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The Amazon rainforest, so crucial to the Earth’s climate system, is coming under threat from cleaner air say prominent UK and Brazilian climate scientists in the journal Nature.

Science Daily: Amazon Under Threat From Cleaner Air

Report: CO2 from deforestation ‘far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories’

Excerpt: The accelerating destruction of the rainforests that form a precious cooling band around the Earth’s equator, is now being recognised as one of the main causes of climate change. Carbon emissions from deforestation far outstrip damage caused by planes and automobiles and factories. The rampant slashing and burning of tropical forests is second only to the energy sector as a source of greenhouses gases according to report published today by the Oxford-based Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of leading rainforest scientists. Figures from the GCP, summarising the latest findings from the United Nations, and building on estimates contained in the Stern Report, show deforestation accounts for up to 25 per cent of global emissions of heat-trapping gases, while transport and industry account for 14 per cent each; and aviation makes up only 3 per cent of the total. “Tropical forests are the elephant in the living room of climate change,” said Andrew Mitchell, the head of the GCP.Scientists say one days’ deforestation is equivalent to the carbon footprint of eight million people flying to New York. Reducing those catastrophic emissions can be achieved most quickly and most cheaply by halting the destruction in Brazil, Indonesia, the Congo and elsewhere.No new technology is needed, says the GCP, just the political will and a system of enforcement and incentives that makes the trees worth more to governments and individuals standing than felled. “The focus on technological fixes for the emissions of rich nations while giving no incentive to poorer nations to stop burning the standing forest means we are putting the cart before the horse,” said Mr Mitchell.

The Independent: Deforestation: The hidden cause of global warming

KEVIN Rudd’s climate change guru Ross Garnaut has used his newly attained expertise in the field to argue heritage traditions, such as a slate roof, should not apply to a sleek, modern house he wants to build in inner suburban Melbourne.

The Australian: Garnaut heavies council over roof

WATER Commissioner Elizabeth Nosworthy says installing a pool at her home is sending “the right message” to Queenslanders coping with tough water restrictions.

couriermail.com.au: Water chief defends new pool

CLIMATE change could lead to “killer cornflakes” with the most potent liver toxin ever recorded, an environmental health conference has been told.

news.com.au: Cornflakes in cereal killer warning

A $34 million solar instrument package to be built by the University of Colorado at Boulder, considered a crucial tool to help monitor global climate change, has been restored to a U.S. government satellite mission slated for launch in 2013.

The data from these instruments will help scientists differentiate between natural and human-caused climate change, said Pilewskie.

CU Team To Build $34 Million Instrument Package For U.S. Environmental Satellite

Study: With locked crust, Earth could become another Venus

HOUSTON, May 12, 2008 — A new study of possible links between climate and geophysics on Earth and similar planets finds that prolonged heating of the atmosphere can shut down plate tectonics and cause a planet’s crust to become locked in place.

EurekAlert: Hot climate could shut down plate tectonics

“The boom of thunder and crackle of lightning generally mean one thing: a storm is coming. Curiously, though, the biggest storms of all, hurricanes, are notoriously lacking in lightning. Hurricanes blow, they rain, they flood, but seldom do they crackle,” at least that was how NASA s Patrick Barry and Tony Phillips began an article entitled ‘Electric Hurricanes’ early in 2006. The article then makes reference to three of the most powerful hurricanes of 2005 –Rita, Katrina, and Emily– with comment that they did have lightning, in fact “lots of it”.

A mystery surrounding hurricanes is their actual formation, for while it is generally accepted that a warmer than usual ocean is a pre-requisite, the formation of tropical cyclones is the topic of extensive ongoing research and is still not fully understood.

One of the reasons why cyclone formation remains mysterious could be because we are excluding one of the largest forces in nature from our intellectual armoury – electricity. The general perception is that atmospheric turbulence creates the charge separation that produces lightning and so electrical forces are excluded from any models of weather.

Much the same reasoning is applied to space where charge separation is also not deemed possible. But this attitude should have changed 100 years ago when Kristian Birkeland pointed out that the polar auroras were produced by electrical currents from the Sun, and proceeded to demonstrate that with his famous “Terrella” experiments.

As Hannes Alfven observed in 1948 “Nearly everything we know about the celestial universe has come from applying principles we have learnt in terrestrial physics…Yet there is one great branch of physics that up to now has told us little or nothing about astronomy. That branch is electricity. It is rather astonishing that this phenomenon, which has been so exhaustively studied on earth, has been of so little help in the celestial sphere”.

Alven’s student Anthony Peratt continued research into plasma universe theory and developed Particle in Cell simulation using the Maxwell-Lorentz equations to model plasma behaviour. One type of simulation involved a pair of Birkeland currents in parallel and looking top row left to right, then next row left to right, was able to produce a spiral galaxy formation, (see Figure 1). The accuracy of PIC simulation is shown in its astonishing ability to mimic known galaxy shapes (Figure 2) without using gravity.

Put simply, the two parallel Birkeland currents approach and start twisting around each other, imparting a spinning motion. This is the basic design of the Maxwell homopolar motor. Here it is the electric current that is generating the circular motion and suggests that we should be looking for signs of electrical activity in cyclones.

Louis Hissink
Perth

Temperatures in the Arctic are rising far faster than in other parts of the world. Climate models produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are tuned to reproduce the human-made greenhouse effect, predict the region should have warmed by 1.4 °C between 1960 and 2000. In fact, the Arctic’s average air temperature rose by 2.2 °C.

Vladimir Semenov of the Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics in Moscow, Russia, says that ocean currents carrying warm water from lower latitudes into polar regions could have played a part in this increase. He analysed air temperature data from the north Atlantic, which revealed a cyclic pattern of highs and lows over the past century. He argues the length of such cycles must be explained by ocean currents, which also fluctuate over a timescale of decades.

Between 1970 and 2000, the average temperature of the northern hemisphere increased by 0.5 °C. Semenov calculates that the natural process he outlined may have been responsible for around 0.2 °C.

New Scientist Environment: Arctic currents may be warming the world (subscription required to read full article).

Conference poster: A mechanism for the early 20th century warming in the Arctic: a missing link Lennart Bengtsson, Vladimir A. Semenov and Ola M. Johannessen

Thanks to Luke for alerting us to this interesting research.