- This important concept can help you explain extreme events to others. - Editor
Frozen jet stream links Pakistan floods, Russian fires
Raging wildfires in western Russia and diluvial rains over northern Pakistan- it now seems that these two apparently disconnected events have a common cause. According to meteorologists monitoring the atmosphere above the northern hemisphere, unusual holding patterns in the jet stream are to blame. As a result, weather systems sat still. Temperatures rocketed and rainfall reached extremes. In recent weeks, meteorologists have noticed a change in the jet stream’s normal pattern. Its waves normally shift east, dragging weather systems along with it. But in mid-July they ground to a halt.  Stationary patterns in the jet stream are called “blocking events”. Normally, these systems are constantly on the move – but not during a blocking event.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727730.101-frozen-jet-stream-links-pakistan-floods-russian-fires.html

- Having spent years with UNESCO struggling over ways to influence rural villages in remote locations in different countries, I know it is not easy. Dealing with climate adaptation isn’t easy, either. Here’s a project where movies showing people’s solutions even from across the world to similar climate problems can increase awareness and motivation to face adaptation. - Editor
 

Movies that save lives
More intense and more frequent floods, droughts and storms generated by the unfolding impact of climate change are hitting millions of people, especially in rural areas in developing countries, yet many are unaware of the growing danger because climate change is hard to understand, and even fewer are prepared to deal with it. On the other hand, humanitarian organizations and governments have piloted several successful projects to help vulnerable rural farmers adapt to a future characterised by bad-tempered weather. Pablo Suarez, associate director of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Climate Centre, commented that it was not “feasible to dispatch technical experts to every location with poor people threatened by climate risks”.

During a workshop in Mozambique some years ago the Red Cross discovered that small-scale farmers were highly receptive to audiovisual presentations showing other small-scale farmers applying solutions and adapting to similar conditions. In 2000 the Mozambican farmers were affected by devastating floods that killed 700 people, followed by two dry spells that ravaged their crops. The Red Cross told the farmers about climate change, but they were not entirely convinced. “Like everybody else, I thought it was God punishing us, and we can’t do much about it,” said one of the women farmers at the workshop. The Red Cross then played a video of a similar workshop in a flood-prone shantytown in Argentina. “But now in the film I see that white women at the other end of the world have the same problem we have! So maybe it is true that the global rainfall is changing, and … I can do something about it.” She is now considering growing crops more suited to changing weather patterns.
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/EGUA-84FSJX?OpenDocument
From Kenya and the reactions to pastoralists to climate change-  http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=88815

- People ask us to get specific all the time- what temperatures, what changes, and when. The when and where is impossible except in broad terms, making detailed planning a challenging nightmare. Now the U.S. government has a plan to use the world’s most powerful computer to get specific, and grants to researchers are being offered. It’s important that the Dept. of Ag is involved, too. Some of our readers will want to check Earth System Models (“EASM”) out! - Editor
Can Climate Models Predict Global Warming’s Direct Effects in Your City?
Nobody lives in the global average climate. Now the National Science Foundation (NSF), along with the U.S. Energy and Agriculture departments are teaming up to financially support the development of new computer models aimed at revealing the anticipated effects of climate change at the regional level. “The impacts of climate change are becoming more immediate and profound than anticipated,” NSF Director Arden Bement said. “We must be able to predict how climate change will impact regions in the next 10 to 20 years.” A big part of the effort will rely on advances in computer power; the Department of Energy (DoE) now hosts the world’s most powerful supercomputer at its Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Such computers will help scientists to improve both the time and spatial scales of their models. “We love to be able to go exoscale -another 1,000 times faster and bigger.” “Producers of food will need to know what to expect in the future to be ready for the kinds of changes that are anticipated,” said Department of Agriculture chief scientist, Roger Beachy. “We are concerned about the impact on our ability to grow food.” We need to have the data before we embark on big policy changes.
For a rather dull video explaining the project and its grant opportunities- http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_images.jsp?cntn_id=116602&org=NSF ;
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=climate-models-predict-global-warming-effects-in-cities

With snow blanketing much of the country, the topic of global warming has become the butt of jokes. For scientists who study the climate, it’s all a bit much. They’re trying to dig out. Most don’t see a contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado explains. “The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago, means there’s about on average 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was, say, in the 1970s.”  Warmer water means more water vapor rises up into the air, and what goes up must come down.  “So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, D.C., for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a consequence of global warming,” he says.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123671588

