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How Warming Impacts Male Capelin Choice of Spawning Habitat
Craig IdsoThe fish responds as most any logical creature would. It seeks a cooler location. In short, “the flexible use of spawning habitats under divergent temperature conditions suggests that capelin have a high capacity to respond to and possibly tolerate predicted ocean-climate change”... Read More Storm-Track Activity: Modeled vs. Measured ...
Corn Production in the USA Is Already Adapting to Warming
Craig IdsoSo what’s the longer-term outlook for the crop? In the concluding paragraph of their report, Butler and Huybers write, “losses to US maize yield from increased temperature,” such as those suggested by Schlenker and Roberts (2006, 2009), “are almost certainly overestimated if adaptation is not accounted for.” But if it is a ...
Growth Responses of Tree Roots to Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment
Craig IdsoThe CO2-induced enhancement of tree root growth out in the real world of nature may actually be much larger than previously believed... Read More Wind Speeds over China: AR5 Climate Models vs. Real-World Data (28 May 2013) Chen et al. quantified and compared “the magnitude, historical trends and temporal variability in 10 ...
Holocene Histories of Atmospheric CO2 Concentration and West Greenland Air Temperature
Craig IdsoWhat can be learned from a cursory glance at the data? That the CO2 concentration of Earth’s atmosphere appears to have had no consistent impact on July air temperatures in the vicinity of North Lake, Greenland, over the past seven millennia... Read More Divining Future Winter Wheat Yields in the United Kingdom (21 May ...
One Hundred and One Years of Netherlands’ Windstorms
Craig IdsoHave they become more or less damaging over the past century of “unprecedented” global warming? No. It has declined since the early 1980s to values that are currently “far below the range witnessed in the 20th century” ... Read More A Polar Dinoflagellate that Can Really Take the Heat (14 May 2013) A new study demonstrates ...
Effects of Temperature on Mortality in Nairobi, Kenya
Craig IdsoEven in places that are appreciated for their relative warmth, a change in the weather or shifting of the seasons to cooler conditions, rather than an equivalent increase in warmth, is typically the more deadly of the two types of temperature evolution... Read More Scots Pine Stands of Estonia Are Growing Ever Better Nowadays ...
Modeling Northern Hemispheric Winters
Craig IdsoHow good are the simulations of the most up-to-date climate models? Authors Kim et al. (2012) assessed the seasonal prediction skill for the Northern Hemisphere winter and found a number of biases that have yet to be overcome... Read More Projections of CMIP5 Models: Will They Ever Come Together? (30 Apr 2013) An unfortunate ...
Larval Growth of Oysters in a Warming and CO2-Accreting World
Craig IdsoHow does the larval-stage of the Portuguese oyster respond to multiple climate change stressors? With a surprising degree of tolerance!... Read More The Thermal Tolerance of a Tropical Lizard Species (23 Apr 2013) A new study demonstrates that “changes in thermal tolerance occurred relatively rapidly (~35 generations),” which ...
The Capacity for Thermal Acclimation in Mosquitofish
Craig IdsoNoting that “many predictions of the impact of climate change on biodiversity assume a species-specific response to changing environments,” the authors of this study proceed to argue, on the basis of their results, that “this resolution can be too coarse and that analysis of the impacts of climate change and other environmental ...
Intense Tropical Cyclones of the Northern Indian Ocean
Craig IdsoOnce again we have another real-world example of the occurrence of intense tropical cyclone activity being totally independent of concomitant mean global air temperature over the past three decades... Read More Evolutionary Rescue of a Species in a Deteriorating Environment (9 Apr 2013) The take-home message of this study ...
Seasonal Flow Regimes of UK Rivers
Craig IdsoAnalyses of river flow records since 1969 reveal there is “no compelling evidence for a decrease in overall runoff or low flows” in the summer, which finding “is contrary to trajectories of most future [model] projections”... Read More Desert Plants in a Warming World of More Variable Precipitation (2 Apr 2013) Salguero-Gomez ...
How Does a Nondescript Shrimp Deal with Rising Temperatures?
Craig IdsoJust like a whole lot of other organisms do, it “shows genuine acclimation capacities” due to the plasticity inherent in both the organism’s thermal limit and its heat shock response... Read More Vegetative Growth in China: It’s Response to Climate Stressor (26 Mar 2013) In spite of a recent increase in drought stress, areas ...
Microevolution in Alaskan Pink Salmon in Response to Warming
Craig IdsoReviewers Needed for Climate Change Reconsidered - 2 The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) is seeking credentialed individuals who are willing to serve as reviewers of the forthcoming NIPCC report Climate Change Reconsidered - 2. Reviewers will be needed between April and August, 2013 for various chapters ...
Would Sea Anemones Survive in a High-CO2 World of the Future?
Craig IdsoAccording to the results of this research study, not only would they survive, they would likely thrive!... Read More Life in the Turbid Zone: Can Corals Cope with Conditions Long Thought to be Deadly to Them? (12 Mar 2013) A number of them can. There are, in point of fact, species of coral that are adapted to a vast ...
Snow Avalanches in Forests of the Swiss Alps
Craig IdsoTrends since 1970 indicate there has been a decrease in snow and weather conditions associated with avalanches throughout the region... Read More The Impact of Elevated CO2 on Forest Arthropod Communities (5 Mar 2013) According to the authors of this study, “decreases in herbivorous arthropods and increases in predaceous arthropods ...
In Search of a CO2-Induced Increase in the Mean Rate-of-Rise of Global Sea Level
Craig IdsoAs more data become available, and as more researchers strive to decipher what those data imply, the search appears ever more futile... Read More The Net Effect of Simultaneous Increases in Air Temperature and CO2 Concentration on Plant Biomass Production (26 Feb 2013) How does it compare with the individual effects of ...
Winter Wheat Yields in a Warmer Yangtze Delta Plain of China
Craig IdsoHow would they likely compare with the region’s winter wheat yields of today? Based on the results of this study, the net effect of several warmth-induced changes induces a mean grain yield increase of 16.3%... Read More A Two-Millennia Record of the South American Summer Monsoon (19 Feb 2013) Today’s temperatures over the ...
Pests of Pests of Blue Willow Trees in a Potentially Warmer World
Craig IdsoHow does the first and smallest of the three-trophic-level consortium affect the larger two as temperatures rise? Survival and development rate generally increase, thereby reducing the potential for damage in willow trees... Read More The Reproduction of a Key Arctic Copepod in Low-pH Seawater (12 Feb 2013) According to the ...
A History of Drought in the Southern United States Since 1895
Craig IdsoOver-the-top contentions of both the IPCC and the authors of the U.S. Climate Report of 2009 with respect to drought are found to be without any confirmation whatsoever in pertinent real-world data for this part of the world... Read More Coral Resilience to Ocean Acidification and Global Warming (5 Feb 2013) For certain ...
Elevated CO2 Enhances the Berry Quality of Sub-Arctic Shrubs
Craig IdsoJust as it does for numerous other foods that sustain mankind and the planet’s many animals, it stimulates the production of antioxidants... Read More Islands Rimming Pacific Atolls: Their Response to Sea Level Rise (29 Jan 2013) On 17 October 2009, members of the Maldives’ Cabinet donned scuba gear and used hand signals ...