Climate

Report says Virginia landmarks jeopardized by climate change

More than $200 million in spending and 4,000 Virginia jobs supported by the six million visitors each year to Jamestown, Chincoteague and Shenandoah National Park are at risk if climate change remains on its current path, according to a major new report issued this week by the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization and the Natural Resources Defense Council. Among the possible changes: a loss of Chincoteague’s beach, the complete flooding by higher tidal waters of historic Jamestown Island – site of the continent’s original English settlement in 1607 – and the decline of the brilliant fall colors of Shenandoah National Park.

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Review: U.N. climate panel must ‘fundamentally reform’

A review ordered by the United Nations has determined that the global panel on climate change needs to “fundamentally reform” how it functions in the wake of errors in a key report that damaged the group’s credibility. The review was conducted by the InterAcademy Council, which groups 15 leading science academies. It came about after the “Climategate” scandal erupted in the face of errors and lack of documentation found in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 study, which suggested that carbon emissions from burning coal, gas and oil were already hurting the planet.

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Pakistani female flood victims struggle to find health care

The Pakistani government says nearly a month of heavy flooding has damaged more than 200 health facilities and displaced roughly a third of the country’s 100,000 female health workers from their homes. VOA Correspondent Sean Maroney traveled to flood-affected areas in northwestern Pakistan and reports on how the disaster has hit women particularly hard across the country:

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‘Dry water’ may be a useful tool in the global warming fight

The possible next big thing in the battle against climate change sounds like something straight out of science fiction. “Dry water” may be an effective new way to absorb and store carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. That was the finding of a group of scientists at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, who added that the substance might also be a greener way to produce hundreds of consumer products and even store and transport potentially harmful industrial materials.

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NASA research shows drought causing decline in plant growth

Global plant productivity that once was on the rise with warming temperatures and a lengthened growing season is now on the decline because of regional drought according to a new study of NASA satellite data. Plant productivity is a measure of the rate of the photosynthesis process that green plants use to convert solar energy, carbon dioxide and water to sugar, oxygen and eventually plant tissue. Compared with a 6 percent increase in plant productivity during the 1980s and 1990s, the decline observed over the last decade is only 1 percent.

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CO2 emissions declined slightly in 2009

Looking for a little bit of positive environmental news amid the floods, record temperatures and out-of-control fires? According to German renewable energy institute IWR, global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell 1.3 percent in 2009 to 31.3 billion tons, the first year-to-year decline in the past decade

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Russian fires not likely to stir up significant amounts of Chernobyl radiation

Concerns that fires ripping through forests already polluted by Chernobyl fallout could launch dangerous amounts of radioactivity into the air are unwarranted, scientists say, adding that real health risks are very small. “Of the total radioactivity in the area, much less than one percent of it will be remobilized,” said Jim Smith, an expert on Chernobyl and a specialist in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Britain’s University of Portsmouth.

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Antartic ice still expanding, but trend may be short lived

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology report that, while Arctic sea ice clearly is on the wane, the Antarctic sea extent currently is increasing slightly. In the face of an overall warming trend, how can this be? The group offered an explanation in a paper appearing in the Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

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New report predicts summers with extreme heat will be the norm

The U.S. space agency NASA says this year has been the warmest for the earth in 131 years. And a new study of hot weather in the U.S. released by the National Wildlife Federation predicts that extreme heat will be the norm by 2050. The private environmental organization says as the planet warms, there will also be heavier rainfall and drought around the globe. But not all scientists agree on the impact of global warming or a solution to its effects:

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Greenland glacier’s new ice island adds to global warming debate

The Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland shed its largest chunk of ice in nearly half a century last week when a break-up sent a 100 squrae-mile chunk of ice drifting into the North Strait. Scientists say Greenland is losing ice mass at an increasing rate as the debate over what it means for global warming heats up:

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