British and Australian researchers have found that one of the world's largest carbon sinks stores carbon differently than first thought.

The Southern Ocean contains about 40 per cent of all carbon dioxide emissions absorbed by the world's oceans.

Researchers from the CSIRO and British Antarctic Survey examined the way the Southern Ocean sucks carbon absorbed from the surface layer into the deeper ocean.

Research co-author Richard Matear from the CSIRO says the study shows the method through which carbon is drawn down from the surface of the Southern Ocean to the ocean's interior - or deep waters.

He says it was previously thought this process, known as subduction, happened uniformly across the ocean.

"A conventional thought would be that once it gets out of this surface layer, it's kind of been tucked away and won't appear for a long time; many years of hundreds of years," he said.

"But with this re-ventilation, there's some places where actually it doesn't get put away into the deep ocean for long at all, re-ventilating in the time-scale of a decade."

Using information collected across 10 years from robotic probes known as Argo floats and various sensors, the team has shown subduction happens at specific locations as a result of interplay between winds, currents and massive whirlpools.

Dr Matear says the study also shows the Southern Ocean is not as efficient as first thought in capturing anthropogenic carbon dioxide.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-30/carbon-storage-trends-revealed/4163274

Gus: in some of my articles I may have wrongly used the word anthropomorphic while meaning anthropogenic... Sorry... my mistake... I always meant anthropogenic while referring to climate change and anthorpomorphic while projecting our own behaviour to explain animal behaviour...  But this does not change the reality of global warming...

THIS year is likely to be seen by future historians as the ''tipping point, the beginning of the clean energy era'' when the world turned decisively towards renewable energy, according to the chief of Australia's Climate Commission, Tim Flannery.

Professor Flannery will try to shift debate in Australia so that solar and wind power are increasingly seen as a centrepiece of the nation's energy mix, starting with a speech today at a Committee for Economic Development of Australia event in Melbourne.

''The global trends we have seen take place this year are not now going to be reversed - it's like a juggernaut,'' he told the Herald. ''We've come out of a period where the debate in Australia is very 'low value' in terms of renewables, but we are seeing a clear shift now in a way that we've never seen before.''
Professor Flannery pointed to Germany's new energy policy, which sidelines nuclear power in favour of solar and wind energy, rapidly dropping solar panel prices around the world, and India's embrace of ''distributed'' energy networks at the expense of centralised, fossil-fuelled power stations.

Investment in renewable power has increased sixfold since 2004, and for the first time businesses around the world are investing more in renewables than coal, oil and gas, he said, citing data from Bloomberg new energy finance.
''When we try to look forward a decade, with the last decade as our yardstick, what do we imagine our country will be like?'' Professor Flannery asks in his speech.
''It's hard to avoid the idea that solar and wind will be commonplace, and that this will drive a transformation in how we move and use electricity.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/energy-smart/sun-rises-on-a-renewable-wind-blowing-through-global-energy-industry-20120813-244t1.html#ixzz23TAyfls5

On ABC Environment last week, we ran an opinion piece by Michael Mann - the guy who compiled the famous 'hockey stick' graph showing global temperatures leaping up in recent years.

Our op-ed provoked a large number of comments doubting the evidence for climate change.

Yet among those who deny that climate change is real, there appears to have been a palpable shift away from a refusal to accept the climate is warming and towards those who doubt the severity of the damage.

It's a subtle but important shift, and suggests that holding the view that climate change is not occurring is intellectually untenable in the long-term.

American physicist Richard Muller is one climate sceptic who has recently changed his mind after reviewing the evidence.

Muller crunched a bunch of numbers to do with global temperatures and announced in the New York Times that he is a "converted sceptic". It was this opinion piece in arguably the world's most influential paper that set tongues wagging about climate change all over again.

Muller had previously been claimed by those unconvinced by the science as one of their own, because he questioned the validity of Mann's 'hockey stick' graph, used by Al Gore in his film An Inconvenient Truth.

The disagreement between Mann and Muller, a rather arcane arm wrestle over data methodology, was used as evidence that the science was not, in fact, settled. It was fuel for thousands of climate sceptic blogs the world over.

Muller had so many concerns over the raw data and the tidied-up data that he just wasn't convinced the world was experiencing unprecedented warming. However, in October last year, Muller announced the findings of his own research in the Wall Street Journal. "Global warming is real," he wrote.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-08-15/phillips-climate-sceptic-reborn-a-believer/4199130?WT.svl=theDrum

Two major heat waves this month have rewritten the weather record from Spain to Ukraine.

A number of cities have registered highest historical temperatures, according to one tracker of world temperature extremes.

A major heat wave spanning much of southeastern, central and eastern Europe was most intense between the 4th and 10th of August, although it lasted only one to two days in some areas.

