RSS AMSU, Jan-Jul: 2011 second coldest in this century
According to RSS AMSU, the first 7 months were the 2nd coldest January-July period in this century so far (second among 11 candidate years).
The top 15 ranking of the years 1979-2011 according to the average temperature during the first seven months is as follows:
1998: 0.652
2010: 0.545
2002: 0.373
2005: 0.356
2007: 0.310
2003: 0.295
2004: 0.230
2006: 0.206
2001: 0.195
2009: 0.168
1991: 0.163
2011: 0.138
1995: 0.134
1988: 0.121
1983: 0.118
You can see that the first seven months of 2011 were colder than the same period of 1991 which was 20 years earlier; and of course, 1998 remains the leader of the league: its first 7 months were more than 0.5 °C warmer than the same months of 2011. At the 12th position, 2011 is out of top ten. Only Jan-Jul 2008 with -0.024 °C managed to be colder than the same period of 2011 among the years of the 21st century. So 2011 is helping to make the preliminary 21st century temperature trend even more negative than before.
Some warming may have been taking place in recent months - because of the delayed effect of the disappearing La Nina a few months ago.
Right now, the ENSO oscillations are finding themselves in ENSO neutral conditions.
However, the latest weekly ENSO report says that the ONI 3.4 anomaly is at -0.4 °C - it went down again and is approaching -0.5 °C, the boundary of the La Nina conditions, again.
Also, their models show that there are equal odds that we will see continuing neutral conditions in the Fall - or that we will see another La Nina episode. I
Fungi Accelerated Demise Of World’s Forests In The Past
An aggressive tree-killing fungi triggered by climate change helped to accelerate the demise of the world’s forests more than 250 million years ago, according to a multinational teams of scientists.
Scientists from Utrecht University, Imperial College London and the University of California, Berkeley, said that they were unable to rule out the possibility that today’s changing climate could cause a similar increase in pathogenic soil bacteria that could devastate forests already stressed by a warming climate and pollution.
The study, available online this week, will be published in the September 2011 print edition of the journal Geology of the Geological Society of America.
The death of the forests – primarily comprised of conifers, which are distant relatives of today’s pines and firs – was part of the largest extinction of life on Earth, which occurred when today’s continents were part of one supercontinent, Pangaea.
The so-called Permian extinction likely was triggered by immense volcanic eruptions in what is now Siberia. The huge amounts of gas and dust thrown into the atmosphere altered global climate, and some 95 percent of marine organisms and 70 percent of land organisms eventually went extinct.
The scientists claim that thread-like or filamentous microfossils commonly preserved in Permian rock are relatives of a group of fungi, Rhizoctonia, that today is known for members that attack and kill plants.
“Modern Rhizoctonia include some of the most ubiquitous plant pathogens, causing root, stem and foliar diseases in a wide variety of plants,” said coauthor Cindy Looy, UC Berkeley assistant professor of integrative biology. “Based on patterns of present-day forest decline, it is likely that fungal disease has been an essential accessory in woodland destabilization, accelerating widespread tree mortality during the end-Permian crisis.”
The conifer forests, which covered the semi-arid equatorial region of Pangaea, were eventually replaced by lycopods – four foot-tall relatives of today’s diminutive club mosses – as well as by seed ferns (pteridosperms). The conifers didn’t recover for another 4 to 5 million years.
Looy and her colleagues – Henk Visscher of the Laboratory of Palaeobotany and Palynology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and Mark Sephton of the Impacts and Astromaterials Research Centre at Imperial College, London – caution that today’s changing climate could also lead to increased activity of pathogenic soil microbes that could accelerate the death of trees already stressed by higher temperatures and drought.
“Pathogenic fungi are important elements of all forest ecosystems,” said Visscher. “When an entire forest becomes weakened by environmental stress factors, onslaught of damaging fungal diseases can result in large-scale tissue death and tree mortality.”
The researchers dispute the conclusion of other researchers who claim that the thread-like microfossils are the remains of algae. Furthermore, while the researchers previously thought that Reduviasporonites were fungi that took advantage of dying forests, they now believe the fungi actively helped destroy the forests.
“Previously, mass occurrences of Reduviasporonites had been ascribed to wood-rotting fungi living off an excessive abundance of dead wood,” said Looy, a paleobotanist who focuses on pollen and spores as keys to understanding past plant communities. “However, the notion that the microfossils represent Rhizoctonia-like resting structures suggest a much more active role for fungi in the ecological crisis:”
The researchers’ conclusion comes largely from the fact that they have found living fungi in the genus Rhizoctonia that have a dormant or resting stage during their life cycles in which they look nearly identical to Reduviasporonites.
“One of our problems was that the microfossils didn’t resemble the hyphae of known fungi,” Looy said. “But a few years ago, we realized that we were looking in the wrong direction; that we should have been looking at fungal resting structures, not normal hyphae.”
