Climate Science

What’s the difference between a majestic layer of white sea ice and an ominous dark blue open ocean? For the Arctic, it means about a 30 to 50 per cent loss in reflectivity (or albedo). And when seasonal sea-ice states are between 30 and 80 per cent below 1979 measures (depending on the method used to gauge remaining sea ice and relative time of year), that means very, very concerning additional heating impacts to an already dangerous human-caused warming. How concerning, however, remained somewhat unclear until recently.

When Elizabeth Kolbert joined The New Yorker in 1999, after more than a decade covering New York politics as a reporter and columnist for The New York Times, she began gravitating to environmental issues. “The magazine has a history in this area,” she told me in one of two recent conversations. “They’d published Rachel Carson. It was unoccupied territory at the time.” This week Ms.

"Severe Drought Has U.S. West Fearing Worst" - front page headline, New York Times, Sunday, Feb. 1 Ayoung couple on the Canada Line asks for directions to the airport. They are flying home to San Francisco after a week skiing in Whistler, despite the fact there was not much snow. "But there was more snow in Whistler," the man says, "because there's none in Tahoe."

On Wednesday, the Church of England’s parliamentary body announced that it was considering redirecting its investments in an effort to battle climate change. The motion put forward, which called for the Church to recognize “the damage being done to the planet through the burning of fossil fuels,” received overwhelming support.

Scientists call it Santa’s revenge. It’s the theory that persistent weather patterns at the mid-latitudes – like this winter’s tediously long-lasting polar vortex or California’s severe drought – are a direct consequence of climate change heating up the Arctic. New evidence suggests the link is real, even as experts continue to argue over how much it is influencing the weather on a day to day basis. The effect has implications for severe weather predictions, food security and water use across the northern hemisphere.

OTTAWA – The federal government will cut $2.6 billion in spending and nearly 5,000 jobs from its science-focused departments between 2013 and 2016, says a report released Thursday by a union representing government scientists and professionals. The report, which includes survey data showing a majority of scientists believe their departments are weakening efforts to protect Canadians and the environment, highlights the departure of key experts who did research on rail safety and public health, as well as the recent review of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline proposal.

Polar amplification. It’s kind of a dirty word in the climate science community. It’s, what would seem, a counter-intuitive displacement of much of the warming world’s heat over some of its coldest regions, during its coldest seasons. It’s not the curse word that everyone can’t say. No, that’s more likely hydrogen sulfide gas — the veritable F-word of the oceanic climate community and only slightly worse than the M-word, methane. But it’s an uncomfortable term nonetheless because it brings up some rather uncomfortable issues.

Global temperatures continued rising in 2013 despite the cold snap that hit parts of the US this winter, NASA research shows. Last year tied with 2009 and 2006, making it the seventh warmest year since record-keeping began back in 1880. The report was released on Tuesday by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. GISS climatologist Gavin Schmidt said such long-­term trends are "unusual".

LOS ANGELES — Responding to one of the worst droughts in California’s history, state officials announced on Friday that they would cut off the water to local agencies serving 25 million residents and about 750,000 acres of farmland.

Tropical rainforests are becoming less able to cope with rising global temperatures according to a study that has looked back over the way they have responded to variations in temperature in the past half a century. For each 1C rise in temperature, tropical regions now release about 2 billion extra tonnes of carbon-containing gases – such as carbon dioxide and methane – into the atmosphere, compared to the same amount of tropical warming in the 1960s and 1970s, the study found.