In the Balkan Peninsula, the heat wave culminated on the 5th and 6th, when all-time high temperatures were reached in Romania, Montenegro and in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to Maximiliano Herrera, readings of 42.5 degrees C (108.5 F) were set in both Bacau, Romania, and at the Podgorica, Montenegro, airport.

Zenica, Bosnia, observed a top of 40.9 degrees C (105.6 degrees F).

Even Ukraine had a highest recorded temperature, 40.4 degrees C (104.7 F), which was reached in Mohyliv Podilsky.

Two all-time highs, for the cities of Przemysl and Zamosc, were apparently set during this heat wave, according to Herrera's web page. This may have happened on the 6th, when Warsaw ticked 34.6 degrees C.

Surging European grain prices following a scorching heat wave in recent weeks are likely to raise flour prices, and farmers are facing higher bills for animal feed, industry executives and analysts said. But some analysts say they doubt whether recent price rises are sustainable in view of large global grain stocks and the fact that overall grain supplies are currently still satisfactory.European grain prices have jumped around 25% in the past three weeks as hot weather and drought have hit crops just before harvesting in Western and Eastern Europe. Key Paris wheat prices were around 178 euros a tonne on Friday.
Europe's fields 'looking like Africa'
The heat wave has stalled grass growth, Campbell-Gibbons said. Yields on a first grass cut to make grass silage to feed to dairy cows were down 20 to 30% in early June and were down as much as 50% on a second cut in late June."The heat wave has left a lot of fields looking more like Africa rather than European meadows," one grain trader said. Hot weather has also meant cows had spent more time indoors, increasing the amount of straw needed for bedding. Campbell-Gibbons said British straw prices had risen to up to 100 pounds a tonne from about 60 pounds last year. She said farmers estimated the total increase in costs at about 1.0 to 1.5 pence per litre of milk.

http://brussels.cta.int/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=4664:europe-heat-wave-sparks-surge-in-grain-prices

After record temperatures in the USA... this adds to the bill...

Time to wake up that the surface of the earth is warming up fast. Time to recognise it's all due to anthropogenic carbon... Meanwhile:

In Midst of a Drought, Keeping Traffic Moving on the Mississippi
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

The authorities are also fighting numerous wildfires elsewhere across Serbia.

In a call issued on Friday, Bishop Milutin of Valjevo - about 50km north-west of Cacak - urged his congregation to repent of their sins and pray for rain.

"Many have asked why the Lord has allowed such a misfortune to descend on the land. Why such a punishment?" he was quoted as saying by the Valjevo diocese.

"Clearly, the cause of such misfortune is human sin and lack of care for the natural order of things."

Serbia has been particularly badly hit by the heatwave across the western Balkans, which has seen temperatures of up to 40C, damaging crops and triggering hundreds of wildfires.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19386527

-----------------------------

Global warming is the culprit... and the only human sin is to burn fossil fuels for comfort...

Walt Meier, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, said long-term warming coupled with recent weather conditions account for the new low. He noted that the long-term warming trend has produced more open water, which in turn absorbs more heat and makes the ice thinner.

“The thinner ice cover is then more easily melted during the summer, and more easily broken up by winds and waves from storms, which leads to more melting as well,” Meier wrote in an e-mail. “This year we had a pretty strong storm go through the Arctic in early August, and that certainly has been a big factor in the rapid loss during August. But before that storm, we were already tracking along the 2007 trajectory, so a record may have happened even without that storm because of the long-term trend.”

Rafe Pomerance, former deputy assistant secretary of state for environment and development under President Bill Clinton, called the record low “a profound moment that will change the debate” over climate change.

“It is very troubling, because the refrigerator of the Northern Hemisphere has been unplugged, so we will keep warming,” Pomerance said.

But the new record may not convince some global warming skeptics, who continue to question the general scientific consensus that human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are helping drive climate change. Just last week, a team of British Antarctic Survey researchers published findings in the journal Nature that recent warming in the Antarctic was “unusual” but not unprecedented, since ice core samples showed the continent experienced a warm period several thousand ago, and temperatures had begun to rise again 600 years ago after a relatively cool period.

Further reduction in the extent of summer sea ice, which has declined 40 percent over the past three decades, would have implications far beyond the Arctic. The difference in temperature between the region and temperate zones is what propels the west-to-east speed of the jet stream, which could shift storm tracks as well as lead to more extreme weather.

Diminished sea ice means there will be a smaller expanse of white reflecting sunlight into space, according to researchers, which could accelerate warming in the Arctic and increase sea surface temperatures. If this led to the melting of a major ice sheet, like the one in Greenland, this could raise global sea levels substantially.

This spring, a group of scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Columbia University published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science that found changes in atmospheric circulation brought on by sea-ice melt contributed to recent cold and snowy winters in the Northern Hemisphere.

