PMEL in the News
How much longer can Antarctica’s hostile ocean delay global warming?
The waters of the Southern Ocean have absorbed much of the excess heat and carbon generated by humanity.
Stunningly good news for the planet: Carbon emissions were flat for the third straight year
A world greatly concerned about how the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president could stall global climate policy received a major dose of welcome news Sunday, when scientists published a projection suggesting that for the third straight year, global carbon dioxide emissions did not increase much in 2016. The news comes from the Global Carbon Project, a group of scientists who measure how much carbon dioxide humans emit each year, as well as how much is subsequently absorbed by plants, land surfaces and oceans. The difference between the two determines the amount of carbon dioxide that remains in the atmosphere and drives global warming.
Low growth in carbon emissions continues for third year
Global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels did not grow in 2015 and are projected to rise only slightly in 2016, marking three years of almost no growth, according to researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Global Carbon Project.
Wet last month, warm this month, maybe snow coming up
After a record wet October, Olympia broke consecutive heat records Tuesday and Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service. Tuesday’s 70-degree high broke a 20-year record of 62 degrees set Nov. 8, 1996. As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, the new record was 64 degrees, 2 degrees warmer than the Nov. 9 record set most recently in 1997. The warmest November day in the books was 74 degrees Nov. 4, 1949, said Johnny Burg, meteorologist with the National Weather Service Office in Seattle.
Huge Puffin Die-Off May Be Linked to Hotter Seas
The tufted puffins started washing ashore on St. Paul Island in mid-October—first a handful, then dozens, then so many that volunteers patrolling to collect dead birds began walking their four-wheelers rather than riding. It was easier than getting off every few feet. The hundreds of dead, emaciated puffins showing up on this isolated, wind-swept scratch of land in the Pribilof Islands in the middle of the North Pacific suddenly has scientists worried—about the population of this white-masked, orange-beaked seabird, but also about what their deaths may portend for the normally productive Bering Sea.