Earth's climate has shifted drastically many times in its history, but barring massive asteroid impacts, climate change tends to play out over thousands or tens of thousands of years. Plenty of time to pack away the summer clothes and buy a nice warm coat when you spot an ice age coming. But researchers at the University of Saskatchewan recently discovered that some ice ages come on quite rapidly.

By taking some very thin slices of a mud core sampled from a really old lake (Ireland's Lough Monreach), the Saskatchewan team got a high-resolution look at varying oxygen and carbon isotope levels in the lake's history. The analysis revealed events happening month by month in the lake's ancient past. They found that things got very cold very quickly during the "Big Freeze" (more scientifically referred to as the Younger Dryas), a small ice age that occurred about 13,000 years ago. How quickly? The lake basically froze solid within a few years, and it might even have happened within a few months.

The Younger Dryas is thought to have been caused by the sudden emptying of Lake Aggasiz, a massive freshwater sea that covered a much of what is now mid-Canada and the northern U.S. At some point, the contents of the lake poured down through the Great Lakes and down the St. Lawrence River, flooding the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic with a deluge of fresh water. Not only did this raise global sea levels, it severely disrupted ocean currents in the area, scrambling the climate and causing an instant ice age. It took about 200 years for things to get back to normal.

Since there's no Lake Aggasiz around to empty itself and cause an ice age, we're off the hook, right? Wrong. The Greenland Ice Sheet (which is an enormous slab of ice that covers most of Greenland) has been melting at a rate of about 50 cubic miles of ice per year. Because the ice sheet basically keeps itself cold, scientists worry that the growing melt zones each summer will lead to a runaway meltdown. If the sheet were to melt away suddenly, it could very well lead to a disruption of ocean currents similar to the one preceeding the Younger Dryas.

Of course, that would probably be the least of our problems, since sea level would rise more than 20 feet. And you still can't outrun cold.

Big Freeze Plunged Europe Into Ice Age in Months. [Science Daily]

That is an enormous amount of mass, and has resulted in the sea level rising about .46 millimeters per year, on average. Sea levels are rising more quickly in recent years though: From 2006 to 2008, it rose about 0.75 mm per year. Researchers, who published their findings in Science today, used both on-the-ground observations and combined them with satellite observations and both methods gave consistent results. Melting of the entire sheet is predicted to raise sea levels globally by about 20 feet, flooding many major cities.

These gorgeous photographs, taken by the science team during their research, show the unearthly beauty of massive ice sheet landscapes. Someday, this landscape may truly be science fiction - or at least, geological history.

via BBC News

In this case, the Rabb's fringe-limbed treefrog is apparently being wiped out by a species of chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, which has invaded its habitat in central Panama. Since the fungus was detected, only one of the species' males has been heard calling out, but no other males have been heard to answer.

There's also been some forest clear-cutting in its habitat, to build some luxury holiday homes, but that hasn't reached critical levels. Photo by Brad Wilson/UICN/AP Images [Guardian]

Over at Astrobiology magazine, Aaron Gronstal describes new scientific work that led to the creation of this map. What you see here is the landmass which included a land bridge over the Bering Strait - the same bridge that allowed animals and humans to wander from Northern Europe into North America without being hindered by the Arctic Sea. The timeframe here is the Pleiocene and Pleistocene Eras - between 5.3 million to 12,000 years ago - when ice sheets and glaciers covered most of the northern hemisphere. And yet at the same time, some of the iciest parts of today's warmer world were at that time ice-free and full of life. How did that happen?

Gronstal sums up the research:

Temperatures were still low in Beringia during these epochs, but a lack of moisture due to the rainshadow of the surrounding mountain ranges prevented large-scale formation of ice. As the authors [of the new study] put it, "The interior of Yukon and Alaska was cold enough to support ice sheets but too dry for extensive glaciation." Because of this, Beringia was a key location for life during the Pleistocene, when the Earth's climate fluctuated between ice ages and glaciers often covered large portions of the globe.

As the Earth's climate varied, so did sea levels. This ebb and flow of the sea exposed a land-bridge across the Bering Straight between Alaska and Siberia. Not only was this an important route for the migration of animals between the continents of Asia and North America, it also expanded the ice-free land mass of Beringia. This provided a large area that was relatively rich in food – which was a lifesaver for those struggling to survive in the Earth's frozen North. Beringia was by no means a tropical paradise for life, but the cold, wind-swept desert was an important ecological refuge for plants and animals when glaciation of the Earth was at its peak.

