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Iran in context with two Iranian-American journalists.

Atmospheric scientists worldwide are seeking to save Australia’s involvement in a NASA-led global network of instruments that monitor microscopic particles called “aerosols”, which play an important role in cooling and warming the Earth’s climate.

When most people think of aerosols, their mind turns to fly spray or deodorant. But the term has a much broader meaning, covering any microscopic particle that can remain airborne for long periods. Think of household dust floating in a ray of sun through your window. It’s an aerosol. So is smoke, salt spray from the sea, ultrafine sand from beaches and deserts, ash from volcanoes, and the carbon soot emitted from car and truck exhaust pipes.

These aerosols sometimes give us blazing red sunsets. But they are also crucial in controlling the Earth’s climate, acting as both warming and cooling agents. Although, molecular gases like methane and carbon dioxide garner more attention for their strong warming effect.

A stark example of the role atmospheric aerosols can play is the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. The 20 million tonnes of aerosol ejected into the atmosphere by this eruption reduced average global temperatures by 0.5℃ for the following two years.

Crucial monitoring

An important tool in the study of atmospheric aerosols is an international monitoring network, led by NASA, called the Aerosol Robotic Network AERONET. It consists of more than 450 monitoring stations across seven continents, including several sites in Australia.

AERONET’s data help atmospheric scientists worldwide to understand how aerosols influence both the global climate, and the daily weather at local scales. The importance of aerosols in the weather is twofold. In addition to affecting atmospheric heat balance, aerosols are also responsible for seeding the formation of clouds.

CSIRO’s reported plans to withdraw from AERONET has dismayed atmospheric scientists, including NASA’s Brent Holben, lead scientist on the AERONET program. CSIRO chief executive Larry Marshall has reportedly justified his planned changes to the agency’s climate science program on the need to divert resources towards a focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation.

A shift in focus towards action is certainly admirable. As any rational citizen knows, climate change is a clear and present danger to our future, and the need for compelling action towards mitigation and adaptation is urgent.

Government action on climate change is highly encouraged by atmospheric scientists. But it’s dangerous to develop climate policies without reference to reliable, up-to-date environmental data on global temperature, carbon dioxide levels and aerosols, just as it would be foolhardy to develop national economic policy without reliable economic data on national debt, government revenue and expenditure, and unemployment figures.

Whether it’s the economy or the climate, without an eye on the data, how can one be sure that policy is having the intended outcome?

Aerosol tracking is vital

Aerosol data of the kind that AERONET provides are vital to the climate change mitigation and adaptation goals upon which CSIRO is now focusing its efforts. Here are two clear reasons why.

A key strategy to reduce greenhouse emissions is the widespread uptake of renewable energy sources, particularly solar energy. Australia, the sunburnt country, has enough sunshine to power not just our own population, but with future storage technologies, enough to export for national profit.

Aerosols have a significant influence on how much sunlight makes it onto the surface of a solar panel. Aerosol particles scatter and absorb the Sun’s rays, and they also help to form clouds which can reduce solar panels' effectiveness. Thus having precise data on atmospheric aerosols in Australian skies is vital to maximising the output, efficiency and stability of our solar energy facilities.

The second reason involves adapting to climate change, rather than mitigating it. Australia’s agriculture industry is highly dependent on rainfall. Droughts and floods are highly damaging, and both are predicted to become more frequent and severe due to climate change.

Once again, aerosols' role in cloud formation is a crucial factor here. Aerosols also affect the properties of existing clouds, such as droplet size, which in turn has a significant impact on rainfall.

Adaptation to changing rainfall patterns and climatic events such as El Niño are vital to continued output and growth in Australian agriculture. Reliable aerosol data – obtained in Australia, by Australia, and specific to the Australian atmosphere – are vital to making informed decisions about how to protect agriculture in the future.

These two examples – one focused on energy and the other concerning agriculture – show how two of Australia’s key economic sectors each rely on atmospheric aerosol monitoring. CSIRO has for many years played a major role in providing these data, and NASA’s Brent Holben, lead scientist on the AERONET program, has rightly urged CSIRO not to stop now.

