Global Warming: February 2010

New Study Finds Increasing Acidification of Pacific Ocean’s Continental Shelf

This is an older article--but I just attended a workshop on it and its intense.

CORVALLIS, Ore. – An international team of scientists surveying the waters of the continental shelf off the West Coast of North America has discovered for the first time high levels of acidified ocean water within 20 miles of the shoreline, raising concern for marine ecosystems from Canada to Mexico.

Researchers aboard the Wecoma, an Oregon State University research vessel, also discovered that this corrosive, acidified water that is being “upwelled” seasonally from the deeper ocean is probably 50 years old, suggesting that future ocean acidification levels will increase since atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide have increased rapidly over the past half century.

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/ncs/newsarch/2008/May08/acid.html

Subtropical Water Melts Greenland's Fjords

Waters from warmer parts of the ocean are penetrating into the normally chilly fjords of the Greenland coast, driving some of the glacier melt that has been gathering speed there in recent years, a new study finds.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100218/sc_livescience/subtropicalwatermeltsgreenlandsfjords

Study: Warming to bring stronger hurricanes

WASHINGTON – Top researchers now agree that the world is likely to get stronger but fewer hurricanes in the future because of global warming,

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100221/ap_on_sc/us_sci_warming_hurricanes

The Sacred Island That's Shrinking Away

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123733017&ft=1&f=1007&sc=YahooNews

Sagar Island is less than 20 miles long. Sanyal estimates that in the past 40 years, its size has shrunk by nearly 10 square miles. Thousands of people have been displaced.

Oceanography professor Sugata Hazra agrees: "For the last 20 to 30 years, we are getting more cyclones and we are losing land to the sea. This is the reality."

Greenland ice loss driven by warming seas: study

Investigating the western side of Greenland, they took ocean measurements in August 2008 in three fjords at the base of four glaciers breaking off into the sea, a process known as calving.

Ocean melting, they found, accounted for between 20 and 75 percent of ice loss from the glacier face, with calving from the part of the iceberg exposed to air accounting for the rest.

Meanwhile, a study also published in the journal Nature Geoscience warned that oceans could become more acidic faster than at any time over the last 65 million years.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100214/sc_afp/climatewarminggreenlandglaciersicesheet_20100214181225

49 states dusted with snow; Hawaii's the holdout

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100213/ap_on_re_us/us_united_states_of_snow

"I'm calling it the upside-down winter," said David Robinson, head of the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University in New Jersey.

Snow paralyzed and fascinated the Deep South on Friday. Snowball fights broke out at Southern Mississippi University, snow delayed flights at the busy Atlanta airport, and Louisiana hardware stores ran out of snow supplies. Andalusia, Ala., shut down its streets because of snow. And yet, Portland, Maine, where snow is usually a given, had to cancel its winter festival for lack of the stuff.

East Coast digs out from storm for record books

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ijPYIJzOJ9gVSRFxOZpSqVc3nG6gD9DPVBJG2

As of Wednesday, Baltimore had 72.3 inches so far this winter, the Washington area had 54.9 inches and Philadelphia had 70.3 inches. The previous records for snowiest winters were 62.5 inches in Baltimore in 1995-96; 54.4 inches in Washington in 1898-99; and 65.5 inches in Philadelphia in 1995-96.

Mid-Atlantic Walloped by Record Snow Storms

It's the second big storm in a row for Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. where the snow is falling on top of the nearly three feet that fell during last weekend's blizzard. Each city needs just another nine inches of snow to mark their snowiest winters since 1884.

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2010/February/Mid-Atlantic-Gets-Walloped-by-Second-Big-Storm/

Snowstorm for the Record Books in Dallas

http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/02/12/snowstorm-for-the-record-books-in-dallas/?test=latestnews

The average snowfall yearly in Dallas is 2.5 inches. In the space of 24 hours, we have received more than a foot of snow. The National Weather Service says the snow we've received is the greatest calendar day snowfall total on record the Dallas/Fort Worth area.