Alessandro Boccaletti's Blog, page 3

The researchers project that by the year 2100, global temperatures will rise 5.9°C (~10.5°F) above pre-industrial values.—We have just 80 years to save humanity, but could be less.

Global mean temperature anomaly with respect to preindustrial reference level. Left panel: Reconstruction of last 784,000 yrs. Right panel: Global warming projection to 2100 based on newly calculated paleoclimate sensitivity. Credit: Friedrich, et al. (2016)

A warm climate is more sensitive to changes in atmospheric CO2

It is well-established in the scientific community that increases in atmospheric CO2 levels result in global warming, but the magnitude of the effect may vary depending on average global temperature. A new study, published this week in Science Advances and led by Tobias Friedrich from the International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa (UHM), concludes that warm climates are more sensitive to changes in CO2 levels than cold climates.

Increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations cause an imbalance in the Earth’s heat budget: more heat is retained than expelled, which in turn generates global surface warming. Climate sensitivity is a term used to describe the amount of warming expected to result after an increase in the concentration of CO2. This number is traditionally calculated using complex computer models of the climate system, but despite decades of progress, the number is still subject to uncertainty.

The new study, which included scientists from the University of Washington, the University at Albany, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, took a different approach in calculating climate sensitivity: using data from the history of Earth. The researchers examined various reconstructions of past temperatures and CO2 levels to determine how the climate system has responded to previous changes in its energy balance.

“The first step was to reconstruct the history of global mean temperatures for the last 784,000 years, using combined data from marine sediment cores, ice cores, and computer simulations covering the last eight glacial cycles,” said Friedrich, a post-doctoral researcher at IPRC.

The second step involved calculating the Earth’s energy balance for this time period, using estimates of greenhouse gas concentrations extracted from air bubbles in ice cores, and incorporating astronomical factors, known as Milankovitch Cycles, that effect the planetary heat budget.

“Our results imply that the Earth’s sensitivity to variations in atmospheric CO2 increases as the climate warms,” explained Friedrich. “Currently, our planet is in a warm phase—an interglacial period—and the associated increased climate sensitivity needs to be taken into account for future projections of warming induced by human activities.”

Using these estimates based on Earth’s paleoclimate sensitivity, the authors computed the warming over the next 85 years that could result from a human-induced, business-as-usual greenhouse gas emission scenario. The researchers project that by the year 2100, global temperatures will rise 5.9°C (~10.5°F) above pre-industrial values. This magnitude of warming overlaps with the upper range of estimates presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Our study also allows us to put our 21st century temperatures into the context of Earth’s history. Paleoclimate data can actually teach us a lot about our future,” said Axel Timmermann, co-author of the study and professor at UHM.

The results of the study demonstrate that unabated human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are likely to push Earth’s climate out of the envelope of temperature conditions that have prevailed for the last 784,000 years.

“The only way out is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible,” concluded Friedrich.

Explore further: Fewer low clouds in the tropics

More information: “Nonlinear climate sensitivity and its implications for future greenhouse warming,” Science Advances, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1501923

Journal reference: Science Advances 

Provided by: University of Hawaii at Manoa

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-11-climate-sensitive-atmospheric-co2.html#jCp

Pollution emitted near equator has biggest impact on global ozone

November 7, 2016

Since the 1980s, air pollution has increased worldwide, but it has increased at a much faster pace in regions close to the equator. Research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill now reveals that this changing global emissions map is creating more total ozone worldwide compared to the amount of pollution being emitted, signaling an effect that could be difficult to reign in without strategic policy planning.

“Emissions are growing in places where there is a much greater effect on the formation of ozone,” said Jason West, who led the research at UNC-Chapel Hill with former graduate student and first author Yuqiang Zhang. “A ton of emissions in a region close to the equator, where there is a lot of sunlight and intense heat, produces more ozone than a ton of emissions in a region farther from it.”

The work, to appear in the Nov. 7 advance online issue of Nature Geoscience, provides a much-needed path forward on where in the world to strategically reduce emissions of pollutants that form ozone, which when present in the lower atmosphere, or troposphere, is one of the primary causes of air pollution-related respiratory problems and heart disease. (In the upper atmosphere, or stratosphere, ozone helps protect against the sun’s ultraviolet rays.)

