BRIEFINGS Climate Change TM 2012 RY & Environment A NOVEMBER 2011 NOVEMBER FEBRU www.ScientificAmerican.com Inside Inside Atlantic Current Slowdown 2 Kyoto Relocated Carbon Production 2 Cosmic Rays and Clouds 4 Earth’s Sensitivity to Carbon Dioxide 4 Climate Change and Body Size 5 Europe’s Windy Future 6 TM BRIEFINGS | Climate Change & Environment 2 national emissions are debat- OCEANOGRAPHY able, however, because it may BRIEFINGS encourage so-called carbon Atlantic current leakage, in which carbon-inten- oto sive production is relocated out- slowdown ckph to Scientific American Briefings: Climate S I side national borders. Change & Environment consists of / RESEARCHERS HAVE long the- ers Rahel Aichele and Gabriel ck summaries of recent peerreviewed articles I from the scientific literature. It draws these orized that the ocean’s thermo- V Felbermayr of the University of ott summaries from the journals of Nature Sc Publishing Group, including Nature, Nature haline or meridional over- Munich, Germany, compiled a Hillside fires in California. Climate Change, Nature Geoscience, Nature turning circulation — an ocean set of annual data on the carbon Physics and the Nature Reviews journals. “conveyor belt” driven by tem- and/or shifting of habitat for footprint — the sum of domestic Mariette DiChristina perature and salinity gradients, many species. As a result there is carbon emissions and net emis- Senior Vice President and Editor-in-Chief, Scientific American which includes the warm North growing interest in proactive ad- sions embodied in trade — of 40 Philip Yam Atlantic Gulf Stream — might aptation strategies, perhaps the countries from 1995 to 2007. Managing Editor, Online, Scientific American slow down as a result of climate most controversial of which is Their model allowed them to John Rennie change. But this has proven dif- assisted colonization, in which isolate the impact of the pro- Contributing Editor, Scientific American ficult to measure. species are moved to new suit- tocol commitments on domestic Michael Mrak Uwe Send of the Scripps In- able habitat that they could not emissions from the impact on Design Director, Scientific American stitution of Oceanography in have reached on their own. the overall carbon footprint. The Philip Campbell Editor-in-Chief, Nature California, and colleagues, Conservation biologist Helen researchers also estimated the looked at readings from three Regan, at the University of Cali- impact of the protocol on the Steven Inchcoombe Managing Director, Nature Publishing Group, moored buoys that are part of fornia, Riverside, USA, and col- carbon-import ratio — the and President, Scientific American the Meridional Overturning leagues focused on Tecate cy- amount of emissions embodied Mike Florek Variability Experiment (MOVE) press, a rare fire-dependant tree in imports relative to domestic Executive Vice President, Scientific American array, anchored at either end of found in California. They emissions. An increase in the Bruce Brandfon a single 1,000-km strip running tracked the impacts of climate ratio indicates that carbon Vice President and Publisher, Scientific American eastwards from Guadalupe, change on the tree’s habitat to leakage has occurred. Wendy Elman Vice President, Digital Solutions, Scientific American north of Venezuela. Data from investigate whether assisted col- Michael Voss January 2000 to June 2009 onization could help offset Vice President and Associate Publisher, Marketing showed a 20 percent decrease in threats, such as habitat loss and and Business Development, Scientific American deep-ocean southward flow altered fire regimes. Christian Dorbandt across this line. This is the first The results suggest that as- Managing Director, Consumer Marketing, Scientific American direct observation of interan- sisted colonization could be an Matt Hansen nual and decadal variability in effective risk-minimizing Senior Production Editor, Nature Publishing Group this current, the team reports. strategy, so long as there are Kerrissa Lynch The slowdown is probably a suitable sites nearby and trans- oto Web Production Editor, Scientific American ckph result of natural variability rather located trees are able to estab- to S I HOW TO CONTACT US c/ than climate change, the team lish successfully. However, as- evi For subscription correspondence, including lj change of e-mail addresses: says, and is likely to reverse sisted colonization may be inef- U.S. and Canada: 800-333-1199 within a few years. Under- fective where other threats are adosav R Outside the North America: +1-515-248-7684 A h Email: [email protected] standing such fluctuations is im- ongoing, such as where humans AS S Postal address: Scientific American Briefings, Box portant for climate prediction, have increased the rate or se- 3187, Harlan, IA 51537 Annual subscription (12 issues): $19.95 (USD) and more data will come from the verity of fire outbreaks. They found that, on average, For editorial comments: Rapid Climate Change Project’s —Alastair Brown, the Kyoto commitments have re- Email: [email protected] array of 20 moored instruments, Nature Climate Change duced domestic