This post is by James Wang, Ph.D., a climate scientist at Environmental Defense Fund.
This month, while Arctic sea ice hits its annual wintertime high (such as it is – see last week’s post), Antarctic sea ice reaches its summertime low.
We’ve already posted about the British Antarctic Survey’s report of a vast ice berg on the verge of breaking off the Wilkins Ice Shelf. Here’s more on what’s happening at the South Pole from NASA’s recent briefing on polar sea ice.
This post is by James Wang, Ph.D., a climate scientist at Environmental Defense Fund.
Last summer we saw record-shattering shrinkage of Arctic sea ice caused, in part, by human-induced global warming. Last week I listened in on a NASA briefing on polar sea ice, and this year looks no better.
This winter was relatively cold due to a strong La Niña, so the Arctic saw a modest increase in overall sea ice (slightly above the record low of 2005-2006, but still below the long-term average). However, the older, thicker ice that lasts through the summer has declined sharply, and this is very worrying.
This post is by Sheryl Canter, an Online Writer and Editorial Manager at Environmental Defense Fund.
A huge Antarctic ice berg – seven times the size of Manhattan – is close to breaking off, supported only by a thin strip of ice hanging between two islands.
Part of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, the berg was captured in satellite and video images by British Antarctic Survey (BAS), which said, “It is another identifiable impact of climate change on the Antarctic environment.”
This post is by Scott Anderson, an attorney and senior policy advisor at the Environmental Defense Fund. It’s the second in a three-part series on carbon sequestration – storing carbon or carbon dioxide (CO2) in soils, trees, geological formations, and oceans.
1. Biological Sequestration
2. Geological Sequestration
3. Ocean Sequestration
To stop global warming, the U.S. must substantially move away from carbon-emitting fossil fuels to clean renewable energy. But a transition of this magnitude takes time. Right now this country is heavily dependent on coal for electricity, and traditional coal plants are none too clean.
How do we stop global warming while renewable technologies to meet our energy needs are still under development? Part of the answer may lie in an emerging transition technology called Carbon dioxide (CO2) Capture and Storage (CCS). The idea behind CCS is to capture the CO2 from industrial processes like coal plants, and then store it in deep geological formations.
This post is by Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense.
Scientists use some technical terms in discussing climate change that can cause confusion. Two that are especially useful to know are "forcing" and "feedback".
You’ll hear these terms a lot in discussions of how human activity impacts climate – and especially when the topic turns to the melting Arctic. If you know what they mean, you’ll have a much better understanding of the dynamics behind climate change.
This post is by Lisa Moore, Ph.D., a scientist in the Climate and Air program at Environmental Defense.
Yesterday, an unusually ferocious winter tornado system killed at least 55 people in five Southern states, and destroyed over a thousand homes and businesses. Usually tornadoes touch down for 20 minutes then come back up, but these were rare "long-track" tornadoes that stayed on the ground for 30 to 50 miles.
Lots of recent research indicates that global warming increases the intensity of hurricanes. Could it also affect tornadoes? It’s too early to tell, but scientists are starting to look.
