A new study has confirmed that waves generated by powerful storms can move massive seaside boulders that weigh hundreds of tons, and as global warming spurs stronger and more powerful storms, this finding illustrates the sheer force that our planet’s weather will challenge us–and the shape of our coastlines–with, in the decades to come.
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As Earth’s climate continues to warm, some scientists are looking at doing more than simply reducing humanity’s outpouring of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by devising ways to actively cool the planet back to temperatures that our civilization is comfortable with. One of the proposed techniques would be to spray massive amounts of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere to create a cloud layer that would reflect a portion of the Sun’s rays back into space, emulating the cooling effect that the gases from a large volcanic eruption would have.read more
While the global average temperature continues to rise, it does so disproportionately around the world: the closer to the poles one gets, the more drastic this temperature rise becomes, a phenomenon in climate science called Polar Amplification. This effect has become so drastic that some areas of the Arctic, such as the Barents and Chukchi seas, are up to 4ºC (7.2ºF) warmer than average. And now these temperature extremes are breaking climate data algorithms, such as in the case of climate data being recorded in Utqiagvik, Alaska.
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The Beaufort Gyre is a wind-driven circular current in the western half of the Arctic Ocean, that alternates between a clockwise and counter-clockwise motion: when it circulates clockwise, it traps ice and melted freshwater, and when it spins counter-clockwise, it releases that freshwater and ice into the North Atlantic Ocean, southward past the east coast of Greenland. This trap-and-release cycle typically reverses every five to seven years, usually when a cyclonic storm in the North Atlantic moves into the Arctic, reversing the Gyre’s direction.read more