Cause of London's 1952 "Killer Fog" Revealed

London may be known for its drizzly weather, but in 1952 the city's quintessential fog cover turned deadly, and no one knew why — until now.

For five days in December 1952, a fog that contained pollutants enveloped all of London. By the time the dense fog cover lifted, more than 150,000 people had been hospitalized and at least 4,000 people had died. Researchers now estimate that the total death count was likely more than 12,000 people, as well as thousands of animals. Despite its lethal nature, the exact cause and nature of the killer fog has largely remained a mystery. Recently, a team of researchers has determined the likely reasons for its formation.

Researchers have for a long time connected emissions from burning coal with the killer fog, but the specific chemical processes that led to the deadly mix of pollution and fog were not fully understood. To determine what turned the fog into a killer, an international team of scientists from China, the U.S. and the U.K. recreated the fog in a lab using results from laboratory experiments and atmospheric measurements from Beijing and Xi’an, two heavily polluted cities in China. 

Study lead author Renyi Zhang, an atmospheric scientist at Texas A&M University, said that sulfate was a big contributor to the deadly London fog. Sulfuric acid particles, which formed from the sulfur dioxide that was released from the burning of coal, were also a component of the fog. The question was, How did sulfur dioxide get turned into sulfuric acid?

"Our results showed that this process was facilitated by nitrogen dioxide, another co-product of coal burning, and occurred initially on natural fog," Zhang said in a statement. "Another key aspect in the conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfate is that it produces acidic particles, which subsequently inhibits this process."

The natural fog contained larger particles, Zhang explained, with the smaller acidic particles evenly distributed throughout. When those fog particles evaporated, an acidic-haze was left covering the city.

The 1952 killer fog led to the creation of the Clean Air Act, which the British Parliament passed in 1956. Researchers still consider it the worst air pollution event in European history.

The air of cities in China, which is often heavily polluted, has a chemistry that's similar to the killer fog in London, Zhang and his colleagues found. China has battled air pollution for decades, and it is home to 16 of the world's 20 most polluted cities, according to the researchers. For instance, air pollution in Beijing often far exceeds the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's acceptable air standards.

The researchers said that the main difference between China's smog and the killer London fog is that China's haze is made up of much smaller nanoparticles. Also, the formation of sulfate is only possible with ammonia, the scientists added.

"In China, sulfur dioxide is mainly emitted by power plants. Nitrogen dioxide is from power plants and automobiles, and ammonia comes from fertilizer use and automobiles," Zhang said. "Again, the right chemical processes have to interplay for the deadly haze to occur in China. Interestingly, while the London fog was highly acidic, contemporary Chinese haze is basically neutral."

A better understanding of air chemistry is key to developing effective regulatory actions in China, Zhang said.

"We think we have helped solve the 1952 London fog mystery and also have given China some ideas of how to improve its air quality," Zhang said. "Reduction in emissions for nitrogen oxides and ammonia is likely effective in disrupting this sulfate-formation process."

http://www.foxnews.com/science/2016/12/13/mystery-solved-cause-londons-1952-killer-fog-revealed.html

Culprit of Deadly Tibet Avalanche: Climate Change

An avalanche of ice that killed nine in western Tibet may be a sign that climate change has come to the region, a new study finds.

The avalanche at the Aru glacier in July 2016 was a massive event that spilled ice and rock 98 feet (30 meters) thick over an area of 4 square miles (10 square kilometers). Nine nomadic herders and many of their animals died during the 5-minute cataclysm. It was the second-biggest glacial avalanche ever recorded, and initially mystified scientists.

"This is new territory scientifically," Andreas Kääb, a glaciologist at the University of Oslo, said in a statement in September. "It is unknown why an entire glacier tongue would shear off like this."

Now, an international group of scientists thinks they know the reason: Meltwater at the base of the glacier must have hastened the slide of the debris.

"Given the rate at which the event occurred and the area covered, I think it could only happen in the presence of meltwater," Lonnie Thompson, a professor of Earth sciences at The Ohio State University, said in a statement.

Thompson and his colleagues from the university's Byrd Polar and Climate Research Center worked with scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences to measure the icefall and recreate it with a computer model. They based the model on satellite and global position system (GPS) data, allowing for a precise understanding of how much debris fell.

The stimulations could only recreate the catastrophic collapse if meltwater was present. Liquid water at the base of a glacier speeds its advance by reducing friction, as is frequently seen in Greenland. Meltwater may also bring heat to the interior of the glacier, warming it from the inside, according to 2013 research on Greenland's glaciers.

