A new investigation of the ancient climate record shows that time to stop climate change is running out — maybe sooner than scientists had thought.

That’s the message from an international team of scientists reporting today at the American Geophysical Union annual meeting in San Francisco (#AGU11 on Twitter).

NASA

Melt water tumbles through a Greenland ice sheet.

James Hansen is director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and was one of the scientists on the study. He says that even the accepted benchmark of a 2-degree Celsius rise (3.6 F) in temperature that might result from doubling of current carbon dioxide levels would have a much greater impact than was previously thought.

“Once the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, then you’ve got an unstable shoreline, which is going to be continuing to change over time,” said Hansen in a presentation to fellow scientists. “It would be a mess for those people living at that time to deal with. And it looks like that time will be this century.”

The team’s new examination of the paleo-climate record now shows that  ”a global warming of a couple degrees Celsius would basically create a different planet,” Hansen warned. It’s different than the one that humanity, that civilization knows about. If we look at the paleo record, the target of two degrees Celsius is actually a prescription for long-term disaster.”

The two-degree mark gets a lot of focus in both scientific and policy circles, as it’s emerged as the one clear benchmark for controlling warming that industrialized nations have been able to rally around.

Hansen says another measure of climate change deserves a second look in light of this new investigation: The atmospheric carbon reduction target of 350 parts per million (ppm) may not be enough. “It really should be somewhat less than that,” he told the gathering. “It’s necessary if we want to maintain stable ice sheets and shorelines.”

Hansen’s warning is based on his team’s finding that long-ago changes of less than two degrees in the Earth’s temperature resulted in oceans rising by about 25 meters (about 82 feet). Current science on global ice sheets concludes that they’re shedding ice, and the rate of that is increasing.

“We’ve got to slow down this experiment that we’re doing with the planet,” says Hansen, “because otherwise we’re leaving for young people a situation that’s going to be out of their control.”

Hansen began publicly warning about the consequences of climate change at congressional hearings in the late 1980s. He’s become a more controversial figure recently, due to his high profile as an environmental activist.

nasa hq/Flickr

Launch of the NPP satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base on Friday.

In a joint effort to improve observations of the Earth from space, NASA and NOAA launched a new satellite on Friday from Vandenberg Air Force base near Lompoc, CA. The satellite carries with it a suite of next-generation technologies and tools that the agencies say will enable scientists to continue monitoring climate change and weather patterns as many existing Earth-observing satellites are reaching the outer edge of their life expectancies.

The new satellite is part of the NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP), which aims to monitor the entire planet, collecting and processing data on the Earth’s weather, atmosphere, oceans, land, and near-space environment.  The agencies say this data will not only help with monitoring climate change, but also with natural disaster prediction and planning, and military strategies.  NASA describes the NPP as a bridge between the aging Earth Observation System (EOS) satellites and the “forthcoming” Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) satellites, which are scheduled to begin launching in 2016.

NASA lists the key science objectives and capabilities of NPP as the following:

• Climate change — contribute to long-term records of global environmental data critical for understanding the dynamics of climate change
• Health of the ozone layer — daily measurements of the atmospheric ozone layer that will determine whether the ozone layer is recovering as expected
• Natural disasters — monitor wildfires, volcanic eruptions, snowstorms, droughts, floods, hurricanes and dust plumes
• Weather predictions — a sounding instrument will collect information about cloud cover, atmospheric temperatures, humidity and other variables critical to accurate weather prediction
• Vegetation — map global land vegetation and quantify changes in plant productivity to understand the global carbon cycle and monitor agricultural processes to predict and respond to food shortages and famines
• Global ice cover — monitor changes to Earth’s sea ice, land ice and glaciers to track the pace of climate change
• Air pollution — monitor the spread of health-sapping pollutants such as soot, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide
• Temperatures — maintain a global record of atmospheric, land surface and sea surface temperatures critical to understanding the long-term dynamics of climate change
• Earth’s energy budget — make measurements to determine how much energy is entering and exiting Earth’s atmosphere

As The New York Times and Popular Mechanics report, it’s been a bumpy road getting the NPP program off the ground, and the budget for future satellites and launches is far from secure in the current economic climate.  Too long a delay, scientists warn, could affect not just the nation’s ability to monitor climate change, but could also impact weather prediction and natural disaster preparedness.