More broadly, it’s vital to realise that climate monitoring and modelling, and mitigation and adaptation go hand in hand. We can’t build proper policy for action without reliable data and forecast models. The government certainly knows this when it comes to the national economy; the same holds when it comes to climate policy.

This article was amended on May 20, 2016 to reflect the fact that the stated views about CSIRO’s involvement in AEROSPAN are those of Brent Holben, AERONET Lead Project Scientist, NASA, rather than of NASA as a whole.

Surya Karthik Mukkavilli receives funding for this PhD from Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Australian Postgraduate Award at UNSW, Australia. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and should not be attributed to the official policy or position of any agency the author is associated with at present or in the past.

Merlinde Kay has received funding from ARENA.

Bernie Hobbs gets us all excited about the latest advances in embedded solar power we wear like a second skin, and more proof over the limits of our ability to connect to other people in social networks.

The Australian Heritage Council held its 87th meeting on 1 April 2016 in Canberra.

The Minister has approved the inclusion of the species in the categories below under the EPBC Act effective 5 May 2016.

MELTING ANTARCTICA: The Totten Glacier in East Antarctica has an unstable area that could collapse and contribute to more than two metres of sea level rise if climate change remains unchecked, say researchers.

The Great Barrier Reef's health has declined in recent years Reef image from www.shutterstock.com

The Great Barrier Reef has been in the spotlight thanks to severe coral bleaching since March, leaving only 7% of the reef untouched. The bleaching, driven by record-breaking sea temperatures, has been linked to human-caused climate change.

Apart from bleaching, the reef is in serious trouble thanks to a variety of threats. Many species and ecosystems of the Great Barrier Reef are in serious decline.

It is now overwhelmingly clear that we need to fix these problems to give the reef the best chance in a warming world. In fact, the upcoming election is arguably our last chance to put in place a plan that will save the reef.

In a recent paper, we estimate that we need to spend A$10 billion over the next ten years - about five times as much as current state and federal governments are spending – to fix up reef water quality before climate change impacts overwhelm it.

Stop water pollution

Poor water quality is one of the major threats to the Great Barrier Reef. Sediment and nutrients (such as nitrogen) washed by rivers onto the reef cause waters to become turbid, shutting out light for corals and seagrass. It can also encourage algal growth and outbreaks of coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish.

The Queensland and Australian governments have made plans with targets to improve water quality, but the main plan - the Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan – is completely inadequate according to the Australian Academy of Science. Its targets are unlikely to be met. And others have suggested ways to improve water quality on the Great Barrier Reef.

To provide resilience for the Great Barrier Reef against the current and rapidly increasing climate impacts, water quality management needs to be greatly improved by 2025 to meet the targets and guidelines. 2025 is important as it’s likely that climate change effects will be overwhelming after that date. It is also the target date for the Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan.

What needs to be done

In our recent article, we analysed what we need to do to respond to the current crisis, especially for water quality.

1. Refocus management to the “Greater Great Barrier Reef (GBR)” – that is, include management of Torres Strait, Hervey Bay and river catchments that run into the reef as priorities along with the world heritage area. This area is shown in figure above.

2. Prioritise management for ecosystems in relatively good condition, such Torres Strait, northern Cape York and Hervey Bay which have the highest current integrity. These areas should still be prioritised despite the recent severe bleaching in the northern Great Barrier Reef.

3. Investigate methods of cross-boundary management to achieve simultaneous cost-effective terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystem protection in the Greater GBR.

4. Develop a detailed, comprehensive, costed water quality management plan for the Greater GBR. In the period 2009-16, more than A$500 million was spent on water quality management (with some success) without a robust comprehensive plan to ensure the most effective use of the funding.

5. Use existing federal legislation (the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Act and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act) to regulate catchment activities that lead to damage to the Greater GBR, together with the relevant Queensland legislation. These rules were established long ago and are immediately available to tackle terrestrial pollutant discharge.

6. Fund catchment and coastal management to the required level to largely solve the pollution issues for the Greater GBR by 2025, to provide resilience for the system in the face of accelerating climate change impacts. The funding required is large – of the order of A$1 billion per year over the next ten years but small by comparison to the worth of the Great Barrier Reef – estimated to be of the order of A$20 billion per year.

