The Greenest Building Around

Denver 9News.com: NREL’s new Research Support Facility in Golden, Colorado, is 222,000 square feet and as large as that may be, it has the potential to produce as much energy as it uses.

“It’s a net-zero energy building. There are solar panels on the roof and on the parking structure and while the RSF will still be on the grid, the energy it produces should meet most, if not all of the buildings needs,” said Jeff Baker with the NREL office of laboratory operations.

Mayan calendar end date and astrological influences

Forbes.com: Astrologer and chartist Arch Crawford sees a whole Mayan calendar full of trouble.

Baylor Study Finds “Cool” Imagery Lower Hot Flashes Through Hypnotherapy

Baylor University: With an estimated 85 percent of women experiencing hot flashes as they approach menopause, researchers are concentrating on finding effective treatments that do not include hormonal or other pharmaceutical therapies. Now, a new Baylor University study has shown that women who specifically pictured images associated with coolness during hypnotherapy had a dramatic decrease in hot flashes.

The results appear in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis.

“This is an interesting finding because it begins to shed light on what is it, specifically, about hypnotic relaxation therapy that reduces the hot flashes,” said Dr. Gary Elkins, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor’s College of Arts and Sciences, who has conducted several studies on hypnotic relaxation therapy. “The finding may indicate that areas of the brain activated by imagery may be identical to those activated by actual perceived events. Consequently, it may be that while a woman suffering hot flashes imagines a cool place, she also feels cool rather than the heat of a hot flash.”

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Indian Ocean Sea Level Rise Threatens Coastal Areas

A new study in Nature Geoscience finds that Indian Ocean sea levels are rising
unevenly and threatening residents in some densely populated coastal areas,
particularly those along the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra,
and Java. This image shows the key player in the process, the Indo-Pacific warm
pool, in bright orange. This enormous, bathtub-shaped area spans a region of the
tropical oceans from the east coast of Africa to the International Date Line in the
Pacific. The warm pool has heated by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, or 0.5 degrees
Celsius, in the past 50 years, primarily because of human-generated emissions
of greenhouses gases. (Image courtesy NASA Earth Observatory.)

UCAR: Indian Ocean sea levels are rising unevenly and threatening residents in some densely populated coastal areas and islands, a new study concludes. The study, led by scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), finds that the sea level rise is at least partly a result of climate change.

Sea level rise is particularly high along the coastlines of the Bay of Bengal, the Arabian Sea, Sri Lanka, Sumatra, and Java, the authors found. The rise–which may aggravate monsoon flooding in Bangladesh and India–could have future impacts on both regional and global climate.

The key player in the process is the Indo-Pacific warm pool, an enormous, bathtub-shaped area spanning a region of the tropical oceans from the east coast of Africa to the International Date Line in the Pacific. The warm pool has heated by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, or 0.5 degrees Celsius, in the past 50 years, primarily because of human-generated emissions of greenhouses gases.

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Losing Arctic Ice

National Snow and Ice Data Center: Arctic sea ice reflects sunlight, keeping the polar regions cool and moderating global climate. According to scientific measurements, Arctic sea ice has declined dramatically over at least the past thirty years, with the most extreme decline seen in the summer melt season.

Rapid ice loss continued through the month of June, and was the lowest in the satellite data record, from 1979 to 2010. Arctic air temperatures were higher than normal, and Arctic sea ice continued to decline at a fast pace.

Meanwhile, rising levels of greenhouse gases and the loss of stratospheric ozone appear to be affecting wind patterns around Antarctica. Shifts in this circulation are referred to as the Antarctic Oscillation (AAO). As greenhouse gases have increased, and especially when ozone is lost in spring, there is a tendency for these winds to strengthen (a positive AAO index). The net effect is to push sea ice eastward, and northward, increasing the ice extent.

Read more on NSIDC.org

Heat Waves Could Be Commonplace in the US by 2039

Stanford University: Exceptionally long heat waves and other hot events could become commonplace in the United States in the next 30 years, according to a new study by Stanford University climate scientists.

“Using a large suite of climate model experiments, we see a clear emergence of much more intense, hot conditions in the U.S. within the next three decades,” said Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental Earth system science at Stanford and the lead author of the study.

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Oil Spills Raise Arsenic Levels in the Ocean, Says New Research

Oil spills can increase levels of toxic arsenic in the ocean, creating an additional long-term threat to the marine ecosystem, according to research published today in the journal Water Research.

Imperial College London: Arsenic is a poisonous chemical element found in minerals and it is present in oil. High levels of arsenic in seawater can enable the toxin to enter the food chain. It can disrupt the photosynthesis process in marine plants and increase the chances of genetic alterations that can cause birth defects and behavioural changes in aquatic life. It can also kill animals such as birds that feed on sea creatures affected by arsenic.

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NASA satellites keep track of growing Gulf oil spill

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center: NASA’s satellite instrument MODIS, on board the Terra and Aqua satellites, captured images of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.