Ancient Method, 'Black Gold Agriculture' May Revolutionize Farming, Curb Global Warming

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080410153658.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 15, 2008) — Fifteen hundred years ago, tribes people from the central Amazon basin mixed their soil with charcoal derived from animal bone and tree bark. Today, at the site of this charcoal deposit, scientists have found some of the richest, most fertile soil in the world. Now this ancient, remarkably simple farming technique seems far ahead of the curve, holding promise as a carbon-negative strategy to rein in world hunger as well as greenhouse gases.

At the 235th national meeting of the American Chemical Society, scientists report that charcoal derived from heated biomass has an unprecedented ability to improve the fertility of soil -- one that surpasses compost, animal manure, and other well-known soil conditioners.
They also suggest that this so-called "biochar" profoundly enhances the natural carbon seizing ability of soil. Dubbed "black gold agriculture," scientists say this "revolutionary" farming technique can provide a cheap, straight-forward strategy to reduce greenhouse gases by trapping them in charcoal-laced soil.
"Charcoal fertilization can permanently increase soil organic matter content and improve soil quality, persisting in soil for hundreds to thousands of years," Mingxin Guo, Ph.D., and colleagues report. In what they describe as a "new and pioneering" ACS report -- the first systematic investigation of soil improvement by charcoal fertilization -- Guo found that soils receiving charcoal produced from organic wastes were much looser, absorbed significantly more water and nutrients and produced higher crop biomass. The authors, with Delaware State University, say "the results demonstrate that charcoal amendment is a revolutionary approach for long-term soil quality improvement."
Soil deterioration from depletion of organic matter is an increasingly serious global problem that contributes to hunger and malnutrition. Often a result of unsustainable farming, overuse of chemical fertilizers and drought, the main weapons to combat the problem --compost, animal manure and crop debris -- decompose rapidly.
"Earth's soil is the largest terrestrial pool of carbon," Guo said. "In other words, most of the earth's carbon is fixed in soil." But if this soil is intensively cultivated by tillage and chemical fertilization, organic matter in soil will be quickly decomposed into carbon dioxide by soil microbes and released into the atmosphere, leaving the soil compacted and nutrient-poor.
Applying raw organic materials to soil only provides a temporary solution, since the applied organic matter decomposes quickly. Converting this unutilized raw material into biochar, a non-toxic and stable fertilizer, could keep carbon in the soil and out of the atmosphere, says Guo.
"Speaking in terms of fertility and productivity, the soil quality will be improved. It is a long-term effect. After you apply it once, it will be there for hundreds of years," according to Guo. With its porous structure and high nutrient- and water-holding capabilities, biochar could become an extremely attractive option for commercial farmers and home gardeners looking for long-term soil improvement.
The researchers planted winter wheat in pots of soil in a greenhouse. Some pots were amended with two percent biochar, generated from readily available ingredients like tree leaves, corn stalk and wood chips. The other pots contained ordinary soil.
The biochar-infused soil showed vastly improved germination and growing rates compared to regular soil. Guo says that even a one-percent charcoal treatment would lead to improved crop yield.
Guo is "positive" that this ground-breaking farming technique can help feed countries with poor soil quality. "We hope this technology will be extended worldwide," says Guo.
"The production of current arable land could be significantly improved to provide more food and fiber for the growing populations. We want to call it the second agricultural revolution, or black gold revolution!"
He suggests that charcoal production has been practiced for at least 3000 years. But until now, nobody realized that this charcoal could improve soil fertility until archaeologists stumbled on the aforementioned Amazonian soil several years ago.
Biochar production is straightforward, involving a heating process known as pyrolysis. First, organic residue such as tree leaves and wood chips is packed into a metal container and sealed. Then, through a small hole on top, the container is heated and the material burns. The raw organic matter is transformed into black charcoal. Smokes generated during pyrolysis can also be collected and cooled down to form bio-oil, a renewable energy source, says Guo.
In lieu of patenting biochar, Guo says he is most interested in extending the technology into practice as soon as possible. To that end, his colleagues at Delaware State University are investigating a standardized production procedure for biochar. They also foresee long-term field studies are needed to validate and demonstrate the technology. Guo noted that downsides of biochar include transportation costs resulting from its bulk mass and a need to develop new tools to spread the granular fertilizer over large tracts of farmland.
The researchers are about to embark on a five-year study on the effect of "black gold" on spinach, green peppers, tomatoes and other crops. They seek the long-term effects of biochar fertilization on soil carbon changes, crop productivity and its effect of the soil microorganism community.
"Through this long-term work, we will show to people that biochar fertilization will significantly change our current conventional farming concepts," says Guo.
Adapted from materials provided by American Chemical Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Fausto Intilla

