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Climate Change: How do we Know?
Alexander Stepanow

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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The rate of change since the mid-20th century is unprecedented over millennia.

Earth's climate has changed throughout history. Just in the last 800,000 years, there have been eight cycles of ice ages and warmer periods, with the end of the last ice age about 11,700 years ago marking the beginning of the modern climate era - and of human civilization. Most of these climate changes are attributed to very small variations in Earth's orbit that change the amount of solar energy our planet receives.

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Credit: Luthi, D., et al.. 2008; Etheridge, D.M., et al. 2010; Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.) Find out more about ice cores (external site).

The current warming trend is different because it is clearly the result of human activities since the mid-1800s, and is proceeding at a rate not seen over many recent millennia. It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun's energy in the Earth system. This extra energy has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land, and widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere, and biosphere have occurred.

Do scientists agree on climate change?

Yes, the vast majority of actively publishing climate scientists - 97 percent - agree that humans are causing global warming and climate change.

detailed answer

Earth-orbiting satellites and new technologies have helped scientists see the big picture, collecting many different types of information about our planet and its climate all over the world. These data, collected over many years, reveal the signs and patterns of a changing climate.

Scientists demonstrated the heat-trapping nature of carbon dioxide and other gases in the mid-19th century. Many of the science instruments NASA uses to study our climate focus on how these gases affect the movement of infrared radiation through the atmosphere. From the measured impacts of increases in these gases, there is no question that increased greenhouse gas levels warm Earth in response.

"Scientific evidence for warming of the climate system is unequivocal."

- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Ice cores drawn from Greenland, Antarctica, and tropical mountain glaciers show that Earth's climate responds to changes in greenhouse gas levels. Ancient evidence can also be found in tree rings, ocean sediments, coral reefs, and layers of sedimentary rocks. This ancient, or paleoclimate, evidence reveals that current warming is occurring roughly 10 times faster than the average rate of warming after an ice age. Carbon dioxide from human activities is increasing about 250 times faster than it did from natural sources after the last Ice Age.

References

References
Header image shows clouds imitating mountains as the sun sets after midnight as seen from Denali's backcountry Unit 13 on June 14, 2019. Credit: NPS/Emily Mesner

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Climate Change Evidence: How Do We Know?

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Vital Signs of the Planet: Global Climate Change and Global Warming. How do we know it's happening? Here's the evidence.

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GOP denies climate change, America pays the price

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GOP denies climate change, America pays the price

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https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/09/14/trump-limbaugh-scott-pruitt-deny-climate-change-america-pays-price-paul-brandus-column/663405001/

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Trophy Hunting May Drive Extinctions, Due to Climate Change - Ayla Pirodan

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Trophy Hunting May Drive Extinctions, Due to Climate Change - Ayla Pirodan

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Trophy hunters, as well as poachers who "harvest" the big males-antelopes and deer with the largest horns and antlers, elephants with the longest tusks, or lions with the most impressive manes-are putting those species at greater risk of extinction with climate change.

That's the finding of a new study published today by researchers at Queen Mary University of London, England, in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. "Trophy" animals tend to be the most evolutionarily fit and possess the high-quality genes a population of animals need to adapt quickly to a changing environment, says evolutionary ecologist and lead author Robert Knell. "They also father a high proportion of the offspring. But if they're killed before they can spread their 'good genes' around, this reduces the overall fitness and resilience of that population."

When environmental conditions change-a shift in seasonal rainfall or warmer temperatures-the risk of extinction increases dramatically, even with a healthy population of animals apparently unaffected by trophy hunting, Knell says.

"The results were very, very clear."

This can happen even with an annual harvest rate as low as 5 percent of the high-quality males. With environmental change now a reality across the globe, the study shows that some animal populations facing even relatively light hunting pressure are more vulnerable to extinction than is generally believed, Knell says.

This also means poachers are even more of a threat since they target big males but also indiscriminately kill any individual they believe will profit them, he says.

The study also shows that restricting the take to older trophy males means that they will have had time to spread their good genes around, which should help populations adapt to environmental changes.

"When properly regulated, trophy hunting can be a powerful force for conservation, which is why we're suggesting a different management approach as opposed to calling for a ban," Knell says.

In an email Rosie Cooney, of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which sets the conservation status of species, called the study interesting, "with obvious relevance to trophy hunting management, highlighting that there may be a need under climate change scenarios to shift to age restrictions as a basis for management."

"This study matches up with the empirical work we've done on bighorn sheep in the Rocky Mountains," says David Coltman, professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta. Coltman's studies have shown that decades of trophy hunting have resulted in a 20 percent decline in the size of ram's horns in today's sheep.

We also know that sheep with the biggest horns produce the largest offspring, and losses of them all contribute to a decline in the fitness of the overall population, Coltman says.

Horns aren't ornaments. They're a signal of fitness. The biggest horns that trophy hunters crave are likely found only on the highest-quality individuals, he says. This is an example of human selection leading to artificial evolution.

Hunters argue that the funds from their hunts-estimated to be anywhere from $132 million to $436 million in Africa annually-gives local communities an incentive to protect wildlife as well as fund conservation efforts and community development. Many conservation groups, on the other hand, argue that oftentimes the fees trophy hunters pay are actually siphoned away by corruption and mismanagement.

The latest trophy hunting controversy came on November 14, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would be lifting the ban on trophy imports of elephants killed in Zimbabwe and Zambia. There was an intense backlash, and within three days President Donald Trump tweeted that the Department of the Interior, which oversees the Fish and Wildlife Service, would reevaluate the decision. In a follow-up tweet he wrote, "[The department] will be "hard pressed to change my mind that this horror show in any way helps conservation of elephants or any other species."

Sustainable sport hunting is important for raising conservation revenue in many areas, but this study tells us we must be mindful of our evolutionary impact, said Adam Hart, professor of science communication at the University of Gloucestershire, England, in an email. "As always, conservation is more complex than it can appear."
Stephen Leahy covers international environmental issues. He is co-winner of the 2012 Prince Albert/United Nations Global Prize for reporting on climate change and is the author of Your Water Footprint: The Shocking Facts About How Much Water We Use To Make Everyday Products, winner of the Best Science Book in Canada 2014. He lives near Toronto, Canada. Follow him on Twitter.
Read more stories about wildlife crime and exploitation on National Geographic's Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas tongwildlife@natgeo.com.

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Trophy Hunting May Drive Extinctions, Due to Climate Change

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Trophy hunters, as well as poachers who "harvest" the big males-antelopes and deer with the largest horns and antlers, elephants with the longest tusks, or lions with the most impressive manes-are putting those species at greater risk of extinction with climate change.

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'Buried in marshes': sea-level rise could destroy historic sites on US east coast - Aidan Wahlmann

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'Buried in marshes': sea-level rise could destroy historic sites on US east coast - Aidan Wahlmann

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Large tracts of America's east coast heritage are at risk from being wiped out by sea level rise, with the rising oceans set to threaten more than 13,000 archaeological and historic sites, according to new research.

Even a modest increase in sea level will imperil much of the south-eastern US's heritage by the end of the century, researchers found, with 13,000 sites threatened by a 1m increase.

Thousands more areas will be threatened as the seas continue to climb in the years beyond this, forcing the potential relocation of the White House and Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC and inundation of historic touchstones such as the Kennedy Space Center and St Augustine, Florida, which lays claim to being the oldest city in the US.

"There are going to be a lot of cultural sites lost and the record of humanity's history will be put at risk," said David Anderson, a University of Tennessee anthropologist who led the published research.

"Some sites will be destroyed, some buried in marshes. We may be able to relocate some. In some places it will be devastating. We need to properly understand the magnitude of this."

Threatened areas, including locations on the national register of historic places, include Native American sites that date back more than 10,000 years, as well as early colonial settlements such as Jamestown, Virginia and Charleston, South Carolina. Researchers pinpointed known sites using topographical data and analyzed how they would fare in various sea level rise scenarios.

Florida, which has a southern portion particularly vulnerable to sea level rise, has the most sites in danger from a 1m raising of the oceans, followed by Louisiana and Virginia.

A 1m sea level rise by 2100 could prove optimistic, with several studies showing the increase could be much greater. Scientists have warned that the break up of the Antarctic ice sheet could significantly fuel sea level rise, pushing the global increase to around 6ft by 2100.

The latest US government estimate predicts a worldwide increase of 1ft to 4ft by 2100, although an 8ft rise "cannot be ruled out".

The eastern seaboard of the US is at particular risk, with water piling up along the coast in greater volumes than the global average. The problem is compounded by areas of the coast, such as in New Jersey and Virginia, gradually subsiding due to long-term geological hangover from a vast ice sheet that once covered much of North America.

Sea level rise is expected to displace millions of people from the US coasts over the next coming decades, with Anderson warning this will create further damage to heritage sites as people move inland.

There is still some uncertainty over the exact timescale involved in the changes - it may take several hundred years for some coastal places to be at risk - leading to hopes that coastlines can be adapted in time in order to protect vital infrastructure and sacred sites. But losses appear inevitable.

"Putting a sea wall around the whole of the US won't be an easy thing to do and would cause a lot of damage elsewhere," said Anderson. "We are going to have to do a lot of planning as a civilization in the next 50 to 100 years and we have to take heritage into account."

Coastal heritage has been lost by previous fluctuations in sea level rise and Harold Wanless, a coastal geologist at the University of Miami who wasn't involved in the study, said that tough decisions will need to be made as to what to protect in the future.

"We will have to look at how much effort we expend saving these sites over more practical things such as critical infrastructure or developing new agriculture resources," Wanless said. "Our human history is important but there are a lot of new things to focus on. They will all need time and effort."

Human-driven climate change is already creating its own historical artifacts, with around a dozen towns in Alaska set to be abandoned or relocated due to rising sea levels and diminishing sea ice. In Louisiana, a community near New Orleans received federal funding last year to relocate because much of their low-lying land has disappeared.

"It's going to be an important choice for government," said Rob Thieler, a sea level rise expert at the US Geological Survey. "There's land that is becoming uninhabitable right now and we've seen from the hurricanes this year that people have to leave not just from the flooding but because infrastructure and services become unreliable."

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'Buried in marshes': sea-level rise could destroy historic sites on US east coast

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Large tracts of America's east coast heritage are at risk from being wiped out by sea level rise, with the rising oceans set to threaten more than 13,000 archaeological and historic sites, according to new research.

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How Climate Change Affects Humans- Katelin Shum 

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How Climate Change Affects Humans- Katelin Shum 

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Narwhals helping scientists find out how fast ice in Greenland is melting and thinking about launching the same project but on Arctic ice.

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Narwhals helping scientists find out how fast ice in Greenland is melting and thinking about launching the same project but on Arctic ice.

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Charlie Zhu

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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Don't bother trying to attach radio transmitters to narwhals, the "unicorns of the sea," says marine ecologist Kristin Laidre.

These tusked Arctic whales are so hard to find they might as well be actual unicorns.

"They're one of the worst study animals ever," said Laidre, who tagged narwhals to gather data on their icy environment. "They're just really, really difficult. They are shy, they are elusive, they are sneaky. You can spend a month in the field and barely see a narwhal."

Still, the narwhals have become unlikely allies in NASA's efforts to understand Greenland's rapidly changing ice sheet. In a cooperative arrangement meant to improve understanding of both narwhal behavior and melting glaciers, the data gathered by tagged narwhals will help fill an important scientific goal in a NASA project called Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG).

This multipronged endeavor seeks precision data on where, how, and how fast the relatively warm ocean waters are melting Greenland's ice. NASA is attacking the problem by ship, plane and floating sensor.

But measuring the ocean near Greenland's glaciers can be a major challenge even from a ship because of heavy sea ice and fjords choked with icebergs. That's where the narwhals come in.

"In the summer, the sea ice melts away and narwhals migrate to remote fjords in Melville Bay" in northwest Greenland, said Ian Fenty, a NASA oceanographer who studies sea level and ice. "Narwhals spend time feeding in the waters in front of the glaciers - exactly where we need ocean measurements for OMG."

Scientists - with fins

Much of the Greenland coast is ice-free only a few times a year - a major barrier to scientific investigation of ice melt and ocean-water variability.

"Very few people live in northwest Greenland and so historically very little of the ocean has been mapped up there," Fenty said. "There's a huge data hole that we need to fill to learn why the glaciers in that region are melting."

So when Fenty learned of a paper Laidre published in 2010, using data from narwhals to show continued warming in Baffin Bay west of Greenland, the partnership was born.

During brief captures using nets, Laidre and colleagues had attached sensors to blubber and cartilage on the backs of 14 narwhals between 2005 and 2007. Once released, the narwhals gathered data on temperature, salinity and depth, diving to the sea floor as far as nearly 6,000 feet (1,800 meters) below.

"We let the narwhals be the oceanographers," Laidre said.

Though secretive and difficult to find, tusked whales called narwhals turned out to be helpful partners in measuring changes in Arctic waters near Greenland. Credit: Kristin Laidre.

Combined with temperature measurements from sensors dropped by helicopter, the narwhal data revealed that a warming trend seen in previous years in Baffin Bay continued through 2007.

"It's super interesting," Fenty said. "These whales go everywhere in Baffin Bay. Even when the ocean is covered in sea ice, they survive, they find air holes."

Fenty reached out to Laidre and asked to use her narwhal data to round out OMG measurements of temperature, salinity and ocean depth along the Greenland coast - essential to unraveling the intricate relationship between warming water, melting ice and Greenland's coastal fjords.

While the 2010 paper focused on measurements in Baffin Bay waters well to the west of Greenland, the narwhals had to be tagged close to the coast, where they also gathered data.

That was the data gap Fenty wanted to fill - from otherwise inaccessible locations.

So NASA and the Office of Naval Research have agreed to jointly fund a new study, focusing both on narwhal behavior and changes in Arctic ice.

Reading clues from narwhals' travels

Acoustic monitoring sensors and land-based cameras in three fjords in Melville Bay will track narwhal presence to better understand how narwhal behavior relates to ocean and ice variations.

"Not only will scientists learn about how warming oceans are melting Greenland but this project will also provide scientists like Kristin more data about how narwhal behavior is linked to ocean temperature, salinity, and ice conditions in the fjord," Fenty said.

Moored instruments also will make frequent measurements of ocean temperature and salinity to enhance OMG data and improve computer modeling of ocean circulation and glacial melting.

Narwhals can dive to great depths. By looking at how deep the narwhal "oceanographers" have dived in the past scientists can get a better sense of just how deep the ocean is.

"I'm hoping that the narwhal dive-depth data will fill out some of the gaps in our bathymetry (sea-floor) measurements made during the OMG mission," Fenty said.
Read the published paper, "Narwhals document continued warming of southern Baffin Bay" This article was originally published on NASA's Sea Level Change portal.

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national aeronautics and space administration

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Narwhal recruits track melting Arctic ice

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Don't bother trying to attach radio transmitters to narwhals, the "unicorns of the sea," says marine ecologist Kristin Laidre. These tusked Arctic whales are so hard to find they might as well be actual unicorns. "They're one of the worst study animals ever," said Laidre, who tagged narwhals to gather data on their icy environment.

