http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php Near realtime Climate Change Monintoring Service hu Climate Change News Copyright (C) RSOE EDIS 2008 havaria@rsoe.hu (RSOE EDIS) zsolt.boszormenyi@rsoe.hu (Zsolt Boszormenyi) http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=440 China has started paying attention to the strategic implications of the melting of Arctic ice and could seek a more active role in regulating use of the region, a report said yesterday. The report comes as Russia prepares to sail a large oil tanker the entire length of its Arctic sea coast for the first time, opening a strategic energy trading bridge between European Russia and east Asia. 2010-03-11T05:14:45 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=439 As the ice melts and the native Inuit people and polar bears retreat, more and more ships and commercial explorers are Arctic bound. With the dream of the Northwest passage opening up for sailors, an uncertain international legal status and vast oil and gas reserves the future could be bleak for the Arctic. Ahead of Wednesday's debate with the EU's top diplomat Catherine Ashton, we spoke to British Liberal Diana Wallis who is active on this issue and sponsored a parliamentary resolution. 2010-03-10T12:06:23 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=438 Russians have been focusing on the impact of global warming on their northern regions, worried that it will turn the northern third of their country into an impassable bog but hopeful that it will leave the adjoining Arctic Ocean sufficient free of ice to allow for economic development and shipping. Earlier this year, Oxfam released a report, entitled “Reaching Tipping Point? Climate Change and Poverty in Tajikistan,” based on interviews with people in that Central Asian country and its neighbors whose lives are being transformed by rising temperatures. 2010-03-10T05:21:24 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=437 A section of the Arctic Ocean seafloor that holds vast stores of frozen methane is showing signs of instability and widespread venting of the powerful greenhouse gas, according to new research findings. The study, published this month in the journal Science, shows that the frozen seabed under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and leaking large amounts of the gas into the atmosphere. 2010-03-09T05:20:16 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=436 Carbon dioxide (C02) is the most prevalent greenhouse gas that is trapping heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet to what most climate scientists consider dangerous levels. But methane, a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more powerful than CO2, has also been growing at an alarming rate, with concentrations more than doubling since pre-industrial times. 2010-03-05T05:04:45 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=435 Global warming is raising the danger from typhoons, Taiwan experts warned Monday, saying the island may be hit in a year or two by a powerful storm like the one which killed more than 700 last August. Typhoon Morakot dumped a record 3,000 millimetres (120 inches) of rainfall and caused massive mudslides in the south of the island, and the government should be prepared for similar disasters in the future, they said. 2010-03-02T07:32:30 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=434 China has started exploring how to reap economic and strategic benefits from the ice melting at the Arctic with global warming, a Stockholm research institute said Monday. Chinese officials have so far had been cautious in expressing interest in the region for fear of causing alarm among the five countries bordering the Arctic, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said. 2010-03-02T07:30:59 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=433 Climactic changes might currently be threatening the survival of polar bears (Ursus maritimus), but similar shifts appear to have played an important part in bringing the species into existence in the not too distant past. 2010-03-02T07:23:50 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=432 Climate change is melting the floating ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula, giving scientists a preview of what could happen if other ice shelves around the southern continent disappear, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said on Monday. The ice has retreated so far from the land mass that Charcot Island, which has long been connected to the peninsula by an ice bridge, emerged as a real island again last year, a USGS scientist said. 2010-02-23T05:23:36 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=431 Summer sea ice is melting in the Arctic, exposing for the first time the fabled Northwest Passage that Europeans sought for centuries. That creates a new frontier for human endeavors ... and potentially a new world of trouble, scientists said this weekend at the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in San Diego. 2010-02-23T05:21:49 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=430 Waters from warmer parts of the ocean are penetrating into the normally chilly fjords of the Greenland coast, driving some of the glacier melt that has been gathering speed there in recent years, a new study finds. “This is the first time we've seen waters this warm in any of the fjords in Greenland,” said study leader Fiamma Straneo, a physical oceanographer from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in Massachusetts. 2010-02-20T05:06:32 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=429 The potential impact of climate change on creatures that live in the Antarctic has been highlighted by a new report. The findings, published by the British Antarctic Survey, showed that as a result of the melting ice covering the waters of the area, populations of krill are falling. Krill is one of the diet staples of penguins, seals and whales and the diminishing number of krill could lead to the population of such creatures being reduced. 2010-02-20T05:05:20 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=428 A worried Norwegian ambassador to the United States visited Charlotte on Wednesday to raise awareness of global warming. While warming in the Southeast was negligible for much of the past century, Norway is among a handful of Arctic nations witnessing rapid changes at the top of the globe. 2010-02-18T07:18:48 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=427 Supporting the argument on glacier melt, Julian Hunt, Emeritus Professor of Climate Modelling, University of Cambridge, U.K., showed evidence from a Chinese study to state that glaciers are indeed melting fast. 2010-02-18T05:12:52 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=426 Tajikistan has done little to contribute to climate change, but is among the countries most adversely affected by it, the charity Oxfam says. Extreme weather conditions and melting glaciers pose a great threat to its food security and social stability. 2010-02-17T09:20:00 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=425 Glaciers in west Greenland are melting 100 times faster at their end points beneath the ocean than they are at their surfaces, according to a new NASA/university study published online Feb. 14 in Nature Geoscience. The results suggest this undersea melting caused by warmer ocean waters is playing an important, if not dominant, role in the current evolution of Greenland's glaciers, a factor that had previously been overlooked. 2010-02-17T04:54:49 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=424 Rajendra Pachauri, head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which came under fire for an error in predicting that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, said on Tuesday that the contentions of snowfall discrediting the meltdown were incorrect and there was no ambiguity that the glaciers were melting. 2010-02-16T21:10:07 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=423 Greenland's continent-sized icesheet is being significantly eroded by winds and currents that drive warmer water into fjords, where it carves out the base of coastal glaciers, according to studies released Sunday. The icy mass sitting atop Greenland holds enough water to boost global sea levels by seven metres (23 feet), potentially drowning low-lying coastal cities and deltas around the world. 2010-02-14T19:36:19 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=422 Climate experts have been forced to admit another embarrassing error in their most recent report on the threat of climate change. In a background note – released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) last night – the UN group said its 2007 report wrongly stated that 55% of the Netherlands lies below sea level. In fact, only 26% of the country does. The figure used by the IPCC included all areas in the country that are prone to flooding, including land along rivers above sea level. This accounts for 29% of the Dutch countryside. 2010-02-14T06:07:17 http://cc.rsoe.hu/index.php?pageid=news_read&hirid=421 Global warming has melted so much arctic ice that a telecommunication group is moving forward with a project that was unthinkable a few years ago: laying fiber optic cable between Tokyo and London by way of the Northwest Passage. The proposed system would nearly cut in half the time it takes to send messages from the United Kingdom to Asia, said Walt Ebell, CEO of Kodiak-Kenai Cable Co. The route is the shortest underwater path between Tokyo and London. 2010-02-14T05:20:03