August

100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge

100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge. To enable 100 cities to better address the increasing shocks and stresses of the 21st century, the Rockefeller Foundation has launched the 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge. One hundred cities from across the globe will be selected to receive technical support and resources for developing and implementing plans for urban resilience. Municipal government leaders or major institutions that have a predominant association with a city and demonstrate collaborative partnership with a municipal government are encouraged to apply. For more information and to start the registration process click here. Registration Deadline: September 23, 2013.

August 1, 2013

Our Once and Future Oceans: Taking Lessons From Earth’s Past. In an effort to predict how earth’s ocean’s will be affected by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, scientists are looking to a period of the earth’s history over 50 million ago when the planet was much hotter and carbon dioxide levels were much higher for clues. Paul Falkowski, a professor at Rutgers University notes that there could be significant changes to all the planet’s ecosystems as a result of changes to the ocean’s chemistry and hydrological processes.

August 2, 2013

NOAA: State of Climate in 2012. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has recently released the 2012 State of the Climate report. The report, designed to inform both the public and private sectors, provides up-to-date information on climate trends including temperature patterns, changes in the cryosphere, and sea level changes. The peer reviewed report, compiled by scientists across the world, provides a reliable update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on land, sea, ice, and sky.  2012 was one of the 10 warmest years on record worldwide. One of the defining events of the year was that Arctic sea ice melted to its lowest extent ever recorded. The Greenland ice sheet was also observed to exhibit some form of melt over 97 percent of its area during a two day span in July 2012. Atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations rose after a period of slight decline associated with the global economic downturn, with concentrations exceeding 400 ppm at several Arctic observational sites.  . Click here to read the highlights of the report, or click here to download the full report.

August 6, 2013

Rutgers researcher explores cooling atmosphere of Southeast Unites States. Annmarie Carlton, a professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences and CECI affiliate, has been in Alabama conducting a study focused on revealing why certain parts of the country are actually cooling rather than warming along with global climate change trends. The research suggests that organic compounds in the atmosphere emitted by forests interact with emissions from human activities to form ozone which effectively blocks out the sun.