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Why Lost Ice Means Lost Hope for an Inuit Village- Alexander Gaytan

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Why Lost Ice Means Lost Hope for an Inuit Village- Alexander Gaytan

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ON SEA ICE NEAR RIGOLET, Labrador - Leaning over the handlebars with one knee up on the seat, Derrick Pottle commanded his snowmobile between rocks and sheets of gray sea ice before stopping suddenly at the mouth of a bay.

"It's open," Mr. Pottle said, turning off his machine. Ten yards away, the ice had cracked and opened a dark hole in the water that made it impossible to drive across the inlet.

It was Jan. 7, unusually late in the season for Mr. Pottle's first trip to his winter cabin - a few hours drive by snowmobile from his hometown, Rigolet - over what should have been more than 60 miles of frozen trails and solid ice.

Rigolet, a town on Canada's eastern edge, has no roads leading in or out. Lakes, rivers and streams, if they freeze over, become what the town's 300 residents call their "highway" - a lifeline to nearby towns and places to fish, trap and hunt.

But as the climate has warmed, these ice roads have become unreliable, breeding isolation, and, some studies suggest, elevated mental stress.

Mr. Pottle, a 61-year-old Inuit hunter, surveyed the land and water. In a lifetime in the north, he had traveled thousands of miles through blizzards, shot seven polar bears and fallen through sea ice. But this was an unfamiliar landscape.

He strode a few yards toward the hole in the ice before turning back to his snowmobile. Pausing, he put his gloves back on his tattooed hands, revved the engine and took off through the spruce trees, searching for another route.

Just four decades ago, Mr. Pottle said, he would have crossed the same inlet over ice more than a foot thick in November. Since then, Labrador's coastal ice has declined by almost 40 percent, making travel treacherous, if possible at all.

"It's a volatile place climatically," said Robert Way, a postdoctoral fellow at Memorial University of Newfoundland who studies Labrador's permafrost. This climatic sensitivity, combined with Arctic amplification - a feedback loop created when reflective ice melts to reveal dark ocean water - Dr. Way said, had more than doubled the region's rate of warming compared with the rest of the world.

"And it's only going to get worse," he said.

Shrubs that thrive in warmer temperatures have sprouted across the tundra and snow cover has diminished, Dr. Way said. Without the ice highway, hunters like Mr. Pottle often have no choice but to drive their snowmobiles through the wilderness. "You can't get in or out of these communities," he said. "We're almost like prisoners."

Attempting the trip to his cabin earlier that winter, Mr. Pottle struck a rock, flipped his snowmobile and had to return home. The next time, the wind was relentless. Mr. Pottle said gales were becoming stronger. "These are the kind of conditions that can kill you," he said. "The wind can get so severe, you can't get warm."

While scientists have not established a link between Labrador's wind strength and climate change, another recent study corroborated locals' observations. "When it's something you've relied on for your safety, you remember," Dr. Way said.

The Inuit have a word for changes they are seeing to their environment: uggianaqtuq. It means "to behave strangely." But it is not just the weather that's in turmoil.

For the past decade, Ashlee Cunsolo, a public health researcher and director of the Labrador Institute of Memorial University, has seen the disorienting effects of climate change take a toll on the mental health of people along the coast. "When you're in situations when you're deeply reliant on the environment, even subtle alternations can have huge ripple effects," she said.

In hundreds of interviews conducted between 2009 and 2014 across five indigenous communities in the Nunatsiavut region of Labrador, including Rigolet, Dr. Cunsolo and her team found that the melted ice, shorter winters and unpredictable weather made people feel trapped, depressed, stressed and anxious, and, in some cases, led to increased risk of substance abuse and suicidal thoughts.

In one town, a woman told Dr. Cunsolo's team that not being able to get on the land made her feel like her spirit was dying. In another, a man said, "Inuit are people of the sea ice. If there is no more sea ice, how can we be people of the sea ice?"

When Dr. Cunsolo first visited Rigolet in the winter of 2009-10, air temperature in the region was an average of 12.8 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. It barely snowed, and there was severe wind and freezing rain. Finally, at the end of January, the ice froze over - choppy, sharp and ten weeks late. By April, six to eight weeks earlier than usual, it was gone.

In part, the warm winter happened because of a natural atmospheric process called negative Arctic oscillation, but the magnitude, Dr. Way said, could only be explained by a century of warming. What Dr. Cunsolo's research revealed to be the "largest climatic and environmental shift in living memory" in Rigolet made clear to her what had until that winter played out at a slower rate.

"A flood happens, or a Hurricane Katrina happens, and people say, 'Oh, that makes sense that people are traumatized,'" Dr. Cunsolo said. When people "are exposed to this ongoing environmental stress, day after day, month after month, that has a tremendous impact."

With less time spent outside, people said they felt "stuck" and "isolated" and some reported increased drug and alcohol use, and domestic violence. Men accustomed to providing for their families and communities by hunting and trapping, Dr. Cunsolo's research found, were particularly at risk.

"Hunting and sharing food is not just a way to meet your basic needs, but is part of the fabric of social life," said Dr. Laurence J. Kirmayer, director of McGill University's social and transcultural psychiatry unit, who was not involved in the research. "You can find another way to get your calories, but in so doing, you may be losing companionship, solidarity and your sense of self."

Dr. Kirmayer said mental health also depended on eating local food because of an Inuit conception of self, tied to the environment, which he described as " ecocentric." There is "a sense in which the food 'becomes you,'" he said.

Mr. Pottle described hunting and eating wild food - which, by his own accounting, makes up at least 95 percent of his diet - like seal, moose, and salmon, as his identity. "It's who I am," he said. "It's something I've done all my life."

In 1968, when Derrick Pottle was 11 years old, he and his family moved from Rigolet to Happy Valley-Goose Bay under a federal government program that relocated thousands of indigenous Canadians from remote communities.

"Goose Bay was a very, very bad place to be an Inuk," Mr. Pottle said, recalling systemic abuse and racism. At school, he was forbidden from speaking his native language, Inuktitut, and after the move, he said, his parents became alcoholics "overnight."

Climate change provokes a similar sense of displacement, experts say, particularly for hunters. An unpredictable environment means disempowerment. "It's like another form of colonization," Dr. Cunsolo said.

Experts say that while the stress wrought by climate change may not, on its own, cause mental health problems, it can rekindle past trauma, worsening existing issues with substance abuse, depression and suicide.

"We went through some horrible injustices in my family," Mr. Pottle said, describing how he, too, had at first turned to alcohol but has not touched a drink in 39 years. His brother, he said, was unable to cope. "I know in my heart he committed suicide."

According to a 2016 study published in the American Journal of Public Health, the suicide rate in Nunatsiavut's indigenous population was more than 20 times higher than the general population of Newfoundland between 1993-2009, and even higher among youth.

Harlie Pottle, Mr. Pottle's 18-year-old niece, said driving her snowmobile across the frozen sea ice comforted her in difficult moments. "The land is part of me. It felt like I was supposed to be there," she said. "The future kind of scares me, just thinking about how we're going to survive."

When Dr. Cunsolo first started researching the impact of climate change on mental health, she said there was a misconception that indigenous people - often on the front lines of rising oceans, extreme heat and melting ice - would be the only ones affected.

But studies in Australia showed how farmers struggled with extreme weather, and that in Ghana, withered crops, dried-up wells and the "loss of beauty" made people sad.

"We weren't around when the asteroid wiped out dinosaurs, but now we have humans in the 21st century who are trying to deal with a change to the world which is unprecedented," said Glenn Albrecht, a philosopher and former professor at Murdoch University in Australia. He said that language needed to evolve to articulate such profound loss.

After witnessing the devastation at Australia's strip mines, Dr. Albrecht coined the word solastalgia: "a form of homesickness one experiences when one is still at home." (It comes from the Latin solacium, meaning "comfort" and the ancient Greek root algia meaning "pain.")

Dr. Albrecht said the anxiety people felt about climate change was perfectly rational. What's disordered, he said, "is the world that is causing you to feel that way."

The experience of those on the front lines, Dr. Cunsolo said, was merely an indication of what was coming. "All humans, whether we want to admit it or not, are impacted by the natural environment," she said.

Mr. Pottle, for his part, is learning, painfully, to adapt.

Blocked by the open water of the bay, he aimed his snowmobile along a path of low willow seedlings and mosses. Miles on, he would reach the tundra, where, in the distance, his red cabin sat against a white backdrop of sky and land.

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Why Lost Ice Means Lost Hope for an Inuit Village

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ON SEA ICE NEAR RIGOLET, Labrador - Leaning over the handlebars with one knee up on the seat, Derrick Pottle commanded his snowmobile between rocks and sheets of gray sea ice before stopping suddenly at the mouth of a bay. "It's open," Mr. Pottle said, turning off his machine.

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Could Climate Change Affect People's Personalities? - Audrynne Antonio

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Could Climate Change Affect People's Personalities? - Audrynne Antonio

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People's personalities may be shaped by the temperatures of the places in which they grew up, a new study suggests. This could mean that as climate change influences temperatures around the globe, shifts in personality may follow.

The idea that someone's personality may be affected by where that person lives is not new: Previous research has suggested that many aspects of human personality vary from one geographical region to another, according to the new study. But the causes of these personality differences have remained unclear.

One potential explanation is temperature, according to senior author Lei Wang, a social and cultural psychologist at Peking University in Beijing, and his colleagues. Because temperatures vary markedly across the world, the study authors reasoned that this factor might shape personality by influencing people's habits. For instance, temperature might have an impact on whether people like exploring their surroundings, interacting with others, trying new activities or engaging in collective outdoor work such as farming. [ 7 Thoughts That Are Bad for You]

But instead of simply looking at whether people grew up in hot or cold climates, the researchers took a more nuanced approach, looking at whether people grew up in milder climates, where temperatures are closer to about 71 degrees Fahrenheit (22 degrees Celsius), or if they lived in places with more extreme temperatures.

In the new paper, the researchers conducted two separate studies within two large, yet culturally distinct countries - China and the United States. By looking at data from these two countries, the researchers hoped to eliminate confounding effects from other factors - such as cultural or economic differences -that might also have influenced the subjects' personality.

The scientists analyzed data from more than 5,500 people from 59 Chinese cities and data from about 1.66 million people from about 12,500 ZIP codes in the United States. They examined data from personality questionnaires as well as the average temperatures of places where those people grew up.

The scientists discovered that the people who grew up in climates with milder temperatures were generally more agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable, extroverted and open to new experiences. These findings held true for people in both countries, despite gender, age and average income.

It's possible that mild temperatures can influence personality by encouraging social interactions and supporting a wider range of activities, the researchers said.

These new findings do not suggest that climate was the sole factor that shaped a person's destiny, said Evert Van de Vliert, a cross-cultural psychologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, who was not involved in the new study.

"I would caution ... against thinking that our ancestors, and we ourselves of course, are passive products of where we live," Van de Vliert told Live Science. "By intelligently and actively using property and money, humans can and do create their own identity and destiny in harsher climates."

Indeed, the study found that despite living in climates that are similarly harsh, people in certain Chinese regions differ, personality-wise, from people living in northern states in the U.S., suggesting that other factors aside from temperature play a role, Van de Vliert said. [ 5 Ways Climate Change Will Affect Your Health]

For example, in China, where people are relatively poor compared with those living in the United States, those "who live in the harsher climates of Heilongjiang, Xinjiang and Shandong have a more collectivist personality than their compatriots living in the more temperate climates of Sichuan, Guangdong and Fujian," Van de Vliert said.

In contrast, in the United States, those "who live in the harsher climates of North and South Dakota, Montana and Minnesota have a more individualist personality than their compatriots in the more temperate climates of Hawaii, Louisiana, California and Florida," he said.

Van de Vliert noted that questions about potential links between personality and geographical regions have often led to controversy. For example, by suggesting that climate essentially controls a person's destiny, some researchers "have put forward self-serving claims about the intellectual superiority of some races and the inferiority of others," he said. Such claims have led others to avoid "research into climatic influences on people," he said.

The authors of the study said that more research is still needed to understand the potential effects of temperature on personality. However, the researchers noted that "as climate change continues across the world, we may also observe [associated] changes in human personality. Of course, questions about the size and extent of these changes await future investigation."

The scientists detailed their findings online Nov. 27 in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

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Could Climate Change Affect People's Personalities?

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People's personalities may be shaped by the temperatures of the places in which they grew up, a new study suggests. This could mean that as climate change influences temperatures around the globe, shifts in personality may follow.

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Reefs at Risk, Coral Reefs may be running out of time.-Isaac Villafranca

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Reefs at Risk, Coral Reefs may be running out of time.-Isaac Villafranca

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New NASA insights into the secret lives of plants-Jessie Park

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New NASA insights into the secret lives of plants-Jessie Park

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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Life. It's the one thing that, so far, makes Earth unique among the thousands of other planets we've discovered. Since the fall of 1997, NASA satellites have continuously and globally observed all plant life at the surface of the land and ocean. During the week of Nov. 13-17, NASA is sharing stories and videos about how this view of life from space is furthering knowledge of our home planet and the search for life on other worlds.
From rainforests to croplands, boreal forests to mangroves, NASA will take a new look at terrestrial vegetation across our living planet over the next two years with several unique instruments in space, including one from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The missions will help scientists investigate the role of plants in Earth's global carbon and water cycles.

Since the 1970s, NASA has studied life from space with satellites such as Landsat, Terra, Aqua and NASA/NOAA's Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership. Scientists have used these data along with observations from international spacecraft to conduct a wide range of research, from detecting northward expansion of forests in the Arctic to monitoring how burned areas recover from wildfires.

Generally, the instruments currently in orbit do their work by detecting sunlight reflected off Earth's surface, as a camera does. But the new instruments being launched over the next two years will take a new, more active approach to probe new questions about vegetation and how it is changing. Two of these NASA missions will use laser instruments that will measure the height of trees, while a third will monitor temperature to provide insights into plant health.

Laser measurements of trees

While the global extent of forest ecosystems has been mapped from satellite imagery, existing maps can't determine how tall those trees are, or the structure of their canopies - that is, the third dimension.

Two missions will use spaceborne lasers to measure tree height: an instrument mounted on the International Space Station, called the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI); and a satellite called the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2), which will focus on measuring snow and ice, but will also measure the planet's forests. With data flowing in from both instruments, scientists plan to develop a three-dimensional map of Earth's vegetation.

By knowing the extent of forests from existing maps, as well as the heights of the canopy from the new instruments, researchers will then be able to estimate how much plant matter - and therefore how much carbon - is present. As trees grow, they absorb carbon from the atmosphere, making forests a key player in the global carbon cycle. Over time, these missions can help give scientists clues to how much carbon is being absorbed by growing forests, and how it's being released into the atmosphere through forest fires and deforestation.

