Climate Fact: Earth’s Ice and Tipping Points
Ice masses maintain their own local climate through several mechanisms. One mechanism is known as the ice-albedo feedback mechanism: ice is more reflective than surrounding rock or ocean and the more...
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Snow in a Warming World
Snowfall and snow cover have direct effects on transportation, soil freeze/thaw cycles, water availability, flood frequency, water quality, wildlife, forest fires and more. Far from being just a...
View ArticleClimate Number: 73 Terawatts
The energy moving in both weather systems and through the wires that power your home can be measured in watts. The Sun heats the Earth causing the fluids of the atmosphere and the oceans to move,...
View ArticleClimate Trivia: Earth’s Green Season
In the Northern Hemisphere, deciduous trees are beginning to come out of their dormant season and unfurl their leaves. Soon, the greys and browns that characterize America’s broadleaf forests during...
View ArticleClimate Fact: Crops and Cooling
In Brief: More irrigation likely drove a 3.6 degree Fahrenheit decline in average summertime daily maximum temperatures between 1934 and 2002 at weather stations in heavily farmed areas of California....
View ArticleClimate Number: 18 Degrees Fahrenheit
Earth 13,000 years ago was in the process of thawing from the coldest part of the last ice age. Then, something sudden and catastrophic happened: within a few decades, northern Europe’s average...
View ArticleClimate Number: 24.2 Teragrams
Since the 1750′s, the amount of methane (CH4) in the atmosphere has increased by 250 percent. Much of this methane is emitted from lakes in northern regions. Glacial movement across the far North...
View ArticleClimate Number: 1.52 Teragrams
While Lake Chad today covers an area of around 115-200 square miles, at the end of the last ice age (12,000 years ago), there was Lake Megachad, which covered an area as large as 154,000 square miles....
View ArticleClimate Fact: Mammoths and Climate
In Brief: The extinction of the Wooly Mammoth from Alaska and the Yukon Territory around 13,800 years ago corresponds to the period of human arrival, the rapid expansion of shrub and tree cover and a...
View ArticleClimate Number: 123 Petagrams of Carbon
Plants use the sun’s energy to turn carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air into the organic matter, or carbohydrates, that make up their bodies. This process, known as photosynthesis, ultimately feeds the...
View ArticleClimate Fact: Pacific Tropical Cyclones and Chlorophyll
In Brief: Less chlorophyll in the North Pacific Gyre can influence Pacific tropical cyclone dynamics. Many factors influence how many tropical cyclones form in the tropical Atlantic and Pacific oceans...
View ArticleClimate Fact: Positive Evaporation/Precipitation Feedback
In Brief: In the eastern United States, afternoon summertime rainfall events are more probable in areas where soil moisture levels are high. Afternoon summertime precipitation in the wet, humid and...
View ArticleClimate Fact: Plants Help Persist Prevailing Precipitation Patterns
In Brief: Plants, particularly in the Amazon, influence their climate by moving moisture from the soil into the atmosphere – less when the soil is dry and more when the soil is wet. This helps to...
View ArticleClimate Trivia: Earth’s Energy Budget
The sun’s energy makes winds blow, ocean waters evaporate and fall as rain, plants grow and tornadoes and hurricanes whirl about. The sun drives all weather and all life on Earth despite being 93...
View ArticleClimate Number: An Albedo Difference of 0.1
Albedo describes how much of the Sun’s radiation an object reflects. New snow is very reflective, with an albedo as high as 0.9, meaning that 90 percent of the sunlight that hits it is reflected. Dark...
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Climate Fact: United States 2012 Drought
In Brief: Drought is a cycle largely driven by changes in long term averages of sea surface temperatures in remote locations around the world. Dust can amplify this cycle. As of August 14, 2012, 61.77...
View ArticleClimate Trivia: Decay and Rising Temperature
Living organic matter has its origins in the atmosphere: energy from the Sun enables plants and some microbes to build sugars out of water and atmospheric carbon dioxide. These sugars ultimately feed...
View ArticleClimate Number: Nine Degrees Fahrenheit
The world’s largest ice mass is found around the South Polar region on the continent of Antarctica. This ice is actually two separate ice sheets. The East Antarctic ice sheet is situated on a...
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Droughts, Floods and Water Vapor – Oh My!
Understanding the earth’s water cycle can help us understand how a warming climate will intensify droughts and floods. A main contributor to the intensity of a drought or flooding event is how much...
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