Earth Blog

One spring five years ago a team of researchers planted red oak seedlings, a tree native to the eastern seaboard, in a northeastern portion of Central Park near 105th Street. They didn’t stop at the famous park; they went on to plant trees in two rural forest plots in suburban Hudson Valley, and near the Ashokan Reservoir located in the foothills of the Catskills about one hundred miles from Manhattan.

The team was testing the “urban heat island” notion: large cities are known to be hotter because sunlight is absorbed by the concrete and buildings and then it is radiated back into the air. They wanted to see if the heat would affect how the trees grew if at all.

A selection of scientists from NASA have been in Washington D.C. since Friday to celebrate the 42nd Annual Earth Day at the National Mall. They have set up three tents with activities and exhibits are free and open to the public (as all events at the Mall are today) at their “NASA Village.”

The Green Theater is one of these tents and will feature presentations by NASA and one topic during Friday’s festivities was satellite imagery. The agency has been beaming back images of Earth, surrounding planets, and stars for such a long time it’s become routine.

NASA’s Global Climate Change website, which won a Webby last year for “Best Science Site”, wanted to shake things up a bit by presenting their pictures in the “State of Flux” gallery differently in honor of Earth Day.

March may have come in like a lion breathing fire for a large swath of the United States where warmer than usual temperatures were enjoyed. The weather wouldn't hold for long and last week temperatures dropped in portions of the Midwest and New England. With them came a last gasp of winter: frost advisories and the threat of light snow, and hail.  Coats and boots were dragged out grudgingly, farmers warily eyed their crops worried about potential loss, and thermostats that had been turned off went back on. 

The temperature that you keep your home during cold months matters more than you think to the environment. A great deal of energy is used to heat a home to a desired temperature- which for a lot of people is hotter than need be. If you have proper insulation and efficient windows you can afford to knock the temperature down a bit and still be cozy.

Comfort is a relative term and some like it hot, some like it cold, and some like it in the pot nine days old-because that is what is considered normal.

Why doesn’t every American believe in anthropogenic global warming or climate change? Is it because we don’t know if there is a difference between the two? Or is it because conflicting studies from climate change naysayers are making it difficult to know what to believe? For every article that is released telling us it doesn’t exist there is another one telling us it most certainly does exist.  The latest study says that we can blame the recession for our global warming skepticism. Well, at least we have another outlet for our blame.

Would you like the good news or the bad news first? How would you like to hear news that is both depending on how you feel about snow? Amount of snowfall and snowmelt are important to California’s tourist and agricultural industries. You may hate living in snow but enjoy visiting it to ski or snowboard. California’s mountain streams enjoy snowmelt to boost fishing -it’s important even if you are only aware of it on a cursory level atop the state’s mountain ranges.

A curious climate scientist wondered about the snowfall on California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range. Was it decreasing like everyone seemed to think? He found that over 130 years the state has seen neither an increase nor a decrease in snowfall. For once it’s true that the more things change the more they stay the same.

Coca-Cola’s 2011-2012 Arctic Home campaign, which came in two phases after the white cans of regular Coke confused the soda addicts, was too late to help a selection of survey respondents improve their polar knowledge.  At best it would have only achieved the bare minimum when it comes to knowledge of Earth’s polar regions -it would have raised awareness and little else.

Raising awareness is good because it could lead to concern which then leads to action. But a research study conducted by the Carsey Institute of the University of New Hampshire (UNH) says even with much ado about the polar regions it has led to not much but political-driven opinions.

NASA scientists have reported that 2011 was the ninth warmest year on record since 1880 and nine out of ten of warmer years have occurred since 2000. 2005 and 2010 tied for the warmest years on record but we could see a not so far off year break the tie and take the title for warmest in one swoop.

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) director John E. Hansen has predicted that it’s just going to get hotter over the next two to three years because of increased solar activity and El Niño’s effect on tropical Pacific temperatures- “The Christ Child” likes them on the warmer side to celebrate his birthday.

"It's always dangerous to make predictions about El Niño, but it's safe to say we'll see one in the next three years," Hansen said. "It won't take a very strong El Niño to push temperatures above 2010."

Carbon dioxide (CO₂), though naturally occurring, is considered detrimental at the levels humans are releasing into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. Greenhouse gases, like CO_2, trap heat in the atmosphere and keep the planet from getting too cold but the amount we are producing could be making it too hot and global warming is not just another way of forecasting “awesome beach weather.”  The carbon cycle can remove some CO₂  but not as quickly as we need it to because of our high emission rate. Current methods of removal are energy intensive and inefficient and scientists are reporting that they have discovered an improved way to remove CO₂  from smokestacks and the open air.  

If you happen to live in a climate that historically doesn’t get much rain, gardening and plant cultivation can become a depressing chore.  Gardeners quickly learn which flowers and vegetables will thrive in their yards and which won’t. Home-owners that aren’t keen on spending time outdoors or doing excessive watering will often plant heat-tolerant or drought-resistant plants. But just because you live in an area prone to drought doesn’t mean any resistant plant will do when it comes to your yard. A non-native plant can turn into an invasive plant and harm the ecosystem.

The UN Climate Talks finally ended at the beginning of the week, after going into some serious overtime, and if you have been following reports in the news the outcome was a mixed bag for reaching a worldwide solution to prevent further global warming. The parties present were able to agree on a few points mainly that more discussion and negotiation is required to reach a new deal. So what exactly were they doing for two weeks in Durban? Did anything good come out of the latest summit?

The United Nations Climate Change Conference started on Monday in Durban, South Africa. The delegates from 190 countries will be there for two weeks (November 28th through December 9th) to work on reaching a new agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, among other issues. For the next two weeks there is going to be intense media coverage of this event so now is a good time to review some phrases and concepts that are going to pop up in the news.

Scientists continue to study the earth’s climate in an effort to make vital predictions about the earth’s health and critical components such as carbon dioxide levels many years from now. Studying a subject as broad as the earth’s climate with so many potential variables involved obviously poses some significant challenges. And this task is made all the more difficult due to such a large number of potential factors that we aren’t even aware of yet. However, recent research conducted by members of the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and the University of Cambridge, UK have uncovered some vital information regarding future carbon dioxide levels that may prove to be quite helpful.