all weather and climate stories

Policy can empower technological climate change solution

404132862 — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:12:00 -0400

The chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming struck an optimistic tone about the planet’s climate crisis last night, saying that an energy revolution is in the offing if government can just get the policy right.

Engineered weathering process might mitigate climate change

404132862 — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:34:16 -0500

Researchers at Harvard University and Penn State University have invented a technology, inspired by nature, to reduce the accumulation of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) caused by human emissions.

By electrochemically removing hydrochloric acid from the ocean and then neutralizing the acid by reaction with silicate (volcanic) rocks, the researchers say they can accelerate natural chemical weathering, permanently transferring CO2 from the atmosphere to the ocean. Unlike other ocean sequestration processes, the new technology does not further acidify the ocean and may be beneficial to coral reefs.

Harvard launches major initiative to help design international climate agreements

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 09:54:08 -0400

Harvard University announced in early July a two-year project to help identify key design elements of a future international agreement on climate change, drawing on the ideas of leading thinkers from academia, private industry, government, and advocacy organizations, both in the industrialized world and in developing countries.

Heat waves deadliest for blacks, diabetics

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 15:22:13 -0400

Heat waves, like the one that scorched the country in July, are more deadly for some people than for others.

Poor blacks and diabetics fare the worst. As you might guess, extreme heat is also hard on the elderly. But as you might not guess, extreme cold has a greater impact.

Also, the increase in risk on extremely hot days is smaller for deaths due to heart disease, such as heart attacks, than for other causes. Conversely, the increase in risk of dying from heart disease on extremely cold days is greater. Deaths from cardiac arrest show the largest increase at such times.

Tilting at ice ages

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:53:49 -0400

Here's a story to cool you off on a hot summer day. One of the major mysteries of ice ages may have been solved by a Harvard climatologist.

Global warming yields 'glacial earthquakes' in polar areas

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:25:43 -0400

Seismologists at Harvard University and Columbia University have found an unexpected offshoot of global warming: "glacial earthquakes" in which Manhattan-sized glaciers lurch unexpectedly, yielding temblors up to magnitude 5.1 on the moment-magnitude scale, which is similar to the Richter scale. Glacial earthquakes in Greenland, the researchers found, are most common in July and August, and have more than doubled in number since 2002.

Scientists Göran Ekström and Victor C. Tsai at Harvard and Meredith Nettles at Columbia reported on Greenland's glacial earthquakes in the journal Science. Ekström, Nettles, and colleagues first described glacial earthquakes in 2003, but that report did not recognize the seasonality or growing frequency of the phenomenon.

Climate choices: Grim and grimmer

50443248 — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 13:01:26 -0400

Climate change from burning fossil fuels is probably already unavoidable, but it is still up to humans to decide just how bad it will be, Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Daniel Schrag said Thursday (Sept. 29) in a talk on global warming that kicked off a new exhibit on the subject at the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH).
"We're fated to have climate change, no matter what we do," Schrag said. "We're going to have climate change. We're going to have a lot of climate change. The question is whether we're going to have catastrophic climate change."

Climate solutions through forests

50443248 — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:16:24 -0400

Using the environment to help address the nation's pollution problems. That's the focus of a new report from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and researchers at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) and Indiana University.
The "Cost of U.S. Forest-based Carbon Sequestration" investigates the potential for incorporating land-use changes into climate policy. Authored by economists Robert Stavins of the Kennedy School of Government and Kenneth Richards of Indiana University, the report looks at the true "opportunity costs" of utilizing U.S. forest lands for carbon dioxide "sequestration," in contrast with other productive uses. The report also examines the many factors that drive the economics of storing carbon in forests over long periods of time.

Warming called a global 'experiment'

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:37:00 -0400

Climate scientist Daniel Schrag says that human-caused climate change is inevitable, though scientists don't know exactly how severe or even exactly what its effects will be. Schrag said the public health effects related to climate change would probably be most severe in poorer nations. Though climate effects will be experienced in richer nations, those countries have the resources to adapt and protect the health of their citizens. Schrag pointed to Hurricane Mitch, which devastated Honduras in 1998, compared with 2004's series of hurricanes that slammed into Florida, with relatively low loss of life. Though some researchers expect that a warmer environment will mean a spread of infectious tropical diseases, like malaria, into cooler latitudes, Schrag said he thought developed nations' public health systems are up to the challenge. Though poorer nations may be hardest hit by climate change, Schrag said it would be a mistake to divert attention from global warming to pour resources into developing those nations. Though there is much uncertainty about global warming, Schrag said, it appears clear that the effects will be dramatic and widespread. "We are performing an experiment on a planetary scale that hasn't been done for millions of years," Schrag said. "Nobody knows what's going to happen and there will be surprises."

