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Global warming may change Amazon
Michael Astor, AP via Yahoo!
Global warming could spell the end of the world’s largest remaining tropical rain forest, transforming the Amazon into a grassy savanna before end of the century, researchers said Friday.
Jose Antonio Marengo, a meteorologist with Brazil’s National Space Research Institute, said that global warming, if left unchecked, will reduce rainfall and raise temperatures substantially in the ecologically rich region.
“We are working with two scenarios: a worst case and a second, more optimistic one,” he said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
“The worst case scenario sees temperatures rise by 5 to 8 degrees until 2100, while rainfall will decrease between 15 and 20 percent. This setting will transform the
Amazon rain forest into a savanna-like landscape,” Marengo said.
That scenario supposes no major steps are taken toward halting global warming and that deforestation continues at its current rate, Marengo said.
The more optimistic scenario supposes governments take more aggressive actions to halt global warming. It would still have temperatures rising in the Amazon region by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius and rainfall dropping by 5 to 15 percent, Marengo said.
“If pollution is controlled and deforestation reduced, the temperature would rise by about 5 degrees Celsius in 2100,” said Marengo. “Within this scenario, the rain forest will not come to the point of total collapse.”
(29 Dec 2006)
World faces hottest year ever, as El Niño combines with global warming
Cahal Milmo, The Independent
A combination of global warming and the El Niño weather system is set to make 2007 the warmest year on record with far-reaching consequences for the planet, one of Britain’s leading climate experts has warned.
As the new year was ushered in with stormy conditions across the UK, the forecast for the next 12 months is of extreme global weather patterns which could bring drought to Indonesia and leave California under a deluge.
The warning, from Professor Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, was one of four sobering predictions from senior scientists and forecasters that 2007 will be a crucial year for determining the response to global warming and its effect on humanity.
(1 Jan 2007)
2007 Predicted to Be World’s Warmest Year
Jeremy Lovell, Reuters via Common Dreams
This year is set to be the hottest on record worldwide due to global warming and the El Nino weather phenomenon, Britain’s Meteorological Office said on Thursday.
The Met Office said the combination of factors would likely push average temperatures this year above the record set in 1998. 2006 is set to be the sixth warmest on record globally.
“This new information represents another warning that climate change is happening around the world,” said Met Office scientist Katie Hopkins.
The world’s 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1994 in a temperature record dating back a century and a half, according to the United Nations’ weather agency.
(4 Jan 2007)
Extreme Autumn Temperatures Cause Unseasonable Flowering In The Netherlands
Science Daily
Observers in the Netherlands reported that more than 240 wild plant species were flowering in December, along with more than 200 cultivated species. According to biologist Arnold van Vliet of Wageningen University, this unseasonable flowering is being caused by extremely high autumn temperatures.
The mean autumn temperature in 2006 was 13.6°C, which is 3.4°C above the long-term average. It was even 1.6°C warmer than in 2005, which was previously the warmest autumn since 1706, when records were first kept. It is very likely that other European countries also experienced unseasonable flowering due to the high temperatures. This information emerged from a unique, large-scale observation campaign conducted by volunteers during the first 15 days of the month.
(22 Dec 2007)
Tibet’s record temperatures spark climate change fears
AFP via Yahoo News
Temperatures in rugged Tibet have hit record highs in recent days, China’s state press has reported, as a scientific survey warned of the impact of global warming in the Himalayan region.
…China’s Tibet plateau, seen as a barometer of world climate conditions, is experiencing accelerating glacial melt and other ecological change, the leading People’s Daily reported Friday.
(7 Jan 2007)
Tropical diseases back as Europe warms up
Maurice Chittenden, Times (UK)
SCIENTISTS have uncovered the first evidence that diseases such as malaria, long thought beaten in Europe, are making a comeback because of climate change.
Holidaymakers could be at risk this summer because the disease has already re-emerged in Italy, where Mussolini once drained marshes to try to eradicate it.
Italy was declared malaria free in 1970 but cases of malaria are now being registered every year in the country’s southern regions.
“We are at the southern edge of the globe’s temperate area and that’s why Italy is being hit most by the shattering of climatic equilibriums. As a result we are importing illness from Africa,” said Francesco Ferrante, director-general of Legambiente, an Italian environmental association which has produced a new report on the hazards of climate change.
Other illnesses taking advantage of the warmer weather include tick-borne encephalitis.
(7 Jan 2007)