"Combining ICESat-2 with GEDI, we're going to have a new view of the state of the biosphere on our planet," said Tom Neumann, the deputy project scientist for the ICESat-2 project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

For Ralph Dubayah, GEDI's principal investigator from the University of Maryland, the GEDI mission will answer questions about the biomass of trees in a given region, and the impact of deforestation and reforestation on the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. GEDI will also quantify how the vertical arrangement of leaves and branches in a forest affects habitat quality and biodiversity.

While both missions use light detection and ranging (lidar) technology - which is like radar, but with laser light instead of radio waves - the GEDI instrument will use a near-infrared wavelength. This wavelength region is optimal to measure vegetation because it reflects off of leaves, and a portion of this reflected light makes its way back to the sensor. The pulses emitted from near-infrared lasers can also better penetrate through tree canopies to reflect off the ground, which is a necessary measurement for determining the height of trees.

GEDI's team has worked to optimize its system's pulse width, wavelength, sampling pattern and footprint size to cover as many forested areas as possible. GEDI's three lasers will pulse 242 times per second, sampling 10 laser tracks spread out across a 3.7-mile (6-kilometer) swath on Earth's surface. Because GEDI will fly on the International Space Station, its orbital path will focus on Earth's mid-latitude and tropical regions, where the vast majority of forest carbon is stored.

ICESat-2, orbiting pole-to-pole, will gather data on Earth's ice sheets, sea ice and glaciers with its near-global coverage. Instead of using near-infrared light, ICESat-2's Advanced Topographic Laser Altimeter System (ATLAS) instrument will use green, visible light. ATLAS has two lasers, only one of which operates at a time. The non-operating laser is an onboard spare. The operating laser will pulse 10,000 times per second and generate six tracks. As it travels over the mid-latitudes, scientists will use ATLAS to measure specific vegetated regions, complementing the GEDI measurements and creating a more complete three-dimensional map of Earth's vegetation.

The photons, or particles of light, from ICESat-2's green lasers will reflect off whatevertha is below them, including the tops of trees, branches and leaves, and - if there is open space in the canopy - off the ground.

"If you can separate those two - the photons reflected from the ground, from the photons reflected from the tops of the trees - you can measure tree height, which is really cool," Neumann said. However, it's not always possible to separate the treetops from the forest floor, especially with a visible wavelength.

"If the tree canopy is too dense, we cannot see the ground, so you can't measure tree height," Neumann said. "If the tree canopy is too sparse, we can't see the trees because it's one tree in the middle of a field, and your chances of hitting that single tree are not so good."

Because GEDI's lasers operate in near-infrared, and have sufficient power to penetrate dense forests with each shot, the instrument can more accurately measure forest structure even in areas that have a dense canopy.

GEDI's vegetation measurements will help close a critical gap in our current understanding of how carbon is stored and emitted over time by forests and other ecosystems. The process plays a huge role, ultimately, in how much carbon dioxide accumulates in the atmosphere.

"The central science goal of GEDI is to provide the data by which we can precisely address this question," Dubayah said. "GEDI is the first lidar ever to fly that has been optimized for vegetation measurements."

Armed with this information, scientists will be able to do a much better job forecasting atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations in the future, he said, and in understanding the role of human activities on the carbon cycle.

Clouds are another obstacle for both the ICESat-2 and GEDI missions. On any given day, Earth is about 50 percent covered in clouds. So, instead of measuring the tops of trees, these lidar-based systems will measure the tops of the clouds which reflect the laser pulse. Having two systems measuring vegetation will help fill in these cloudy data gaps. By combining the data, scientists will get a better picture of the status of Earth's vegetation.

Although the two missions are optimized for different scientific objectives, they will work together to create a more precise height map of Earth's vegetation - a data set that can help answer Dubayah's questions.

Taking the temperature of plants

Knowing how much vegetation is present on Earth does not indicate whether or not that vegetation is healthy. How vegetation changes due to stresses caused by water availability is the key science question to be addressed by JPL's ECOsystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station (ECOSTRESS) mission.

As plants take in carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, they release water through evapotranspiration from their leaf pores, which helps them cool down in the hot sun, much as human sweat cools us down. And just like humans, if plants don't get enough water, they can overheat.

The plant pores open and shut in response to heat stress and water availability. When they're open, plants take in carbon dioxide and lose water. When they're closed, plants stop taking in carbon dioxide (i.e., growing) but also stop losing water. If we know plants are losing water, we know they're taking in carbon dioxide, and vice versa. ECOSTRESS data will help scientists understand the total carbon dioxide uptake by plants over the course of a typical day. For example, if it's a hot and dry afternoon, some plants may shut down their water use and carbon dioxide uptake in the afternoon. ECOSTRESS will be able to detect these types of responses. Current polar orbiting satellites can provide only a single snapshot of carbon dioxide uptake and water release each day, at the same time of day, so scientists have to estimate how that one-time snapshot translates over the course of the entire day.

ECOSTRESS will measure plant temperatures from space to detect the cooling nature of water evaporated by plants, or the lack thereof. It will tell us how much water different plants use and need and how they react to environmental stresses from water shortages. In addition to its carbon and water cycle science objectives, it will also study how Earth's terrestrial biosphere is responding to changes in water availability.

From its unique orbital perch, ECOSTRESS will observe the same spot on Earth every few days at different times of day for a minimum of one year, allowing scientists to track changes in plant-water dynamics over the course of a typical day.

"ECOSTRESS will enable a detailed investigation into plant water use throughout the day," said Josh Fisher, the mission's science lead at JPL. "Furthermore, we'll be able to better understand how certain regions are being impacted by drought. This could have important implications for managing forests or agricultural systems."

ECOSTRESS will also provide key insights into links between Earth's water and carbon cycles by identifying which areas of our planet require more or less water for the amount of carbon dioxide they take up.

ECOSTRESS Principal Investigator Simon Hook of JPL began developing the thermal infrared radiometer for ECOSTRESS several years ago. ECOSTRESS will track the energy used in evaporating water in combination with other factors that affect evaporation, such as temperature and humidity.

ECOSTRESS data will be used by ecologists, hydrologists, meteorologists and other scientists as well as the agricultural and water management communities. In fact, the ECOSTRESS science team includes scientists from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It will collect data at pixels measuring a little more than 200 feet (70 meters) on a side, about the size of a large backyard, small farm or part of a big farm. This scale of information can also be useful for applications research on the effects of droughts on natural vegetation; for example, for identifying which types of trees are most vulnerable to dying first.

NASA and its partners are planning even more future missions over the next several years to advance what we know about Earth's ecosystems. For example, the agency is partnering with the Indian Space Research Organization to develop the NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, which will routinely provide systematic observations of Earth's land and ice-covered surfaces at least twice every 12 days, enabling greater scientific understanding of the dynamic processes that drive the Earth system and natural hazards, as well as providing actionable support for disaster response and recovery.

NISAR will complement GEDI, ICESat-2 and ECOSTRESS. With its capability to see through clouds, it will be able to help measure the amount of carbon stored in forests, the loss of forests due to disturbance, and the extent of agricultural areas and wetland areas across the globe.

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New NASA insights into the secret lives of plants

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Life. It's the one thing that, so far, makes Earth unique among the thousands of other planets we've discovered. Since the fall of 1997, NASA satellites have continuously and globally observed all plant life at the surface of the land and ocean. During the week of Nov.

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A COOL TOOL - KIAN KISHIMOTO (Just an extra tool but not an article)

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A COOL TOOL - KIAN KISHIMOTO (Just an extra tool but not an article)

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Here's a cool tool that can show how the map will look when water level rises! :D
- KIAN KISHIMOTO

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Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Impacts

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Sea Level Rise Viewer: View projected sea level rise at any coastal location up to 6 feet of inundation from flooding, hurricane storm surge, high tides.

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Sea Level Rise Would Redraw the Map - KIAN KISHIMOTO :D

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Sea Level Rise Would Redraw the Map - KIAN KISHIMOTO :D

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(I'm not sure if the video is part of the article)

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Federal predictions show dramatic shifts in shoreline

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Global climate change and evolution-Peyton lee

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Global climate change and evolution-Peyton lee

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It seems like every time a new story is created by the media about science, there needs to be some sort of controversial subject or debate included. The Theory of Evolution is no stranger to controversy, especially the idea that humans evolved over time from other species. Many religious groups and others do not believe in evolution because of this conflict with their creation stories.

Another controversial science topic often talked about by the news media is global climate change, or global warming.

Most people do not dispute that the average temperature of the Earth is increasing every year. However, the controversy comes in when there is an assertion that human actions are causing the process to speed up.

The majority of scientists believe both evolution and global climate change to be true. So how does one affect the other?

Global Climate Change

Before connecting the two controversial scientific subjects, it is first important to understand what both are individually. Global climate change, once called global warming, is based on the annual increase of the average global temperature. In short, the average temperature of all places on Earth increases every year. This increase in temperature seems to be causing many potential environmental issues including the melting of the polar ice caps, more extreme natural disasters like hurricanes and tornadoes, and larger areas are becoming affected by droughts.

Scientists have linked the increase in temperature to an overall increase in the amount of greenhouse gases in the air. Greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide, are necessary to keep some heat trapped in our atmosphere. Without some greenhouse gases, it would be too cold for life to survive on Earth. However, too many greenhouse gases can have extreme effects on the life that is present.

Controversy

It would be pretty hard to dispute that the average global temperature for Earth is increasing. There are numbers that prove that. However, it is still a controversial subject because many people do not believe that humans are causing global climate change to speed up as some scientists are suggesting. Many opponents of the idea claim the Earth cyclically becomes hotter and colder over long periods of time, which is true. The Earth moves in and out of ice ages over somewhat regular intervals and has since before life and long before humans came into existence.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that current human lifestyles do add greenhouse gases into the air at a very high rate. Some greenhouse gases are expelled from factories into the atmosphere. Modern automobiles release many types of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, that get trapped in our atmosphere. Also, many forests are disappearing because humans are cutting them down to create more living and agriculture space. This makes a large impact on the amount of carbon dioxide in the air because trees and other plants can use carbon dioxide and produce more oxygen through the process of photosynthesis. Unfortunately, if these large, mature trees are cut down, the carbon dioxide builds up and traps more heat.

Global Climate Change Affects Evolution

Since evolution is most simply defined as the change in species over time, how can global warming change a species? Evolution is driven through the process of natural selection. As Charles Darwin first explained, natural selection is when favorable adaptations for a given environment are chosen over the less favorable adaptations. In other words, individuals within a population that have traits that are better suited to whatever their immediate environment is will live long enough to reproduce and pass down those favorable traits and adaptations to their offspring. Eventually, the individuals that have less favorable traits for that environment will either have to move to a new, more suitable environment, or they will die out and those traits will no longer be available in the gene pool for new generations of offspring.

Ideally, this would create the strongest species possible to live long and prosperous lives in any environment.

Going by this definition, natural selection is dependent upon the environment. As the environment changes, the ideal traits and favorable adaptations for that area will also change. This could mean that adaptations in a population of a species that were once the best are now becoming much less favorable. This means the species will have to adapt and perhaps even undergo speciation to create a stronger set of individuals to survive. If the species cannot adapt quickly enough, they will become extinct.

For example, polar bears are currently on the endangered species list due to global climate change. Polar bears live in areas where there is very thick ice in the northern polar regions of Earth. They have very thick coats of fur and layers upon layers of fat to keep warm. They rely on fish that live under the ice as a primary food source and have become skilled ice fishermen in order to survive. Unfortunately, with the melting polar ice caps, the polar bears are finding their once favorable adaptations to be obsolete and they are not adapting quickly enough. The temperatures are increasing in those areas which make the extra fur and fat on the polar bears more of a problem than a favorable adaptation. Also, the thick ice that was once there to walk on is too thin to hold the weight of the polar bears any longer. Therefore, swimming has become a very necessary skill for polar bears to have.

If the current increase in temperature keeps up or accelerates, there will be no more polar bears. Those who have the genes to be great swimmers will live a bit longer than those who do not possess that gene, but, eventually, all will most likely disappear since evolution takes many generations and there just is not enough time.

There are many other species all over the Earth that are in the same sort of predicaments as the polar bears. Plants are having to adapt to differing amounts of rainfall than what is usual in their areas, other animals need to adjust to changing temperatures, and still others have to deal with their habitats disappearing or changing due to human interference. There is no doubt that global climate change is causing problems and increasing the need for a quicker pace of evolution in order to avoid mass extinctions all over the world.

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It seems like every time a new story is created by the media about science, there needs to be some sort of controversial subject or debate included. The Theory of Evolution is no stranger to controversy, especially the idea that humans evolved over time from other species.

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Climate change impacts on coral reefs- Erin Dominguez

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Climate change impacts on coral reefs- Erin Dominguez

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Coral reefs are highly vulnerable to climate change and the impacts will be far reaching.

Coral reefs are complex structures built mainly from the calcium carbonate (limestone) skeletons laid down by hard corals. These reef-building corals are highly vulnerable to rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification. Slowed growth and loss of hard corals will reduce essential habitat for many other reef creatures.

Reef structures themselves will also begin to crumble if reef growth does not keep pace with erosion by animals and storms.

Coral reefs comprise only six per cent of the area of the Great Barrier Reef, yet they provide critical habitat and food for many species in the ecosystem. Healthy coral reefs are also the essential foundation for reef-based tourism and fishing.

They are vitally connected to other Great Barrier Reef habitats including mangroves and salt marshes, seagrass meadows, estuaries, and open water environments. Reefs also act as barriers, protecting inshore habitats and human communities from large waves and storm surges.

Rising sea temperature

Hard corals are highly susceptible to coral bleaching caused by higher-than-normal sea temperatures. Coral bleaching is expected to occur more often and with greater severity in the future, making it difficult for corals to recover between bleaching events. As a result, the abundance of living corals on reefs is likely to decline in coming decades.

Some coral types, such as staghorn corals, are especially sensitive to bleaching, and these will be the most seriously affected. Coral communities will increasingly be dominated by types that are more tolerant to temperature stress.

Large, fleshy seaweeds (macroalgae), which compete with corals for space on the reef, will also benefit from rising temperatures and coral bleaching. Scientists have shown that degrading reefs can be rapidly overgrown by these macroalgae, which in turn impede coral recovery. Reefs dominated by macroalgae and bleaching-resistant corals have less three-dimensional structure than healthy coral reefs. Such reefs provide fewer shelters and refuges for the many animals that rely on the reef for their habitat.

Ocean acidification

Coral reefs are also highly vulnerable to ocean acidification. Hard corals and many other organisms that contribute to reef building, such as coralline algae, make their skeletons from calcium carbonate (limestone).

The rate of skeleton formation, known as calcification, will slow if waters become more acidic and the skeletons of these animals and plants will be weaker. Reefs are continually worn down by storms, and creatures that eat, burrow or dissolve their way through limestone.

