BEN NORMAN, - Science News Room
Stephan: Here is the latest on the polar ice. This one the North Pole.
There is growing recognition that reductions in Arctic sea ice levels will influence patterns of atmospheric circulation both within and beyond the Arctic. New research in the International Journal of Climatology explores the impact of 2007 ice conditions, the second lowest Arctic sea ice extent in the satellite era, on atmospheric circulation and surface temperatures.
Two 30-year simulations, one using the sea ice levels of 2007 and another using sea ice levels at the end of the 20th century, were used to access the impact of ice free seas. The results showed a significant response to the anomalous open water of 2007.
The results confirm that the atmospheric response to declining sea ice could have implications far beyond the Arctic such as a decrease in the pole to equator temperature gradient, given the increased temperatures associated with the increase in open water, leading to a weaker jet stream and less storminess in the mid-latitudes.
‘In the context of decreasing Arctic sea ice extent, our experiments investigating the impacts of anomalous open water on the atmosphere showed increased heat transfer from the ocean to the atmosphere and warmer temperatures in areas of reduced sea ice. Comparing the model simulated circulation to the observed circulation […]
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Stephan: Information revealing the truth about the level of surveillance just continues to pour out. We are beginning to get a sense of the scale of it. I find it notable that I get most of these stories from non-U.S. media. And if you have been following the stories I have been publishing in SR, and understand what is behind this, it gets really quite freaky.
Facebook and Microsoft were able to reveal limited information on Friday night about the government orders they have received to turn over user data to security agencies.
Ted Ullyot, Facebook’s general counsel, said in a statement that they had between 9,000 and 10,000 requests from all government entities, from local to federal, in the last six months of 2012.
The orders involved the accounts of between 18,000 and 19,000 Facebook users on a broad range of surveillance topics, from missing children to terrorism.
Microsoft said they had between 6,000 and 7,000 orders, affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 accounts, but downplayed how much they had revealed.
Looking on? Facebook received government data requests that involved the accounts of 18,000 and 19,000 Facebook users
Data: Microsoft said they had between 6,000 and 7,000 government orders, affecting between 31,000 and 32,000 accounts, but downplayed how much they revealed.
The announcements come at the end of a week when Facebook, Microsoft and Google, normally rivals, had jointly pressured the Obama administration to loosen their legal gag on national security orders.
The companies are still not allowed to make public how many orders they received from a particular agency or on a particular subject.
But the numbers do include all national security […]
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WHITNEY CLAVIN, J.D. HARRINGTON and MARIA-JOSE VINAS GARCIA, - NASA - Jet Propulsion Laboratory & Goddard Space Center
Stephan: This is the definitive South Pole report.
Click through to see the images that accompany this report.
Imagery related to this release can be found online at: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/earth20130613.html .
PASADENA, Calif. — Ocean waters melting the undersides of Antarctic ice shelves are responsible for most of the continent’s ice shelf mass loss, a new study by NASA and university researchers has found.
Scientists have studied the rates of basal melt, or the melting of the ice shelves from underneath, of individual ice shelves, the floating extensions of glaciers that empty into the sea. But this is the first comprehensive survey of all Antarctic ice shelves. The study found basal melt accounted for 55 percent of all Antarctic ice shelf mass loss from 2003 to 2008, an amount much higher than previously thought.
Antarctica holds about 60 percent of the planet’s fresh water locked into its massive ice sheet. Ice shelves buttress the glaciers behind them, modulating the speed at which these rivers of ice flow into the ocean. Determining how ice shelves melt will help scientists improve projections of how the Antarctic ice sheet will respond to a warming ocean and contribute to sea level rise. It also will improve global models of ocean circulation by providing a better estimate of the amount of fresh water ice shelf melting adds to Antarctic coastal waters.
The study uses reconstructions of ice accumulation, […]
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KATE SHEPPARD and JAMES WEST, - Mother Jones
Stephan: If you live along a coast line, or in an area lower that 200 feet above sea level when a coast line is within 50 miles of where you live, you need to begin thinking about this.
This is, by the way, a confirmation of a prediction I made six years, and wrote about at length in 2009. What is really going to drive change is the increased cost or discontinuance of insurance in coastal areas. (See: Migration: http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2808%2900398-4/fulltext)
Click through to see the very important map that accompanies this story.
Rising seas and increasingly severe weather are expected to increase the areas of the United States at risk of floods by up to 45 percent by 2100, according to a first-of-its-kind report released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Wednesday. These changes could double the number of flood-prone properties covered by the National Flood Insurance Program and drastically increase the costs of floods, the report finds.
The report concludes that climate change is likely to expand vastly the size and costs of the 45-year-old government flood insurance program. Like previous government reports, it anticipates that sea levels will rise an average of four feet by the end of the century. But this is what’s new: The portion of the US at risk for flooding, including coastal regions and areas along rivers, will grow between 40 and 45 percent by the end of the century. That shift will hammer the flood insurance program. Premiums paid into the program totaled $3.2 billion in 2009, but that figure could grow to $5.4 billion by 2040 and up to $11.2 billion by the year 2100, the report found. The 257-page study has been in the works for nearly five years and was finally released […]
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DR. NAFEEZ MOSADDEQ AHMED, Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: This is one of the most important essays SR has ever published. Here, I believe you see the real reason for the creation of the security apparat. Terrorism is its second, but public, brief. Its real brief is to prepare for climate change. When you cut through what flows out of the Aegean Stables that is the Congress, you find that in the civil and military bureaucracies they are laying track for what they see coming.
This should definitely give you pause.
Top secret US National Security Agency (NSA) documents disclosed by the Guardian have shocked the world with revelations of a comprehensive US-based surveillance system with direct access to Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft and other tech giants. New Zealand court records suggest that data harvested by the NSA’s Prism system has been fed into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance whose members also include the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
But why have Western security agencies developed such an unprecedented capacity to spy on their own domestic populations? Since the 2008 economic crash, security agencies have increasingly spied on political activists, especially environmental groups, on behalf of corporate interests. This activity is linked to the last decade of US defence planning, which has been increasingly concerned by the risk of civil unrest at home triggered by catastrophic events linked to climate change, energy shocks or economic crisis – or all three.
Just last month, unilateral changes to US military laws formally granted the Pentagon extraordinary powers to intervene in a domestic ’emergency’ or ‘civil disturbance’:
‘Federal military commanders have the authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable […]
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