Climate News

April 18, 2012

A series of papers published this month on ecological changes at 26 global research sites -- including one administered by the University of Colorado Boulder in the high mountains west of the city -- indicates that ecosystems dependent on seasonal snow and ice are the most sensitive to changes in climate.

The six papers appeared in the April issue of the journal BioScience.  The papers were tied to data gathered at sites in North America, Puerto Rico, the island of Moorea near Tahiti, and Antarctica, which are known as Long-Term Ecological Research, or LTER, sites and are funded by the National Science Foundation. CU-Boulder’s Niwot Ridge site, one of the five original LTER sites designated by NSF in 1980, encompasses several thousand acres of subalpine forest, tundra, talus slopes, glacial lakes and wetlands stretching up to more than 13,000 feet on top of the Continental Divide.

As part of the new reports, LTER scientists in association with NSF have come up with a new evaluation system of the research sites that brings in the “human dimension,” said CU-Boulder Professor Mark Williams, the principal investigator on CU’s Niwot Ridge LTER site.  “In the past we tried to look at pristine ecosystems, but those are essentially gone,” said Williams. “So we’ve come up with an approach that integrates human activities with our ecological research.”

One of the six papers, “Long-Term Studies Detect Effects of Disappearing Ice and Snow,” was led by Portland State University Professor Andrew Fountain and co-authored by several others, including Williams, a geography professor and a fellow at CU-Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.  According to the authors, there are big changes occurring in temperate areas beyond the poles, where warming temperatures have triggered declines in polar bear and penguin populations.

Key measurements at the Niwot Ridge site -- which has climate records going back more than 60 years thanks to pioneering work by CU biology Professor John Marr in the 1950s -- are temperature and precipitation logs from two stations, one at 12,700 feet in elevation and a second at 10,000 feet.  Although the climate at the higher meteorological station -- by far the highest long-term climate station in the United States -- has been getting slightly wetter and cooler in recent decades, the station at 10,000 feet in a subalpine forest is getting significantly warmer and drier.

Williams said warming at 10,000 feet and lower may be causing enhanced surface water evaporation and transport that moves westward and higher in the mountains, with the water vapor being converted to snow that falls atop the Continental Divide.  Snow cover increases reflectivity of incoming sunlight, further cooling the alpine area and overriding the overall warming signal in the West, which is believed to be a 2 or 3 degree Fahrenheit rise over the past decade due to rising greenhouse gases.

“These two Niwot Ridge stations are less than five miles away from each other -- you can see one from the other -- but there are totally different trends occurring,” he said. In many places in the mountainous West, only a small increase in temperature can cause the climate to cross a “threshold” that triggers earlier and more intense snow melting, said Williams, principal investigator on a 2011 grant of $5.9 million from NSF to CU to continue long-term ecological studies at Niwot Ridge.
 

With snowpack roughly half of normal in 2012 and snow melting in the high country that began more than three months earlier than last year, the outlook is not good for montane and subalpine forests in Colorado and other parts of the West, he said.
 

Low snowpack and early melt invariably have a huge impact on the Colorado economy, said Williams.  Despite near record snowfall in 2010-11, warming temperatures have caused less snow and shorter winters in recent years and affected the ski industry -- one of Colorado’s largest economic drivers, said Williams.
 

As for the future of flora and fauna in subalpine and alpine regions like Niwot Ridge, there will be “winners and losers” as the climate warms, said Williams. Animals like American pikas, potato-sized denizens of alpine talus slopes in the West, need heavy snowpack to insulate them from cold winters as they huddle in hay piles beneath the rocks. In lower, more isolated mountain ranges in Nevada, researchers are already seeing a marked decline in American pika populations.
 

The predictions of the study authors are that microbes, plants and animals that depend on snow and ice will decrease if they are unable to move higher into areas of snow and ice.  But shallower snow could cause big game like deer and elk to move higher in altitude to browse, according to the authors.
 

A big concern in temperate mountains like Colorado is the heath and welfare of coniferous trees as the climate changes, said Williams. “Trees in Colorado’s mountains are under a tremendous amount of stress due to drought and pine beetle outbreaks.  And the fire danger, at least now, is through the roof,” he said.
 

“If some of these forested areas disappear, I think the chances of them coming back are pretty low,” Williams said. “The climate they grew up in doesn’t exist anymore.  As we lose trees to drought, beetles and wildfires, we are likely to see an invasion of grasses and shrubs in areas where we have never seen them, causing a complete restructuring of our forest community.”
 

