http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/30/science/fish-climate-change-northeast.html Source:   By Erica Goode, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: POINT JUDITH, R.I. — There was a time when whiting were plentiful in the waters of Rhode Island Sound, and Christopher Brown pulled the fish into his long stern trawler by the bucketful. “We used to come right here and catch two, three, four thousand pounds a day, sometimes 10,” he said,.... But like many other fish on the Atlantic Coast, whiting have moved north, seeking cooler waters as ocean temperatures have risen, and they are now filling the nets of fishermen farther up the coast. Studies have found that two-thirds of marine species in the Northeast United States have shifted or extended their range as a result of ocean warming, migrating northward or outward into deeper and cooler water. Lobster, once a staple in southern New England, have decamped to Maine. Black sea bass, scup, yellowtail flounder, mackerel, herring a

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/business/2016/12/30/with-enough-evidence-even-skepticism-will-thaw/ Source:   By Washington Post For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Video & article about studies of Petermann Ice Shelf in Greenland.  ...Andreas Muenchow had his doubts about whether warming temperatures were causing one of the world’s great platforms of ice to melt and fall apart. He even stood before Congress in 2010 and balked on whether climate change might have caused a mammoth chunk of ice, four times the size of Manhattan, to break off from this floating, 300-square-mile shelf. The University of Delaware oceanographer said he wasn’t sure. He needed more evidence. ...But then the Petermann Ice Shelf lost another two Manhattans of ice in 2012, and Muenchow decided to see for himself, launching a project to study the ice shelf intensively....

https://eos.org/project-updates/using-landsat-to-take-the-long-view-on-greenlands-glaciers Source:   By M. Scheinert, Ralf Rosenau, and Benjamin Ebermann, EoS Earth & Space News, AGU For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: A new web-based data portal gives scientists access to more than 40 years of satellite imagery, providing seasonal to long-term insights into outflows from Greenland's ice sheet. ...Many of Greenland’s outlet glaciers are retreating substantially; they are flowing more rapidly and their surfaces are lowering....

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/notorious-ocean-current-is-far-stronger-than-previously-thought Source:   Emily Underwood, EoS Earth & Space news, AGU For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Notorious among sailors for its strength and the rough seas it creates, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) is the largest wind-driven current on Earth and the only ocean current to travel all the way around the planet. Now, researchers have found that the current transports 30% more water than previously thought. The revised estimate is an important update for scientists studying how the world’s oceans will respond to a warming climate. The ACC transports massive amounts of water between the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans in an eastward loop. ...For the new study, Donohue et al. installed gauges along the bottom of Drake Passage, spanning an 800-kilometer passage between Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. ...The classic estimate used for the ACC’s transport i

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-skepticism-fueled-by-gut-reaction-to-local-weather/ Source:   By Scott Waldman, ClimateWire, reprinted by Scientific American For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: If it’s hot outside, you’re more likely to believe in climate change. The public perception of climate change is shaped by the weather that people experience, according to a study published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. People who live in areas where high temperature records are broken are more likely to believe in global warming than those who do not. In areas that experienced record lows, people were less inclined to believe in the mainstream climate science that shows human activity is warming the Earth. People see climate change through a local lens, said Robert Kaufmann, the study’s lead author and director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Boston University.  ...“When personal experience and exper

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/18/science/polar-bears-global-warming.html Source:  By Erica Goode, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...Scientists have counted up to 80 [polar bears] at a time in or near Kaktovik; many look healthy and plump, especially in the early fall, when their presence overlaps with the Inupiat village’s whaling season. But the bears that come here are climate refugees, on land because the sea ice they rely on for hunting seals is receding. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and the ice cover is retreating at a pace that even the climate scientists who predicted the decline find startling. Much of 2016 was warmer than normal, and the freeze-up came late. In November, the extent of Arctic sea ice was lower than ever recorded for that month.  ...The continuing loss of sea ice does not bode well for polar bears, whose existence depends on an ice cover that is rapidly thinning and melting as the clima

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/16/world/asia/beijing-air-pollution.html Source:  By Jane Perez, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 [Note from FOSS Climate-Blog-Meister: I include this article as an example of how our fossil fuel based energy system contributes not only to climate change, but severe health problems owing to air pollution.] Excerpt: BEIJING — A thick layer of deep gray smog swept into Beijing on Friday afternoon, bringing what the authorities said would be five days of the worst air pollution in a year. The city issued its first red alert for air pollution of 2016, the most severe notice in a four-tier system, requiring schools to close and half of all privately owned cars to stay off the roads. ...The geography of Beijing makes it especially vulnerable to bad air. The city is bordered to the south and east by the coal-consuming industries that emit pollutants, and to the north and west by mountains that trap the emissions. Greenpeace urged the Chinese g

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-we-entering-the-photovoltaic-energy-era/ Source:   By John Fialka, ClimateWire, reprinted by Scientific American For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...Nations from all regions reported to the International Energy Agency for the first time that their markets for solar-generated electricity were growing. According to a “snapshot” of this spurt of activity released by the Paris-based agency, nations in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia reported the world market for “PV,” as it’s commonly called, is setting a variety of records. It grew by 25 percent in 2015 as the price for solar panels, the basic unit needed to make electricity, continues a stunning eight-year drop. ...Since 2008, the price of solar panels has dropped almost 80 percent, and the main reason for that, according to the IEA, is China. ... Some large U.S. panel manufacturers have been pushed into bankruptcy, and others appear to be heading

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/science/california-new-computer-energy-rules.html Source:  By Tatiana Schlossberg, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Computers, long a symbol of the digital age, are now moving into a more earth-friendly future: California’s state energy agency voted unanimously Wednesday to approve new regulations for energy efficiency in desktop computers and monitors. ...Computers use more energy than many other consumer electronics — the electricity used to power all of the computers in the country is the equivalent of the output of 30 large power plants emitting 65 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent every year, according to estimates from the Natural Resources Defense Council ....

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6701 Source:   NASA For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...The 3-D visualization reveals in startling detail the complex patterns in which carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases, decreases and moves around the globe over the time period from September 2014 to September 2015....

https://www.google.com/green/projects/announcement-100/ Source:   Urs Hölzle, Senior Vice President of Technical Infrastructure, Google For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...in 2017 Google will reach 100% renewable energy for our global operations — including both our data centers and offices. This is a huge milestone. We were one of the first corporations to create large-scale, long-term contracts to buy renewable energy directly; we signed our first agreement to purchase all the electricity from a 114-megawatt wind farm in Iowa, in 2010. Today, we are the world’s largest corporate buyer of renewable power, with commitments reaching 2.6 gigawatts (2,600 megawatts) of wind and solar energy [mostly wind]. That’s bigger than many large utilities and more than twice as much as the 1.21 gigawatts it took to send Marty McFly back in time....

URL Source:   By Robert Sanders, UB Berkeley News, Media relations For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Following Earth’s last ice age, which peaked 20,000 years ago, the Antarctic warmed between two and three times the average temperature increase worldwide, according to a new study by a team of American geophysicists. The disparity – Antarctica warmed about 11 degrees Celsius, nearly 20 degrees Fahrenheit, between about 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, while the average temperature worldwide rose only about 4 degrees Celsius, or 7 degrees Fahrenheit – highlights the fact that the poles, both the Arctic in the north and the Antarctic in the south, amplify the effects of a changing climate, whether it gets warmer or cooler. The calculations are in line with estimates from most climate models, proving that these models do a good job of estimating past climatic conditions and, very likely, future conditions in an era of climate change and global warming. ...These models currently predict