James Morris

Thursday 10:15 AM

As the head of the World Food Program, James Morris is responsible for feeding people affected by emergencies; in other words, disaster is his business. It's also the business of insurers and they know these storms are driven by climate change. They also know it will only get worse. Morris says we need to prepare for better relief. We also need to cut our carbon emissions drastically. [Free, one-time reg. req'd]

http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?t=ago6r7n6.4l8gm9n6.uws5r7n6.tiniiyn6.80374&p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tompaine.com%2Fopinion%2F%23001899

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/848788.cms


Informant: Earth First! Media

Major Temperature Rise Recorded in Arctic This Year: German Scientists

Published on Sunday, August 29, 2004 by Agence France Presse

PARIS - German scientists probing global warming said they had detected a major temperature rise this year in the Arctic Ocean and linked this to a progressive shrinking of the region's sea ice.

Temperatures recorded this year in the upper 500 meters (1,625 feet) of sea in the Fram Strait -- the gap between Greenland and the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen -- were up to 0.6 C (1.08 F) higher than in 2003, they said in a press release received here.

The rise was detectable to a water depth of 2,000 meters (6,500 feet), "representing an exceptionally strong signal by ocean standards," it said.

The experts, from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine
Research in Bremerhaven, have been recording temperatures aboard a specialized vessel, Polarstern (Pole Star), for the past six weeks.

The sampling has been taking place in the West Spitsbergen Current, which carries warm water from the Atlantic into the Arctic Ocean.

The institute said water in the Fram Strait has been warming steadily since 1990 and over the past three years, satellite images had documented "a clear recession" of sea ice edges, both in the strait and the Barents Sea.

The latest data "point towards a further warming tendency," the institute said.

In June, a UN organization announced that American scientists had detected an "alarmingly rapid growth" this year in airborne concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2), the fossil-fuel pollutant blamed for global warming.

CO2 levels recorded in March 2004 at Hawaii measured 379 parts per million (ppm), an increase of three ppm over the previous year.

By comparison, there had been an annual increase of only 1.8 ppm over the past decade.

Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 before the Industrial Revolution
were 280 ppm.

The June announcement was made at a conference on renewable energies in Bonn by Joke Waller-Hunter, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) -- the United Nations' paramount environment accord.

CO2 is the most important of the six "greenhouse" gases blamed for driving changes to the world's delicate climate system.

These gases hang like an invisible shroud in the atmosphere, trapping the Sun's heat and inflicting what many scientists predict will be serious changes to icecaps, glaciers and weather patterns.

In the Earth's distant past, climate change has occurred naturally, by emissions of CO2 disgorged by volcanoes and other phenomena. But the overwhelming majority of climate experts say CO2 levels are rising fast today because of the unbridled burning of oil, gas and coal.

Opinions differ, though, as to how fast the effects will occur and how bad they will be.

© Copyright 2004 AFP


Informant: Anna Webb

Nirgendwo lässt sich in der Nähe menschlicher Zivilisation die Auswirkungen des Klimawandel so eindrucksvoll beobachten wie durch das Abschmelzen der Alpengletscher. Die Gletscher haben Schweiß auf der Stirn...

http://www.sonnenseite.com/fp/archiv/Akt-News/5212.php

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3597584.stm


Informant: Craig Klawuhn

Unknown Country

http://www.unknowncountry.com/

24-Aug-2004

Violent storms in the ocean off the U.K. and Ireland are ripping off huge chunks of cliffs and hurling the rocks long distances inland-distances scientists didn't think were possible. And a tornado has been seen at 12,000 feet in Sequoia National Park in the U.S., making it the highest elevation tornado ever recorded. This is something new, since tornadoes are a sea level phenomenon.

Tornadoes need the dense, humid air of the lower atmosphere to give them their energy. This high-altitude tornado is additional evidence that we can expect radical changes in weather patterns as the temperature difference between the stratosphere and the troposphere increases. The lower atmosphere, the troposphere, is retaining more and more heat due to rising levels of methane and carbon dioxide, while the stratosphere is getting colder because the heat is no longer reaching it. This is a major cause of the increase in violent weather that has recently been observed worldwide. It is also the reason that forecasters keep underestimating the power of storms, as happened with Hurricane Charley, which was expected to decline to a tropical storm before it struck the Florida coast. Instead, it became a Category 4 hurricane.

In the North Atlantic, storms are creating waves over 65 feet high, which are powerful enough to tear rocks off ancient cliffs and throw them inland in places like the Shetland, Orkney and Western islands in Scotland and the Arran islands in Ireland. Some of these rocks weigh around 50 tons. Since this kind of erosion is recent, it must be caused by rising sea levels and sinking coastlines, due to global warming.

Geomorphologist Jim Hansom says, "When I was asked to investigate the reason for hundreds of boulders piled up inland from [65 foot] high cliffs, I did not believe that waves could be responsible. The boulders were just to big and too heavy. But now we can show it is occurring and at an ever increasing rate."


Informant: Anna Webb