euronews.green
A lithium leach-field in South America. |
Demand for lithium-ion batteries is unprecedented - but is
mining the chemical harmful to the environment? Story here.
euronews.green
A lithium leach-field in South America. |
Demand for lithium-ion batteries is unprecedented - but is
mining the chemical harmful to the environment? Story here.
CBC NEWS
Milder winter likely ahead, and more severe weather too, expert says.
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Kayaking in the Canadian Arctic. Photo credit - Kerry Raymond Nature Communications |
The amount of rainfall in the Arctic may increase at a faster rate than previously thought, according to a modelling study published in Nature Communications. The research suggests that total rainfall will supersede snowfall in the Arctic decades earlier than previously thought, and could have various climatic, ecosystem and socio-economic impacts.
The Arctic is known to be warming faster than most other parts of the world, leading to substantial environmental changes in this region. Research suggests that there will be more rainfall than snowfall in the Arctic at some stage of the 21st century, but it is not yet clear when this shift will occur.
Michelle McCrystall and colleagues used the latest projections from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) to assess the changes in the Arctic water cycle by the year 2100. The authors found that precipitation, such as rainfall and snowfall, is projected to increase in all seasons. Rainfall is projected to become the dominant form of precipitation one to two decades earlier than previous models suggested, depending on the season and region, linked to increased warming and a faster decline of sea ice. For example, previous models projected the central Arctic to transition to a rainfall-dominated region in 2090, but it is now predicted to transition in 2060/2070. The authors suggest that a transition to a rainfall-dominated Arctic could occur at lower temperature thresholds than previous models projected, even at 1.5°C warming in some regions, such as Greenland.
The authors argue that more stringent climate mitigation policies are required, as a rainfall-dominant Arctic would have impacts on ice sheet melting, rivers and wild animal populations, and have important social-ecological, cultural and economic implications.
PEMBINA
INSTITUTE
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A power pylon wrecked by severe weather. A Manitoba Hydro photo. |
Common Dreams
'Urgent' action is needed, atmospheric scientist Markus Rex said.
Policy Options
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Oil pipe sits on a railway siding in SW Manitoba. A PinP photo. |
If Alberta’s policy-makers don’t plan for a managed fossil fuel decline, financial and other institutions will make the decision for them. Story here.
Widespread, long-term declines in temperate lake oxygen levels have been reported in Nature this week. This trend, calculated for nearly 400 lakes within an 80-year period, may be linked to warming temperatures and decreasing water clarity. The declines could threaten essential lake ecosystems.
The concentration of dissolved oxygen in aquatic systems can affect the balance of nutrients, biodiversity, the quality of drinking water and greenhouse gas emissions. While oxygen loss in oceans has been documented, the changes in dissolved oxygen concentrations in lakes are less well understood, in part owing to a lack of long-term and large-scale studies.Kevin Rose and authors measured temperature and dissolved oxygen levels for almost 400 lakes (mostly in Europe and the United States) between 1941 and 2017. Declines in dissolved oxygen are up to nine times greater than those observed in the oceans.
Increased water temperatures are associated with reduced oxygen concentration in surface waters. And lower oxygen levels in deeper waters are linked to the formation of distinct thermal layers at different depths, along with reduced water clarity.
There were some exceptions to these trends; for example, a large subset of 87 lakes exhibited increases in both water temperature and dissolved oxygen concentration. However, this anomaly could be attributed to algal blooms, which may increase concentrations at the surface, but reduce oxygen solubility lower down.
Human activity and warming temperatures are expected to continue to drive future losses in lake dissolved oxygen.
As the authors conclude, ongoing, rigorous efforts will be needed to counter these effects.
The Tyee
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Bighorn country, eastern slopes, AB. Photo by Aerin Jacob
Approving the Grassy Mountain Coal Project will surely spell nothing less than the industrialization of Alberta’s sensitive eastern slopes. Story here.
Science Daily
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The Pine Island ice shelf - Antarctica. Photo credit - NASA ice. Researchers have confirmed for the first time that Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica could cross tipping points, leading to a rapid and irreversible retreat which would have significant consequences for global sea level. Story here. |
Journal of Experimental Biology
"Polar bear with seal kill, Baffin Island" by vtluvbug79 As Arctic sea ice disappears, polar bears will lose access to their preferred prey – highly caloric seals. The authors say that, on land, a polar bear would need to eat about 1.5 caribou, 37 Arctic char, 74 snow geese, 216 snow goose eggs, or 3 million crowberries to get the digestible energy they now get from the blubber of one adult ringed seal. Read the full study here. READ another version of this story: Here. |
EcoWatch
The head of the world body sounds the alarm on what he calls humanity's "senseless and suicidal war on nature." Details here.
