https://eos.org/research-spotlights/massive-waves-of-melting-greenland-ice-warped-earths-crust Source:   By Emily Underwood, Earth & Space Science News (EoS, AGU) For Investigation:   Excerpt: Greenland’s roughly 1.7 million square kilometer ice sheet has waxed and waned for millennia, with slabs of ice calving into the sea during the summer and snow building the sheet back up in the winter. In recent decades, however, warming temperatures have caused the ice to melt faster than it can refreeze, sending large volumes of freshwater into the ocean. In a new study, Adhikari et al. deduced that the record-setting ice melts of 2010 and 2012 triggered a strange phenomenon: the propagation of an enormous solitary ice wave. This pulse traveled down glacier for many kilometers. The Earth’s crust is elastic, meaning that it changes shape with the redistribution of mass on its surface, much like the deformation of a foam mattress. When a glacier melts, as 95% of the Rink Glacier basin d

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/how-shifting-winds-turn-tropical-storms-into-hurricanes Source:   By Emily Underwood, Earth & Space Science News (EoS, AGU) For Investigation:  10.3, 3.1, 3.2 Excerpt: Wind is a fickle force, frequently changing speed and direction. When this variation occurs over a short distance, it is called wind shear. Such sudden reversals are the bane of airline pilots because they can cause planes to lose altitude or change course. They can also disrupt the structure and trajectory of tropical cyclones, rotating complexes of thunderstorms that can strengthen into hurricanes if their path is undisturbed. The more wind shear one of these storms encounters, the more likely it is to be thrown off balance, wobbling like a top as its spin weakens. ...a recent study by Onderlinde and Nolan ...used a modified version of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model with a high-resolution grid (points separated by 2 kilometers) centered on developing tropical cy

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/climate/carbon-in-atmosphere-is-rising-even-as-emissions-stabilize.html Source:   By Justin Gillis, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: CAPE GRIM, Tasmania — ...a bank of sophisticated machines sniffs that air day and night, revealing telltale indicators of the way human activity is altering the planet on a major scale. For more than two years, the monitoring station here, along with its counterparts across the world, has been flashing a warning: The excess carbon dioxide scorching the planet rose at the highest rate on record in 2015 and 2016. A slightly slower but still unusual rate of increase has continued into 2017. Scientists are concerned about the cause of the rapid rises because, in one of the most hopeful signs since the global climate crisis became widely understood in the 1980s, the amount of carbon dioxide that people are pumping into the air seems to have stabilized in recent years, at least judging from the data th

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/world-rsquo-s-largest-wind-turbine-would-be-taller-than-the-empire-state-building/ Source:   By Annie Sneed, Scientific American For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Wind energy is soaring in the U.S.; the nation’s renewable energy capacity has more than tripled in the past nine years, and wind and solar power are largely responsible. Now businesses want to harness even more wind energy, at a cheaper price—and one of the best ways to lower cost is to build bigger turbines. That’s why an alliance of six institutions led by researchers at the University of Virginia are designing the world’s largest wind turbine at 500 meters tall—almost a third of a mile high, and about 57 meters taller than the Empire State Building. ...The team also envisions these gigantic structures standing at least 80 kilometers offshore, where winds tend to be stronger and where people on land cannot see or hear them, according to Loth. But powerful storms hit such pla

https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/great-barrier-reef-25000000-bc-ad-2017 Source:   By Jeff Turrentine, NRDC OnEarth For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Australia’s Great Barrier Reef isn’t dead yet. But it’s dying. What’s killing the largest coral reef system on the planet? The short answer is us. We’re killing it via warmer waters, ocean acidification, pollution, poaching, and overfishing. Right now, scientists are most concerned about something called coral bleaching. ...Bleaching typically occurs when warm water stresses the coral polyps—the trillions of tiny animals that make up a reef—causing them to expel zooxanthellae, the photosynthetic algae that live within the polyps and serve as their principal food source, as well as the source of their Technicolor appearance. Though bleached coral isn’t dead, it’s weakened significantly by the loss of these algae; as a result, it’s far more likely to become diseased and to die. And while coral can recover, it generally takes about 10 years

https://eos.org/research-spotlights/the-future-of-earth-looks-drier-but-just-how-dry Source:   By Sarah Stanley, Earth & Space Science News (EoS, AGU) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: As global warming progresses, factors that promote drought and aridity will outweigh a gentle rise in precipitation, scientists predict, leading to a net increase in aridity over Earth’s landmasses. However, recent research suggests that the calculations behind these predictions may overestimate future dryness because they rely too much on indirect atmospheric factors. Instead, some scientists have called for predictions based directly on projected changes in the water cycle itself, such as changes in runoff and soil moisture. To help resolve this issue, Berg et al. recently analyzed the future of soil moisture as predicted by 25 climate models from Phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). Although previous studies have focused mostly on soil moisture down to a depth of 10

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/business/energy-environment/oil-north-sea-shell.html Source:   By Stanley Reed, The New York Times For Investigation:   Excerpt: As the energy industry evolves, production platforms in the North Sea, once a crucial source of crude oil, are being dismantled and sold for scrap. Moored off the port of Rotterdam, Netherlands, Pioneering Spirit looms so large that it is difficult to recognize as a ship. The crew of 450 is dwarfed by the cranes and pipes that dominate the sprawling layers of decks. ...The British North Sea was once a crucial source of oil for the world. At its peak in 1999, it produced about 2.9 million barrels of oil a day, more than Kuwait or Iraq at the time. Since then, production has generally been in a long slide as oil fields discovered decades ago are exhausted and high costs discourage new exploration. Its diminishing fortunes have been cemented by the rise of renewables and the push for cleaner alternatives to oil. “It is on

http://climatefeedback.org/report-heartland-institute-sent-to-influence-us-teachers-on-climate-change-earns-an-f-from-scientists/ Source:   By climatefeedback.org For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Tens of thousands of science teachers in the US have recently received an unsolicited booklet titled “Why Scientists Disagree about Global Warming”, which looks like a scientific report. It was published by the Heartland Institute (self-described as a “free-market think tank”), which plans to send a copy to every public school science teacher in the nation—more than 200,000 K-12 teachers. So how accurate is this book meant to teach elements of the science of climate change to teachers? Climate Feedback asked scientists who actually work on these topics. Their conclusion: it could hardly score lower. Scientists found that almost all the claims that made it to the “Key Findings” section are incorrect, misleading, based on flawed logic, or simply factually inaccurate. See the list of scien

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/04/us/education-climate-change-science-class-students.html Source:   By Amy Harmon, The New York Times For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...When the teacher, James Sutter, ascribed the recent warming of the Earth to heat-trapping gases released by burning fossil fuels like the coal her father had once mined, she asserted that it could be a result of other, natural causes. When he described the flooding, droughts and fierce storms that scientists predict within the century if such carbon emissions are not sharply reduced, she challenged him to prove it. “Scientists are wrong all the time,” she said with a shrug, echoing those celebrating President Trump’s announcement last week that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord. ...the day she grew so agitated by a documentary he was showing that she bolted out of the school left them both shaken. ...As more of the nation’s teachers seek to integrate climate science into the curricu