Scientists find Antarctic ice is melting faster.

[Dennis Barsten]

CANBERRA (Reuters) - The summer ice melt in parts of Antarctica is at its highest level in 1,000 years, Australian and British researchers reported on Monday, adding new evidence of the impact of global warming on sensitive Antarctic glaciers and ice shelves.

Researchers from the Australian National University and the British Antarctic Survey found data taken from an ice core also shows the summer ice melt has been 10 times more intense over the past 50 years compared with 600 years ago.

"It's definitely evidence that the climate and the environment is changing in this part of Antarctica," lead researcher Nerilie Abram said.

Abram and her team drilled a 364-metre (400-yard) deep ice core on James Ross Island, near the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, to measure historical temperatures and compare them with summer ice melt levels in the area.

They found that, while the temperatures have gradually increased by 1.6 degrees Celsius (2.9 degrees Fahrenheit) over 600 years, the rate of ice melting has been most intense over the past 50 years.

That shows the ice melt can increase dramatically in climate terms once temperatures hit a tipping point.

"Once your climate is at that level where it is starting to go above zero degrees, the amount of melt that will happen is very sensitive to any further increase in temperature you may have," Abram said.

Robert Mulvaney, from the British Antarctic Survey, said the stronger ice melts are likely responsible for faster glacier ice loss and some of the dramatic collapses from the Antarctic ice shelf over the past 50 years.

Their research was published in the Nature Geoscience journal.

(Reporting by James Grubel; Editing by Paul Tait)

[LoveLife&Laughter]

Natures natural methods of handling pollution can't handle the amount in the atmosphere thanks to carbon emissions   We need a way to clean up; it's already too late to slow down / carbon tax thingie.

[Dennis Barsten]

Must be the Republican Propaganda of: no see, no hear, No talk...?

[ProblemAgain]

a simple simon picture article....but it might get the point across...in a nutshell, drought and global warming impact rainfall which impacts agriculture which causes scarcity instead of abundance...scarcity causes commodities such as corn and wheat to rise...which also causes prices to rise on food products that utilize those commodities ..and causes meat prices to rise because feedstocks are more expensive....better bend over and get ready

A clouded outlook

Much of the midsection of the United States is experiencing a drought. More than half of the Lower 48 states recently had abnormally dry conditions that qualified as a moderate drought or worse.

More than 80% of seven states were in severe drought, characterized by crop or pasture loss, water shortages and water restrictions. Depending on whether the hardest-hit regions see significant precipitation, crop yields could continue to fall and drought conditions could persist for months.

When the drought began in 2012, conditions were most serious in Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, said Brad Rippey, a meteorologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The USDA said that 59% of the nation's rangeland and pastureland was in poor or very poor condition that summer due to drought, causing corn and hay harvests to be depleted. The ensuing shortage of livestock feed forced some ranchers to destroy cattle, which drove up beef prices.

By late 2012, drought conditions were spreading westward, Rippey said, to Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Oklahoma, the drought's current epicenter.

Relatively large areas in the worst-off states are experiencing what the USDA defines as "exceptional drought," marked by "exceptional and widespread crop/pasture losses (and) shortages of water in reservoirs, streams and wells creating water emergencies."

The last time the United States saw a drought close to this level of severity was in the 1980s, Rippey said. But even compared with that drought, the current conditions may be worse. "You really need to go back to the 1950s to find a drought that lasted and occupied at least as much territory," Rippey said.

The possibility of global or national water shortages has emerged as an investment theme in recent years, with exchange-traded funds including the PowerShares Water Resources Portfolio (PHO) and Guggenheim S&P Global Water Index (CGW) allowing anyone to play the sector.

The website 24/7 Wall St. took a look at the states running out of water, using as a starting point data from the U.S. Drought Monitor, produced in partnership by the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the USDA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

http://money.msn.com/investing/5-states-running-out-of-water