www.oloscience.com

Sea Salt Worsens Coastal Air Pollution

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080408163231.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2008) — Air pollution in the world's busiest ports and shipping regions may be markedly worse than previously suspected, according to a new study showing that industrial and shipping pollution is exacerbated when it combines with sunshine and salty sea air.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, a team of researchers that included University of Calgary chemistry professor Hans Osthoff report that the disturbing phenomenon substantially raises the levels of ground-level ozone and other pollutants in coastal areas.
"We found unexpectedly high levels of certain air pollutants where pollution from cities and ships meets salt in the ocean air along the southeast coast of the United States," said Osthoff, who joined the U of C's Department of Chemistry last August. "It only makes sense that this is a problem everywhere industrial pollution meets the ocean, as is the case in many of the largest cities around the world. It also changes our view of the chemical transformations that occur in ship engine exhaust plumes, and tells us that emissions from marine vessels may be polluting the globe to a greater extent than currently estimated."
Dr. Osthoff was part of a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) team that spent six weeks monitoring air quality in busy shipping areas off the southeastern coast of the United States between Charleston, South Carolina and Houston, Texas, in the summer of 2006. The researchers found unexpectedly high levels of nitryl chloride (ClNO2), a chemical long suspected to be involved in ground-level ozone production along the coast.
They then determined that the compound is efficiently produced at night by the reaction of the nitrogen oxide N2O5 in polluted air with chloride from sea salt. With the help of sunlight, the chemical then splits into radicals that accelerate production of ozone and, potentially, fine particulate matter, which are the main components of air pollution. Their findings also show that up to 30 per cent of the ground-level ozone present in seaside cities such as Houston may be the result of pollution mixing with salt from ocean mist.
Dr. Osthoff intends to continue to work on halogen compounds at the University of Calgary.
"The Texas study covered only a very limited geographic area. We would like to find out to what extent this chemistry affects air quality in other regions, for example, the the Greater Vancouver area, or the Arctic," he said. "Our study indicates that halide salts such as chloride or bromide, which have been thought of as being relatively inert, may be playing a much greater role overall in the lower atmosphere."
The paper "High levels of nitryl chloride in the polluted subtropical marine boundary layer" is available in the April 6, 2008 advance online edition of the journal Nature Geoscience. The print version is scheduled to appear on May 1st, 2008.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Calgary, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Fausto Intilla

www.oloscience.com

Geologists Discover New Way Of Estimating Size And Frequency Of Meteorite Impacts

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080411160239.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 12, 2008) — Scientists have developed a new way of determining the size and frequency of meteorites that have collided with Earth.