In western Tibet, the origin of the possible meltwater is unknown, Thompson said in the statement. However, the region is undoubtedly heating up.

"[G]iven that the average temperature at the nearest weather station has risen by about 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last 50 years, it makes sense that snow and ice are melting and the resulting water is seeping down beneath the glacier," Thompson said.

That's particularly alarming because western Tibet's glaciers have so far been stable in the face of warming temperatures, according to the researchers. In southern and eastern Tibet, the glaciers have been melting much more rapidly. Above-average snowfall in western Tibet has even expanded some glaciers, according to study author Lide Tian, a glaciologist at the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Paradoxically, Tian said in a statement, that extra snowfall may have created more meltwater and made the devastating avalanche more likely.

A second avalanche hit just a few kilometers away in September 2016. No one was harmed in that icefall, but Kääb and his colleagues said that the two collapses, so close in time and space, were unprecedented.

http://www.livescience.com/57150-culprit-of-deadly-tibet-avalanche-found.html

Mountain Glaciers Are Showing Some of The Strongest Responses to Climate Change

Mountain glaciers have long been a favorite poster child of climate change. The near-global retreat of glaciers of the last century provides some of the most iconic imagery for communicating the reality of human-driven climate change.

But the scientific basis for their retreat has been less clear. Glaciers respond slowly to any climate changes, they are susceptible to year-to-year variations in mountain weather, and some of the largest are still catching up after the end of the Little Ice Age. Scientists can connect climate change to the overall retreat of glaciers worldwide, but linking an individual glacier's retreat to climate change has remained a subject of debate.

The last report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded only that it was "likely" that a "substantial" part of mountain glacier retreat is due to human-induced climate change — a much weaker conclusion than for other things, like temperature.

Now, using statistical techniques to analyze 37 mountain glaciers around the world, a University of Washington study finds that for most of them the observed retreat is more than 99 percent likely due to climate change. In the climate report's wording, it is "virtually certain" that the retreat of these mountain glaciers is due to climate change over the past century.

"Because of their decades-long response times, we found that glaciers are actually among the purest signals of climate change," said Gerard Roe, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences. He is corresponding author of the study published Dec. 12 in Nature Geoscience, and presented this week at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco.

The new study analyzes specific glaciers with a history of length observations, and nearby weather records of temperature and precipitation. The authors also sought different glacier locations, focusing on roughly seven glaciers in each of five geographic regions: North America, Europe, Asia, Scandinavia and the Southern Hemisphere.

"We evaluate glaciers which are hanging on at high altitudes in the deserts of Asia as well as glaciers that are being beaten up by midlatitude storms in maritime climate settings," Roe said. "The thickness, slope and area of the glaciers are different, and all of those things affect the size of the glacier length fluctuations."
Co-authors are Florian Herla , an undergraduate student at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, and Marcia Baker, a UW professor emeritus of atmospheric sciences and Earth and space sciences.

The authors used statistical tools to compare the natural, weather-induced variations in a glacier's length with its observed changes over the last 130 years, and establish a signal-to-noise ratio. They then use that to calculate the probability that observed retreats would have happened without any background change in the climate. 
The iconic Hintereisferner Glacier in Austria has retreated 2.8 km (1.75 miles) since 1880. Results show that climate change is extremely likely to be responsible for its retreat, with the probability that the changes are natural variations being less than 0.001 percent, or one in 100,000.

Likewise, for the well-known Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand, even though the glacier has experienced re-advances of up to 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) in a given decade, there is a less than 1 percent chance that natural variations could explain the overall 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) retreat in the last 130 years.

The least significant retreats among the glaciers studied were for Rabots Glacier in northern Sweden, and South Cascade Glacier in Washington state, with probabilities of 11 and 6 percent, respectively, that their retreats might be natural variability.

"South Cascade is at the end of the Pacific storm track, and it experiences a high degree of wintertime variability. Average wintertime snowfall generates about 3 meters (10 feet) of ice per year, whereas for glaciers in desert Asia, ice accumulation might be as low as 10 centimeters (4 inches) per year,” Roe said. "So they're experiencing very different climate settings. As a result, their variability, and also their sensitivity to climate change, varies from place to place."

The method uses a signal-to-noise ratio that relies on observational records for glacier length, local weather, and the basic size and shape of the glacier, but does not require detailed computer modeling. The technique could be used on any glacier that had enough observations.

Overall, the results show that changes in the 37 glaciers' lengths are between two and 15 standard deviations away from their statistical means. That represents some of the highest signal-to-noise ratios yet documented in natural systems' response to climate change.