This map is a perfect demonstration of how complicated the results are when we see massive weather shifts on Earth. Some areas that were uninhabitable become habitable in unforeseen ways.

via Astrobiology

The article, published today in Science, looks at a microbe known as SUPO5, which lives in areas of the ocean which have low amounts of oxygen. These "dead zones" are created by climate change and nitrogen runoff. The microbes were found off the coast of British Columbia, in the Saanich Inlet, and use nitrates instead of oxygen as a source of energy. They remove sulfides from the water, fix carbon dioxide, and in turn produce nitrous oxide, a very potent greenhouse gas.

The dead zones, officially called oxygen minimum zones (OMZs), are expanding, and most marine life struggles to live in their low oxygen environments. You can find dead zones off the coasts of British Columbia, Oregon, Chile, and Namibia, among other locations. Their growth may have significant impact on fisheries and marine life, and the presence of SUPO5 seems to be one of the best indicators of the presence of dead zones - they are helping turn the zones into nitrogen sinks that pump out greenhouse gasses.

By creating dead zones, we my have inadvertently helped space-faring microbes evolve. SUPO5 can survive low oxygen environments, with otherwise deadly chemical makeups. The organism refines sulfur compounds, which on earth are only found in very exotic environments, such as hydrothermal vents, or these OMZs. On another planet, they could thrive.

Said Steve Hallam, the head researcher on the project:

I hesitate to use the word alien to describe [SMO5], as it's very much part of earth's system, but it's alien to us...it doesn't require the thin film of oxygenated atmosphere that we thrive in.

Possibly these microbes could be used in terraforming. They can survive starvation, too. When food supplies get low, the microbe goes dormant. That would make it ideal for putting into hibernation for a long trip.

Hallan says SMO5 also could be useful here on Earth in wastewater treatment or fuel production, where the microbes' unique biology could be used to remove sulfides.

via Science and the Joint Genome Institute

Image courtesy of Hallam Lab.

The dust storm accomplished something that geoengineers call "ocean fertilization." When the storm hit Sydney, it dumped an estimated three million tonnes of Australian desert dust into Sydney Harbour and the Tasman Straight. That dust brought nitrogen and phosphate to the waters, providing food to microscopic phytoplankton, whose population numbers rapidly tripled (which is what you see in the image above). And that in turn may rapidly expand the population of local fish, too. Boosting the lower levels of the food chain can easily lead to population growth at the higher rungs.

But ocean fertilization isn't just a way to help the fishing industry, and feed hungry Australians. There are some even more interesting results that come from rapidly hurling piles of dirt into the ocean - results that could slow climate change.

Ocean fertilization can trap atmospheric carbon. First, the excess algae absorb carbon dioxide; then, when the algae dies and sinks to the bottom of the ocean, the carbon it has absorbed is isolated from the atmosphere for a few thousand years. Of course, the effectiveness of this is hotly disputed. An article recently published in Nature tracked a natural influx of high levels of iron into the ocean around the Crozet Islands, and the carbon uptake was 50 times lower than previously estimated. This study, as most others on the subject, focused on iron rather than nitrogen, and there is some argument that natural intake will produce different effects than deliberately dumping tonnes of the material into the ocean. Geoengineering could promote different phytoplanktons to develop. The location of the experiment also has a lot to do with what grows and how much carbon it traps.

The final effect that this explosion of algae could produce? It could help cool the planet. Certain plankton species produce dimethyl sulfide, which works its way into the atmosphere, and eventually transforms into clouds, increasing the reflectivity of the Earth, and lowering its temperature.

So, by taking tonnes of desert dirt (something Australia is in no way short of), and flushing it into the ocean, we can potentially rejuvenate flagging fish populations, trap atmospheric carbon dioxide and lower the Earth's albedo. That's a hell of a way to hack the planet. Except no-one's sure if it actually works yet, with iron or nitrogen.

Now Australian geoengineers Ian Jones and Associate Professor Rob Wheen, both of Sydney University, want to inject 2.5 tonnes of nitrogen-rich urea into a controlled area of the sea and try to replicate the effect. They claim that nourishing a 20km wide patch of water could significantly boost catch numbers for small-scale artisanal fishing industries.

The process still very controversial, and the act of massively changing the makeup of the biosphere is practically begging for algae to take over the ocean as we know it and start belching sulfurous fumes into the air. Jones is also the head of the Ocean Nourishment Corporation, a private group who are attempting to use urea to boost phytoplankton numbers, and gain carbon credits to sell, which perhaps makes him a less than unbiased figure to ask about the whole topic.

