climateadaptation:

Trouble in paradise. The Maldives islands are among the most beautiful places on earth. The islands are considered by some to be ground zero for the impacts of sea level rise, and the country’s president has been a strong advocate for climate adaptation measures.

However, the islands have a dirty secret - it’s been dumping its trash and toxic chemicals into the ocean. The BBC cracks the case wide open in this sickening video report, “Apocalyptic island of waste in the Maldives.”

my friend invited me to the Maldives next winter. 

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mohandasgandhi:

theeconomist:

Overfishing, global warming and pollution threaten to transform the ocean—and perhaps life as we know it

This is important.

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fotojournalismus:

A village boy leads his goat past a parched pond on the outskirts of the eastern Indian city of Bhubaneswar, India, on May 17. Huge swathes of rural farmland has turned dry as farmers await the annual monsoon rains which, according to the India Meteorological Department, are expected to reach on time this year.

[Credit : Biswaranjan Rout / AP]

Should we move creatures threatened by climate change? ›

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fotojournalismus:

[World Press Photo 2012]

Nature, 1st prize singles :

Cliff-Climbing Polar Bear Attempting to Eat Seabird Eggs by Jenny E. Ross

A male polar bear climbs precariously on the face of a cliff above the ocean at Ostrova Oranskie in northern Novaya Zemlya, attempting to feed on seabird eggs. This bear was marooned on land and unable to feed on seals—its normal prey—because sea ice had melted throughout the region and receded far to the north as a result of climate change. (30 July 2011)

[Credit : Jenny E. Ross]

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sagansense:

NASA Satellites Show How Our Icy World Is Melting

The melt-off from the world’s ice sheets, ice caps and glaciers over eight years of the past decade would have been enough to cover the United States in about 18 inches (46 centimeters) of water, according to new research based on the most-comprehensive analysis of satellite data yet.

Data, collected for the years 2003 through 2010, indicates that melting ice raised sea levels worldwide by an average of 1.48 millimeters (0.06 inches) each year. The loss of ice from Greenland and Antarctica has already been measured using satellite data, but the new analysis revealed that melting ice elsewhere accounted for about 0.41 mm (0.016 inches) of the annual rise.

Until now, satellite measurements from only selected places were used to extrapolate the overall ice loss outside Greenland and Antarctica.

“The Earth is losing an incredible amount of ice to the oceans annually, and these new results will help us answer important questions in terms of both sea rise and how the planet’s cold regions are responding to global change,” study researcher John Wahr, a professor of physics at the University of Colorado, said in a press release issued by the Boulder campus.

Climate change, spurred by greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere by humans, is believed to be the culprit. Warming raises sea levels not only by melting ice — the aspect examined in this study — but  by causing water to expand.

For the first time, the researchers used the satellite system called GRACE (for “Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment”) to look at loss of ice by glaciers and ice caps around the world.

GRACE, operated by NASA and Germany, already had been used to study ice sheets on Antarctica, Greenland and other large ice-covered areas.

“But so far the data have not been analyzed simultaneously and consistently for all areas,” Jonathan Bamber, of the Glaciology Centre at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, wrote in a commentary published along with the study in the Feb. 9 issue of the journal Nature.

The new data confirmed that most of the melting happened on ice-covered Greenland and Antarctica, where enough ice melted to raise sea levels by 1.06 millimeters (0.042 inches)  per year between January 2003 and December 2010, the study period.

There are more than 160,000 glaciers and ice caps worldwide, but annual changes in mass have been directly measured for only 120 of them, and in most cases only within the last 30 years, according to Bamber.

GRACE consists of two satellites that travel around the Earth together, picking up on changes in the Earth’s gravitational field, which are linked to changes in mass. The researchers devised a way to separate out the changes in mass for ice-covered regions around the globe.  

Their results yielded two surprises: The melt rate for glaciers and ice caps outside Antarctica and Greenland made a smaller contribution to sea-level rise than had been estimated, and the melt rate in the Asian mountains, including the Himalayas, was dramatically lower: 4 billion tons annually versus up to 50 billion. 

In his commentary, Bamber notes that the study period was too brief to capture large fluctuations in melting from some areas, such as in the Gulf of Alaska and the high Asian mountains.

“Nonetheless, Jacob and colleagues have dramatically altered our understanding of recent global (glacier and ice cap) volume changes, and their contribution to sea-level rise,” Bamber wrote, referring to study researcher Thomas Jacob of Colorado-Boulder. “Now we need to work out what this means for estimating their future response.”

(via oldowan)

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mothernaturenetwork:

NASA photos show Dead Sea dying
Thanks to massive water-diversion and salt-evaporation projects, satellite images show how the ancient lake is gradually living up to its name.

ecocides:

Emperor penguins become first creatures to be counted from space

The first census of a entire species using satellite images reveals double the number of the birds, meaning the impact of climate change can be monitored far more accurately.

The new research, using very high resolution satellite images, has revealed almost double the number of Emperor penguins living in Antarctica - 595,000 birds - compared to the last survey in 1992

The work revealed seven previously unknown colonies and analysed 44 colonies in total. The study, conducted by scientists at the British Antarctic Survey and international colleagues, is published in the journal PloS ONE.

The science teams were able to differentiate between birds, ice, shadow and penguin guano (droppings) by using a digital technique called pan-sharpening. Scientists then used population counts on the ground and detailed aerial photography to calibrate the analysis of the satellite images.

Being able to assess the total number of birds from space is valuable because the penguins breed in remote and often inaccessible areas, with temperatures as low as -50°C, and so are very hard to study on the ground.

[via guardian.co.uk]

Climate Change Throws Nature's Timing Out of Whack ›

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kateoplis:

Greenland’s Ice is Growing Darker

In the past, the bright surface of the Greenland Ice Sheet reflected well over half of the sunlight that fell on it. This reflectiveness helped keep the ice sheet stable, as less absorbed sunlight meant less heating and melting. In the past decade, however, satellites have observed a decrease in Greenland’s reflectiveness. This darker surface now absorbs more sunlight, which accelerates melting.