The research determined that Earth’s magnetic field, which shields our planet from particles streaming outward from the Sun, often develops two holes that allow the largest leaks.

According to Vassilis Angelopoulos of the University of California, Los Angeles, Principal Investigator for NASA’s THEMIS mission (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms), “The discovery overturns a long-standing belief about how and when most of the solar particles penetrate Earth’s magnetic field, and could be used to predict when solar storms will be severe.”

“Based on these results, we expect more severe storms during the upcoming solar cycle,” he added.

THEMIS was used to discover the size of the leak.

Earth’s magnetic field acts as a shield against the bombardment of particles continuously streaming from the sun. Because the solar particles (ions and electrons) are electrically charged, they feel magnetic forces and most are deflected by our planet’s magnetic field.

However, our magnetic field is a leaky shield and the number of particles breaching this shield depends on the orientation of the sun’s magnetic field.

It had been thought that when the sun’s magnetic field is aligned with that of the Earth, the door is shut and that few if any solar particles enter Earth’s magnetic shield.

The door was thought to open up when the solar magnetic field direction points opposite to Earth’s field, leading to more solar particles inside the shield.

Surprisingly, recent observations by the THEMIS spacecraft fleet demonstrate that the opposite is true.

“Twenty times more solar particles cross the Earth’s leaky magnetic shield when the sun’s magnetic field is aligned with that of the Earth compared to when the two magnetic fields are oppositely directed,” said Marit Oieroset of the University of California, Berkeley, lead author of one of two papers on this research.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20081217/981/tsc-scientists-discover-biggest-breach-o.html

The study, conducted by researchers at Queen’s University and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment in Canada, reports that striking changes are now occurring in many temperate lakes similar to those previously observed in the rapidly warming Arctic, although typically many decades later.

“Our findings suggest that ecologically important changes are already under way in temperate lakes,” said Queen’s Biology research scientist, Dr. Kathleen Ruhland, from the university’s Paleoecological Environmental Assessment and Research Lab (PEARL) and lead author of the study.

The scientists studied changes over the last few decades in the species composition of small, microscopic algae preserved in sediments from more than 200 lake systems in the northern hemisphere.

These algae dominate the plankton that float at or near the surface of lakes, and serve as food for other larger organisms.

Striking ecosystem changes were recorded from a large suite of lakes from Arctic, alpine and temperate ecozones in North America and western Europe.

Aquatic ecosystem changes across the circumpolar Arctic were found to occur in the late-19th and early 20th centuries.

These were similar to shifts in algal communities, indicating decreased ice cover and related changes, over the last few decades in the temperate lakes.

“As expected, these changes occurred earlier – by about 100 years – in highly sensitive Arctic lakes, compared with temperate regions,” said Dr. Smol, recipient of the 2004 Herzberg Gold Medal as Canada’s top scientist.

In a detailed study from Whitefish Bay, Lake of the Woods, located in northwestern Ontario, strong relationships were found between changes in the lake algae and long-term changes in air temperature and ice-out records.

The authors believe that, although the study was focused on algae preserved in lake sediments, changes to other parts of the aquatic ecosystem are also likely.

“The widespread occurrence of these trends is particularly troubling as they suggest that climatically-induced ecological thresholds have already been crossed, even with temperature increases that are below projected future warming scenarios for these regions,” said Dr. Paterson.

The authors warn that if the rate and magnitude of temperature increases continue, it is likely that new ecological thresholds will be surpassed, many of which may be unexpected.

“We are entering unchartered territory, the effects of which can cascade throughout the entire ecosystem,” concluded Dr. Smol.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20081217/981/tsc-climate-warming-causing-ecosystem-ch.html

According to a report in The Times, the study, commissioned by the US Climate Change Science Program, said that the rises will substantially exceed forecasts that do not take into account the latest data and observations.

The adjusted outlook suggests that recent predictions of a rise of between 7 inches and 2 feet over the next century are conservative.

