Editor’s Note: This issue of The Climate CIRCulator spotlights not one, but two researchers in the same profile. To see why, read on. You could think of Oregon State University scientists George Waldbusser and Burke Hales as the Lennon and McCartney of climate science. Like the two Beatles icons, their collaboration works precisely because of their…
Month: January 2015
New Accounting Method For Sources of Uncertainty
Climate scientists — including those of us at OCCRI and CIRC— use global climate models to understand the range of possible futures. Dozens of research groups produce hundreds of simulations, which may differ in their greenhouse-gas emission scenarios as well as their starting conditions for each simulation. Thus, interpretation can be challenging. Translating these simulations…
The Role of Saturation in Seashell Formation
From the corals of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef to the shellfish hatcheries of the Pacific Northwest, ocean acidification’s effects on shell-forming organisms are now well documented. However, ocean acidification research has tended to focus on just one aspect of the phenomenon’s chemistry: pH. Now, a new study published in Nature Climate Change suggests pH alone…
Warm, Rainy Cascades Winter Means Scarce Summer Water
You’ve probably noticed there isn’t much snow in the Cascades this winter. The reason is temperature. Winters in the Pacific Northwest are typically wet. This winter has been no exception. Precipitation has been above normal for Oregon, Washington and Idaho since the start of the water year on October 1. Temperatures, too, have been above…
Are “Dust Bowls” More Likely under Climate Change?
A new paper published in the Journal of Climate suggests that the risk of decade-long droughts, like the Dust Bowl in the 20th century, may be greater than previously estimated. The greatest risk is in the Southwest United States, where the likelihood of these droughts occurring once every 50 years is possibly greater than 80 percent with…
Modulating Climate Change in North America
As the planet warms, some patterns of natural climate variability – notably El Niño – may also change. A team of climate scientists in China and California wanted to disentangle the role of El Niño from all the other factors in climate change. So they posed the following question: “How much of the pattern of…
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