Global warming creates unusual coral refuge in Pacific - Mother Nature Network

THRIVING: Warming ocean water has devastating effects on coral reefs, causing coral to bleach by expelling their symbiotic algae. (Photo: Hughes et al/Current Biology)

Global warming is expected to have devastating effects on coral reefs, but recent research points to a few exceptions.

Warming in the equatorial Pacific may actually create refuges for corals around a handful of islands, even as it bleaches, or kills, corals elsewhere, suggests new research that predicts increased upwelling of cold, nutrient-rich water in these places.

"These little islands in the middle of the ocean can counteract global trends and have a big impact on their own future, which I think is a beautiful concept," said study researcher Kristopher Karnauskas, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist, in a press release issued by the institution.

If predictions made by Karnauskas and colleague Anne Cohen are accurate, warming around the Gilbert Islands will be slower than elsewhere, giving the corals and their symbiotic algae a better chance to adapt. Perhaps these refuges could eventually become a source of new corals and other species that could recolonize reefs damaged by warming, Karnauskas said.

Corals are animals that host tiny plants, or algae, that feed them using photosynthesis. The reefs corals build provide important habitat for many species. Warming water can cause corals to expel their algae, a phenomenon called bleaching, which turns the corals white and puts them under great stress and at risk of death.  

Global climate models predict the central tropical Pacific will warm by about 5.0 degrees Fahrenheit (2.8 degrees Celsius) by the end of the century. To get a better idea of how conditions might play out on a small geographic scale, the researchers used the global models in combination with a fine-scale regional model.

The low-lying coral atoll islands, part of the nation of Kiribati, are as small as 1.54 square miles (4 square kilometers).

As a result of other changes caused by warming, their work predicts the deep equatorial undercurrent (EUC), an eastward flowing current at the equator, will strengthen by 14 percent; this strengthening would create habitat for corals to flourish alongside the islands by bringing cooler water and nutrients to the surface. Though the EUC is an east-to-west current, when it hits an island, water gets deflected upward.

"Our model suggests that the amount of upwelling will actually increase by about 50 percent around these islands and reduce the rate of warming waters around them by about 1.25 degrees F (0.7 degrees C) per century," Karnauskas said.

The research appears in the April 30 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change.

You can follow LiveScience senior writer Wynne Parry on Twitter @Wynne_Parry. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

Related on LiveScience:

• 50 Amazing Facts About Earth
• Virtual Dive: Colorful Coral Photos
• Top 10 Surprising Results of Global Warming

Copyright 2012 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved.

No, wind farms are not causing global warming - Washington Post (blog)

Scientific studies get misrepresented all the time. But now and again the distortions are especially bad. That was the case Monday, when Fox News ran the headline, “New Research Shows Wind Farms Cause Global Warming.” A number of other outlets did the same thing. And it’s ... not true at all.

(George Frey/Bloomberg) The frenzy started after Liming Zhou, a scientist at the University of Albany, published a short study in Nature Climate Change analyzing satellite data for a handful of large wind farms in Texas. What Zhou’s team found was that, between 2003 and 2011, the surface temperature in the immediate vicinity of the wind farms had heated up a fair bit, especially during the night hours, as the wind turbines pulled warmer air from the atmosphere down closer to the ground.

This is mildly interesting â€" if unsurprising. Orange growers in Florida often use giant fans to protect their crops from frost, using the same principle. But it’s not clear that this has any global significance whatsoever. As Zhou himself explained in an accompanying Q&A: “the warming effect reported in this study is local and is small compared to the strong background year-to-year land surface temperature changes. Very likely, the wind turbines do not create a net warming of the air and instead only re-distribute the air’s heat near the surface, which is fundamentally different from the large-scale warming effect caused by increasing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases.”

Read that paragraph again. Wind turbines appear to shift some warm air around in a relatively small slice of Texas â€" a fact that might be of interest to, say, nearby farmers â€" but it’s not the same thing as putting more and more carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere, which traps heat that would otherwise escape out to space and causes the Earth to warm overall. A coal plant helps raise the temperature of the planet by pumping greenhouse gases into the air. A wind turbine... shifts some heat around.

Still, that didn’t stop news outlets and pundits from inflating the study beyond all recognition. The Daily Mail ran the headline, “Wind farms make climate change WORSE.” That is wrong. Zhou himself complained that the media coverage of his study has been “misleading.”

Now, to pull back a bit, there are real questions about what would happen if we massively scaled up wind farms to produce huge amounts of renewable electricity. After all, wind turbines generate power by capturing the kinetic energy of wind and thereby slowing the winds down. On a large enough scale, that might significantly influence the Earth’s temperature and rainfall patterns.

To get a sense for what we know about this broader topic, I called up Mark Jacobson, an environmental engineer at Stanford who has done a lot of modeling work in this area. The first thing to note is that humanity doesn’t currently use anywhere near enough wind power to make a huge difference. Jacobson’s earlier simulations suggested that there’s somewhere around 72 of wind power that could reasonably be harnessed worldwide. But, at the end of 2011, worldwide wind power generation capacity was just 0.2 terawatts. (Humanity, for its part, currently uses about 16 terawatts of energy, all told.)

