http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/california-gas-leak-doubled-methane-emissions-la-basin Source:  By Robert Service, Science For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...On 23 October 2015, officials reported an ongoing leak at SS25, a well in a massive underground natural gas storage facility near Los Angeles, California. Researchers collected air samples from daily flights over the region from 7 November 2015 through 13 February, 2 days after the leak was capped. ...every hour after the blast—the facility released up to 60 metric tons of methane, the primary component of natural gas and the greenhouse gas with the second biggest overall climate impact. The leak was so massive that it essentially doubled the methane emissions for the entire Los Angeles basin, and had the same climate impact in annual greenhouse gas emissions as 572,000 cars. ...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/how-do-you-save-sick-coral-reef-pop-antacid Source:  By Eli Kintisch, Science For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Anyone who has ever dissolved a piece of chalk in vinegar knows that ocean acidification—the result of seawater absorbing carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution from the air—has to be bad for calcareous creatures like coral. But just how big a role does ocean acidification play in the sickly state of many reefs? ...Near shores across the planet, the health of reefs is in decline. Global studies have shown that major reef systems are calcifying—building their stony skeletons—more slowly, with one study suggesting growth rates of the Great Barrier Reef off Australia have plummeted 40% in just 3 decades. But lots of factors contribute to this harm: diseases, warming water, pollution, and sediment runoff, along with the 0.1 unit drop in the pH of the global ocean since the preindustrial era. ...scientists led by Rebecca Albright

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/23/science/sea-level-rise-global-warming-climate-change.html Source:   By Justin Gillis, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: The worsening of tidal flooding in American coastal communities is largely a consequence of greenhouse gases from human activity, and the problem will grow far worse in coming decades, scientists reported Monday. Those emissions, primarily from the burning of fossil fuels, are causing the ocean to rise at the fastest rate since at least the founding of ancient Rome, the scientists said. They added that in the absence of human emissions, the ocean surface would be rising less rapidly and might even be falling. The increasingly routine tidal flooding is making life miserable in places like Miami Beach; Charleston, S.C.; and Norfolk, Va., even on sunny days. ...Though these types of floods often produce only a foot or two of standing saltwater, they are straining life in many towns by killing lawns and trees, blo

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/17-governors-agree-to-pursue-clean-energy-goals/ Source:   By Debra Kahn, Scientific American, ClimateWire. For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: States across the U.S. are moving forward with renewables, energy efficiency and electric cars. The announcement by 17 governors yesterday to jointly pursue clean energy goals was perhaps most noteworthy in what it did not include—any mention of climate change. That omission was necessary to bring a bipartisan swath of states together on energy efficiency and renewable energy, modernizing the electricity grid and promoting electric and alternatively fueled vehicles—all subjects often mentioned in the same breath as climate change. ...Instead, the “ Governors’ Accord for a New Energy Future ”  makes an economic case for expanding cooperation between states on renewable energy. The document cites “extreme weather events,” including sea-level rise, droughts, floods and wildfires, that can affect electr

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/02/17/warming-oceans-are-turning-sea-stars-to-goo-and-killing-lobsters-scientists-say/ Source:   By Darryl Fears, The Washington Post For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Warming waters in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have increased the prevalence of diseases that are turning sea stars to mush and killing lobsters by burrowing under their shells and causing lesions, two new studies say. The outbreaks are so lethal, according to a biologist involved in both studies, that at least one species of sea star has vanished off the coasts of Washington and British Columbia and the lobster fishery, already decimated in southern New England, will likely be threatened in Maine. ...The sea-star study was led by Morgan E. Eisenlord, an evolutionary biologist at Cornell, and published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Both in a laboratory and at 16 sites on the San Juan Islands off Washington’s coast, researchers determined

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/17/australian-wine-under-threat-from-climate-change-as-grapes-ripen-early Source:   By Calla Wahlquist, The Guardian. For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Wine grapes ripening up to two days earlier each year, as viticultural experts warn some traditional varieties may be abandoned in warmer areas. ...A 2011 study by Barlow’s Melbourne University colleague, Leanne Webb, examined the vintage records of 44 vineyards, some of which went back as far as 115 years, and found that grapes had ripened at a rate of 1.7 days a year earlier between 1993 and 2009. ..

http://earth.nullschool.net For Investigation:     3.1, 3.2, 6.2, 6.3 Click and drag on the globe to change viewing latitude and longitude.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6274/664.full Source:   By Eric Plutzer et al, Science For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Although more than 95% of active climate scientists attribute recent global warming to human causes and most of the general public accepts that climate change is occurring, only about half of U.S. adults believe that human activity is the predominant cause, which is the lowest among 20 nations polled in 2014. We ...find that, whereas most U.S. science teachers include climate science in their courses, their insufficient grasp of the science may hinder effective teaching. Mirroring some actors in the societal debate over climate change, many teachers repeat scientifically unsupported claims in class.  ...30% of teachers emphasize that recent global warming “is likely due to natural causes,” and 12% do not emphasize human causes (half of whom do not emphasize any explanation and thereby avoid the topic altogether). ...Some teachers may wish to teach “bo

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-university-study-shows-rising-seas-slowed-by-increasing-water-on-land Source:   NASA Release 16-015 For Investigation:   9.1, 10.3 Excerpt: New measurements from a NASA satellite have allowed researchers to identify and quantify, for the first time, how climate-driven increases of liquid water storage on land have affected the rate of sea level rise.  ...while ice sheets and glaciers continue to melt, changes in weather and climate over the past decade have caused Earth’s continents to soak up and store an extra 3.2 trillion tons of water in soils, lakes and underground aquifers, temporarily slowing the rate of sea level rise by about 20 percent. The water gains over land were spread globally, but taken together they equal the volume of Lake Huron, the world’s seventh largest lake. The study is published in the Feb. 12 issue of the journal Science. Each year, a large amount of water evaporates from the oceans, falls over land as rain or snow,

http://toolkit.climate.gov Source:   Government website For Investigation:   10.3 First introduced in November 2014, the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit provides scientific tools, information, and expertise to help people manage their climate-related risks and opportunities, and improve their resilience to extreme events. The site is designed to serve interested citizens, communities, businesses, resource managers, planners, and policy leaders at all levels of government....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/02/08/what-the-earth-will-be-like-in-10000-years-according-to-scientists/ Source:   By Chris Mooney, Washington Post For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: A large group of climate scientists has made a bracing statement in the journal Nature Climate Change, arguing that we are mistaken if we think global warming is only a matter of the next 100 years or so — in fact, they say, we are locking in changes that will play out over as many as 10,000 years. “The next few decades offer a brief window of opportunity to minimize large-scale and potentially catastrophic climate change that will extend longer than the entire history of human civilization thus far,” write the 22 climate researchers, led by Peter Clark, from Oregon State University. ...“In hundreds of years from now, people will look back and say, ‘Yeah, the sea level is rising; it will continue to rise; we live with a constant rise of sea level because of these people

https://www.climate.gov/enso Source:   National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) For Investigation:  6.3, 9.2, 9.3