Climate articles from Live Science

[Abraham3]

Summer Sea Levels Rising Fast Along Florida's Gulf Coast

By Becky Oskin, Staff Writer | January 30, 2014 04:03pm ET

Summer high tides are getting higher in the eastern Gulf of Mexico,
boosting the destructive power of hurricanes, a new study finds.

The trend is strongest in Florida, such as in Key West, where tidal
flooding regularly inundates low-lying city streets. Summer sea levels
are now 1.8 inches (4.5 centimeters) higher than before 1993, and that's
on top of the contribution from global sea level rise, according to the
study, published Jan. 3 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. On
the flip side, winter tides are now lower, the study finds.

Put more simply, in the past two decades, summer sea level has increased
on Florida's Gulf Coast by a total of 4 inches (10 cm). "Sea level is
rising because of global warming, but on top of this, the seasonal cycle
is also changing," said Thomas Wahl, lead study author and a coastal
engineer at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg. "We don't
know whether this is climate change or part of a natural cycle, but this
increase over the last 20 years is not found elsewhere in the world."

All coastlines undergo seasonal cycles in their tides. Summer tides are
higher than winter tides because of several factors, such as the
difference between summer and winter water temperatures; rainfall and
seasonal changes in air temperature; and wind. (For example, cold water
takes up less volume than warm water, so the tides in winter are lower.)



Email Becky Oskin or follow her [MENTION=20668]Becky[/MENTION]oskin. Follow us @livescience,
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[Abraham3]

Less Snow Threatens Antarctica's Fragile Ice Shelves

By Becky Oskin, Staff Writer | January 29, 2014 08:00pm ET

Antarctica's summer meltwater ponds are beautiful killers. Given an
escape route down to the ice, the sapphire-blue water jacks open
fractures and crevasses in ice shelves, breaking them apart.

Most ice shelves - floating, frozen plateaus permanently attached to the
shore - have a thick blanket of snow that protects them from meltwater.
The snow soaks up water like a sponge. But climate change may soon
transform these downy snow blankets into threadbare sheets, putting more
ice shelves in the Antarctic Peninsula at risk of collapse, a new study
finds. The results were published today (Jan. 29) in the Journal of
Glaciology.

Lead study author Peter Kuipers Munneke notes that not all of
Antarctica's ice shelves are in danger of breaking apart.


Email Becky Oskin or follow her [MENTION=20668]Becky[/MENTION]oskin. Follow us @livescience,
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[Abraham3]

Perhaps why the poles get more warming than the rest of the planet.

Arctic's 'Layer Cake' Atmosphere Blamed for Rapid Warming

By Becky Oskin, Staff Writer | February 02, 2014 01:00pm ET


Arctic warming

The Arctic is leading a race with few winners, warming twice as fast as
the rest of the Earth. Loss of snow and ice, which reflect the sun's
energy, is usually blamed for the Arctic temperature spike.

But a new study suggests the Arctic's cap of cold, layered air plays a
more important role in boosting polar warming than does its shrinking
ice and snow cover. A layer of shallow, stagnant air acts like a lid,
concentrating heat near the surface, researchers report today (Feb. 2)
in the journal Nature Geoscience. [Images of Melt: Earth's Vanishing
Ice]

"In the Arctic, as the climate warms, most of the additional heat
remains trapped in a shallow layer of the atmosphere close to the
ground, not deeper than 1 or 2 kilometers [0.6 to 1.2 miles]," said
Felix Pithan, a climate scientist at the Max Planck Institute for
Meteorology in Germany and lead author of the new study.

"[This] makes the Arctic surface rather inefficient at getting rid of
extra energy, and therefore it warms more than other regions when the
entire planet is warming," Pithan told Live Science.



Email Becky Oskin or follow her [MENTION=20668]Becky[/MENTION]oskin. Follow us @livescience,
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[Abraham3]

BBC News - Alaska's Arctic icy lakes lose thickness

The ubiquitous shallow icy lakes that dominate Alaska's Arctic coastal plain have undergone a significant change in recent decades.

These lakes, many of which are no more than 3m deep, melt earlier in the season and retain open water conditions for much longer.

And 20 years of satellite radar also now show that far fewer will freeze right through to the bottom in winter.

The results of the space-borne survey are published in The Cryosphere.

What is happening to the lakes is an example of how land ice is following the pattern of diminishing sea ice in the region, say scientists.

