CLIM

Scientists find fossil proof of Egypt's ancient climate

Earth and planetary scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are studying snail fossils to understand the climate of northern Africa 130,000 years ago. While that might sound a bit like relying on wooly bear caterpillars to predict the severity of winter, the snails actually reveal clues about the climate and environment of western Egypt, lo those many years ago. They also could s...

Small species back-up giant marsupial climate change extinction claim

Thinking small in a time when everything was big has helped Queensland researchers to unearth new evidence that climate change, instead of humans, was responsible for wiping out Australian giant marsupials or megafauna 40,000 years ago. Instead of only excavating 'trophy specimens' such as giant kangaroos and wombats, the researchers from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and Quee...

Africa to take it on chin again with climate change

A new analysis of Africa's past and future climate shows that the Sahel region, which experienced catastrophic drought until rains returned in the 1990s, could experience wetter monsoons for decades to come. However, drought across southern Africa is projected to intensify further. Oceanic warming consistent with an increase in greenhouse gases appears to be a factor in these expected 21st-centur...

Climatologists discover deep-sea secret

Climate changes in the northern and southern hemispheres are linked by a phenomenon by which the oceans react to changes on either side of the planet. A research team from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Cardiff University has shown for the first time that ocean circulation in the southern hemisphere has, in the past, adapted to sudden changes in the north. The research published to...

Ocean climate predicts elk population in Canadian Rockies

Mark Hebblewhite can look at specific climate statistics from the north Pacific Ocean and tell you how the elk are doing in Banff National Park. The University of Alberta doctoral student is the first researcher to show a correlation between the North Pacific Oscillation (NPO) and a mammal population. Based on many climate-related ocean measurements, researchers are able to determine posit...

Deep sea algae connect ancient climate, carbon dioxide and vegetation

Assistant Professor Mark Pagani in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Yale and his colleagues mapped the first detailed history of atmospheric carbon dioxide between 45 - 25 million years ago based on stable isotopes of carbon in a National Science Foundation study reported in Science Express. "Through the energy we consume, each of us makes a contribution to increasing greenhouse...

Climate model links higher temperatures to prehistoric extinction

Virginia Commonwealth University immunologists studying mast cells, known to play a central role in asthma and allergic disease, have identified a hormone-like molecule that can kill these cells by programming them to die in studies with mice. The findings move researchers another step closer to understanding the life cycle of mast cells, and may help researchers develop new treatments fo...

Climate experts search for answers in the oceans

By absorbing half of the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere, the oceans have a profound influence on climate. However, their ability to take up this carbon dioxide might be impaired as a result of climate change. To determine their response to global warming, ESA has backed two projects that provide systematic data on key oceanic variables ?color and temperature. The Medspiration p...

Gap-climbing fruit flies reveal components of goal-driven behaviors

Like humans, other animals are faced with everyday obstacles in their physical environments and must engage appropriate decision-making and motor skills to deal with them. Navigating these obstacles can involve highly complex events in mammals and other vertebrates, but in new work, researchers have employed an ingenious obstacle-based system for studying the control and structure of goal-oriente...

York scientists warn of dramatic impact of climate change on Africa

Scientists at the University of York are warning that dramatic changes may soon occur in Africa's vegetation in response to global warming. Scientists in the University's Environment Department studied the likely impact of future climate f...

New markers of climate change

A new way to monitor the effects of climate change on rainforests is being investigated at Cambridge University. Researchers are using biomarkers in the shape of epiphytes ('air-plants' which grow on other plants) to find out how their photosynthesis and water evaporation have been affected by climate change over the last 50 years. Using types of epiphytes known as bromeliads, Monica Mejia...

Disappearing arctic lakes linked to climate change

Continued arctic warming may be causing a decrease in the number and size of Arctic lakes. The issue is the subject of a paper published in the June 3 issue of the journal "Science." The paper, titled, "Disappearing Arctic Lakes" is the result of a comparison of satellite data taken of Siberia in the early 1970s to data from 1997-2004. Researchers, including Larry Hinzman with the Water and Envir...

Field tested: Grasslands won't help buffer climate change as carbon dioxide levels rise

UCLA biochemists reveal the first structural details of a family of mysterious objects called microcompartments that seem to be present in a variety of bacteria. The discovery was published Aug. 5 in the journal Science. "This is the first look at how microcompartments are built, and what the pieces look like," said Todd O. Yeates, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and a member...