7. Continue enforcement of the zoning plan.

8. Show commitment to protecting the Greater GBR through greenhouse gas emissions control, of a scale to be relevant to protecting the reef (for example those proposed by the Climate Change Authority), by 2025.

Unless immediate action is taken to improve water quality, the onset of accelerating climate change impacts mean there is little chance the current decline in reef health can be prevented.

Jon Brodie has received funding over the last two years from the Australian Government, the Queensland Government, Natural Resource Management groups, WWF, UNEP, Melbourne Water, NSW EPA.

Richard Pearson has in the past received funding from the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council and the Marine and Tropical Science Research Facility. He is a member of ACF.

New mapping of one of the most remote areas in Antarctica has revealed regions deep within Earth’s largest ice sheet that are particularly prone to rapid melting.

Our study, published today in Nature, is focused on East Antarctica’s Totten Glacier, the outlet for the world’s largest ice catchment. The results suggest that if rising global temperatures trigger the glacier to retreat rapidly – as has happened previously in its history – this region alone could deliver sea-level rises of well over a metre over the ensuing centuries.

The Totten Glacier region is a key area for understanding the long-term vulnerability of the Antarctic Ice Sheet, but until now, knowledge of this region’s glacial history has been very limited.

Our study shows that, although the region near the coast is quite stable on timescales of several millennia, regions further inland have potential for significant and rapid retreat as the climate warms.

Specifically, we identified two stable zones where the ice sheet is not prone to rapid collapse, and two unstable zones, where it is. We have also discovered that transitions between these states have happened repeatedly during the life of the ice sheet.

Stable and not so stable

As part of the international ICECAP project, my colleagues and I used ice-penetrating radar, as well as magnetic and gravity data, to chart the rocks beneath the glacier.

By mapping the shape of the ice-sheet and its base, as well as the thickness of the rocks and sediments beneath, we were able to study the characteristic patterns of erosion left behind by the ice sheet’s previous advances and retreats – thus revealing the ice sheet’s past behaviour.

The observed patterns suggest that the ice sheet has spent much of its history in one of two configurations: either the edge has been close to the current Antarctic coast (within 150 kilometres); or it has been located some 350-550 kilometres inland. In either of these states, the ice would be relatively stable, with this glacier providing sea level fluctuations of less than a metre over the course of glacial cycles.

But the pattern of erosion also shows that melting has periodically forced the ice sheet out of either of these stable states, causing the ice sheet to collapse and retreat far inland. These events might have typically driven up global sea levels by 1.3-1.4 metres over the course of a few centuries.

What is happening today?

Previous studies from satellite data have indicated that the coastal part of the Totten Glacier region and its floating ice shelf are melting rapidly. Last year, the ICECAP team discovered that there is currently warm water circulating underneath a floating portion of the glacier that is causing more melting than might have been expected.

Our results show that following a rapid loss of coastal ice due to the collapse of the floating ice shelf, this region is likely to respond more slowly than other parts of Antarctica to warming temperatures, due to the existence of a “stable zone”.

But as temperatures continue to increase, this glacier is likely to retreat into the unstable zone, and make a rapid and proportionally greater contribution to sea levels.

Our ice sheet modelling suggests that while the Totten region is not the first region in Antarctica to respond to warming climate, it is likely to become progressively more unstable as warming proceeds over hundreds to thousands of years. Ultimately this region could become the “fat end of the wedge” in terms of Antarctica’s overall contribution to rising seas, accounting for almost 15% of Antarctica’s total contribution to sea-level rise. This is likely to happen while other regions have become ice-free, or are stabilising after periods of rapid ice loss.

Our results suggest that the Totten region has severe implications for global sea level rise in warming climate conditions, especially once warming reaches the critical thresholds likely to tip the glacier out of its stable states. Given the long timescales involved for ice-sheet melting it is difficult to say with confidence when this tipping point might be reached.

Increases to carbon dioxide levels today will commit us to temperature increases that persist for thousands of years. The upper limit of the coastal stable zone could be crossed under conditions similar to those predicted for the next century, based on the higher emissions scenarios envisaged by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Alan Aitken receives research funding from the Australian Research Council, the Science and Industry Endowment Fund and the State Government of Western Australia. These funding sources relate to other projects. His contribution to this work was funded by the University of Western Australia's Goodeve Foundation.

