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What A Week It Was: Apocadocuments from
View By Scenario:
Species Collapse:(2)
Plague/Virus:(1)
Climate Chaos:(15)
Resource Depletion: (7)
Biology Breach:(13)
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This Week's Top Ten Very Scary Tags:
global warming  ~ arctic meltdown  ~ unintended consequences  ~ smart policy  ~ ecosystem interrelationships  ~ climate impacts  ~ faster than expected  ~ feedback loop  ~ anthropogenic change  ~ rain forest depletion  ~ efficiency increase  



ApocaDocuments (4) matching "faster than expected" from this week
[see full week] ~ [see all stories tagged "faster than expected"]
Sun, Feb 22, 2009
from London Daily Telegraph:
Scientists capture dramatic footage of Arctic glaciers melting in hours
Glaciologist Jason Box has been testing a Moulin, a shaft that allows water to travel from the glacier's surface to its bottom, in a glacier on the Greenland ice cap to find out how fast it is melting. Dr Box said: "The Moulin is the epicentre of our concern because all the water is running down at this one point. "It's just bottomless, no light escapes." Balanced on the edge of an ice sheet the team used a flow meter to measure the water speed.... The team found that in just one day 42 million litres fresh water drained down this one Moulin. Dr Box thinks there are hundreds, possibly thousands more Moulins across the Greenland ice cap. Greenland is losing enough water each year to cover Germany a metre deep. Dr Box, from Ohio State University, thinks the way to combat melting glaciers is to cover them with blankets that will reflect the sun's rays. ...


Blankets... now that's thinking outside the Dr. Box!

ApocaDoc
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Fri, Feb 20, 2009
from London Guardian:
Melt-pools 'accelerating Arctic ice loss'
New research has revealed that melt-water pooling on the Arctic sea ice is causing it to melt at a faster rate than computer models had previously predicted. Scientists have been struggling to understand why the northern sea ice has been retreating at a faster rate than estimated by the most recent assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in 2007. The IPCC's computer models had simulated an average loss of 2.5 percent in sea ice extent per decade from 1953 to 2006. But in reality the Arctic sea ice had declined at a rate of about 7.8 percent per decade. Arctic sea ice has retreated so much that in September 2007 it covered an all-time low area of 4.14m km sq, surpassing by 23 percent the previous all-time record set in September 2005. And during the summer of 2008, the north-west and north-east passages - the sea routes running along the Arctic coastlines of northern America and northern Russia, normally perilously clogged with thick ice – were ice-free for the first time since records began in 1972. Part of the reasons for the discrepancy has to do with melt ponds, which are pools of melted ice and snow that form on the sea ice when it is warmed in spring and summer. As they are darker than ice and snow, they absorb solar radiation rather than reflect it, which accelerates the melting process. ...


As Homer Simpson would say: Albe-d'oh!

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Wed, Feb 18, 2009
from NOAA, via Mongabay:
CO2 levels rise to a new record
Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations climbed 2.28 parts-per-million (ppm) in 2008 to the highest level in at least 650,000 years -- and possibly 20 million years -- reports NOAA. The average annual growth rate of CO2 concentrations this decade is now 2.1 ppm a year or 40 percent higher than that of the 1990s. CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are increasing at four times the rate of the previous decade.... Some scientists, including James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warn that CO2 levels must be kept below 350 ppm to avoid serious impacts from climate change. CO2 concentrations are presently around 386 ppm. ...


Guinness didn't want to see this.

ApocaDoc
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Tue, Feb 17, 2009
from New Scientist:
North Atlantic is world's 'climate superpower'
IF EVER there was a superpower of the oceans, the North Atlantic, with its ability to control global weather systems, is it. The bad news is that this region also happens to be especially sensitive to the effects of climate change, so what is happening there could affect the world. The planet's climate goes through periodic convulsions that affect every region simultaneously. The most recent were in the early 1940s and mid-1970s. The latter coincided with the start of more frequent El Nino events in the Pacific and a strong global warming trend.... But the findings will leave most climate scientists more worried. Today's climate is changing most dramatically in the far North Atlantic, with record warming and ice loss in recent years. If the climate's "tipping point" resides in these waters, then nature's synchronised chaos could unleash unexpectedly sudden and severe consequences. ...


Why does Science always give us bad news? Can't reality fit our desires?

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