Study shows big game hunters, not climate change, killed off sloths

Prehistoric big game hunters and not the last ice age are the likely culprits in the extinction of giant ground sloths and other North American great mammals such as mammoths, mastodons and saber-toothed tigers, says a University of Florida researcher. Determining whether the first arrival of humans or the warm-up of the American continent at the end of the last Ice Age was responsible for...

Climate change will affect carbon sequestration in oceans, model shows

An Earth System model developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign indicates that the best location to store carbon dioxide in the deep ocean will change with climate change. The direct injection of carbon dioxide deep into the ocean has been suggested as one method to help control rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and mitigate the effects of glob...

Oil spills and climate change double the mortality rate of British seabirds

New research from the University of Sheffield has shown that major oil spills and a changing climate have had a far greater impact on populations of British sea birds than was previously thought. A team led by Professor Tim Birkhead from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield, shows for the first time that major oil spills double the mortality rate of a...

Lethal needle blight epidemic may be related to climate change

Increased summer precipitation apparently helping to spread spores of pathogen Biologists studying a lethal blight of lodgepole pines in northwestern British Columbia present strong evidence in the September issue of BioScience that climate change is to blame for the outbreak. The blight, caused by the fungus Dothistroma septosporum, causes trees to lose their needles and, in the case of...

Amazon trees much older than assumed, raising questions on global climate impact of region

Trees in the Amazon tropical forests are old. Really old, in fact, which comes as a surprise to a team of American and Brazilian researchers studying tree growth in the world's largest tropical region. Using radiocarbon dating methods, the team, which includes UC Irvine's Susan Trumbore, found that up to half of all trees greater than 10 centimeters in diameter are more than 300 years old....

Climate change: The rice genome to the rescue

New evidence is emerging that climate change could reduce not only the world's ability to produce food but also international efforts to cut poverty. However, the recent sequencing of the rice genome is already providing researchers with some of the tools they need to help poor rice farmers and consumers avoid the worst effects of the problem. The new knowledge generated by the sequencing...

Growing crops to cope with climate change

Scientists at the UK's leading plant science centre have uncovered a gene that could help to develop new varieties of crop that will be able to cope with the changing world climate. Researchers funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) at the John Innes Centre in Norwich have identified the gene in barley that controls how the plant responds to seasonal changes...

Extinctions linked to climate change

A new report that links global warming to the recent extinction of dozens of amphibian species in tropical America is more evidence of a large phenomena that may affect broad regions, many animal species and ultimately humans, according to researchers at Oregon State University. A study being published Thursday in the journal Nature finds compelling evidence that global climate change crea...

Deep-rooted plants have much greater impact on climate than experts thought

Trees, particularly those with deep roots, contribute to the Earth's climate much more than scientists thought, according to a new study by biologists and climatologists from the University of California, Berkeley. While scientists studying global climate change recognize the importance of vegetation in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and in local cooling through transpiration,...

Climate change drives widespread amphibian extinctions

Results of a new study provide the first clear proof that global warming is causing outbreaks of an infectious disease that is wiping out entire frog populations and driving many species to extinction. Published in the Jan. 12 issue of the journal Nature, the study reveals how the warming may alter the dynamics of a skin fungus that is fatal to amphibians. The climate-driven fungal disease...

Sociality of sweat bees evolved simultaneously during climate change

In the first study to link social evolution to climate change, Cornell University entomologists show that the social behavior of many species of sweat bees evolved simultaneously during a period of global warming. This social evolution occurred much more recently than scientists ever thought -- only 20 million to 22 million years ago, compared with the social evolution of other insects, w...

Healthy coral reefs of Madagascar resisting damage from climate change

Healthy coral reefs of Madagascar's northeast coast have so far resisted the damaging effects of warmer ocean temperatures attributed to global climate change, say scientists who recently studied the region. The survey of a previously unexplored region in March 2006 by scientists from Conservation International and its partners documented a much greater variety of life than expected, inclu...

Tiny airborne particles are a major cause of climate change

A scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science and his colleagues caused a storm in the atmospheric community when they suggested a few years back that tiny airborne particles, known as aerosols, may be one of the main culprits causing climate change ?having, on a local scale, an even greater impact than the greenhouse gases effect. Attempts to understand how these particles influence clouds ha...

Recent, rapid climate change is driving evolution of animal species

Rapid climate changes over the past several decades have led to heritable, genetic changes in animals as diverse as squirrels, birds and mosquitoes, according to University of Oregon evolutionary geneticists. Writing in the "Perspectives" section of the June 9 issue of SCIENCE, William E. Bradshaw, professor of biology, and Christina Holzapfel, biology research associate, show that diverse...