As snowline moves up due to warming temperatures, so will parts of alpine tundra in the West, Williams said. “The tundra may be able to function reasonably well for several decades -- it will be awhile before warming climate change pushes the tundra off the tops of mountains.  But that is the direction we are heading.”
 

Williams co-authored three of the six BioScience studies, including the main LTER overview paper and a paper on ecosystem and human influences on stream flow in response to climate change at LTER sites. CU-Boulder Professor Tim Seastedt was a co-author on another of the papers, a study on the past, present and future roles of long-term experiments in the LTER network.
 

The 2011 NSF renewal grant to CU-Boulder for the Niwot Ridge LTER site, which is adjacent to CU-Boulder’s Mountain Research Station, will allow faculty and students, including undergraduates, to continue key environmental studies there.  Both sites are located about 25 miles west of Boulder.
 

Contact:

Mark Williams, 303-492-8830

mark@snobear.colorado.edu

New for Fall 2012: Special Topics in Geography - "World Water Today and Tomorrow"

University of Colorado-Boulder
Continuing Education
GEOG 4110
3.0 semester hours

Paul Lander, PhD, ASLA, LEED A.P.
Mon, September 10 - December 17, 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
For more information, and to register, visit:
http://conted.colorado.edu/programs/boulder-evening/courses

Looks at human-environment relations through the element of water. Key areas for investigation:
    - scope of water issues across the world: quantity, quality, access, governance
    - in depth look at key regions of the world
    - elements driving future change - population and climate change

Click here to download a flyer for the course.

Click here to visit the web page for this event.

Click here to watch Learn More About Climate's two newest films about Population, Consumption, Energy, and Solutions featuring Professor Al Bartlett.

Film Screening and Discussion of"Growthbusters: Hooked on Growth"

Monday, April 9

6:00-8:00 p.m.

Humanities Room 250, University of Colorado at Boulder

This documentary film examines the beliefs and behaviors preventing us from becoming a sustainable civilization. It takes a unique approach among modern environmental documentaries: Rather than dispensing facts about climate change; peak energy, food and water; and bio-diversity loss, it examines the cultural barriers that prevent us from acting rationally. It asks why population conversations are so difficult to have, and why a roaring economy is more important to us than a survivable planet. It explores our obsession with community growth and economic growth. Growthbusters holds up a mirror, encouraging us to examine the beliefs and behaviors we must leave behind, and the values we need to embrace, in order that our children can survive and thrive.

The film screening will be followed by a discussion with film's producer Dave Gardner and Dr. Al Bartlett.

Sponsored by the CU Environmental Center in conjunction with the Conference on World Affairs, April 9-13,www.colorado.edu/cwa/. This event is free and open to the public.

Location: http://www.colorado.edu/campusmap/map.html?bldg=HUMN


 

Click here to watch our film about the unprecedented mountain pine beetle epidemic featuring Professor Jeff Mitton.

March 27, 2012

Some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations of tree-killing offspring annually, dramatically increasing the potential for bugs to kill lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees, CU-Boulder researchers have found.

Because of the extra annual generation of beetles, there could be up to 60 times as many beetles attacking trees in any given year, the study found. And in response to warmer temperatures at high elevations, pine beetles also are better able to survive and attack trees that haven't previously developed defenses.

This exponential increase in the beetle population might help explain the scope of the current beetle epidemic, which is the largest in history and extends from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico to the Yukon Territory near Alaska, according to Professor Jeffry Mitton and graduate student Scott Ferrenberg, both of the ecology and evolutionary biology department.

"This thing is immense," Mitton said. The duo's research, conducted in 2009 and 2010 at CU's Mountain Research Station, located about 25 miles west of Boulder, helps explain why.

"We followed them through the summer, and we saw something that had never been seen before," Mitton said. "Adults that were newly laid eggs two months before were going out and attacking trees" -- in the same year. Normally, mountain pine beetles spend a winter as larvae in trees before emerging as adults the following summer.

These effects may be particularly pronounced at higher elevations, where warmer temperatures have facilitated beetle attacks. In the last two decades at the Mountain Research Station, mean annual temperatures were 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they were in the previous two decades.

Warmer temperatures gave the beetle larvae more spring days to grow to adulthood. The number of spring days above freezing temperatures increased by 15.1 in the last two decades, according to Mitton and Ferrenberg. Also, the number of days that were warm enough for the beetles to grow increased by 44 percent since 1970.

The Mountain Research Station site is about 10,000 feet in elevation, 1,000 feet higher than the beetles have historically thrived.

"While our study is limited in area, it was completed in a site that was characterized as climatically unsuitable for (mountain pine beetle) development by the U.S. Forest Service only three decades ago," they wrote in the study.

