Yes, during ice ages it can be a bit chilly. That’s why stuff that happened in the Pleistocene is easily linked to climate cooling. Like asteroids falling from the sky. Or volcanoes erupting.
Solar activity from 2012 to 2013: sunspots lingering under cycle forecasts
Alpine meadows and subalpine meadows – equally beautiful and equally threatened by decreasing snowcover
Do you like to go for a hike in the mountains on a sunny summer day? Do you then enjoy stepping out of the forest into one of those flowery meadows?
In many cases this would not be an actual alpine meadow [situated above the tree line] but a so-called subalpine meadow, formed in a local microclimate and microenvironment and therefore just as natural as alpine meadows – and perhaps even more important for ecological diversity.
Dinosaurs were pretty big – and yes, that’s how evolution had them in mind
All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey – which means it’s time for the Geological Society of America annual meeting.
A couple of days packed with discussions and research presentations about stuff you did not know in advance you would turn out to find interesting (like ‘Anthropocene geomorphology‘) – to get you to bridge the long-days-baking-hot-Sun fieldwork season and the season of long lonesome nights filled with proper indoors academic paperwork, to romanticise the geoscientist’s bearded existence – like the size of dinosaurs…
Dinosaur scale comparison. That’s you in the left corner standing and waving. That red one planning to eat you is an ornithopod species. And that extremely big one is a member of the sauropod clade, not so friendly if you’d happen to be a plant. These Cretaceous folks are so big because they were very, very patient for many millions of years, researchers say. Image Wikimedia Commons.
NASA: Antarctic winter sea ice extent has 3 decade growing trend – does polar ozone depletion stabilise the climate?
Triassic paleoclimate lesson: a baking planet is a dead planet
Local Indonesian El Niño progression, possibility strong wildfire season Borneo, Sumatra
Over the course of 2012 ENSO has moved from La Niña to El Niño state. Various ENSO forecasting models (see NOAA NECP, IRI ensemble below) now show Pacific equatorial SSTs anomalies will remain positive for the remainder of 2012 – albeit decreasing, possibly transgressing to negative temperature anomalies in early 2013 (NOAA NCEP) but within margins (±0.5C) of neutral ENSO state.
Can’t see a problem in the middle of a greenhouse? CO2 clouds the mind – from 1000+ ppm
Hypercapnia it turns out, develops much more gradually than previously assumed. Apparently long before we pass thresholds that mean real medical trouble, our bodies – and our minds – can be disturbed by elevated CO2 levels in the air around us.
