In recent years, public discussion of climate change has included concerns that increased levels of carbon dioxide will contribute to global warming, which in turn may change the circulation in the earth's oceans, with potentially disastrous consequences. In a paper published recently in the journal Science, scientists presented new data from their analysis of ice core samples and ocean deposits dating as far back as 90,000 years ago and suggest that warming, carbon dioxide levels and ocean currents are tightly inter-related. These findings provide researchers with more data and insights into how these phenomena were connected in the past and may lead to a better understanding of future climate trends........

Scientists are homing in on the hurricane-prone Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea to assess the likely changes, between now and the middle of the century, in the frequency, intensity, and tracks of these powerful storms. Initial results are expected early next year. The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo., working with federal agencies as well as the insurance and energy industries, has launched an intensive study to examine how global warming will influence hurricanes in the next few decades........

A team of Yale researchers has observed that certain countries and some U.S. states stand to benefit from the use of compact fluorescent lighting more than others in the fight against global warming. Some places may even produce more mercury emissions by switching from incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescent lighting........

Abrupt climate change is a potential menace that hasn't received much attention. That's about to change. Through its Climate Change Prediction Program, the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Biological and Environmental Research (OBER) recently launched IMPACTS - Investigation of the Magnitudes and Probabilities of Abrupt Climate Transitions - a program led by William Collins of Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division (ESD) that brings together six national laboratories to attack the problem of abrupt climate change, or ACC........

An ongoing rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels might be kept below harmful levels if emissions from coal are phased out within the next few decades, say researchers. They say that less plentiful oil and gas should be used sparingly as well, but that far greater supplies of coal mean that it must be the main target of reductions. Their study appears in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles.......

Scientists have yet to reach a consensus on how much and how quickly melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet will contribute to sea level rise. To shed light on this question, researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia University's Center for Climate Systems Research analyzed the disappearance of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, the last ice sheet to melt completely in the Northern Hemisphere and the closest example of what can be expected to happen to the Greenland Ice Sheet in the next century. Their findings show that sea level rise as a result of ice sheet melt can happen very rapidly. The study will be published online this week in Nature Geoscience.........

The geysers of Yellowstone National Park owe their eistence to the "Yellowstone hotspot"--a region of molten rock buried deep beneath Yellowstone, geologists have found. But how hot is this "hotspot," and what's causing it? In an effort to find out, Derek Schutt of Colorado State University and Ken Dueker of the University of Wyoming took the hotspot's temperature........

A study by a group of prominent seismologists suggests that a pattern of subtle but active faults makes the risk of earthquakes to the New York City area substantially greater than formerly believed. Among other things, they say that the controversial Indian Point nuclear power plants, 24 miles north of the city, sit astride the previously unidentified intersection of two active seismic zones. The paper appears in the current issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America at http://www.bssaonline.org/cgi/reprint/98/4/1696........

Embracing the belief that an interdisciplinary and coordinated research agenda can have a profound impact on advancing science and influencing policy, a group of experts has developed a roadmap for improving our understanding of how mercury moves through the marine ecosystem and into the fish we eat........

Scientists monitoring daily satellite images here of Greenland's glaciers have discovered break-ups at two of the largest glaciers in the last month. They expect that part of the Northern hemisphere's longest floating glacier will continue to disintegrate within the next year. A massive 11-square-mile (29-square-kilometer) piece of the Petermann Glacier in northern Greenland broke away between July 10th and by July 24th. The loss to that glacier is equal to half the size of Manhattan Island. The last major ice loss to Petermann occurred when the glacier lost 33 square miles (86 square kilometers) of floating ice between 2000 and 2001........

In a study of parasites living in three estuaries on the Pacific coast of California and Baja California, scientists have determined that biomass of these parasites exceeds that of top predators, in some cases by more than 20 times. Their findings, which could have significant ecological and biomedical implications, appear in this week's issue of the journal Nature........

Nutrients from the Amazon River's outflow spread well beyond the continental shelf and drive carbon cycling in the tropical ocean, say researchers who conducted a multi-year study. They will publish their results this week online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)........

People living near vulnerable creeks and rivers along Colorado's Front Range may soon get advance notice of potentially deadly floods, thanks to a new forecasting system being tested this summer by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. Known as the NCAR Front Range Flash Flood Prediction System, it combines detailed atmospheric conditions with information about stream flows to predict floods along specific streams and catchments........

After completing one of the longest running experiments ever done on a lake, scientists from the University of Alberta, University of Minnesota and the Freshwater Institute, contend that nitrogen control, in which the European Union and a number of other jurisdictions around the world are investing millions of dollars, is not effective and in fact, may actually increase the problem of cultural eutrophication........

Research at the University of Liverpool has found how Saharan dust storms help sustain life over extensive regions of the North Atlantic Ocean. Working aboard research vessels in the Atlantic, researchers mapped the distribution of nutrients including phosphorous and nitrogen and investigated how organisms such as phytoplankton are sustained in areas with low nutrient levels........

Horticultural crops account for almost 50% of crop sales in the United States, and these crops are carefully managed to ensure good quality. But more information is needed about the crops' growth and response to seasonal and climatic changes so that management practices such as irrigation can be precisely scheduled. Existing research can be difficult to generalize because of variations in crops, planting densities, and cultural practices........

Though a number of policymakers have argued that environmental regulations can negatively impact an organization's bottom line, a new study by George Mason University researcher Nicole Darnall shows that companies that develop green production processes can not only offset the costs of regulations, but can also reap further benefits........

If a warmer Wisconsin climate causes some northern tree species to disappear in the future, it's easy to imagine that southern species will just expand their range northward as soon as the conditions suit them. The reality, though, may not be nearly so simple. A model developed by University of Wisconsin-Madison forest ecologists Robert Scheller and David Mladenoff suggests that while certain northern species, such as balsam fir, spruce and jack pine, are likely to decline as the state's climate warms, oaks, hickories and other southern Wisconsin trees will be slow to replace them........

As per a new study, global. warming could lead to larger changes in snowmelt in the western United States than was previously thought, possibly increasing wildfire risk and creating new water management challenges for agriculture, ecosystems and urban populations. Researchers, including a Purdue University professor of earth and atmospheric sciences, discovered that a critical surface temperature feedback is twice as strong as what had been projected by earlier studies........

For the first time, scientists have taken a detailed look at what lies beneath all of Iceland's volcanoes - and found a world far more complex than they ever imagined. They mapped an elaborate maze of magma chambers - work that could one day help researchers better understand how earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in Iceland and elsewhere in the world........