Still, the Sydney dust storms have given us the first solid evidence that ocean nourishment can affect algae blooms. And as far as geoengineering goes, ocean fertilization uses techniques and technology readily available. If the mechanisms of action are shown to be effective, Jones and Wheen's project could be rolled out easily. The research on it is already underway, and it's now a working concept. Your oceans could be massively reengineered soon, without requiring significant hardware developments.

Dust storm triggers ocean bloom [ABC Science]

According to Google's official blog,

In collaboration with the Danish government and others, we are launching a series of Google Earth layers and tours to allow you to explore the potential impacts of climate change on our planet and the solutions for managing it. Working with data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we show on Google Earth the range of expected temperature and precipitation changes under different global emissions scenarios that could occur throughout the century.

The first tour, "Confronting Climate Change," was launched this week on YouTube:

In addition to the Google Earth program, Google has also launched a tie-in YouTube channel to allow people to upload questions and concerns that can be raised to decision makers attending December's UN COP15 Climate Change convention.

Google climate change tools for COP15 [Googleblog] (Via)

In a paper published in Nature this week, a group of scientists explain that boreal forests emit hydrocarbons called "volatile monoterpene compounds," some of which cause the distinct smell of a pine forest. These are all basically particles that float into the clouds, and interact with ozone and other compounds to form small, semi-liquid droplets called cloud condensation nucleii (CCN). The key here is that monoterpene causes more of these CCN droplets to form, which are what make the clouds so reflective. Essentially, it's just sunlight reflecting off water held together with other chemicals.

So if these giant pine forests are always emitting so many monoterpenes, why would the Earth ever warm up? The problem is a compound that comes from deciduous trees and other vegetation called isoprene. Isoprene cancels out monoterpene, and causes fewer of those reflective droplets to form. As the climate changes, it's likely we'll see more of the kinds of plants that make isoprene, and fewer that make monoterpene.

The obvious solution is geoengineering. Why not synthesize a reasonable quantity of monoterpenes and seed the clouds with them? It's a naturally-occurring chemical which would normally float up to the clouds anyway. And it would encourage the production of reflective droplets in our cloud cover, thus reflecting back more sunlight and lowering temperatures.

Either that, or let's start boreal farms whose sole purpose is cloud engineering.

via Nature

Photo by peterkelly

In next month's issue of Climate Change, cell biologist Leonard Ornstein of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and David Rind and Igor Aleinov of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies outline their plan to plant a forest in the Sahara Desert. They propose desalinating seawater from the desert's nearby oceans, and using aquaducts and pumps to bring it inland. The idea is to plant Eucalyptus Grandis, which survives well in heat, which would be watered using drip irrigation. The trio claim the trees would lower the Sahara's temperature by up to 8°C Celsius in some areas, bring clouds to reflect the sun's rays back into space, and capture eight billion tons of carbon each year.

But the plan is not without its downsides. Aside from the $2 trillion a year price tag, the forest would also likely prevent iron-rich dust from the sands from blowing into the Atlantic Ocean, iron that nourishes marine life. And the increased moisture could bring a plague of locusts down on not just the Sahara, but the rest of Africa as well.

Forest a Desert, Cool the World [ScienceNOW via Popular Science]

New research suggests that rising ocean levels will result in the northern pole of Earth's spin axis shifting by around 1.5 centimeters per year in the direction of Alaska (Insert your own "If only Sarah Palin was still governor" joke here) if projections from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that carbon dioxide levels will double in the next hundred years are accurate. That may sound like a lot, but according to NASA Jet Propulsion expert Felix Landerer, we shouldn't be too worried:

The Earth is like a spinning top, and if you put more mass on one side or other, the axis of rotation is going to shift slightly [but the] pole's not going to drift away in a crazy manner.

What it's likely to do, according to New Scientist magazine, is increase the planet's rate of spin:

Previously, Landerer and colleagues showed that global warming would cause Earth's mass to be redistributed towards higher latitudes. Since that pulls mass closer to the planet's spin axis, it causes the planet to rotate faster – just as an ice skater spins faster when she pulls her arms towards her body.

That does it - It's time to unleash Operation Let's All Move To The Center of The Earth.