Their work shows that the size of the meteorite that likely plummeted to Earth at the time of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary 65 million years ago was four to six kilometers in diameter. The meteorite was the trigger, scientists believe, for the mass extinction of dinosaurs and other life forms.
François Paquay, a geologist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM), used variations (isotopes) of the rare element osmium in sediments at the ocean bottom to estimate the size of these meteorites. The results are published in this week's issue of the journal Science.
When meteorites collide with Earth, they carry a different osmium isotope ratio than the levels normally seen throughout the oceans.
"The vaporization of meteorites carries a pulse of this rare element into the area where they landed," says Rodey Batiza of the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the research along with NSF's Division of Earth Sciences. "The osmium mixes throughout the ocean quickly. Records of these impact-induced changes in ocean chemistry are then preserved in deep-sea sediments."
Paquay analyzed samples from two sites, Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) site 1219 (located in the Equatorial Pacific), and ODP site 1090 (located off of the tip of South Africa) and measured osmium isotope levels during the late Eocene period, a time during which large meteorite impacts are known to have occurred.
"The record in marine sediments allowed us to discover how osmium changes in the ocean during and after an impact," says Paquay.
The scientists expect that this new approach to estimating impact size will become an important complement to a more well-known method based on iridium.
Paquay, along with co-author Gregory Ravizza of UHM and collaborators Tarun Dalai from the Indian Institute of Technology and Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, also used this method to make estimates of impact size at the K-T boundary.
Even though these method works well for the K-T impact, it would break down for an event larger than that: the meteorite contribution of osmium to the oceans would overwhelm existing levels of the element, researchers believe, making it impossible to sort out the osmium's origin.
Under the assumption that all the osmium carried by meteorites is dissolved in seawater, the geologists were able to use their method to estimate the size of the K-T meteorite as four to six kilometers in diameter.
The potential for recognizing previously unknown impacts is an important outcome of this research, the scientists say.
"We know there were two big impacts, and can now give an interpretation of how the oceans behaved during these impacts," says Paquay. "Now we can look at other impact events, both large and small."
Adapted from materials provided by National Science Foundation.

Fausto Intilla - www.oloscience.com

Unusual Earthquake Swarm Off Oregon Coast Puzzles Scientists

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080413184801.htm

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2008) — Scientists at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center have recorded more than 600 earthquakes in the last 10 days off the central Oregon coast in an area not typically known for a high degree of seismic activity.
This earthquake “swarm” is unique, according to OSU marine geologist Robert Dziak, because it is occurring within the middle of the Juan de Fuca plate – away from the major, regional tectonic boundaries.
“In the 17 years we’ve been monitoring the ocean through hydrophone recordings, we’ve never seen a swarm of earthquakes in an area such as this,” Dziak said. “We’re not certain what it means. But we hope to have a ship divert to the site and take some water samples that may help us learn more.” The water samples may indicate whether the process causing the earthquakes is tectonic or hydrothermal, he added.
At least three of the earthquakes have been of a magnitude of 5.0 or higher, Dziak said, which also is unusual. On Monday (April 7), the largest event took place, which was a 5.4 quake. Seismic activity has continued through the week and a 5.0 tremor hit on Thursday. Numerous small quakes have continued in between the periodic larger events.
Few, if any, of these earthquakes would be felt on shore, Dziak said, because they originate offshore and deep within the ocean.
The earthquakes are located about 150 nautical miles southwest of Newport, Ore., in a basin between two subsurface “faulted” geologic features rising out of the deep abyssal sediments. The hill closest to the swarm location appears to be on a curved structure edging out in a northwestern direction from the Blanco Transform Fault toward the Juan de Fuca ridge, Dziak said.
Analysis of seismic “decay” rates, which look at the decreasing intensity of the tremors as they radiate outward, suggest that the earthquakes are not the usual sequence of a primary event followed by a series of aftershocks, Dziak said.
“Some process going on down there is sustaining a high stress rate in the crust,” he pointed out.
Dziak and his colleagues are monitoring the earthquakes through a system of hydrophones located on the ocean floor. The network – called the Sound Surveillance System, or SOSUS – was used during the decades of the Cold War to monitor submarine activity in the northern Pacific Ocean. As the Cold War ebbed, these and other unique military assets were offered to civilian researchers performing environmental studies, Dziak said.
Hatfield Marine Science Center researchers also have created their own portable hydrophones, which Dziak has deployed in Antarctica to listen for seismic activity in that region. The sensitive hydrophones also have recorded a symphony of sounds revealing not only undersea earthquakes, but the movement of massive icebergs, and vocalizations of whales, penguins, elephant seals and other marine species.
This isn’t the first time the researchers have recorded earthquake swarms off the Oregon coast, Dziak said. In 2005, they recorded thousands of small quakes within a couple of weeks along the Juan de Fuca Ridge northwest of Astoria. Those earthquakes were smaller, he pointed out, and located along the tectonic plate boundary.
This is the eighth such swarm over the past dozen years, Dziak said, and the first seven were likely because of volcanic activity on the Juan de Fuca ridge. The plate doesn't move in a continuous manner and some parts move faster than others. Movement generally occurs when magma is injected into the ocean crust and pushes the plates apart.
“When it does, these swarms occur and sometimes lava breaks through onto the seafloor,” Dziak pointed out. “Usually, the plate moves at about the rate a fingernail might grow – say three centimeters a year. But when these swarms take place, the movement may be more like a meter in a two-week period."
But this eighth swarm may be different.
“The fact that it’s taking place in the middle of the plate, and not a boundary, is puzzling,” Dziak admitted. “It’s something worth keeping an eye on.”
Adapted from materials provided by Oregon State University.