For a healthy reef to be maintained, the growth of corals and encrusting algae has to at least keep pace with this erosion. Continuing ocean acidification will ultimately contribute to coral loss, and a weakening and collapse of limestone reef structures.

Extreme weather events

The Great Barrier Reef has adapted to cope with the impacts of cyclones and severe storms. However, many scientists predict that intense cyclones (such as cyclone Hamish and cyclone Yasi) will occur more often due to climate change. Reef recovery from such severe storms is slow, because fewer corals survive to recolonise affected areas. An increase in severe cyclones could therefore contribute to the degradation of reefs structures already weakened by coral bleaching and ocean acidification.

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Coral reefs are highly vulnerable to climate change and the impacts will be far reaching. Coral reefs are complex structures built mainly from the calcium carbonate (limestone) skeletons laid down by hard corals. These reef-building corals are highly vulnerable to rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification.

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Studies of how climate change might affect agriculture generally look only at crop yields - the amount of product harvested from a given unit of land. But climate change may also influence how much land people choose to farm and the number of crops they plant each growing season. A new study takes all of these variables into account, and suggests researchers may be underestimating the total effect of climate change on the world's food supply.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - One of the most critical questions surrounding climate change is how it might affect the food supply for a growing global population. A new study by researchers from Brown and Tufts universities suggests that researchers have been overlooking how two key human responses to climate - how much land people choose to farm, and the number of crops they plant - will impact food production in the future.

The study, published in Nature Climate Change, focused on the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, an emerging global breadbasket that as of 2013 supplied 10 percent of the world's soybeans. The researchers used variations in temperature and precipitation across the state over an eight-year period to estimate the sensitivity of the region's agricultural production to climate change. Those historical comparisons can help in making predictions about the sensitivity of agriculture to future climate change.

The study found that, if the patterns from 2002 to 2008 hold in the future, an increase in average temperature in Mato Grosso of just 1 degree Celsius will lead to a nine to 13 percent reduction in overall production of soy and corn. "This is worrisome given that the temperature in the study region is predicted to rise by as much as 2 degrees by midcentury under the range of plausible greenhouse gas emissions scenarios," said Avery Cohn, aassistant professor of environment and resource policy at Tufts, who led the work while he was a visiting researcher at Brown.

But the study's broader implications stem from the mechanisms behind the changes in agricultural output. Most studies of this kind look only at the extent to which climate shocks affect crop yield-the amount of product harvested from a given unit of agricultural land. But by only looking at that single variable, researchers can miss critical dynamics that can affect overall output, says Leah VanWey, professor of sociology at Brown and senior deputy director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (IBES).

"If you look at yields alone, you're not looking at all of the information because there are economic and social changes going on as well," said VanWey, one of the study's senior authors. "You're not taking into account farmers' reactions to climate shocks."

For example, farmers may react to decreasing yields by putting less land area into production because it's simply not profitable. Farmers may also vary the number of crops they plant in a growing season. Double cropping-the planting of two successive crops in the same field in the same growing season-is common in Mato Grosso. If the weather is bad, farmers may alter their decision to plant a second crop.

For this new study, the researchers looked not only at crop yield, but also at year-to-year variation in crop area and double cropping. To develop those additional datasets, Cohn and VanWey worked with Jack Mustard, professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences at Brown, and graduate student Stephanie Spera. Mustard and Spera gathered imagery of the Mato Grosso region from NASA's MODIS satellite, which monitors land cover and land use all over the world.

In the satellite data, cropland is identified as areas that turn green during the growing season, and then quickly become brown, indicating a harvest. Two green-ups in the same growing season indicate the land is being double-cropped.

"The changes in cropping that we quantified with remotely sensed data were stunning," Mustard said. "We can use those satellite data to better understand what's happening from a climate, economic, and sociological standpoint."

The study showed that temperature increases of 1 degree Celsius were associated with substantial decreases in both total crop area and double cropping. In fact, those decreases accounted for 70 percent of the overall loss in production found in the study. Only the remaining 30 percent was attributable to crop yield.

"Had we looked at yield alone, as most studies do, we would have missed the production losses associated with these other variables," VanWey said.

Taken together, the results suggest that traditional studies "may be underestimating the magnitude of the link between climate and agricultural production," Cohn said.

That's especially true in places like Brazil, where agricultural subsidies are scarce compared with places like the U.S.

"This is an agricultural frontier in the tropics in a middle-income country," VanWey said. "This is where the vast majority of agricultural development is going to happen in the next 30 to 50 years. So understanding how people respond in this kind of environment is going to be really important."

VanWey said a next step for this line of research might be to repeat it in the U.S. to see if increased subsidies or insurance help to guard against these kinds of shocks. If so, it might inform policy decisions in emerging agricultural regions like Mato Grosso.

"We may need to figure out a way to create incentives - credit products or insurance - that can reduce farmers' responses to climate shocks," VanWey said.

Funding for the research was provided by NASA (grant NNX11AH91G).

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Study suggests impact of climate change on agriculture may be underestimated

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Studies of how climate change might affect agriculture generally look only at crop yields - the amount of product harvested from a given unit of land. But climate change may also influence how much land people choose to farm and the number of crops they plant each growing season.

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NASA links port-city sea levels to regional ice melt

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NASA links port-city sea levels to regional ice melt

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Russell Kang

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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A new NASA tool links changes in sea level in 293 global port cities to specific regions of melting land ice, such as southern Greenland and the Antarctic Peninsula. It is intended to help coastal planners prepare for rising seas in the decades to come.

All coastal cities will see some impacts of global sea level rise. But the new tool shows that, for example, New York City is more strongly affected by melting ice in northeastern Greenland than in southwestern Greenland; while Sydney has a greater risk from the rapidly melting Antarctic Peninsula than from East Antarctica.

A paper describing the new tool, titled "Should coastal planners have concern over where land ice is melting?," was recently published in the journal Science Advances. The research team is Eric Larour, Erik Ivins and Surendra Adhikari of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Melting ice and rising ocean temperatures contribute about evenly to global sea level rise today. Individual cities are also affected by local conditions such as land sinking. Other Web-based resources such as the U.S. Climate Resilience Toolkit address some of these issues, but the new NASA tool is the only resource to match specific melting ice locations with their effects on the world's ports.

Water from melted ice on land doesn't spread evenly across the world's oceans because of a gravitational push-pull between ice and ocean. As a melting glacier or ice sheet dwindles, it loses mass, causing its local gravitational pull on nearby ocean water to diminish. Seawater that had been pulled toward the ice by the force of gravity flows away - in other words, sea level drops in the vicinity of a melting glacier but rises farther away. When this spatial pattern can be attributed to a given glacier or ice sheet, it is known as a sea level fingerprint.

To calculate this and other influences on sea level such as Earth's rotation, Larour and his colleagues used a dynamic mathematical formula called the adjoint method, which is used in seismic and meteorological studies. The method enables fast computation of the sensitivity of a model's output to its inputs - in this case, the sensitivity of sea level to ice melting. They used the method with JPL's well-tested computer model of ice sheet melting, the Ice Sheet System Model, to develop their new tool, called Gradient Fingerprint Mapping.

Users of the tool need no specialized training or extreme computer power; they simply download it, input data or projections of ice loss, and let it evolve the shifting ice and water patterns forward into the future. The result: a detailed profile of the sensitivity of sea level at any of these cities to changes in ice anywhere in the world.

Calculations of sea level fingerprints have been made in previous studies but tended to be cumbersome and spatially coarse, Larour said. The new tool provides an overall mechanism for rapidly computing high-resolution results using a variety of potential data sets.

Gradient Fingerprint Mapping is not dependent on a particular climate change scenario, Larour said. "You can apply the method to any type of melting scenario that you want." That means it will retain its utility as improved projections of ice loss become available in the future.

The computations show that the specific location of mass loss in Greenland is crucial, as it greatly affects the local sea level predictions for many major coastal cities in North America and Europe. The spatial details of Antarctic melting are important for areas south of the equator in South America, Africa and South Asia.

Among some intriguing results, Larour said, are those for New York, London and Oslo. Greenland's northeastern ice stream was shown to have an outsized effect on New York's local sea level, but the island's southern glaciers had little influence. London was more strongly affected by Greenland's northwestern and western glaciers. And Norway is so close to Greenland, the island's gravitational fingerprint is contributing to sea level decrease in Oslo.

The authors note that ocean dynamics can accelerate or offset the changes in sea level from gravitational fingerprints - particularly in New York, where the contribution of melting ice to accelerated sea level rise is minor compared to other sources.

"This is really a new capability," Larour said. "Now a coastal planner can understand and see how the melting or growing of a given ice sheet could be detrimental or beneficial to a specific location."

Access the tool at:
https://vesl.jpl.nasa.gov/research/sea-level/slr-gfm
News media contact

Alan Buis
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California
818-354-0474
Alan.Buis@jpl.nasa.gov

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NASA links port-city sea levels to regional ice melt - Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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A new NASA tool links changes in sea level in 293 global port cities to specific regions of melting land ice, such as southern Greenland and the Antarctic Peninsula. It is intended to help coastal planners prepare for rising seas in the decades to come.

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Scientists Study How Climate Change Affects Horses

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Scientists Study How Climate Change Affects Horses

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Ruby Louis

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One species, the Equus capensis, did finally die out in the late Pleistocene, but the Przewalski's (pictured) and domestic horse, as well as donkeys and onagers, survived.

Photo: iStock

With climate change come earthquakes, flooding, droughts, disruptions in plant growth, and the extinction of large mammals-including horses. At least that's what happened 50,000 years ago during the last great episode of global warming. And while the extinction of domestic horses is unlikely in this current situation of climate change, rising temperatures could still have significant effects on our horses.

"The major threats of current climate change to domestic horses would be the extreme climate in short time (such as drought, heat, snow, etc.), which need to be carefully monitored and prevented," said Zhibin Zhang, PhD, a researcher in the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology, in Beijing. "And effects of the current climate warming on natural or biological disasters (which could affect domestic horse breeding and management) need to be further investigated."

Like many large mammalian species, horses suffered the effects of the rapid climate change that occurred during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene epochs. While it didn't cause their total extinction, like it did for mammoths and frigid-zone rhinoceroses, it did lead them to migrate toward the North Pole in Eurasia, Zhang said. One species, the Equus capensis, did finally die out in the late Pleistocene, but the Przewalski's and domestic horse ( Equus caballus), as well as donkeys and onagers, survived.

Once displaced, they became principle prey to humans in these cooler regions-a phenomenon that might have been accentuated by the fact that so many other large mammal species had died out, Zhang said. While hunting further threatened species survival, the horses held out-probably due to their smaller size (which allowed them to live off less food than a mammoth could) and high fertility rates, he added.

"The climate warming would have changed the habitats of horses' southern boundaries due to increased rainfall," said Zhang. He said it eliminated some southern populations and pushed others to move north.

Zhang said a closer look at what happened to horses and other large mammals during the last great climate shift could help us better prepare for what could happen during the current one. That's why he and colleague Xinru Wan, PhD, also of the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Zoology, recently analyzed the effects of the temperature change on these animals 50,000 years ago.

The pair evaluated data on 2,440 radiocarbon-dated fossils or historical remains of large mammals from the late Pleistocene and Holocene epochs; these data are available online for scientists worldwide to access. Then, they compared the specimens' ages to where they were found to get an overall picture of large mammal movement, proliferation, and reduction over tens of thousands of years.

They found that climate warming was associated with horses moving northward in both western and eastern Eurasia. Rainfall in Asia increased dramatically, with stronger Southeast and Indian monsoons. That altered the steppe habitats horses had thrived in for hundreds of thousands of years. Meanwhile, glaciers in northern Europe (mainly Scandinavia) were melting, leading to newly available grasslands and thereby opening opportunities for horses to survive there.

As such, the horses proved to be adaptable to the changing climate, they said, rather than victims of it. "Despite the effects of climate warming, horses survived to the middle Holocene," they stated.

It was, however, that movement that led them right into the world of men, where they quickly became hunting targets. "Climate warming was not the key factor in causing the total or massive extinction of wild horses," Zhang said. "Humans were."

Excessive horse hunting during this new episode of climate change seems unlikely, Zhang said. However, the ancient horses' reaction to climate change 50,000 years ago indicates that our modern horses could be affected by the increasing heat.

The study, " Climate warming and humans played different roles in triggering Late Quaternary extinctions in east and west Eurasia," will appear in an upcoming issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

About the Author

Christa Lesté-Lasserre is a freelance writer based in France. A native of Dallas, Texas, Lesté-Lasserre grew up riding Quarter Horses, Appaloosas, and Shetland Ponies. She holds a master's degree in English, specializing in creative writing, from the University of Mississippi in Oxford and earned a bachelor's in journalism and creative writing with a minor in sciences from Baylor University in Waco, Texas. She currently keeps her two Trakehners at home near Paris. Follow Lesté-Lasserre on Twitter @christalestelas.

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Scientists Study How Climate Change Affects Horses

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One species, the Equus capensis, did finally die out in the late Pleistocene, but the Przewalski's (pictured) and domestic horse, as well as donkeys and onagers, survived. Photo: iStock With climate change come earthquakes, flooding, droughts, disruptions in plant growth, and the extinction of large mammals-including horses.

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Bali's Mt Agung eruption could send temperatures plunging -Jack Harris

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Bali's Mt Agung eruption could send temperatures plunging -Jack Harris

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Bali's Mt Agung eruption could send temperatures plunging

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But any respite from global warming would only be temporary, scientists say.

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https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2643/narwhal-recruits-track-melting-arctic-ice/

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Climate Change may shrink Adelie penguin range by end of century ~ Alex Zakoor

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Climate Change may shrink Adelie penguin range by end of century ~ Alex Zakoor

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Climate change may shrink Adélie penguin range by end of century - NASA Science

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Rising temperatures in Antarctica have caused a population decline in a penguin species that breeds across the continent.

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Human activities have increased carbon-dioxide emissions, driving up temperatures. Extreme weather and melting polar ice are among the possible effects.

What is climate change?

The Earth's average temperature is about 15C but has been much higher and lower in the past.

There are natural fluctuations in the climate but scientists say temperatures are now rising faster than at many other times.

This is linked to the greenhouse effect, which describes how the Earth's atmosphere traps some of the Sun's energy.

Solar energy radiating back to space from the Earth's surface is absorbed by greenhouse gases and re-emitted in all directions.

This heats both the lower atmosphere and the surface of the planet. Without this effect, the Earth would be about 30C colder and hostile to life.

Scientists believe we are adding to the natural greenhouse effect, with gases released from industry and agriculture trapping more energy and increasing the temperature.

This is known as climate change or global warming.

What are greenhouse gases?

The greenhouse gas with the greatest impact on warming is water vapour. But it remains in the atmosphere for only a few days.

Carbon dioxide (CO2), however, persists for much longer. It would take hundreds of years for a return to pre-industrial levels and only so much can be soaked up by natural reservoirs such as the oceans.