To drive home the point, West explained that China’s emissions increased more than India’s and Southeast Asia’s from 1980 to 2010, but Southeast Asia and India, despite their lower growth in emissions during this period, appear to have contributed more to the total global ozone increase due to their proximity to the equator.

The reason is that ozone, a greenhouse gas and toxic air pollutant, is not emitted but forms when ultraviolet light hits nitrogen oxides (basically combustion exhaust from cars and other sources). When these pollutants interact with more intense sunlight and higher temperatures, the interplay speeds up the chemical reactions that form ozone. Higher temperatures near the equator also increase the vertical motion of air, transporting ozone-forming chemicals higher in the troposphere, where they can live longer and form more ozone.

“The findings were surprising,” said West. “We thought that location was going to be important, but we didn’t suspect it would be the most important factor contributing to total ozone levels worldwide. Our findings suggest that where the world emits is more important than how much it emits.”

Zhang, West and colleagues, including Owen Cooper and Audrey Gaudel, from the University of Colorado Boulder and NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, used a computer model to simulate the total amount of ozone in the troposphere, the part of the atmosphere where ozone is harmful to humans and agriculture, between 1980 and 2010. Since emissions have shifted south during this period, they wanted to answer, what contributed more to the increased production of ozone worldwide: the changing magnitude of emissions or location?

To find out, the team used a unique European data set of ozone observations from commercial aircraft to confirm the strong increases in ozone above Asia. Then they superimposed a map of how much pollution the world was emitting in 1980 onto where the world was emitting it in 2010, and vice versa, in addition to another scenario of the growth of methane gas, to determine what is driving the world’s increase in ozone production.

“Location, by far,” said West, associate professor of environmental sciences in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health.

The findings point to several strategies for reducing ground-level ozone across the world, such as decreasing emissions of ozone precursors in regions close to the equator, particularly those with the fastest growth of emissions. However, concerns exist for policy makers.

“A more challenging scenario is that even if there is a net reduction in global emissions, ozone levels may not decrease if emissions continue to shift toward the equator,” said Cooper. “But continuing aircraft and satellite observations of ozone across the tropics can monitor the situation and model forecasts can guide decision making for controlling global ozone pollution.

Explore further: Air pollution plays bigger role in global rainfall changes

More information: Tropospheric ozone change from 1980 to 2010 dominated by equatorward redistribution of emissions, Nature Geoscience, nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/ngeo2827

Journal reference: Nature Geoscience 

Provided by: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-11-pollution-emitted-equator-biggest-impact.html#jCp

Adapting to climate change – a major challenge for forestsNovember 1, 2016

Climate change is happening so quickly that a question mark hangs over whether forests can adapt accordingly without human interference and can continue to perform their various functions such as timber production, protection against natural hazards and providing a recreational space for the public. In Switzerland, temperatures have already risen by around 1.9°C since the beginning of industrialisation. Even keeping global warming down to the 1.5-2°C target set by the Paris Agreement on climate change will yield a further increase of 1-2°C.

For the Swiss forests, this warming trend will involve vegetation zones shifting 500‑700 metres higher in altitude. Thus, in future, broadleaf trees will increasingly thrive in lower-lying mountain forests which are currently dominated by conifers. Rising temperatures and drought levels during the growing season are exerting stress on trees and are increasing the risk of forest fires and exacerbating attacks by harmful organisms. This affects Norway spruce, for example, which is more susceptible to bark beetle infestation in prolonged dry spells. In future, it will be less common at lower elevations, while the conditions will be increasingly favourable to more drought-tolerant species such as the sessile oak.

Foresters and forest owners should already tailor the management of their forests to these future conditions. With a view to ensuring a sound empirical basis for this, in 2009 the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL and the Federal Office for the Environment FOEN launched the Forests and Climate Change research programme (see box 1). The results provide a comprehensive overview, unique for Central Europe, of the effects of climate change on trees and on the various functions of forests.