And it’s not clear what would happen if we erected wind turbines all over the world. One 2004 study (pdf) led by the University of Calgary’s David Keith found that getting just 2 terawatts of electricity from wind could produce “non-negligible climactic change at continental scales” â€" including shifts in rainfall pattern. But, says Jacobson, the effects that Keith’s group found don’t appear to be distinguishable from random fluctuations in the Earth’s climate.

“To me,” says Jacobson, “that’s a meaningless result.” Jacobson himself is working on a more in-depth effort to model the effects of a massive ramp-up in wind that could be published later this year. He says it’s even possible that a huge expansion of wind power on both land and oceans could cool the planet overall, by slowing the rate at which water vapor evaporates from the soil and enters the atmosphere.

But, for these effects to be noticeable, the wind industry would have to be orders of magnitude larger than it is now. For now, there’s no evidence that wind power is having any effect on the global climate, while there’s plenty of evidence that the greenhouse gases we’ve pumped into the air are warming the planet.

Tim McCarver isn't crazy: the home run and global warming connection - Washington Post (blog)

Temperatures compared to a 1951-1980 baseline since 1880 and the average home runs per team per game since 1880. (Temperature data from NASA GISS; home run data from Baseball-Reference.com ) Over the weekend, baseball announcer Tim McCarver became the source of ridicule when he blamed global warming for the increase in home run totals in recent years. But it was the criticism of McCarver rather than McCarver’s comment that was over the top.

“There have been climactic changes over the last 50 years in the world, and I think that’s one of the reasons that balls are carrying much better now than I remember,” McCarver said.

Deadspin called McCarver’s statement “one of the most insane things ever asserted by a professional broadcaster.” The blog Watts Up With That described it as “climate craziness”. WeatherBell meteorologist Joe Bastardi tweeted: “What a stone stupid comment”.

Tweet exchange between Baltimore meteorologist Justin Berk and WeatherBell’s Joe Bastardi

But data and physics are on the side of McCarver... to an extent.

We’ve blogged previously about the fact baseballs travel farther in warm, humid air. And data show the atmosphere has trended warmer and more humid over the last 120-plus years.

In 2006, the New York Times printed a piece headlined The Weather Was Fine, and the Home Runs Were Easy. Excerpt:

When Major League Baseball made the penalties for positive tests [for steroids] far stronger after last season, predictions followed that offense would decrease in 2006.

But it has gone up instead. A lot. Almost as much as the temperature and the heat index in the United States, which could very well have been responsible for most of it.

The graph I’ve displayed at the top of this post shows how home run rates (number of home runs per team per game) have closely tracked the long-term changes in global temperature. They went up until the 1950s, leveled off through the 70s, and then ramped back up before showing a pause over the last decade or so. There are minor differences with the temperature curve but the similarities are eerie.

Related: Behind the present pause in global warming

Of course, just like blaming a decrease in the number of pirates for global warming, correlation doesn’t equal causation. To be sure, the reasons for changes in home run numbers over time are difficult to unravel and complex. Bat/ball technology, evolving quality of pitching/batting, performance enhancing substances, ballpark depth and other factors have no doubt played a role.

Related: Global warming and greenhouse gases activate steroid era of our atmosphere

While the home run/temperature correlation may be mostly a coincidence, it is overly dismissive to discount weather and climate from playing any role.

As such, McCarver’s listing climate as “one of the reasons” for increasing home run totals is not all that far-fetched. Maybe Bastardi, Deadspin, Watts, Berk et al. should dial back their criticism.

Post script: Daily Climate has a good piece about global warming, home runs, and McCarver. Two interesting snippets which muddy the waters a bit...:

* Robert Adair, a retired physics professor from Yale University, gained notoriety a few years back when his book, The Physics of Baseball, gave scholarly explanations for why a curveball curves and a knuckleball wobbles. He calculated that a two-degree temperature rise will add one foot to a 400-foot home run ball, increasing home run odds by about 1.75 percent.

* [Climatologist Michael] Mann .... [said] that the carbon emissions behind climate change may even lower home runs. “If anything, anthropogenic carbon emissions and global warming should make the atmosphere slightly heavier, because we’re taking carbon that was trapped in the solid earth and releasing to the atmosphere (in the form of CO2), and a warmer atmosphere will hold more water vapor. Both CO2 and water vapor contribute (slightly) to the mass of the atmosphere.”

Additional reading:

Does cloudiness affect baseball game outcomes?

Aerodynamics of Baseball: NASA interactive simulations; specify weather conditions and see effects on hitting and pitching (great fun)

Can the wind make Strasburg’s fastball faster? (from the Capital Weather Gang)

Proof global warming isn't making weather wackier? - Fox News

Greenhouse gases do much more than just warm the planet, some environmentalists warn: They cause hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, droughts, and even extreme cold spells. Or do they?

Steven Goddard, who runs the skeptical climate blog Real Science and has a background in geology and computer science, has spent thousands of hours studying bad weather events around the world.