Most man-made emissions of CO2 come from burning fossil fuels. When carbon-absorbing forests are cut down and left to rot, or burned, that stored carbon is released, contributing to global warming.

Climate change: Where we are in seven charts

Five things the 1.5C report taught us

Since the industrial revolution began in about 1750, CO2 levels have risen more than 30%. The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years.

Other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide are also released through human activities but they are less abundant than carbon dioxide.

What is the evidence for warming?

The world is about one degree Celsius warmer than before widespread industrialisation, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says.

The 20 warmest years on record all occurred in the past 22 years, with 2015-18 making up the top four.

Across the globe, the average sea level increased by 3.6mm per year between 2005 and 2015.

Most of this change was because water increases in volume as it heats up.

However, melting ice is now thought to be the main reason for rising sea levels. Most glaciers in temperate regions of the world are retreating.

And satellite records show a dramatic decline in Arctic sea-ice since 1979. The Greenland Ice Sheet has experienced record melting in recent years.

Satellite data also shows the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is losing mass. A recent study indicated East Antarctica may also have started to lose mass.

The effects of a changing climate can also be seen in vegetation and land animals. These include earlier flowering and fruiting times for plants and changes in the territories of animals.

How much will temperatures rise in future?

The change in the global surface temperature between 1850 and the end of the 21st Century is likely to exceed 1.5C, most simulations suggest.

The WMO says that if the current warming trend continues, temperatures could rise 3-5C by the end of this century.

Temperature rises of 2C had long been regarded as the gateway to dangerous warming. More recently, scientists and policymakers have argued that limiting temperature rises to 1.5C is safer.

An Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2018 suggested that keeping to the 1.5C target would require " rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society".

The UN is leading a political effort to stabilise greenhouse-gas emissions. China emits more CO2 than any other country. It is followed by the US and the European Union member states, although emissions per person are much greater there.

But even if we now cut greenhouse-gas emissions dramatically, scientists say the effects will continue. Large bodies of water and ice can take hundreds of years to respond to changes in temperature. And it takes CO2 decades to be removed from the atmosphere.

How will climate change affect us?

There is uncertainty about how great the impact of a changing climate will be.

It could cause freshwater shortages, dramatically alter our ability to produce food, and increase the number of deaths from floods, storms and heatwaves. This is because climate change is expected to increase the frequency of extreme weather events - though linking any single event to global warming is complicated.

As the world warms, more water evaporates, leading to more moisture in the air. This means many areas will experience more intense rainfall - and in some places snowfall. But the risk of drought in inland areas during hot summers will increase. More flooding is expected from storms and rising sea levels. But there are likely to be very strong regional variations in these patterns.

Vietnam's children and the fear of climate change

Would you give up beef to help the planet?

Poorer countries, which are least equipped to deal with rapid change, could suffer the most.

Plant and animal extinctions are predicted as habitats change faster than species can adapt. And the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the health of millions could be threatened by increases in malaria, water-borne disease and malnutrition.

As more CO2 is released into the atmosphere, uptake of the gas by the oceans increases, causing the water to become more acidic. This could pose major problems for coral reefs.

Global warming will cause further changes that are likely to create further heating. This includes the release of large quantities of methane as permafrost - frozen soil found mainly at high latitudes - melts.

Responding to climate change will be one of the biggest challenges we face this century.

Climate-related words and phrases explained

How much warmer is your city?

What is your diet's carbon footprint?

Where we are in seven charts

What questions do you have about changes in our climate?
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Human activities have increased carbon-dioxide emissions, driving up temperatures. Extreme weather and melting polar ice are among the possible effects. The Earth's average temperature is about 15C but has been much higher and lower in the past. There are natural fluctuations in the climate but scientists say temperatures are now rising faster than at many other times.

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Polar Bears and Climate Change - Nikki Firouzi

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Polar Bears and Climate Change - Nikki Firouzi

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Polar bears ( Ursus maritimus) are the poster child for the impacts of climate change on species, and justifiably so. To date, global warming has been most pronounced in the Arctic, and this trend is projected to continue. There are suggestions that before mid-century we could have a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer. This increases the urgency with which we must act to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to delay or avoid some of the worst consequences of climate change.

Polar bears have relatively high genetic diversity within the species and can disperse over very long distances, suggesting that they may have some capacity to adapt to the ongoing changes in the Arctic.

However, their dependence on sea ice makes them highly vulnerable to a changing climate. Polar bears rely heavily on the sea ice environment for traveling, hunting, mating, resting, and in some areas, maternal dens. In particular, they depend heavily on sea ice-dependent prey, such as ringed and bearded seals. Additionally, their long generation time and low reproductive rate may limit their ability to adapt to changes in the environment.

Priorities for climate-informed polar bear conservation should include identifying and protecting the "last ice areas," the parts of the Arctic that are projected to retain sea ice farthest into the future. It is also important to increase monitoring of polar bear populations, particularly their responses to declining sea ice. And as polar bears spend more time on land, we need to be prepared to manage for increased human-polar bear conflict.

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Polar Bears and Climate Change | Pages | WWF

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Polar bears ( Ursus maritimus) are the poster child for the impacts of climate change on species, and justifiably so. To date, global warming has been most pronounced in the Arctic, and this trend is projected to continue. There are suggestions that before mid-century we could have a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer.

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Venice will be underwater within a century if the acceleration in global warming is not quelled and flood defences installed, a new climate change report has warned.

The ancient and iconic city will be flooded because the Mediterranean Sea is forecast to rise by up to 140cm before 2100, according to the research.

The same rise in sea level is predicted to swamp a 176-mile long coastline in the north Adriatic and parts of the west coast of Italy, because of greenhouse gas emissions.

The report, published in Quarternary International, claimed up to 5,500km2 of coastal plains will be flooded before 2100.

"The subsequent loss of land will impact the environment and local infrastructures, suggesting land planners and decision makers [should] take into account these scenarios for cognizant coastal management," said lead author Fabrizio Antonioli.

"Our method developed for the Italian coast can be applied worldwide in other coastal areas expected to be affected by marine ingression due to global climate change."

The study, by the ENEA (the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development), looked at how flooding had affected millstone quarries to predict the possible rise in sea levels.

Millstones are circular stones that were mined to grind grain in the Stone Age pre 2,000 BC.

"We integrated historical sources, aerial photography, field surveys and palaeo sea-level modelling to investigate a number of millstones quarries with the aim of assessing the intervening sera level change that occurred since the quarries were abandoned," added Mr Antonioli.

The research also said sea levels rose by just 32cm over the past millennium.

The team also believes 33 areas across Italy are particularly at risk from the predicted rise.

This includes the coastline between Trieste and Ravenna, the Parc Delta del Po Veneto where hundreds of flamingos live, Verslia in Tuscancy on the west coast, and Fiumicino in Lazio.

About 86 million people in Europe - around 19 per cent of its population - are estimated to live within 10km from the coastline. Around 75 per cent of the Italian population are estimated to live within 10km of the coast.

A separate study released earlier this year suggested global warming could cause sea levels to rise higher than the height of a three-storey building.

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The whole of Venice will be destroyed within the century

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Venice will be underwater within a century if the acceleration in global warming is not quelled and flood defences installed, a new climate change report has warned. The ancient and iconic city will be flooded because the Mediterranean Sea is forecast to rise by up to 140cm before 2100, according to the research.

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Diving Scientists Report 'Big Changes' Beneath Antarctic Ice Shelf ~ Sarika Pasumarthy

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Diving Scientists Report 'Big Changes' Beneath Antarctic Ice Shelf ~ Sarika Pasumarthy

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A researcher dives the near-freezing seawater beneath the ice at New Harbour in the Antarctica's Ross Sea.

Credit: Science Under the Ice

Climate change may be leading to shifts in the communities of sea life beneath an Antarctic ice shelf, researchers say.

Scientists diving beneath sea ice at the edge of Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf have discovered unexpected changes in the seafloor ecosystem compared to previous studies of the same area, and they think the thinning of the ice shelf caused by climate change may be to blame.

"Surprisingly big changes in the coastal seafloor communities have occurred in only a few years," Patrick Degerman, one of three researchers from Finland on the expedition along with six from New Zealand, wrote in a dispatch from the team's camp on the ice shelf near New Harbour in the Ross Sea.

"Two days ago, [two of the researchers] did the first dive of the year under the ice in crystal clear water, and much to everyone's surprise, the animal community on the seafloor had changed dramatically since the last visit in 2009," he wrote in the first week of November on the expedition's Facebook page, " Science Under the Ice." [ See Photos of the Big Changes Beneath the Antarctic Ice Shelf]

For the duration of the six-week expedition, the team members from Finland are regularly updating the page with posts, photographs and videos of their work above and below the ice.

"The first diver observations show that the changes can be unexpectedly rapid, even in Antarctica, where everything is expected to happen very slowly due to the low temperature," Degerman wrote.

The seafloor beneath Antarctica's ice shelves is usually in complete darkness and lacks most of the "marine snow" of phytoplankton and other biological material that rains down from the sunlit levels of other parts of the ocean.

Although the depth of the dive sites beneath the ice shelf is only about 66 feet (20 meters), the sparse animal life found there is similar to that found in the very deepest parts of the oceans, and consists mainly of organisms like deep-sea sponges, sea stars, brittle stars and sea cucumbers.

"What used to be a very stable, sparse and food-deprived animal community on the seafloor under the thick ice in New Harbour is now much richer, with more species and higher densities of animals," Degerman wrote. "Some species rarely observed at this site now appear to be relatively common."

Changing climate

The researchers are spending six weeks at two camp sites on the Ross Ice Shelf, the largest and southernmost ice shelf on the Antarctic continent. Both sites have been studied by previous diving expeditions, so the researchers can make a scientific comparison of any changes that have occurred over time.

"The aim of this expedition is to explore how climate change will affect the marine biodiversity in Antarctica," Degerman wrote. "Almost all of the biodiversity in Antarctica is found in the oceans. A unique combination of species and isolation has provided a place to treasure, largely unaffected by human activity."

The scientists set up "closed chamber" experiments to study how seafloor animals consume nutrients.

Credit: Science Under the Ice

The researchers think the changes in the seafloor ecosystem seen at the New Harbour site are probably the result of thinning sea ice that permits more light to filter through, and occasionally breaks up in the Antarctic summer months.

"New Harbour sea ice can go for years without breaking [up], and this multiyear ice can grow up to 4.5 meters [15 feet] thick. When the ice is thick, very little light can penetrate the ice to fuel primary production (for example, algae), and thus food supply to the animals on the seafloor is limited," Degerman wrote.

"The rich community now observed is most likely a rapid response to the sea ice breaking out two years in a row, resulting in more light and higher productivity in the ecosystem," he added. "The ice is currently about 3 meters [10 feet] thick."

In addition to conducting scientific research, the Finnish researchers are also recording the work of the expedition using five 360-degree video cameras. It's the first time an entire scientific expedition has been documented in virtual reality.

The 360-degree video will be available early next year after being processed in Finland, but until then, the researchers are regularly sharing photographs and videos of their work above and below the ice shelf, including aerial drone footage and underwater video from the dive site at New Harbour, some of which was posted to YouTube on Nov. 8.

Moving on

During the last stage of their stay at the New Harbour camp and dive sites, the researchers conducted "closed chamber" experiments on the seafloor to examine how much food is consumed by animal species that are common in the ecosystem, such as brittle stars ( Ophionotus victoriae). [ Weird Wildlife: The Real Animals of Antarctica]

The closed-chamber experiments would "analyse the food webs (who eats who) to compare with previous analyses conducted in 2001, 2002 and 2009, when sea ice conditions were very different, to reveal how food webs have changed over the last 15 years and what this will imply for the future of these unique ecosystems," Degerman posted to the expedition Facebook page early last week.

"The aim is to investigate how the seafloor ecosystem will work differently as a result of climate change," University of Helsinki marine biologist Joanna Norkko wrote in a Nov. 6 update.

Life on the seafloor beneath the ice shelf is similar to that found in the deepest parts of the oceans, and includes sponges, sea cucumbers and brittle stars.

Credit: Science Under the Ice

"In addition to warmer temperatures, climate change is expected to lead to increased food availability to the animals on the seafloor. This is because the sea ice is predicted to get thinner, which means that more light will penetrate the ice, which, in turn, means that there will be more algae growing on the underside of the ice ( so-called ice algae)," Norkko explained. "These algae are the main food source for many of the animals on the seafloor."

In their most recent posts from the ice, the researchers reported that they've now struck their camp at New Harbour and have returned briefly to the New Zealand Antarctic headquarters at Scott Base. Next, they will head to their second camp on the Ross Ice Shelf, near Cape Evans on Ross Island.

"[We] spent two days packing up the whole camp to go back to Scott Base for a day to repack (and have a shower) before heading out to our second site at Cape Evans for a few days of diving," reads the latest update, posted Tuesday (Nov. 14).

"But, as is quite common in Antarctica, the weather had its own way, and snow and increasing wind forced us to wait until the late evening before we could start driving back to Scott Base in the two Hägglunds [tracked snow vehicles], towing all of our gear on big sleds," they wrote in the update. "It was a beautiful night though! Thanks to the Scott Base staff for driving all through the night!"

Editor's Note: This article was updated to clarify that the scientists were diving beneath sea ice at the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf, not beneath the shelf itself.

Original article on Live Science.

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Diving Scientists Report 'Big Changes' Beneath Antarctic Ice Shelf

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Climate change may be leading to shifts in the communities of sea life beneath an Antarctic ice shelf, researchers say. Scientists diving beneath sea ice at the edge of Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf have discovered unexpected changes in the seafloor ecosystem compared to previous studies of the same area, and they think the thinning of the ice shelf caused by climate change may be to blame.

