Ron Clutz writes at Science Matters: Years ago, Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. explained why sea surface temperatures (SST) were the best indicator of heat content gained or lost from earth’s climate system. Enthalpy is the thermodynamic term for total heat content in a system, and humidity differences in air parcels affect enthalpy. Measuring water temperature…
From ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FÉDÉRALE DE LAUSANNE and the “adjusting the past” department: The oceans were colder than we thought A team of EPFL and European researchers has discovered a flaw in the way past ocean temperatures have been estimated up to now. Their findings could mean that the current period of climate change is unparalleled over…
Guest essay by Jim Steele Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism Recently Dr. Terry Hughes published the paper Global Warming and Recurrent Mass Bleaching of Corals (henceforth Hughes 2017) and concluded “immediate global action to curb future warming is…
I don’t know where to start. I really don’t “text mining” oy ~ctm From Eurekalert Public Release: 3-Aug-2017 A new method of surveying published research, which has highlighted current issues faced by the marine environment, hopes to place scientific knowledge at the heart of policy agendas Frontiers Share Print E-Mail Covering two-thirds of our planet,…
Guest post by David Middleton July 24, 2017 New study challenges prevailing theory about how deep-sea vents are colonized An article just published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B describes two remarkably different hydrothermal vent fields discovered in the southern Gulf of California. Despite being relatively close together, these vents host very different animal…
Guest Post by Wim Röst Abstract Glacial cycles show a gradual diminishing temperature during the slide into the glacial period, but a steep increase of temperature at the start of an interglacial period. As argued here, both ‘ocean upwelling’* and the temperature of the deep ocean might play an important role. Introduction The temperature profiles…
Guest post by David Middleton Science News Fossil site shows impact of early Jurassic’s low oxygen oceans Date: July 15, 2017 Source: University of Texas at Austin Summary: Using a combination of fossils and chemical markers, scientists have tracked how a period of globally low ocean-oxygen turned an Early Jurassic marine ecosystem into a stressed…
From Eurekalert Public Release: 14-Jul-2017 Florida State University TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Scientists have long believed that the waters of the Central and Northeast Pacific Ocean were inhospitable to deep-sea scleractinian coral, but a Florida State University professor’s discovery of an odd chain of reefs suggests there are mysteries about the development and durability of…
Feature | June 13, 2017 From NASA NASA-MIT study evaluates efficiency of oceans as heat sink, atmospheric gases sponge Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. By Ellen Gray, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center The world’s oceans are like brakes slowing down the full effects of greenhouse gas warming of the atmosphere. Over the last…
Interdisciplinary studies reveal relationship between solar activity and climate change INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES The solar flux is considered the fundamental energy source of earth’s climate system on long time scales. In recent decades, some studies have noted that the tiny variations in solar activity could be amplified by the nonlinear…