"Even though the scientific analysis arguably hasn't always been there, it now turns out that it really is true — we can look at these glaciers all around us that we see retreating, and see definitive evidence that the climate is changing," Roe said. "That's why people have noticed it. These glaciers are stunningly far away from where they would have been in a preindustrial climate."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161212084912.htm

Hawaii: Sand, surf, and snow

Hawaiians more used to dusting sand than ice from their feet have been warned that a winter storm may bring heavy snow to Big Island peaks overnight.

Up to six inches of snow is expected to fall, the National Weather Service says, with a winter storm warning in place until 6 a.m. local time Monday (11 a.m. ET).

The NWS is forecasting heavy snow, blowing and drifting snow, strong winds gusting up to 55 mph and low visibility for the summits of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea. The conditions will make driving and hiking very dangerous, the NWS warned, with the combination of strong winds and heavy snow making travel potentially "very hazardous or impossible."

CNN meteorologist Michael Guy says it isn't unusual for the Big Island summits to experience snowfall in the winter months.

"It usually can snow at elevations above 9,000 feet and some of the summits reach above 13,000 feet.
"There have actually been blizzard warnings for those areas that get snow at those elevations before," Guy says.

The variation in the island's elevation allows for colder temperatures at higher altitudes -- which can support winter weather precipitation, he says.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/05/us/hawaii-snow-warning/index.html

Japan Tsunami Triggers Rare Tidal Waves

The strong earthquake and resulting tsunami in eastern Japan Monday did not result in significant damage or casualties, but it did produce an interesting and rare phenomenon known as a "tidal bore."

According to Andy Newman, an associate professor and geophysicist at Georgia Tech, "a tsunami acts much like a tide (hence the old name 'tidal wave'), which can contain significant tidal bore structures." Tsunamis used to be referred to as tidal waves, which is incorrect since they are not associated with the actual tides, but rather from earthquakes or other earth movements like landslides.

Tidal bores are waves that are formed by the extreme funneling of an incoming ocean tide into a long, narrow inlet or channel. The force of the incoming water is focused into the smaller area and pushes against the normal flow of the channel, forming the slow-moving wave that pushes upstream.

Though tidal bores forced from tsunamis are not nearly as dangerous as the actual tsunami arrival on the coastline, they can have some farther reaching impacts inland. The waves from the tidal bore can travel many miles inland. Newman said, and "could catch individuals upstream that are unsuspecting and cause damage to piers in the river."

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/world/japan-tsunami-tidal-bore/index.html

"Thunderstorm Asthma" Kills 4 People in Australia

Thousands of people were rushed to hospital Monday with breathing problems in the southern Australian state of Victoria as emergency services struggled to cope. Three were still in a critical condition Thursday, a Victorian Department of Health spokesman told CNN.

During a four hour period Monday, Ambulance Victoria received more than 1,900 calls, or one call every four to five seconds. An extra 60 ambulances were deployed, as well as police and firefighters.
Thunderstorm asthma occurs when a storm hits during a period of unusually high rye grass pollen, said Robin Ould, chief executive of the Asthma Foundation of Australia. 

"When you have a perfect storm coming together (of) a very high pollen day, high humidity, and a thunderstorm, the grains of rye grass absorb water with the humidity and they break up into thousands of pieces," Ould said.

"Normally with rye grass the pollen would be trapped by nose hairs. When it breaks up it goes straight to the lungs."

The pollen irritates the lungs' bronchial tubes, causing them to become inflamed and filled with mucus and making it hard for people to breathe. 

Pollen levels peak in late spring. When this combines with strong winds, rain and high temperatures, as it did in Victoria this week, it can lead to incidents of thunderstorm asthma. Though grass pollen is the most common known cause of thunderstorm asthma, attacks can also be triggered by excessive levels of tree pollen and fungal spores in the atmosphere. 

"This will vary by geography," said Aziz Sheikh, Professor of Primary Care Research and Development at the University of Edinburgh, adding that pollen from olive trees, for example, was reported in a previous thunderstorm asthma event in Italy in 2010. Levels of fungal spores in the atmosphere typically peak during harvest, which can also be drawn up and broken down during large thunderstorms due to the rise in atmospheric pressure, according to Sheikh.

Edward Newbigin, a professor of biosciences at the University of Melbourne, said that many of those affected in Australia this week may never have had an asthma attack before. 

"I imagine it was absolutely terrifying," he said.

18-year-old Omar Moujalled was one of the victims of a "thunderstorm asthma" incident in Victoria, Australia on November 21, 2016.

