Climate & Climate Change

BOFFINS fear Arctic ice melting could see the rise of a polar bear and grizzly bear hybrid – dubbed the ‘grolar bear.’ The effects of climate change means the hybrid bears could become more common as their habitats increasingly overlap due to global warning. …And he delivered a stark warning of what the future holds. He believes that by THIS summer there could be no ice at the North Pole. …And Dr Divoky had a message for climate change sceptics, saying: “Having a polar bear show up in your front yard is one of the more compelling pieces of evidence that climate change is real.”

The Sun: Grolar bears are global warning

Koalas are threatened by the rising level of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere because it saps nutrients from the eucalyptus leaves they feed on, a researcher said Wednesday.

CNN.com: Koalas under threat from toxic eucalyptus leaves

Destruction of mangrove forests in Burma left coastal areas exposed to the devastating force of the weekend’s cyclone, a top politician suggests.

ASEAN secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan said coastal developments had resulted in mangroves, which act as a natural defence against storms, being lost.

BBC News website: Mangrove loss ‘left Burma exposed’

Former vice president tells NPR’s ‘Fresh Air’ cyclone is example of ‘consequences that scientists have long predicted might be associated with continued global warming.’

Business and Media Institute: Al Gore Calls Myanmar Cyclone a ‘Consequence’ of Global Warming

The orthodoxy has been that as a consequence of greenhouse gas emissions global temperatures will continue to increase. But what is really meant by global temperatures? According to James Hansen from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies even defining surface air temperature is not easy:

“I doubt that there is a general agreement how to answer this question [of what is surface air temperature]. Even at the same location, the temperature near the ground may be very different from the temperature 5 ft above the ground and different again from 10 ft or 50 ft above the ground. Particularly in the presence of vegetation (say in a rain forest), the temperature above the vegetation may be very different from the temperature below the top of the vegetation. A reasonable suggestion might be to use the average temperature of the first 50 ft of air either above ground or above the top of the vegetation. To measure SAT we have to agree on what it is and, as far as I know, no such standard has been suggested or generally adopted. Even if the 50 ft standard were adopted, I cannot imagine that a weather station would build a 50 ft stack of thermometers to be able to find the true SAT at its location.”

He is also ambiguous when it comes to daily mean surface air temperatures:

“Again, there is no universally accepted correct answer. Should we note the temperature every 6 hours and report the mean, should we do it every 2 hours, hourly, have a machine record it every second, or simply take the average of the highest and lowest temperature of the day ? On some days the various methods may lead to drastically different results.”

Read more here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/abs_temp.html

There won’t be much, if any, coverage in the media about the unprecedented high in the Southern Hemisphere sea ice anomaly, so a self-explanatory graphic is posted below of the 1979 to present anomaly from the 1979 to 2000 mean:

We will, of course, be hearing about the extent of the Northern Hemisphere sea ice during the summer, which has bounced back over the winter from its record low. See the graph below of the anomaly for 1978 to present from the 1978 to 2000 mean:

I’ll finish with a graphic of the un-exciting 1979 to present global sea ice anomaly trend (in red) from the 1979 to 2000 mean (in black), and the global daily sea ice anomaly (in blue):

The graphs are from The Cryosphere Today

More than 1,500 people have fled their homes in southern Chile after the Chaiten volcano erupted, throwing a huge cloud of ash and lava into the sky.

More than 1,500 people have fled their homes in southern Chile after the Chaiten volcano erupted, throwing a huge cloud of ash and lava into the sky.

UK Telegraph: Thousands flee as Chilean volcano erupts