Hydroxyl proves stable atmospheric cleaner

Good news in Science from an international team of atmospheric chemists, including researchers from NOAA and the Dutch universities of Wageningen and Utrecht. Hydroxyl, atmosphere’s enthusiastic cleaning agent, proves to be produced in quite stable quantities from year to year.

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Tibetan dust could lower Himalayan glacier albedo

Changing wind patterns due to current climate changes sweep up more dust from the Tibetan Plateau, lake sediment measurements show. Jessica Conroy, a graduate student in paleoclimatology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, presented a dust record dating back to 1050 C.E. at the December meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

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Bumblebee CCD in US?

Recently we witnessed positive news with respect to the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) of honeybees. In December British scientists announced in Parasites & Vectors they had discovered a method to combat a parasitic mite that kills honeybee colonies, varroa destructor, by altering parts of the mite’s DNA. One thousand of these mites can kill a colony of 50,000 bees. This threat would be no more, after certain genes in the mite population are switched off.

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GCM study finds no Arctic albedo tipping point

The albedo effect still acts as a positive feedback to warming and melting. In fact the general circulation model study shows Arctic sea ice melting will speed up over recent years. From 2020 to 2030 more than 2.5 million square kilometres of ice will be lost. Although this decline is much faster than the current rate of melting, it would be more or less linear with temperature rise and time.

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The 5 main results of Cancún

After the deception of Copenhagen, the news is progress was made at all. Just like in the Danish capital last year, also this year, during the climate conference in Cancún no legally binding new climate treaty, to replace the expiring Kyoto Protocol, has been agreed. National emission targets for the crucial year of 2020 were also not raised.

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WMO: 2010 ‘at least top 3’ hottest years ever

We were expecting news along similar lines from NASA later this month, but today, during the UN climate conference in Cancún, the World Meteorological Organisation [see special COP16 WMO page] decided to recognize the social relevance of timely sharing climatic data.

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