"The decline after 2006 is quite sharp," explained Dr Cristina Surdu from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. "This is another piece in the puzzle of climate change in the region.


[email protected] and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

 

[westwall]

You need to add the links for the first three posts. Also edit them down because you are fringing on copyright violation. Do it quickly.

EDIT: I edited them down for you, but you still need to provide the links.

 

[Abraham3]

Says the fellow so gifted he no longer has to speak. He just emotes and all becomes clear.

Grow up. Use that brain to impress us with your knowledge and your ability to reason. The world's doesn't really need another asshole. Ya know?

 

[Abraham3]

Are you a girl?

 

[IanC]

sea level rise is an interesting concept. we are really only concerned with how far up the beach is at high tide. most of the problem areas are caused not by the water but because the land is subsiding. tide guages in stable land areas show the same SLR for more than a century. yet we are being told by satellite altimetry that SLR dramatically increased, at the exact moment that we started to use satellites to measure it! because it is rising somewhere that we have no possible way to check. and when it slowed during the middle 2000's, no problem, just add an 'adjustment' to bring it back up.

 

[Abraham3]

sea level rise is an interesting concept. we are really only concerned with how far up the beach is at high tide. most of the problem areas are caused not by the water but because the land is subsiding.

While a coastal area subsiding would be in worse trouble than others, it is NOT the primary problem - not by a long shot. Isostasy from (as we've been told so often) coming out of an ice age is causing land to rise, not sink. Sea level is rising and will have an impact on coastal infrastructure. Storm surge damage will be the first to worsen, but eventually, the rising seas will force the relocations of homes, roadways, docks and marinas. Seawalls will overtop. And, of course, should the West Antarctic ice sheet destabilize, we will lose the a significant portion of ALL of the world's coastal cities. Give some thought to what that would cost.

sea level rise is an interesting concept. we are really only
tide guages in stable land areas show the same SLR for more than a century. yet we are being told by satellite altimetry that SLR dramatically increased, at the exact moment that we started to use satellites to measure it! because it is rising somewhere that we have no possible way to check. and when it slowed during the middle 2000's, no problem, just add an 'adjustment' to bring it back up.

Current sea level rise
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Current sea level rise is about 3 mm/year worldwide. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), "this is a significantly larger rate than the sea-level rise averaged over the last several thousand years", and the rate may be increasing.[2] This rise in sea levels around the world potentially affects human populations in coastal and island regions[3] and natural environments like marine ecosystems.[4]
Between 1870 and 2004, global average sea levels rose 195 mm (7.7 in), 1.46 mm (0.057 in) per year.[5] From 1950 to 2009, measurements show an average annual rise in sea level of 1.7 ± 0.3 mm per year, with satellite data showing a rise of 3.3 ± 0.4 mm per year from 1993 to 2009,[6] a faster rate of increase than previously estimated.[7] It is unclear whether the increased rate reflects an increase in the underlying long-term trend.[8]
Two main factors contribute to observed sea level rise.[9] The first is thermal expansion: as ocean water warms, it expands.[10] The second is from the melting of major stores of land ice like glaciers and ice sheets.
Sea level rise is one of several lines of evidence that support the view that the climate has recently warmed.[11] The global community of climate scientists confirms that it is very likely human-induced (anthropogenic) warming contributed to the sea level rise observed in the latter half of the 20th century.[12]
Sea level rise is expected to continue for centuries.[13] In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projected that during the 21st century, sea level will rise another 18 to 59 cm (7.1 to 23.2 in), but these numbers do not include "uncertainties in climate-carbon cycle feedbacks nor do they include the full effects of changes in ice sheet flow".[14] More recent projections assessed by the US National Research Council (2010)[15] suggest possible sea level rise over the 21st century of between 56 and 200 cm (22 and 79 in).
On the timescale of centuries to millennia, the melting of ice sheets could result in even higher sea level rise. Partial deglaciation of the Greenland ice sheet, and possibly the West Antarctic ice sheet, could contribute 4 to 6 m (13 to 20 ft) or more to sea level rise.[16]
Work by a team led by Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography suggests that a quick way to stave off impending sea level rise is to cut emissions of short-lived climate warmers such as methane and soot.[17][18]

