August 20, 2014

Baraorbunga: Over the past 10,000 years, it has erupted“more lava than any other volcano on the pla

The Icelandic Met Office reports that about 1,000 small earthquakes occurred near the volcano on Tuesday.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/19/iceland_volcano_bardarbunga_how_bad_would_an_eruption_be.html

July 26, 2014

Warner presses Gillespie on climate change

Republican Senate candidate Ed Gillespie said he thinks there is enough evidence to support climate change after being pressed on the issue during a debate with incumbent Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.).

During the first, and possibly only debate Saturday between the two Virginia Senate candidates, Warner asked Gillespie about his views on global warming, and whether he sided with a majority of Republicans in Congress who remain skeptical of the science.

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/213427-warner-pressures-gillespie-on-climate-change#ixzz38bnxV2ml

July 5, 2014

Dark snow: from the Arctic to the Himalayas, the phenomenon that is accelerating glacier melting

... Research indicates that the Arctic's albedo may be declining much faster than was estimated only a few years ago. Earlier this year a paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that declining Arctic albedo between 1979 and 2011 constituted 25% of the heating effect from carbon dioxide over the same time.

According to Danish glaciologist Jason Box, who heads the Dark Snow project to measure the effect of dust and other darkening agents on Greenland's ice sheet, Arctic ice sheet reflectivity has been at a near record low for much of 2014. Even a minor decrease in the brightness of the ice sheet can double the average yearly rate of ice loss, seen from 1992 to 2010...

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/05/dark-snow-speeding-glacier-melting-rising-sea-levels