#President Obama to Announce Climate Change Plan Today President Barack Obama will announce a comprehensive plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a highly anticipated speech today (June 25) according to senior White house officials.
and prepare communities for the effects of global warming signal the administration's commitment to tackling climate change
According to top White house officials the president's climate strategy will focus on three key areas: preparing the country for the short-and long-term effects of climate change cutting the amount of carbon pollution in the United states
and leading global efforts to combat climate change. 8 Ways Global Warming Is Already Changing the World Frank Lowenstein Climate Adaptation Strategy Leader for The Nature Conservancy's Global
Climate Change Team said the objectives outlined in the president's speech represent an important step in the right direction.
All three of those goals are appropriate and necessary Lowenstein told Livescience. It's important that we act quickly
Reducing emissions The president's plan will direct the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to establish standards for greenhouse gas emissions for new and existing power plants.
A global problem White house officials also stated that a key part of the president's plan would involve working with other countries to develop global solutions to climate change.
The climate negotiations have been stalled for a long time he said. We do need to take action together with other countries so
and towns for the effects of climate change including developing robust infrastructure to withstand storms floods or droughts.
but stressed that he hopes the new plan will also recognize the importance of preserving natural ecosystems.
I hope in terms of responding to climate change and preparing our communities we recognize the enormous benefits that we receive today from natural habitats floodplains
and forest that reduce the force of floods coming down from our mountains and coastal ecosystems that buffer the shores he explained.
We need to take action to protect these natural ecosystems. Â Overall Lowenstein is optimistic that the president's plan will lead to real action to combat climate change.
I continue to believe that addressing climate change in a way that gives us a healthy environment to live in a healthy economy to earn our livings in
and a healthy society for us to enjoy is said possible Lowenstein. If I didn't believe that I couldn't continue working to address climate change.
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#Preventing an Elephant Eden from Becoming Paradise Lost (Op-Ed) Richard Carroll is vice president for Africa at World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Washington D c. He contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices:
Central african republic's neighbors Cameroon and Republic of congo can also help to ensure the integrity of their shared forests and wildlife.
The Bald cypress forest was buried under ocean sediments protected in an oxygen-free environment for more than 50000 years
but was uncovered likely by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 said Ben Raines one of the first divers to explore the underwater forest
about a year after Hurricane Katrina. The dive shop owner confided that a local fisherman had found a site teeming with fish
The trees'growth rings could reveal secrets about the climate of the Gulf of mexico thousands of years ago during a period known as the Wisconsin Glacial period
and there are so many of them the trees could contain thousands of years of climate history for the region Harley said.
since lead poisoning is the number one environmental threat to children in the United states. Sources of lead in soil include past industrial activities flaking lead paint from old houses and emissions from leaded gasoline.
It is easy for a child to obtain more than 6 micrograms of lead per day in a contaminated environment said Howard Mielke a toxicologist at Tulane University in New orleans who also spoke at the AAAS conference.
but we do want to suggest some precautions said Kim Dietrich an environmental health scientist at the University of Cincinnati School of medicine who did not present at the conference.
and South america in March returning with images of volcanoes Amazon floods and archaeological sites. The small Gulfstream-III passenger plane carries a 10-foot-long (3 meters) radar pod the unmanned aerial vehicle synthetic aperture radar (UAVSAR.
In past years flight passes included volcanoes glaciers earthquakes and landslides. This March researchers had a long list of targets to hit in Central and South america.
In South america the sites ranged from Chilean wineries and shrinking tropical glaciers to Amazon cloud forests and Moche culture archaeological sites in Peru.
and soil moisture constrains a lot of ecosystem processes Yang Zheng UAVSAR operational processing lead told Ouramazingplanet during a UAVSAR demo at NASA's Dryden Flight Research center in January.
and South america in March returning with images of volcanoes Amazon floods and archaeological sites. The small Gulfstream-III passenger plane carries a 10-foot-long (3 meters) radar pod the unmanned aerial vehicle synthetic aperture radar (UAVSAR.
