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Coupling of CO2 and Ice Sheet Stability Over Major Climate Transitions of the Last 20 Million Years
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During the Middle Miocene, when temperatures were ~3° to 6°C warmer and sea level 25 to 40 meters higher than present, pCO2 was similar to modern levels.
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Carbon Market Lessons and Global Policy Outlook
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Summary: Ongoing work on linking markets and mixing policies builds on successes and failures in pricing and trading carbon. Closing sentence, 1st paragraph: Are carbon markets seriously challenged or succeeding and on the rise?
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Assemblage Time Series Reveal Biodiversity Change but Not Systematic Loss
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The extent to which biodiversity change in local assemblages contributes to global biodiversity
loss is poorly understood. We analyzed 100 time series from biomes across Earth to ask how diversity
within assemblages is changing through time. We quantified patterns of temporal a diversity, measured
as change in local diversity, and temporal b diversity, measured as change in community composition.
Contrary to our expectations, we did not detect systematic loss of a diversity. However, community
composition changed systematically through time, in excess of predictions from null models.
Heterogeneous rates of environmental change, species range shifts associated with climate change,
and biotic homogenization may explain the different patterns of temporal a and b diversity.
Monitoring and understanding change in species composition should be a conservation priority.
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Climate Change Conversations
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THE THOUSANDS OF PRESENTATIONS AT NEXT WEEK’S MEETING OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY (ACS) in New Orleans exemplify one of the many ways scientists converse among themselves
about the most recent advances in science. Science and technology continue to reshape the
world we live in, and appreciating how these changes, both intended and unintended, come
about is a necessity for all citizens in a democratic society. Scientists have a responsibility to
help their fellow citizens understand what science and technology can and cannot do for them
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A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years
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Surface temperature reconstructions of the past 1500 years suggest that recent warming is
unprecedented in that time. Here we provide a broader perspective by reconstructing regional
and global temperature anomalies for the past 11,300 years from 73 globally distributed
records. Early Holocene (10,000 to 5000 years ago) warmth is followed by ~0.7°C cooling
through the middle to late Holocene (<5000 years ago), culminating in the coolest temperatures
of the Holocene during the Little Ice Age, about 200 years ago. This cooling is largely
associated with ~2°C change in the North Atlantic. Current global temperatures of the past
decade have not yet exceeded peak interglacial values but are warmer than during ~75% of
the Holocene temperature history. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change model projections
for 2100 exceed the full distribution of Holocene temperature under all plausible greenhouse
gas emission scenarios.
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Enhanced Seasonal Exchange of CO2 by Northern Ecosystems Since 1960
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Seasonal variations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) in the Northern Hemisphere have increased since the 1950s, but sparse observations have prevented a clear assessment of the patterns of long-term change and the underlying mechanisms. We compare recent aircraft-based observations of CO2 above the North Pacific and Arctic Oceans to earlier data from 1958 to 1961 and find that the seasonal amplitude at altitudes of 3 to 6 km increased by 50% for 45° to 90°N but by less than 25% for 10° to 45°N. An increase of 30 to 60% in the seasonal exchange of CO2 by northern extratropical land ecosystems, focused on boreal forests, is implicated, substantially more than simulated by current land ecosystem models. The observations appear
to signal large ecological changes in northern forests and a major shift in the global carbon cycle.
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Biotic Multipliers of Climate Change
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A focus on species interactions may improve predictions of the effects of climate change
on ecosystems.
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Carbon Storage with Benefits
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Biochar—a material related to charcoal—has the potential to benefit farming as well as mitigate climate change.
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Climate Outlook Looking Much The Same, or Even Worse
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Climate scientists have been feverishly preparing analyses for inclusion in the fifth climate assessment report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) due out in 2013. At the meeting, they gave colleagues a peek at where climate science stands 5 years after their last push to inform the authoritative international evaluation . The climate models are bigger and more sophisticated
than ever, speakers reported, but they are yielding the same wide range of possible warming and precipitation changes as they did 5 years ago. But when polled on other areas of concern, researchers say they see more trouble ahead than the previous IPCC assessment had, though less than some scientists had feared
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The Hot Summer of 2010: Redrawing the Temperature Record Map of Europe
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The summer of 2010 was exceptionally warm in eastern
Europe and large parts of Russia. We provide evidence
that the anomalous 2010 warmth that caused adverse
impacts exceeded the amplitude and spatial extent of the
previous hottest summer of 2003. 'Mega-heatwaves' such
as the 2003 and 2010 events broke the 500-yr long
seasonal temperature records over approximately 50% of
Europe. According to regional multi-model experiments,
the probability of a summer experiencing 'megaheatwaves'
will increase by a factor of 5 to 10 within the
next 40 years. However, the magnitude of the 2010 event
was so extreme that despite this increase, the occurrence
of an analogue over the same region remains fairly
unlikely until the second half of the 21st century.
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