Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Ocean life can take millennia to recover from climate change

new study reports that ocean life can take thousands of years to recover from climate change.


The team, led by Dr Sarah Moffitt, examined more than 5,400 fossils, from sea urchins to clams, found in a 30 metre sediment core from the ocean floor off Santa Barbara, California.


An example of an ocean sediment core.


The sediment core revealed a history of a well-oxygenated sea-floor full of life, followed by a period of oxygen loss and warming, that seems to have triggered a rapid collapse of life.

A typical view of the ocean floor
The study shows that the fossils nearly vanish in layers formed when oxygen levels in the sea dropped.

In periods of less than 100 years, ocean oxygen levels decreased significantly.

Quite small changes in oxygen in seawater can cause big changes for seafloor life.

The study results suggest that future periods of global climate change may result in similar effects, with life taking thousands of years to recover.

"It’s not just about temperature," says Sarah Moffitt. 

               Dr Moffitt examining a fossil marine gastropod (sea-snail)

"These systems have the capacity to be very unstable when you poke the climate system with a sharp stick."

The Atmosphere

Space is not very far away.





That's pretty much how near you are to space.


Monday, 30 March 2015

Did ‘they’ predict an Ice Age in the 1970s? - not really, it's an Urban Myth

It seems to be a common saying..... but it's very misleading.

"Why are scientists talking about global warming? In the 1970s they were warning us an Ice Age was coming.  They can't expect to be taken seriously if they keep changing their minds."  

It's not as simple as that ... and science has learned a lot since the 1970s.
Muir Glacier, Alaska. Left: August 13, 1941. Right: August 31, 2004.

Credit: 1941 photo taken by Ulysses William O. Field; 2004 photo taken by Bruce F. Molnia. Courtesy of the Glacier Photograph Collection, National Snow and Ice Data Center/World Data Center for Glaciology.

So why does this story keep appearing in so many places?

The magazine "New Scientist" has looked at this myth….
From the article -


44 scientific papers predicted warming, 

20 were neutral and just 7 predicted cooling.
So 'global cooling' was a minority idea, and was never the mainstream idea in science.

Peter Gwynne says 
"The vast majority of climatologists now assure us that Earth's atmosphere is not cooling.  Rather, it's warming up.   And the main responsibility for the phenomenon lies with human activity."

Martian Volcanoes

Mars is smaller than Earth, but some things are familiar.


There are a number of round features, which are volcanoes.


Olympus Mons is a shield volcano. 

It is 624 km (374 miles) in diameter. 


Olympus Mons is 25 km (16 miles) high






Sunday, 29 March 2015

Climate Change and The Great Plains

Since the 1940s, farming on the southern Great Plains of the USA—Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas—has relied on irrigation. 

On the high plains of Texas, tens of thousands of wells pumping from the 10-million-year-old Ogallala Aquifer have reduced the water content by 50 percent. 

Most of the remaining underground water source will probably be useless within about 30 years.

Katharine Hayhoe, professor and director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, says big changes are on the way for agriculture on the Great Plains.




The Earth From Space - There's only one Earth


The spaceprobe was beyond the Moon, looking back at Earth.


The dot marked with an arrow is Earth.

To see the Earth turning in space is an amazing thing - click here for a video.

Finally, an image taken by the Galileo spaceprobe - the Earth and Moon.

Saturday, 28 March 2015

Antarctic ice shelves thinning quickly

Professor Helen Fricker and colleagues at  Scripps Institution of Oceanography have used two decades of data from European radar satellites to compile an assessment of Antarctica's floating ice shelves. Ice shelf
In the first decade, the total losses from the ice shelves averaged 25 cubic km per year.
But during the second decade, this had jumped to 310 cubic km per year.
"For before 2003, ice-shelf volume for all Antarctica did not change much," said Fernando Paolo, one of the team.
"Since then, volume loss has been significant. The western ice shelves have been persistently thinning for two decades, and earlier gains in the eastern ice shelves ceased in the most recent decade," he told BBC News.
“The ice shelves buttress the flow from grounded ice into the ocean, and that flow impacts sea-level rise, so that’s a key concern from our new study,” said Professor Fricker.