In past years flight passes included volcanoes glaciers earthquakes and landslides. This March researchers had a long list of targets to hit in Central and South america.
In South america the sites ranged from Chilean wineries and shrinking tropical glaciers to Amazon cloud forests and Moche culture archaeological sites in Peru.
and soil moisture constrains a lot of ecosystem processes Yang Zheng UAVSAR operational processing lead told Ouramazingplanet during a UAVSAR demo at NASA's Dryden Flight Research center in January.
Scientists think a shock wave from a supernova might have been the event that caused a rotating cloud of gas
As it exploded the supernova also would have seeded the cloud with material and some of that material may have ended up in the meteorites we find today.
me exciting and nerve-wracking waiting for three days in this windstorm for these four eggs to hatch he said.
suspects include wild animals disease or even lightning. The fact is scavenger animals eat soft tissues of the body first including the parts missing from the pony:
Kurt Fritz the guide who led Henn to Ãzi's body died in an avalanche shortly thereafter.
The most apparent problems are nutritional deficiencies particularly for vitamins B12 and D selenium zinc iron and two omega-3 fatty acids DHA and EPA.
Even around the tropics where vegetation is plentiful humans have been cooking as long as humans have been human at least 200000 years and likely longer in our hominid form.
Ecology in Germany. But said Baldwin it's also an example of the importance of studying animals in a natural habitat rather than just in the lab. We never would have discovered the function of this gene
The Clean Air Act requires the Environmental protection agency to set air quality standards for six criteria pollutants:
Rice grown as a staple food for a large portion of the world's population absorbs arsenic from its environment and transfers it to the grain.
or it may be a result of environmental contamination. Despite the health risks arsenic in rice poses to millions of people around the world there are currently no effective agricultural methods in use to reduce arsenic levels.
Past studies have analyzed how reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would also improve air quality. 5 Ways Climate Change Affects Your Health
or the indirect effects of climate change on air quality said researcher Jason West an atmospheric scientist at the University of North carolina at Chapel hill.
The International Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change the international body that assesses the current science on climate change is due to release its next summary on climate science on Sept. 27.
The panel will also release further reports on how climate change will impact the world
Climate changeâ is an important problem that needs strong action and our study suggests serious benefits to reducing greenhouse gases
in addition to helping slow down climate change West said. Many times long-term global problems such as climate change are hard to act on
but here we show that reducing greenhouse gas emissions can have near-term local benefits for health as well
West and his colleagues detailed their findings online Sept. 22 in the journal Nature Climate Change h
For instance a team that includes Harvard genetics expert George Church is trying to bring back the passenger pigeon a bird that once filled eastern North america's skies.
'Nuked'California's enormous Rim Fire had a devastating effect on soils and vegetation according to Forest Service ecologists.
A full 60 square miles (155 square kilometers) burned so severely that all vegetation died a senior wildland ecologist told the Associated press. In other words it's nuked ecologist Jay Miller said.
and organic matter that prevents erosion. Despite the damage the forests are already showing signs of new plant growth.
and colonized different ecosystems. For decades diatoms resisted study. Their genome is notoriously difficult to analyze.
Roses The biggest weather-related factor in the production of beautiful roses is the temperature.
-and-Making-Wine. aspx#axzz2kisqwofj) Chocolate How can weather affect chocolate? Chocolate is made from cocoa beans.
The tree needs just the right weather conditions to produce the cacao pods. Cacao trees grow best in the shade.
Rainfall is another factor that determines how well the trees produce the beans. Ideally the trees should have between 40-80 inches of rainfall per year.
When all of the weather factors work out a surplus of cocoa beans can be exported and the price of chocolate is kept low.
when winds stir up low-oxygen water from the lake depths. A fascinating and foul discovery on the skeleton-clad shores recently revealed the fate of the rest of the fish remains.
Perhaps disturbed by fierce winds globs of decomposed fish flesh recently rose from deep in the Salton Sea coagulated into spheres on the lake surface
and surfed the waves to shore leaving the highwater line littered with thousands of sticky fish balls.
