By Penny Paugh Scientist Peter Cox, speaking at the University of Exeter (United Kingdom), recently suggests that the way to win the battle with greenhouse gases is to lower methane emissions. In fact, curbing methane may be the best way to stem dangerous warming. Methane is released in many ways: landfills, livestock, rice paddies, coal […]
Historic Data, Data Rescue
Isolating Climate Change Constraints
April 3, 2012
By Penny Paugh There are many factors that affect the global temperature of the planet, including the rise and fall of greenhouse gases, solar activity, light-scattering atmospheric pollutants, heat transfer among the land, sea, and air, and the presence or absence of forests to process carbon dioxide. Researchers at the University of Oxford tweaked three […]
Could Climate Change Have Contributed to the Fall of Rome?
March 26, 2012
By Penny Paugh One form of environmental data, tree rings, has provided evidence of a climate shift that, perhaps not coincidentally, occurred from 250 to 550 A.D., a period that coincides with the fall of the Roman Empire. From ancient wood found in medieval castles and Roman ruins, the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, […]
African Drought and Data Rescue
March 23, 2012
Drought in Africa has been a destructive force to life and property since the beginning of recorded time. Most recently, East Africa suffered a severe drought in 2010 that persisted nearly the entire year. However, one good thing that came out of this catastrophic drought was that it revealed several important hints for predicting future […]
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 […]
NASA’s GRIP Project: Leading Edge Research on Hurricanes
September 29, 2010
By Penny Paugh In August 2010, NASA launched the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) Earth science field experiment to better understand how tropical storms form and develop into major hurricanes. NASA hopes forecasters will assimilate GRIP data into their prediction models to improve forecasts and provide earlier warning for communities in a burgeoning hurricane’s […]
Paleo Proxy Data: What Is It?
September 29, 2010
By Martina M. Dewey A paleoclimatologist’s work is science focused on the climate of past ages. Proxy data is data that paleoclimatologists gather from natural recorders of climate variability, e.g., tree rings, ice cores, fossil pollen, ocean sediments, coral and historical data. By analyzing records taken from these and other proxy sources, scientists can extend […]
Clamshells May Measure Paleoclimate
September 23, 2010
Clamshells may provide the most fascinating detailed record July 2010 By Virginie Noel Paleo data come from natural sources, such as tree rings, ice cores, corals, as well as, ocean and lake sediments. These data extend the archive of weather and climate back hundreds to millions of years. Most measures of palaeoclimate provide data on […]
Digitized Climate Data Invaluable to Pacific Islands
September 14, 2010
By Carmen Lee Collection and digitization of historical climate data is critical to the work of an inter-governmental organization protecting and managing the environment and natural resources in the Pacific Islands region (the Pacific Island Global Climate Observing System, PI-GCOS). “One of the critical components of the seasonal climate prediction model is a rainfall climate […]
Bangladesh Named Country Most Vulnerable to Natural Disasters
July 12, 2010
Environmental risk advisory firm Maplecroft has named Bangladesh the country most vulnerable to natural disasters on their Natural Disasters Risk Index. Surveying incidents of natural disasters, and the material and human costs of those disasters over a period of 30 years, Maplecroft placed Bangladesh at the head of the 15 countries with an “extreme risk” […]