For more about the NPP satellite, check out this video from Space.com

Or, if you’d rather have it explained to you by a cartoon polar bear, you can watch this NASA video for the basics:

A new move by the company seeks to address another kind of energy challenge: airplane fuel. The company has teamed up with NASA to sponsor the Green Flight Challenge, a competition to develop emissions-free aircraft.

The challenge?  Build a plane that can fly at least 100 miles per hour and achieve the equivalent energy efficiency of 200 miles per gallon of fuel on a 200-mile flight.

Thirteen teams will be competing for $1.65 million in prizes, funded by NASA, including a $1.3 million grand prize.  The competition will be held between September 25 and October 2 at Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport, and is being organized by the CAFE Foundation, a non-profit devoted to aviation technology.

From the CAFE Foundation press release:

The electric aircraft in the competition will demonstrate for the first time that practical, emission-free cross-country flight is possible. Their batteries will be recharged using clean geo-thermal based electricity from The Geysers geo-thermal fields in the Mayacama Mountains North of Santa Rosa. This recharging will occur at the CAFE Flight Test Center’s first-ever Electric Aircraft Charging Station sponsored by Google.

The public will have a chance to check out all of the competing aircraft at Moffett Field–NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View on October 3, 2011.

Airplanes account for about three percent of the United States’ total greenhouse emissions, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, and, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, greenhouse gas emissions from domestic aircraft are expected to increase 60 percent by 2025 and worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide from aircraft engines will more than triple by mid-century.

An image from a joint NASA-NOAA satellite project. (Image: NASA-NOAA GOES Project)

S. Pete Worden, the director of NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, expressed confidence that the agency’s 2012 budget would remain intact, despite a letter sent to committee heads from Congressmen from Florida and Utah, urging an end to climate science research at the agency.

Kate Sheppard has more about the letter at the Mother Jones Blue Marble blog.

“It’s more than just climate research — it’s understanding the Earth that we live on,” said Worden at a Monday press briefing at Ames. “We think once the Congress understands the details of what we do, that support will be strong.”

NASA’s $18.7 billion budget request for next year maintains Ames funding at about $755 million. Worden said that climate-related activities make up a small, but significant portion of Ames projects.

Worden said that losing Ames’ $40 million budget for Earth sciences would mean having to deploy the 50-100 people who work on climate projects to different areas. “Since the budget is very tight, that’s going to be tough,” he said.

Worden said there are two critical research areas that could be under threat if NASA’s climate funding were cut.  One is airborne measurements.  Ames builds instruments that measure atmospheric pollutants, dust, and other environmental factors that have impacts on the Earth, he said.  The second is site-specific climate prediction.

“We’re now getting to the point where climate models are good enough that we can say not just [that] the global climate may get warmer 30 years from now, but some areas may get less warm, some may have more rainfall, some many have less,’” said Worden.

A lot of this sophisticated modeling, he said, is done on Ames’ supercomputer, Pleiades, which he counts as one of the top ten high-end computing systems in the world.

So, will climate scientists soon have to do without NASA’s help?

“I don’t anticipate that,” said Worden. “Traditionally we’ve had very strong support. I want to emphasize that [last year's NASA] authorization bill had broad bipartisan support, very strong with both Democrats and the Republicans, and it included a lot of Earth science research.”

Ames is one of two major NASA research facilities in California, the other being the larger Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, which recently announced a joint mission with NOAA to study the mechanics of severe winter storms that drench the West Coast.

Taking global climate models and “downscaling” them for use at the local level is an ongoing challenge for scientists and for planners.  But thanks to new climate projections from NASA, the Bay Area now has a sharper view of what may be in store.

BCDC map showing 16 inches of sea level rise in the SF Bay, which the agency projects will occur by mid-century.

NASA says two-thirds of its facilities are at risk from sea-level rise, including Ames Research Center, which sits at the southern edge of San Francisco Bay.  So, it’s not exactly altruism that motivated the agency to deploy its own scientists to take a closer look at what climate change will really mean on the ground in places where it’s heavily invested.

“This is the first time we’re actually working with our scientists and taking the data that’s usually at hundreds of miles by hundreds of miles and bringing it down to the local level,” said Olga Dominguez, assistant administrator for NASA’s Office of Strategic Infrastructure.

Dominguez was at NASA Ames on Friday for a conference on climate change impacts in the South Bay.