Global warming could change Earth's tilt [New Scientist]

Science has known for some time that, when cockroaches are resting, they periodically stop breathing for up to 40 minutes, but it took researchers at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, to discover just why they did so. The team, led by Natalie Schimpf, found that cockroaches' breathing is related to water as opposed to oxygen concentration or carbon dioxide, as previously theorized. According to Schimpf:

Cockroaches lose water across their respiratory surfaces when they breathe... so taking shorter breaths in dry conditions reduces the amount of water they will lose.

George McGavin of the University of Oxford explains why this means that they're environmentally invincible:

Living in the humid conditions of a rainforest, where they evolved, might be plain sailing, but cockroaches are adaptable and can cope in a wide range of environmental conditions... Two hundred and fifty million years of physiological fine tuning has produced a creature that will be around for a long time to come. Cockroaches, I'm afraid to say, will do well in the face of climate change.

That's it; I'm splicing my DNA with cockroach as soon as possible.

Cockroaches future-proofed against climate change [New Scientist]

With no written record to describe the rise of the largest pre-Columbian empire, paleoecologists have investigated the climate that existed in the centuries proceeding the Incas' apex. Pollen and seeds found in the sediment in the Cuzco region of the Peruvian Andes reveal a period of climate warming that began around 1100 CE and continued past the Spanish conquest of the Incas in 1533 CE. Alex Chepstow-Lusty of the French Institute for Andean Studies in Lima, Peru, noted such climate change can have a positive effect on civilizations:

"Climate warming does not always have to be a negative issue. Our research shows that it can favor societal development."

In the case of the Incas, four centuries of warm weather melted the glaciers, pumping water into the formerly arid region. Trees were moved up mountains to combat soil erosion, allowing for agriculture in the newly cleared lands. The result was a lengthy period of plenty, with maize and potato crops feeding a growing population and allowing the Incas to turn their attention to assembling a military, building roads and buildings, and creating an infrastructure.

But climate experts warn that future climate change could have disastrous effects:

"Peru is considered the third most threatened country in the world by climate change, with most of its glaciers predicted to disappear by 2050. The country should be focusing on restoring and protecting its ecosystems," Chepstow-Lusty said.

Incan Empire Aided by Global Warming [Discovery News]

The study, published today in PLoS One, is the result of work on climate modeling based on likely climate change in California's Central Valley. Researchers project that the region will lose more than half its winter chill by the year 2100. From the study:

Winter chill determines the ability of many deciduous trees from temperate climates to break their dormancy in the spring. Each species or cultivar has a specific chilling requirement, which if not met results in erratic growth patterns and economically unsuccessful fruit or nut production.

The authors used modeled temperature records for two past and 18 future climate scenarios and calculated the amount of safe winter chill that will be exceeded in 90 percent of all years for each scenario. Their findings indicate that imminent climatic change is likely to make most of California's Central Valley, which annually produces 1.2 million hectares of tree crops with chilling requirements and produces valued at about 9 billion dollars, unsuitable for many crops such as walnuts, cherries, prunes and peaches. Pistachios and almonds might also be affected.

What this means is that one of California's greatest sources of income will be strongly affected. Plus, many other regions will suffer since so many communities depend on California exports for fruits and nuts throughout the year.

Professor Minghua Zhang, whor worked on the study, said:

Depending on the pace of winter chill decline, the consequences for California's fruit and nut industries could be devastating.

Get ready for the post-farm California apocalypse. Without fruit exports, the main export from Central California could become some futuristic crystal meth. Of course if we're lucky, scientists will come up with GMO fruits and nuts that can bloom even with warmer winters.

via PLoS One

Image by Bill Sharp.

Researchers at the UK National Oceanography Centre have inspected samples from arctic sea floors, discovering that these floors used to teem with life. The samples were replete with a type of algae called diatoms. These diatoms serve as a low rung on the food chain for larger, more complex ecosystems. Other studies suggest that sharks and larger fish once called the warmed arctic their home.

If arctic temperatures continue their upward trend, the arctic ocean floors will be covered in this food source again. As a result, creatures that consume these diatoms could move in during the summer, making the summer arctic oceans as biologically rich as southern oceans.

No word yet on when construction begins for the first arctic beach resort.

Warming arctic could teem with life by 2030 [via NewScientist]

Further reading: Images of the Arctic Ocean as We Will Know It

Professor Tim Coulson, of the Imperial College London's Life Sciences Department, sums up what exactly is happening to sheep evolution on this island:

In the past, only the big, healthy sheep and large lambs that had piled on weight in their first summer could survive the harsh winters on Hirta. But now, due to climate change, grass for food is available for more months of the year, and survival conditions are not so challenging - even the slower growing sheep have a chance of making it, and this means smaller individuals are becoming increasingly prevalent in the population.

