice job" that "used a lot more data than anybody else has used in a study like this."

The analysis goes further than explaining historical sea level rise. It includes worrying projections for the future.

By extending their findings to future scenarios, the scientists showed that the amount of land that could be inundated in the coming years will depend heavily on whether humanity succeeds in slashing pollution from fuel burning, deforestation and farming.

The Paris Agreement negotiated in December aims to do just that, with nations agreeing to take voluntary steps to reduce the amount of pollution they release after 2020. It could take decades, though, before that untested approach is revealed to have been a success, a failure, or something in between.

Even If humans quickly stop polluting the atmosphere, potentially keeping a global temperature rise to well below 2°C (3.8°F) compared with preindustrial times — a major goal of the Paris climate agreement — seas may still rise by an additional 9 inches to 2 feet this century, the study concluded. That would trigger serious flooding in some areas, and worsen it in others.

Under the worst-case scenario investigated, if pollution continues unabated, and if seas respond to ongoing warming by rising at the fastest rates considered likely, sea levels could rise more than 4 feet this century alone, wiping out coastal infrastructure and driving communities inland.

The problem would be made far worse if the Antarctic or Greenland ice sheets collapse — something that's difficult to forecast.

Their projections for future sea level rise were similar to those published in 2013 by scientists convened by the United Nations, following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's most recent assessment of climate science.

They also closely matched projections that were coincidentally published in a separate paper in the same journal on Monday.

The similarity of the other papers' projections "strengthens the confidence" in the findings, said Robert Kopp, a Rutgers University climate scientist who led the analysis.

The convergence of the findings in Monday's papers was a "nice result," said Matthias Mengel, a researcher at at Potsdam University who coauthored the other sea level rise study released Monday. He led a team of sea level scientists who took a different approach than Kopp's team to projecting future sea levels.

Mengel's team projected future sea levels by combining the results of models that anticipate changes to icebergs, ice sheets and ocean expansion in the years ahead, and used those findings to predict sea levels.

For years, different approaches to projecting future sea level rise have arrived at different results, but the gap has recently been closing, which Mengel described as "a really good sign for sea level science" — even if it's ominous news for humanity.


RELATED CONTENT   pdf's.links at article
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[thorfourwinds]

Massive CO Clouds Over West Coast/Earthquake Watch!!

BPEarthWatch
Published on Feb 28, 2016
Could this be the early warning for a Mega-West Coast Quake.?http://www.bpearthwatch.com

Earthquake Update February 28, 2016
- Carbon Monoxide Poisoning West Coast[/url]

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/greenland-ice-climate-change_us_56d7c02be4b0000de4036b5b?ir=Science&section=us_science&utm_hp_ref=science

Nick Visser
General Assignment Reporter ?
Jacqueline Howard
Senior Science Editor, The Huffington Post
03/04/2016 10:10 am ET

Greenland's Ice Sheet Is Filthy, And That's A Problem

Yet another sign that climate change is a major threat to our planet.

Credit: Marco Tedesco/Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

An aerial image of Greenland shows rivers of meltwater and areas of dark ice. Greenland's surface is absorbing more solar radiation as melting increases grain size and brings old impurities to the surface.
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/09/why-greenland-dark-snow-should-worry-you
 

Scientists have long known that Greenland's surface is neither green nor snowy white like you'll find on a world map. Rather, many of the country's massive ice fields have morphed into an ugly grey-black you'd find on the side of the road a few days after a blizzard.

Now, a new paper links this darkening of Greenland's ice to a familiar culprit, climate change, and warns that the worst is yet to come as the planet warms.

The study, published Thursday in the journal The Cyrosphere,
http://www.the-cryosphere.net/10/477/2016/
suggests that a "feedback loop" of melting ice in turn causes the once-white landscape to collect impurities like soot, where it then soaks up more heat and melts further.

"We knew that these processes had been happening," Dr. Marco Tedesco, a professor at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and lead author of the study, told The Christian Science Monitor. "What's new is the acceleration of the darkening, which started in 1996."
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0303/Why-is-Greenland-s-ice-sheet-getting-darker






Steve Humphreys via Getty Images

Dirty sea ice breaking up in Kulusuk, Greenland.


Due to the ongoing plight of climate change, the Earth has seen year after year of record-breaking warmth,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/2015-hottest-year_us_568e9101e4b0a2b6fb6ef5eb
which can cause several seasons' worth of snowfall to melt. Additionally, soot from global wildfires or atmospheric dust that has settled year after year then gets concentrated on the ground as surrounding snow layers disappear. This mixture of melted snow and atmospheric dust causes the black appearance.

"You have impurities stored in the snowpack, and as you start melting in the snow, part of the impurities will be flushed away, and the other part will be basically standing on the surface," Tedesco told The Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/03/03/greenlands-vast-ice-sheet-is-getting-darker-heres-why-thats-really-bad-news/
"Snow acts really like a filter. So the idea here is, the more you melt the snowpack, the more you will release these impurities on the surface of the snow, or the ice."

Other, less noticeable changes happen in another "feedback loop" when the melted snow and ice then refreezes into larger crystals that can absorb more solar radiation than before -- causing more melting.

"I call it melting cannibalism," Tedesco said in the Post. "You have melting feeding on itself."

For the study, the researchers analyzed satellite data to compare the reflectivity and darkening of Greenland's ice and snow from 1981 to 2012. White snow reflects more radiation from the sun, which keeps the ice cooler, while black snow absorbs radiation and leads to more ice melt.

The researchers also created a computer model to simulate the future of Greenland's surface temperature, grain size, exposed ice area and albedo.

They noticed that beginning around 1996, Greenland's ice began absorbing more solar radiation -- and they warn that the reflectivity of the ice could fall by as much as 10 percent by the end of the century, spurring further melt.

Tedesco and the paper's co-authors noted that the decrease in reflectivity could be stopped with a heavy bout of snowfall and less melting. But seeing as the world just had its hottest year on record in 2015, that option seems unlikely.

Scientists have long turned to Greenland to measure the impacts of climate change, since more than 650,000 square miles of the country are covered by a thick layer of snow and ice. Previous studies have shown that the ice sheets are shrinking at ever-increasing rates as glaciers retreat, and some scientists have warned the melt may soon become irreversible.

This drastic level of melt is the source of several climate-related doomsday scenarios that would force sea levels to rise dramatically, flooding many of the world's major cities. The new research sheds light on yet another process by which melting can occur.

"It's worrying because if the ice sheet continues to get darker, it becomes more sensitive to atmospheric warming," Tedesco told The Guardian. "The impact of two weeks of sunshine with no clouds, for example, is far greater than it was 20 years ago. The ice is going to melt much more quickly, with more water flowing off on to the sea."



more embedded links  in article.. not all are included