Canada's fabled Northwest Passage will not open up to shipping anytime soon, according to a study that warns global warming is a double-edged sword for northern transportation. “And Canada is going to be feeling the harsh edge of the sword more strongly than other Arctic states,” says Scott Stephenson, lead author of the study that forecasts that the Northwest Passage will be the last Arctic shipping route to become ice free.
It also predicts huge swaths of Canada’s landscape will become inaccessible by road by mid-century.
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The network was opened on Sunday in connection with Telenor’s 100 years anniversary on Svalbard. Telenor opened its first telegraph station in Svalbard in 1911, and now - after 100 years - Svalbard is probably among the world's most digitalized communities.
The world's northernmost 4G/LTE network was opened in in Longyearbyen by Telenor's chairman Harald Norvik and CEO Jon Fredrik Baksaas, Svalbardposten writes.
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Thirty-eight million years ago, tropical jungles thrived in what are now the cornfields of the American Midwest and furry marsupials wandered temperate forests in what is now the frozen Antarctic. The temperature differences of that era, known as the late Eocene, between the equator and Antarctica were only half of what they are today. A debate has long been raging in the scientific community on what changes in our global climate system led to such a major shift from the more tropical, greenhouse climate of the Eocene to the modern and much cooler climates of today.
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A team of researchers has recently discovered that reindeer can not only see ultraviolet light, but that they can also make sense of the images they see to find food and stay safe. The study, recently published in The Journal of Experimental Biology, shows that this skill is crucial to their survival in the harsh Arctic environment, where the sun barely rises in the middle of the day and light is scattered such that the majority of light that reaches objects is either blue or ultraviolet.
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Global warming will likely open up coastal areas in the Arctic to development but close vast regions of the northern interior to forestry and mining by mid-century as ice and frozen soil under temporary winter roads melt, researchers said.
Higher temperatures have already led to lower summer sea ice levels in the Arctic and the melting has the potential to increase access for fishermen, tourists and oil and natural gas developers to coastal regions in coming decades.
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Current hotspots of marine mammal diversity are concentrated in the temperate waters of the southern hemisphere, and the number of cetacean and pinniped species will likely remain highest in these areas in the coming 40 years, -- regardless of climate change. However, on the level of individual species the picture may be different: Whereas about half the species of marine mammals will experience some loss in their habitat, distributional ranges of the other half may increase by up to 40 percent.
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Researchers have discovered that the ultraviolet (UV) light that causes the temporary but painful condition of snow blindness in humans is life-saving for reindeer in the arctic.
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Identifying the human impact of rising sea levels is far more complex than just looking at coastal cities on a map. Rather, estimates that are based on current, static population data can greatly misrepresent the true extent -- and the pronounced variability -- of the human toll of climate change, say University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers.
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A senior Russian diplomat says the Harper government's pointed public criticisms of his country's motives in the Arctic are not grounded in reality.
Russia's ambassador-at-large for Arctic issues, Anton Vasiliev, fired back Thursday at the frequent complaints that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his cabinet ministers have levelled at Russia for what they see as provocative behaviour in the Arctic.
That has included former foreign minister Lawrence Cannon blasting a planned Russian parachute jump that was to take place in April 2010 as a "stunt" and an exercise in "propaganda."
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Russia and Canada aren't gearing up for a tussle over the North, a top envoy from the Kremlin said Wednesday.
"There are a lot of issues that can be dealt with on an international level," said Petr Plikhin, deputy chief of mission for the Russian embassy in Ottawa, who underscored the joint interests held by both countries, including sustainable economic development.
"We are the biggest Arctic nations and we have a lot of common things to tackle."
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ARKHANGELSK: The International Tourists Forum which is held in Arkhangelsk this week want to boost tourism in the Russian part of the Arctic.
For the first time, the Russian Agency of tourism development holds such meeting in the periphery. The main topic of the conference is the development of tourism in the northern territories of Russia and the importance of this agenda is proved by participation of over 400 experts, officials and travel agencies from seven countries and different regions of Russia.
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There's a theory about how the Marinoan ice age -- also known as the "Snowball Earth" ice age because of its extreme low temperatures -- came to an abrupt end some 600 million years ago. It has to do with large amounts of methane, a strong greenhouse gas, bubbling up through ocean sediments and from beneath the permafrost and heating the atmosphere.