Grizzly bears in Alaska and Canada are moving north as their environment warms, bringing them into contact with polar bears located on the coastline

Climate change is known for swelling the oceans and fueling extreme weather, but it may be also causing the curious emergence of a new type of bear in the Arctic.

A bear shot in the frigid expanse of northern Canada is believed to be a grizzly-polar bear hybrid, a consequence of the increasing interactions between the two imposing bear species.

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Country’s low emissions action plan cannot be undone even by a Donald Trump presidency, but it may put global cooperation on climate change at risk

The US would still meet its obligations under the Paris accord on climate change if Donald Trump were elected president, a senior US administration official has told the Guardian.

He said the path of the US towards a lower-carbon economy was already set, and was dependent on market forces that would not easily succumb to political tinkering.

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Women now hold six of the most influential positions at global climate talks, but can they make a difference on the ground? Climate Home reports

Whisper it quietly, but a gender revolution is taking place at the global climate change negotiations.

As of 17 May, the six most influential positions within the UN process are all held by women, a significant increase on last year’s total of two.

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Thanks to the great western commons, which the Bundys and their legislative champions would like to dismantle, all Americans still enjoy the freedom to roam on some of the most spectacular lands on the planet

It goes without saying that in a democracy, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions. The trouble starts when people think they are also entitled to their own facts.

Away out west, on the hundreds of millions of acres of public lands that most Americans take for granted (if they are aware of them at all), the trouble is deep, widespread, and won’t soon go away. Last winter’s armed takeover and 41-day occupation of Malheur national wildlife refuge in south-eastern Oregon is a case in point. It was carried out by people who, if they hadn’t been white and dressed as cowboys, might have been called “terrorists” and treated as such. Their interpretation of the history of western lands and of the judicial basis for federal land ownership – or at least that of their leaders, since they weren’t exactly a band of intellectuals – was only loosely linked to reality.

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The ability to cooperate and coordinate will mean the difference between looking forward with hope to the future or facing catastrophic climate change

In 1972 the law was passed that allowed the UK to join what was then called the European Economic Community (EEC). Despite Europe’s current crises, it’s unchanging, fundamental challenge was expressed that year by Sicco Mansholt, then president of the European commission, probably better than by any of the current voices in the referendum campaign, whether for or against UK remaining in.

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Zero emission milestone reached as country is powered by just wind, solar and hydro-generated electricity for 107 hours

Portugal kept its lights on with renewable energy alone for four consecutive days last week in a clean energy milestone revealed by data analysis of national energy network figures.

Electricity consumption in the country was fully covered by solar, wind and hydro power in an extraordinary 107-hour run that lasted from 6.45am on Saturday 7 May until 5.45pm the following Wednesday, the analysis says.

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Look inside a life-size model of a submarine which the Chinese hope will take humans to the very bottom of the ocean - the Mariana Trench, in the Pacific.

Deep underground, beneath Daya Bay in the south of China, scientists are hunting for the oddest particles in the cosmos - neutrinos.

Government plans to fell Poland’s Białowieża forest have divided families, led to death threats against green campaigners and allegations of an ‘environmental coup’ by government and state timber interests

Europe’s last primeval forest is facing what campaigners call its last stand as loggers prepare to start clear-cutting trees, following the dismissal of dozens of scientists and conservation experts opposed to the plan.

Poland’s new far right government says logging is needed because more than 10% of spruce trees in the Unesco world heritage site of Białowieża are suffering from a bark beetle outbreak. But nearly half the logging will be of other species, according to its only published inventory.

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The Greens were not invited to an election debate over the environment and climate change, and they're not altogether pleased about it.

More than 30 green groups sign statement after damning report says extending regional forestry agreements ‘would constitute an irrational decision on environmental, economic and social grounds’

More than 30 environmental groups have signed a statement demanding that agreements allowing the logging of Australian native forests not be renewed.

Australia’s 10 regional forestry agreements (RFAs) were signed between 1997 and 2001, each running for 20 years, with the first two expiring in 2017.

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SOCIAL NETWORKS: There is a limit to how many people you can have in your social network - now a study reveals why, and how many relationships you need to maintain that network.