FROM YAHOO NEWS


Temperature swings 100 degrees in one week in Okla. town

By Liz Goodwin

Residents in the Northern Oklahoma town of Nowata experienced a nearly 110-degree shift in the weather this week after a cold front brought temperatures down to a record-setting -31 degrees.

Today, it's a balmy 72 degrees in Nowata. Yesterday, it reached 79 degrees.

"Isn't it crazy? I love it," Nowata resident Julie Koupe told local channel News on 6.

On Feb. 10, it was slightly colder in the region than it was on the South Pole, notes Tulsa World writer Cary Aspinall. More than 3,000 Nowata homes lost power and residents spent the next few days digging their cars and homes out of the snow. There was so much snow in Tulsa last week that city officials began debating provisional plans to truck it out of town.

On Thursday, the 79 degree weather tied for the warmest Feb. 17 since 1907.


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FROM The Guardian

Mass tree deaths prompt fears of Amazon 'climate tipping point'
Scientists fear billions of tree deaths caused by 2010 drought could see vast forest turn from carbon sink to carbon source

Billions of trees died in the record drought that struck the Amazon in 2010, raising fears that the vast forest is on the verge of a tipping point, where it will stop absorbing greenhouse gas emissions and instead increase them.

The dense forests of the Amazon soak up more than one-quarter of the world's atmospheric carbon, making it a critically important buffer against global warming. But if the Amazon switches from a carbon sink to a carbon source that prompts further droughts and mass tree deaths, such a feedback loop could cause runaway climate change, with disastrous consequences.

"Put starkly, current emissions pathways risk playing Russian roulette with the world's largest forest," said tropical forest expert Simon Lewis, at the University of Leeds, and who led the research published today in the journal Science. Lewis was careful to note that significant scientific uncertainties remain and that the 2010 and 2005 drought – thought then to be of once-a-century severity – might yet be explained by natural climate variation.

"We can't just wait and see because there is no going back," he said. "We won't know we have passed the point where the Amazon turns from a sink to a source until afterwards, when it will be too late."

Alex Bowen, from the London School of Economics and Political Science's Grantham research institute on climate change, said huge emissions of carbon from the Amazon would make it even harder to keep global greenhouse gases at a low enough level to avoid dangerous climate change. "It therefore makes it even more important for there to be strong and urgent reductions in man-made emissions."

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FROM DAILYMAIL (SO READ BETWEEN THE LIES!!!)

The sun rises two days early in Greenland, sparking fears that climate change is accelerating
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER


The sun over Greenland has risen two days early, baffling scientists and sparking fears that Arctic icecaps are melting faster than previously thought.


Experts say the sun should have risen over the Arctic nation's most westerly town, Ilulissat, yesterday, ending a month-and-a-half of winter darkness.


But for the first time in history light began creeping over the horizon at around 1pm on Tuesday - 48 hours ahead of the usual date of 13 January.

The mysterious sunrise has confused scientists, although it is believed the most likely explanation is that it is down to the lower height of melting icecaps allowing the sun's light to penetrate through earlier.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1346936/The-sun-rises-days-early-Greenland-sparking-fears-climate-change-accelerating.html#ixzz1BmiMyFA1