Earth quickly being depleted of resources
In WWF’s eye-opening Living Planet Report 2012, scientists reveal the world’s population currently uses natural resources at a rate of 1.5 times the planet can provide. The report goes on to say that if we don’t change course, by 2030 the resources from two planets will not be enough to sustain our rate of consumption.
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Solar tornadoes five times the size of the Earth spotted for the first time
For the first time, monster solar tornadoes several times the size of the Earth and swirling at speeds of up to 190,000 miles per hour were filmed by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).
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World’s oceans turning acidic at an unprecedented rate
A new study in the journal Science reports that today’s ocean acidification rate may be unprecedented compared with the last four major extinctions in the Earth’s 300-million year geologic record.
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Seagrass is the world’s oldest known living organism
Mediterranean seagrass Posidonia oceanica ranks amongst the slowest-growing and longest-lived plants in existence, according to Carlos Duarte of the University of Western Australia in Perth. Duarte estimates the minimum age to be between 80,000 and 200,000 years, projecting the origin of the clones well into the late Pleistocene, and making it the oldest known living organism on the planet.
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Rate of carbon release 10 times faster than previous period of rapid global warming
Based on core samples from 55.9 million years ago, when the earth last experienced a rapid period of global warming, our current rate of carbon release is nearly 10 times as fast. According to geologists, rate matters and this current rapid change may not allow sufficient time for the biological environment to adjust.
The past warming period, known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), experienced a rapid increase in global temperatures over a time span of 20,000 years. Based on models developed at Penn State University, the outcome was a warming of from 9 to 16 degrees Fahrenheit and an acidification event in the oceans.
“Rather than the 20,000 years of the PETM which is long enough for ecological systems to adapt, carbon is now being released into the atmosphere at a rate 10 times faster,” said Lee R. Kump, professor of geosciences at Penn State. “It is possible that this is faster than ecosystems can adapt.”
Mass extinction of marine life may be on the horizon
Dead zones – areas of the seas and oceans that are lacking in oxygen and are suffering from increases of CO2, rising temperatures, nutrient run-off from agriculture and other factors - are rapidly growing in numbers and total area around the globe.
Professor Martin Kennedy from the University of Adelaide and Professor Thomas Wagner from Newcastle University, UK, have been studying these dead zones, or “greenhouse oceans.” They studied core samples from the Late Cretaceous Period (85 million years ago) across a 400,000-year timespan, and found evidence that points to a mass mortality in the oceans at a time when the Earth was going through a greenhouse effect. The mass extinction of marine life in our oceans during that prehistoric time is a warning that the same could happen again due to similarly high levels of greenhouse gases, according to their research.
“This could have a catastrophic, profound impact on the sustainability of life in our oceans, which in turn is likely to impact on the sustainability of life for many land-based species, including humankind,” he added.
What the geological records show, however, is a glimmer of hope attributed to a naturally occurring response to the greenhouse effect. After the phase when the oceans suffer a lack of oxygen, the concentration eventually improves, along with an increase in marine life. Carbon burial of the excess carbon ultimately contributes to CO2 removal from the atmosphere, cooling the planet and the ocean.
“This is nature’s solution to the greenhouse effect and it could offer a possible solution for us,” said Professor Wagner. “If we are able to learn more about this effect and its feedbacks, we may be able to manage it, and reduce the present rate of warming threatening our oceans.”
Their research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Effects from climate change in the Arctic taking place significantly faster than previously thought
The Arctic region is the part of globe that is warming up the fastest today compared with all other regions. Measurements of air temperature show that the most recent five-year period has been the warmest since 1880, when monitoring began. Other data, from tree rings among other things, show that the summer temperatures over the last decades have been the highest in 2,000 years. As a consequence, the snow cover in May and June has decreased by close to 20 percent. The winter season has also become almost two weeks shorter – in just a few decades. In addition, the temperature in the permafrost has increased by between half a degree and two degrees.
“The changes we see are dramatic. And they are not coincidental. The trends are unequivocal and deviate from the norm when compared with a longer term perspective,” says Terry Callaghan, a researcher at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and contributor to a new research report detailing the vast changes to the Arctic region, which was presented in Copenhagen last week.
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