Tag: Climate Change

Prof. Peter Wadhams: Arctic Amplification, Climate Change, and Global Warming (TWO of TWO)

By MariaSeptember 18, 2018Newest Catalog ItemsArctic, Climate Change

New Challenges from the Top of the World (TWO of TWO) Fossil fuel emissions caused the melting of Arctic ice. Now the Arctic in turn is accelerating global warming instead of cooling the planet because the disappearance or thinning of the ice sheet in the Arctic summer has many serious consequences.
This ice sheet covered the top of the world and touched the coast lines of Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Siberia for 100.000 years. In only 30 years the retreat from the coast lines during the Arctic summer accelerated and an ice free Arctic in September may occur by 2020. And the Arctic winter is no longer cold enough to restore ice levels.
In this extraordinary comprehensive lecture that Prof. Wadhams gave [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Prof. Peter Wadhams: Arctic Amplification, Climate Change, and Global Warming (TWO of TWO)

By MariaSeptember 17, 20182018, Newest PodcastsArctic, Climate Change

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Prof. Jim White How to respond to climate change deniers and Consequences of sea level rise

By MariaMarch 8, 2017Environment and Climate Change, Newest Catalog ItemsClimate Change

TWO programs
When the Weather and Climate Summit was established in 1985 the goal was to bring together weather-casters and meteorologists from the U.S. and Canada with scientists and researchers. Their annual summit of 2017 was held in Breckenridge, Colorado, from January 8 to 12. One of the many topics at the summit was to prepare for the incoming Trump administration that was to include outspoken climate change deniers.
Dr. Jim White teaches at the University of Colorado. He specializes in Global change, paleoclimate dynamics, and the human impact on climate.
In a very entertaining and easy to understand way he addressed the five topics climate change deniers most often bring up:
2. How can we insignificant humans change the climate?
3. How can something [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)

Podcast (file2): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 19.9MB)

Ice Core Climate Records of the World Prof. Lonnie Thompson

By MariaJanuary 11, 2017Environment and Climate Change, Newest Catalog ItemsClimate Change, Glaciers

ONE self contained 29 min. program
Lonnie Thompson is University Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University in the School of Earth Sciences and the Byrd Polar Research Center. He is the leading paleo-scientist who drilled and preserved ice cores from high mountain glaciers while others focussed on Greenland and Antarctica.
In 1952 the Danish geophysicist Willi Dansgaard made a discovery that opened up a completely new field of research. He found that the amount of heavy oxygen isotopes in rain correlates with the temperature at the location where the precipitation was formed. But more important in preparation for debates with climate change deniers is the record of CO2 that is also preserved in the ice cores. The correlation of temperature rise and [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

How does the melting Arctic affect the rest of the world?

By MariaDecember 21, 2016Melting IceArctic, Climate Change

NOAA’s Arctic Report Card 2016
ONE self contained 29 min. program
The Arctic is now warming twice as fast as the global average. That’s the finding in the 11th Arctic Report Card released on December 13, 2016, at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. NOAA’s Arctic Research Program Director, Jeremy Mathis, said about the year 2016: “Rarely have we seen the Arctic show a clearer, stronger or more pronounced signal of persistent warming and its cascading effects on the environment than this year.”
The Arctic Report Card, by a team of 61 scientists from 11 nations, lists the many ways in which the warming Arctic affects sea level rise, ocean and air circulation as well as weather in the [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

How does the melting Arctic affect the rest of the world?

By MariaDecember 21, 20162016Arctic, Climate Change

NOAA’s Arctic Report Card 2016
The Arctic is now warming twice as fast as the global average. That’s the finding in the 11th Arctic Report Card released on December 13, 2016, at the annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. NOAA’s Arctic Research Program Director, Jeremy Mathis, said about the year 2016: “Rarely have we seen the Arctic show a clearer, stronger or more pronounced signal of persistent warming and its cascading effects on the environment than this year.”
The Arctic Report Card, by a team of 61 scientists from 11 nations, lists the many ways in which the warming Arctic affects sea level rise, ocean and air circulation as well as weather in the Northern Hemisphere and beyond.
The warming Arctic [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Arctic Amplification, Climate Change, and Global Warming – New Challenges from the Top of the World

By MariaSeptember 21, 2016Melting IceArctic, Climate Change

Professor Peter Wadhams
With increasing urgency Wadhams is calling attention to the disappearing sea ice of the Arctic. In his most recent book, A Farewell to Ice, he writes: “Our planet has changed color. Today, from space, the top of the world in the northern summer looks blue instead of white. We have created an ocean where there was once an ice sheet.”
In a lecture in Milan, Italy, in May 2015, Peter Wadhams explained how the melting of the Arctic affects the rest of the world. He listed seven major areas, among them sea level rise, emission of methane, and extreme weather events that we already experience.
Peter Wadhams is the UK’s most experienced sea ice scientist. He has made more than [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Podcast (file2): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Climate Change is Here – Now What? Professor Bill Collins (ONE of TWO)

By MariaMay 25, 20162016Climate Change, Ecosystem

The Berkeley Lab, short for: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, overlooks the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. They conduct scientific research on behalf of the US Department of Energy, and are managed and operated by the University of California.
In September 2015 the Berkeley Lab established the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division. The mission of the new Division is to understand, predict, and advance stewardship of the Earth’s Climate and Ecosystems. They pay attention to water, energy, and agriculture.
The Director for the new Climate and Ecosystem Science Division is Dr. Bill Collins. He is an internationally recognized expert in climate modeling and climate change science and also serves as director of the Climate Readiness Institute, a new multi-campus initiative to [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Climate Scientist Kevin Anderson on The Unforgiving Math for Staying Under 2 Degrees