But in 25 years, the beetles have expanded their range 2,000 feet higher in elevation and 240 miles north in latitude in Canada, Mitton said.

April 5, 2012

A new study led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and involving the University of Colorado Boulder proposes a simple new mechanism to explain the source of carbon that fed a series of extreme warming events on Earth about 50 million years ago called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, as well as a sequence of similar, smaller warming events afterward.

“The standard hypothesis has been that the source of carbon was in the ocean in the form of frozen methane gas in ocean-floor sediments,” said lead study author Rob DeConto of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “We are instead ascribing the carbon source to the continents in polar latitudes where permafrost can store massive amounts of carbon that can be released as CO2 when the permafrost thaws.”

The new view is supported by calculations estimating interactions of variables such as greenhouse gas levels, changes in the Earth’s tilt and orbit, ancient distributions of vegetation, and carbon stored in rocks and in frozen soil.  A paper on the subject appears in the April 5 issue of Nature.

While the amounts of carbon involved in the ancient soil-thaw scenarios were likely much greater than today, implications of the study appear dire for the long-term future as polar permafrost carbon deposits have begun to thaw due to burning fossil fuels, DeConto said. “Similar dynamics are at play today. Global warming is degrading permafrost in the north polar regions, thawing frozen organic matter, which will decay to release CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. This will only exacerbate future warming in a positive feedback loop.”  

He and colleagues at CU-Boulder, Yale, Penn State, the University of Urbino, Italy, and the University of Sheffield in England designed a model to account for the source, magnitude and timing of carbon release at the PETM and subsequent warm periods, which now appear to have been triggered by changes in the Earth’s orbit.

CU-Boulder researcher Kevin Schaefer, a Nature paper co-author, led a 2011 study showing up to two-thirds of Earth’s permafrost could disappear by 2200 as a result of warming temperatures, unleashing vast quantities of carbon into the atmosphere.

“We found in this new Nature study that changes in Earth’s orbit triggered massive releases of carbon dioxide and methane from thawing permafrost in Antarctica,” said Schaefer, a research associate at CU-Boulder’s National Snow and Ice Data Center, an arm of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. “If the Arctic permafrost thaws out, it will release carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere and amplify warming due to the burning of fossil fuels.”

Earth’s atmospheric temperature is a result of energy input from the sun minus what escapes back to space. CO2 in the atmosphere absorbs and traps heat that would otherwise return to space. The PETM was accompanied by a massive carbon input to the atmosphere, with ocean acidification, and was characterized by a global temperature rise of about 9 degrees Fahrenheit in a few thousand years, according to the study.

The research team used a new, high-precision geologic record from rocks in central Italy to show that the PETM and other warming events occurred during periods when Earth’s orbit around the sun was both highly eccentric and tilted. Orbit affects the amount, location and seasonality of solar radiation received on Earth, which in turn affects the seasons, particularly in polar latitudes, where permafrost and stored carbon can accumulate.

They then simulated climate-ecosystem-soil interactions, accounting for gradually rising greenhouse gases and polar temperatures plus the combined effects of changes in Earth’s orbit. Their results show that the magnitude and timing of the PETM and subsequent busts of warming can be explained by the orbitally triggered decomposition of organic carbon soil material in Antarctica and the area surrounding the Arctic.

The massive carbon reservoir at the poles had the potential to repeatedly release billions of tons carbon to the atmosphere-ocean system once a long-term warming threshold was reached just prior to the PETM,” DeConto and colleagues say. Until now, Antarctica, which today is covered by miles of ice, has not been recognized as an important player in such global carbon dynamics, according to the team.

In the past, Antarctica and high elevations adjacent to the Arctic region were suitable locations for massive carbon storage, according to the study. “During long-term warming, these environments eventually reached a climatic threshold,” with permafrost thaw and the sudden release of stored soil carbon triggered during the Earth’s highly eccentric orbits coupled with high tilt, according to the study.

Contact:

Janet Lathrop, UMass media relations, 413-545-0444
jlathrop@admin.umass.edu
Robert DeConto, 413-545-3426
deconto@geo.umass.edu
Kevin Schaefer, 303-492-8869
Kevin.schaefer@colorado.edu

Exploring Climate Connections between the Global Oceans and Climate, Ecosystems & Economy 

• Scientists will present talks on their cutting edge research
• Lessons that can be used in the classroom will be tied to the themes (both in science and computer labs)
• The nature and process of science will be explored

March 13, 2012

“You cannot sustain population growth. It’s not debatable,” says CU-Boulder Professor Emeritus Al Bartlett.  “It’s based on arithmetic.  It’s not debatable unless you want to debate arithmetic."
 

