[Groentje-18]

Nog meer toetsbare voorspellingen voor de toekomst: (Hopelijk duurt het nog even vooraleer we daadwerkelijk weten of ze juist zijn of niet.)
(Ik weet dat het veel is, maar wie twijfelt aan de specifiteit en dus de toetsbaarheid van de hypothesen rond climate change moet dit beslist lezen.)


- the risk of severe thunderstorms in the eastern and southern US could double by 2100 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0705494104).

Higher temperatures will fuel such storms by increasing the water vapour in the atmosphere and boosting convection.

http://environment.newscientist.com/...ad-for-us.html


- Arctic tundra fires may increase significantly as a result of continued global warming, warns a new study examining the relationship between historic changes in climate, vegetation, and wildfires in Alaska.

And as about a third of the world's soil-based carbon is locked in high-latitude tundra and boreal forest ecosystems, the release of carbon dioxide from an increase in burning tundra could also play a significant role in fuelling further warming, the study's authors add.

http://environment.newscientist.com/...fire-risk.html

- "The world has never faced such a predictably massive threat to food production as that posed by the melting mountain glaciers of Asia," says Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute.
The Ganges, Yellow and Yangtze Rivers in India and China are fed by rains during the monsoon season, but during the dry season they depend heavily on meltwater from glaciers in the Himalayas. The Gangotri Glacier in the Himalayas alone supplies 70% of the flow of the Ganges in the dry season.
(...)the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported last year that many Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. (...)
(...)Severely diminished meltwater could make the flow of the three great rivers seasonal (...)
The irrigation water vital for the grain crops that feed China and India is at risk of drying up, as global warming melts the glaciers that feed Asia's biggest rivers.

http://environment.newscientist.com/...shortages.html


- Rising temperatures bring their own CO2

http://environment.newscientist.com/...cosub2sub.html

- Melting ice cap may trigger more volcanic eruptions (...) Pagli and Sigmundsson say that the extra magma produced as the ice cap melts could supply enough magma for similar eruptions to take place every 30 years on average.
Predicting the eruptions precisely will be tricky, though, as the rate of magma migration to the surface is unknown.
(...)
The situation in Iceland does not necessarily mean magma will be melting faster around the world.

But the thinning ice has another effect on volcanoes which will be more widespread.
As the amount of weight on the crust changes, geological stresses inside the crust will also change, increasing the likelihood of eruptions.
Pagli say places likely to be at increased risk of eruption due to ice-melt include Antarctica's Mount Erebus, the Aleutian Islands and other Alaskan volcanoes.
The shifting stress might even cause eruptions in unexpected places.

"We are going to see a massive increase in volcanic activity globally," he told New Scientist. "If we look back at previous warm periods, that is what happened." (McGuire)

http://environment.newscientist.com/...eruptions.html



- As the world warms, the plants that billions of people depend on for their food are likely to become less nutritious. That's the worrying conclusion of an analysis of more than 40 studies investigating how crops will react to increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.


http://environment.newscientist.com/...d-quality.html

- (...) Bangladesh. Flooding in the country is set to increase by up to 40 per cent this century as global temperatures rise, the latest climate models suggest.

Each year, roughly a fifth of Bangladesh is flooded, and climate change is forecast to exacerbate the problem as sea levels rise, monsoons become wetter and more intense cyclones lead to higher tidal surges.

To make things worse, heavier rainfall triggered by global warming will swamp Bangladesh's riverbanks, a previously unforeseen effect, flooding between 20 and 40 per cent more land than today, says Monirul Qader Mirza, a Bangladeshi water resources expert now at the Adaptation and Impacts Research Group at the University of Toronto.
(...)
There will also be a steep increase in deeply flooded land - that covered by more than 1.8 metres of water for nine months of the year. Of the 3.1 million hectares that floods each year, 42 per cent is already deeply flooded. That will climb to 55 per cent if temperatures rise by 6 °C.

The land available to grow rice, vegetables, lintel, onion and mustard crops will be significantly reduced, placing an intolerable pressure on farmers. Policy planners should begin working on adaptation measures now, Mirza says.

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn3605


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