By MariaMay 4, 20162016Climate Change

Part TWO of TWO
Two numbers haunted the climate negotiations of COP 21 in Paris in December 2015: 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius. Finally the vast majority of the world’s countries agreed that global warming may not go over 2 degrees and that we really ought to stay under 1.5 degrees to save the island states and low coastal areas that are already flooding at the current 1 degree C warming.
Politicians and some scientists claim that we will invent technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere and therefore no urgent action is required now. Anderson explains BECCS, Biomass energy carbon capture and storage, the so far elusive promise to extract the already emitted CO2 from the air and store it underground. [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:58 — 19.9MB)

Ricarda Winkelmann: The Melting of Antarctica

By MariaOctober 28, 20152015Antarctic, Climate Change

A fairly unknown scientist – at least by US standards – took the lime light in major media in the US in September 2015. The New York Times – and also Democracy Now – quoted her this way:
“To be blunt: If we burn it all, we melt it all,” said Ricarda Winkelmann, the lead author of a paper entitled: “Combustion of available fossil fuel resources sufficient to eliminate the Antarctic Ice Sheet.” It was published on September 11, 2015, in the journal Science Advances.
Winkelmann is Juniorprofessor of Climate System Analysis at the prestigious Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. Her research areas are Anthropogenic climate change; Tipping elements; Antarctic ice dynamics and Sea-level rise.
The New York Times summed [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)

Melting Arctic Sea Ice

By MariaOctober 14, 20152015Arctic, Climate Change

with Cambridge Glaciology Professor Peter Wadhams (Part TWO of TWO)

Only days before professor Wadhams set off on his 2015 research voyage to the Arctic the UK blogger Nick Breeze did an interview with him, asking him about the latest data on the disappearing Arctic sea ice.
At the end of September 2015 we had just heard on the news that the sea ice minimum at the end of the Arctic summer was the fourth lowest on record. It stands at about half of the ice that used to cover the same area.
Peter Wadhams is Professor of Ocean Physics at the University of Cambridge, UK. With over 40 years of research on Arctic sea ice, icebergs and polar oceanography, he is considered [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

Our Time is Running Out – The Arctic Sea Ice is Going!

By MariaOctober 7, 20152015Arctic, Climate Change

with Cambridge Glaciology Professor Peter Wadhams (Part ONE of TWO)
Peter Wadhams is Professor of Ocean Physics at the University of Cambridge, UK. With over 40 years of research on Arctic sea ice, icebergs and polar oceanography, he is considered one of the leading experts in his field.
Recently Wadhams has gone public on an additional danger related to the loss of sea ice. The Arctic summer ends in September and observations show a tendency of shrinking ice followed by a dramatic lack of re-growth of ice during the subsequent Arctic winter. Wadhams has made studies from submarines that show that the new ice is thin and slushy and easily broken up by winds. An ice free Arctic in September would accelerate [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

The loss of West Antarctic Glaciers – Interview with Prof. Eric Rignot

By MariaSeptember 8, 20152015Antarctic, Climate Change

Repeat of June 2014 Broadcast
The world was shocked in May 2014 when NASA announced that parts of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appear to be in an irreversible decline. That area holds 4 feet of sea level rise. This rebroadcast prepares for an update of the melting – one year later. Eric Rignot is one of the lead scientists in this project. I called him on May 23, 2014 to find out how the teams arrived at these data:
Interview on Remote Sensing Technology with Professor Eric Rignot. He teaches Earth System Science at UC Irvine and is a glaciologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena
A new study by Professor Eric Rignot and researchers at NASA and the University of [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)

The Loss of West Antarctic Glaciers, FOUR of FOUR

By MariaJune 11, 20142014Antarctic, Climate Change

An Interview with Professor Chris Rapley
When NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, announced at a press conference on May 12, 2014, that the loss of the West Antarctic glaciers in the Amundsen Sea Embayment appears unstoppable I asked Professor Chris Rapley for his comments. As former Director of the British Antarctic Survey it had been his job and expertise to know all aspects of Antarctic research.
Born and educated in Britain, Rapley became an international scientist. 40 years ago he began a six year term with NASA’s Solar Maximum Mission. Then he lectured at the Department of Space and Climate Physics of University College London from 1981 to 1987 and became Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) at [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:01 — 19.9MB)

The Loss of West Antarctic Glaciers Appears Unstoppable (THREE of FOUR)

By MariaJune 4, 20142014Antarctic, Climate Change

Interview on Remote Sensing Technology with Professor Eric Rignot. He teaches Earth System Science at UC Irvine and is a glaciologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena
A new study by Professor Eric Rignot and researchers at NASA and the University of California, Irvine, presented in May, 2014, finds a rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline.
The Amundsen Sea Embayment with its five glaciers is one of the hardest to reach areas of West Antarctica. The advent of over-flights by airplanes and now observation from satellites was a game changer for research, says Professor Rignot.
This is an interview about the current technology of observation, and the way in which [ . . . ]

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:00 — 19.9MB)