Environment | Universe Today

It would appear that rising atmospheric temperatures may be slowed or even stopped over the next ten years due to periodic changes in ocean circulation. As the Gulf Stream slows the flow of warm tropical waters from the equator to the North Atlantic, North America and Northern Europe will experience a slight reduction in atmospheric temperatures. This appears to be a natural process that has occurred in historic records. But don't go getting too excited, this will only pause the global warming trend at best. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecasts a global temperature rise of 0.2°C (0.36°F) per decade, and this trend will continue after the currents have settled…
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It appears the Earth's climate has the ability to naturally regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Historic records extracted from ice cores show quantities of CO₂ have varied widely in the last hundreds of thousands of years. This evidence appears to support the global warming critics view that current observations of the human-induced greenhouse effect is actually naturally occurring and the effects of carbon on the climate is over-hyped. However, a new study shows that although carbon dioxide levels may have been larger in the past, the Earth's natural processes had time to react and counteract global warming. The current trend of industrial emissions has been far more accelerated than any historic natural process, natural climate "feedback loops" cannot catch up to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere.
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Question: How Long Will Life Survive on Earth?

Answer: It feels like the Earth is forever. But we know it formed around 4.5 billion years ago, and it will last another 7.5 billion years or so, when the Sun becomes a red giant, and probably destroying the Earth.

But our climate will become unlivable long before that. According to Peter Ward and Robert Brownlee, in their book, The Life and Death of Planet Earth, things are going to heat up much, much earlier.

That's because the energy output coming the Sun is gradually increasing. Not enough to change the climate in our lifetimes, or even millions of years. But in the span of hundreds of millions of years, things are going to heat up.

A model developed by researchers at Pennsylvania State University calculated that the energy coming from the Sun will heat up the planet so much that the oceans will evaporate within a billion years or so.

But this is just the end of a series of terrible things that will happen to the planet as the Sun's energy output increases.

As the climate becomes warmer, the cycle of silicate rock weather speeds up, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequestering it as calcium carbonate in the oceans. Without carbon dioxide, plants won't be able to survive, and everything relying on them dies too.

According to their calculations, Earth has been habitable for 4.5 billion years, and only has half a billion years left.

Here's an article I did about the end of the Universe, just in case you really want to look ahead.

Filed under: Earth, Environment, Questions | 11 Comments »

The connection between solar activity and global warming has been a contentious issue for a long time. The idea that cosmic rays create global cloud cover just doesn't seem to be working out; even the highest estimates of cloud cover variation caused by cosmic ray flux predict the effect to be very small. Now UK scientists have stepped into the debate, producing scientific evidence that there is no link between global warming, cosmic rays and solar activity. Sorry global warming sceptics, we might have to cut back on the emissions after all…
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35 countries, 26 major cities, 370 towns and literally tens of millions of people… What do they all have in common?

They're all switching off their lights for one hour at 8:00 pm local time in a now staggering global event known as Earth Hour. From around the world, Universe Today readers made a huge impact. Read more…

Filed under: Astronomy, Environment | 26 Comments »

Do you remember last year when Sydney, Australia made the news by turning their lights out for one hour to show their concern about global warming? Besides being concerned about the effects, especially for my children and grandchildren, as an astronomer I support anything which helps reduce light pollution, even if it's just for an hour. Beyond extinguishing the lights for 60 minutes at 8pm March 29, 2008, there are lots of things you can do to make Earth Hour 2008 an even greater success. Let's take a look. Read more…

Filed under: Astronomy, Earth, Environment | 34 Comments »

The idea goes like this: Cosmic rays, originating from outside the Solar System, hit the Earth's atmosphere. In doing so these highly energetic particles create microscopic aerosols. Aerosols collect in the atmosphere and act as nuclei for water droplet formation. Large-scale cloud cover can result from this microscopic interaction. Cloud cover reflects light from the Sun, therefore cooling the Earth. This "global dimming" effect could hold some answers to the global warming debate as it influences the amount of radiation entering the atmosphere. Therefore the flux of cosmic rays is highly dependent on the Sun's magnetic field that varies over the 11-year solar cycle.

If this theory is so, some questions come to mind: Is the Sun's changing magnetic field responsible for the amount of global cloud cover? To what degree does this influence global temperatures? Where does that leave man-made global warming? Two research groups have published their work and, perhaps unsurprisingly, have two different opinions…

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Filed under: Environment, Physics | 29 Comments »

Gravity waves are global events. Much like the ripples on a massive pond, these large-scale waves can propagate from an atmospheric disturbance over thousands of miles. These waves are maintained by the gravitational force of Earth pulling down and the buoyancy of the atmosphere pushing up. Until now it has been hard to link atmospheric gravity waves with other atmospheric phenomena, but new research suggests that gravity waves passing over storms can spin up highly dangerous and damaging tornados… Suddenly gravity waves become very important and may help to forecast where and when tornados may strike…
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Filed under: Earth, Environment | 14 Comments »

It's been a strange year for the Arctic. During the summer, high temperatures melted away vast regions of the Arctic sea ice, opening up the Northwest Passage for the first time. But then this winter has been unusually cold, bringing back large large areas of sea ice. So what's going on? Is the Arctic recovering, or is Global Warming marching on?
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Filed under: Earth Observation, Environment | 19 Comments »