The study predicts that sea level rises will be far higher than the levels that were set out last year by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change.

The research looked at prehistoric periods when the climate changed dramatically over the course of decades, and evaluated the mechanisms behind such rapid transformation.

Rising sea levels were one of the major elements involved in past episodes, along with faster glacial melting, droughts and changes to the Atlantic Ocean’s heat-driven circulation.

According to the study’s authors, they are “among the greatest natural hazards facing the United States and the globe today” and call for “committed and sustained” monitoring of the forces that could trigger abrupt climate change.

“If we don’t monitor the vital signs of the patient, then we’ll never be in a position to advise on the best course of action to take to ward off or prepare for the potentially devastating consequences,” said Peter Clark, a professor of geosciences at Oregon State University and a lead author on the report.

But, the report concludes that some changes will not be as bad as first thought.

For example, rapid releases of methane stored in permafrost and on the seabed may be less likely than feared.

Other forecasts include a severe and permanent drought in the American West.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20081217/981/tsc-sea-levels-will-rise-much-faster-tha.html

Understanding how these holes form will help them better predict the electrical storms that cause power grid blackouts and the aurora, activity that will peak in 2012 as sunspots hit their maximum level.

Scientists at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco said they had been entirely wrong about how solar particles that cause the storms were entering the Earth’s magnetosphere.

The magnetosphere is a bubble of magnetism that surrounds Earth and protects us from solar wind.

Scientists once believed that the particles entered when the sun’s magnetic field was aligned opposite to that of the Earth’s. But findings presented at the meeting show that 20 times more solar particles enter the Earth’s magnetic field when it is aligned in the same direction as the sun’s magnetic field.

The alignment causes the two magnetic fields to connect and tears holes in the Earth’s magnetic field over the poles.

“What we observed was the breach in the levee,” said Jimmy Raeder, a physicist at the University of New Hampshire. “This has taken us completely by surprise.”

In June 2007, NASA’s five THEMIS spacecraft probes flew through one of the tears just as it was opening. Sensors recorded a torrent of solar wind particles streaming into the magnetosphere, said Raeder.

“The opening was huge — four times wider than Earth itself,” said Raeder. “This kind of influx is an order of magnitude greater than what we thought was possible.”

Most of the particles are deflected back into space, but some circulate in the magnetosphere, get energized, and cause electrical storms that trigger power grid outages, cause problems for aircraft flying over the poles, and can damage satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

“There’s a bigger risk because we have more stuff in space now,” said Raeder.

Scientists said that the majority of solar storms take place midway through and on the tail end of the solar cycle. This 11-year cycle of activity is at its minimum now and electrical storms will be at their peak in 2012.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/137/20081217/776/tsc-holes-in-earth-s-magnetic-cloak-let.html

Most sought after commodities during the Christmas celebrations are the cakes and the gift articles. The shops of Kochi are all decked up but wear a deserted look with the customers staying away.

“The recent crisis has really affected us a lot. We have started feeling it. Till last year, the customers during Christmas used to come and do a lot of cash business, but this year may be because of the financial slowdown they are not willing to do the same which has badly affected our sales,” said Sandhya Devraj, Supervisor, Lemars Marketing (P) Ltd.

The actual Christmas and New Year sales normally start much before. The markets are flooded with costumers buying cakes, confectioneries and gift articles. The shopkeepers had a handful of orders by now last year.

Some shops had registered record sales and ran out of cakes with huge corporate orders. This year, the wait for customers appears to be long.

“As we have just started the business, we can not expect good sales like last year, because of share market going down and money problem,” said Simy K Biju, shop supervisor, Pandhal Cake Shop.

Last year sale of cakes in Kerala alone stood around Rs 25 to 30 crore. The experts estimate the sales to dip by 20 to 30 per cent this year. by Juhan Samuel (ANI)

http://in.news.yahoo.com/139/20081215/824/tnl-global-meltdown-dampens-christmas-ce.html

The study was published today in Geophysical Research Letters. It was funded by NASA and by the National Science Foundation, which sponsors NCAR.