NASA scientists used historic local temperature and precipitation data and sea level rise records from San Francisco to downscale global climate models to produce projections for the southwestern Bay Area, which includes Ames.

Their results indicate that by 2050:

• average temps could rise 2-4 degree F
• sea level could rise 6-9 inches
• precipitation could increase OR decrease up to 15%
  
• days per year above 90 degrees F could increase from 8 to 15

Next the agency is drawing up adaption plans for each facility.

Will Travis, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), says both NASA’s science, and its ideas for solutions, are welcome.

“We have this rich resource at NASA, a great deal of wonderful science, and getting that applied at the local level is quite a challenge,” said Travis, who was a speaker at Friday’s conference.

“This conference is showing how NASA can be doing that at a facility level, and that information and techniques and those approaches are great models for other businesses and other communities in the Bay Area.”

There are detailed maps of projected sea level rise for the Bay Area at both the BCDC and the USGS websites.

1. CEC approves 250-megawatt solar thermal project in Kern County
The California Energy Commission approved the Beacon Solar Energy project on Wednesday. It’s the first time in 20 years that state energy regulators have approved construction on a solar thermal farm, the Los Angeles Times reports.

2. Geoengineering won’t curb sea-level rise, study finds
A new report from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that geoengineering strategies to combat global warming by blocking the sun’s radiation would not have much of an impact on rising sea levels, unless the efforts are extremely aggressive. (Read more at Nature.com)

3. Earth’s plant growth fell due to climate change, says NASA
After 20 years of increasing growth under warming temperatures, the Earth’s vegetation   saw a slight decrease over the last decade, according to a new NASA analysis.  Scientists reported they were surprised to find that the negative effects of regional droughts outweighed the positive influence of a longer growing season.

4. Another hurdle cleared for the world’s largest solar farm
Federal regulators are one step closer to approving plans for the 1,000 megawatt plant proposed by Oakland-based company Solar Millennium LLC.  The project would be located across more than 7,000 acres in Riverside County. (Read more at The New York Times.)

By Andrew Freedman

California’s freakishly cool summer has been bucking a global trend this season. You’ve seen the headlines from Moscow and Pakistan–but that’s just part of the story. 2010 has featured several extreme heat events, as well as record flooding, in many countries worldwide. The number of countries that have set new national records for the warmest temperature recorded — 17 — would beat the old record of 14, provided that all of the new records are verified by meteorological agencies. According to meteorologist Jeff Masters of the private weather forecasting firm Weather Underground in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the countries that have set new records thus far this year comprise about 19 percent of the earth’s surface area.

This graphic shows the new record-high temperatures for the 17 nations that have broken their national records so far in 2010. If verified, the record set in Pakistan would also stand as the warmest temperature ever recorded in the continent of Asia. Click on the graphic for a larger version. (Graphic: Russell Freedman).

Masters wrote on his blog: “This is the largest area of Earth’s surface to experience all-time record high temperatures in any single year in the historical record. Looking back at the past decade, which was the hottest decade in the historical record, 75 countries set extreme hottest temperature records (33% of all countries.) For comparison, fifteen countries set extreme coldest temperature records over the past ten years (six percent of all countries).” According to Masters, Guinea, which is located in northwestern Africa, is the one nation so far this year to break its coldest temperature record, which occurred in early January.

The new record high temperature set in Belarus occurred during the Russian heat wave, which is still gripping portions of that country. Although Russia did not set any all-time record high temperatures, Moscow did, breaking 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the first time since records have been kept.

Temperature departures from average for July 2010, as measured by NASA. Note the warmth (in red) centered over western Russia. (Map: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies)

For the planet as a whole, 2010 has been extremely warm, with the June-to-July period ranking as the warmest on record for those two months combined.

Part of the warmth earlier this year may have been due to an El Nino event in the Pacific Ocean, which tends to warm the planet, but that event is no longer taking place. According to scientists, including Climate Central’s Claudia Tebaldi, man-made global warming is likely also playing a role in the record heat. Tebaldi and others have published studies showing that as the planet warms due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, warm temperature extremes become more likely to occur.

Coast Guard Cutter Healy. Photo: Petty Officer Patrick Kelley, US Coast Guard

Next week, a NASA team of more than 40 scientists will take to the seas for a five-week expedition in the Arctic to study how changing conditions there are affecting ocean chemistry and ecosystems.  The voyage, NASA’s first dedicated oceanographic research mission, is named ICESCAPE, which stands for “Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment.”  It will take place aboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Healy.