His friend Shuayb Talic told CNN the news left him in "absolute shock, denial, then horror."
"Omar was the fittest of the group," Talic said. "We were discussing a gym meet up just a few days earlier. However, he did have asthma, and apparently it was so severe during the storm he could barely stand up to treat it." 

Apollo Papadopoulos, 35, and Hope Carnevali, 20, also died during the storm. Carnevali passed away in the arms of her family members after waiting more than 40 minutes for an ambulance, according to CNN affiliate 7 News Australia.

The fourth victim was father-of-two Clarence Leo, 7 News Australia said, who died after an asthma attack early on Tuesday morning.

Though normally hay fever occurs in the nasal area, the freak weather conditions which cause thunderstorm asthma can drive the allergens deep into the lungs, causing a far more severe asthmatic attack. 

"Anybody with severe or brittle asthma (a less common form involving severe but irregular attacks) is most likely to experience severe symptoms and need rapid treatment," said Sheikh, adding that smog days, pollution and smoking as other environmental triggers for an attack. "They are much less likely to trigger it if there is good underlying asthma control."

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/23/health/thunderstorm-asthma-australia/index.html

November Sees a Dry Spell for Rain & Tornadoes

Severe weather is often associated with spring, but fall is a second deadly season for tornadoes, especially for Gulf Coast states. 

There hasn't been a single tornado to date this month in the country. Last year 99 tornadoes occurred in November. On average, the month sees 58 tornadoes, most occurring in Texas, which averages nine in November. Drought is overwhelming Southeastern states this fall, and temperatures have soared, depleting ground moisture. Storms need moist air to develop, and the lack of moisture this fall has inhibited storm development both for the much needed rain and the formation of supercell storms capable of producing tornadoes. 

Precipitation has been near or at zero for weeks in the region. The last measurable day of rain in Birmingham, Alabama, was September 18.

There's been an "exceptional" drought -- the most severe kind -- along the Mississippi and Alabama border, and it's also expanded into eastern Alabama, northern Georgia and western North Carolina.
As a result, wildfires have become the main disaster threat this fall. 

This week more than 50 wildfires burned across the region; those fires have now been reduced to 38, but some remain fairly large. The Rough Ridge fire in Georgia currently has 10,336 acres burning and is only 13% contained.

It may seem we have traded one natural disaster for another, but meteorologists caution the month is not over. 

Top 5 tornado outbreaks in November

• November 21-23, 1992 -- 105
• November 23-24, 2004 -- 93
• November 9-11, 2002 -- 82
• November 17, 2013 -- 74
• November 23-24, 2001 -- 66

Source: National Weather Service

"We are not out of the woods yet. People don't think about November being a season for severe weather so they tend to let their guard down, especially when storms have been virtually nonexistent," CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar said. "In fact, the Southeast states are particularly at risk for tornadoes this time of year. All it takes is one outbreak."
Four of the five biggest outbreaks in November occurred in the latter part of the month, including 105 over a three-day period in 1992.
The current trend for weather has been dry, but if moisture pushes back into the weather equation, the possibility for severe storms and tornadoes exists till the end of the month.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/12/us/november-no-tornadoes/index.html

The California Drought

The California drought has killed more than 102m trees in a die-off of forests that increases the risk of catastrophic wildfires and other threats to humans, officials said on Friday. The latest aerial survey by the US Forest Service shows there are 36m more dead trees since May in the state and there has been a 100% increase since 2015.

“These dead and dying trees continue to elevate the risk of wildfire, complicate our efforts to respond safely and effectively to fires when they do occur and pose a host of threats to life and property,” the US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, said in a statement. 

California has endured five years of drought marked by a record low mountain snowpack and warm temperatures. The drought has left trees thirsty and prone to infestation by bark beetles.

Late last year, Governor Jerry Brown formed a taskforce charged with finding ways to remove the trees that threaten motorists and communities. 

Vilsack called on Congress to act, saying more federal funding goes toward fighting fires than forestry management, such as removing dead trees to improve forests’ health. Officials are pushing to turn more trees into lumber, burn them in energy plants or dispose of them in incinerators to eliminate them as fuel for wildfires. Some environmentalists argue, however, that a die-off is part of a healthy forest’s life-cycle. They favor leaving the trees that need to be cut down on the forest floor to decompose and serve as wildlife habitat.

Most dead trees are in the central and southern Sierra Nevada, officials say. However, they are also beginning to find dead trees in northern California counties such as Siskiyou, Modoc, Plumas and Lassen. More trees are expected to die into 2017, US Forest Service officials say. 