Fausto Intilla - www.oloscience.com

Geologists Say 'Wall Of Africa' Allowed Humanity To Emerge

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071219082604.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2007) — Scientists long have focused on how climate and vegetation allowed human ancestors to evolve in Africa. Now, University of Utah geologists are calling renewed attention to the idea that ground movements formed mountains and valleys, creating environments that favored the emergence of humanity.

"Tectonics [movement of Earth's crust] was ultimately responsible for the evolution of humankind," Royhan and Nahid Gani of the university's Energy and Geoscience Institute write in the January, 2008, issue of Geotimes, published by the American Geological Institute.
They argue that the accelerated uplift of mountains and highlands stretching from Ethiopia to South Africa blocked much ocean moisture, converting lush tropical forests into an arid patchwork of woodlands and savannah grasslands that gradually favored human ancestors who came down from the trees and started walking on two feet -- an energy-efficient way to search larger areas for food in an arid environment.
In their Geotimes article, the Ganis -- a husband-and-wife research team who met in college in their native Bangladesh -- describe this 3,700-mile-long stretch of highlands and mountains as "the Wall of Africa." It parallels the famed East African Rift valley, where many fossils of human ancestors were found.
"Because of the crustal movement or tectonism in East Africa, the landscape drastically changed over the last 7 million years," says Royhan Gani (pronounced rye-hawn Go-knee), a research assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering. "That landscape controlled climate on a local to regional scale. That climate change spurred human ancestors to evolve from apes."
Hominins -- the new scientific word for humans (Homo) and their ancestors (including Ardipithecus, Paranthropus and Australopithecus) -- split from apes on the evolutionary tree roughly 7 million to 4 million years ago. Royhan Gani says the earliest undisputed hominin was Ardipithecus ramidus 4.4 million years ago. The earliest Homo arose 2.5 million years ago, and our species, Homo sapiens, almost 200,000 years ago.
Tectonics -- movements of Earth's crust, including its ever-shifting tectonic plates and the creation of mountains, valleys and ocean basins -- has been discussed since at least 1983 as an influence on human evolution.
But Royhan Gani says much previous discussion of how climate affected human evolution involves global climate changes, such as those caused by cyclic changes in Earth's orbit around the sun, and not local and regional climate changes caused by East Africa's rising landscape.
A Force from within the Earth
The geological or tectonic forces shaping Africa begin deep in the Earth, where a "superplume" of hot and molten rock has swelled upward for at least the past 45 million years. This superplume and its branching smaller plumes help push apart the African and Arabian tectonic plates of Earth's crust, forming the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and the Great Rift Valley that stretches from Syria to southern Africa.
As part of this process, Africa is being split apart along the East African Rift, a valley bounded by elevated "shoulders" a few tens of miles wide and sitting atop "domes" a few hundreds of miles wide and caused by upward bulging of the plume.
The East African Rift runs about 3,700 miles from the Ethiopian Plateau south-southwest to South Africa's Karoo Plateau. It is up to 370 miles wide and includes mountains reaching a maximum elevation of about 19,340 feet at Mount Kilimanjaro.
The rift "is characterized by volcanic peaks, plateaus, valleys and large basins and freshwater lakes," including sites where many fossils of early humans and their ancestors have been found, says Nahid Gani (pronounced nah-heed go-knee), a research scientist. There was some uplift in East Africa as early as 40 million years ago, but "most of these topographic features developed between 7 million and 2 million years ago."