Hematite is an iron oxide mineral that forms in low-oxygen environments. Geochemical analysis then revealed the rotting balls were made of tilapia adipocere a hard waxy substance that feels slippery like soap Simpson said.
but the extent of 2012's rotten-egg smell driven by strong southeasterly winds was unusually broad.
This environmental catastrophe really shaped Southern California Simpson said. This should be in every environmental textbook.
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Only portions of Wyoming and Colorado to the central High Plains have had some moisture-rich storms of late.
Long-term indications are that these storms will break off in the weeks ahead and are not a sign of wetter times through the summer.
The region is likely to have many critical Fire Weather days which are defined by the National Weather Service as days in which the relative humidity is at
or below 15 percent winds are 20 mph or higher and the fire danger is rated at a high or extreme level.
As the summer progresses we believe thunderstorms will begin to fire over the Southwest associated with the monsoon
but moisture may be limited moving farther north to a point over the West Pastelok said. While the storms will provide a source of moisture to a small fraction of the region lightning strikes from the storms will ignite wildfires.
Many of the storms will not bring significant rainfall to a broad area. RELATED: Forest Service Fiscal year 2013 Budget Justification Budget Puts NOAA's Focus on Weather Interactive US Radar Extreme heat is forecast over a large part of the West this summer.
Last summer Denver officially hit 100 degrees 13 times. This summer has the potential to bring just as many if not more 100-degree days.
It could be a similar story for Salt lake city which had 11 days in which temperatures hit 100 degrees or higher.
and thunderstorms there is still the potential for a random stray storm or careless human activity in the region.
and tends to prevent thunderstorm activity initially. However as the pattern progresses moisture can circulate into the high from the outside.
Such moisture can lead to thunderstorm formation over the mountains. The full Accuweather. com forecast for the Summer of 2013 will be released in a couple of weeks.
but has changed already the way the U s. Forest Service monitors ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest according to the NASA statement.
 Such programs are also good for hands-on learners who may not be getting much out of a traditional learning environment said Kalich a dietitian who has designed
or growing climate to implement a gardening program. Â The Australian program used part-time specialists to instruct children rather than full-time teachers.
and events around them and use words to describe their environment. Ask them to describe sounds textures smells and when appropriate taste as well as color shape and size.
Help your child to collect dirt from several places around the neighborhood. Good spots to try are:
The world<a href=http://www. livescience. com/14447-global-food-shortage-urgent-climate-global-warming. html>produces enough food</a>to feed all its human inhabitants
and Applied Ecology IME in Munster Germany have created tobacco plants that grow to over six meters tall with healthy and green leaves.
Last Saturday Caitlin Mackenzie finished setting up the common gardens in Acadia national park that will provide data for her Ph d. research on the effects of climate change on plants.
when there are problems in Earth's ecosystems from harmful toxins to the drivers of habitat loss for birds or their response to climate change.
but furloughed hurricane respondents have been told that if a storm comes up they'll just be called back.
It's a felony for the researchers to take any research home or continue with their work during shutdown.
Incredible Animal Migrations International pressure from environmental groups helped force the Tanzanian government to scrap plans for a paved highway through the Serengeti in June 2011 according to the BBC.
He also advocated building more fences around large reserves a suggestion that was met with some resistance by at least one ecologist present at the conference who questioned Leakey after his talk about the fence's ability to stop elephants.
Erratic weather including a devastating drought in Europe and a freak hailstorm in Australia has left the world with a looming shortage of olive oil.
In spring of 2012 a late frost hit Spain in the middle of the olive's flowering season according to the Huffington Post.
hailstorm that destroyed roughly 6 percent of Australia's olive crop according to Australia's ABC. net news service have left restaurants and food manufacturers worldwide in a tight spot.
because there are some unsettled weather patterns coming that could stir up fire activity Carbonaro told Livescience.
And in the Stanislaus National Forest an emergency soil restoration team will continue its efforts to stabilize steep slopes before the winter rains arrive Snyder said.
as a result of climate change a new study suggests. Interested in how regional climate affects bison size biologist Joseph Craine of Kansas State university collected body mass data for more than 250000 bison across the country.