Climate change has surprising effect on endangered naked carp

Forthcoming in the January/February 2007 issue of Physiological and Biochemical Zoology, a groundbreaking study reveals an unanticipated way freshwater fish may respond to water diversion and climate change. Endangered naked carp migrate annually between freshwater rivers, where they spawn, and a lake in Western China, where they feed and grow. However, Lake Qinghai is drying up and becoming incr...

Pattern of human Ebola outbreaks linked to wildlife and climate

A visiting biologist at the University of California, San Diego and her colleagues in Africa and Britain have shown that there are close linkages between outbreaks of Ebola hemorrhagic fever in human and wildlife populations, and that climate may influence the spread of the disease. The decade-long study, published this month (with a cover date of January) in the journal Transactions of th...

Climate change creates dramatic decline in red-winged black bird population

Global warming strikes again. A University of Illinois researcher reports that a red-winged black bird population in Ontario, Canada has decreased by 50 percent since 1972. The decrease is related to a positive shift in the North Atlantic Oscillation which has resulted in warmer, wetter winters in the southeastern United States. When Patrick Weatherhead put his 25-year data about the red-w...

Researchers link ocean organisms with increased cloud cover and potential climate change

Atmospheric scientists have reported a new and potentially important mechanism by which chemical emissions from ocean phytoplankton may influence the formation of clouds that reflect sunlight away from our planet. Discovery of the new link between clouds and the biosphere grew out of efforts to explain increased cloud cover observed over an area of the Southern Ocean where a large bloom...

Evolution of Old World fruit flies on three continents mirrors climate change

Fast-warming climate appears to be triggering genetic changes in a species of fruit fly that is native to Europe and was introduced into North and South America about 25 years ago. "This is a clear signal on three different continents that climate change is occurring, and that genetic change is going along with it," said Raymond Huey, a University of Washington biology professor who is...

Fish growth changes enhanced by climate change

Changes in growth rates in some coastal and long-lived deep-ocean fish species in the south west Pacific are consistent with shifts in wind systems and water temperatures, according to new Australian research published in the United States this week. “We have drawn correlations between the growth of fish species related to their environmental conditions ?faster growth in waters above a dep...

Ocean's 'twilight zone' may be a key to understanding climate change

A major study sheds new light on the role of carbon dioxide once it's transported to the oceans' depths. The research indicates that instead of sinking, carbon dioxide is often consumed by animals and bacteria and recycled in the "twilight zone," a dimly lit area 100 to 1,000 meters below the surface. Because the carbon often never reaches the deep ocean, where it can be stored and prevented from...

Microfossils unravel climate history of tropical Africa

Scientists from the NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research obtained for the first time a detailed temperature record for tropical central Africa over the past 25,000 years. They did this in cooperation with a German colleague from the University of Bremen, The scientists developed an entirely new method to reconstruct the history of land temperatures based on the molecular fossils of s...

Mosquito genes explain response to climate change

University of Oregon researchers studying mosquitoes have produced the first chromosomal map that shows regions of chromosomes that activate ?and are apparently evolving ?in animals in response to climate change. The map will allow researchers to narrow their focus to identify specific genes that control the seasonal development of animals. Such information will help predict which animals...

Gene chips forecast ecological impacts of climate change

Gretchen Hofmann, an associate professor of biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, will present a talk about the use of technologies in molecular biology to assess climate-change related impacts on marine invertebrates at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco on Sunday, Feb. 18. Her research centers on sea urchins...

Scientists to track impact of Asian dust and pollution on clouds, weather, climate change

Mice whose brain cells respond to a flash of light are providing insight into the complexities of the sense of smell and may ultimately yield a better understanding of how the human brain works. Investigators at Duke University Medical Center and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have engineered a strain of mice whose olfactory brain cells "fire" when exposed to light. This was accomplis...

Climate change could trigger 'boom and bust' population cycles leading to extinction

Climate change could trigger "boom and bust" population cycles that make animal species more vulnerable to extinction. , according to Christopher C. Wilmers, an assistant professor of environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Favorable environmental conditions that produce abundant supplies of food and stimulate population booms appear to set the stage for populati...

Confirmed -- deforestation plays critical climate change role

Dr Pep Canadell, from the Global Carbon Project and CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, says today in the journal Science that tropical deforestation releases 1.5 billion tonnes of carbon each year into the atmosphere. "Deforestation in the tropics accounts for nearly 20 per cent of carbon emissions due to human activities," Dr Canadell says. "This will release an estimated 87 to 130 b...