emissions by 7 www.ScientificAmerican.com installed in 2004 between the percent, but the carbon-import ■■ Glob. Change Biol. doi: Canary Islands and the Bahamas. ratio increased on average by Scientific American is a trademark of 10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02586.x (2011) Scientific American, Inc., used with permission. —Nicola Jones, about 14 percent. This implies a Nature Climate Change substantial relocation of carbon- EMISSIONS TRADE intensive production; carbon ■■ Geophys. Res. Lett. doi: TM leakage cancelled out the do- 10.1029/2011GL049801 (in the press) The effects of mestic savings, rendering carbon Kyoto footprints unchanged. ECOLOGY —Monica Contestabile, THE KYOTO Protocol, which Nature Climate Change Moving trees came into force in 2005, was the ■■ J. Environ. Econ. Manage. doi: 10.1016/ CLIMATE CHANGE is expected first multilateral attempt to cap to lead to significant shrinkage carbon emissions. Its effects on j.jeem.2011.10.005 (2011) SUBScRIBE >> TM BRIEFINGS | Climate Change & Environment 3 lyst is added, three of these rings chemically join together, re- leasing hydrogen in the process. Liu’s work was funded by a US Department of Energy project that is aiming to develop a viable liquid or solid storage mechanism for hydrogen fuel by 2017. The team is now working to make recycling of their ON THE COVER starting material cheaper and The North Atlantic Gulf more energy efficient. stream, part of the ocean’s uoman —Nicola Jones, /l thermohaline circulation oto Nature Climate Change system, exerts a significant ckph to S I ■■ J. Am. Chem. Soc. doi: 10.1021/ influence on the Logging site in the Amazon. ja208834v (2011) hemisphere’s climate. Studies have begun to measure its natural FORESTRY a potential strategy for managing clIMATOlOGY variability. See page 2. tropical forest that minimizes Selective logging risks to the climate. Teak record for Credit: RedAndr/Wikimedia TROPICAL DEFORESTATION —Alastair Brown, Commons contributed about 16 percent of Nature Climate Change Burma the total anthropogenic carbon THERE ARE few long-term in- emissions between 2000 and ■■ Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA doi: 10.1073/ strument-based climate records 2006. In addition to releasing pnas.1105068108 (2011) in Asia, so researchers turn to carbon into the atmosphere, de- natural records instead. This in- forestation changes land surface TECHNOLOGY cludes tree rings from species, reflectivity, which affects regional such as teak, that have identifi- temperature and precipitation Liquid hydrogen able rings from the wet and dry patterns. Reduced-impact log- FUEL-CELL CARS — which run seasons in the tropics. In 2010, a ging, which selects certain valu- on hydrogen and emit only water tree-ring atlas of droughts and able trees, is intended to mini- from their tailpipes — offer a monsoons in Asia over the last mize disruption of the forest compelling way to reduce trans- 1,000 years was published but canopy, but the effect of this log- port emissions. However, manu- some countries were not repre- ging practice on land–atmosphere facturers have struggled to find sented in the regional study. carbon exchange has not been ways of safely storing enough hy- Now, Rosanne D’Arrigo of the well quantified. drogen in a car for long journeys. Tree-Ring Laboratory at the Scott Miller of the Atmospheric Researchers have now taken Lamont-Doherty Earth Observa- Sciences Research Center at the a step towards an alternative: tory in New York, and colleagues, State University of New York, US, storing the hydrogen as a liquid. have looked at teak samples from and co-workers measured carbon University of Oregon chemist Burma’s Maingtha Reserve dioxide exchange and various eco- Shih-Yuan Liu and colleagues re- Forest, revealing a climate record logical parameters to investigate port the creation of a new mate- stretching from 1613 to 2009. the effects of selective logging on rial: BN-methylcyclopentane, a Their results match well with carbon exchange in an old-growth five-membered cyclic amine bo- those from neighboring coun- Amazonian forest. rane that is a stable liquid at tries, D’Arrigo’s team reports. Results suggest that the log- room temperature and pressure. They recommend stitching to- ging caused small decreases in When a cheap iron chloride cata- gether more such records, al- Scientific AmericanBriefings, Climate Change & Environment, Volume 1, Number 2, February 2012, published monthly by Scientific American, a primary production, leaf produc- though intense logging makes it division of Nature America, Inc., 75 Varick Street, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10013-1917. tion and latent heat flux, and in- hard to find long-lived trees. Subscription rates: 1 year (12 issues) $19.95 (USD). Please send subscription correspondence, including change creases in respiration, tree mor- —Nicola Jones, of e-mail and postal addresses to: tality and wood production. The Nature Climate Change Scientific American Briefings, Box 3187, Harlan, IA 51537. E-mail address for subscription inquires: net effect of reduced-impact log- oto [email protected].