Earth-Save

According to research from British climate scientists, there is a 50-50 chance the Earth’s temperature will rise to disaster levels over the next century.  Such exclamations of doom make catchy headlines, but what does it mean in practical terms?

The scientists believe that a 2-degree Celsius increase in global temperatures would cause massive heat waves and droughts, many worse than the 2003 European heat wave that killed thousands of people.

But even with heavy cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of 3 percent a year from 2015 on, there is only a 50% chance of preventing the temperature from rising that much.  And every decade delay in reducing emissions will cause temperatures to go up by another half a degree, researchers say.

Story at London Times

The frozen interior of Antarctica had long been the counter-example to global warming, with some areas getting even colder as the rest of the world warmed rapidly.

But climate researchers have now proven this to be false.  A study by Penn State University shows that the entire continent has actually been warming for the past 50 years.  "Antarctica is warming, and it’s warming at the same rate as the rest of the planet," said study co-author Michael Mann.

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A large majority of scientists believe that human-induced global warming is real.  The University of Illinois surveyed 3,146 scientists.  The results say 90% of scientists believe that mean global temperatures have risen since pre-1800s levels, and 82% believe that human activity is a significant factor in raising global temps.

However there is a divide between climatologists and other scientists as to whether humans are to blame for global warming.  Nearly 97% of climatologists who perform climate research believe that humans play a role.  But only 64% of meteorologists and 47% of petroleum geologists believe in human involvement.

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Terra is the flagship satellite of NASA’s Earth Observing System, a series of satellites gazing down on our planet from the unique vantage point of space.  Focused on measurements important for U.S. and international scientists, Terra helps research how Earth’s lands, oceans, air, ice and life function together as an environmental system.

This photo of our planet was taken by the Earth Observing System flagship Terra.  This spectacular "blue marble" was the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date.  Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice and clouds into a seamless true-color mosaic of every square kilometer of our planet.

See more at SpaceToday

Earth is a planet on which we humans live.  Earth is the third planet from the Sun.  Earth orbits the Sun once every (approximately) 366.26 days, where a day is the time it takes for Earth to rotate once on its axis.

Home to millions of species, including humans, Earth is the only place in the universe where life is known by humans to exist.  Earth formed 4.54 billion years ago, and life appeared on its surface within a billion years.  Earth is expected to support life for another 1.5 billion years, after which the Sun will brighten and eliminate the biosphere.

Earth’s outer surface is divided into several rigid plates that migrate gradually across the surface over millions of years.  About 71% of Earth’s surface is covered with salt-water oceans, the rest consisting of continents and islands.  Liquid water, necessary for all known life, is not known by humans to exist on any other planet in the universe.  Earth’s interior remains geologically active, with a thick layer of relatively solid mantle, a liquid outer core that generates a magnetic field, and a solid iron inner core.

Adapted from Wikipedia