http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jan/26/sea-level-rise-from-ocean-warming-underestimated-scientists-say Source:   By Agence-France Presse, The Guardian For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Thermal expansion of the oceans as they warm is likely to be twice as large as previously thought, according to German researchers. ...The findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal, suggest that increasingly severe storm surges could be anticipated as a result. Sea level can mount due to two factors – melting ice and the thermal expansion of water as it warms. Until now, researchers have believed the oceans rose between 0.7 to 1mm per year due to thermal expansion. But a fresh look at the latest satellite data from 2002 to 2014 shows the seas are expanding about 1.4mm a year, said the study. ...The overall sea level rise rate is about 2.74mm per year, combining both thermal expansion and melting ice....

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/26/business/energy-environment/climate-deals-first-big-hurdle-the-draw-of-cheap-oil.html Source:   By Clifford Krauss and Diane Cardwell, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Barely a month after world leaders signed a sweeping agreement to reduce carbon emissions, the global commitment to renewable energy sources faces its first big test as the price of oil collapses. Buoyed by low gas prices, Americans are largely eschewing electric cars in favor of lower-mileage trucks and sport utility vehicles. Yet the Obama administration has shown no signs of backing off its requirement that automakers nearly double the fuel economy of their vehicles by 2025. In China, government officials are also taking steps to ensure that the recent plunge in oil prices to under $30 a barrel does not undermine its programs to improve energy efficiency. ...A few days ago, the Energy Department projected that total renewable power consumed in the United Stat

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/what-s-behind-arctic-s-increasing-carbon-dioxide-fluctuations Source:   By Sid Perkins, Science (AAAS) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: It’s no mystery why carbon dioxide (CO2) levels fluctuate with the seasons: As greenery grows in the spring and summer, it soaks up the planet-warming gas, and when trees shed their leaves in the autumn, some of that gas returns to the atmosphere. But scientists haven’t figured out why the differences between summer and winter concentrations of CO2 have been growing substantially at Arctic latitudes since the 1960s—in some regions, the fluctuations have increased as much as 25%. A new computer simulation fingers long-term warming in the Arctic, which has led to the proliferation of plants across large swaths of the landscape....

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/867659e34643474988d1bcf3447e60e8/disappearance-bolivias-no-2-lake-harbinger Source:   By Carlos Valdez, AP For Investigation:    10.3 Excerpt: UNTAVI, Bolivia (AP) —  ...Lake Poopo was officially declared evaporated last month. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people have lost their livelihoods and gone. ...the shallow saline lake has essentially dried up before only to rebound to twice the area of Los Angeles. But recovery may no longer be possible, scientists say. "This is a picture of the future of climate change," says Dirk Hoffman, a German glaciologist who studies how rising temperatures from the burning of fossil fuels has accelerated glacial melting in Bolivia. As Andean glaciers disappear so do the sources of Poopo's water. But other factors are in play in the demise of Bolivia's second-largest body of water behind Lake Titicaca. Drought caused by the recurrent El Nino meteorological phenomenon is considered the main driver. A

http://phys.org/news/2016-01-degrees.html Source:   phys.org For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...according to various climate models, the temperature will rise more sharply over land than over oceans. The big question is therefore how a maximum of two degrees global warming will affect individual regions of the world. ...A team of climate researchers from Switzerland, Australia and the UK led by Seneviratne has ... calculated the levels of extreme and average temperatures, as well as of heavy precipitation, that will occur in individual regions if the average global rise in temperature is taken as a reference. Recently published in Nature as a "Perspective", this study constitutes one of the first quantitative treatments of this issue....

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-noaa-analyses-reveal-record-shattering-global-warm-temperatures-in-2015 Source:   NASA Release 16-008. For Investigation:   Excerpt: Earth’s 2015 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern record keeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). ...Most of the warming occurred in the past 35 years, with 15 of the 16 warmest years on record occurring since 2001. Last year was the first time the global average temperatures were 1 degree Celsius or more above the 1880-1899 average. ...Weather dynamics often affect regional temperatures, so not every region on Earth experienced record average temperatures last year. For example, NASA and NOAA found that the 2015 annual mean temperature for the contiguous 48 United States was the second warmest on record....

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/early-agriculture-has-kept-earth-warm-for-millennia Source:   By Sarah Stanley, Earth & Space News (EoS; AGU) For Investigation:   Excerpt: Ice core data, archeological evidence, and other studies suggest humans had a significant influence on Earth's preindustrial climate. Modern human activity is known to drive climate change, but global temperatures were already affected by farmers millennia before the Industrial Revolution. For years, scientists have been debating about the size of preindustrial warming effects caused by human activities. Now, according to Ruddiman et al., new evidence confirms that early agricultural greenhouse gas emissions had a large warming effect that slowed a natural cooling trend. Earth’s climate has cycled between warmer interglacial and cooler glacial periods for 2.75 million years as a result of cyclic variations in the Earth’s orbit. The current Holocene epoch, which began about 11,700 years ago, is an in

http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/01/11/rings-on-rocks-detail-north-american-paleoclimate/ Source:   By Sarah Yang, UC Berkeley News. For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: A research team led by UC Berkeley soil scientists obtained data about precipitation and temperature in North America spanning the past 120,000 years, which covers glacial and interglacial periods during the Pleistocene Epoch. They did this at thousand-year resolutions — a blink of an eye in geologic terms — through a microanalysis of the carbonate deposits that formed growth rings around rocks, some measuring just 3 millimeters thick. “The cool thing that this study reveals is that within soil — an unlikely reservoir given how ‘messy’ most people think it is — there is a mineral that accumulates steadily and creates some of the most detailed information to date on the Earth’s past climates,” said senior author Ronald Amundson, a UC Berkeley professor of environmental science, policy and management. The study, publishe