Safeguarding forest functions against the backdrop of climate change

The research results show that while forests can adapt to climate change to a certain extent, they are unlikely to be capable of continuing to perform their functions – so natural-hazard protection, the increasingly vital production of timber as a renewable raw material and energy source or their recreational function – everywhere to the extent we have become used to. A major disruptive event such as the forest fire that happened above Leuk in the Swiss canton of Valais in the hot summer of 2003 can undermine forests’ natural function of providing protection from natural hazards and can require costly measures such as afforestation and avalanche barriers. It will take decades before the forest’s full protective function is restored there. As a result of climate change, such events may become a more frequent occurrence in future.

To avert the loss of such functions, the research programme devised various management strategies adapted to changing climatic conditions. In particular, they result in a greater increase in the diversity of the tree species. How a forest is affected by climate change and what type of management makes it more able to cope with the new climatic conditions depend decisively on the particularities of the relevant site, especially soil depth, water supply and slope exposure. These conditions are changing from site to site and must be viewed in the context of the management of the forest. In this way, for example, areas in high-resolution site maps can be shown where the climate-sensitive Norway spruce can continue to thrive (box 2). Currently, tree-species recommendations are being examined in forest tests along with the cantonal forestry offices and associations of forest owners and environmental and forestry industry associations.

Provided by: Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL

Study predicts deserts in Spain if global warming continues

Southern Spain will become desert and deciduous forests will vanish from much of the Mediterranean basin unless global warming is reined in sharply, according to a study released Thursday.

Researchers used historical data and computer models to forecast the likely impact of climate change on the Mediterranean region, based on the targets for limiting global warming 195 countries agreed to during a summit in France last year.

“The Paris Agreement says it’s necessary to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), if possible 1.5 degrees,” Joel Guiot, a researcher at the National Center of Scientific Research in France who co-wrote the study, said. “That doesn’t seem much to people, but we wanted to see what the difference would be on a sensitive region like the Mediterranean.”

The authors examined the environmental changes the Mediterranean has undergone during the last 10,000 years, using pollen records to gauge the effect that temperatures had on plant life.

They came up with four scenarios pegged to different concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Three of the scenarios are already widely used by scientists to model future climate change, while the fourth was designed to predict what would happen if global warming remains at or below 1.5 degrees Celsius this century.

The fourth scenario is particularly ambitious because average global temperatures have already risen by 1 degree Celsius since pre-industrial times. It is, however, the only one under which Mediterranean basin ecosystems would remain within the range of changes seen in the past 10,000 years, the researchers found.

At the other extreme —the scenario in which global warming hits 2 degrees—deserts would expand in Spain, North Africa and the Near East, while vegetation in the region would undergo a significant change from the coasts right up to the mountains, the study states.

The region is considered a hotspot for biodiversity and its landscape also has long been cultivated by humans, making it a particularly interesting case study for the researchers, whose work was published online in the journal Science .

“Climate has always been important there,” said Guiot, noting that several civilizations—from the ancient Egyptians to the Greeks and the Romans—emerged around the Mediterranean over the past millennia.

While their demise probably resulted from social and political changes, climate conditions may have played a role in the past and could do so again in the future, he said.

Current flows of migrants are being driven largely by political unrest, but prolonged periods of drought could spark mass migrations of people due to climate change, Guiot said.

The researchers acknowledged that their study did not factor in the environmental impact of human activity in the Mediterranean basin. Some areas already are experiencing severe water shortages made worse by intensive agriculture and tree clearance.

“If anything, human action will exacerbate what the study projects, and it could turn out to be too optimistic,” Guiot said.

The Paris climate agreement comes into effect next week.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-10-spain-global.html#jCp

October 27, 2016 by Frank Jordans

More information: “Climate change: The 2015 Paris Agreement thresholds and Mediterranean basin ecosystems,” Science science.sciencemag.org/cgi/doi/10.1126/science.aah5015

Journal reference: Science 

Australia set for more heatwaves amid climate change: study

October 27, 2016

Australia is set to experience more heatwaves, with record-breaking hot weather becoming “normal” across the continent as climate change pushes up land and sea temperatures, a government report warned Thursday.

The biannual State of the Climate report from the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and national science body CSIRO said Australia was already experiencing more extremely hot days and severe fire seasons, and projections showed temperatures would likely keep rising.