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A two day conference "Canada/Russia/Norway: Dialogue and Cooperation in the Arctic", is being held on May 26-27, 2011 at the Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.
"The conference will bring together key people from the three countries who can talk about solutions to real-world problems facing the Arctic, such as ecology, transportation and business-related issues. We need to decide on how we can co-operate and move forward on these issues before resolving the issue of Arctic sovereignty," says Piotr Dutkiewicz, conference chair, Professor of Political Science at Carleton and Member of the Valdai Club Advisory Board.
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Global warming can uncover and expose anthrax cattle burial sites in the Arctic and cause the spread of dangerous infections, Russia's Emergencies Ministry warned on Wednesday.
"Climatic anomaly impacts on permafrost zones, enhances the danger of exposing anthrax cattle burial grounds," a ministry spokesman said.
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Denmark and Greenland intend to establish an Arctic military command structure, boost oil and gas drilling and claim sovereignty of the North Pole, the country’s draft Arctic Strategy reads.
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A team of scientists from the University of Sheffield and Bangor University have used a computer climate model to study how freshwater entering the oceans at the end of the penultimate Ice Age 140,000 years ago affected the parts of the ocean currents that control climate.
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All Norwegian flights between mainland Norway and Svalbard are temporarily cancelled as ash from the Iceland's Grimsvotn volcano swept across the Norwegian area of the Barents Sea on Monday night. Russian flights are still operating in the area.
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A new study aimed at refining the way scientists measure ice loss in Greenland is providing a "high-definition picture" of climate-caused changes on the island.
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Environmental group Greenpeace has sent two vessels into the northern North Sea to protest against oil exploration off Greenland, the organization and officials said on Tuesday.
Greenpeace's action came as British explorer Cairn Energy laid out its plans for drilling off Greenland this summer and began preparing to move the Leiv Eiriksson rig into position.
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Russia and Germany plan to create a joint Ioffe-Roentgen Institute to develop elementary particle accelerators, as well as synchrotron and neutron radiation sources, the chief academic secretary for the Kurchatov Institute's National Research Center, Mikhail Popov, said on Tuesday.
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The first international agreement made exclusively for the Arctic region was signed at the ministerial meeting in Nuuk, May 12 2011. The agreement, which deals with search and rescue of aeronautical and maritime vessels and passengers, is also the first international agreement made under the auspices of the Arctic Council. The Arctic Council is now planning another international agreement for adoption which will deal with oil pollution in the Arctic.
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The research vessel Polarstern of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association will arrive back at its homeport of Bremerhaven after a seven-month expedition on Friday, 20 May. Nearly 200 researchers from institutes in 15 countries took part in the expedition. The oceanographers on board conducted measurements showing that warming of the water in the deep Weddell Sea continues further. The observations of biologists indicated that organisms in the Antarctic adapt very slowly to changes in the environment.
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Trees in the Arctic region may grow 500 km (300 miles) further north by 2100 as climate change greens the barren tundra and causes sweeping change to wildlife, a leading expert said.
A quickening melt of snow, ice and permafrost will enable more southerly species such as pine trees or animals such as foxes to move north.
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Oil and gas producer Statoil, the biggest operator of offshore platforms off Norway, said ash from an Icelandic volcano was so far not affecting helicopter traffic to and from installations.
"We are constantly assessing the situation and the helicopter companies flying for us are in close contact with the authorities," said Statoil spokesman Ola Anders Skauby.
"We have not decided to do any changes as of now and we continue to monitor the situation."
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Permanent secretariat will facilitate the council’s work.
Arctic Council Ministerial meeting in Nuuk decided that Tromso in Northern Norway will be the location for the work to coordinate the joint work for the eight Arctic States.
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The planned Arctic special forces brigade on the border to Norway can be established already this year. A high-ranking officer has already inspected the premises.
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According to a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Greenland Ice Sheet melt may contribute to global sea level rise at a slower rate than previously believed. The model – which researchers say does a much more accurate job of simulating how ice in Greenland responds to rising temperatures – forecasts that the rise in sea levels attributable to Greenland Ice Sheet melt may end up being half that made by previous estimates.