References

1) US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) (2010). "Sea Level: Climate Change: US EPA". US EPA.
2) Is sea level rising?
3) Bindoff, N.L., J. Willebrand, V. Artale, A, Cazenave, J. Gregory, S. Gulev, K. Hanawa, C. Le Quéré, S. Levitus, Y. Nojiri, C.K. Shum, L.D. Talley and A. Unnikrishnan (2007) "Section 5.5.1: Introductory Remarks" in IPCC AR4 WG1 2007 Chapter 5: Observations: Ocean Climate Change and Sea Level ISBN 978-0-521-88009-1
4) Fischlin; et al., "Section 4.4.9: Oceans and shallow seas – Impacts", in IPCC AR4 WG2 2007, Chapter 4: Ecosystems, their Properties, Goods and Services, p. 234
5) Church, John; White, Neil (January 6, 2006). "A 20th century acceleration in global sea-level rise". Geophysical Research Letters 33: L01602. Bibcode:2006GeoRL..3301602C. doi:10.1029/2005GL024826. L01602. Retrieved 2010-05-17. pdf is here [1]
6) Nicholls, Robert J.; Cazenave, Anny (18 June 2010). "Sea-Level Sea-Level Rise and Its Impact on Coastal Zones". Science Magazine 328 (5985): 1517–1520. Bibcode:2010Sci...328.1517N. doi:10.1126/science.1185782.
7) IPCC, Synthesis Report, Section 1.1: Observations of climate change, in IPCC AR4 SYR 2007.
8) IPCC, Synthesis Report, Section 1.1: Observations of climate change, in IPCC AR4 SYR 2007; Dahlman, L. (2009). "NOAA Climate Portal: ClimateWatch Magazine: Climate Change: Global Sea Level". NOAA Climate Services. Retrieved 2011-07-29.
9) IPCC, FAQ 5.1: Is Sea Level Rising?, in IPCC AR4 WG1 2007.
10) Albritton et al., Technical Summary, Box 2: What causes sea level to change?, in IPCC TAR WG1 2001.
11) Solomon et al., Technical Summary, Section 3.4 Consistency Among Observations, in IPCC AR4 WG1 2007; Hegerl et al., Executive summary, Section 1.3: Consistency of changes in physical and biological systems with warming, in IPCC AR4 SYR 2007.
12) Hegerl et al., Chapter 9: Understanding and Attributing Climate Change, in IPCC AR4 WG1 2007.
13) America's Climate Choices: Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES (2010). "7 Sea Level Rise and the Coastal Environment". Advancing the Science of Climate Change. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. p. 245. ISBN 978-0-309-14588-6. Retrieved 2011-06-17.
14) IPCC, Topic 3, Section 3.2.1: 21st century global changes, p. 45, in IPCC AR4 SYR 2007.
15) America's Climate Choices: Panel on Advancing the Science of Climate Change, Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, Division on Earth and Life Studies, NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES (2010). "7 Sea Level Rise and the Coastal Environment". Advancing the Science of Climate Change. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press. pp. 243–250. ISBN 978-0-309-14588-6. Retrieved 2011-06-17. "(From pg 250) Even if sea-level rise were to remain in the conservative range projected by the IPCC (0.6–1.9 feet [0.18–0.59 m])—not considering potentially much larger increases due to rapid decay of the Greenland or West Antarctic ice sheets—tens of millions of people worldwide would become vulnerable to flooding due to sea-level rise over the next 50 years (Nicholls, 2004; Nicholls and Tol, 2006). This is especially true in densely populated, low-lying areas with limited ability to erect or establish protective measures. In the United States, the high end of the conservative IPCC estimate would result in the loss of a large portion of the nation's remaining coastal wetlands. The impact on the east and Gulf coasts of the United States of 3.3 feet (1 m) of sea-level rise, which is well within the range of more recent projections for the 21st century (e.g., Pfeffer et al., 2008; Vermeer and Rahmstorf, 2009), is shown in pink in Figure 7.7. Also shown, in red, is the effect of 19.8 feet (6 m) of sea-level rise, which could occur over the next several centuries if warming were to continue unabated."
16) IPCC, Summary for Policymakers, Section C. Current knowledge about future impacts – Magnitudes of impact in IPCC AR4 WG2 2007.
17) Cuts in some greenhouse gases could slow sea level rise; "Methane, ozone and other short-lived pollutants have a big impact on ocean heights" April 12, 2013 Vol.183 #9 Science News
18) doi:10.1038/nclimate1869