In all the excitement over Copenhagen, you may not have noticed that there’s another important meeting going on at the moment: the 2009 fall American Geophysical Union. Here’s what Nature’s reporters there have noticed so far and written about on our In the Field and Climate Feedback blogs.
The morning of September 29, 2009, was one Mase Akapo will never forget. Akapo is a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Pago Pago, American Samoa, and one of his jobs is to help prepare the islands for natural disasters. At 6:48 a.m. that day, he felt the ground shaking stronger than he’d ever felt before. When you’re an emergency manager, that means just one thing: get to work.
Arctic vegetation changes amplify warming
Chalk up another piece of dire news for the Arctic in a globally warmed future. Researchers have identified a previously unknown climate feedback effect suggesting that, as vegetation creeps northward, it will accelerate warming trends already in place.
The GRACE gravity-hunting satellites have nailed another significant observation: Groundwater levels in California’s agriculturally rich Central Valley have dropped dramatically since 2003.
Capeless superheroes and rumbling shorelines
I started Fall Meeting bright and early Monday in the vast poster display hall, almost a city block long. The posters, like the oral sessions, cover a couple dozen broad areas of science, but climate change pops up in many of them: ocean science, environmental change, atmospheric science, and others. No one can cover it all, so a reporter depends a little on serendipity, that is, just stumbling onto the right presentation.
Change is in the air this year at the fall American Geophysical Union meeting, and not just because of the gossip in the hallways about what might happen at the climate negotiations in Copenhagen this week. No, the AGU changes are far more navel-gazing and concern the future of the 50,000-member society itself.
If it’s December, it’s the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union. For the 42nd consecutive year, AGU has returned here, and each year more scientists participate, descending on the city from all around the world. It is the must meeting for researchers in Earth and space science, and especially for those studying climate change.