In a study reported in the journal Science, the research team also blames something called the "young mum effect." Since ewes are giving birth at younger ages, they produce smaller offspring.

This effect explains why the sheep are not getting bigger over time, but the study suggests that climate change is the main culprit for the shrinking sheep. On the upside, smaller sheep also means cuter sheep pictures on the internet!

Climate change and the mystery of the shrinking sheep [via EurekaAlert]
The Dynamics of Phenotypic Change and the Shrinking Sheep of St. Kilda [via Science]

And that's how one droplet of acid leads to mutants. Get the scoop at Science and on PhysOrg.

Some African nations, like Ethiopia, will have little to worry about. Although a new report published today in Global Environmental Change says the country's average temperature will go up by several degrees over the next half century, Ethiopia already grows crops that can withstand that kind of heat. But other nations, like Chad, will get hot enough that the local strain of maize will no longer grow.

And this situaiton will escalate very quickly. New Scientist reports:

[The researchers] found that farmers in Africa will face average temperatures outside the current range of experience in their locality in 42% of years by 2025 – and 97% by 2075. Since temperature strongly affects crop yields, farmers will need to find new varieties adapted to these higher temperatures, Burke says. Future rainfall showed more overlap with current conditions, largely because rainfall already varies more from year to year.

But scientists emphasize that this situation is not catastrophic. There are plenty of other nations where maize and other local crops are grown in higher temperatures. And that's where this idea of the "genetic prospector" comes in. This would be a person who would go out in the field, to warmer crop-growing nations like Cameroon or Nigeria, and find strains of maize that are heat-resistant. Or at least, resistant to the kinds of temperatures Chad can expect as early as 2025.

The problem, as research report author Marshall Burke explains, is that few of these nations have agreements about sharing crop strains or collaborating on agricultural science projects. There isn't much knowledge-sharing, and therefore a nation like Chad may find its people starving in bad crop seasons. But genetic prospectors, who could go out and find replacement strains, could stop the starvation cycle and food riots before they start. (Already, some African nations like Somalia have had food riots when crops failed last year.)

Given the lack of coordination between the agricultural scientists and farmers of affected nations, I think "genetic prospector" may be too hopeful of a term. I think what we're likely to see are genetic poachers, desperate people who sneak into neighboring ecologies in search of climates that match their own - and crops that thrive there.

This sounds to me like the plot for a perfect futuristic action movie: His family's crops have failed. There is nothing left for our brave young man from Chad to do but become a genetic poacher in Nigeria. Unfortunately, Nigeria wants to closely guard its heat-friendly crops, and sell their genetic profiles only to the richest agribusinesses. This becomes an even more dire situation when you consider how many of those agribusinesses are owned by foreign nations who take a huge cut of every harvest. Will our brave Chadian lad survive to bring the genetic material home?

Via New Scientist and Global Environmental Change

Image of a village in Chad via Wunderground.

Andrew Revkin over at the New York Times' Dot-Earth blog reports that the new study, published in Science, explores how much sea levels would rise as the Antarctic ice sheets melt. Though previous studies had suggested that sea levels could rise as much as 20 feet over the next century - a devastating amount - the new study says it's more likely to be about 10 feet or less. Keep in mind that these numbers are only relevant to how much the Antarctic will contribute to rising sea levels, and does not account for what will be contributed by the rapid melt of Greenland's ice sheets.

Find out more in Revkin's article about the study.

According to Dan Box at The Ecologist:

The evacuation of the Carteret Islands [has] begun. This morning I stood on black volcanic sand, pressed up right against the jungle, and watched a small white boat powered by a single outboard engine run in against the shore. On board were five men from the Islands, the fathers of five families, who have come to finish building houses and gardens already begun in a cleared patch of jungle at Tinputz, on the east coast of Bougainville. When these homes are ready the five will return to the Carterets, to fetch their wives and children back. Life, they hope, will be better for them here. On the Carterets, king tides have washed away their crops and rising sea levels poisoned those that remain with salt. The people have been forced to move.

The Solmon Islands News provides more details:

The five families were chosen from a criteria set by Tulele Peisa with the emphasis on size of family, whether a family has enough to feed on the island, access to paying school fees and medical services and the whether the family is able to survive on the island for the next two years.

This story is going to become more and more common in the next decade or two, as the people who did the least to cause climate change pay the highest price.

Top photos from Sun Come Up. [via Mother Jones]