Earth Equity News

As Globe Warms, Coasts Cool.By Erik Vance, Scientific American, September 23, 2008. "A group of northern California scientists have found a new bend in the Gordian knot of global warming: coastal cooling. The team, headed by meteorologist Robert Bornstein of San Jose State University, has found that as temperatures rise in California, so do pressure differences that control cool Pacific winds. That means higher temperatures inland create lower ones at the coast. 'It's not that the whole Earth is warming like an oven,' Bornstein says. 'Different parts are warming at different rates, therefore the pressure patterns are upset -- and therefore the wind patterns are upset.' Bornstein, along with colleagues... found that daytime summer highs have been dropping at the coast because of cooling higher winds. The research is part of a growing trend of examining smaller areas to fill in the wider picture of global warming. Wind is a good example: In this case it is lowering temps by bringing cooler air from the ocean; in other instances, it may bring hotter, dryer desert air to the U.S. Southwest; or change the cloud cover over the Pacific Northwest; or shift rain patterns in the nation's South. These smaller scale snapshots are creating a complex and nuanced image of how warming will affect the country -- and the world... The study is currently being reviewed to appear in the Journal of Climate."