People assume the tally amounts to too many dead trees, but fire suppression has created unnaturally green forests with far too little wildfire and dead trees, said Chad Hanson, a forest ecologist at Earth Island Institute’s John Muir Project. 

“We don’t want too much and we don’t want too little,” he said. “This is not too much.” 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/18/dead-trees-california-drought-wildfires-forest-services

Will Climate Change Affect Arctic Whale Migration?

A study published by researchers from Florida Atlantic University's Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and a team of scientists is evaluating the relationship between changing sea ice and beluga whale migration. They are also assessing the summer residency patterns of a number of populations over two decades of dramatic sea ice changes in the Pacific Arctic. Working in collaboration with Native hunters in Alaska and Canada, the researchers discovered that beluga whales showed an ability to deal with a changing environment.

In their research published in the Royal Society Biology Letters titled, "Genetic Profiling Links Changing Sea Ice to Shifting Beluga Whale Migration Patterns," scientists presented that beluga whales, popularly known as the white whale, (Delphinapterus leucas), showed a tremendous capacity to deal with greatly varying sea ice conditions from one year to the next over a 20-year time period as they return to their traditional summering grounds each year.

With the increasing concern over global warming, declines in the Arctic sea ice show the most dramatic proof of climate change on ocean systems. "It was not clear how sea ice influences beluga whale migration patterns and their summer habitat use, and climate change has added urgency to determining how environmental factors might shape the behavior and ecology of this species," said Greg O'Corry-Crowe, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and a research professor at FAU Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. His research focused on combining molecular genetic analysis with field ecology to study the molecular and behavioral ecology of marine apex predators.

O'Corry-Crowe and his collaborators utilized a combination of genetic profiling, sighting data, and satellite microwave imagery of sea ice in the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas. This resulted in discovering dramatic shifts in migration behavior during the years with unusually low spring sea ice concentration. There was also an increase in killer whale (Orcinus orca) sightings that reportedly preyed on beluga whales.

Much of the data analyzed by O'Corry-Crowe and his collaborators were obtained using genetic fingerprinting to investigate the population of origin of whales returning to four traditional coastal sites in the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic between 1988 and 2007. They also gathered detailed beluga sightings and harvest data for the same period to assess inter-annual variation on the timing of return. Lastly, they evaluated sea ice data in the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort seas to calculate seasonal and regional patterns of sea ice from 1979 to 2014. They also utilized data from tissue samples from 978 beluga whales that were gathered over a 30-year period.

"Continued reductions in sea ice may result in increased predation at key aggregation areas and shifts in beluga whale behavior with implications for population viability, ecosystem structure and the subsistence cultures that rely on them," concluded O'Corry-Crowe.

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/32339/20161120/will-climate-change-affect-arctic-whale-migration.htm

How to Stop Human-Made Droughts and Floods Before They Start

Alberta's rivers are the main source of water for agriculture in Canada's Prairie provinces. But climate change and increased human interference mean that the flow of these headwaters is under threat. This could have major implications for Canadian gross domestic product, and even global food security.

A new study published in Hydrological Processes sheds light on sources of streamflow variability and change in Alberta's headwaters that can affect irrigated agriculture in the Prairies. This provides the knowledge base to develop improved water resource management to effectively adapt to evolving river flow conditions.

"This study is a call for better understanding of the complex interactions between natural and human-made change in river systems" says the study's lead author, Ali Nazemi, assistant professor in Concordia's Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering.

"We hope this can result in better human management to promote water, food and energy security both in Canada and around the world."

Nazemi and his co-authors* developed a mathematical process to examine streamflow and climate data and carry out a case study on eight streams within the Oldman River Basin in Southern Alberta. They discovered various forms of change in the annual average streamflow and timing of the yearly peak in Alberta's headwater streams throughout the 20th century.

"We saw that change in streamflow can be mainly linked to temperature variance, as well as to human regulations through water resource management," says Nazemi.

"From the natural perspective, we found that air temperature is the main driver of change in Alberta's headwaters due to its effect on snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains, where the headwaters are initiated. But various components of temperature affect the streamflow differently -- this shows the complexity of streamflow response to climate variability and change."

They found that Pacific Decadal Oscillation -- a climate variability signal similar to El Niño that's linked to the sea surface temperature in the Pacific Ocean -- is the main driver of change in average annual flow.

In contrast, other triggers of regional air temperature -- such as climate change -- are the key sources behind major variations in the timing of the annual peak in Alberta's headwaters.