A Wall Rises and New Species Evolve
"Although the Wall of Africa started to form around 30 million years ago, recent studies show most of the uplift occurred between 7 million and 2 million years ago, just about when hominins split off from African apes, developed bipedalism and evolved bigger brains," the Ganis write.
"Nature built this wall, and then humans could evolve, walk tall and think big," says Royhan Gani. "Is there any characteristic feature of the wall that drove human evolution?"
The answer, he believes, is the variable landscape and vegetation resulting from uplift of the Wall of Africa, which created "a topographic barrier to moisture, mostly from the Indian Ocean" and dried the climate. He says that contrary to those who cite global climate cycles, the climate changes in East Africa were local and resulted from the uplift of different parts of the wall at different times.
Royhan Gani says the change from forests to a patchwork of woodland and open savannah did not happen everywhere in East Africa at the same time, and the changes also happened in East Africa later than elsewhere in the world.
The Ganis studied the roughly 300-mile-by-300-mile Ethiopian Plateau -- the most prominent part of the Wall of Africa. Previous research indicated the plateau reached its present average elevation of 8,200 feet 25 million years ago. The Ganis analyzed rates at which the Blue Nile River cut down into the Ethiopian Plateau, creating a canyon that rivals North America's Grand Canyon. They released those findings in the September 2007 issue of GSA Today, published by the Geological Society of America.
The conclusion: There were periods of low-to-moderate incision and uplift between 29 million and 10 million years ago, and again between 10 million and 6 million years ago, but the most rapid uplift of the Ethiopian Plateau (by some 3,200 vertical feet) happened 6 million to 3 million years ago.
The Geotimes paper says other research has shown the Kenyan part of the wall rose mostly between 7 million and 2 million years ago, mountains in Tanganyika and Malawi were uplifted mainly between 5 million and 2 million years ago, and the wall's southernmost end gained most of its elevation during the past 5 million years.
"Clearly, the Wall of Africa grew to be a prominent elevated feature over the last 7 million years, thereby playing a prominent role in East African aridification by wringing moisture out of monsoonal air moving across the region," the Ganis write. That period coincides with evolution of human ancestors in the area.
Royhan Gani says the earliest undisputed evidence of true bipedalism (as opposed to knuckle-dragging by apes) is 4.1 million years ago in Australopithecus anamensis, but some believe the trait existed as early as 6 million to 7 million years ago.
The Ganis speculate that the shaping of varied landscapes by tectonic forces -- lake basins, valleys, mountains, grasslands, woodlands -- "could also be responsible, at a later stage, for hominins developing a bigger brain as a way to cope with these extremely variable and changing landscapes" in which they had to find food and survive predators.
For now, Royhan Gani acknowledges the lack of more precise timeframes makes it difficult to link specific tectonic events to the development of upright walking, bigger brains and other key steps in human evolution.
"But it all happened within the right time period," he says. "Now we need to nail it down."
Adapted from materials provided by University of Utah.

Fausto Intilla

www.oloscience.com

Without Its Insulating Ice Cap, Arctic Surface Waters Warm To As Much As 5 C Above Average

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071212201236.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 17, 2007) — Record-breaking amounts of ice-free water have deprived the Arctic of more of its natural "sunscreen" than ever in recent summers. The effect is so pronounced that sea surface temperatures rose to 5 C above average in one place this year, a high never before observed, says the oceanographer who has compiled the first-ever look at average sea surface temperatures for the region.

