Climate
- Earth
Sea levels erratic during latest ice age
Mineral crusts deposited 81,000 years ago in a Mediterranean island’s caves suggest an abrupt jump in sea level.
By Sid Perkins - Climate
Water vapor slowed recent global warming trend
A decline in stratospheric water vapor has slowed Earth’s surface warming slightly in recent years.
By Sid Perkins - Climate
Indian climatologist disputes charges over Himalayan projection
London’s Sunday Mail reported that it had reached the author of a chapter in a purportedly authoritative 2007 climate-change assessment and learned that this scientist – Murari Lal – deliberately used unsubstantiated sources for conclusions about the rate of glacier melting in the Himalayas. Lal doesn’t dispute that mistakes were made – ones that likely exaggerated projections of glacier melting. But he does challenge the newspaper’s charge that those mistakes were politically motivated.
By Janet Raloff - Climate
IPCC’s Himalayan glacier ‘mistake’ not an accident
A London newspaper reports today that the unsubstantiated Himalayan-glacier melt figures contained in a supposedly authoritative 2007 report on climate warming were used intentionally, despite the report’s lead author knowing there were no data to back them up.
By Janet Raloff - Climate
IPCC admits Himalayan glacier error
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledged today that it had erred in projecting the rate and impacts of retreating Himalayan glaciers in a 2007 report.
By Janet Raloff - Climate
IPCC relied on unvetted Himalaya melt figure
British newspapers have uncovered what appears to be an embarrassing fact-checking omission by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. It regards the degree of glacial melting in the Himalayas — information that said parts of the area could be icefree a quarter century from now.
By Janet Raloff - Earth
Copenhagen Meeting Highlights
Find all the Science News coverage of the 2009 United Nation's climate summit in one place.
By Janet Raloff - Climate
Acidifying ocean may stifle phytoplankton
Chemical changes in seawater make a key nutrient less available to these organisms.
By Sid Perkins - Climate
Warming has already boosted insect breeding
Museum records, publications suggest extra generations at same time as temperature increases
By Susan Milius - Climate
Climate: Deal or no deal?
We’ve got a climate accord, President Barack Obama said at a parting press conference tonight (at about 11 to 11:30 p.m. local time, before leaving Denmark). Not so fast, argue a number of other negotiating blocs...like the G77.
By Janet Raloff - Climate
Carbon dioxide: Blame where blame is due?
Blog: Measuring outsourcing of greenhouse gases. From the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
By Sid Perkins - Climate
Climate: China defends its reputation
Over the past few days, a number of national delegations – not least the United States’ – have criticized implicitly, if not explicitly, China’s unwillingness to accept binding limits on its greenhouse-gas emissions and the measurement of emissions by outside auditors. This morning, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao addressed a plenary meeting of the United Nations climate-change conference – populated by more than 100 heads of heads of state – to make his case that China has embarked on an earnest step toward substantive climate protection.
By Janet Raloff