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5 Reasons Why Climate Change Is a Social Issue, Not Just an Environmental One - Noya Hafiz

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5 Reasons Why Climate Change Is a Social Issue, Not Just an Environmental One - Noya Hafiz

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As illustrated by the 400,000 attendees at the People's Climate March in New York City and the solidarity events that took place around the word, the realities of climate change are no longer only being stressed by environmentalists. The effects of climate change will be economic, social, and environmental and will alter people's lives in a myriad of ways that we are just beginning to understand. Acceptance of this complex interaction, which follows the prescription laid out by the concept of sustainable development, is key to beginning to enact effective policy on climate. Since the recent New Climate Economy Report focused on climate change through an economic lens, it is time to facilitate discussion on the social effects. Here are 5 reasons why climate change needs to be considered a social issue as well:
1. Small farmers will feel the effects
Small farmers already struggle to get a fair price for their goods, safeguard against weather & pests, and compete with large-scale monoculture agricultural systems to stay in business. Climate change is poised to make matters worse for farmers through a shift in climate and agricultural zones, changes in production patterns due to higher temperatures, and more extreme and changing precipitation patterns all of which threaten crops. Such an upset has the potential to take away families' livelihoods and main source of income as well as hurt entire communities who depend on selling the fruit (and veggies) of their labor. Small farmers are an integral part of our societies and, consequently, the effects of climate change on farmers can threaten food supplies and security as well as increase volatility in global food prices.
2. Rural and urban poor are the hardest hit
1 billion people will still live in extreme poverty in 2015 and many depend on their surrounding natural resources for survival. Poverty and inequality, which we have been working to improve for decades, will only get worse with climate change because disadvantaged groups do not have the resources to cope with effects such as extreme flooding or droughts that may displace them or change their way of life. Poor neighborhoods in cities around the world are already known to suffer from more pollution, but they will also be disappointingly affected by increase in temperatures. Even in U.S. cities, research shows that poor neighborhoods are at higher risk for heat-related ailments, which will increase as temperature rises. Residents in poorer neighborhood are less likely to have air conditioning and only willing to use it when needed due to cost. There is also a tendency for there to be less trees and for buildings to be constructed from materials that retain heat.
3. Unequal capacity for adaptation
Developing countries, who did not significantly contribute to the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, will now be at an even greater disadvantage when it comes to dealing with the effects of climate change. Developing countries already struggle with lack of infrastructure and less technological and financial resources, among a number of other concerns that will hinder their ability to adapt. Furthermore, these countries are dependent on the resources they do have to deal with high rates of poverty and income inequality, both of which, as we stated, will be exacerbated with climate change. For example, public funds that could have originally been used towards education will now have to go to sea walls, increased irrigation, or storm water systems to adapt. Although this reality is discussed as a part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ( UNFCCC), technological and financial assistance to developing countries isn't even close to sufficient.
4. Women, children, and the elderly will become even more vulnerable
Women, children, and the elderly who already tend to be a vulnerable group in society will become even more so from climate change . In rural areas of developing countries it is often the responsibility of women and children to collect firewood and water, yet decreasing supplies is resulting in more work and less time for other tasks as they now often have to go further distances to find supplies. Children and the elderly are also more susceptible to the heath concerns associated with climate change such as heat-related ailments from higher temperatures, malnourishment due to increased strain on food supplies/increased prices, and also disease that can be associated with increased flooding. In many countries where women do not have equal access to land, capital, and other resources as men (yet are often heads of households), women are already having difficulty in accessing climate resilient technology or crops, which are necessary for climate change adaptation. Furthermore, there are various psychological and physical impacts that have already been witnessed (in both men and women) due to increased pressure to provide for the family.
5. Communities will be forced to relocate
Many communities will be forced to move as they are exposed to rising sea levels, extreme drought that puts strain on resources, or even extreme rainfall that becomes the norm. Small island developing states (SIDS) are particularly vulnerable and are at the forefront of feeling the effects of climate change. At the beginning of 2014, Fiji's first village to relocate moved 1 km further inland as a part of the country's climate change program as seawater had already began to flood residents' homes in the village of Vunidogoloa. It is expected that 34 other villages could also be moved as Fiji grapples with eroding coastlines and increased flooding. The entire nation of Kiribati, a small island state in the Pacific, is expected to become uninhabitable due to sea level rise and the country has recently bought land in Fiji in order to relocate. This means entire ways of life that have existed for centuries will be relocated and changed forever.

Because the effects of climate change are not simply environmental but economic and social as well, new and existing policies must take a holistic approach and transcend disciplines, sectors, and the public-private divide. Addressing climate change is a tremendous concern unlike any our society has had yet to deal with and requires a unique approach that leaves behind the idea that humans are a separate entity outside of the environment.

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5 Reasons Why Climate Change Is A Social Issue, Not Just An Environmental One

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As illustrated by the 400,000 attendees at the People's Climate March in New York City and the solidarity events that took place around the word, the realities of climate change are no longer only being stressed by environmentalists.

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#ClimateActionPH: It’s time for the Philippines to get serious about climate change - June Phillips

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#ClimateActionPH: It’s time for the Philippines to get serious about climate change - June Phillips

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https://docs.google.com/a/powayusd.com/document/d/1jjBS1JAI9Hg0X09TDl39uYzYuVgDFN4TxxptVACFlAc/edit?usp=sharing

This is the Google Doc with my article. (There were too many ads so I used copy paste)

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The Vanishing Jewel of the Colorado River -Kushneet Dhami

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The Vanishing Jewel of the Colorado River -Kushneet Dhami

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Every year, millions of tourists from across the country visit the famed Colorado River for its many recreational opportunities, including motor-boating, fishing, and rafting. One of the most popular destinations is Glen Canyon Reservoir, otherwise known as Lake Powell. Surrounded by beautiful red rock cliffs and breathtaking geologic formations, the reservoir's unnaturally emerald-green waters stretch from the Utah-Arizona border all the way to the bridge at Hite Crossing over a hundred miles to the northeast. For its many aesthetic charms and laid-back atmosphere, visitors affectionately refer to Lake Powell as the Jewel of the Colorado River. But alarmingly, this jewel could disappear over the coming decades as a result of the regional effects of climate change and the Southwest's increasing demand for water.

Lake Powell's walls can talk; the sandstone cliffs and the reservoir's fifty-nine year history of changing water levels tell the story of the arid west's disappearing water resources. Over the last two decades, visitors have observed that the reservoir's water level has dropped sharply. A white line, made up of exposed calcium carbonate deposits, runs along the walls of Glen Canyon Reservoir. This line, known locally as the "bathtub ring," marks how far Lake Powell's water levels have fallen over the years.

Historical data support the conclusions made by casual observations of the bathtub ring. As of April 2015, Lake Powell was at only 45% capacity. ¹ This low water volume is part of a seventeen year trend. Evidence compiled by EcoWest shows that, since 1998, water levels have been significantly below the historical average; since 2011, the reservoir's surface has fallen over 50 feet. ²

Unfortunately for the 40 million people who depend on the Colorado River as their primary water source, this trend of decreasing water availability will likely continue for several decades, if not indefinitely. Climate projections for the already dry Southwest predict a drop in precipitation, as well as an almost certain increase in evaporation caused by higher temperatures. ³ If these projections are accurate, the water level in Lake Powell could eventually reach dead pool, a level so low that water cannot escape the reservoir by natural gravity alone. Dead pool would not only mark the end of Glen Canyon Dam's electric power generation, it would also expose a layer of toxic sediments that have been accumulating below the water since the dam was completed. The Colorado River's red sediment contains trace amounts of heavy metals. When the Bureau of Reclamation built Glen Canyon dam, that sediment began to build up behind its concrete wall. If the dam's managers continue to release water downstream at current levels, the jewel of the Colorado could be transformed into a stagnant pool loaded with decades of accumulated heavy metals.

Although it was inevitable that Lake Powell would one day fill with sediment, the Bureau of Reclamation expected the process to take hundreds of years. However, given projected changes to the region's climate regime, the toxic layer of chemicals could surface in decades rather than centuries.

Currently, Page, Arizona, population 8,000, is the only city that takes water directly out of Lake Powell. The rest of the water is channeled through hydropower turbines and released downstream. That situation could change in the coming years as other desert cities try to stick a new straw into the lake. One such proposal calls for the construction of a 139 mile pipeline to transport water across the state of Utah, at a projected cost of $1 billion. ⁴ Such projects are politically ambitious and extraordinarily expensive, but as water supplies dwindle, and nearby cities like St. George, Utah, continue to grow, Glen Canyon Reservoir will look like an ever-more attractive resource to the region's water-strapped municipalities. There is no guarantee that the pipeline will be built, but if it were the likelihood of Lake Powell reaching dead pool would only increase as the Southwest's changing climate continues to take its toll on water levels.

Beyond the local problems that dead pool would cause, the falling water levels have chilling implications for the rest of the southwestern region and everyone else who depends on the Colorado River. Much like the Down Jones Industrial Average compiles information from many economic sectors to create a simplified indicator of how the entire economy is performing, Lake Powell indicates how the entire Colorado River basin is performing in terms of water supply.2 The reservoir's level depends on the amount of precipitation, both rain and snow, that falls in the upper basin states of Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. All of the Colorado's upper basin tributaries, whose water levels are difficult to measure, combine to make a complex river system that eventually coalesces into Glen Canyon reservoir. Water released from Glen Canyon Dam runs downstream to the lower basin (Arizona, Nevada, and southern California) which receives far less precipitation. If less precipitation falls in the upper basin, then Lake Powell's level will drop, meaning that less water will be available for use in the lower basin. The low water levels that have been recorded for Glen Canyon Reservoir over the last decade indicate a combination of low precipitation in the Rocky Mountains and high rates of evaporation on the reservoir and on the Colorado.

Population growth in the American Southwest has been underpinned by the assumption that there would always be plenty of water for everyone. The 40 million people who rely on the Colorado River for drinking water will have to challenge their old assumptions as a new climate regime significantly decreases water availability. The dream of endless development and population growth will soon come to an end as the region wakes up to its new, water-scarce reality. Glen Canyon's bathtub ring is irrefutable evidence of how precarious the water situation in the arid southwest will be over the coming decades. If Southwesterners want to maintain their livelihood in the great American desert, they will have to change their mindset from one of expansion to conservation.

References

1. Taylor A. 2 April 2015. The American West Dries Up. The Atlantic. [Internet] [Cited 2015 Sep 14]. Available from: http://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/04/the-american-west-dries-up/389432/

2. Tobin M. 21 Aug 2013. Plotting "dead pool" and other watersheds for Lake Powell and Lake Mead. EcoWest. [Internet] [Cited 2015 Sep 14]. Available from: http://ecowest.org/2013/08/21/plotting-dead-pool-and-other-watersheds-for-lake-powell-and-lake-mead

3. Seager R, Ting M, Held I, Kushnir Y, Lu J, Vecchi G, Naik N. 2007. Model projections of an imminent transition to a more arid climate in southwestern North America. Science 316(5828): 1181-1184.

4. O'Donoghue A. 29 Nov 2013. Lake Powell Pipeline gets financing reality check. Desert News. [Internet] [Cited 2015 Sep 14] Available from: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865591561/Lake-Powell-Pipeline-gets-financing-reality-check.html?pg=all

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The Vanishing Jewel of the Colorado River

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Every year, millions of tourists from across the country visit the famed Colorado River for its many recreational opportunities, including motor-boating, fishing, and rafting. One of the most popular destinations is Glen Canyon Reservoir, otherwise known as Lake Powell.

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Climate Change Impact on Arctic Ecosystems ~ Flora Yuan

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Climate Change Impact on Arctic Ecosystems ~ Flora Yuan

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Christina Ospina | June 14th, 2017

If there is a single image that universally signifies the impact of climate change, it would a polar bear, alone on a small chunk of ice floating in the Arctic, struggling to find food or shelter. It's a pervasive image, and you can't help but feel an overbearing sense of guilt or pity for the animal when you see it. However, this image shouldn't symbolize an insurmountable challenge or a lack of hope. It's important to look beyond the image and understand not only the extent of climate change's impacts, but also the potential to overcome this change. Majestic creatures like the polar bear are not doomed to suffer the cruel fate of an uninhabitable environment. There are actions we can take to slow climate change and help protect species we hold dear.

The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme recently published a report on Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic, which asses the state of the Arctic and the projected impact climate change will have on this part of the world. Most importantly, this report confirms a shift that scientists have feared for years: that the Arctic's climate will be significantly transformed to one that is warmer, wetter, and more variable. Already temperatures are rising faster than the global average: several months out of the year are already 5°C higher than the average of the past several decades. Ice sheets and glaciers are becoming smaller and younger, and summer sea ice may disappear altogether as early as a couple decades from now. Perhaps more worryingly, increases in Arctic temperatures are causing greater levels of permafrost thaw in northern latitudes, thereby releasing carbon that has previously been locked away in this frozen soil into our atmosphere.

Of course, the effects of climate change are not limited to differing weather patterns, as we know from the heart-wrenching images of polar bears on dwindling sea ice. Polar bears spend most their lives on sea ice - it's where they hunt, seeks mates, raise their young, and den - so there is no doubt that a loss of sea ice would have a dramatic effect on their livelihoods. And as we know, everything in nature is connected. The polar bear is the apex predator in the Arctic, and meaning that when their population declines, the entire food web could fall out of balance.

Already, climate change has proven to have a damaging effect on the Arctic environment, and careful analyses are revealing that this transformation will only become more dramatic if climate change remains unmitigated. Fortunately, we do not have to sit idly by as climate change affects beloved species, causes a series of cascading effects related to both weather and the Arctic ecosystem. Policies and partnerships that aim to slow climate change could help substantially slow down the projected changes we'll see in the Arctic, and therefore protect our planet's species and ecosystems.

Decline of the Polar Bear

Today, the polar population is estimated to be between 22,000 and 31,000 bears and is made up of 19 different sub-populations across the Arctic. For nine of these sub-groups, numbers are not known and studies are on-going; some populations are considered stable; one is improving; and three are known to be in decline. It is important to note that improvements in number are relative to the past several decades, where polar bear populations were decimated due to widespread hunting. Hunting may have been the leading cause of decline in polar bear numbers in the late 1900s, but regulations and multi-national agreements curbed polar bear take - i.e. hunting, killing or capturing - allowing numbers to stabilize. Today the challenge that climate change brings could be much more difficult to regulate.

In 2016, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a conservation management plan for the polar bear, citing loss of sea ice and inaction against climate change as the most significant challenges to this species' survival. With estimates that predict a complete disappearance of summer sea ice in the next several decades, there is no doubt that climate change will have a deeply negative effect on polar bear survival. A study by the Royal Society, released in 2016, at which point no global assessment analyzing polar bear populations relative to sea ice had yet been published, dove into this in more detail. This report found undeniable trends in a loss of sea ice from 1979 to 2014 in each of the 19 regions for polar bear sub-populations. Considering polar bear population projections and taking variable and incomplete information for some populations into account, the study found a high probability for a 30% decline in the mean global population size for polar bears within the next 40 years. Less conservative methods in this study put projections at 50% and upwards.

It has been suggested that the loss of sea ice might not be so detrimental to the polar bear. Perhaps, in fact, the polar might take advantage of its increased time on land to consume terrestrial foods to enhance their survival. While many species can adapt to changing conditions, the polar bear is highly specialized to this habitat, and evidence does not suggest that they will be able to adapt to warmer climates with less sea ice. Where terrestrial food consumption has been observed, it has not been sufficient to offset the loss of sea-based nourishment, and it was seen in a very small fraction of individuals within polar bears populations. For some populations, exploration into terrestrial foods might help, but overall, data has shown that this is not a viable strategy for polar bear survival.

Beyond the Polar Bear

The Arctic food web is complex; as scientists strive to better predict the impact of climate change, we cannot be fully certain how the loss of the polar bear will directly impact the Arctic ecology. Barring any other changes, the decline of this predator would like cause imbalances in species at lower trophic levels, but climate change will not impact the polar bear alone. Many of the prey species that polar bears depend on, like ringed and bearded seals, will likely see population declines, as the suitability of their ice habitats decrease. This could have a significant impact on the polar bear.