The decade ending in 2009 was the warmest on record, new surface temperature figures released Thursday by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) show. The agency also found that 2009 was the second warmest year since 1880, when modern temperature measurement began. The warmest year was 2005. A separate preliminary analysis from the National Climatic Data Center, a unit of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), found that 2009 tied with 2006 as the fifth warmest year on record, based on measurements taken on land and at sea. The data center report also cited the years 2000 to 2009 as the warmest decade ever measured.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/science/earth/22warming.html
For NASA- http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/temp-analysis-2009.html
For NOAA- http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/

- These findings corroborate what was discovered in California caves- changes in the Artic will be creating big changes in the U.S. It’s not just polar bears, folks. - Editor
Cave Reveals Southwest’s Abrupt Climate Swings During Ice Age
Ice Age climate records from an Arizona stalagmite link the Southwest’s winter precipitation to temperatures in the North Atlantic, according to new research. “It’s a new picture of the climate in the Southwest during the last Ice Age,” said Cole, a UA professor of geosciences. “When it was cold in Greenland, it was wet here, and when it was warm in Greenland, it was dry here.” The researchers tapped into the natural climate archives recorded in a stalagmite from a limestone cave in southern Arizona. The stalagmite yielded an almost continuous, century-by-century climate record spanning 55,000 to 11,000 years ago. These changes are part of a global pattern of abrupt changes that were first documented in Greenland ice cores,” she said. “No one had documented those changes in the Southwest before.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100120161243.htm

- Some parts of the world are experiencing excessive snow and cold, not a good argument for global warming, which really should be called “climate change.” In case a climate denier concludes warming is not occurring, do share information from these 2 articles. - Editor

Feeling That Cold Wind? Here’s Why
A bitter wind has been blowing over parts of North America, Europe and Asia. What’s going on? Global cooling? Nope. A mass of high pressure is sitting over Greenland like a rock in a river, deflecting the cold air of the jet stream farther to the south than usual. This situation is caused by Arctic oscillation. This winter’s cold has not been global. Santa, by North Pole standards, has been experiencing a balmy winter. “Pretty much all of the Arctic is above normal,” said Dr. Walter Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. In some areas, the temperatures are as much as 15 degrees Fahrenheit above normal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/weekinreview/10chang.html?ref=science

The United States may be experiencing one of the coldest winters in decades, but things continue to heat up in the Southern Hemisphere. Science has obtained exclusive data from NASA that indicates that 2009 was the hottest year on record south of the Equator. The find adds to multiple lines of evidence showing that the 2000s were the warmest decade in the modern instrumental record. “This is one of the coldest winters we’ve experienced in a while up here in the northern latitudes,” says Derek Arndt of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. “But we’re piling up a lot of heat in the tropics.”
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2010/113/2

- Years ago when I took corporate executives to Biosphere 2 for transformational rethinking of our planet’s limits, now this astonishing facility has evolved and continues to offer real opportunities. Visitors welcome! - Editor

Biosphere 2’s Second Chapter: Climate Change
Biosphere 2 was sold to an investment company, which, in turn, allowed New York’s Columbia University to manage the property. Under Columbia’s supervision, the focus of the project shifted to the study of how the high concentrations of carbon dioxide inside the structures affected plant life. Biosphere 2, it turned out, was a great laboratory for tracking the effects of climate change on a number of different ecosystems.

“They were able to show that as more carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere, coral reefs are endangered and die off,” said Joaquin Ruiz, dean of the College of Science at the University of Arizona, who now oversees Biosphere 2. Researchers at the University of Arizona have made important findings about the effects of drought on varying species of trees planted inside the biosphere more than two decades ago.

According to Ruiz, Biosphere 2’s initial attempts at creating a fully enclosed system have produced a unique tool to study a similarly enclosed environment: Earth’s. “Because of its scale, there is no other facility like it. It has become one of the best places to study the effects of climate change.”
http://www.sphere.com/2010/01/11/biosphere-2s-second-chapter-climate-change/19312078/?icid=main|search3|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sphere.com%2F2010%2F01%2F11%2Fbiosphere-2s-second-chapter-climate-change%2F19312078%2F
For more information about the lectures, or for tour prices and hours of operation, call 520-838-6200 or visit the Biosphere 2 website - http://www.b2science.org/.
For an article on how trees respond to drought with increased temperatures inside Biosphere 2- http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-04/uoa-b2e040809.php

Discovering that jet streams shift markedly with lose of polar ice is hugely significant, impacting the fate of all vegetation, including our food, as well as our water supplies. – Editor
Cave Study Links Climate Change To California Droughts
California experienced centuries-long droughts in the past 20,000 years that coincided with the thawing of ice caps in the Arctic.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091110171741.htm
(At www.ClimateToday.org-Food- Food Systems- Nov. 13, 2009)