Author Archives: thingsbreak

Economic costs of ocean acidification: a look into the impacts on global shellfish production

by Daiju Narita, Katrin Rehdanz, and Richard S. J. Tol Climatic Change in press, doi:10.1007/s10584-011-0383-3 ABSTRACT:  Ocean acidification is increasingly recognized as a major global problem. Yet economic assessments of its effects are currently almost absent. Unlike most other marine organisms, mollusks, which have significant commercial value worldwide, have relatively solid scientific evidence of biological impact…

Observed changes in top-of-the-atmosphere radiation and upper-ocean heating consistent within uncertainty

by Norman G. Loeb, John M. Lyman, Gregory C. Johnson, Richard P. Allan, David R. Doelling, Takmeng Wong, Brian J. Soden, and Graeme L. Stephens Nature Geoscience in press, doi:10.1038/ngeo1375 ABSTRACT:  Global climate change results from a small yet persistent imbalance between the amount of sunlight absorbed by Earth and the thermal radiation emitted back to space1….

Detecting regional anthropogenic trends in ocean acidification against natural variability

by T. Friedrich, A. Timmermann, A. Abe-Ouchi, N. R. Bates, M. O. Chikamoto, M. J. Church, J. E. Dore, D. K. Gledhill, M. González-Dávila, M. Heinemann, T. Ilyina, J. H. Jungclaus, E. McLeod, A. Mouchet, and J. M. Santana-Casiano Nature Climate Change in press, doi:10.1038/nclimate1372 ABSTRACT:  Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution humans have released ~500…

Orbital control on carbon cycle and oceanography in the mid-Cretaceous greenhouse

by Martino Giorgioni, Helmut Weissert, Stefano M. Bernasconi, Peter A. Hochuli, Rodolfo Coccioni, and Christina E. Keller Paleoceanography 27, PA1204, doi:10.1029/2011PA002163. ABSTRACT:  We established a new high-resolution carbonate carbon isotope record of the Albian interval of the Marne a Fucoidi Formation (Central Apennines, Italy), which was deposited on the southern margin of the western Tethys Ocean….

What influence will future solar activity changes over the 21st century have on projected global near surface temperature changes?

by Gareth S. Jones, Michael Lockwood, and Peter A. Stott Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres in press, doi:10.1029/2011JD017013 ABSTRACT:  During the 20th century solar activity increased in magnitude to a so called `grand maximum’. It is probable that this high level of solar activity is at or near its end. It is of great interest…

Interview with Nathan Urban on his new paper “Climate Sensitivity Estimated from Temperature Reconstructions of the Last Glacial Maximum”

Nathan Urban is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He recently spoke to Planet 3.0 about the topic of climate sensitivity here. Today, he’s graciously agreed to answer some questions about a paper he co-authored that was just published in the journal Science. Q:  Thanks for talking…

Abstract Round Up: 11/07-11/15

  A contribution to attribution of recent global warming by out-of-sample Granger causality analysis ABSTRACT:  The topic of attribution of recent global warming is usually faced by studies performed through global climate models (GCMs). Even simpler econometric models have been applied to this problem, but they led to contrasting results. In this article, we show…

Abstract Round Up: 10/31-11/06

Correlation between climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing and its implication for the “climate trap” ABSTRACT:  Climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing are dominant uncertain properties of the global climate system. Their estimates based on the inverse approach are interdependent as historical temperature records constrain possible combinations. Nevertheless, many literature projections of future climate are based on…