Last month, South Asia nations met to discuss how to prevent and respond to climate change in the Himalaya. The conference, called “Kathmandu to Copenhagen: A Vision For Addressing Climate Change Risks and Vulnerabilities in the Himalayas,” brought together representatives from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Kyrgyz Republic, Maldives, Nepal and Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Representatives from China [...]
Posts Tagged ‘greenhouse gases’
27 Aug
The Other Climate Changers: Why Black Carbon and Ozone Also Matter
The Other Climate Changers | Foreign Affairs By Jessica Seddon Wallack and Veerabhadran Ramanathan Summary — Most initiatives to slow global warming involve reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Little attention has been given to reducing emissions of the light-absorbing particles known as “black carbon” or the gases that form ozone–even though doing so would be easier [...]
20 Aug
Still Rising After All These Years: CO2 Levels Increase for 51st Straight Year
Atmospheric CO2 reached 387.81 parts per million (ppm) in July 2009 up from 386.38ppm this time last year according to data released by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) earlier this month. Atmospheric CO2 has been rising since Charles Keeling started taking measurements with high precision instruments at the remote Mauna Loa Observatory in 1958. [...]
17 Aug
Global Warming Bubbles up from the Deep
European scientists have discovered more than 250 plumes of methane (CH4) gas bubbles rising from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin in the Arctic, at a depth of 150 to 400 meters. The warming of Arctic currents by 1° over the last 30 years has triggered the release of methane, a potent greenhouse [...]
12 Aug
Ocean acidification: the “other carbon problem” – now at a theater near you!
Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the oceans have acted as a big sink, absorbing 30% of the CO2 that has been pumped into the atmosphere at a rate of 22 million tons a day. That would seem like good news; less atmospheric CO2 means less warming. But there’s a catch: the CO2 doesn’t [...]
30 Jul
A Talk About Black Carbon by Dr. V. Ramanathan
Today, I attended an excellent talk by Dr. V. Ramanathan at the World Bank in Washington, DC. Dr. Ramanathan, of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, is the leading expert on the effects of non-CO2 greenhouse gases on climate change. In the past decade, Dr. Ramanathan has turned his [...]
