climate change tagged posts

Magnetic loops gyrate above the sun, March 23-24, 2017. Credit: NASA/GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory

The Sun might emit less radiation by mid-century, giving planet Earth a chance to warm a bit more slowly but not halt the trend of human-induced climate change. The cooldown would be the result of what scientists call a grand minimum, a periodic event during which the Sun’s magnetism diminishes, sunspots form infrequently, and less ultraviolet radiation makes it to the surface of the planet. Scientists believe that the event is triggered at irregular intervals by random fluctuations related to the Sun’s magnetic field.

Scientists have used reconstructions based on geological and historical data to attribute a cold period in Europe in the mid-17th Century to such an event, named the “Maunder...

Annual mean heatwave degree days in Belgium. Historical on the left, and under business-as-usual climate change scenario on right. Not only the number of hot days days, but also the heatwave intensity are rising drastically under global warming, especially in the cities.

Heatwaves are intensifying in cities due to the double whammy of the urban heat island effect and global warming, according to a new study. The study’s authors used computer models to simulate with unprecedented detail the temperature changes through the mid-21st century in Belgian cities. They found that heatwaves become hotter, longer and more frequent because of greenhouse gas emissions, and that temperature above the heat stress alarm level increases by a factor of between 1.4 and 15 by the middle of this century.

“The...

A recent snow storm in New York

The research, carried out by an international team of scientists including the University of Sheffield, found that warming in the Arctic may be intensifying the effects of the jet stream’s position, which in the winter can cause extreme cold weather, such as the winter of 2014/15 which saw record snowfall levels in New York. Scientists previously had 2 schools of thought. One group believe that natural variability in jet stream’s position has caused recent severe cold winter weather seen in places such as the Eastern US and the UK...

Three different tropical cyclones spinning over the western Pacific Ocean on August 7, 2006. The cyclone on the lower right has intensified into a typhoon. Credit: NASA

China, Taiwan, Japan and the Koreas will experience more violent typhoons under climate change, said researchers presenting evidence for a recent rise in storm intensity caused by ocean warming. Scientists have struggled to identify changes in the intensity and frequency of typhoons over the NW Pacific ocean—never mind trying to pinpoint a role for global warming. Contradictory trends emerge from records such as the Joint Typhoon Warming Center and Japan Meteorological Agency—the two most widely-used data sets in typhoon research, according to the US-based Wei Mei and Shang-Ping Xie...