Fungi typically spread by means of thread-like hyphae, which can form immense underground networks of mycelia, especially in forests where the fungi live in a symbiotic relationship with tree roots. Each filament is a chain of cells with hard walls made of chitin, the same substance that insects use for their exoskeleton.
Fossilized hyphae of Reduviasporonites stoschianus, aggregated into a mass that looks like the sclerotia of the living fungus Rhizoctonia.
When these hyphae branch and intertwine, they may form resting structures known as sclerotia. Sclerotia of modern soil-borne fungi such as Rhizoctonia look nearly identical to the disc-shaped structures found among the Reduviasporonites microfossils. Sclerotia are energy storage structures that can help fungi survive extreme conditions.
The team concluded that the loss of trees and the roots that hold soil in place led to severe topsoil erosion, which carried the sclerotia to the sea.
The researchers acknowledge that conifer forests probably suffered from other environmental stresses as a result of the long-term volcanic eruptions, which spewed carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere and likely destroyed some of Earth’s protective ozone layer.
Nevertheless, they wrote in their paper, “… whatever (the) sequence of events that triggered ecosystem destabilization on land, the aggressiveness of soil-borne pathogenic fungi must have been an integral factor involved in Late Permian forest decline worldwide.”
Biological Hazard in Sweden on Wednesday, 27 July, 2011 at 03:31 (03:31 AM) UTC.
The discovery of a deadly bee disease among several broods in western Sweden have prompted a warning from agriculture officials concerned about containing the contagious illness. A number of bee broods outside Varberg in Halland County have been affected by American foulbrood (AFB), considered one the most common and damaging diseases affecting bees. The disease has no known cure and can cause significant economic harm if not contained. "Beekeepers are urged to go through their hives and look for signs of the spores so to ensure the brood isn't infected," the Halland County governing board said in a statement. The disease affects new bee larvae up to three days old, which become infected by ingesting spores that are present in their food. Spores germinate inside of and eventually kill the larvae, which can contain millions of new spores. The only way to stop the disease from spreading is to burn hives in which it is discovered. "It's taken too many broods among a number of serious beekeepers and there is a risk that the disease will spread," Gert Lagerstedt, a beekeeper and head of bee supervision for the county, told Sveriges Radio (SR). If the disease is discovered, beekeepers are required to file a report with county agriculture officials and then destroy the brood, a policy which has kept the disease rare in Sweden, Eva Forsgren, a honey bee disease researcher at the Swedish Agricultural University (SLU), told SR. However, as AFB has already spread to so many broods in Halland County, concerns are growing that the disease could spread further.
新一波的蜜蜂致命傳染病 American foulbrood (AFB)，已經在瑞典西部被發現，目前沒有任何的醫療手段能夠治癒此種疾病，他將會造成感染的蜜蜂群大量的死亡，對農業造成無比的傷害。目前唯一的預防手段就是，一旦發現蜂巢受感染，就立刻把該蜂巢燒毀。用此方式來控制它的蔓延。
2011年8月4日 星期四
Spring was coldest on record, UW researcher says
All that collective griping about the weather just got validated by some cold facts: The spring of 2011 was the chilliest on record for the state.
James Johnstone, a research associate with the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean in the UW College of the Environment, said the average high temperature from April through June was 60.4 degrees Fahrenheit, beating the previous average of 61.6 degrees in 1955.
The average high temperature for the period since 1900 is 65.6 degrees.
“The people who have been complaining about the weather have had a right to complain,” said Nick Bond, a UW research meteorologist and the state climatologist. “I rather like it, but that’s my own character flaw.”
While the state shivered through the coldest spring on record, Seattle didn’t have it quite so bad. It was just the second-coldest spring on record, with an average high temperature of 60.4 degrees. Only 1920, with a daily average high of 59.6 degrees, was colder.
And it gets worse for the Emerald City: The past two springs were the cloudiest since measurements started 50 years ago.
“We were still getting wintertime cloud cover into late June, which is the most remarkable aspect to me,” Johnstone said.
According to Johnstone, the period from April through June averaged 18.6 hours per day of at least 50 percent cloud cover. Last year was worse, with 19.1 hours per day.
Is it something Seattleites should get used to?
“I think it’s just a run of two bad springs in a row,” Johnstone said. “I wouldn’t expect it to happen again and again and again.”
APNewsBreak: Arctic scientist under investigation
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Just five years ago, Charles Monnett was one of the scientists whose observation that several polar bears had drowned in the Arctic Ocean helped galvanize the global warming movement.
Now, the wildlife biologist is on administrative leave and facing accusations of scientific misconduct.
The federal agency where he works told him he was on leave pending the results of an investigation into "integrity issues." A watchdog group believes it has to do with the 2006 journal article about the bear, but a source familiar with the investigation said late Thursday that placing Monnett on leave had nothing to with scientific integrity or the article.