Using data from the past decade, Stephen Price from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, USA devised the new model of ice sheet movement. The model shows that as temperatures warm and the ice sheet melts, disruptions at the edge of the ice sheet produce a large initial movement of the ice followed by several decades of smaller movement.
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Denmark will make an official claim to the North Pole, setting the stage for possible tug-of-war with Canada and Russia over the seabed at the top of the world, say reports from Copenhagen.
Citing a leaked draft 10-year Arctic strategy, which wasn’t supposed to be made public until next month, Danish media say the country plans to claim five sections of continental shelf: four around the Faeroe Islands and one off Greenland, which would include the pole. Both Greenland and the Faeroes are self-governing Danish territories.
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The collapse of BP's deal to explore the Arctic sea for oil is deeply humiliating for the giant oil corporation. It was only in January that BP, with a great fanfare, announced the deal with Rosneft, the Kremlin-backed Russian oil company. The tie-up was supposed to rebuild BP's reputation after the disaster of the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico last year which has cost the company $41bn so far. That much-vaunted strategy is now in tatters.
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Our climate is affected by the ocean in many ways. The most prominent example is the El Niño phenomenon in the Pacific, a well-documented interannual climate signal. Oceanographers from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel (IFM-GEOMAR) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI, USA) have recently documented the effect of deep equatorial currents in the Atlantic on rainfall and climate over West Africa.
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Kate Stafford, an oceanographer at the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington, writes from Alaska, where she is participating in a visual census of bowhead whales.
You can look across a vast expanse of ice, all white and blue and cold, and see nothing. The lead is choked with pack ice or sealed over with newly formed ice, and there is no movement or sound. With few birds, no whales and no bears, one might mistake the Arctic for a desert. But if you go down to the ice edge, pick a hole in the new ice deep enough to reach water and drop in a hydrophone (an underwater microphone), the cacophony is astonishing.
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he hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is starting to heal, say researchers in Australia. The team is the first to detect a recovery in baseline average springtime ozone levels in the region, 22 years after the Montreal Protocol to ban chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and related ozone-destroying chemicals came into force.
Each spring, those chlorine- and bromine-releasing chemicals eat a hole in the ozone layer above the Antarctic.
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A Canadian multidisciplinary research team has discovered new evidence of the destructive impact of global climate change on North America’s largest Arctic delta, the Mackenzie Delta in Canada’s Northwest Territorries.
The findings, which were presented in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identifies rising sea levels as "one of the most ominous threats of global warming." The threat, the scientists say, is particularly acute in the Polar Regions, where shrinking sea ice increases the risk of storm surges.
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The El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant mode of interannual climate variability on Earth, alternating between anomalously warm (El Nino) and cold (La Nina) conditions in the tropical Pacific at intervals of 2–8 years. The amplitude of ENSO variability affects the occurrence and predictability of climate extremes around the world, but our ability to detect and predict changes in ENSO amplitude is limited by the fact that the instrumental record is too short to characterize its natural variability.
Our record is in broad agreement with independent, ENSO-sensitive proxy records in the Pacific and surrounding regions. Together, these records indicate that ENSO amplitude exhibits a quasi-regular cycle of 50–90 years that is closely coupled to the tropical Pacific mean state.
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NUUK, Greenland — Here, just south of the Arctic Circle, where the sea ice is vanishing like dew on a July morning, the temperature isn’t the only thing that’s heating up.
Across the region, a warming Arctic is opening up new competition for resources that until recently were out of reach, protected under a thick layer of ice. As glaciers defrost and ice floes diminish, the North is being viewed as a source of not only great wealth but also conflict, diplomats and policy experts say.
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The Governor of Svalbard has been working on a document presenting a new management plan for the Eastern Svalbard nature reserves recently. The document is now released for comments from all interested institutions.
Svalbard Science Forum has been involved in the process where several working groups representing different user groups were appointed. A result of their work is a document covering research ideas for future research in East Svalbard, overview of scientific installations and suggestions for management of the nature reserves, among other issues.
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The research aircraft Polar 5 of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association returned to Bremerhaven from a six-week expedition in the high Arctic on May 6. Joint flights with aircraft of the European and American space agencies (ESA and NASA) were a novelty in sea ice research. Simultaneous measurements with a large number of sensors on three planes underneath the CryoSat-2 satellite led to unique data records. Furthermore, the international team composed of 25 scientists and engineers collected data on trace gases, aerosols and meteorological parameters that will be evaluated at the research institutes involved in the coming months.