"In addition to these natural sources, human-made factors such as reservoir regulation can profoundly change the streamflow characteristics," Nazemi explains. "Although the general tendency of human regulation is to reduce the severity of above? and below?average streamflow conditions, it can also increase the severity of both, if the system is not well managed."

Indeed, the Canadian Prairies have been, and will continue to be the subject of major variability and change, as seen in extreme conditions such as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the devastating flood of 2013 in southern Alberta..

Nazemi hopes that this study will lead to the development of effective regional water resource management in the Prairies and beyond.

"The major river systems around the world are now highly regulated by human activity -- and the natural streamflow regime is perturbed by climate change. This study can provide a scientific methodology to understand the effects of different natural and anthropogenic drivers on river flows. This is the first step towards development of effective management strategies that can face the ever-increasing threats to our precious freshwater resources in Canada and globally."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161116123019.htm

La Niña Arrives in the Pacific

La Niña conditions, which are characterized by below-normal sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific, were observed during October and have persisted into November -- prompting the CPC to raise the ENSO Alert System from a La Niña Watch to a La Niña Advisory. La Niña, much like its warmer counterpart, El Niño, have far reaching global impacts extending beyond the Pacific Ocean.

For the United States, NOAA forecasters say the current La Niña will "likely contribute to drier and warmer weather in the southern US and wetter, cooler conditions in the Pacific Northwest and across to the northern tier of the nation this winter." 

This is bad news for the southeast, which is currently seeing an expanding and worsening drought. Following an autumn that had well above-average temperatures and scant rainfall has left more than 20% of the region in an Extreme or Exceptional Drought, the two highest designations in the US Drought Monitor.

This is a 10-fold increase from the severity of the drought in early August, with northern Alabama and northern Georgia facing the worst of the drought conditions. La Niña "is likely to contribute to persisting or developing drought across much of the southern U.S. this winter," said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center.

Fortunately, the current La Niña is weak and is expected to stay that way through the winter. This should keep the impact from being as severe as what was seen globally with 2015's record-setting El Niño, which saw deadly drought in Asia and helped make it the hottest year on record.
La Niña generally tends to lower global temperatures as it cools the surface of the tropical Pacific Ocean.

It will be interesting to see if this La Niña can slow down the rapidly rising global temperature and prevent 2016 from outpacing 2015 and becoming the third consecutive hottest year for the planet.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/us/la-nina-arrives/index.html

Climate Change: Sea Levels in New York Could Rise 3 Feet by 2100, Displacing Millions

The world better decide to pull the plug on climate change forever, or unbearable temperatures and rising sea-levels are the least of our worries, a new study suggests. 

It can be remembered that the Paris climate agreement intends to "hold" the planet's temperature rise to just barely 2 degrees Celsius above what it was during pre-industrial times. The world grew hotter by a degree Celsius by then, and this is not a good sign.

A study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences noted that if the world continues on this progression and does not meet the "agreement" as prescribed in the Paris documents, then the 2 degree Celsius threshold can be met as early as 2040.

The research also suggests at least a half-foot rise in sea level on average all around the globe, vastly larger than the increase from 1986 to 2005. This is a foreboding sign for places like in the U.S. East Coast, where the rise can be well over a foot. 

If this continues, there will be another sharp increase in temperature by 2040. At this time, the world will be two degrees Celsius hotter and sea level would rise another two feet. This means a sea level rise of more than 3.5 feet in places like New York.

Svetlana Jevrejeva, the lead author of the study, said this is like spending 200 years warming up the Earth in two degrees and spending just 40 years to increase the temperature at the same amount. 

Jevrejeva's research is one of many that tried to go beyond "estimates" for the whole planet and tried to be more precise in its predictions. According to the Washington Post, while the rest of the world will indeed encounter sea level rises, it will be different in all sorts of areas. However, all of the studies so far point toward a stark increase of polar ice cap melting in Greenland and Antarctica. 

The study also found out that by 2040, the rate of sea level rise could go up to 6 millimeters a year, and by the end of the century, 10 millimeters. This adds to the conclusion that carbon pollution really is a deal breaker when it comes to climate change. 

The effects of such unprecedented change can be catastrophic, especially for scenarios such as hurricanes, tropical cyclones and storm surges.

Of course, the study entails that this is the worst-case scenario. It still depends on the choices made by other countries that could directly impact the Paris climate pledges. If the agreement is met, then the world may simply settle for 3 degrees Celsius of warming by 2100. By some stroke of luck, the world may even settle for just 2 degrees Celsius or lower.

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/31512/20161110/sea-levels-new-york-orlean-rise-3-feet-2100-displacing.htm

Major Ocean Current Is Expanding -- Is It Bad for Climate Change?

