Climate of Our Future

Higher River Levels Predicted As More Carbon Dioxide Makes Plants Less Thirsty

Science Daily — Rising carbon dioxide levels will increase river levels in the future, according to a team of scientists from the Met Office Hadley Centre, the University of Exeter and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.

Researchers expect that increasing carbon dioxide will cause plants to extract less water from the soil, leaving more water to drain into rivers which will add to the river flow increases already expected due to climate change. (Credit: Michele Hogan)

The findings, published on 30 August 2007 in the journal Nature, suggest that increasing carbon dioxide will cause plants to extract less water from the soil, leaving more water to drain into rivers which will add to the river flow increases already expected due to climate change.

Last year, members of the research team showed that this effect can already be seen in historical river flow records.

This new study shows that the effect of plant responses to carbon dioxide could be as important as those of increased rainfall due to man-made climate change. Read More

Mathematics Of Ice To Aid Global Warming Forecasts

Science Daily — University of Utah mathematicians have arrived at a new understanding of how salt-saturated ocean water flows through sea ice — a discovery that promises to improve forecasts of how global warming will affect polar icepacks.

University of Utah mathematician Ken Golden stands in front of sea ice melt ponds in the Arctic near Barrow, Alaska. His research on sea ice’s permeability to salt water promises to help improve forecasts of the effects of global warming. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Utah)

In the current issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters, math Professor Ken Golden and colleagues show that brine moving up or down through floating sea ice follows “universal transport properties.”

“It means that almost the exact same formulas describing how water flows through sedimentary rocks in the Earth’s crust apply to brine flow in sea ice, even though the microstructural details of the rocks are quite different from sea ice,” says Golden, who currently is on an Australian research ship in Antarctica.

The study suggests similar porous materials — including ice on other worlds, such as Jupiter’s icy ocean-covered moon Europa — should follow the same rules, he adds. Read More