Sunday, 15 September 2019

Climate Change - Ocean acidification - what does it mean?



Sea water normally had a pH around 8.2 



Here is what one expert scientist has said about this -




The stony skeletons that support corals and reefs will dissolve.

The left-hand picture shows healthy coral.    The right-hand picture shows dead and dying coral.

UNESCO: Great Barrier Reef Loses &quot;In Danger&quot; Status ...


Saturday, 14 September 2019

Climate Change - What's going on with the Gulf Stream?

The Gulf Stream transports vast amounts of heat northwards, from the equator to the pole, passing off the East Coast of the U.S. and into the North Atlantic.












This is still a matter needing more research.

Friday, 13 September 2019

Climate Change - Coal and carbon dioxide

Coal, oil and natural gas are fossil fuels.

When they are burned, they change the Earth's atmosphere.

How is that possible?      Coal is a good example.

Coal was formed hundreds of millions of years ago.

Geologists say that a three-metre (10-foot) coal seam took between 12,000 and 60,000 years to form.

Ancient trees and other plants lived, died and were fossilised.
All those plants took carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. 
Some larger coal seams are, for example, 10 metres thick.

They took around 40,000 years to form, but have been mined and burned in a little over 100 years.

The carbon joins up with oxygen when it burns.


As a result, oxygen concentration in the air is slowly reducing.

No need to panic, however, as the reduction is around 2ppm per year.

The atmosphere contains 210,000 parts per million of oxygen, so the reduction in oxygen has little direct impact.

It does, however, confirm that the extra CO2 is being made by burning of materials containing carbon, which combines with atmospheric oxygen.

Several scientific organisations measure the gases in the air.

One major set of measurements are from a laboratory in Hawaii.

Carbon dioxide levels hit record peak in May

Thursday, 12 September 2019

Climate Change - Carbon Sinks




The oceans are a major carbon storage system for carbon dioxide. 



The remaining carbon dioxide is building up in the atmosphere.

Wednesday, 11 September 2019

Climate Change - Corals and Coral Bleaching

Healthy coral can be very colourful.

Some coral reefs have started to look rather different.

This is called 'coral bleaching'.

To understand this, we need to start by looking at corals.

Corals are animals that make a framework around them that looks like rock.

Coral animals (polyps) have tiny plants - algae - living in their tissues.

The algae provide food to the corals, which they produce by photosynthesis.

Reef-building corals only live in a limited temperature range.

Like porridge, they should be 'not too hot and not too cold'.


Algae in corals need light

Corals grow in warm, clear, shallow waters that receive plenty of light.

Most corals grow in the warmest water they can stand (about 85° F or 29° C). 

This means that slight increases in ocean temperature can harm corals.

Tuesday, 10 September 2019

Russell Coope & the Discovery of Abrupt Climate Change

Many people think climate change always happens slowly, but that is not the case......rather than hundreds, or thousands, of years, sometimes it can happen in decades.

"Abrupt climate change" was discovered by accident by Russell Coope (1930-2011), over 50 years ago.

More recently he said:

"We are messing with the trigger that causes climate change....the outcome is likely to be ferocious."

In the 1950s, Russell Coope was a young geologist.

He was studying layers of sediment formed during the "Ice Ages", a time geologists call the Quaternary.

He spotted something unusual in a quarry in the English Midlands.  

This is his own description of what he found ...



I was hooked instantly! 



A well-developed sequence of ice age deposits at Bridgwalton Quarry near Bridgnorth, Shropshire. (Photo: Dave Evans).

This was the first discovery of evidence that the climate can change really quickly.

His discovery was later confirmed by evidence from ice cores from the Greenland ice sheet.

So how does Russell Coope's method work?

Different beetles prefer different temperatures.

By identifying the beetles in layers of sand or gravel, Coope could tell what climate existed in that place, and how it changed.

Experts still use Russell Coope's method.

This fossilised beetle is well preserved.

Scientists often identify the fossil beetles from fragments.

This particular fossil is of a diving beetle found in the La Brea Tar Pits in California.

A recent research project links some of the abrupt climate change events in the last glacial stage to changes in ocean circulation.
“We know from ice cores in Greenland that large climate oscillations occurred during this time,” lead study author Gene Henry told Gizmodo. “We wanted to see if those climate oscillations had an imprint in circulation patterns.” 

Monday, 9 September 2019







The warm Earth gives off infrared radiation with various wavelengths.  




There is no doubt why the Earth is warming.



The idea that global temperature over the last few centuries is connected to solar activity has been disproved by astronomers.