A new research has shown that a major ocean's current is expanding because of global warming. According to the study conducted by researchers from University of Miami, the Indian Ocean's Agulhas Current is getting wider rather than strengthening.

The Agulhas Current, according to Ruf.edu, is the second swiftest current in all the world's oceans. Agulhas which travels between Madagascar and Mozambique is deadlier than the swiftest current (the Gulf Stream) because the Gulf Stream moves through open waters of the Atlantic.

With its large size and depth, Agulhas transports warm, salty water away from the tropics. It influences not only on the regional climate of Africa, but the global as well, NDTV reported. Findings revealed that intensifying winds in the region may be mounting the turbulence of the current, rather than its flow rate.

Using measurements collected during three scientific cruises to the Agulhas Current, the researchers found out that Agulhas has been like this since the early 1990s. Is it bad? According to Lisa Beal, a UM Rosenstiel School professor of ocean sciences and lead author of the study, these changes may directly affect the future of climate change.

"Changes in western boundary currents could exacerbate or mitigate future climate change," she said in a press release. "Currently, western boundary current regions are warming at three times the rate of the rest of the world ocean and our research suggests this may be related to a broadening of these current systems."

Previous studies have suggested that the atmospheric conditions such as the intensifying winds and accelerated warming rates are brought by man-made climate change.

"Increased eddying and meandering could act to decrease poleward heat transport, while increasing coastal upwelling and the exchange of pollutants and larvae across the current from the coast to the open ocean," co-author Shane Elipot, a UM Rosenstiel School associate scientist said.

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/31638/20161111/major-ocean-current-expanding-bad-climate-change.htm

2015's Record-Breaking Temperature May Be the Norm by 2025

The year 2015 saw the hottest temperature on record globally but in less than a decade, this may just be another year. A research published by the Bulletin of American Meteorological Society reveals that human activities had already locked in a "new normal" for global average temperatures that would occur no later than 2040.

Lead author Dr. Sophie Lewis from the Australian National University hub of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science stated, "If we continue with business-as-usual emissions, extreme seasons will inevitably become the norm within decades and Australia will be the canary in the coal mine that will experience this change first."

But Dr. Lewis doesn't think the situation is completely without hope. Though annual global average temperatures were locked in, it would still be possible with immediate and strong action on controlling carbon emissions to prevent record-breaking seasons from becoming average, at least at regional levels. "If we reduce emissions drastically to the lowest pathway recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, then we will never enter a new normal state for extreme seasons at a regional level in the 21st Century," Dr. Lewis said.

Dr. Lewis and her colleagues have now developed a scientific definition for the term 'new normal' as this is the cornerstone of their new research. "Based on a specific starting point, we determined a new normal occurred when at least half of the years following a record year were cooler and half warmer. Only then can a new normal state be declared," she said.

The researchers, in an effort to determine when new normal states would appear under the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change's four emissions pathways, used the National Computational Infrastructure supercomputer at Australian National University to run climate models. Results showed that though global average temperatures would inevitably enter a new normal under all emissions scenarios, this wasn't the case at seasonal and regional levels.

"It gives us hope to know that if we act quickly to reduce greenhouse gases, seasonal extremes might never enter a new normal state in the 21st Century at regional levels for the Southern Hemisphere summer and Northern Hemisphere winter," Dr Lewis stated.

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/31672/20161111/getting-hot-here-2015s-record-breaking-temperature-norm-2025.htm

Sharks Help Prevent Climate Change

Researchers from the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences at Bournemouth University, along with a team on international co-authors, have shown that poor management of the oceans, including overfishing and shark finning, may have an adverse effect on climate change. 

The team showed that removal of top predators, including sharks, from marine ecosystems, results in higher biomass of prey animals, greater levels of respiration and as such, higher overall levels of carbon dioxide.

Dr Rick Stafford from the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences at Bournemouth University led the study. He says, "The research really demonstrates the far reaching consequences of overfishing and of barbaric practices like shark finning. We need to be much more aware of the importance of marine ecosystems and how they can affect all of us."

Shark finning, the process of removing shark fins from live sharks, leading to the slow death of the marine animal, has become big business in recent years, driven by the demand for shark-fin soup in the Far East.