“It’s important to understand the health impacts of wildfires,” says NCAR scientist Gabriele Pfister, the lead author. “Ozone can hit unhealthy levels even in places where people don’t see smoke.”

Although scientists have long known that wildfires can affect air quality by emitting particles and gases into the air, there has been little research to quantify the impacts. Fires worsen ozone levels by releasing nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons, which can form ozone near the fire or far downwind as a result of chemical reactions in sunlight.

The researchers, using a combination of computer models and ground-level measurements, studied intense California wildfires that broke out in September and October of 2007. They found that ozone was three times more likely to violate safe levels when fire plumes blew into a region than when no plumes were present.

At the time of the wildfires, the public health standard for ozone set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was 0.08 parts per million over an eight-hour period. The EPA has since tightened the standard to 0.075 parts per million. Under the stricter standard, the number of violations would have nearly doubled.

While ozone in the stratosphere benefits life on Earth by blocking ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, ozone in the lower atmosphere can trigger a number of health problems. These range from coughing and throat irritation to more serious problems, such as aggravation of asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema. Ground-level ozone pollution also damages crops and other plants.

“Wildfires are expected to worsen in the future, especially as our climate grows warmer,” Pfister says. “But we are only now beginning to understand their potential impacts on people and ecosystems, not only nearby but also potentially far downwind.”

Rural impacts

The unhealthy levels of ozone the researchers detected occurred mostly in rural areas. This finding may be a result of the computer modeling, which lacked the fine detail to zoom in on relatively compact urban areas. However, the authors also speculate that wildfire emissions have a greater impact on ozone levels in the countryside than on cities. The reason has to do with chemistry. Cities tend to have more nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant that can, at high levels, reduce the efficiency with which ozone is produced or even destroy ozone.

“The impact of wildfires on ozone in suburban and rural areas, far from urban sources of pollution, was quite noticeable,” says NCAR scientist Christine Wiedinmyer, a co-author of the paper.

The paper notes that ozone levels would likely have been even greater except that Santa Ana winds in October blew wildfire plumes over the Pacific Ocean, safely away from populated areas.

Tracking the emissions

To measure the impact of the fires on ozone formation, the researchers turned to a pair of computer models developed at NCAR. With the first one, a specialized fire model, they estimated the amount of vegetation burned and resulting emissions of nitrous oxides, sulfur dioxide, and other pollutants. Those results went into a global air chemistry model that simulated the movement of the emissions and evolving chemistry and tracked the resulting formation of ozone as the fire plumes spread downwind.

The scientists compared their modeling results with ozone measurements from a network of EPA ground stations at various sites in California. This enabled them to determine both the number of ozone violations and the extent to which the wildfires contributed to those violations. It also enabled them to verify the accuracy of the model.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081009144115.htm

Scientists believe the barely observed Aurora Subglacial Basin, which lies in East Antarctica, could represent the weak underbelly of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the largest remaining body of ice on Earth. Until recently the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which covers the two basins, had been considered a stable ice reservoir unlikely to contribute to rising sea level in the near future.

Limited soundings of the ice upstream of Australia’s Casey Station, however, reveal a vast basin with its base lying kilometers below sea level. The basin could make the East Antarctic Ice Sheet more vulnerable in a warming world. Satellite data show that Totten Glacier, which dominates the ice of the Aurora Subglacial Basin, appears to be losing ice at its downstream edge.

The University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences has teamed up with the University of Edinburgh and the Australian Antarctic Division as part of a major International Polar Year project to study this vast area using multiple airborne instruments.

Beginning this December, the ICECAP (Investigating the Cryospheric Evolution of the Central Antarctic Plate) team will fly an upgraded World War II-era DC-3 aircraft with a suite of geophysical instruments to map the thickness of the ice sheet and measure the texture, composition, density and topography of rocks below the ice.