In a newly-released video, entitled “Population, Consumption, and Climate:  A Conversation with Al Bartlett,” the physics professor reprises themes from a talk on the arithmetic of population he first gave in 1969.  He has since delivered that well-known lecture more than 1,700 times to audiences worldwide.
 

Using an animation that shows bacteria doubling in number over a fixed period of time, Bartlett illustrates the arithmetic of steady growth and how quickly resources are depleted as growth continues.
 

“There will be limits,” states Bartlett.  We are approaching one such limit globally in petroleum. “New technologies in drilling for natural gas doesn’t change our supplies,” he points out.  “It doesn’t change the amount of oil or natural gas that’s in the ground.  What it does is let us use it up more rapidly.”
 

Bartlett goes on to explain that despite the fact that population growth rates in developing countries may be 3-4 times higher, the worst problem with population is in the United States because of our very high per capita demand for energy and resources.
 

“The average child born in the United States will have, over its lifetime, 10-20 times the impact on world resources as a child born in an underdeveloped nation,” he says.  “So we’ve got to address the problem at home” by learning to conserve and live within our means.
 

In addition to putting enormous strain on the earth’s natural resources, excessive consumption contributes to climate change because resource extraction, manufacturing and transportation produce a great deal of carbon dioxide.  And, according to Bartlett, “if any fraction of global warming can be attributed to the actions of humans, that’s all the proof you need to say the human population today is greater than the carrying capacity of the earth.”
 

Part of CU-Boulder’s “Learn More About Climate” initiative, which brings climate change-related information to communities across the state, “Population, Consumption, and Climate:  A Conversation with Al Bartlett” is the seventh in a series of videos that can be viewed at LearnMoreAboutClimate.colorado.edu — an online tool that localizes climate change through interviews with leading scientists and everyday Coloradans to explain how climate change is affecting our state.  The site also offers resources for teachers, students, policy makers and community members who want to learn more about this critical issue.    

Professor Emeritus Bartlett joined the faculty at CU-Boulder in 1950.  He continues to deliver his acclaimed lecture “Arithmetic, Population and Energy: Sustainability 101” to audiences in towns across Colorado. To view “Population, Consumption, and Climate:  A Conversation with Al Bartlett,” please visit LearnMoreAboutClimate.colorado.edu. 

Click here for a list of links related to climate, energy, and consumption.
 

In addition to our two new films, "Population Growth, Consumption, and Climate: A Conversation with Al Bartlett" and "Climate Change: Making Choices that Make A Difference," the websites below provide useful information about the speakers and topics covered.

Click on the links below for more information about population growth, climate, energy, and consumption.

POPULATION, CONSUMPTION, AND CLIMATE: A CONVERSATION ABOUT AL BARTLETT

About Al Bartlett: http://www.albartlett.org

Full Interview with Al Bartlett: http://vimeo.com/37014682

Related Links

• Al Bartlett's arithmetic, population, and energy presentation
• Al Bartlett's book, "The Essential Exponential" 
• CU-Boulder Population Center 
• NPR Story: "Visualizing How A Population Grows to 7 Billion" 
• The Population Connection 

CLIMATE CHANGE: MAKING CHOICES THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE

About Max Boykoff: http://cires.colorado.edu/people/boykoff/

Full Interview with Max Boykoff: http://vimeo.com/37500836

Related Links

• Max Boykoff's new book, "Who Speaks for the Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change"
•  "The New Carbon Economy: Constitution, Governance, and Contestation" edited by Peter Newell, Max Boykoff, and Emily Boyd
• Solar Energy International's "Solar in the Schools" Program
• The "Young Voices on Climate Change" project from author and illustrator Lynne Cherry
• The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) science and education program

About Beth Osnes: http://theatredance.colorado.edu/?page_id=518 and http://centerwest.org/beth-osnes/

Full Interview with Beth Osnes: http://vimeo.com/37505865

Related Links:

• MOTHER: Caring for 7 Billion Film
• Beth Osnes Explains World Energy Justice
  

About Bernard Amadei:  https://mcedc.colorado.edu/amadei-biography

Related Links:

• Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities
• Mortenson Center Introduces Sustainable Housing Solution on Crow Reservation
• Crow Tribe Sustainable Housing Project Student Outreach, Exchange, and Training
• TED Talk: "Technology with a Soul" by Bernard Amadei 
• Engineers without Borders USA
• Engineers without Borders International

March 14, 2012

Long thought to produce only one generation of tree-killing offspring annually, some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations per year, dramatically increasing the potential for the bugs to kill lodgepole and ponderosa pine trees, University of Colorado Boulder researchers have found.

