http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/31/science/climate-chaos-across-the-map.html Source:   By Justin Gillis, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: What is going on with the weather? With tornado outbreaks in the South, Christmas temperatures that sent trees into bloom in Central Park, drought in parts of Africa and historic floods drowning the old industrial cities of England, 2015 is closing with a string of weather anomalies all over the world. The year, expected to be the hottest on record, may be over at midnight Thursday, but the trouble will not be. Rain in the central United States has been so heavy that major floods are beginning along the Mississippi River and are likely to intensify in coming weeks. California may lurch from drought to flood by late winter. Most serious, millions of people could be threatened by a developing food shortage in southern Africa.  ...Scientists say the most obvious suspect in the turmoil is the climate pattern called El Niño, in wh

https://eos.org/articles/worlds-smallest-glaciers-risk-vanishing-in-warm-climate Source:   By JoAnna Wendel, EoS Earth & Space News (AGU) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: The next few decades do not bode well for the world’s smallest glaciers. These tiny glaciers, less than half a square kilometer, dot mountains all over the world and account for 80%–90% of the globe’s mountain glacier population. But as temperatures rise, scientists worry that these glaciers will all but disappear. Even if they seem insignificant because of their size, these glaciers “respond very quickly and therefore they can contribute significantly, even on the global level, in terms of sea level rise for the next decade,” said Matthias Huss, senior lecturer at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland and lead scientist in the research....

https://eos.org/features/how-biofuels-can-cool-our-climate-and-strengthen-our-ecosystems Source:   By Evan H. DeLucia and Carl R. Woes, Earth & Space News (AGU) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: As the world seeks strategies to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) into the atmosphere, bioenergy is one promising substitute for fossil fuels [Somerville et al., 2010]. Currently, the United States uses the starch component from roughly 40% of its corn harvest to produce ethanol for the transportation sector (see the National Agricultural Statistics Service website). ...Replacing annual crops with perennial grasses such as miscanthus and switchgrass would pull carbon out of the atmosphere and return it to the ground (Figure 2). These crops allocate a large fraction of their biomass below ground in their root systems, and they can rapidly build up carbon stores in soil, reversing losses associated with frequent tillage, particularly on degraded or heavily tilled soils....

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/study-shows-climate-change-rapidly-warming-world-s-lakes Source:   NASA Release 15-239 For Investigation:   Excerpt: Climate change is rapidly warming lakes around the world, threatening freshwater supplies and ecosystems, according to a new NASA and National Science Foundation-funded study of more than half of the world’s freshwater supply. ...Using more than 25 years of satellite temperature data and ground measurements of 235 lakes on six continents, this study -- the largest of its kind -- found lakes are warming an average of 0.61 degrees Fahrenheit (0.34 degrees Celsius) each decade. The scientists say this is greater than the warming rate of either the ocean or the atmosphere, and it can have profound effects. ...As warming rates increase over the next century, algal blooms, which can rob water of oxygen, are projected to increase 20 percent in lakes. Algal blooms that are toxic to fish and animals are expected to increase by 5 percent. Em

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/12/16/greenland-has-lost-a-staggering-amount-of-ice-and-its-only-getting-worse/ Source:   By Chris Mooney, Washington Post. For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: A massive new study by 16 authors has calculated just how much ice the Greenland ice sheet has lost since the year 1900. And the number, says the paper just out in the journal Nature, is astounding: 9,103 gigatons (a gigaton is a billion metric tons). ...the rate of loss has been increasing, the research finds, with a doubling of annual loss in the period 2003 to 2010 compared with what it was throughout the 20th century. The study was led by Kristian K. Kjeldsen of the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen.  ... “It’s the first observational based study that shows where Greenland has lost its mass over the last 110 years,” said Kurt H. Kjær, the paper’s senior author and also of the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University

http://www.onearth.org/earthwire/paris-climate-talks-agreement Source:   By Brian Palmer. By Brian Palmer, onEarth, NRDC For Investigation:  10.3 Excerpt: Negotiators in Paris [COP21] have signed on to an historic and comprehensive deal to address climate change. ...Reassessment: The Paris agreement requires each country to revisit its carbon reduction commitment every five years, beginning in 2020. ...Money: ...Rather than setting a specific finance goal, the developed countries agreed to “set a new collective quantified goal from a floor of USD 100 billion per year” before the 2025 climate change conference. ...Transparency: The document signed today mandates that all countries—regardless of income level—provide all the information necessary for external experts to track their carbon-cutting progress, making it possible for the international community to fully analyze the success of each participant.... See also New York Times articles: An Illustrated Guide to COP21   and http:/

https://eos.org/articles/ted-cruz-chairs-heated-senate-hearing-on-climate-change Source:   By Randy Showstack, EoS Earth & Space News. For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Republican-invited witnesses reject consensus view of climate change, charge bias in federal funding. Democratic senators decry attempt to stir controversy about well-established climate findings. ...Witnesses Debate the Science. The hearing featured a panel of five witnesses, four of whom were invited by the Republican majority. ...John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, ...Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, questioned findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ...William Happer, a physics professor at Princeton University in New Jersey, and Mark Steyn, a journalist and author of books on climate, threats to Wester

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/model-of-solar-cycles-impact-on-climate-gets-upgrade Source:   By Mark Zastrow,  EoS Earth & Space Science News For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...Over the course of the 11-year cycle, the rotation of the Sun slowly twists its magnetic field into knots, creating dark sunspots. Although the overall brightness of the Sun varies by only 0.1%, the twisted bundles of magnetic energy can boost its ultraviolet (UV) radiation by 4%–8% at the solar cycle’s peak. These powerful UV rays trigger chemical reactions in the stratosphere that bind oxygen atoms and molecules to form ozone. Since ozone itself is a good absorber of UV radiation, it can heat the stratosphere near the equator, which affects the winds that circle the globe. Increased solar activity also excites Earth’s magnetic field, sending high-energy particles hurtling into the upper atmosphere. During the long polar night, this can generate large amounts of the nitrogen compounds nitric o