In the past, scientists surveying the Antarctic ice sheets relied either on heavy cargo planes with poor fuel efficiency but long range, or lighter planes with better fuel efficiency but short range. To fly lighter planes far into the interior of the continent, support planes have to fly in additional fuel from a coastal port, multiplying fuel costs several times.

With the upgraded DC-3, the ICECAP team gets a combination of efficiency and range, minimizing the project’s carbon footprint at a time when high oil prices have caused federal funding agencies to scale back scientific studies in the polar regions.

“We’re getting much more science done with less oil using this old airframe with modern engines,” said Don Blankenship, research scientist at the Jackson School’s Institute for Geophysics and principal investigator for ICECAP.

Data from the project will help model East Antarctic ice stability, forecast how ice might react to climate change, and show its potential impact on global sea level.

The chemistry of the thick ice might also solve a mystery about past climate. Antarctic ice cores have already revealed aspects of Earth’s climate dating back 800,000 years. Farther back, around one million years ago, Earth’s climate changed in a way that caused ice ages to come and go much more rapidly than before. Scientists have long wondered what caused this shift. Australian researchers with ICECAP will search for sites to drill new ice cores with the potential to extend the ice core record to beyond one million years.

Martin Siegert, head of the school of Geosciences at the University of Edinburgh, leads the ICECAP team’s U.K. contingent. Tas van Ommen, principal research scientist at the Australian Antarctic Division, leads the Australian contingent. Other institutions with major involvement include the University of Bristol (U.K.), the University of Cambridge (U.K.) and the University of Melbourne (Australia).

Funding for ICECAP is provided by the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council, the Australian Antarctic Division, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Jackson School of Geosciences.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081028074329.htm

If one assumes the former (the local SST hypothesis), then by 2100, the lower bound on Atlantic hurricane activity is comparable to that of 2005, when four major hurricanes struck the continental United States, causing more than $100 billion in damage. The upper bound exceeds 2005 levels by more than a factor of two. However, if one assumes the latter (the relative SST hypothesis), then the future is similar to the recent past, with periods of higher and lower hurricane activity relative to present-day conditions due to natural climate variability, but with little long-term trend.

The statistical relationship between either interpretation of the SST/hurricane activity link is ambiguous over the period 1946-2007 (they are statistically indistinguishable, though both are significant), but they imply fundamentally different projections for the future and interpretations of the past. The team further argues that the consistency between theory, numerical models, and historical observations offers compelling evidence that the ‘relative’ SST hypothesis is more accurate and provides a better framework for projections of future changes in hurricane activity.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081031141526.htm

With realty sector, the position is optimistic because of the heavy inflow of foreign funds and the tie ups local builders get into with them. Builders are concerned with the profit margin and would compromise on the price level so long as it does not sting their purse. Their concern for ecology is even less than for raw materials and could always put up attractive landscaping to trumpet their eco concerns. But their need for land is consistent and they would branch out into the outskirts so long as the buyers are there. It means extension of housing/commercial complexes geographically is an undeniable fact. Artificial increase in land value has not been arrested and the government seems to be able to do little about it. So urbanisation will be total but quality life is beyond anybody’s comprehension.

The same yardstick applies to automobile or any other core sector because they are all ruled by price tyranny. Globalisation has made it impossible for a particular country to keep price levels reachable because of interdependent economies.

There is need for eco rating now. It means that every sector – realty, automobile or engineering – must be allowed to have their physical resources in place without upsetting ecology. Tax must be so computed to penalise them for the level of harm to ecology and conversely give them relief to the extent of contribution to protecting ecology. Eco rating deserves a deeper attention than is getting now.

http://subbumani.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/06/eco-rating-a-major-issue-now.htm

http://subbumani.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/10/investing-in-global-warming.htm