He found that herds from hot dry regions tend to weigh less than those from cooler wetter regions.
Other grazers like cattle will likely face similar changes in a warming climate Craine said.
#Snow leopard's Fate Hinges on Historic Talks (Op-Ed) Bradnee Chambers Executive secretary of the United nations Environment Program Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals contributed this article
The meetings provided an opportunity for countries to present the zero drafts of their National Snow leopard Ecosystem Protection Priorities
and which species are going to die with climate change Johnson told Ouramazingplanet. Plant hydraulics will tell us what our future forests will look like in 50 years.
and those complaining about other environmental stress. We're working on trying to differentiate these two signals:
if these emissions are also providing information to neighborhoods of plants she said. Plants have ways of protecting themselves
and an expert on how trees respond to wind. How many times have sat you next to someone who has their car stereo at full blast?
Trees perceive and respond to touch like wind or an animal passing on a trail.
And like the wind sound is a wave that travels through air. In fact a tree needs wind to grow Telewski said.
If you stake down a seedling you do it a little bit of disservice because a tree needs to perceive motion.
but Karban and others went on to prove that plants including sagebrush warn their neighbors of impending danger by wafting chemical signals into the air.
Climate Change Swirls Wine Production (Op-Ed) Antonio Busalacchi directs the University of Maryland Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center and chairs the World Climate Research
Programme's Joint Scientific Committee and the National Research Council board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate.
Climate change is altering growing conditions in wine-producing regions and in coming decades it will change the wines produced in these regions in some cases shifting northward the growth of grape varieties long associated with regions further south.
Climate change will produce winners and losers among wine-growing regions and for every region it will result in changes to the alcohol acid sugar tannins
My research assistant Eric Hackert and I have analyzed climate change impacts on two dozen of the world's major wine-producing regions across both the Old
and Kent in southern England as potential sites for new vineyards because as climate warms the region those areas are becoming more hospitable to quality grape growing.
In general vineyards in higher latitudes at higher altitudes or surrounded by ocean will benefit from climate change.
Extreme events such as heat waves that shut down photosynthesis and hail storms that can ruin a chateau's annual production in a matter of minutes will become more commonplace.
I are working collaboratively to understand the Earth and its changing climate. As part of that work the university has major research partnerships with federal agencies in Earth science climate and energy research.
Our partnerships include the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration-supported Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites;
a longstanding cooperative agreement between UMD's Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center and the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center;
The impact of climate change on global viticulture is just one example of how the climate of the past is no longer prologue for the future.
and governments in effectively planning for and responding to climate change's impacts UMD's Climate Information:
Responding to User Needs (CIRUN) initiative is building diverse partnerships among climate scientists behavioral and social scientists engineers agricultural scientists public health and risk-management experts and private-and public-sector decision makers.
However these viticulture effects illustrate that climate change is not an abstract concept. Rather in ways the world may not have appreciated global warming will likely have an impact on the culture and way of life in many countries.
#Starry Sky Over Sequoia National park: Stargazer's Serene Scene (Photos) Astrophotographer Meldeine Sipes took advantage of her family's picturesque vacation spot by shooting some spectacular images of giant sequoia trees under a starry sky.
Sipes recently sent SPACE. com these stunning images taken over the Fourthâ of July weekend from Sequoia National park in California.
For the first time we saw the night sky as nature intended Sipes wrote SPACE. com via email. 6 Stellar Places for Skywatching in the US The sequoias reminded us how small we are
and the night sky showed us that the giants surrounding us were smaller than we could ever imagine.
Terrie Williams a professor at the University of California Santa cruz recalls a gin and tonic made with Antarctic glacier ice.
Climate scientists who pull up ice cores stretching back 100000 years regularly plunk broken core pieces into their drinks.
and attracted by the opportunity to chow down on our study organisms said Nalini Nadkarni an ecologist at the University of Utah.
and out delicious snack according to Joe Sapp an ecology graduate student at the University of California Santa cruz. They are full of nectar
If there were a way to form an environment for the dust to grow perhaps it could solve the radial-drift problem.