“Australian temperatures will almost certainly continue to increase over the coming decades. Temperature projections suggest more extremely hot days and fewer extremely cool days,” CSIRO senior scientist Helen Cleugh said.

“As land temperatures increase, so do ocean temperatures and the report shows that the deep ocean is also impacted, with warming now recorded at least 2,000 metres (1.24 miles) below the sea surface.”

The country experienced its three warmest springs on record between 2013-15, the weather bureau said. Spring, between September to November, is the period when temperature and rainfall are critical to southern Australia’s bushfire season.

While there has been more rain in some areas, there has also been a “significant seasonal decline” in others, including an 11 percent drop during the April-October growing season in Australia’s southeastern region since the mid-1990s, BOM added.

“The changing climate significantly affects all Australians through increased heatwaves, more significant wet weather events and more severe fire weather conditions,” said the bureau’s climate monitoring manager Karl Braganza.

“Some of the record-breaking extreme heat we have been seeing recently will be considered normal in 30 years’ time.”

Cleugh said changes in the climate was due to an increase in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, which were keeping heat in Earth’s lower atmosphere.

She added that this year CO2 levels would reach a global annual average of over 400ppm (parts per million)—the highest in two million years.

Australia has warmed by approximately 1.0 degree Celsius (1.8 Fahrenheit) since 1910, with the number of days each year that post temperatures of more than 35C increasing in recent decades except in northern Australia, the report said.

Meanwhile, rainfall has reduced by 19 percent between May to July in southwestern Australia since 1970.

While bushfires are common in Australia’s arid summer, which usually begins in December, firefighters have said they are observing deteriorating conditions, including an apparent increase in the number of the most severe blazes in recent times.

Australia set for more heatwaves amid climate change: study

Credit to Phys.org

Tasmanian devil’s milk could be key to combating drug-resistant superbugs – study

“A glass of Tasmanian devil’s milk a day, will keep the doctors away.”

Superbugs have proven to be too stubborn for antibiotics, but it appears a much simpler solution could be available. Scientists have found that milk from Tasmanian devils have the power to kill drug-resistant bacteria.

Scientists at the University of Sydney turned to the marsupials because of their biology – particularly because the underdeveloped young have an immature immune system when they are born, yet survive in their mother’s pouch by suckling milk for about four months.

This led the researchers to believe the milk made by Tasmanian devils was full of beneficial qualities which help their vulnerable young survive and thrive.

“There are potential pathogens present in the devil microbiome, so the fact that the under-developed young in the pouch don’t get sick was a clue something interesting was going on,” researcher and PhD candidate Emma Peel said, as quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald. “That’s what inspired our most recent study.”

When they tested the milk, they found several peptides called cathelicidins, a natural kind of antibiotic. In total, the animals were found to have six cathelicidins – compared to the singular cathelicidin found in humans, known as LL-37.

The researchers then applied the peptides found in the milk to drug-resistant bacteria, including methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The peptides were also applied to enterococcus, which has been found to be resistant to the powerful vancomycin antibiotic.

“Vancomycin is a pretty potent antibiotic and if a bug is resistant to that, then there aren’t a lot of drug options available to you,” Peel said.

However, the researchers found that perhaps traditional drugs aren’t the answer at all, because in both cases the bacteria died after being introduced to the peptides.

“We showed that these devil peptides kill multi-drug resistant bacteria, which is really cool,” Peel said.

The finding, which could lead to new drugs being developed to combat superbugs, is a huge breakthrough in the fight against the powerful bacteria, which a recent study concluded could kill 10 million people a year by 2050.

The research was published in Nature’s Scientific Reports journal.

Meanwhile, University of Sydney geneticist Kathy Belov says a study is also underway with koalas, as preliminary results show that similar peptides are present in koala milk.

“Australia has lots of marsupials which would have evolved to protect their joeys [babies] from different pathogens in different environments,” Belov said. “There has to be a treasure trove of amazing peptides out there to be discovered.”

