Portal:Climate change/Selected panorama
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Selected panorama 1
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Credit: Mike Scalora
A view of Sand Mountain campground from the side of Sand Mountain at Little Sahara Recreation Area in Utah. The Little Sahara sand dunes are remnants of a large river delta formed by the Sevier River from about 12,500 to 20,000 years ago. The river emptied into ancient Lake Bonneville near the present day mouth of Leamington Canyon. After Lake Bonneville receded, winds transported the sand from the river delta to the current location. The dunes are still moving 5 to 9 feet (1.5 to 3 m) per year. The area is home to typical Great Basin desert wildlife including mule deer, pronghorn antelope, snakes, lizards and birds of prey. Great horned owls make their home among juniper trees in the Rockwell Natural Area.
Selected panorama 2
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The effective rate of change in glacier thickness, also known as the glaciological mass balance, is a measure of the average change in a glacier's thickness after correcting for changes in density associated with the compaction of snow and conversion to ice. The map shows the average annual rate of thinning since 1970 for the 173 glaciers that have been measured at least 5 times between 1970 and 2004. Larger changes are plotted as larger circles and towards the back.
All survey regions except Scandinavia show a net thinning. This widespread glacier retreat is generally regarded as a sign of global warming.
During this period, 83% of surveyed glaciers showed thinning with an average loss across all glaciers of 0.31 m/yr. The most rapidly growing glacier in the sample is Engabreen glacier in Norway with a thickening of 0.64 m/yr. The most rapidly shrinking was Ivory glacier in New Zealand which was thinning at 2.4 m/yr. Ivory glacier had totally disintegrated by circa 1988. [1]Selected panorama 3
Selected panorama 4
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Credit: NASA Multimedia
This video summarizes how climate change, associated with increased carbon dioxide levels, has affected plant growth.
Selected panorama 5
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Credit: USGS Landsat Project: Warming Island – comparison of satellite pictures between 1985 and 2005.
Warming Island, Greenland: On January 16th, 2007, the New York Times reported that a new island had been found in Greenland. Warming Island was once thought to be an ice-covered peninsula, but it was exposed as an island when a glacier melted to reveal the strait. This image shows satellite pictures of the island in 1985 when the glacier had firmly tied it to the mainland, in 2002 when there was only a thin bridge of ice, and in 2005 when the bridge of ice has broken to reveal an open water strait. More islands like this may be discovered if the Greenland ice sheet continues to disappear.
Selected panorama 6
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Credit: NASA
the Arctic temperature trend between August 1981 and July 2009. Due to global warming, which is exacerbated at the Arctic, there's a significant warming over this 28 year period.
Selected panorama 7
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Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Plant Productivity in a Warming World: The past decade is the warmest on record since instrumental measurements began in the 1880s. Previous research suggested that in the '80s and '90s, warmer global temperatures and higher levels of precipitation—factors associated with climate change—were generally good for plant productivity. An updated analysis published this week in Science indicates that as temperatures have continued to rise, the benefits to plants are now overwhelmed by longer and more frequent droughts. High-resolution data from the Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS, indicate a net decrease in net primary production (NPP) from 2000-2009, as compared to the previous two decades. This narrated video gives an overview of NPP and the carbon cycle.
Selected panorama 8
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Credit: Created by Robert A. Rohde from data published by the U.S. NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Global Monitoring Division
The Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN) is one of the primary reference compilations of temperature data used for climatology, and is the foundation of the GISTEMP Temperature Record. This map shows the 7,280 fixed temperature stations in the GHCN catalog color coded by the length of the available record. Sites that are actively updated in the database (2,277) are marked as "active" and shown in large symbols, other sites are marked as "historical" and shown in small symbols. In some cases, the "historical" sites are still collecting data but due to reporting and data processing delays (of more than a decade in some cases) they do not contribute to current temperature estimates.
As is evident from this plot, the most densely instrumented portion of the globe is in the United States, while Antarctica is the most sparsely instrumented land area. Parts of the Pacific and other oceans are more isolated from fixed temperature stations, but this is supplemented by volunteer observing ships that record temperature information during their normal travels. This image shows 3,832 records longer than 50 years, 1,656 records longer than 100 years, and 226 records longer than 150 years. The longest record in the collection began in Berlin in 1701 and is still collected in the present day.
Selected panorama 9
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Credit: U.S. Geological Survey – Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center (NOROCK) Authors: Myrna H. P. Hall and Daniel B. Fagre, 2003
Animation of Modeled Climate-Induced Glacier Change in Glacier National Park, 1850- 2100. The simulation reflects the predicted exponential rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, a 2xCO2 "global warming" scenario, with a concurrent warming of 2-3 degrees centigrade (4-5 degrees Fahrenheit) by the year 2050. In addition it assumes that precipitation, primarily in the form of rain, will increase over the same time period about 10 percent (based on the research of Dr. Steven Running, University of Montana).
Selected panorama 10
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Sea level trends between 1993 and 2010. Per the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), "The following maps provide estimates of sea level rise based on measurements from satellite radar altimeters. The local trends were estimated using data from TOPEX/Poseidon (T/P), Jason-1, and Jason-2, which have monitored the same ground track since 1992.
An inverted barometer has been applied. The estimates of sea level rise do not include glacial isostatic adjustment effects on the geoid, which are modeled to be +0.2 to +0.5 mm/year when globally averaged."