Climate Change Index for week ending 1 Nov. 2009
Greenbang’s weekly Climate Change Index tracks research findings and events directly attributable to global warming. Our aim is to provide a numerical, week-to-week indicator of climate change developments.
Items that qualify for listing in each week’s index include new climate data published in peer-reviewed academic journals and extreme weather incidents or other natural events that are likely directly linked to the global warming trend.
The Climate Change Index for this week, ending 1 Nov. 2009 (details below): 5
26 October: Recent tree loss, largely driven by climate stress, in forests around the world could portend increased tree mortality under climate change, according to a new report from the US Geological Survey.
28 October: A team of scientists has found that sea-level rise in North Carolina is accelerating, with 20th-century levels rising three times as quickly as the rate over the last 500 years. The jump appears to occur between 1879 and 1915, a time of industrial change that may provide a direct link to human-induced climate change.
28 October: A recent “pronounced change in temperature” in the North Sea over the past 50 years has radically realtered the ecosystem, according to research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
29 October: New models showing how gases interact in the atmosphere indicate that methane, carbon monoxide and all the non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases “together have a net impact that rivals the warming caused by carbon dioxide,” according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
31 October: A researcher with Canada’s Arctic System Science at the University of Manitoba reported that multiyear ice has all but disappeared from the Arctic Ocean, replaced by “rotten ice” made up of small older chunks covered by thin layers of new ice.