Credits:

Cathelicidins in the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii)

E. Peel, Y. Cheng, J. T. Djordjevic, S. Fox, T. C. Sorrell & K. Belov

Scientific Reports 6, Article number: 35019 (2016)

doi:10.1038/srep35019

Download Citation

Evolutionary geneticsImmunogenetics

Received:

17 May 2016

Accepted:

19 September 2016

Published online:

11 October 2016

New novel

I have started to work on my next novel. It will be the second book of Dr. Bauman's trilogy. Expect many good things and a lot of suspense. This world is really sick.

A small hint in the shadow of mysteries.

"Nature rebellion".

What does it mean? I leave the answer to...the release.

Expected to be published in 2017.

Alessandro Boccaletti

Painkillers linked to heart failure: study

September 29, 2016

Painkillers linked to heart failure: study

Widely used prescription and non-prescription painkillers are associated with an increased risk of hospital admission for heart failure, according to a study released Thursday.

The drugs in question are so-called NSAIDs, or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, including several known as COX-2 inhibitors.

Many are among the most commonly used drugs to alleviate pain and inflammation, and some were introduced over a century ago with minimal safety checks.

The broad link between the use of NSAIDs and heart failure is well established, but which drugs pose the greatest risk, and at what doses, remains poorly understood.

To get a clearer picture, a team of researchers led by Giovanni Corrao at the University of Milano-Bicocca combed through the medical records of nearly 10 million NSAID users in four European countries: Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Italy.

They identified 92,163 hospital admissions for heart failure and then checked to see which of 27 drugs—and at what doses—each of them was taking.

Overall, they found that current use of NSAID slightly raised the risk of hospital admission compared to past use for nine drugs.

These included diclofenac, ibuprofen, indomethacin, ketorolac, naproxen, nimesulide, and piroxicam, along with two COX 2 inhibitors, etoricoxib and rofecoxib.

At very high doses, some doubled the risk of hospital admission.

The researchers emphasised that the study was observational, meaning that it did not benefit from the controlled conditions of an experiment and thus could not draw firm conclusions about cause and effect.

But the findings “offer further evidence that the most frequently used individual NSAIDs and selective COX2 inhibitors are associated with an increased risk of hospital admissions,” they concluded.

The study was published in BMJ, a leading medical journal.

“Even a small increase in cardiovascular risk is a concern for public health,” two Danish heart experts, Gunnar Gislason and Christian Torp-Pedersen, wrote in a comment, also in BMJ.

For one drug in particular—diclofenac—the European Society of Cardiology has recommended against its use at any dose, they noted.

Helen Williams, a consultant pharmacist for cardiovascular disease at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in Britain, noted that the country’s National Health Service had been “moving away” from the powerful NSAIDs in recent years.

“Reassuringly,” she added, “use of the most commonly purchased NSAID—ibuprofen—was associated with a lower overall increased risk” compared to the other medicines, she added in a comment released by the Science Media Centre.

Explore further: Common painkillers are more dangerous than we think

Journal reference: British Medical Journal (BMJ)

How humanity would deal a 75 feet sea rise?

“Your life must now run the course that’s been set for it.”

― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Global warming = 75 feet (23 meters) sea rise.

Are we ready to move away from coastal cities?

As carbon dioxide concentration rise, the ice sheet melts, and a lot of cities will submerge. Could you immagine New York, London, Hong Kong, San Francisco and many others underwater?

People do not understand that we have crossed the point of no return. We are in unchartered territories in reference to the speed of change. It could be much faster than thought.

Billions of people live around coastal cities.

We have alredy altered Earth climate speed of change.

You should all build awareness. Ignorance is not an excuse.

Read this scientist  article below, and post your comments if you really care about yourself and the planet in which you live!

Scientists say ocean fossils found in mountains are cause for concern over future sea levels

Do you care about your daily life?

Are you aware of what is going on with the current climate change?

Do you know how is it going to affect you, your life, and the people around you?

These are challenging questions for all the readers and people that care about Earth imminent future.

I would like to see your position in reference to the above questions.

The results will then forwarded to the:

Deputy Director

U.S. Geological Survey

Michigan-Ohio Water Science Center

6520 Mercantile Way

Lansing, MI 48911-5991

http://mi.water.usgs.gov

Alessandro Boccaletti

Published Author

Amazon:

www.amazon.com/author/alessandro.boccaletti

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Alessandro Boccaletti