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The majority of seaports around the world are unprepared for the potentially damaging impacts of climate change in the coming century, according to a new Stanford University study.
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Recently defended PhD work on benthic amphipods delivers new information about life and ecology of related species living in ice covered waters around Svalbard.
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Scientists from Queen's and Carleton universities head a national multidisciplinary research team that has uncovered startling new evidence of the destructive impact of global climate change on North America's largest Arctic delta.
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When NASA's salt-seeking Aquarius instrument ascends to the heavens this June, the moon above its launch site at California's Vandenberg Air Force Base won't be in the seventh house, and Jupiter's latest alignment with Mars will be weeks in the past, in contrast to the lyrics of the song from the popular Broadway musical "Hair." Yet for the science team eagerly awaiting Aquarius' ocean surface salinity data, the dawning of NASA's "Age of Aquarius" promises revelations on how salinity is linked to Earth's water cycle, ocean circulation and climate.
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Marine organisms in the Arctic Ocean have a daily rhythm cued on by light – even in the dark season when it is pitch black outside and the ocean has a thick ice cover preventing light from penetrating into the water. But how light sensitive are these organisms – and what light sources affect their behavior? Experiments at UNIS is part of a Ph.D. project aiming at finding out just that.
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Old-school thinking sees America as a nation bounded by two great oceans. Yet the world has changed. The Arctic Ocean is no longer optional. In fact, it has become our nation’s third great ocean border - and the opportunity of a lifetime.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s recent visit to Greenland on May 12 confirmed that realization. She became the first U.S. secretary of state to attend the Arctic Council.
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Leaked cables show how nations are carving up pristine wilderness.
As the eight Arctic nations met in Greenland yesterday, cables released by WikiLeaks gave insight into the battle for control of the world's least explored region and the resources that lie beneath its icy waters.
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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is heading to Greenland to attend a ministerial meeting of the Arctic Council.
During his stay in the capital Nuuk, Lavrov will sign an agreement on Russia's participation in creating instruments to support the Council's projects and an agreement on search and rescue in the Arctic, which will be the first legally binding agreement negotiated under the auspices of the Arctic Council.
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A 2,300-year climate record University of Pittsburgh researchers recovered from an Andes Mountains lake reveals that as temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere rise, the planet's densely populated tropical regions will most likely experience severe water shortages as the crucial summer monsoons become drier. The Pitt team found that equatorial regions of South America already are receiving less rainfall than at any point in the past millennium.
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A new set of buoys in Alaska waters will help scientists understand how climate change may be affecting the pH level of northern seas. Researchers placed the first buoy last month.
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Researchers in Alaska, Siberia and Greenland can now look to the Polar Geospatial Center to find their way around.
The U.S.-funded center, which operates the McMurdo station in Antarctica every summer, is expanding its logistics services to the Arctic.
The center's researchers have been mapping Antarctica using satellite images and on-the-ground surveys since 2007. With funding from the National Science Foundation, they have also worked with Google Earth and Google Maps to update data on the Arctic and Antarctic.
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Officials of the eight Arctic nations are taking their first concrete step to cooperate in an ecologically fragile region where climate change is driving economic competition.
Members of the Arctic Council — the United States, Russia, Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Sweden — plan to sign an agreement on Thursday to coordinate search-and-rescue operations across 13 million square miles of ocean that are becoming more navigable as Arctic sea ice decreases. In a sign of the council’s new prominence in American foreign policy, Hillary Rodham Clinton is the first secretary of state to attend one of its biannual meetings.
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Scientists have known for two decades that sulfur compounds that are produced by bacterioplankton as they consume decaying algae in the ocean cycle through two paths. In one, a sulfur compound dimethylsulfide, or DMS, goes into the atmosphere, where it leads to water droplet formation -- the basis of clouds that cool Earth. In the other, a sulfur compound goes into the ocean's food web, where it is eaten and returned to seawater.
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A new WikiLeaks cable suggests the U.S. government views Stephen Harper's talk about Canadian Arctic sovereignty as little more than empty chest-thumping designed to win votes.
