Good Morning,

Forecast for summers as we know it: HOT. The first article
summarizes a study that predicts summer temperature increases around the globe do to greenhouse gas levels. Urban legend or scientific fact? I suppose time will tell.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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Study sees permanent hotter summers

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Many regions of the world will see hotter summers in the next 20 to 60 years if greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising, U.S. researchers say. Climate scientists at Stanford University predict many tropical regions in Africa, Asia and South America could see "the permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat" in the next two decades, while the middle latitudes of Europe, China and North America, including the United States, are likely to undergo extreme summer temperature shifts within 60 years, a Stanford release reported Monday. "According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years," study author Noah Diffenbaugh, an assistant professor of environmental science, said. "When scientists talk about global warming causing more heat waves, people often ask if that means that the hottest temperatures will become 'the new normal,'" Diffenbaugh said. "That got us thinking -- at what point can we expect the coolest seasonal temperatures to always be hotter than the historically highest temperatures for that season?" An analysis of more than 50 climate model experiments revealed that many parts of the planet could experience a permanent spike in seasonal temperatures within 60 years, the researchers said. Climate models suggest the tropics are heating up the fastest, they said. "We find that the most immediate increase in extreme seasonal heat occurs in the tropics, with up to 70 percent of seasons in the early 21st century (2010-2039) exceeding the late-20th century maximum," the researchers said.


Ancient farmers chose rice attributes

KOBE, Japan - Farmers in China 10,000 years ago were early pioneers of genetic breeding, developing practices still used today to boost agricultural yields, researchers say. Masanori Yamasaki of Kobe University in Japan says those Chinese farmers, like modern breeders, came to realize shorter plants would produce higher yields, as the stalkier plants could produce more grain without falling over, NewScientist.com reported. So they unwittingly began selective breeding that resulted in a genetic shrinking of rice stems, he says. Yamasaki looked at sticky rice, Oryza sativa japonica, and found two mutations in the variety's SD1 gene that did not exist in a wild variety or in long-grain rice. That suggests a strong effort to conserve and encourage the variety 10,000 years ago, when both sticky and long-grain rice were being domesticated, he says. Yamasaki says he thinks farmers growing the first sticky rice drove this change to get a better harvest and in doing so kicked off an early "green revolution" mirrored in modern efforts last century to select for the SD1 gene to boost yields and feed a burgeoning global population.


Denser forests taking up more carbon

NEW YORK - Forests in many parts of the world are becoming larger carbon storage sinks because of higher density, U.S. and European researchers say. Despite little or no expansion of forest area, the increased density significantly raised the forests' ability to take up and sequester carbon emissions, a release from Rockefeller University said. Even in South America, researchers said, increased density helped maintain regional carbon levels in the face of ongoing deforestation. "The great role of density means that not only conservation of forest area but also managing denser, healthier forests can mitigate carbon emission," Aapo Rautiainen of the University of Helsinki, Finland said. "Forests are like cities -- they can grow both by spreading and by becoming denser," says co-author Iddo Wernick of Rockefeller University's Program for the Human Environment. As an example, researchers found that while U.S. timberland area grew only 1 percent between 1953 and 2007, the combined national volume of growing stock increased by an impressive 51 percent as national forest density increased substantially."We are pleased to report that, of 68 nations studied, forest area is expanding in 45 and density is also increasing in 45," University of Helsinki researcher Pekka Kauppi said. "Changing area and density combined had a positive impact on the carbon stock in 51 countries."


U.S. develops 'alternate' Internet systems

WASHINGTON - The United States is developing an alternate form of communications to the Internet to circumvent censorship, The New York Times said Sunday. By the end of the year, the Obama administration has authorized the State Department to spend $70 million on systems that would allow text and video to be shared electronically before it eventually reaches the Internet, the report said. Various methods have already been created and more are being developed, some of which use cellphones and portable wireless hubs that can be carried in a suitcase. Among others, the governments of China, Syria and Egypt have used censorship to shut down Web sites or the entire Internet to stop dissident activity, while in Afghanistan, militants freeze communications to hamper the government. In an e-mail to the Times, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said as valuable as the Internet can be, alternate systems need to be developed to detour censorship. "We see more and more people around the globe using the Internet, mobile phones and other technologies to make their voices heard as they protest against injustice and seek to realize their aspirations," Clinton wrote. "So we're focused on helping them do that, on helping them talk to each other, to their communities, to their governments and to the world."

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