A sampling of recent research and developments in climate science.
The native plants unique to California are so vulnerable to global climate change that two-thirds of them could suffer more than an 80 percent reduction in geographic range by the end of the century, according to a University of California Berkeley study.
Because endemic species – native species not found outside the state – make up nearly half of all California's native plants, a changing climate will have a major impact on the state's unparalleled plant diversity, the researchers warn.
“The magnitude and speed of climate change today is greater than during past glacial periods, and plants are in danger of getting killed off before they can adjust their distributions to keep pace,” said David Ackerly, a UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology.
The researchers caution that their study can't reliably predict the fate of specific species. However, the trend is clear: The researchers project that, in response to rising temperatures and altered rainfall, many plants could move northward and toward the coast, following the shifts in their preferred climate, while others, primarily in the southern part of the state and in Baja California, may move up mountains into cool but highly vulnerable environments.
Coast redwoods may range farther north, for example, while California oaks could disappear from Central California in favor of cooler weather in the Klamath Mountains along the California-Oregon border. Plants of northern Baja California could migrate north into the San Diego County mountains. The Central Valley will become preferred habitat for plants of the Sonoran desert.
“Across the flora, there will be winners and losers,” said first author Scott Loarie, a Ph.D. candidate at Duke University's Nicholas School for the Environment who has worked with Ackerly on the analysis for the past four years. “In nearly every scenario we explored, biodiversity suffers – especially if the flora can't disperse fast enough to keep pace with climate change.”
– ONLINE JOURNAL PLoS ONE
Ice shelf breaks in Antarctic winter
The European Space Agency says the Antarctic's Wilkins Ice Shelf continued to break up, with a 100-mile area breaking away at the end of May.
The ice shelf event May 30-31 is the first documented episode to occur during the antarctic winter, the ESA said.
Wilkins Ice Shelf, a broad plate of floating ice south of South America on the Antarctic Peninsula, is connected to two islands, Charcot and Latady. In February, an area of about 250 miles broke free of the ice shelf, narrowing the connection to a 4-mile strip. The latest event reduced that strip to just 1.6 miles.
ESA's Envisat satellite observes the rapidly dwindling strip of ice that is protecting thousands of miles of the ice shelf from further destruction.
Matthias Braun of Bonn University's Center for Remote Sensing of Land Surfaces and Angelika Humbert from the Institute of Geophysics at Munster University said the remaining plate has an arched fracture at its narrowest point, making it very likely the connection will soon completely break.
ESA said antarctic ice shelves are important indicators of climate change because they are sandwiched by rising surface air temperatures and a warming ocean.
– UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Greenland ice cores show rapid changes
A high-resolution ice core from Greenland demonstrates just how quickly climate can change when it flips from a cold to a warm state, with some aspects, such as atmospheric circulation, changing in as little as a single year.
The dramatic climate fluctuations seen in Greenland during two abrupt warming periods 15 thousand and 11 thousand years ago offer important benchmarks for predicting the speed of modern climate changes, say J.P. Steffensen and colleagues from the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
The researchers measured multiple climate clues, from precipitation to temperature, as they changed from year to year. The findings suggest dramatic and rapid temperature changes during each warming period, and complete reorganization of polar atmospheric circulation from one year to the next.
Greenland's climate flipping during the warming periods could have its roots in atmospheric changes affecting lower latitude Asian deserts, the researchers note.
– ONLINE JOURNAL SCIENCE EXPRESS
Compiled by Robert Krier.
