Climate Change
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Looking for New Discoveries in Old Data
What happens to old lab notebooks and other records of scientific data? It's still useful, though not so much so when it's molding away in a box at the bottom of a closet. But now a group of scientists who recently met at the Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) conference is start...
November 08, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
It's Easy to Ignore Climate Change
It's easy to ignore climate change, to say it's not a problem. Or, at least, it's not my problem.That’s not because climate change isn’t happening or because humans aren’t responsible for it—the excuses for non-action given by many people. In truth, Americans can ignore climate change because, for ...
October 27, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Why Climate Change Brings Both More and Less Water
Among the more perplexing bits of climate change research are the predictions for both more droughts and more floods. How could that be? Well, when I was reporting the recently published story on the Colorado River, geoscientist Bradley Udall, director of the University of Colorado's Western Water ...
October 05, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Colorado River One of Many Imperiled Waterways
First, check out my story on the Colorado River in the October issue of Smithsonian:From its source high in the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado River channels water south nearly 1,500 miles, over falls, through deserts and canyons, to the lush wetlands of a vast delta in Mexico and into the Gulf of C...
September 30, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Time to Stop Measuring Fuel Economy in MPG?
Today, if you go to buy a new car, you'll find a sticker like the one on the right giving you a bunch of data on fuel economy: the miles per gallon you'll get on the highway and in the city and the estimated annual fuel cost (based on 15,000 miles driven over a year and gas costing $2.80 per gallon...
September 01, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Hurricanes and the Color of the Oceans
Little kids draw the ocean as blue, but the seas are more complex in color than that. They can be a rich turquoise, like the shallow waters of the Bahamas, or a dark greeny blue, nearly black, out in the middle of the deep oceans. Depth and life, specifically phytoplankton, both influence the ocean...
August 16, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Flowers May Adapt Faster than Thought to Climate Change
One of the big worries about climate change is that organisms will be unable to migrate or adapt quickly enough to deal with all the coming changes to their environments, which could lead to a lot of extinctions. But a new study led by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which appears in Molecular Biol...
August 13, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Plane May Be Better Than Car in Climate Equation
Generally I feel pretty good about my carbon footprint. I live in a tiny apartment that doesn't use much energy to cool in the summer or heat in the winter. I gave up my car and walk or take public transportation to get most places. I try to be conscious of how my choices affect the world around me...
August 11, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
The Problem with Space Junk
There's a lot of space junk—or, as NASA calls it, "orbital debris"—circling high above our heads: around 19,000 objects larger than 10 centimeters, 500,000 between 1 and 10 cm in size, and tens of millions of pieces smaller than 1 cm. Generally, all that junk isn't much of a problem. If it falls to...
August 05, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Rising Seas Endanger Wetland Wildlife
For scientists in a remote corner of coastal North Carolina, ignoring global warming is not an option
August 2010 |
By Abigail Tucker
Electric Cars Won't Save Us from Climate Change
GM announced yesterday that their electric car, the Chevy Volt, will cost $41,000. The car can go 40 miles on its battery, after which a gas-powered generator will charge the battery and extend the vehicle's range another 340 miles. The Volt isn't the only choice for electric-car enthusiasts: the N...
July 28, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
More Heat Waves on the Horizon
You know you're in a heat wave when a high of 92 degrees comes as a relief. But at least heat waves this hot—temperatures reached an official high of 102 degrees last week here in Washington—don't happen every year. Right?Well, that break between years of extremely high-temperature summers may get ...
July 12, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Coral Atolls Rise With the Seas
The plight of Pacific Islanders has been the center of the debate over the human toll of climate change. Last month, the Federated States of Micronesia filed an objection against one the dirtiest power plants in Europe, arguing that unchecked carbon emissions could eventually drown this nation of 6...
June 03, 2010 |
By Brendan Borrell
Plenty of Warming in the Ocean's Upper Layer
"If you want to know if the globe has warmed, you want to look at the upper ocean," says John Lyman, a NOAA/University of Hawaii oceanographer. That's because the oceans have a very large heat capacity (about 1000 times that of the atmosphere) and take up about 80 to 90 percent of any excess heat f...
May 19, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
One in Five Lizard Species Could Be Extinct by 2080
How much heat can a lizard endure? That sounds like the question a fourth-grader might ask (and then try to answer, tragically, by adding a couple more heat lamps to his pet lizard's tank), but it's a real concern in this era of climate change. Lizards are cold-blooded creatures and while they need...
May 14, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Icebergs Contribute to Sea Level Rise
When you learned about Archimedes back in elementary school, your teacher probably told you that a floating object displaces an amount of water equal to its own weight. Although an ice cube pokes up out of the water, when it melts, the level of the water should stay the same. Extrapolate this conce...
April 29, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Letter From Earth
Dear members of the species Homo sapiens,Hi. I'm Earth. While I'm pleased and flattered that you have chosen to honor me on every April 22 for the last 40 years, I am seriously concerned and, frankly, very angry that most of you seem to forget me for the rest of the year. I periodically try to remi...
April 21, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Changing Climate May Have Led to Angkor's Downfall
From the 9th to the 13th centuries, Angkor was the center of the Khmer Empire and the largest city in the world. Roads and canals connected the sprawling complex, which included hundreds of temples. But it didn't last.Today, two million people each year visit the site in Cambodia, though much of it...
March 30, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
Turn Off the Lights!
One of the most wonderful memories I have from a sailing trip is being miles and miles from shore on a moonless night and seeing the thousands of stars twinkling in the sky. It's something that most people in the developed world never see; most of the stars are drowned out by light pollution. As yo...
March 26, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
A Whale of a Carbon Sink
Living organisms are a great place to store carbon. Trees are the most common organisms to be used as carbon sinks, but other things might be even better. Whales are particularly good for this because they are large—blue whales are the largest animals on Earth—and when they die, they sink to the bo...
March 01, 2010 |
By Sarah Zielinski
