Casey Saladino
Ms. Kochis
AP Environmental Science, Period 2
30 April 2014
Final Blog Project
"No More Super-Storm Sandys" explored new simulations that suggest that the atmospheric
conditions that allowed the Hurricane Sandy to follow its unusual path will become
less frequent in the future. From this article, I learned that typically, North
Atlantic hurricanes travel roughly parallel to the East Coast and make landfall
approaching from the south. The October 2012 storm that slammed New Jersey was
an unusual occurrence because it took a left turn and approached from the east,
hitting New Jersey at a right angle. This nearly perpendicular angle to the
shore intensified its destructive storm surge. Recently, Elizabeth Barnes, an
atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, and her
team ran simulations of an extreme warming situation where carbon dioxide
emissions quadruple over the 21st century in order to understand how climate
change might change atmospheric patterns and alter that frequency. Overall,
this article interested me because it described research about Hurricane Sandy,
which affected my community. Additionally, it explains to readers that this hurricane
was a rare occurrence, and is predicted to not happen again for some time.
"The Mendenhall
Glacier" article explored the story of an Alaskan glacier that recently thawed,
revealing an ancient forest beneath. The Mendenhall Glacier is an icy expanse
of 36.8 square miles that has withdrawn about 170 feet each year since 2005. Many
tree stumps are now being exposed to the sunlight due to this thawing. About
five feet of gravel most likely encased the bases of the trees when the glacier
first advanced, keeping the stumps upright even as the glacier plowed over and
snapped the stumps' trunks and limbs. Cathy Connor, an Alaskan geology professor
who participated in research on the thawing glacier explained that there are a
lot of the tree stumps, and this case is especially exciting because it is
possible to see the outermost part of the tree and count back to see how old
the tree was. Although the research performed on this glacier is interesting
and helpful, the thawing glacier represents the bigger ide of Earth's climate
change.
"Coral Reefs and
Climate Change" discussed how coral reefs are improving their chances of
surviving through the end of the century because they may be able to adapt to
moderate climate warning if there are large reductions in carbon dioxide
emissions. The study was conducted by the NOAA's scientists and its academic
partners. An interesting and convincing result of the study shows that coral
reefs have already adapted to part of the warming that has occurred. The study mainly
explores a variety of possible coral adaptive responses to thermal stress
previously identified by other scientists and research. It suggests that coral
reefs may be more resilient than otherwise thought in studies that did not
consider effects of possible adaptation. Through genetic adaptation, the reefs
could reduce their projected rate of temperature-induced bleaching by 20 to 80
percent of levels expected by the year 2100, if there are large reductions in
carbon dioxide emissions. Many of the articles that I summarized for my blog
discussed how many species are having trouble adapting to Earth's climate
change. This article, however; discussed quite the opposite.