Northern latitudes in Alaska, Greenland and elsewhere have experienced unusually high temperatures this summer. Barrow, Alaska, had six record-breaking days in a row of temperatures above 48 degrees Fahrenheit between Aug. 14 and 20, including a record high of 66 degrees on Aug. 19.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/arctic-sea-ice-hits-record-low-scientists-say/2012/08/27/0e11a63a-efe6-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_print.html

Sea also all Gus' rants about this subject espcially those than have mentioned "refrigerator"... and whisky...

Note also:

I'm sure I'm wrong but I thought yesterday [26 Mar 2010], after going over the processes of warming, that 2012 was going to be a telling year. I mean by that that the sea level average will be noticeably higher... previously 2015 was my benchmark. New information to date have brought this forward by about three years.. I'm sure I'm wrong... If I was right then we'd be going to hell by 2100. The stresses on the atmosphere would go beyond the imaginable. But we're still releasing more and more CO2 in the atmosphere...

Just look at a kettle. You turn it on. It sings as it "bubbles". Then a minute or so later it goes silent as if it was not warming at all...  But in there, inside, the heat makes the convection currents accelerate to the point bubbles do not have time to form. Then the heat is intense enough to beat the currents and the kettle sings again with bubbles... In climate warming parlance we're at the non-singing stage, I believe... Soon the song will start again with a frightening clarity. Sure, not all kettles behave in the same way. The wattage, the temperature of the water, the ambient temperature, the shape of the kettle, all play a part with the heating progression. And the earth is big kettle attached to a couple of fridges, with ons and offs such as night and day...

And in regard to farting cows, they still add the same amount of farts nonetheless, but not the same proportion of the emission total. It's a mathematical "error" that actually underestimates the total amount of emissions. Say if in the erroneous accounting the cows were 3 and transport was 2, the total would be 5 and the cows farting proportion would be 60 per cent... But as the cows farts are 3 and transport is actually 5, the total is 8 (160 per cent of the previous total) while the cows now represent  — with the same amount of farts — 37.5 per cent of the total emissions...

So there... See image at top. and for those who live in cool places, the present temperature in Sydney is a warm 27 degrees C (81 degree F) at 11:00 at night... about 6 degrees C above average...

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/9147#comment-24508

The melting Arctic shouldn’t be on the backburner

By Editorial Board, Tuesday, September 4, 9:15 AM

THE ARCTIC IS GETTING warmer faster than almost anywhere else on Earth. The latest evidence came in an announcement from the University of Colorado’s National Snow and Ice Data Center saying that, as of Aug. 26, the Arctic sea ice cover shrunk to 1.58 million square miles this summer, the smallest area since satellite measurements began in 1979. The trend is expected to continue in the next few weeks.

Over the past three decades, the average extent of the Arctic sea ice has declined by 25 to 30 percent, and the rate of decline is accelerating. In the past, older, thicker ice would drift away and be replaced by seasonal ice. But now more of the older ice is melting in the Arctic, a phenomenon that had been relatively rare. Also, less seasonal ice is replacing it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-should-take-the-lead-on-the-shrinking-arctic-ice/2012/09/03/afb2ed5e-f14f-11e1-a612-3cfc842a6d89_story.html?hpid=z4

Massive fish die-offs are common in the 376-sq mile lake, which is itself slowly dying from excessive salinity, but nobody remembered such a powerful stench.

Experts collected air samples, modelled weather patterns and ran computer simulations as part of "odour surveillance" before concluding a huge thunderstorm churned up fetid waters with bacteria and made the stench airborne where it became trapped by low-hanging clouds and then gusted north on 60mph winds.

"No one using the freeways could possibly have travelled so far so fast in southern California," noted the Mercury News.

The noxious smell, however, zipped through Mecca, Indio and other towns on its way through the Coachella Valley and Los Angeles.

"I think we've shown it was theoretically possible," Sam Atwood, a spokesman for the AQMD, told reporters. "But this is just something we did not expect."

Other suspects, besides San Diego, included oil refineries, landfills and natural springs, though from the outset a combination of weather and fish was considered likeliest.

''The problem I'm having is the magnitude of the area that was covered by the odour itself,'' Andrew Schlange, general manager at the Salton Sea Authority, told reporters before inspectors confirmed their findings. ''But I guess it can happen under the right conditions, and we had those conditions, apparently, the other night."

Salton Sea, formed in 1905 when floodwaters breached a Colorado river irrigation canal, sits 235 feet below sea level and is 50% saltier than the ocean. It was a popular resort destination in the 1950s but increasing salinity, receding shorelines and periodic mass fish deaths turned it into a symbol of decay and desolation in documentaries such as Bombay Beach.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/12/california-smell-fish-salton-sea/print