DWR Climate News Digest
March 28th – April 26th, 2012
Disclaimer: The information and links provided on this web page are not intended to state or imply any formal position of the California Department of Water Resources
The information provided herein is a selected compilation of recent popular news articles, publications, and other information relevant to climate change and water management. The links provided herein are intended to provide educational and thought-provoking material for water managers and water users.
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TOPICS [Find older items in the Climate News Archive]
DWR Staff Publications
The climate has changed: Now what? Integrated Regional Water Management and climate change planning - A coincidental or inevitable union? [American Bar Association 30th Annual Water Law Conference - January 17, 2012]
Hydrological response to climate warming: The Upper Feather River Watershed [Journal of Hydrology 426-427:138-150]
Isolated and integrated effects of sea level rise, seasonal runoff shifts, and annual runoff volume on California's largest water supply [Journal of Hydrology 405:83-92]
Reports
Public Support for Climate & Energy Policies in March 2012 [Yale Project on Climate Change Communication - April 2012] (majorities of Americans say that global warming and clean energy should be among the nations priorities, and that global warming will be one of the issues that determines their vote for President this fall)
Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation - Summary for Policymakers [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - April 2012]
Ready or Not: An Evaluation of State Climate and Water Preparedness Planning [National Resources Defense Council - April 2012]
Washington State Integrated Climate Change Response Strategy [Washington State - April 2012]
Extreme Weather, Climate and Preparedness [Yale Project on Climate Change Communication - April 2012] (according to this March 2012 poll, 'a majority of Americans say the weather in the United States is getting worse and...large majorities believe that global warming made a number of recent extreme weather in their own local area has become more frequent and damaging")
Restore-Adapt-Mitigate: Responding to Climate Change through Coastal Habitat Restoration [Restore America's Estuaries - April 2012]
Sea Level Rise Threats to Energy Infrastructure [Climate Central - April 2012] ("Sea level rise from global warming is well on the way to doubling the risk of coastal floods 4 feet or more over high tide by 2030 at locations nationwide. In the lower 48 states, nearly 300 energy facilities stand on land below that level, including natural gas infrastructure, electric power plants, and oil and gas refineries)
Sustainable Water and Environmental Management in the California Bay-Delta [National Research Council - March 29, 2012]
Moving Forward: Adaptation and Resilience to Climate Change, Drought, and Water Demand in the Urbanizing Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico [NOAA - March 2012]
Global Water Security [Intelligence Community Assessment - February 2012] ["this report is designed to answer the question: How will water problems (shortages, poor water quality, or floods) impact US national security interests over the next 30 years?"; "Bottom line - Water problems will hinder the ability of key countries to produce food and generate energy, posing a risk to global food markets and hobbling economic growth"]
Adapting to Sea Level Rise: A Guide for California's Coastal Communities [UC Santa Cruz/PIER - February 2012]
Published Literature
Past extreme warming events linked to massive carbon release from thawing permafrost [(abstract) Nature - April 4, 2012]
Ocean salinities reveal strong global water cycle intensification during 1950-2000 [Science - April 27, 2012]
Sea-level Rise and other Ocean Impacts
Warm ocean currents cause majority of ice loss from Antarctica [Science Daily - April 25, 2012]
Climate change is reducing Arctic Ocean biodiversity [Calgary Herald - April 24, 2012]
Climate change: Arctic ocean could be a source of greenhouse gas [Weather Online - April 23, 2012] (measurements of atmospheric methane concentrations near areas where sea ice cracked or has broken up indicate that Arctic waters could potentially be an important source of the high GHG-potential gas which could accelerate global warming)
Senate climate change hearing focuses on sea level rise [OPB - April 19, 2012]
Ocean acidification linked with larval oyster failure in hatcheries [National Science Foundation - April 11, 2012]
Evolution at sea: Long-term experiments indicate phytoplankton can adapt to ocean acidification [Science Daily - April 8, 2012]
Ocean's acidic shift may be fastest in 300 million years [Reuters - March 1, 2012]
Agriculture/Food Production
Climate change may create price volatility in the corn market [PhysOrg - April 22, 2012] (a Stanford study found that climate change's impact on corn price volatility could far outweigh the volatility caused by changing oil prices or government energy policies affecting biofuels production)
Proper soil management needed to combat climate change [Drovers Cattle Network - April 19, 2012] ("Food and energy security, water availability and quality, and climate change adaptation and mitigation are some of the greatest challenges facing our society; appropriate management of soils offers the potential to provide solutions for each of these challenges" - Chuck Rice, Kansas State University Professor of Agronomy)
American corn growers leader speaks out on climate change report [American Corn Growers - April 18, 2012]
Climate change boosts then quickly stunts plants, decade-long study shows [National Science Foundation - April 10, 2012] (nitrogen turnover occurred more rapidly but was quickly lost to the atmosphere or leached from the soil)
General Water Management
Warm spring may mean drought and wildfires in West [National Geographic - April 25, 2012]
Drought
Climate change threatens all of civilization [Sacramento Bee - April 9, 2012]
Wildlife and Ecosystem Impacts
Accelerating climate change exerts strong pressure on Europe's mountain flora [PhysOrg - April 19, 2012]
Polar bears 600,000 years old and more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought [Audubon Magazine - April 19, 2012]
Scientists determined first-ever census for Emperor Penguins [National Science Foundation - April 13, 2012]
Climate change boosts then quickly stunts plants, decade-long study shows [Science Codex - April 11, 2012]