Such superwarming of surface waters can affect how thick ice grows back in the winter, as well as its ability to withstand melting the next summer, according to Michael Steele, an oceanographer with the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory. Indeed, since September, the end of summer in the Arctic, winter freeze-up in some areas is two months later than usual.
The extra ocean warming also might be contributing to some changes on land, such as previously unseen plant growth in the coastal Arctic tundra, if heat coming off the ocean during freeze-up is making its way over land, says Steele, who spoke December 12 at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
He is lead author of "Arctic Ocean surface warming trends over the past 100 years," accepted for publication in AGU's Geophysical Research Letters. Co-authors are physicist Wendy Ermold and research scientist Jinlun Zhang, both of the UW Applied Physics Laboratory.
"Warming is particularly pronounced since 1995, and especially since 2000," the authors write. The spot where waters were 5 C above average was in the region just north of the Chakchi Sea. The historical average temperature there is -1 C -- remember that the salt in ocean water keeps it liquid at temperatures that would cause fresh water to freeze. This year water in that area warmed to 4 C, for a 5-degree change from the average.
That general area, the part of the ocean north of Alaska and Eastern Siberia that includes the Bering Strait and Chukchi Sea, experienced the greatest summer warming. Temperatures for that region were generally 3.5 C warmer than historical averages and 1.5 C warmer than the historical maximum.
Such widespread warming in those areas and elsewhere in the Arctic is probably the result of having increasing amounts of open water in the summer that readily absorb the sun's rays, Steele says. Hard, white ice, on the other hand, can work as a kind of sunscreen for the waters below, reflecting rather than absorbing sunlight. The warming also may be partly caused by increasing amounts of warmer water coming from the Pacific Ocean, something scientists have noted in recent years.
The Arctic was primed for more open water since the early 1990s as the sea-ice cover has thinned, due to a warming atmosphere and more frequent strong winds sweeping ice out of the Arctic Ocean via Fram Strait into the Atlantic Ocean where the ice melts. The wind effect was particularly strong in the summer of 2007.
Now the situation could be self-perpetuating, Steele says. For example, he calculates that having more heat in surface waters in recent years means 23 to 30 inches less ice will grow in the winter than formed in 1965. Since sea ice typically grows about 80 inches in a winter, that is a significant fraction of ice that's going missing, he says.
Then too, higher sea surface temperatures can delay the start of freeze-up because the extra heat must be discharged from the upper ocean before ice can form. "The effect on net winter growth would probably be negligible for a delay of several weeks, but could be substantial for delays of several months," the authors write.
The work is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Washington.

Fausto Intilla

www.oloscience.com

Natural Climate Changes Can Intensify Hurricanes More Efficiently Than Global Warming

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071212201954.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 13, 2007) — Natural climate variations, which tend to involve localized changes in sea surface temperature, may have a larger effect on hurricane activity than the more uniform patterns of global warming, a report in Nature suggests.

In the debate over the effect of global warming on hurricanes, it is generally assumed that warmer oceans provide a more favorable environment for hurricane development and intensification. However, several other factors, such as atmospheric temperature and moisture, also come into play.
Drs. Gabriel A. Vecchi of the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and Brian J. Soden from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science analyzed climate model projections and observational reconstructions to explore the relationship between changes in sea surface temperature and tropical cyclone 'potential intensity' - a measure that provides an upper limit on cyclone intensity.
They found that warmer oceans do not alone produce a more favorable environment for storms because the effect of remote warming can counter, and sometimes overwhelm, the effect of local surface warming. "Warming near the storm acts to increase the potential intensity of hurricanes, whereas warming away from the storms acts to decrease their potential intensity," Vecchi said.
Their study found that long-term changes in potential intensity are more closely related to the regional pattern of warming than to local ocean temperature change. Regions that warm more than the tropical average are characterized by increased potential intensity, and vice versa. "A surprising result is that the current potential intensity for Atlantic hurricanes is about average, despite the record high temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean over the past decade." Soden said. "This is due to the compensating warmth in other ocean basins."
"As we try to understand the future changes in hurricane intensity, we must look beyond changes in Atlantic Ocean temperature. If the Atlantic warms more slowly than the rest of the tropical oceans, we would expect a decrease in the upper limit on hurricane intensity," Vecchi added. "This is an interesting piece of the puzzle."
"While these results challenge some current notions regarding the link between climate change and hurricane activity, they do not contradict the widespread scientific consensus on the reality of global warming," Soden noted.
The journal article is entitled "Effect of Remote Sea Surface Temperature Change on Tropical Cyclone Potential Intensity."
Adapted from materials provided by University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science.

Fausto Intilla

www.oloscience.com