He found that the weather was wilder and weirder in the past than it is today. 

“People are claiming there are more disasters now,” Goddard said. “That’s crazy. The weather was terrible in the past, back when CO2 was below 350ppm."

1) Deadly hurricanes
The deadliest hurricane in U.S. history was not hurricane Katrina, but rather one that hit Galveston, Tex., more than a century ago. The Texas State Historical Association notes that, upon the first signs of the hurricane in 1900, a local weather official drove “a horse-drawn cart around low areas warning people to leave.”

For many, the warning was too late.

'Hurricanes have not become more frequent or intense.'

- University of Alabama climate scientist John Christie

“A storm wave… caused a sudden rise of 4 feet in water depth, and shortly afterward the entire city was underwater to a maximum depth of 15 feet.”

The hurricane destroyed most of the city, killing between 10,000 and 12,000.

“Hurricanes have not become more frequent or intense,” University of Alabama climate scientist John Christie told FoxNews.com. NOAA hurricane records back up that claim.

“The story on hurricanes is a mixed bag,” agrees Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist at the Union for Concerned Scientists.

2) Melting Glaciers
Glaciers are melting around the world, and many worry that will cause flooding. But the melting is not necessarily due to greenhouse gases. Goddard points to places where glaciers nearly vanished due to natural warming.

Glacier Bay, in Alaska, is one such place. The glacier was discovered in 1794, but the National Park Service reports that “by 1879… naturalist John Muir discovered that the ice had retreated more than 30 miles ... By 1916 it … had melted back 60 miles.”

3) Extreme Cold
It was so cold in New York City that the rivers around Manhattan froze over for five weeks -- in 1780, that is. British troops occupying the city at the time rolled cannons from Manhattan across the ice to Staten Island. They even built temporary fortifications on the ice, which stayed solid enough to support men on horseback until March 17.

Throughout the 1800s, the rivers froze over at least six times.

4) Extreme Heat
Many scientists argue that greenhouse gases have made extreme heat events more common.

“If we keep putting heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere at current rates, we can expect a city like NYC to go from having less than 10 days over 100F to between 30 and 45 [such days] by the end of the century,” Ekwurzel of the Union for Concerned Scientists told FoxNews.com, citing a government study.

But Goddard notes that heat waves are nothing new. One newspaper reported that on June 5, 1921, the temperature in New York rose to 107 degrees. In Washington, DC, “an egg carefully broken ... on an asphalt pavement … as an experiment was completely fried in 9 minutes.”

The deadliest heat wave in U.S. history also struck long ago, in 1936, causing some 5,000 deaths nationwide.

“Twenty-two of the lower 48 states set their all-time temperature records in the 1930s,” Goddard said. “Just one state [Arizona] has set a new record since the turn of the millennium.”

That shows that U.S. weather has been more extreme in the past, but does not indicate whether climate has warmed in general.

“The warmest month in U.S. history was July of 1936 -- and the coldest month in U.S. history was February of that same year,” Goddard said, noting that such rapid changes were due to fluctuations in a major air current known as the jet stream.

5) Drought
The worst drought in U.S. history also took place in the 1930s, destroying so many crops in the Midwest that, as a USDA report put it, “The eroding soil from once-productive range and crop lands filled the air with billowing clouds of dust that subsequently buried farm equipment, buildings and even barbed-wire fences.”

The disaster became known as “The Dust Bowl,” as 2.5 million Americans abandoned their farms.

“Climate was never safe,” Goddard said. “You had horrific fires, droughts, floods, heat waves -- it hasn't gotten any worse with the CO2 increase.”

Global warming refuge discovered near at-risk Pacific island nation of Kiribati - Science Codex

Scientists predict ocean temperatures will rise in the equatorial Pacific by the end of the century, wreaking havoc on coral reef ecosystems.

But a new study shows that climate change could cause ocean currents to operate in a way that mitigates warming near a handful of islands right on the equator.

Those islands include some of the 33 coral atolls that form the nation of Kiribati. This low-lying country is at risk from sea-level rise caused by global warming.

Surprisingly, these Pacific islands within two degrees north and south of the equator may become isolated climate change refuges for corals and fish.

"The finding that there may be refuges in the tropics where local circulation features buffer the trend of rising sea surface temperature has important implications for the survival of coral reef systems," said David Garrison, program director in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research.

Here's how it could happen, according to the study by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists Kristopher Karnauskas and Anne Cohen, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.

At the equator, trade winds push a surface current from east to west.

About 100 to 200 meters below, a swift countercurrent develops, flowing in the opposite direction.

This, the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC), is cooler and rich in nutrients. When it hits an island, like a rock in a river, water is deflected upward on an island's western flank.

This upwelling process brings cooler water and nutrients to the sunlit surface, creating localized areas where tiny marine plants and corals flourish.

On color-enhanced satellite maps showing measurements of global ocean chlorophyll levels, these productive patches of ocean stand out as bright green or red spots--for example, around the Galapagos Islands in the Eastern Pacific.

