climate change tagged posts

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...

Converting greenhouse gas emissions into energy-rich fuel using nano silicon (Si) in a carbon-neutral carbon-cycle is illustrated. Credit: Chenxi Qian

Saving the planet from climate change with a grain of sand. Every year, humans advance climate change and global warming – and quite likely our own eventual extinction – by injecting about 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A team of scientists from the University of Toronto (U of T) believes they’ve found a way to convert all these emissions into energy-rich fuel in a carbon-neutral cycle that uses a very abundant natural resource: silicon, the 7th most-abundant element in the universe and the 2nd most-abundant element in the earth’s crust.

The idea of converting carbon dioxide emissions to energy isn’t new: there’s be...

The Jason series of U.S./European satellites can measure the height of the ocean surface. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The amount of sea level rise in the Pacific Ocean can be used to estimate future global surface temperatures, according to a new report led by University of Arizona geoscientists. Based on the Pacific Ocean’s sea level in 2015, the team estimates by the end of 2016 the world’s average surface temperature will increase up to 0.5 F (0.28 C) more than in 2014. In 2015 alone, the average global surface temperature increased by 0.32 F (0.18 C). “Our prediction is through the end of 2016,” said first author Cheryl Peyser. “The prediction is looking on target so far.”

Scientists knew that both the rate at which global surface temperature is rising and sea level in the western Pacifi...