Nature
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A PublicDomainPictures.com photo |
PHYS ORG
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US Firefighter Clay Stephen helps fight Australian bushfires in Tambo Complex near Victoria. Photo by BLM Idaho. |
The ten costliest weather disasters worldwide this year saw insured damages worth $150 billion, topping the figure for 2019 and reflecting a long-term impact of global warming, according to a report today. Story here.
The Tyee
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How ethical are ethical funds?
Using tools which included video taken by a robot submarine, a Canadian research team recently discovered an amazing array of plants and animals, living in the heart of Milne, the very ice shelf which broke apart just this summer north of Ellesmere Island (above), losing almost half of its mass. Dr. Derek Mueller, Professor of Geography and Environment Science at Ottawa's Carleton University, is a team member who's worked in the area for decades. In an email to PinP, he can barely disguise his excitement over what they found. "There are really neat microbial mats (communities of micro-organisms including cyanobacteria, green algae, diatoms, heterotrophic bacteria, and viruses) that live on the surface of the ice shelves. Similar microbial mats can be found in ponds on the bottom of shallow lakes... Inside the sea ice and clinging to its underside are communities of algae and lots of kinds of phytoplankton in the ocean as well." Small animals from marine waters under the sea ice in Tuvaijuittuq, a Marine Protected Area in the region. Photo credit: P. Coupel and P. Tremblay, Fisheries and Oceans Canada. So what might the world lose if these organisms disappear with the ice? "This Last Ice Area will hopefully serve as a refuge for ice-dependent species," Dr. Mueller explains, "both on land and in the marine environment. We know relatively little about these organisms - how they are adapted to their surroundings, how unique they are (or perhaps how similar they are to their cousins in analogous environments in the Antarctic) and many more questions! We won't get to ask these questions if global temperatures rise unabated and this ice melts away." The images above come from just a tiny part of the vastness Mueller refers to, called the "Last Ice Area." And, in the face of a rapidly-warming Arctic, events involving the break-up of sea ice are all too common there. What's left of the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf in the Last Ice Area after breaking apart in 2011. Credit: CEN, Laval University. |
Here's how Dr. Mueller describes the LIA. "'The Last Ice Area' means the region in the Arctic Ocean where sea ice is most likely to survive in a warming world." It sprawls for up to 25 hundred kilometres along the coastlines of northern Canada and Greenland and well out to sea. It's there that the thickest sea-ice in the entire Arctic can be found. Because of its importance as a home for ice-dependant marine life and its cultural significance to the Inuit people living there, they and the World Wildlife Fund have long promoted it as worthy of conservation. (Local Inuit elders call it “Similijuaq - place of the big ice.”) |
Nature (With minor editing by PinP)
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One of several steel power pylons toppled in an historic wind, snow and ice storm which swept through eastern Manitoba about a year ago. It left thousands without power in what was described as the worst power outage in the history of Manitoba Hydro. Damages are expected to exceed 100 million dollars. A Manitoba Hydro photo. |
Even if human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be reduced to zero, global temperatures may continue to rise for centuries afterwards, according to a simulation of the global climate published in Scientific Reports.
Jorgen Randers and Ulrich Goluke modelled the effect of different greenhouse gas emission reductions on changes in the global climate from 1850 to 2500. They also created projections of global temperature and sea level rises.
What do they show? Under conditions where manmade greenhouse gas emissions peak during the 2030s, then decline to zero by 2100, global temperatures will be 3°C warmer and sea levels 3 metres higher by 2500 than they were in 1850. Where all such emissions are reduced to zero during the year 2020 here's the scenario the models portray.
After an initial decline, global temperatures will still be around 3°C warmer and sea levels will rise by around 2.5 metres by 2500, compared to 1850. Global temperatures could continue to increase after emissions have reduced, as continued melting of Arctic ice and carbon-containing permafrost may increase the levels of water vapour, methane and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Melting of Arctic ice and permafrost would also reduce the area of ice reflecting heat and light from the sun.
To prevent the projected temperature and sea level rises, the authors suggest that all GHG emissions would have had to be reduced to zero between 1960 and 1970. To prevent global temperature and sea level rises after greenhouse gas emissions have ceased, and to limit the potentially catastrophic impacts of this on Earth’s ecosystems and human society, at least 33 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide would need to be removed from the atmosphere each year from 2020 onwards through carbon capture and storage methods.
Prevention Web (UN) The clear signs of human-induced climate change reached new heights in 2024, with some of the consequences being irrever...