New research on habitable exoplanets

The Earth is a planet orbiting the Sun.


Exoplanets are planets of stars other than the Sun.





Mars lies at the outer edge.

Friday, 27 March 2015

What's going on with the Gulf Stream?


But one area of the North Atlantic was the coldest on record... shown in blue on this map.Land and Ocean Temperatures

This cold pool may be an indicator of a dramatic slowdown in the Gulf Stream.

The Gulf Stream transports vast amounts of heat north from the equator to the pole, passing off the East Coast of the U.S. and into the North Atlantic.

A slowdown like this in the current has not happened for a very long time, perhaps as long as 1,000 years. 

It is most likely related to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. 

The influx of freshwater from the ice sheet is lighter and colder than heavier, salty water that typically occupies that area. 

It tends to sit on top of the water, interfering with the sinking of dense, cold and salt-rich water.

The Gulf Stream transports more water than "all the world's rivers combined," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A rapid slowdown in the current would increase sea level rise rates along the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast coasts of the U.S. 

It could also bring much cooler conditions to parts of northern Europe.

The Tomb of Richard III - Crinoidal Limestone from Yorkshire

The new tomb of King Richard III in Leicester Cathedral is made of limestone from Swaledale in Yorkshire.

The limestone was formed at the bottom of a shallow sea that covered much of what was to become the United Kingdom, back in the early Carboniferous geological period.  

It is coarse grained, and contains fossil remains of  crinoids.

Crinoids are related to starfish and sea urchins.

They are spectacular fossils if they are complete, but that is quite unusual.

It is more common to find fragments of them in limestone.

Thursday, 26 March 2015

Early steps in Climate Change science


Level of carbon dioxide gas (CO2) in the atmosphere, as later measured in ancient ice, was about 290 ppm (parts per million).

Global temperature for 1850-1870 was about 13.6°C.

Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier calculated that the Earth would be far colder if it lacked an atmosphere. 

John Tyndall discovered that some gases block infrared radiation. 

He suggested that changes in the concentration of the gases could bring climate change.

Milutin Milankovitch proposed orbital changes as the cause of ice ages. 

Guy Callendar showed that global warming was underway, reviving interest in the question. 

By accident, Russell Coope discovered that some past climate change events happened in just a few decades.

This came from his research into beetle fossils in 'Ice Age' layers.

Telescope studies showed a greenhouse effect raises temperature of the atmosphere of Venus far above the boiling point of water. 


Charles David Keeling accurately measured CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere.

He was not expecting to detect an annual rise.

The CO2 level was 315 parts per million (ppm)and global temperature (five-year average) was 13.9°C.

Keeling's measurements have been continued.

At the end of 2014 the level was around 400 ppm.

Global temperature in 2014 was 14.57°C.

Current chart and data for atmospheric CO2



Chambered nautilus



The nautilus has more than 90 suckerless tentacles. 

Grooves and ridges on the tentacles are used to grip prey.

They deliver food to a crushing, parrot-like beak.


A newly hatched nautilus begins life with about four chambers.

It develops an average of 30 chambers by adulthood. 

The inner chambers are filled with gas.

They help the nautilus to maintain buoyancy. 

The nautilus adds liquid to the chambers in order to dive.

Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Volcanoes are not the main reason for melting Antarctic ice



This is not the case.

The 'volcanoes' story is mainly a misreading of research on the Thwaites glacier.
This is the actual paper on this research......
"Evidence for elevated and spatially variable geothermal flux beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet" 




Rising sea temperatures can melt up to 100 metres of a glacier each year, he said.


1816 - The Year Without a Summer

The weather in 1816 was unprecedented. 


The sky seemed permanently overcast. 






With sunlight blocked, 1816 did not have a normal summer.



During the miserable weather Mary Shelley wrote her classic novel Frankenstein.

Tuesday, 24 March 2015

2014 - Warmest Year in Modern Record








Ammonites are an extinct group of sea creatures.

They were cephalopod molluscs, related to squid and octopus.





There are hundreds of types of ammonites, with different shapes.

Here are just a few examples.