The climate is predicted to get warmer and this favors more fires said Ryan Kelly a plant biologist at the University of Illinois who examined the records.
The new study detailed in the July 22 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is part of decades-long research seeking to understand how ecosystems have changed in the past Kelly told Livescience adding that this information will help scientists predict what may happen in the future.
During the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) between 1000 and 500 years ago the warm and dry climatic conditions hich are most similar to today's compared with other periods in the 10000-year recordâ aused intense fires to pop up.
but there's a pretty clear link between humans inducing a warmer climate and increased forest burning Kelly said adding that lightning can more readily spark a wildfire
when the environment is dried out from high temperatures. The results are particularly striking given that wildfires release the forests'stored carbon into the atmosphere potentially exacerbating climate change.
And it's plausible that as the climate continues to warm even the fire-resistant deciduous trees could start to burn.
We may be out of the realm of what has happened in the past Kelly said. Are we now entering into something totally different?
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#Super-Eruption Launched Algae Army Into the Sky Slimy brown algae not only survived a wild ride into the stratosphere via a volcanic ash cloud they landed on distant islands looking flawless a new study finds.
The combination of water and ash created a hellish dirty thunderstorm with towering clouds and roaring winds.
The prevailing winds blew west at the time so the shells circled the Southern hemisphere before landing on the islands Van Eaton
The color suggests they weren't cooked to extreme temperatures in the volcanic eruption Van Eaton said.
Spores infect the sky But even though the Taupo diatom shells are pristine Theriot is doubtful any diatoms lived through the eruptions.
and colonizing new ecosystems. Diatoms fashion spores to ride out inhospitable changes in their environment Two years ago Danish researchers revived 100-year-old resting spores from muck in a local fjord.
Resting spores have been found in clouds. The eruption could have launched spores from the lake bottom into the atmosphere Theriot said.
I and many others have joked about Yellowstone blowing up again and dispersing the diatomite that is being created at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake Theriot said.
We have been able to show that the largest volcanic eruption of the last two million years did not significantly alter the climate of East Africa said researcher Christine Lane a geologist at the University of Oxford.
Apparently the environment very quickly recovered from any atmospheric disturbance that may have occurred Lane said. But these results detailed online April 29 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences don't mean that super-eruptions aren't as big a risk to Earth's denizens as previously suggested.
It is important to realize that every volcanic eruption is different and the Youngest Toba Tuff provides only one example Lane said.
but also the composition and volume of aerosols how high in the atmosphere the ash is injected and the meteorological conditions at the time.
Whilst from this we can hypothesize that the global climatic impact was not as dramatic as some have suggested we will need to find similarly high-resolution records of past climate from other regions that also contain Youngest Toba Tuff
Too Many Trees (Op-Ed) Jamie Workman writer for the Environmental Defense Fund contributed this article to Livescience's Expert Voices:
That policy has altered radically our forest landscapes where fires set by lightning or Native americans had limited always forest stocks to roughly a few dozen trees per acre.
Helen Poulos a fire ecologist at Wesleyan University and I have estimated conservatively that excess trees in the 7. 5 million acres of Sierra nevada conifer forest are responsible for the loss of more than 15 billion gallons per day
Then look at its two neighbours that lie deeper inside the triangle they ll always add up to that very same square number.
Incredible Photos of Peacock Spiders I also love the way they interact with their environment how they exhibit fear excitement and curiosity.
I have been fortunate to work with a range of people from ecologists to medical doctors asking very different questions.
Another example of the usefulness of stable isotope ratios can be found in the tropics where woody plants and grasses
We have used stable isotopes to quantify African elephant diet over time as it relates to rainfall history
Typically after rainfall grasses become more abundant and constitute a greater portion of an elephant's diet.
and how their diet changes with changes in rainfall. Similarly we have used carbon isotopes in fossil soils to determine the fraction of woody cover sites that bear hominin fossils a problem that has implications for the history of our species
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