Never going back again.

Small mountain glaciers play a big role in recharging vital aquifers and in keeping rivers flowing during the winter, according to a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

The study also suggests that the accelerated melting of mountain glaciers in recent decades may explain a phenomenon that has long puzzled scientists – why arctic and subarctic rivers have increased their water flow during the winter even without a correlative increase in rain or snowfall.

These photos show University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Anna Liljedahl coring the glacier snow pack on Jarvis Glacier to measure snow density in order to estimate how much water is stored in the later winter snow pack before the snow melts, and putting up a wind shield around a gauge that she installed on Jarvis Glacier to measure rainfall. They also show UAF researchers hiking between the glacier mass balance stakes on Jarvis Glacier to measure how much snow and ice melted over the summer, and taking a water sample for geochemical analysis at the mouth of the Jarvis Glacier. 

The bottom images show a before and after photo of Gulkana Glacier. The top photo shows the Gulkana Glacier in 1967 when the US Geological Survey started their glacier mass balance monitoring program. The bottom photo is 49 years later in 2016 and shows the shrinkage of the glacier extent. The total loss of water from the glacier retreat equals a 25m deep water column spread out across the entire recent glacier area.

Read more at http://blogs.agu.org/blog/2017/07/21/mountain-glaciers-recharge-vital-aquifers/

The First Climate Model Turns 50, And Predicted Global Warming Almost Perfectly

“The big advance of Manabe and Wetherald’s work was to model not just the feedbacks but the interrelationships between the different components that contribute to the Earth’s temperature. As the atmospheric contents change, so do both the absolute and relative humidity, which impacts cloud cover, water vapor content and cycling/convection of the atmosphere. What they found is that if you start with a stable initial state – roughly what Earth experienced for thousands of years prior to the start of the industrial revolution – you can tinker with one component (like CO2) and model how everything else evolves.”

In 1967, a groundbreaking paper in climate science was published, detailing the inputs and feedbacks for the first accurate climate model. You don’t have to look far to find contentions that climate models are wrong, inaccurate and unreliable: 8 of the first 10 results on google state it. Yet if you look at the science, the original model, even at age 50, does a remarkable job of getting things right. The biggest success? Understanding how large-scale processes work, including the thermodynamic effects of adding additional greenhouse gases to Earth’s atmosphere. The increase of temperature – approximately 2 degrees C for a doubling of CO2 – was well known then, and continues to be well known today. There are uncertainties and difficulties in modern models, but that doesn’t mean there’s uncertainty surrounding global warming. Quite to the contrary, the evidence has never been better.

Here is the text of the letter:

January 6, 2017

In late December, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources altered and removed information on its website concerning climate change, its impacts, and ways to mitigate and adapt to those impacts (http://dnr.wi.gov/topic/greatlakes/climatechange.html).

Before the change, the introductory statement read: “Earth’s climate is changing. Human activities that increase heat-trapping (‘greenhouse’) gases are the main cause.”

Afterwards, it read: “As it has done throughout the centuries, the earth is going through a change. The reasons for this change at this particular time in the earth’s long history are being debated and researched by academic entities outside the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.”

The original wording accurately reflected our knowledge about climate change and its causes, emphasizing the need for the Wisconsin DNR to focus on climate change impacts to protect and manage Wisconsin’s natural resources. The revised statement fails to mention either human-caused climate change or science, but manages to imply that changes in climate are natural, mysterious, and driven by causes that still stir debate among climate scientists. In fact, the revised version is simply incorrect. We know that climates are getting warmer, often wetter, and with more extreme events such as heat waves, droughts, and floods. Greenhouse gases created by burning fossil fuels are driving these dramatic and accelerating changes in climate. The consensus on this is clear among climate scientists, within the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and on websites of environmental agencies in surrounding states.

As a public agency, the Wisconsin DNR is responsible for managing our state’s natural resources and protecting the health and welfare of its citizens, forests, waters, and wildlife. Rapid changes in climate are threatening public health, safety, and natural resources. Failing to accurately inform the public about these threats and the opportunities to reduce them, violates the trust we place in our public institutions. Even more disturbing, the Wisconsin DNR is repudiating its own long-standing tradition of applying the best available science in the public interest.

The DNR has a distinguished tradition of working with colleagues at the state’s universities and the broader scientific community; for example, their recent WICCI (Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts ) collaboration in research and assessment (http://www.wicci.wisc.edu/). These partnerships must continue if we are to develop tools and approaches to protect and manage our natural resources while major changes in climate are occurring.

Wisconsin’s natural resources are being affected by climate change, and these impacts are increasing.

* Warmer conditions, especially in winter, are dramatically reducing the duration of ice cover, giving ice fishers less time to fish.

* Deer hunters are finding less snow on the ground during the gun season.

* Many brook trout streams are threatened by a warming climate.

* In lakes, dominance by the coolwater walleye is shifting to dominance by the warmwater largemouth bass.

* Several popular game species, like the ruffed grouse, are shifting their ranges northward and becoming less abundant.

* Increases in extreme rain events are increasing runoff from farm fields into downstream waterways and lakes, reducing water quality.

* High temperatures worsen health-damaging smog (ozone). The hot summer of 2012 produced very high ozone levels, worsening asthma and harming crops.

* Some key forest trees are declining in a warming Wisconsin, and the season for timber harvesting is getting shorter.

* Several tree species are threatened as warming allows more pest insects and diseases to move north.

The Wisconsin DNR has a responsibility to accurately inform the public about the challenges presented by climate change. Ignoring facts and this responsibility, hobbles the state agency entrusted to manage natural resources and protect the public. It also portrays the Wisconsin state government as anti-science.

Aldo Leopold’s 130th birthday is January 11. As one of Wisconsin’s preeminent conservationists he was adamant that natural resource management must be guided by science and ethics, saying “The hope of the future lies not in curbing the influence of human occupancy – it is already too late for that – but in creating a better understanding of the extent of that influence and a new ethic for its governance.” (Aldo Leopold)

Przystanek Piekarnia Bakery / Five Cell

Badlands National Park defied Trump by tweeting climate facts — and was quickly silenced

On Tuesday, the official Twitter account of the Badlands National Park went rogue amid the efforts of Trump’s administration to impose a communications blackout at several major government agencies.

The account posted several facts about the role of mass human industrial activity on the global climate, a link that is near-universally agreed upon by scientists.

The Trump administration’s blackout has so far only been reported to apply at the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Agriculture, Health and Human Services Department and National Institutes of Health,

But the tweets from the Badlands account disappeared several hours after they were posted.

The Daily Beast’s Kelly Weill that when she called the Badlands National Park the “main phone line repeatedly failed,” while emails bounced back.

Other agencies, such as NASA’s climate division, have continued tweeting about the climate unabated. Read more

The United States Department of Agriculture on Tuesday night removed a gag order on its scientists and other researchers that prevented them from publicly releasing any information on their taxpayer-funded research, BuzzFeed reported.

The lifting of the gag order came a day after a top Agriculture official sent a memo to the Agricultural Research Service that banned them from releasing any information to the public on the research they were conducting. 

That order was met with a loud public outcry on social media.

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