But as you gaze west, chlorophyll levels fade like a comet tail, giving scientists little reason to look closely at scattered low-lying coral atolls in that direction.

These islands are easy to overlook because they are tiny, remote, and lie at the far left edge of standard global satellite maps that place continents in the center.

Karnauskas, a climate scientist, was working with coral scientist Cohen to explore how climate change would affect central equatorial Pacific reefs.

When he changed the map view on his screen in order to view the entire tropical Pacific at once, he saw that chlorophyll concentrations jumped up again exactly at the Gilbert Islands on the equator.

Coral reefs near the island nation of Kiribati may be somewhat protected from global warming.

(Photo Credit: NOAA)

Satellite maps also showed cooler sea surface temperatures on the west sides of these islands, part of Kiribati.

"I've been studying the tropical Pacific Ocean for most of my career, and I had never noticed that," he said. "It jumped out at me immediately, and I thought, 'there's probably a story there.'"

So Karnauskas and Cohen began to investigate how the EUC would affect the equatorial islands' reef ecosystems, starting with global climate models that simulate effects in a warming world.

Global-scale climate models predict that ocean temperatures will rise nearly 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) in the central tropical Pacific.

Warmer waters often cause corals to bleach, a process in which they lose the tiny symbiotic algae that live in them and provide vital nutrition.

Bleaching has been a major cause of coral mortality and loss of coral reef area during the last 30 years.

Even the best global models, with their planet-scale views and lower resolution, cannot predict conditions in areas as small as these small islands, Karnauskas said.

So the scientists combined global models with a fine-scale regional model to focus on much smaller areas around minuscule islands scattered along the equator.

To accommodate the trillions of calculations needed for such small-area resolution, they used the new high-performance computer cluster at WHOI called "Scylla."

"Global models predict significant temperature increases in the central tropical Pacific over the next few decades, but in truth conditions can be highly variable across and around a coral reef island," Cohen said.

"To predict what the coral reef will experience in global climate change, we have to use high-resolution models, not global models."

The model predicts that as air temperatures rise and equatorial trade winds weaken, the Pacific surface current will also weaken by 15 percent by the end of the century.

The then-weaker surface current will impose less friction and drag on the EUC, so this deeper current will strengthen by 14 percent.

"Our model suggests that the amount of upwelling will actually increase by about 50 percent around these islands and reduce the rate of warming waters around them by about 0.7 C (1.25 F) per century," Karnauskas said.

Colorful species inhabit equatorial Pacific reefs; these reefs may be global warming refuges.

(Photo Credit: NOAA)

A handful of coral atolls on the equator, some as small as 4 square kilometers (1.54 square miles) in area, may not seem like much.

But Karnauskas' and Cohen's results say that waters on the western sides of the islands will warm more slowly than at islands 2 degrees, or 138 miles, north and south of the equator that are not in the path of the EUC.

That gives the Gilbert Islands a significant advantage over neighboring reef systems.

"While the mitigating effect of a strengthened Equatorial Undercurrent will not spare corals the perhaps-inevitable warming expected for this region, the warming rate will be slower around these equatorial islands," Karnauskas said.

"This may allow corals and their symbiotic algae a better chance to adapt and survive."

If the model holds true, even if neighboring reefs are hard-hit, equatorial island coral reefs may survive to produce larvae of corals and other reef species.

Like a seed bank for the future, they might be a source of new corals and other species that could re-colonize damaged reefs.

"The globe is warming, but there are things going on underfoot that will slow that warming for certain parts of certain coral reef islands," said Cohen.

"These little islands in the middle of the ocean can counteract global trends and have a big effect on their own future," Karnauskas said, "which I think is a beautiful concept."

Tiny dots in a seemingly endless sea, the islands of Kiribati are seen from space.

(Photo Credit: NASA)

Source: National Science Foundation

GORE: Global Warming IS REAL - Fox News (blog)

America's Talking â„¢

All Opinions Welcome

The Fox Nation is for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought, expression, and worship. Read more...

We invite all Americans who share these values to join us here at Fox Nation.

Subscribe to the Newsletter

Pic of the Day

An Unimaginable Tragedy ...

Three generations of a family killed after SUV plummets off highway near Bronx ZooPublished April 30, 2012 | FoxNews.comThree generations of a family were killed Sunday when their SUV plunged more...

Romney on 'Spreading the Wealth' ...

Those who try to spread the wealth around only ever succeed in spreading poverty around.

Fox Nation Salutes

Woman Survives 4 Days in Desert

 

Published April 30, 2012 | FoxNews.comGARFIELD COUNTY , UTAH â€"  A Maine woman was rescued Saturday after she was stranded for four days in a remote area of the Utah desert without food in what...

Lapland journey highlights global warming - CNN

Lebanese photographer Roger Moukarzel swapped his warm studio in Beirut for the frozen mountains of Lulea in northern Sweden. He was here to create a series of striking images that would highlight the cause and effect of climate change.

Lulea is part of the area commonly known as Lapland, a reindeer heartland and home, of course, to Santa Clause's legendary workshop.