The source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation, wouldn't comment further.
The watchdog, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, filed a complaint on Monnett's behalf Thursday with the agency, the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.
Investigators have not yet told Monnett of the specific charges or questions related to the scientific integrity of his work, said Jeff Ruch, the watchdog group's executive director. His group released excerpts of interviews investigators conducted with Monnett and fellow researcher Jeffrey Gleason, in which they were questioned about the observations that led to the article.
Whatever the outcome, the investigation comes at a time when climate change activists and those who are skeptical about global warming are battling over the credibility of scientists' work.
Members of both sides, however, said that it was too early to make any pronouncements about the case, particularly since the agency has not yet released the details of the allegations against him.
Myron Ebell, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said the case reinforces the group's position that people should be more skeptical about the work of climate change scientists.
Even if every scientist is objective, "what we're being asked to do is turn our economy around and spend trillions and trillions of dollars on the basis of" climate change claims, he said.
Francesca Grifo, director of the scientific integrity program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said she's not alarmed by the handling of the case so far.
Grifo said the allegations made in the complaint filed by Ruch's group are premature and said people should wait to see what, if anything, comes of the inspector general's investigation.
Beyond the climate change debate, the investigation also focuses attention on an Obama administration policy intended to protect scientists from political interference.
The complaint seeks Monnett's reinstatement and a public apology from the agency and inspector general, whose office is conducting the probe.
The group's filing also seeks to have the investigation dropped or to have the charges specified and the matter carried out quickly and fairly, as the Obama policy states.
BOEMRE, which oversees leasing and development of offshore drilling, was created last year in the reorganization of the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, which oversaw offshore drilling.
The MMS was abolished after the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The agency was accused of being too close to oil and gas industry interests. A congressional report last year found MMS Alaska was vulnerable to lawsuits and allegations of scientific misconduct.
The agency announced steps to improve.
On July 18, BOEMRE told the longtime Anchorage-based Monnett that he was being put on leave, pending the investigation, according to the complaint. BOEMRE has barred Monnett from speaking to reporters, Ruch said.
Monnett could not immediately be reached Thursday.
His wife, Lisa Rotterman, a fellow scientist who worked with Monnett for years, including at BOEMRE's predecessor agency, said the case did not come out of the blue.
Rotterman said Monnett had come under fire in the past within the agency for speaking the truth about what the science showed. She said the 2006 article wasn't framed in the context of climate change but was relevant to the topic.
She feared what happened to Monnett would send a "chilling message" at the agency just as important oil and gas development decisions in the Arctic will soon be made.
"I don't believe the timing is coincidental," she said.
Rotterman said Monnett's work included identifying questions that needed to be answered to inform the environmental analyses the agency must conduct before issuing drilling permits.
"This is a time when sowing doubt in the public's mind about whether those findings can be trusted or not, that makes people think, I don't know what to believe," she said.
Monnett coordinated much of BOEMRE's research on Arctic wildlife and ecology, had duties that included managing about $50 million worth of studies, according to the complaint.
The agency said other scientists would manage the studies in his absence.
According to documents provided by Ruch's group, which sat in on investigators' interviews with Monnett, the questioning focused on observations that he and researcher Jeffrey Gleason made in 2004.
At the time, they were conducting an aerial survey of bowhead whales, and saw four dead polar bears floating in the water after a storm. There were other witnesses, according to Ruch, and low-resolution photos show floating white blobs.
Monnett and Gleason detailed their observations in an article published two years later in the journal Polar Biology. In the peer-reviewed article, they said they were reporting, to the best of their knowledge, the first observations of the bears floating dead and presumed drowned while apparently swimming long distances.
Polar bears are considered strong swimmers, they wrote, but long-distance swims may exact a greater metabolic toll than standing or walking on ice in better weather.
They said their observations suggested the bears drowned in rough seas and high winds. They also added that the findings "suggest that drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the observed trend of regression of pack ice and/or longer open water periods continues."
The article and presentations drew national attention and helped make the polar bear a symbol for the global warming movement. Former vice president and climate change activist Al Gore mentioned the animal in his Oscar-winning global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth."
The complaint said agency officials harassed Gleason and Monnett, and that they received negative comments after the journal article. Gleason took another Interior Department job; he didn't respond to an email and a BOEMRE spokeswoman said he wouldn't be available for comment.
In May 2008, the bear was classified as a threatened species, the first with its survival at risk due to global warming.
According to a transcript, provided by Ruch's group, Ruch asked investigator Eric May, during questioning of Monnett in February, for specifics about the allegations. May replied: "well, scientific misconduct, basically, uh, wrong numbers, uh, miscalculations."
Monnett said that alleging scientific misconduct "suggests that we did something deliberately to deceive or to, to change it. Um, I sure don't see any indication of that in what you're asking me about."
