From Science Daily. New research to be published this week by hydrogeologists at the University of Texas, Austin, shows that vegetation has been drying out desert soil since the last glacial maximum. This research has some interesting implications: Plants that flourish in arid areas after rains, might reduce water accumulation in soil should the climate shift toward wetter conditions. [...] Because plants can maintain dry conditions, minimizing leaching of wastes into underlying aquifers, important implications exist for radioactive and hazardous waste disposal.
Picked this item up from PhysOrg.com. Meteorologists using 30 different climate models are claiming that they are able to show the main causes for climate change in the 19th and 20th centuries, varying from solar fluctuations, volcanic activity and moving on towards man-made emissions. Bonn meteorologists have now been able to calculate, on the basis of about 30 different climate models, which of the suspects are responsible for climate change: greenhouse gases, particulate matter or natural factors. Their verdict is that they are all guilty. ‘Without the influence of the greenhouse gases the average annual temperature would have only increased by 0.4 degrees,’ is how Professor Andreas Hense summarises the results. ‘However, the fluctuations at the end of the 19th and in the first half of the 20th century are mainly due to changes in solar activity and volcanic eruptions.’ This adds more fuel to the “Global Warming - Man-made or not” fire that continues to burn. It seems all scientists are in agreement that global warming is happening. The contentious issue is whether or not we as humans are responsible.
The following articles are via PhysOrg.com, dealing with issues on global warming. In the first article, Professor James Gustave Speth of Yale, urges fellow scientists to speak up on the issue of global warming, saying that it’s a “real, dangerous and ignored great risk to the planet.” The second article, two physicists from the University of Rochester have charted data and concluded that there is a mysterious mechanism that controls global climate that is not yet counted for. The researchers plotted data from satellite measurements of the Earth’s atmosphere in the months and years following the volcanic eruption of Mount Pinatubo in 1991. The results show that global temperatures dropped more and rebounded to normal significantly faster than conventional climate models could have predicted.
Scientists have long suspected this, and new research adds to mounting evidence that global warming could shut down the Atlantic Conveyor Belt. However, the research cited in the Science Daily article shows drastic implications on the ocean food chains if this shutdown were to actually happen: In a worst case scenario, global productivity of phytoplankton could decrease by as much as 20 percent and in some areas, such as the North Atlantic, the loss could hit 50 percent. [...] As the water cools, it sinks 2,000 to 3,000 meters and begins flowing southward. The upwelling from the mixing of waters constantly replenishes the supply of phytoplankton at the surface, forming a rich nutrient source at the bottom of the marine food web.”
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Geological Survey of Israel have apparently developed a new method to date earthquakes, using evidence found in caves. How effective is this in practice though? This press release contains little information on their method or what they are specifically looking for however. Anyway, from the article: Together with her advisor, Prof. Amotz Agnon of the Hebrew University Institute of Earth Sciences, Kagan further noted the patterns of fallen stalactites and stalagmites in the caves and found that they had fallen primarily in the direction of north to south and east to west. The researchers showed through calculations that these patterns were caused by extremely large earthquakes that originated in the Dead Sea Region.