The reindeer share the region with the Sami, Europe's northernmost officially indigenous people, whose ancestral lands spread across Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia.

Lulea's subarctic climate, with mild summers and long, cold and snowy winters, make it an ideal habitat for reindeer. However, in recent years, locals have said that temperatures have been rising appreciably and, in 2010, a herd of more than 300 reindeer was reportedly lost when the ice cover of a frozen lake broke beneath their hoofs.

Moukarzel takes a picture of a local Sami girl, against the dark, ethereal backdrop of the Lulea forest.

Dressed in their rich and colourful traditional clothing, Moukarzel positioned his subjects against the intentionally incongruous image of a large, smoke-chugging factory.

"Many of the people that are suffering the effects of climate change have not done anything to contribute to it, and areas that are being destroyed are often far away from where the pollution is made," he said. "The idea with the images is to bring these two realities closer together."

According to Moukarzel, this series of images will be the beginning of many. The 45-year-old photographer plans to travel across all five continents, exploring this theme among different climates and cultures.

It will certainly not his first big adventure. At just 15, Moukarzel started his career with moving, sometimes haunting pictures of the Lebanese civil war.

He says he has always been primarily interested in taking pictures of people and "capturing moments of humanity" -- such as this striking exchange from 1978 between a Lebanese soldier and a woman in war-torn Beirut.

After 15 years as a front-line photojournalist for news agencies Sygma and Reuters, Moukarzel hung up his hard hat in favor of high fashion, as he embarked on a new career in the world of fashion photography.

But Moukarzel retains his desire to challenge people's preconceptions through his photography. This image was part of a series called "Turning Disabilities to Abilities."

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

• Lebanese photographer Roger Moukarzel travels to north Sweden to document climate change
• Moukarzel teams up with local photograher Carl-Johan Utsi, a member of the indigenous Sami people
• Moukarzel's images contrast the beauty of landscape and people with industrial pollution

Editor's note: Part culture show, part travel show, over six weeks Fusion Journeys takes six stars of the creative world on a journey of discovery to a location of their choice. There, they will learn from a different culture and create something new inspired by their experience. Watch the show every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from April 9 to May 18, during Connect The World, from 20:00 GMT.

(CNN) -- If Roger Moukarzel's camera could talk, it would have some colorful stories to tell. From the front line of the Lebanese wars, to the bewitching fashion houses of Italy and France, the Beirut-born photographer has crossed every continent in search of the perfect picture.

Born in 1962, Moukarzel says his calling was thrust upon him as a teenager, when civil war broke loose on his doorstep and he felt a duty to document it. For 15 years he worked for news agencies Sygma and Reuters, capturing the spectacle and chaos of combat.

Swapping the battlefield for haute couture, Moukarzel's fashion shots have featured on the cover of Elle magazine, while his advertising work has earned him three Pikasso d'Or Billboard Advertising awards over the past decade.

Roger Moukarzel: Lebanon through a lens

On his latest journey, Moukarzel swapped the baking streets of his home in Beirut for the glacial mountains of Lulea in northern Sweden, more popularly known as the reindeer haven of Lapland.

Here he would fuse his experience of both documentary and fashion photography to create a series of staged images that tell the story of how climate change is impacting the life and landscape of the Sami -- an indigenous people who live across four nations in northern Europe.

See more Fusion Journeys

He was met in Lulea by local part-time photographer and full-time reindeer herder Carl-Johan Utsi, himself a member of the Sami. Utsi's knowledge and experience proved invaluable to Moukarzel as he attempted to tackle the rugged and frost-bitten landscape of Lulea.

Here, CNN asks Moukarzel to look back over his Fusion Journey.

Self-portrait: Photographer Roger Moukarzel

CNN: Describe the photographs. What was the thought behind their composition?

Roger Moukarzel: This series shows members of the indigenous Sami people from northern Scandinavia, dressed in their beautiful, very flamboyant traditional clothing. They are stood in the snow in this incredible landscape of Lulea, but right behind I placed an image of industry ... a big factory.

Many of the people that are suffering the effects of climate change have not done anything to contribute to it, and areas that are being destroyed are often far away from where the pollution is made. The idea with the images is to bring these two realities closer together.

CNN: What drew you to make this journey in the first place?

RM: I believe that the role of the photographer is not only to take nice pictures, but to show people something that changes how they see and understand the world.

There are lots of pictures out there of ice-caps melting, forests being chopped down and so on. They are very direct images. But I wanted to tell the story of an indirect process, a story that somehow shows the chain of events from factory pollution on one hand to habitat destruction on the other.

This journey for me was about creating images that would have an impact -- that would ask the viewer to think about the cause and effect of climate change.

CNN: Why Lulea?

RM: The Samis are fighting everyday to preserve their traditions and culture. They mainly make their living from fishing and reindeer herding. The environment is really crucial for them and they are aiming to live in harmony with it.

But in the past few years, these people have really experienced climate change. Their livelihood has been affected because they've not been able to travel on the frozen lakes. Why? Because they're no longer frozen! They are in crazy situation where they have to transport reindeer by truck because it is not safe for them on the ice.