Climate, asthma connected, according to research

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:30:54 -0400

Christine Rogers, a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health, measures particulates - pollen grains and fungal spores - in outdoor air and correlates levels with asthma events. She also examines how those particulate levels might change over time because of global warming. "One of the most predictable effects of global warming is that CO2 is going to increase," she says. "But also, seasonality is going to change. Springs will come earlier, lengthening our growing seasons. Both of these trends affect plants' biomass, making them larger at maturity and, logically, able to produce more pollen." To measure the effects of global warming on pollen production, Rogers and her colleagues forced ragweed plants to germinate two and four weeks earlier than they normally would, simulating the early springs that are likely to become more frequent. Half of each plant group was exposed to the normal, ambient CO2 level of 350 parts per million, and the other half to double that amount. Rogers found that total pollen production under ambient CO2 was higher in the plants grown in early spring than in those grown later. At high CO2 levels, however, plants grown later had higher total pollen production than those at ambient CO2.

Global warming is not so hot

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:29:36 -0400

Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics took a look at how weather has changed in the past 1,000 years. They looked at studies of changes in glaciers, corals, stalagmites, and fossils. They checked investigations of cores drilled out of ice caps and sediments lying on the bottom of lakes, rivers, and seas. They examined research on pollen, tree rings, tree lines, and junk left over from old cultures and colonies. Their conclusion: We are not living either in the warmest years of the past millennium nor in a time with the most extreme weather. This review of changes in nature and culture during the past 1,000 years was published in the April 11, 2003 issue of the Journal of Energy and Environment. It puts subjective observations of climate change on a much firmer objective foundation. For example, tree-ring data show that temperatures were warmer than now in many far northern regions from 950 to 1100 A.D. From 800 to 1300 A.D., the Medieval Warm Period, many parts of the world were warmer than they have been in recent decades. But temperatures now (including last winter) are generally much milder than they were from 1300 to 1900, the Little Ice Age.

Weather watchers forecast better forecasts

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:23:37 -0400

Brian Farrell, the Robert P. Burden Professor of Meteorology, is spearheading a project that is part of a five-year initiative funded by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research to spark progress in the general area of predictability of the atmosphere and oceans. "Right now we have a fairly good forecast out to 48 hours," Farrell says, "maybe two or three days. After that, you never know." The reason for this, he adds, is that starting out with a certain amount of error is inevitable. Both the observational data and the mathematical model used to parse it are imperfect; the necessity of using them together only compounds the problem.

New earthquake mapping system could save lives

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:20:21 -0400

"The earthquake-hazard maps currently in use are based on the premise that the closer a building is to a large fault, the better designed it should be," says Harvard earthquake expert John Shaw. "But what these new, comprehensive 3-D models we've developed tell us is that this basic rule of proximity doesn't always work." A case in point is the quake that interrupted the 1989 World Series in San Francisco.

Scientists predict calmer weather ahead

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:20:03 -0400

When the Sun is more active, it has bad effects on our planet. For instance, energy from solar eruptions changes the orbits of satellites, causing them to spiral back to the Earth. Solar eruptions perturb the Earth's magnetic field, causing communications disruptions, especially to cell phone and other wireless devices. Magnetic storms also cause current surges in power lines that destroy equipment and knock out power over large areas. Now, a new instrument called the Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer, or UVCS, is allowing first-of-a-kind observations by astronomers. The observations are providing the best descriptions yet of the workings of the Sun from its core to its surface. Recent observations have convinced astronomers that calmer weather is ahead in space. Such observations also are leading the way to better long-term predictions of how and when the Sun's gusty particle emissions will affect spacecraft and life on Earth. Improved predictions are expected after next-generation instruments come on line later in the decade. "We need these better predictions as we become more dependent upon satellites and reliable long-distance communications," says Mari Paz Miralles of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Atmospheric chemists fly high and low for novel carbon dioxide measurements

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:16:26 -0400

Political leaders throughout the world have taken notice of the increasing levels of carbon in the atmosphere and have begun negotiations on how to mitigate "greenhouse" gases through accords such as the Kyoto Protocol. One major problem with the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States rejected, was how to monitor compliance. Currently there is no good way to tell how much carbon is being emitted from - or taken up by - land on a country-sized scale. This makes accords such as the Kyoto Protocol, should they be agreed upon, nearly impossible to enforce. That's why researchers at Harvard University are developing novel methods to measure greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.