Other familiar species could be impacted as well. Once such example is the musk ox, a species that has been affect by global climate change before. Historical data, derived from the bones and remains of musk oxen alive thousands of years ago, has shown that the musk ox is very sensitive to changes in climate. Its population has risen and fallen in such a way that has shown a strong correlation to changes in the Arctic ecosystem.

These trends serve as a strong indication that the rapid changes we are seeing in today's climate will also have a significant effect on musk oxen. In Greenland, for example, expeditions in 2013 and 2015 have already shown evidence of the musk oxen's struggle. Warmer winters means more rainfall. When it rains on top of snow, it will be more likely to freeze over, forming a hard layer of ice that is often too difficult for the oxen to push through to find patches of grass. In the summers, where average temperatures in the region have risen by 3-6°C over the last two decades, new parasites and diseases can now affect the survival of musk ox populations. When new pathogens emerge, this could also give rise to new vectors to transmit diseases to humans, reminding us that changes that impact other species are not isolated events.

The implication for species population is apparent, and it is important to note that Artic climate change will have a broader impact. Changes in the Artic will likely cause warmer temperatures in the tropics and drastically different weather patterns around the world. report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme explains that the Arctic acts as a "global refrigerator," accounting for northern Europe's relatively mild climate compared to other northern territories. Driven by differences in salinity and wind patterns, the Gulf Stream carries warm water from the south up north. As it moves northward, it cools, releasing heat (helping to keep Europe's temperature milder) and increases in salt content. As cold northern air cools this current, it becomes denser, finally sinking down again towards the south, resetting this loop. Should climate change continue on its current trajectory, melted Artic ice will introduce vast amounts of freshwater, changing the salinity of ocean waters. Diluting ocean waters would disrupt the necessary difference in salt content for the Gulf Stream to flow, thereby stalling it out and potentially leading to more extreme temperatures and unexpected weather conditions in all regions.

The changes wouldn't end there, since the Arctic is also a significant carbon sink, meaning climate change would create a positive feedback loop. As the planet warms, carbon and other greenhouse gases trapped in glaciers and permafrost would be released, further exacerbating climate change. Already permafrost has started to thaw, but the extent of this change can be limited. A letter published in Nature Climate Change detailed findings that revealed stabilizing the climate at 2°C (3.6°F) above preindustrial levels would still result in a loss of approximately 6.6 million km ², or 2.5 million miles ² of permafrost, a 40% loss relative to today. Mitigating climate change such that we stabilize temperatures at 1.5°C (2.7°F) would save 2 million km ², or 770,000 miles ², from thawing. Thawing permafrost also affects the 35 million people who have made their home in that region. These populations who have built directly on and rely on permafrost would face serious infrastructural damage from ground collapse or lake formation.

Policy Options for the Future

Considering so much disruption in the Arctic ecosystem, in the face of all the doom and gloom, what can we do to help the survival of so many species and to reduce climate disruption? Fortunately, there a range of policy options that can help promote a healthy Arctic ecosystem by promoting ways to mitigate climate change.

Even policies targeted at saving just the polar bear can be broadly beneficial. For example, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's draft conservation management plan outlines a high priority recovery plan and emphatically notes that that the "first and foremost action for the purpose of recovery is to stop Arctic warming and the loss of sea ice by limiting atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases; the principal mechanism for doing that is to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions." To address this threat, the plan goes on to outline key strategies for protecting the polar bear, including supporting greenhouse gas reduction plans, supporting conservation efforts, conducting careful monitoring and research, and engaging stakeholders. In supporting the reduction of greenhouse gases, the US Fish and Wildlife service acknowledges some limits. The organization itself may have limited impact in directly reducing carbon emissions, but they plan to actively engage in science-based communication efforts to circulate the urgency of addressing climate change.

Even though they may face some limits, to "limit global atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases to levels appropriate for supporting polar bear recovery and conservation" has been listed as the first high-priority item in their Conservation and Recovery Actions. They have broken out specific policy items, including developing and delivering strategies to communicate the impact of climate change on polar bear populations, continuing the US Fish and Wildlife Service's commitment of achieving carbon neutrality, and encouraging appropriate market-driven, regulatory, or voluntary actions to address anthropogenic causes of Arctic climate change.

The Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme's Snow, Water, Ice and Permafrost in the Arctic (SWIPA) report looked beyond individual species and looked more broadly at investigating the state of the Arctic. With this report, they published a summary targeted at policy makers to help them better understand the science behind how climate change will affect the Arctic along with important recommendations for mitigating climate impact. First, the report emphasizes the value of adhering to the Paris Agreement, noting that the full implementation of the plan is essential to stabilizing Arctic temperatures. Another key planning area involves prioritizing research as a means of filling in knowledge gaps and facilitating the adoption of effective adaptation responses. Like the US Fish and Wildlife Plan, SWIPA highlights the importance of communicating information about Artic climate change, along with as risks, uncertainties, and mitigation options.

The above strategies can certainly be replicated for conservation efforts for other species and even habitats beyond the Arctic. Key elements of the US Fish and Wildlife conservation plan, such as stakeholder engagement and monitoring and research, are essential to any conservation effort. Fostering conversations among various partners and interest groups allow them to come together to find solutions that are beneficial to all, making strategies more effective. Transparency and information are also essential to making informed decisions and effective policy change. Without a proper understanding of potential changes, policies could be put in enacted that serve little or no positive effect. Poorly planned programs could even have unintended adverse effects, so it is essential to plan carefully with as much information as possible.

At the same time, it's important to act. Species like the polar bear do not have to be fated to decline and extinction. Rather, we have every opportunity to protect beloved species through climate change. By doing so, we can even see benefits that protect our own way of life, so long as our efforts are concerted and that climate strategies are made a priority.
Christina Ospina is a Graduate Fellow for the Climate Institute.
PDF version with references available here.

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Climate Change Impact on Arctic Ecosystems

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If there is a single image that universally signifies the impact of climate change, it would a polar bear, alone on a small chunk of ice floating in the Arctic, struggling to find food or shelter. It's a pervasive image, and you can't help but feel an overbearing sense of guilt or pity for the animal when you see it.

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If oceans stopped absorbing heat from climate change, life on land would average 122°F - Harry Li

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If oceans stopped absorbing heat from climate change, life on land would average 122°F - Harry Li

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Since the 1970s, more than 93% of excess heat caused by greenhouse gases has been absorbed by the oceans. To understand how much heat that is, think of it this way: If the oceans weren't absorbing it, average global temperatures on land would be far higher-around 122°F, according to researchers on the documentary Chasing Coral. The global average surface temperature right now is 59°F.

A 122°F world, needless to say, would be unlivable. More than 93% of climate change is out of sight and out of mind for most of us land-dwelling humans, but as the oceans continue to onboard all that heat, they're becoming unlivable themselves.

Ocean temperatures are the highest since record-keeping began, and hundreds of marine species are suffering because of it. Recent back-to-back coral bleaching events-triggered by too-hot sea temperatures-have killed off significant portions (paywall) of the Great Barrier Reef, and a recent UN report warned that the world's most significant coral reefs could die out completely by the end of the century, if not sooner.

"Warming is projected to exceed the ability of reefs to survive within one to three decades for the majority of the World Heritage sites containing corals reefs," the report said.

Scientists worry that the warming ocean also risks releasing billions of tons of frozen methane from the thawing seabed. Unlocking that methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, could trigger significant warming here on land.

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If oceans stopped absorbing heat from climate change, life on land would average 122°F

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Since the 1970s, more than 93% of excess heat caused by greenhouse gases has been absorbed by the oceans. To understand how much heat that is, think of it this way: If the oceans weren't absorbing it, average global temperatures on land would be far higher-around 122°F, according to researchers on the documentary Chasing Coral....

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Human-driven global warming is biggest threat to polar bears - Athena Wu

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Human-driven global warming is biggest threat to polar bears - Athena Wu

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Mr. Trump has signaled his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement - an accord the wildlife agency lauded in its report as a positive step toward ensuring the continued existence of polar bears - and he has shown little interest in making emissions reduction a priority. Nor is the price tag that accompanies the recovery plan for the polar bear, about $13 million a year, likely to be greeted with enthusiasm by a Republican-dominated Congress that includes members with no great love for the Endangered Species Act.

The Fish and Wildlife Service, a division of the Interior Department, has no authority on its own to dictate energy policy or regulate emissions, a point the agency's report readily concedes. As a result, the conservation plan is mostly focused on less critical issues for polar bears, like overhunting, the increasing conflicts between bears and humans, the preservation of areas that bears use for dens, the potential threats posed by oil spills and the possibility of increased exposure to diseases as the marine environment changes.

Addressing these problems, the authors of the report wrote, would place the bears in a better position to survive "once Arctic warming has been abated."

Todd Atwood, a research wildlife biologist at the United States Geological Survey's Alaska Science Center who was involved in crafting the plan, said: "We wanted a document that really clearly stated that climate change was, in fact, the primary threat to polar bears in the long term. At the same time, we also wanted folks on the ground and around the country to know that we still need to do what we can in the near and mid-term."

Dr. Atwood said the plan was unusual because it was developed before the species had showed a precipitous decline. Species are sometimes listed as endangered only after their numbers have become so depleted that recovery is impossible.

Over all, the global polar bear population has remained steady, but in some areas - including the southern Beaufort Sea, off the Alaska coast - the population has declined, and the bears' physical condition has deteriorated.

Biologists agree that there will be a pronounced drop in the overall polar bear population as the Arctic ice cover continues to decrease. Polar bears depend on sea ice as a platform for hunting seals, the main staple of their diet.

In its report, which defines what recovery means and sets goals toward achieving it, the wildlife agency says the threat to polar bears will vary depending on the steps that are taken to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and slow sea-ice loss. If prompt and very aggressive action is taken to keep the rise in global mean temperature below 2 degrees Celsius, the chance that polar bears recover will be greatly enhanced, the report's authors say.

If, on the other hand, emissions continue unabated at their current rate, only small areas in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and northern Greenland might still provide enough sea ice for the bears to survive.

An estimated 26,000 polar bears currently make up 19 subpopulations that range across the five countries ringing the Arctic: the United States, Canada, Russia, Norway and Greenland (a territory of Denmark). Scientists have divided the bears into four eco-regions, defined by the seasonal behavior of the sea ice and the amount of time that bears spend on shore. The recovery plan deals primarily with two polar bear subpopulations off the coast of Alaska, in the southern Beaufort and Chuckchi Seas.

While the global polar bear population has not yet shown a significant decline, the number of bears in the southern Beaufort Sea has decreased over the last decade, to about 900 bears, from about 1,500 in 2006.

Andrea Medeiros, a spokeswoman for the Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska Region, said that many of the issues discussed in the conservation plan - including determining to what extent a population of polar bears can sustain subsistence hunting by indigenous people and developing technologies for rescuing bears from oil spills - are already being addressed in collaboration with native Alaskan communities, nonprofit conservation organizations like Defenders of Wildlife and Polar Bears International, and energy industry representatives.

Kristin Laidre, a principal scientist at the University of Washington's Polar Science Center who was not involved in the conservation report, praised it as a plan that was put together by a group of people with "vastly different perspectives" on the issues.

"On its own, that is impressive and must not have been easy," Dr. Laidre said.

But while agreeing that the authors were right to focus on the things that were achievable, Andrew Derocher, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta, said mitigating climate change was the only thing that could make a real difference in the end.

"There's no nest-box-on-fence-post type of solution for the polar bear," Dr. Derocher said, referring to strategies sometimes used to save endangered bird species.

He added, "I have a hard time believing that anything they can recommend is going to be a significant factor in population stability or recovery."

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Human-Driven Global Warming Is Biggest Threat to Polar Bears, Report Says

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Mr. Trump has signaled his intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement - an accord the wildlife agency lauded in its report as a positive step toward ensuring the continued existence of polar bears - and he has shown little interest in making emissions reduction a priority.

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The US is relocating an entire town because of climate change. And this is just the beginning - Sean Tran

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The US is relocating an entire town because of climate change. And this is just the beginning - Sean Tran

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The water has been inching closer to Rita Falgout's house, lapping at the edges of her front yard. Her home is one of 29 in Isle de Jean Charles, a narrow island in the bayous of southeastern Louisiana that is slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. The island, home to members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw and the United Houma Nation tribes, is reached by a lone road that passes through the marshland with water on either side. Since 1955, the island has lost 98% of its land.

"Now there's just a little strip of land left," Falgout, 81, tells Quartz. "That's all we have. There's water all around us." She's one of just 100 people who lives in Isle de Jean Charles. Few outside know or care what's going on there. "I'm anxious to go," she says.

On the other side of the US, a small village of approximately 350 people on the Ninglick river on the western edge of Alaska faces similar troubles ahead. In Newtok, rising seas and melting permafrost caused by climate change have meant the Ninglick is gradually eroding the land. "They see the river bearing down on them. They all accept it, they all know they have to leave," said Joel Neimeyer, the co-chair of the Denali Commission, a federal agency tasked with coordinating government assistance for coastal resilience in Alaska. "The river is coming at 70 feet a year. You can just take out a tape measure and measure it."

Both towns were left with an awful choice that is going to come to many who live in coastal areas across the US that are at risk of being inundated as the sea level continues to rise: Move or perish. But then they heard of an unusual, first-of-its-kind competition held by the Obama administration, which offered the chance for relocation. The National Disaster Resilience Competition (NDRC) was organized by the federal government and aimed to help communities and states recover from previous disasters and reduce future risks.

For both Isle de Jean Charles and Newtok, the competition offered hope. It also suggested that powerful people far away cared. US president Barack Obama visited Alaska in September 2015, a few months before the Paris climate summit that would create a landmark comprehensive global climate deal, and said, "What's happening in Alaska isn't just a preview to what will happen to the rest of us if we don't take action, it's our wake-up call. The alarm bells are ringing."

As climate change impacts larger swathes of US coastal towns, the idea of climate-induced migration is no longer an abstract concept that is only impacting far-away islands in the Pacific. A March 2016 study (pdf) suggests that a 6-foot (1.8-meter) rise in sea levels by 2100, fuelled by a collapse of the polar ice caps, could lead to 13.1 million Americans along the coasts losing their homes to the rising tide. Even a more modest rise of 3 feet would leave 4 million homeless.

With the US population highly concentrated in dense coastal areas, this raises urgent questions for the government. Where would you move everyone? How do you move entire towns and cities? Who will pay for it? And, perhaps most contentiously, who do you help first?

The perfect community

Obama's disaster competition came about in unusual circumstances. After Hurricane Sandy struck the US East Coast in 2013, Congress passed a bill awarding $16 billion in long-term recovery grants to the department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The money awarded to HUD was earmarked for Hurricane Sandy and other eligible disasters that took place between 2011 and 2013."I mean, heavens, if you can't move 50 people, how do you move 100,000?"