I was told that two years ago, a whole herd of reindeer died in the mountains because the ice beneath them just gave way.

See also: Indian master chef gets fresh in Denmark

CNN: What were you first feelings encountering the landscape and the people?

RM: It's interesting because for this project I had done a lot of research -- I felt like I had really immersed myself in the location before I got there, and that I would have a good idea of what to expect.

But nothing prepares you for the reality -- the sudden impact of the scenery, the extreme cold, the deep beauty of this dreamlike land. It goes to show that nature is much deeper than what you can ever see in a photo ... this is something I always have difficulty accepting as a photographer!

As for the people, they were wonderful. So warm, smiling -- despite all that is happening. They went out of their way to help me.

Nothing prepares you for the reality, the sudden impact of the scenery, the extreme cold, the deep beauty of this dreamlike land
Roger Moukarzel, photographer

CNN: You collaborated with local photographer Carl-Johan Utsi, did you work well together?

RM: I could not have done it without him. As a fellow photographer, I think he understood my intentions much more, and as a Sami himself -- his knowledge and understanding of the people and the area was very important.

From a technical point of view, his experience of shooting in extreme weather was very useful. It's not something I've ever done before and he showed me what to do when my camera froze, how to deal with the surroundings from a photographer's perspective.

We had a lot of practical difficulties setting up the shoot, transporting the canvas and equipment across a very challenging landscape, and he was there for guidance at each step.

CNN: Are you happy with the results?

RM: Yes, very much so. I think there is a lot going on in these photos. You have elements of indigenous culture -- the colorful dress and these remarkable people; you have the striking, other-worldly landscape; and finally you have this shocking image that grabs your attention and gives the photograph its important meaning.

But ultimately, the images are only truly valuable if they have some sort of impact. Already, I think, just by being on CNN, by you talking to me now, I can say that they are having this impact.

From here I will be traveling to at least 12 other countries using the same idea, the same motif. I'm going to go to every continent to show the real impact that climate change is having ... So this was the start of my journey, and I hope you'll be there when I reach the end.

Global Warming Affects Water Cycle - TopNews United States

Findings of the ocean salinity study, conducted by CSIRO and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to learn about the global warming and its effects on our environment have no good news for people and our planet Earth.

Researchers have found a major inaccuracy of data being provided by climate models, when they noticed that the changes in the water cycle are running faster than the predictions given by models.

Considering all the three aspects i. e. salinity, evaporation and rainfall in their study, scientists concluded that the water cycle phenomenon has strengthened by approx 4% since the year 1950 till 2000. The figures have concluded an almost twice acceleration than the rate that has been predicted in current climate models.

The team, of scientists and their study, was led by Dr. Paul Durack at LLNL. Researchers are explaining in their findings that warming climate is forcing the wet regions to get wetter whereas the dry regions are following the drying trend.

Prof Durack says the study found “robust evidence of an intensified global water cycle at a rate of about eight percent per degree of surface warming. Salinity shifts in the ocean confirm climate and the global water cycle have changed”.

He added in his explanation that the water cycle and its phenomenon is enhancing because the warmer air is more holding and redistributing the moisture in the weather that are showcasing the results.

In the findings and the study that has been published in Science, researchers have clearly mentioned their fear that the continuity in the procedure can increase the incidence as well as the severity of extreme weather events in future.

Experts are suggesting efficient maintenance of the present fleet of 3,500 profilers to continuously observe all the occurring changes to salinity in the upper oceans.

Refuge from Global Warming May Create Seed Bank for the Future - PlanetSave.com

A pair of scientists who were working to determine how climate change would affect central equatorial Pacific reefs have discovered that some Pacific islands within two degrees north and south of the equator may become isolated climate change refuges for corals and fish.

“The finding that there may be refuges in the tropics where local circulation features buffer the trend of rising sea surface temperature has important implications for the survival of coral reef systems,” said David Garrison, program director in the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research.

Colorful species inhabit equatorial Pacific reefs; these reefs may be global warming refuges.

Here’s how it could happen, according to the study by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists Kristopher Karnauskas and Anne Cohen, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change.

At the equator, trade winds push a surface current from east to west.

About 100 to 200 meters below, a swift countercurrent develops, flowing in the opposite direction.

This, the Equatorial Undercurrent (EUC), is cooler and rich in nutrients. When it hits an island, like a rock in a river, water is deflected upward on an island’s western flank.

This upwelling process brings cooler water and nutrients to the sunlit surface, creating localized areas where tiny marine plants and corals flourish.

Karnauskas, a climate scientist, was working with Cohen on how climate change would affect central equatorial Pacific reefs. One day he changed the map view on his screen in order to view the entire tropical Pacific at once. What he saw immediately surprised him.

“I’ve been studying the tropical Pacific Ocean for most of my career, and I had never noticed that,” he said. “It jumped out at me immediately, and I thought, ‘there’s probably a story there.’”

