By Gavin Roy The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released their annual December report on the past year’s natural disasters in the United States. The sum of the damage in 2011 cost American taxpayers $52 billion. Disasters listed ranged from the Groundhog’s Day blizzard in the Northeast ($1.8 billion; 38 deaths) to Hurricane Irene […]
South American Data Rated as Second Highest Priority Climate Data
December 18, 2011
by Gavin Roy A group led by PAGES (Past Global Changes) has ranked human weather observations in South America as the second-highest priority climate data that must be collected, collated, and integrated to understand South America’s climate. Their highest-ranked priority is tree-ring records, with ice-core samples, glacial variations, and marine sediment records coming after. Meteorological […]
Who is ACRE?
December 14, 2011
The international Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) initiative both undertakes and facilitates the recovery of historical instrumental surface terrestrial and marine global weather observations to underpin 3D weather reconstructions (reanalyses) spanning the last 200-250 years for climate applications and impacts needs worldwide. All of the historical surface weather data and the reanalyses are […]
Climate Change Solutions: CO2 Capture
December 11, 2011
By Deborah Resnick Ideas on how to slow climate change are abundant and wildly varied. They range from giant solar sails to seeding the atmosphere with sulphur to reflect sunlight away from the Earth. They are radical solutions to a radical problem. Estimates on the monetary cost of climate change for the US alone could […]
Throwing the Dice with Climate Data
December 5, 2011
By Deborah Resnick In the summer of 2010, Russia suffered a heat wave that killed 700 people. This heat wave exceeded anything on record for Russia. As with any catastrophic weather event, climate change was immediately blamed for the heat wave. Scientists have used a Monte Carlo simulation to determine if global warming was a […]
PAGES group studies past human impacts on rivers
December 3, 2011
By Gavin Roy Human interaction with rivers began thousands of years ago when organized agriculture first appeared, and the interaction continues today on a grand scale. Rivers are diverted for irrigation, contained by concrete barriers through major cities, and dammed to form reservoirs and generate hydroelectric power. As humans rely on the Earth’s rivers more […]
Weather Conditions: Mozambique and Zambia
December 1, 2011
By Pennell Paugh and Ran Meng The Republic of Mozambique is in southeastern Africa, bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west and Swaziland and South Africa to the southwest. Maputo, which is the capital city, is the largest city in […]