Because of the extra annual generation of beetles, there could be up to 60 times as many beetles attacking trees in any given year, their study found. And in response to warmer temperatures at high elevations, pine beetles also are better able to survive and attack trees that haven’t previously developed defenses.

These are among the key findings of Jeffry Mitton, a CU-Boulder professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and Scott Ferrenberg, a graduate student in that department. The study is being published this month in The American Naturalist.

This exponential increase in the beetle population might help to explain the scope of the current beetle epidemic, which is the largest in history and extends from the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in New Mexico to the Yukon Territory near Alaska.

“This thing is immense,” Mitton said. The duo’s research, conducted in 2009 and 2010 at CU’s Mountain Research Station, located about 25 miles west of Boulder, helps explain why.

“We followed them through the summer, and we saw something that had never been seen before,” Mitton said. “Adults that were newly laid eggs two months before were going out and attacking trees” -- in the same year. Normally, mountain pine beetles spend a winter as larvae in trees before emerging as adults the following summer.

These effects may be particularly pronounced at higher elevations, where warmer temperatures have facilitated beetle attacks. In the last two decades at the Mountain Research Station, mean annual temperatures were 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they were in the previous two decades.

Warmer temperatures gave the beetle larvae more spring days to grow to adulthood. The number of spring days above freezing temperatures increased by 15.1 in the last two decades, Mitton and Ferrenberg report. Also, the number of days that were warm enough for the beetles to grow increased by 44 percent since 1970.

The Mountain Research Station site is about 10,000 feet in elevation, 1,000 feet higher than the beetles have historically thrived. In their study, Mitton and Ferrenberg emphasize this anomaly.

“While our study is limited in area, it was completed in a site that was characterized as climatically unsuitable for (mountain pine beetle) development by the U.S. Forest Service only three decades ago,” they write.

But in 25 years, the beetles have expanded their range 2,000 feet higher in elevation and 240 miles north in latitude in Canada, Mitton said.

Ferrenberg had the idea to monitor the beetles at higher elevations partly because trees at lower elevations have been attacked by beetles for centuries and have developed some defenses.

Lodgepole pines at higher elevations tended to have a lower density of resin ducts, which transport resin, the sole defense against beetles. The number of resin ducts in a tree can be a “marker” for whether a tree has a higher or lower resistance to a beetle attack, Ferrenberg said.
 

The trees at higher elevations had not faced the same intensity of beetle attacks as those at lower elevations until temperatures warmed, and they have not faced pressures of natural selection exerted by attacking beetles. “The trees in that area are somewhat naïve in their response,” Ferrenberg said.
 

These data help explain why westbound motorists emerging from the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 can look up, from 11,000 feet in elevation, and see beetle-killed trees. “We think we see some of the reason for the fact that this epidemic is so widespread,” Mitton said.
 

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.
 

More on this story will appear in the next edition of Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine at http://artsandsciences.colorado.edu/magazine/

Contact:

Jeffry Mitton 303-492-8956

mitton@colorado.edu

Scott Ferrenberg, 303-492-8956

scott.ferrenberg@colorado.edu
 

MARCH 6TH TEACHER WORKSHOPS IN COLORADO SPRINGS

Meeting Materials

For those who attended the Science Hubs meeting, you can download meeting materials here.

1.  All presenter powerpoint files (zip file)
2.  Selected handouts

Some people noticed that the Evidence lesson plan has the old Colorado science standards on it -- this was due to a version error, and we are updating it.  You can access the Evidence lesson plan here:  http://learnmoreaboutclimate.colorado.edu/model-lessons/evidence-of-climate-change

Dr. Chris Ray mentioned the newly launched site on pika science that is not in the handouts.  That URL is:
http://cumuseum.colorado.edu/ScienceLIVE

Dr. Anne Gold included some resources in her first presentation that weren't on the handouts.  Those are:
1.  AAAS Strand Maps with concept maps of important topics in science and their interconnections, including climate:  http://strandmaps.nsdl.org
2.  AAAS Misconceptions study, outlining common misconceptions in various areas, including weather and climate:  http://assessment.aaas.org/topics
3.  Skeptical Science, a good source for sound information and explaining misinformation about various areas, including climate change:  http://skepticalscience.com
4.  Real Climate, another good resource for information about climate: http://realclimate.org

On the agenda:
* Is climate changing in Colorado?  How would we know?
* Climate and energy topics in the classroom
* The American Pika:  A model species for studying climate sensitivity
* Resources for teaching about climate and energy.