The “it” was the global ocean chlorophyll levels as depicted on colour-enhanced satellite maps. They stand out as bright green o red spots, for example, near the Galapagos Islands in the Eastern Pacific, but then fade away like a comet trail as you move your gaze west. However, when Karnauskas changed his map view, he found that the chlorophyll levels jumped up again exactly at the Gilbert Islands on the equator.

Together, Karnauskas and Cohen started investigating how the EUC would affect the equatorial islands’ reef ecosystems, starting with global climate models that simulate the effects of a warming world. But even the best global model will have trouble predicting conditions in small areas such as the islands that scatter the ocean along the equator. So Karnauskas and Cohen combined global models with a fine-scale regional model to focus on the much smaller areas, and used the high-performance computer cluster at WHOI called “Scylla.”

“Global models predict significant temperature increases in the central tropical Pacific over the next few decades, but in truth conditions can be highly variable across and around a coral reef island,” Cohen said.

“To predict what the coral reef will experience in global climate change, we have to use high-resolution models, not global models.”

The model predicts that as air temperatures rise and equatorial trade winds weaken, the Pacific surface current will also weaken by 15 percent by the end of the century. As a result, the then-weaker surface current will impose less friction and drag on the EUC, strengthening the deeper current by 14 percent.

“Our model suggests that the amount of upwelling will actually increase by about 50 percent around these islands and reduce the rate of warming waters around them by about 0.7 C (1.25 F) per century,” Karnauskas said.

Coral reefs near the island nation of Kiribati may be somewhat protected from global warming.

What possible benefit could the survival of a few small coral atolls be?

These coral atolls are some of them only 4 square kilometres in area. It doesn’t seem like much at all. But Karnauskas’ and Cohen’s results say that waters on the western sides of the islands will warm more slowly than at islands 2 degrees, or 138 miles, north and south of the equator that are not in the path of the EUC. This gives the Gilbert Islands a great advantage over neighbouring reef systems in the coming decades.

“While the mitigating effect of a strengthened Equatorial Undercurrent will not spare corals the perhaps-inevitable warming expected for this region, the warming rate will be slower around these equatorial islands,” Karnauskas said.

“This may allow corals and their symbiotic algae a better chance to adapt and survive.”

What this really means is that with the slower increase in warming the atolls may have enough time to adapt to the new environments, and may have enough time to produce larvae of corals and other reef species that could re-colonize damaged reefs.

“The globe is warming, but there are things going on underfoot that will slow that warming for certain parts of certain coral reef islands,” said Cohen.

“These little islands in the middle of the ocean can counteract global trends and have a big effect on their own future,” Karnauskas said, “which I think is a beautiful concept.”

Source: National Science Foundation
Image Source: NOAA

Photographer's Lapland journey highlights global warming - CNN

Lebanese photographer Roger Moukarzel swapped his warm studio in Beirut for the frozen mountains of Lulea in northern Sweden. He was here to create a series of striking images that would highlight the cause and effect of climate change.

Lulea is part of the area commonly known as Lapland, a reindeer heartland and home, of course, to Santa Clause's legendary workshop.

The reindeer share the region with the Sami, Europe's northernmost officially indigenous people, whose ancestral lands spread across Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia.

Lulea's subarctic climate, with mild summers and long, cold and snowy winters, make it an ideal habitat for reindeer. However, in recent years, locals have said that temperatures have been rising appreciably and, in 2010, a herd of more than 300 reindeer was reportedly lost when the ice cover of a frozen lake broke beneath their hoofs.

Moukarzel takes a picture of a local Sami girl, against the dark, ethereal backdrop of the Lulea forest.

Dressed in their rich and colourful traditional clothing, Moukarzel positioned his subjects against the intentionally incongruous image of a large, smoke-chugging factory.

"Many of the people that are suffering the effects of climate change have not done anything to contribute to it, and areas that are being destroyed are often far away from where the pollution is made," he said. "The idea with the images is to bring these two realities closer together."

According to Moukarzel, this series of images will be the beginning of many. The 45-year-old photographer plans to travel across all five continents, exploring this theme among different climates and cultures.

It will certainly not his first big adventure. At just 15, Moukarzel started his career with moving, sometimes haunting pictures of the Lebanese civil war.

He says he has always been primarily interested in taking pictures of people and "capturing moments of humanity" -- such as this striking exchange from 1978 between a Lebanese soldier and a woman in war-torn Beirut.

After 15 years as a front-line photojournalist for news agencies Sygma and Reuters, Moukarzel hung up his hard hat in favor of high fashion, as he embarked on a new career in the world of fashion photography.

But Moukarzel retains his desire to challenge people's preconceptions through his photography. This image was part of a series called "Turning Disabilities to Abilities."

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

• Lebanese photographer Roger Moukarzel travels to north Sweden to document climate change
• Moukarzel teams up with local photograher Carl-Johan Utsi, a member of the indigenous Sami people
• Moukarzel's images contrast the beauty of landscape and people with industrial pollution

Editor's note: Part culture show, part travel show, over six weeks Fusion Journeys takes six stars of the creative world on a journey of discovery to a location of their choice. There, they will learn from a different culture and create something new inspired by their experience. Watch the show every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from April 9 to May 18, during Connect The World, from 20:00 GMT.