It's a stunning photo… And one we all recognize. At this point in time, more than half of the Earth's population lives in or near a city and the results shine clearly from space. The crime is not energy consumption, over-population or even global warming. It's the loss of one of our greatest natural resources… The starry night sky.
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The gradual increase in global temperatures is getting harder and harder to pin on the Sun and its energy output variability. The Sun has a variation in how much energy it outputs but this variability is only about one tenth of one percent. The pattern of atmospheric heating since the 1960s is showing an increase with the increase in human activity (industry, transportation, power generation) and neither are showing signs of slowing down…
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If we really want to combat climate change, how much carbon can we reasonably generate? How much will still push temperatures up? The current presidential candidates are all calling for serious carbon reductions over the next 40 years, but according to researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science, it's not enough. To really stabilize our planet's climate, we need to get away from carbon forever.
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If we needed any more proof that we as a race are damaging the worlds oceans, for the first time, our impact has been mapped by new study to be published in Science. It makes for uncomfortable viewing. Taking 17 known types of human impact on marine ecosystems, this new research suggests that only 4% of the oceans are relatively untouched, whilst 40% are strongly impacted by human activity. The most impacted marine ecosystems include the North Sea, the South and East China Seas, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Gulf, the Bering Sea, the East coast of North America and in much of the western Pacific.
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With the rising threat of global warming, you'd think humans are the best (or worst) climate engineers to arrive on planet Earth. But you'd be wrong. Tiny microbes have been modifying our climate for billions of years, and unless we learn how to work with them, we could be fighting a losing battle to get our greenhouse emissions under control.
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With the diversity of life on Earth, and its ability to exploit every niche, you would think planet could bounce back from a devastating extinction event. Or maybe not. According to researchers from the University of Bristol, life took a full 30 million years to recover from the Permian extinction.
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October of last year was the 50th anniversary of Sputnik, the first spacecraft to be launched into orbit. Since then, we've come a long, long way. Think of all the stuff that's floating around our planet right now: GPS, television, and military satellites, the International Space Station and the Hubble telescope, and a host of debris. With more satellites and projects launching into space, the issue of regulating all of this space traffic is starting to become an issue.

Current regulations of space come from a series of treaties and agreements between nations and organizations, starting with the Outer Space Treaty created 40 years ago. But with private companies like Virgin Galactic merging into space traffic, as well as nations like Japan, India, and China, launching satellites and scientific spacecraft, the need for a defined set of regulations is in order. Read more…

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Increasing amounts of ice mass have been lost from West Antarctica and the Antarctic peninsula over the past ten years, according to a 10-year study from the University of Bristol, England. But at the same time, however, the ice mass in East Antarctica has been roughly stable, with neither loss nor accumulation over the past decade.
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Cancer is a mysterious and complicated disease, with many different types and causes. Researchers are still trying to track down all of the environmental effects that can lead to the disease, as anything from what someone eats to where they live determines the probability of developing cancer. A recent paper published in The International Journal of Astrobiology looked at data for cancer deaths from around the world for the past 140 years, and found a strong correlation between rises in cancer deaths and the amount of cosmic rays emitted by the Sun.
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Filed under: Earth, Environment, Solar Astronomy | 3 Comments »

Good news everyone; the ozone hole above Antarctica has shrunk 30% since the same last year. According to ESA's Envisat satellite, the ozone layer only lost a mere 27.7 million tonnes. Down from last year's record loss of 40 million tonnes. But don't jump to conclusions; it doesn't necessarily mean that the ozone layer is recovering… yet.
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Here in Vancouver, we have a maritime museum with the first ship to completely circumnavigate North America, and the second vessel to complete a voyage through the Northwest Passage - the St. Roch. Their journey was long and difficult, taking 28 months to cross above North America. And just think, if they'd waited until now, they could sail right across with clear waters the whole way. Satellite photos show that Arctic ice levels have reached their lowest point in recorded history, opening up the Northwest Passage.
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Sometimes you wish records didn't get broken. A group of Japanese science agencies announced today that the area of the Arctic Sea covered by ice is at its lowest level ever recorded. It reached this low point on August 15th, and it's going to get worse. Ice levels should continue to shrink all the way through mid-September. If reality matches predictions, the ice levels will reach IPCC predictions 40 years ahead of schedule.
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Researchers are reporting that the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes has doubled over the last century. 100 years ago, the Atlantic saw 6 severe storms a year, and now it experiences 15. The study concludes that warmer sea surface temperatures are to blame; changing wind patterns from global warming are fueling the increase in hurricanes.
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I recently wrote an article for Wired Science about how there doesn't appear to be a link between cosmic rays and global warming. Now another argument against human-created global warming has fallen to the wayside: increasing temperatures from the Sun.
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Over the coming decades, we're going to learn what kind of impact global warming is going to have on planet Earth. If the impact is as severe as some scientists are predicting, countries might take drastic action to stabilize temperatures. But scientists from Concordia University and the Carnegie Institution think that tinkering with the Earth on a global scale - or geoengineering - is very bad idea, and could make the problem much worse.
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I've got to say, I nearly fell out of my chair when I read this today. NASA Administrator Mike Griffin was interviewed on NPR about the threat of global warming. Apparently, he's not convinced it's a problem.
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