"The study really identifies sharks as an important part of the functioning of the marine ecosystem, not as creatures to be frightened of and persecuted," said Elisabeth Spiers, a visiting fellow at Bournemouth University and co-author of the study.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/11/161107112632.htm

Receding Glaciers in Bolivia Leave Communities at Risk

A new study published in The Cryosphere, an European Geosciences Union journal, has found that Bolivian glaciers shrunk by 43% between 1986 and 2014, and will continue to diminish if temperatures in the region continue to increase. "On top of that, glacier recession is leaving lakes that could burst and wash away villages or infrastructure downstream," says lead-author Simon Cook, a lecturer at the Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK.

Receding glaciers also put water supply in the region at risk. Glacial meltwater is important for irrigation, drinking water and hydropower, both for mountain villages and large cities such as La Paz and El Alto. Throughout the year, the 2.3 million inhabitants of these two cities receive about 15% of their water supply from glaciers, with this percentage almost doubling during the dry season. Glacier retreat also means less water is available to supply rivers and lakes, such as southern Bolivia's Lake Poopó, which recently dried up.

The new study is one of the first to monitor recent large-scale glacier change in Bolivia, to better understand how receding glaciers could affect communities in the country. "The novelty of our study lies in the bigger picture -- measuring glacier change over all main glaciated ranges in Bolivia -- and in the identification of potentially dangerous lakes for the first time," Cook says.

The team measured glacier area change from 1986 to 2014 using satellite images from Landsat, the U.S. Geological Survey's and NASA's Earth observation programme. They found that the area of the Bolivian Andes covered by glaciers decreased from about 530 square kilometres in 1986 to only around 300 square kilometres in 2014, a reduction of 43%.

As glaciers recede, they leave behind lakes typically dammed by bedrock or glacial debris. Avalanches, rockfalls or earthquakes can breach these dams, or cause water to overflow them, resulting in catastrophic floods known as glacial lake outburst floods. The team reports that both the number and size of glacier lakes in the study region increased significantly from 1986 to 2014.

In a study, the team also estimated that glacier area will be severely reduced by the end of the century, to about a tenth of the 1986 values. This would put communities even more at risk from water scarcity, Cook says. "We predicted in our study that most glaciers will be gone or much diminished by the end of the century -- so where will the water come from in the dry season? Big cities like La Paz are partially dependent on meltwater from glaciers. But little is known about potential water resource stress in more remote areas. More work needs to be done on this issue."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161020100810.htm

Climate Change Impairs Survival Instincts of Fish

Climate change is disrupting the sensory systems of fish and can even make them swim towards predators, instead of away from them, a paper by marine biologists at the University of Exeter says.

Research into the impact of rising CO2 has shown it can disrupt the senses of fish including their smell, hearing and vision. High CO2 levels can impair the way they behave, including making them swim towards predator smells instead of away and even ignoring the sounds that normally deter them from risky habitats.

According to a paper published in the journal Global Change Biology by Dr Robert Ellis and Dr Rod Wilson, climate-change marine biologists at Exeter University, these abnormal behaviours have been linked to the effect of CO2 on how the brain processes signals from sensory organs. CO2 levels are predicted to be 2.5 times higher in the oceans by the end of this century.

The report's authors Dr Robert Ellis and Dr Rod Wilson believe that fish farms, may be the key to establishing the long-term impact of CO2 on marine life. In their paper, Lessons from two high CO2 worlds: future oceans and intensive aquaculture, Dr. Ellis and Dr. Wilson, alongside a colleague from Chile (Dr. Urbina), show that farmed fish often live in CO2 conditions 10 times higher than their wild cousins. The scientists believe that further study of farmed fish -- which already provides as much seafood for human consumption as that caught in the wild -- may be crucial for understanding how aquatic species will evolve to climate change. The captive fish farm populations living in high CO2 levels already amount to "a giant long-term laboratory experiment."

"Aquaculture may provide an 'accidental' long-term experiment that can help climate-change predictions," said Dr. Ellis. "There is the enticing possibility that fish and shellfish previously grown in high CO2 aquaculture conditions over multiple generations can offer valuable insights regarding the potential for aquatic animals in the wild to adapt to the predicted further increases in CO2."

The aquaculture industry may also benefit from what the climate change scientists study too. The abnormal behaviour seen in wild fish may not matter in farmed fish, as they are provided with abundant food and shelter and they have no predators to avoid. But while extremely high CO2 can reduce digestion efficiency in cod, recent research suggests that relatively small increases in CO2 may actually act as a growth stimulant in some fish.

Dr. Rod Wilson said, "Our research will allow fish farmers to optimise conditions, and specifically CO2 levels, to improve growth and health of their fish, profitability and the long-term sustainability of the industry. This is really important given that aquaculture is the only way we will increase seafood production to feed the growing human population, particularly given wild fish stocks are overexploited."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161021135727.htm