(CNN) -- If Roger Moukarzel's camera could talk, it would have some colorful stories to tell. From the front line of the Lebanese wars, to the bewitching fashion houses of Italy and France, the Beirut-born photographer has crossed every continent in search the perfect picture.

Born in 1962, Moukarzel says his calling was thrust upon him as a teenager, when civil war broke loose on his doorstep and he felt a duty to document it. For 15 years he worked for news agencies Sygma and Reuters, capturing the spectacle and chaos of combat.

Swapping the battlefield for haute couture, Moukarzel's fashion shots have featured on the cover of Elle magazine and Vogue, while his advertising work has earned him three Pikasso d'Or Billboard Advertising awards over the past decade.

On his latest journey, Moukarzel swapped the baking streets of his home in Beirut for the glacial mountains of Lulea in northern Sweden, more popularly known as the reindeer haven of Lapland.

Here he would fuse his experience of both documentary and fashion photography to create a series of staged images that tell the story of how climate change is impacting the life and landscape of the Sami -- an indigenous people who live across four nations in northern Europe.

See more Fusion Journeys

He was met in Lulea by local part-time photographer and full-time reindeer herder Carl-Johan Utsi, himself a member of the Sami. Utsi's knowledge and experience proved invaluable to Moukarzel as he attempted to tackle the rugged and frost-bitten landscape of Lulea.

Here, CNN asks Moukarzel to look back over his Fusion Journey.

Self-portrait: Photographer Roger Moukarzel

CNN: Describe the photographs. What was the thought behind their composition?

Roger Moukarzel: This series shows members of the indigenous Sami people from northern Scandinavia, dressed in their beautiful, very flamboyant traditional clothing. They are stood in the snow in this incredible landscape of Lulea, but right behind I placed an image of industry ... a big factory.

Many of the people that are suffering the effects of climate change have not done anything to contribute to it, and areas that are being destroyed are often far away from where the pollution is made. The idea with the images is to bring these two realities closer together.

CNN: What drew you to make this journey in the first place?

RM: I believe that the role of the photographer is not only to take nice pictures, but to show people something that changes how they see and understand the world.

There are lots of pictures out there of ice-caps melting, forests being chopped down and so on. They are very direct images. But I wanted to tell the story of an indirect process, a story that somehow shows the chain of events from factory pollution on one hand to habitat destruction on the other.

This journey for me was about creating images that would have an impact -- that would ask the viewer to think about the cause and effect of climate change.

Fusion Journeys meets Roger Moukarzel

CNN: Why Lulea?

RM: The Samis are fighting everyday to preserve their traditions and culture. They mainly make their living from fishing and reindeer herding. The environment is really crucial for them and they are aiming to live in harmony with it.

But in the past few years, these people have really experienced climate change. Their livelihood has been affected because they've not been able to travel on the frozen lakes. Why? Because they're no longer frozen! They are in crazy situation where they have to transport reindeer by truck because it is not safe for them on the ice.

I was told that two years ago, a whole herd of reindeer died in the mountains because the ice beneath them just gave way.

See also: Indian master chef gets fresh in Denmark

CNN: What were you first feelings encountering the landscape and the people?

RM: It's interesting because for this project I had done a lot of research -- I felt like I had really immersed myself in the location before I got there, and that I would have a good idea of what to expect.

But nothing prepares you for the reality -- the sudden impact of the scenery, the extreme cold, the deep beauty of this dreamlike land. It goes to show that nature is much deeper than what you can ever see in a photo ... this is something I always have difficulty accepting as a photographer!

As for the people, they were wonderful. So warm, smiling -- despite all that is happening. They went out of their way to help me.

Nothing prepares you for the reality, the sudden impact of the scenery, the extreme cold, the deep beauty of this dreamlike land
Roger Moukarzel, photographer

CNN: You collaborated with local photographer Carl-Johan Utsi, did you work well together?

RM: I could not have done it without him. As a fellow photographer, I think he understood my intentions much more, and as a Sami himself -- his knowledge and understanding of the people and the area was very important.

From a technical point of view, his experience of shooting in extreme weather was very useful. It's not something I've ever done before and he showed me what to do when my camera froze, how to deal with the surroundings from a photographer's perspective.

We had a lot of practical difficulties setting up the shoot, transporting the canvas and equipment across a very challenging landscape, and he was there for guidance at each step.

CNN: Are you happy with the results?

RM: Yes, very much so. I think there is a lot going on in these photos. You have elements of indigenous culture -- the colorful dress and these remarkable people; you have the striking, other-worldly landscape; and finally you have this shocking image that grabs your attention and gives the photograph its important meaning.

But ultimately, the images are only truly valuable if they have some sort of impact. Already, I think, just by being on CNN, by you talking to me now, I can say that they are having this impact.

From here I will be traveling to at least 12 other countries using the same idea, the same motif. I'm going to go to every continent to show the real impact that climate change is having ... So this was the start of my journey, and I hope you'll be there when I reach the end.