“We’re  trying to address what is the long term impact of climate variability and change, both natural and anthropogenic, on the biogeochemistry and ecology of the Arctic,” said Paula Bontempi, program manager for NASA’s ocean biology and biogeochemistry research program.

The expedition will give scientists a chance to make field observations about the ocean, sea ice, and the atmosphere in regions where researchers often must rely on remote sensing technology for their data.  One main focus of the research will be to observe how changes, such as a substantial decrease in sea ice, may be affecting the ocean’s ability to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and the consequent effects on ecosystems.

“The Arctic is in the midst of some substantial changes,” said ICESCAPE Chief Scientist Kevin Arrigo of Stanford.  “In the last 10 years, the ice-free season in the Arctic Ocean has increased by about 45 days.  And this has a big impact on organisms in the Arctic that are keyed to these events.”

Arrigo says that the sea ice retreats about 28 days sooner than it did just a decade ago, and advances about 17 days later. He says this change has shifted the timing of food production.  Phytoplankton, the base of the food chain in the Arctic Ocean, are now growing a month earlier than they did in the 1990s, says Arrigo, which could spell a problem for organisms such as the California gray whales, which time their migrations around peak food production.

“Over the years satellite imagery has shown a significant decline in the Arctic ice cover,” said Don Perovich, a research geophysicist at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, NH, who is part of the ICESCAPE expedition. “But there’s really more to it than just the ice.  It’s important to remember that sea ice isn’t just some isolated component. It’s part of larger system.”

Sea ice, he said, serves as a barrier between the atmosphere and the ocean, limiting the exchange of heat, moisture and gases; acts as a reflector of sunlight; and is a habitat for a rich marine ecosystem.

“It’s an ecosystem where sea ice and biology are intricately intertwined,” said Perovich. “You can think of the ice and the biology as executing this intricate dance, but it’s a dance where one of the partners has started changing its steps. And that partner is the sea ice cover.”

The 2010 ICESCAPE expedition starts in Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands, will continue across the southern Chukchi Sea and into the Beaufort Sea along Alaska’s northern shelf.  A second expedition is planned for 2011.   NASA estimates the cost of the ICESCAPE project to be $10 million over four years.

The expedition blog has already launched, and will be updated daily once the expedition is underway, according to NASA spokesman Steve Cole.

I’ll be launching my own “Arctic expedition” next week.  Starting June 18th, I’ll be spending two weeks with climate scientists at the Toolik Field Station in northern Alaska, as part of the Logan Science Journalism Program, run by the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.   Check back here for periodic dispatches about the science, the landscape, and the impacts of constant daylight on one journalist’s mental state.

NASA's GRACE satellite is equipped to gather ice and water data on the Earth's surface. Image: NASA

To boldly go–where we already live

By Rachel Cohen

NASA will likely be focusing more attention on the “pale blue dot” in coming years, with a reinvigorated Earth Science Program. California’s freshwater supply and sea level change are among the features that will be studied by replacing an aging satellite.

The proposed White House budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration includes billions of dollars for satellites and other tech tools to help scientists investigate Earth-bound problems, especially climate change. Part of the program will be steered from Pasadena’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will manage two key missions connected with the program. JPL spokesman Alan Buis says the White House support may provide stability for gathering the kind of long-term data sets needed to study gradual changes in earth systems.

As Jon Hamilton reports in his  story for NPR’s Morning Edition, the centerpiece of the program will be the GRACE satellite which will collect data critical for a variety of models and applications, including:

· The changing mass of polar ice caps
· Changes in water resources on land
· Shallow and deep ocean current transport mechanisms
· Sea level change resulting from ocean temperature and water mass changes
· Exchanges between the oceans and atmosphere
· Forces that generate Earth’s geomagnetic field, and
· Internal Earth forces that move tectonic plates and result in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions

GRACE has been in orbit since 2002 and is due to be replaced. NASA suffered a severe setback when its Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) satellite crashed after its launch early last year. The White House budget includes funding to rebuild the vehicle and relaunch in February of 2013. The OCO2 satellite is designed to measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, specifically comparing sources of CO2 to “sinks,” where it is stored.