How butterflies adapt when climate changes [msnbc - April 4, 2012]
Greenhouse Gas Mitigation and Climate Adaptation
Clean energy lags put world on pace for 6 degrees Celsius of global warming [Scientific American - April 26, 2012] (the International Energy Agency told world energy ministers that multiple sectors are falling behind in efforts to mitigate global warming)
U.N. struggles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions [Scientific American - April 25, 2012]
EPA publishes national U.S. greenhouse gas inventory [US EPA - April 16, 2012]
NASA expert speaks on coal-fired power plants, climate change [redOrbit - April 11, 2012]
EU CO2 law could scupper global climate talks [Reuters - April 11, 2012]
University of Minnesota invention helps advance reliability of alternative energy [University of Minnesota - April 11, 2012]
Costa Rican farmers beat climate change by protecting soil [Inside Costa Rica - April 9, 2012]
International Planning
Mexico passes climate-change law [Nature.com - April 23, 2012] (Mexico follows the lead of countries such as Australia, South Korea and China which have all taken steps to create national standards and goals for mitigating climate change, including the establishment of carbon markets)
Climate change threat brings mountain countries together [Hindustan Times - April 5, 2012]
As climate becomes less certain, so does China's ability to grow enough food [Scientific American - April 2, 2012]
Legislative Updates
New EPA rules target pollution at fracking sites [LA Times - April 18, 2012]
EPA to impose first greenhouse gas limits on power plants [Washington Post - March 26, 2012]
BLOGS
Paul Douglas on "Climate change unrelated to Gore" [Bloomberg Businessweek - April 19, 2012] (a moderate Republican explains why climate change shouldn't be framed and discussed a political issue)
Andrew Revkin on "A fresh look at how humans are loading climate 'dice' [New York Times - April 10, 2012] (here is the abstract to the draft paper by Hansen, Sato and Ruedy - submitted to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - April 2012]
Thomas Lovejoy on ”The greatest challenge of our species" [New York Times - April 5, 2012] ("Human ingenuity should be up to the challenge. But it has to recognize the problem and address it with immediacy and at scale")
Joe Romm on "Nature bombshell: 'Past extreme warming events linked to massive carbon release from thawing permafrost'" [Think Progress - April 4, 2012]
Stephen Lacey on ”Senate climate hawks deliver speech calling for U.S. action on the 'Planetary Crisis of Global Warming'" [Think Progress - February 17, 2012]
Additional Items of Interest
[website] ClimaScope ('ClimaScope is a data visualization engine providing maps and data on projected climate changes for a range of greenhouse gas emissions scenarios; data provided include terrestrial temperature change, sea surface temperature, total precipitation and cloud cover')
Climate change has intensified the global water cycle [OPB news - April 26, 2012] (see research paper abstract HERE)
Spread of diseases linked to climate change [Financial Times - April 26, 2012]
Obama: Climate change will be a campaign issue [Politico - April 25, 2012]
Climate scientists discover "warming hole" over Eastern U.S. that delayed U.S. climate impacts from GHGs [PlanetSave - April 26, 2012]
Climate change proponent realizes he was wrong, but for the wrong reasons [ars technica - April 26, 2012] (James Lovelock, originator or the Gaia concept (but not a climate scientist) has backtracked on his previous predictions about climate change, which were indeed alarmist compared to the known science at the time)
Jerry Brown tells state agencies to reduce emissions, water use [Sacramento Bee - April 25, 2012]
With environmental spotlight on Greenland, more tourists want closer look [CNN - April 23, 2012]
GE, Alcoa, Johnson Controls, Ford and Intel top climate innovation list [Environmental Leader - April 23, 2012]
Earth day: Discussing the coming climate crisis with Heidi Cullen [Daily Beast - April 22, 2012] (the chief climatologist for Climate Central discusses the evidence and the need for scientists to educate others about the issue)
NASA image gallery highlights Earth's changing face [NASA - April 19, 2012] (see the gallery HERE for images showing the state of flux of Earth's surface, including melting glaciers)
[Website] - California Climate Change Research Database [CARB and
In poll, many link weather extremes to climate change [New York Times - April 17, 2012] (by a 2-to-1 margin, the public says the weather has been getting worse in recent years, due to global warming)
Greenland may be slip-sliding away due to surface lake melting [Science Daily - April 16, 2012]
A new Cold War? As climate change melts polar ice cap, militaries vie for Arctic advantage [Washington Post - April 16, 2012]
Climate change scientists look back - 3 million years - to look to future [msnbc - April 15, 2012]
The glaciers are still shrinking - and rapidly [Guardian - April 15, 2012]
Climate change could cripple New York's transportation [Climate Central - April 10, 2012]
Not just March, but start of 2012 shatter U.S. records for heat, worrying meteorologists [Washington Post - April 9, 2012]
US Forest Service and NASA temp up on climate change early warning system [USDA - April 9, 2012]
Study: Impact of warming climate doesn't always translate to streamflow [Oregon State University - April 6, 2012]
Long-term study sheds new light on climate change impact [redOrbit - April 6, 2012] (cool, wet areas are especially vulnerable to climate change; healthy, forested watersheds appear to be more resilient)
Rising CO2 levels linked to global warming during the last deglaciation [Oregon State University - April 4, 2012] ("CO2 was a big part of bringing the world out of the last Ice Age and it took about 10,000 years to do it. Now CO2 levels are rising again, but this time the equivalent increase in CO2 has occurred in only about 200 years, and there are clear signs the planet is already beginning to respond")
Fertilizer use responsible for increase in nitrous oxide in atmosphere [Science Daily - April 2, 2012]
World landmarks dimmed for Earth Hour to highlight climate change [Washington Post - March 31, 2012]
Electricity and carbon dioxide used to generate alternative fuel [Science Daily - March 29, 2012]
Signs of thawing permafrost revealed from space [Science Daily - March 27, 2012]
Earth warming faster than expected [Science Now/AAAS - March 25, 2012]
Images to Ponder
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