"Kate Brown" wrote in message
...
In article , dated Wed, 26 Jan 2005,
Alan wrote
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4210629.stm


Are there similar reports coming from inside the US - glaciers melting
in the Rockies, weather patterns moving, that sort of thing? I ask
because there seems to be a kind of consensus in certain quarters that
climate change is not actually happening in the US. I find this hard to
believe, though anyone who saw Newsnight last night will know what I
mean.

The main greenhouse gas is water vapour. By ploughing up the soil
the Americans have dried out their soil, which led to them having high
temperatues in the thirties ending with the Dust Bowl. Now the increase
in CO2 cannot produce more water vapour in the Mid West, so global
warming is much less there. They have had forest fires and the snow
on the Rockies is melting, but temperatures have only increased
marginally.

Cheer,Alastair.

In article , Graham P Davis writes:
Keith Dancey wrote:

snip

The biggest 'biomass' (and the one we know least about) that takes CO2 out
of the atmosphere is the plankton.


Last summer witnessed one of Britain's biggest seabird disasters, when
many colonies around Shetland bred not a single bird.

Thousands of dead adult guilletmots have been found along Scotish coasts.

Arctic Terns failed to raise a single chick.

Kittiwakes failed to raise a single chick.

Fulmar populations are crashing.


The reason for this disaster was the collapse of the plankton population
at the base of the food chain. A 3C rise in sea temperature killed off
all the plankton species.

Any idea whether the same thing happened in the summer of 1968, when the
ocean west of Scotland was also 3 DegC above normal? Of course, this was
probably a different "normal".


Sorry, I don't have any information on that. Breeding season failures are
not uncommon - these are relatively long-lived birds with low numbers of
eggs - but it demonstrated an example of the fragility of wildlife (plankton
are wildlife) to climate change.

Also, it is possible that the northern isles have different plankton species
to those west of Scotland (something else I don't know) and that those around
Shetland were more susceptible to over-heating?

But it does rather put a dampener on any hopes that increased atmospheric CO2
can be mopped up by plankton.


Cheers,

keith




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