In a diplomatic cable posted this week by the online whistleblower, the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa says the Tories have made successful political use of promises to beef up Canada's presence in the Arctic.
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Canada, Russia, the United States and their smaller circumpolar neighbours have agreed how to divvy up the fast-warming and fragile Arctic, but only for search-and-rescue responsibilities, leaving aside the vexed issues of sovereignty, oil drilling, pollution and shipping.
The search-and-rescue treaty, to be signed Thursday, is the first significant achievement of the eight-nation Arctic Council, and was hailed as evidence that the Arctic nations are committed to working together, although that co-operation will be tested in settling overlapping claims.
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BP, faced with Shakespearean-scale woes from Louisiana to Moscow, went to extra-legal lengths to avoid exploring Russia's oil-rich Arctic alongside its four oligarch partners. Now that it's been told it must if it wishes the benefits of the potential bonanza, does BP truly intend now to accept just half the upside that buttressed the Arctic venture's original logic? The answer is yes and no -- BP will proceed with the venture, but with a reasonable possibility of another attempt to buy out the oligarchs, according to a person involved in the process, though the latest news much increases the pricetag.
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Unique Arctic habitats for flora and fauna, including sea ice, tundra, lakes, and peatlands have been disappearing over recent decades, and some characteristic Arctic species have shown a decline. The changes in Arctic Biodiversity have global repercussions and are further creating challenges for people living in the Arctic.
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Russia and Norway will hold large-scale naval exercise Pomor 2011 on May 11-16, a spokesman for Russia's Northern Fleet said on Friday.
The drills in the Barents and Norwegian seas will involve Russian Udaloy class destroyer Vice Admiral Kulakov from the Northern Fleet, Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen class frigate Helge Ingstad, coastal guard vessels and naval aircraft.
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From a bucket of seawater, scientists have unlocked information that may lead to deeper understanding of organisms as different as coral reefs and human disease. By analyzing genomes of a tiny, single-celled marine animal, they have demonstrated a possible way to address diverse questions such as how diseased cells differ from neighboring healthy cells and what it is about some Antarctic algae that allows them to live in warming waters while other algae die out.
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Tens of thousands of albatrosses and other far-ranging seabirds are killed each year after they become caught in longline fishing gear. Innovative new models developed by a Duke University-led research team may help reduce these casualties by more precisely projecting where and when birds and boats are likely to cross paths.
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With the most recent five-year period having been the warmest since 1880 when monitoring began, climate change is predicted to bring a wide range of impacts to the Arctic, according to a new report entitled Snow, Water, Ice, Permafrost in the Arctic (SWIPA). The report was coordinated by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP) and produced in collaboration with the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Climate and Cryosphere program (CliC) and the International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA).
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Leaders of Arctic nations gather in Greenland this week to chart future cooperation as global warming sets off a race for oil, mineral, fishing and shipping opportunities in the world's fragile final frontier.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will join foreign ministers from seven other Arctic states in Greenland's tiny capital of Nuuk -- population 15,000 -- on Thursday for an Arctic Council meeting on the next steps for a region where warming temperatures are creating huge new challenges and unlocking untapped resources.
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By surgically inserting radio transmitters into 100 sea trout from the Halland river Himleån, Sweden, researchers from the University of Gothenburg hope to reveal the route the sea trout take when they migrate to sea. The researchers also wish to enlist the help of anglers in collecting fin samples so that they can analyse the kinship of trout from different parts waters.
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A new research paper from an international and interdisciplinary team, published in the journal Ecography, has uncovered the mystery behind the relationship between the duration of the open water period and the geographic coverage of marine species.
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Less polar bear dens and fewer encounters with polar bears than in 2009 were conclusions from 2011 monitoring fieldwork on Kongsoya.
Oystein Overrein from the Norwegian Polar Institute and Tommy Sandal have spent 4 weeks in March - April 2011 on the western side of Kongsoya carrying out monitoring fieldwork for polar bear scientists. The same monitoring was done 2 years ago. The aim was to:
- check how visible the dens are over time
- how many dens are in this part of Svalbard
- number of polar bear females in productive age and number of born cubs
- sampling dens for hair and excrement from the dens
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Small unmanned planes operated by NORUT are used in the spring campaign in Svalbard right now. They are to map the melting of snow and ice caused by black carbon transported to Svalbard over long distances.
