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recyclingbin:

Live together with the earth

montereybayaquarium:

How do you do? Did you know that some of our rescued otters go to good homes around the country, like Sina, now at SeaWorld San Diego? (©Monterey Bay Aquarium, photo by Luke Miller)

Learn how you can help save sea otters.

science-junkie:

Understanding the Earth’s climate prior to the industrial era

Climate signals locked in the layers of glacial ice, preserved in the annual growth rings of trees, or fingerprinted in other so-called proxy archives such as lake sediments, speleothems, and corals allow researchers to quantify climate variation prior to instrumental measurements. An international research team has now investigated hundreds of these proxy records from across the globe and compared them with both simulations of the Earth’s climate and instrumental measurements of temperature and precipitation.

The scientists learned that these proxy archives provide an incomplete record of climate variation. The annual width or density of tree-rings is not only influenced by temperature while the ring is developing, but also from the climate of the past years and other factors like tree age. This makes it difficult to extract pure temperature signals from these natural archives. Importantly, the researchers found out that proxy data underestimate climate fluctuations of, for example, air temperature over the land surface where large year-to-year variability is common. In contrast, long-term trends in precipitation tend to be exaggerated by the proxy records. These findings indicate that the proxy data often result in a “blurry picture” of climate variation. The researchers were able to conclude from their work that short-term extreme climate events, such as individual years with hot summers, are not well captured by the proxy reconstructions.

The authors explicitly warn that proxy records that predominately reflect temperature variation should not be used to make conclusions about precipitation change and vice-versa… There is still a lot of basic research needed to reduce uncertainties about how the Earth’s climate system operated prior to the industrial era and how it may operate in the future.

Source: wsl.ch

woodendreams:

(by Steve Thompson images)

travelingcolors:

Cape Kiwanda Sunset | Oregon (by Kevin McNeal)

woodendreams:

(by Mattia Camellini)