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Sea Level Rise Is Faster Than Predicted, Previous Estimates Of Rate Of Future Sea Level Rise Were Likely Too Low According To New Research

November 5, 2012 in Geology & Climate

Sea levels worldwide have been rising at a much faster rate than has been predicted by climate change models. The reasons for this are clear according to University of Colorado geologist Bill Hay; there are many large feedback loops that are just beginning to kick in, that will contribute significantly to future sea level rise.

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The most recent official report from the IPCC was released back in 2007, and only predicted a global sea level rise of 0.2 to 0.5 meters by 2100. But current sea-level rise measurements are already meeting or exceeding the high end of that range, and have been suggesting a rise of at least one meter by 2100, possibly much more.

“What’s missing from the models used to forecast sea-level rise are critical feedbacks that speed everything up,” says Hay.

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5-Million-Year-Long ‘Dead Zone’ Caused By Extreme Heat Followed Largest Extinction Event Ever 250 Million Years Ago

October 19, 2012 in Geology & Climate

The end-Permian mass extinction event 250 million years ago left a ‘broken world’ where new species weren’t seen for the next five million years. Why this ‘dead zone’ lasted so much longer than other similar periods after mass extinctions had been somewhat unclear. But now new research is strongly suggesting that it was simply too hot for nearly anything to survive.

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Mass extinctions are nearly always followed by a period of tens of thousands of years when no new species emerge, a ‘dead zone’. The dead zone following the Early Triassic period is such an extreme outlier, at five million years long, that researchers have long suspected that there must be some unknown influence at work.

The new research clarifies: “the cause of this lengthy devastation was a temperature rise to lethal levels in the tropics: around 50-60°C on land, and 40°C at the sea-surface.”

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Ice Age Magnetic Reversal Was Global Event And Linked With Super Volcano Eruption And Rapid Climate Variability, Says New Research

October 17, 2012 in Geology & Climate

During the last ice age, around 41,000 years ago, there was a very rapid and complete reversal of the Earth’s geomagnetic field, according to new research. There was already localized evidence of polarity reversals during this time, but with the new research, the theory that it was a global event is now strongly supported. And very interestingly, it is one that nearly coincided with the very fast, short-term climate variability of the last ice age and the largest volcanic eruption in the northern hemisphere during the last 100,000 years.

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Magnetic studies using sediment cores taken from the Black Sea, done by the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, have clearly shown that if you had a compass at the Black Sea during that time, it would have pointed towards the south, not the north.

But more importantly, new data gathered by the researchers when it’s combined with additional data from previous studies in the North Atlantic, the South Pacific, and Hawaii, strongly supports the theory that this polarity reversal was truly global.

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