Setting up disaster recovery as a competition ensured that the department funded creative, forward-looking solutions for rebuilding infrastructure, says Marion McFadden, who was then the deputy assistant secretary for grant programs at HUD and oversaw the competition. The department had had a good experience with Rebuild By Design in 2013 with a competition that brought together teams of designers, architects, engineers, ecologists, and hydrologists to come up with solutions to improve resilience in areas hit by Sandy. So after a bulk of the money was set aside for rebuilding after Sandy, HUD set aside $1 billion and announced the competition in October 2014. "We wanted to ensure that we weren't putting problems back with the money we sent in and were really looking for innovation," McFadden says.

The competition was run in two stages. All states and local governments that had experienced a presidentially declared major disaster between 2011 and 2013 or had received disaster recovery funding from HUD were invited to apply. This included 48 states, plus Puerto Rico, Washington, DC, and several local governments. The process of the application was gruelling, and with all the different inputs required, a bureaucratic nightmare.

Relocating entire towns and villages was not the goal of the competition-you could present any solution-but Newtok saw its opportunity. In Alaska, a team of five people from four different government agencies formed the core team for the application. Moving wasn't a new idea. Back in 1984, when the local government noticed that the city was losing ground and requested an assessment of the erosion issue, consulting geologists found that attempting to stop the erosion would be extremely expensive. "Relocating Newtok would likely be less expensive than trying to hold back the Ninglick River," they said in a letter (pdf) to then mayor John Charles. Yet it took the community nearly 10 years to decide what to do. In 1996, they finally voted to move.

In selecting a place to move, the community had to ensure they preserved their livelihood. The village of about 350 members of the Yupik tribe relies mostly on a subsistence economy of fishing, hunting moose, muskox, and birds, collecting bird eggs, and gathering berries and greens. The community identified Mertarvik, a piece of land within their subsistence area, which would work for them.

But the land was a protected wildlife refuge and the community began a seven-year process of negotiating with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. By 2003, they finally owned the title to Mertarvik, about 10 miles south of Newtok. In the years since, the local community and the state has struggled to find the funds to develop this new land. "No funding agencies were willing to invest in this new place where there was no population," says Sally Russell Cox, a planner with Alaska's Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development.

So when officials in the state of Alaska heard about the National Disaster Resilience Competition in 2014, they felt like Newtok would be well placed to win some much-deserved funding. "It seemed like this community that was going through this active relocation process would be a perfect community to be applying for funding for," says Cox, who was part of the team that developed the state's application for the competition.

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, the strip of land of Isle De Jean Charles was fast being eaten up by the sea and regular floods and hurricanes had helped to show the community that resettlement was their only available option. They seemed a good candidate for the grant because, unlike other places, the residents of the village did not have to be convinced of the need to resettle.

"One of the hardest things about this is for people to decide to leave the place where they've grown up," says Pat Forbes, the executive director of the state's Office of Community Development, the agency in charge of administering the federal climate grant. "Having a community that had already been considering that and coming to grips with it for a while was an advantage."

Mathew Sanders, then a policy advisor to the state, was having sleepless nights over the application. There were about 15 people from various parts of the state government working on the application, with another 15 people brought in from the private sector to provide expertise. "We were working across the large geographic area in a fairly short period of time and trying to really put together a series of high-minded ideas and also drill down with some specificity," said Sanders. "It was extremely difficult."

After the initial applications were reviewed, 40 top-scoring state and local governments were selected to go on to the next phase in June 2015, where applicants had four months to refine their plans for implementation. Both Isle De Jean Charles and Newtok made it to the second round.

'Simply a backdrop on your way to Paris'

Alaska and Louisiana took very different approaches to arguing their case for funding. The state of Alaska argued that the projects they were proposing were in the places that had the greatest and most urgent need (pdf). "There's a huge reduction in arctic sea ice which has in the past provided a buffer for communities on the coast from storms," said Cox. "The science all bears it out. Those are the types of facts that we provided to build a case that we are feeling the impacts of warming up here a lot earlier than other places are. It's affecting very vulnerable communities."

Alaska decided to apply for funding for projects in four different communities, one of which was the relocation of Newtok. The four projects had a combined request of $286 million (pdf), of which $69 million (pdf) was earmarked for Newtok. The final proposal included costs for creating housing in Mertarvik, developing a road system and community landfill, and demolishing the abandoned homes in Newtok.

In Louisiana, the team felt that the federal government was not simply looking to solve current problems but also to create a model for future projects. "What they were looking for was projects that could be duplicated and replicated not only in Louisiana but around the country in response to threats to communities," Forbes says. And so they presented the Isle De Jean Charles relocation plan as an experiment, a novel solution in a place which was experiencing coastal land loss and sea level rise problems which would impact other US coastal areas in the future.

"If we're going to try and figure out how to try to solve this problem anywhere, we presented ourselves as a test case, and as a laboratory," said Sanders. "We were mindful of the fact that the land loss and sea level rise conditions that we're facing here in Louisiana, we expect to see replicated in other places across the Gulf coast and up the Eastern Seaboard. If we're that proverbial canary in a coalmine, we thought it was a fairly natural fit for HUD to make these types of investments here to begin to try to build those models and test concepts that could be scaled and replicated in other places."

In January 2016, HUD announced the winners of the competition. Louisiana received $92.6 million, of which $48 million was to go towards relocating the people of Isle de Jean Charles to higher ground. "What set Louisiana's relocation application apart was the dedicated resources for studying and evaluating the process of relocation," said McFadden, who was then working at HUD and oversaw the competition. "We didn't really have a good database to draw on of experiences and lessons learned from communities moving."

Not everyone was so lucky.

In a letter to the state of Alaska denying its application for funding, HUD noted that applicants had requested over $7 billion in funding, when only $1 billion was available. Senator Lisa Murkowski wrote in a letter to Obama that said, given his public statements acknowledging the impact of climate change on coastal Alaskan villages, the fact that Alaska did not get any funding "left rural Alaskans looking like simply a backdrop on your pathway to Paris."

The state of Alaska asked for a briefing with HUD to discuss the results of the application. At the meeting, representatives of HUD talked through the criteria of the application and where Alaska had lost out. Mark Romick, the deputy executive director at the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, who was part of the team that put together the application and was in the room, described the conversation as "not wholly satisfying." "Need wasn't a big factor," said Romnick of his conversations with HUD. "It was how you responded to the goal of resiliency."In Florida, one in eight homes-worth over $400 billion in current housing value-could be underwater by 2100.

Alaska was also disadvantaged because the competition's metrics gave a lot of weight to population; the communities that are most impacted in the state are sparsely populated and very spread out. While Isle De Jean Charles is a very small settlement, the scoring took into account that the state of Louisiana overall is more densely populated. Alaska's application was penalized as its investment of nearly $20 million over the years in Newtok's relocation efforts and development of the new site did not qualify under HUD's definition of "leverage." Cox was surprised by the outcome. "There hasn't been a funding opportunity like this and so, yes, this was very disappointing," she says.

Even McFadden, who ran the competition, said that the process could be "frustrating" and emphasized the technical nature of bidding for government money. "You can have a great idea that isn't fleshed out very well and doesn't score as highly as it could, and a more technically proficient application that's not as ambitious," she says. "It doesn't mean the quality of the idea-it's just the way it's laid out on paper."

Isle de Jean Charles was the only town to receive funding for relocation; the bulk of the rest of the funding went towards building coastal resilience in other states and towns. For example, HUD awarded (pdf) the state of California $70.4 million to build resilience against wildfires, New Orleans $141 million to establish a Resilience District in the Gentilly neighbourhood, and gave New York City $176 million to build a coastal flood protection system. Florida, which has 1,350 miles (2,170 km) of coastline, had five towns that applied for NDRC aid; it did not make it through to the second round (pdf).

In Florida, one in eight homes-or about 934,000 existing properties worth over $400 billion in current housing value-could be underwater by 2100, according to projections by Zillow. Philip Stoddard, the mayor of South Miami, thinks that residents should not wait for the federal government to bail them out. "The idea that the feds are going to buy people out has already failed. It's not happening nearly at the rate that it needs to happen," Stoddard tells Quartz. "There's just nowhere near enough money. Maybe a few lucky people will get help, but it's going to be a shrinking minority."

By choosing to fund the Isle De Jean Charles resettlement, the federal government has already made it clear that, in some circumstances, it supports relocation. The question of when it's willing to step in-and how often-is still open.

How do you move a sense of belonging?

With the funding in hand, Isle de Jean Charles is now navigating the challenges of moving an entire town. They have narrowed the list of possible relocation sites down to three candidates based on their future flood risk profile. They are hoping to build consensus within the community to move forward with one those sites in the next two months and then begin the lengthy process of acquiring the land.

"There's no real blue-print or playbook for us to work from," said Sanders. Each week, about 20 people dial in to a conference call where the state officials speak with community members. Part of his job, says Sanders, is simply to reassure the local community that this plan will work. The people of Isle De Jean Charles have been waiting a long time and have already experienced a few aborted starts, making them wary of federal aid.

"Everytime I talk to the people down there there is some idea that the money is going to go away for some reason," says Sanders. "I try to calm nerves and help people understand that we're not going to take this money and go do other things with it."

They are enlisting a planning team to figure out what the new community will look like and an "exit strategy" from the town's current location as the island slowly disappears. They hope to begin construction by 2018. With another hurricane season around the corner, they are creating a transitional housing program so that people can move into rental units if the town is hit by a disaster in the interim. The deadline for spending their federal funds is September 2022; the state of Louisiana is hoping to resettle the community by then.

But identifying climate risks and coordinating logistics is only one aspect of planned relocation. In selecting a site for relocation, experts argue, planners need to consider whether the community has the right skill sets to find work in their new environment. "The worst thing to do would be just to relocate a population into a place that's already struggling economically and has an extremely different set of industries," Kate Gordon, the founding director of the Risky Business Project, which examines the economic risks presented by climate change, tells Quartz. "If you are relocating a population that just doesn't have a match in terms of skills and culture-I think that would probably be disastrous."

In the case of Isle De Jean Charles, which is largely inhabited by tribal communities, state officials were faced with the question of transporting a unique culture, intact, to another place. Louisiana state officials are attempting to understand the community's culture and ensure that it is "embedded" in the blueprint for the new settlement.

The psychological impact of displacement, even when the community knows that it is in their best interest, is potentially devastating.

"Although the destination could be just 5 miles away, people need time to understand that their lives and all the memories they have related to that place will just remain memories because they will have to settle in some other place," said Cosmin Corendea, associate academic officer at United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security, who specializes in creating legal frameworks to protect and promote the rights of people displaced by climate change. He believes that one of the reasons the Isle De Jean Charles resettlement will be successful is that people had years to come to terms with the move.

Officials all over the country are closely watching the current efforts to see how it pans out. "What comes out of the Isle De Jean Charles relocation effort may well inform what the federal government thinks it can do," said Mark Davis, director of the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy. "I mean, heavens, if you can't move 50 people, how do you move 100,000? And if you do successfully move 50, what does that tell you might be possible elsewhere?"

In Newtok, as the shock of losing out wears off, state officials in Alaska are hoping to continue the village's relocation efforts. There are plans for roads to be built over the summer and a few more homes to be constructed at the new site, but funding remains a challenge. Building a single energy efficient home in rural Alaska costs about $300,000, said Cox. Then there is water, sanitation, sewage, a school, a store, and an airport; each fall under a different government agency.

But with the Trump administration pulling of the Paris climate accord that Obama used Alaskans to champion, federal funding for Newtok seems unlikely to come anytime soon. It's unlikely that Trump's HUD would approve of such a competition again anytime soon-even as towns like Newtok, and and island nations like Tuvalu, are struggling to deal with rising seas now. For the world, what these residents are facing is only the beginning. "No nation, whether large or small, rich or poor, will be immune from the impacts of climate change," Obama himself warned recently.

Newtok's only school is a battered structure with peeling blue and white paint on its wooden boards propped up on stilts. It sits at the village's highest point, its sole source of running water, and serves as a community center-and it's also only a few hundred feet from the Ninglick River. At the current rate of erosion, the river could reach the school's site this year.

"My observation in the country is that there hasn't really been a comprehension of how this changing climate is going to impact the built environment over the years," Neimeyer says. "Eventually, I think this country will get there."
This article was updated on Aug. 24 to reflect appropriate attribution to Julie Dermansky for her photos. Read this next: Can the Paris climate agreement survive a US withdrawal?

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Boats and boating--Equipment and supplies

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The US is relocating an entire town because of climate change. And this is just the beginning

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The water has been inching closer to Rita Falgout's house, lapping at the edges of her front yard. Her home is one of 29 in Isle de Jean Charles, a narrow island in the bayous of southeastern Louisiana that is slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.

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Climate Change Will Bring Major Flooding to New York Every 5 Years -Sriya Chilla

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Climate Change Will Bring Major Flooding to New York Every 5 Years -Sriya Chilla

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New York City has experienced 7.5-foot floods several times in the past decade. Superstorm Sandy loosed 10- or 11-foot floods on much of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, killing 43 people and inundating more than 88,000 buildings.

Not all of the news from the study's estimates was bad. In a climate-changed world, the effects of storm surge on New York may remain about the same. Even though future hurricanes are likely to be more intense -and thus more likely to "push" more water in front of them, as storm surge-the hurricane models also showed the same storms avoiding New York Harbor. In other words, global warming seems to redirect some of the largest hurricanes eastward. It's unclear why this may be the case.

Andra Garner, a climate scientist at Rutgers University and the first author of the paper, described the shift as "the biggest surprise from this work."

"The eastward shift in storm tracks at the latitude of NYC in future simulations [was] a result that we did not expect to find, and something that we hope to investigate further with future research," she told me in an email.

The study is the first to compare data from three sources: models of storm surge in New York City; probabilistic projections of sea-level rise; and advanced climate models that include high-resolution hurricane simulations. Its coauthors include Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Bob Kopp, a climate economist at Rutgers University; and Michael Mann and Richard Alley, two geoscientists at Pennsylvania State University.

The study also investigates how hurricane flooding will be affected by the possible collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The timing of the ice sheet's collapse remains debated: While some models suggest that a warmed world will erode the ice sheet between the years 2200 and 3000, newer and more aggressive studies argue it could collapse within decades. Its collapse will have profound consequences for the U.S. Eastern Seaboard, as its powerful gravitational pull currently keeps sea levels on that coast unusually low.

If it does begin to fall into the sea, ocean levels worldwide could rise five to six feet by 2100. "To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind, looking at flood risk associated with tropical cyclones, to incorporate such 'worst-case scenario' sea-level rise projections," said Garner.

The study doesn't capture every kind of flooding event that New York will experience-only spinning tropical storms. It doesn't account for systems like Superstorm Sandy, for instance, which became a more disorganized "extratropical cyclone" before it made landfall.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Climate Change Will Bring Major Flooding to New York Every 5 Years

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
New York City has experienced 7.5-foot floods several times in the past decade. Superstorm Sandy loosed 10- or 11-foot floods on much of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island, killing 43 people and inundating more than 88,000 buildings. Not all of the news from the study's estimates was bad.