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Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 20 Sep 2011
Earth’s deep oceans may absorb enough heat at times to flatten the rate of global warming for periods of as long as a decade–even in the midst of longer-term warming. This according to a new analysis led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).
 Excess energy entering the climate system due to greenhouse gas increases may not be immediately realized as warmer surface temperatures, as it can go into the deep ocean instead The study, based on computer simulations of global climate, points to ocean layers deeper than 1,000 feet as the main location of the “missing heat” during periods such as the past decade when global air temperatures showed little trend.
The findings also suggest that several more intervals like this can be expected over the next century, even as the trend toward overall warming continues.
“We will see global warming go through hiatus periods in the future,” says NCAR’s Gerald Meehl, lead author of the study.
“However, these periods would likely last only about a decade or so, and warming would then resume. This study illustrates one reason why global temperatures do not simply rise in a straight line.”
The research, by scientists at NCAR and the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia, was published online Sunday in Nature Climate Change.
Funding for the study came from the National Science Foundation (NSF), NCAR’s sponsor.
“The research shows that the natural variability of the climate system can produce periods of a decade or more in which Earth’s temperature does not rise, despite an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations,” says Eric DeWeaver, program director in NSF’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences. Continue reading Missing energy is buried in the ocean
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 14 Sep 2011
South Africa will beef up its climate policy to ensure that all government departments responded well to the issue of climate change.
While details were still sketchy on how this would be done, Water [...]
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 22 Aug 2011
Plants and animals are responding up to three times faster to climate change than previously estimated, as wildlife shifts to cooler altitudes and latitudes, researchers said on Thursday.
 In Borneo, moths shifted 220 feet upward on Mount Kinabalu Scientists have reported this decade on individual species that moved toward the poles or uphill as their traditional habitats shifted due to global warming, but this study analyzed data on over 2,000 species to get a more comprehensive picture.
In this analysis, researchers found that on average, wildlife moved to higher elevations at the rate of about 40 feet per decade.
They are moving toward the poles at an average rate of 10.31 miles a decade, scientists reported in the journal Science.
The altitude shift is twice what scientists had estimated as recently as 2003, according to Chris Thomas, a professor of conservation biology at the University of York in Britain, and the leader of the project.
The average latitude shift is triple earlier estimates, Thomas said in a telephone interview. But he noted that not all species move toward the poles as quickly as that, some don’t move much at all and others actually move slightly toward the Equator, depending on what they need most to survive.
What became clear in this study, Thomas and the other authors said, was that species moved furthest in places where the climate warmed most, an unambiguous link to climate change over the last 40 years. Continue reading Wildlife migration to cooler altitudes is happening faster
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 08 Aug 2011
The right to food, health and shelter is threatened due to global warming, International Relations and Cooperation Minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, said on Monday.
 In drought prone areas it is women who have to fend for their families “Climate change affects the economic and social rights of countless individuals. This includes their rights to food, health and shelter,” she said.
The minister was speaking at a consultative dialogue on Women and Climate Change in Limpopo. She said that as climate change will continue to affect humanity, it was key to safeguard the lives of the people that are adversely affected, which are women.
“As incoming president [of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change], I will strive to ensure the centrality of women in all global fora to advance the multilateral efforts to address climate change, which impacts in a very pernicious manner on women, especially in developing countries,” said Nkoana-Mashabane.
Women, she said, are the propellers and carriers of development.
“In flood prone regions, it is women who have to deal with the impact. In drought prone areas, it is women who have to fend for their families ensuring that the children are fed, and that the sick and the indigent are taken care of. Continue reading Climate change a threat to countless individuals
Posted by: Saving Water SA (Cape Town, South Africa) – partnered with Water Rhapsody conservation systems – 21 July 2011
Climate change could exponentially increase the scale of natural disasters while at the same time threatening world security, a senior UN official told the UN Security Council Wednesday.
Floods, such as the ones [...]
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