Black carbon is transported to Arctic by wind and precipitation even from remote locations in industrialised parts of the world. The UAVs are equipped with spectrometer so they are able to send light down to the surface and measure the amount of light reflected. Size of particles can also be measured. The drones measure meteorological parameters like temperature, humidity and air pressure. This is an operational part of the project called: variability of Albedo Using and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (VAUUAV).
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Russia allocates €10 million to the Arctic Council over the next two years.
The Russian Government will today discuss the question of concluding a treaty between Russia and the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation (NEFCO) on participation in the Arctic Council’s Project Support Instrument (PSI).
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The Chinese ambassador to Norway wants the Norwegian government to apologize for awarding Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo with the Nobel Peace Prize.
China says its relationship with Norway will improve if the Norwegian government apologizes for giving the the Nobel Peace prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
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Global climate change is anticipated to bring more extreme weather phenomena such as heat waves that could impact human health in the coming decades. An analysis led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health calculated that the city of Chicago could experience between 166 and 2,217 excess deaths per year attributable to heat waves using three different climate change scenarios for the final decades of the 21st century.
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An international team of scientists report on the first observatory experiment to study the dynamic microbial life of an ever-changing environment inside Earth's crust. University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science professor Keir Becker contributed the deep-sea technology required to make long-term scientific observations of life beneath the seafloor.
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The Arctic is changing faster and contributing more to global climate change than scientists had previously predicted.
The latest report from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme projects that the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in summer within the next three to four decades and global sea levels will rise by up to 1.6 m by the end of the century.
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Navigation in the Arctic and development of the Northern Sea Route are the main themes for discussion when 500 Russian and foreign scientists, politicians and businesspeople gather in Arkhangelsk in September for the second International Arctic Forum.
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Arctic ice is melting faster than expected and could raise the average global sea level by as much as five feet this century, an authoritative new report suggests.
The study by the international Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, or AMAP, is one of the most comprehensive updates on climate change in the Arctic, and builds on a similar.
The full report will be delivered to foreign ministers of the eight Arctic nations next week, but an executive summary including the key findings was obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday.
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Canada’s focus on Arctic sovereignty and offshore drilling will gain strength now that Canadian voters have given Prime Minister Stephen Harper his long-desired majority Conservative government.
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Blogging has become one of the modern tools to communicate science as it is happening, directly from the research tents in the field or various research vessels. Read about current activities on SSF blog section.
There are several research groups in various placesin and around Svalbard right now. High season started for many Arctic scientists several weeks ago. Many of them tell stories from field through blogging. Right now you can follow scientist on one of the Svalbard largest ice caps - Austfonna where land-based callibration part of the ESA CryoSat mission takes place.
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An international team of scientists report on the first observatory experiment to study the dynamic microbial life of an ever-changing environment inside Earth's crust. University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science professor Keir Becker contributed the deep-sea technology required to make long-term scientific observations of life beneath the seafloor.
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The production of wind energy in the U.S. over the next 30-50 years will be largely unaffected by upward changes in global temperature, say a pair of Indiana University Bloomington scientists who analyzed output from several regional climate models to assess future wind patterns in America's lower 48 states.
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A team of scientists has produced an innovative new study of the environmental impact of major urban ecosystems, published in the April issue of the journal Ecological Applications.
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Climate change is predicted to become a major threat to biodiversity in the 21st century, but accurate predictions and effective solutions have proved difficult to formulate. Alarming predictions have come from a rather narrow methodological base, but a new, integrated science of climate-change biodiversity assessment is emerging, based on multiple sources and approaches. Drawing on evidence from paleoecological observations, recent phenological and microevolutionary responses, experiments, and computational models, we review the insights that different approaches bring to anticipating and managing the biodiversity consequences of climate change, including the extent of species’ natural resilience.
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In a new study, marine biologists from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences (IFM-GEOMAR), together with colleagues from six other countries, show that highly complex interactions in ecosystems can intensify the impact of climate change within a relatively short period of time.
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University of Alberta-led research has confirmed that a relatively harmless inorganic form of mercury found worldwide in ocean water is transformed into a potent neurotoxin in the seawater itself.
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