Climate Central’s climate characters: Now appearing on TIME.com
Many people worry about the link between rising bark-beetle infestations and an increase in western wildfires. But Dr. Susan Prichard, a Research Scientist at the University of Washington, adds another concern: what happens after the fires go out?
Prichard’s story is the latest in a series of video shorts featured on TIME.com and produced by Princeton, NJ-based nonprofit Climate Central, an authoritative, non-advocacy source for science-based information about climate change. The series introduces viewers to people from all walks of life who are studying or dealing with the impact of climate change today.
Climate Central’s Correspondent and Senior Research Scientist, Dr. Heidi Cullen, interviewed Prichard. Cullen says Prichard helps bring …

New Fraunhofer IWES presents research highlights at the European Offshore Wind Energy Conference in Stockholm:
- Research at the offshore wind energy test site alpha ventus
- Rotor Blade Competence Center
- Technical Reliabity
- Wind Power-Management-System WPMS
“We offer the complete research spectrum for advancing offshore wind energy systems”, Dr. Hans Gerd Busmann and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Schmid are justifiably self-assured. They are the directors of the new Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy and Energy System Technology IWES with locations in Bremerhaven and Kassel. Along with their research calalogue, the scientists are currently presenting selected highlights at the leading European offshore wind energy conference EOW in Stockholm.
Highlights presented at the European Offshore Wind Energy Conference
Research at the offshore wind …

Spain is one of the leading European countries, along with Sweden, in terms of wood production for paper paste, but this uses large amounts of energy.
Spanish and Swedish scientists have compared the environmental load stemming from forestry operations, and have concluded that the Spanish sector uses more energy than the Swedish one. They are proposing improvements, such as the use of biofuels, in order to make forestry production more sustainable.
In order to predict the consequences of forestry operations, the scientists have studied the most important wood species used in making paper paste – the eucalyptus (Eucalyptus globulus) plantations in Spain, and those of the Norway Spruce and Scots Pine in Sweden.
The research study, published recently …

Using a completely new method, researchers have shown that high atmospheric and oceanic oxygen content makes the climate colder.
In prehistoric times, the earth experienced two periods of large increases and fluctuations in the oxygen level of the atmosphere and oceans. These fluctuations also lead to an explosion of multicellular organisms in the oceans, which are the predecessors for life as we know it today. The results are now being published in Nature.
Everybody talks about CO2 and other greenhouse gases as causes of global warming and the large climate changes we are currently experiencing. But what about the atmospheric and oceanic oxygen content? Which role does oxygen content play in global warming?
This question has become extremely …

A rare opportunity has allowed a team of biologists to evaluate corals and the essential, photosynthetic algae that live inside their cells before, during, and after a period in 2005 when global warming caused sea-surface temperatures in the Caribbean Ocean to rise.
The team, led by Penn State Assistant Professor of Biology Todd LaJeunesse, found that a rare species of algae that is tolerant of stressful environmental conditions proliferated in corals as the more-sensitive algae were being expelled from corals. The results will be published in the online version of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B on 9 September 2009.
“Symbiodinium trenchi is normally a rare species of micro-alga in the Caribbean,” said LaJeunesse. “Because …

“Salt-loving algae could be the key to the successful development of biofuels as well as being an efficient means of recycling atmospheric carbon dioxide”, Professor John Cushman of the University of Nevada told the Society for General Microbiology meeting at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.
The current major limitation of biofuel production is the lack of adequate feedstocks, soybeans and corn, for biodiesel and ethanol production, respectively. Halophytic (salt-loving) micro-algae can be grown on marginal lands with brackish or salt water unsuitable for traditional agriculture.
Their growth is non-seasonal, making them 10-30 times more productive than terrestrial crops. They can be grown on municipal wastewater and have widespread potential for recycling carbon dioxide from biomass-, coal-, and gas-fired power …

Global climate trend since Nov. 16, 1978: +0.13 C per decade
August temperatures (preliminary)
Global composite temp.: +0.23 C (about 0.41 degrees Fahrenheit) above 20-year average for August.
Northern Hemisphere: +0.28 C (about 0.50 degrees Fahrenheit) above 20-year average for August.
Southern Hemisphere: +0.18 C (about 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit) above 20-year average for August.
July temperatures (revised):
Global Composite: +0.41 C above 20-year average
Northern Hemisphere: +0.21 C above 20-year average
Southern Hemisphere: +0.61 C above 20-year average
(All temperature variations are based on a 20-year average (1979-1998) for the month reported.)
Notes on data released September 8, 2009:
The tropics continued to respond in August to warming caused by the El Niño Pacific Ocean warming event, with the average temperature in the tropics warming from …