Yesterday, James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute and Thomas Karl of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center held a joint press conference, describing very similar findings for last year’s warmer than average temperatures around the world. A pdf with their organizations’ side-by-side comparisons is available here.

The average temperature globally in 2012 was about 58.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which is 1.0 F (0.6 C) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline. The average global temperature has increased about 1.4 degrees F (0.8 C) since 1880, according to the new analysis.

The scientists emphasized that weather patterns always will cause fluctuations in average temperature from year to year, but the continued increase in greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere assures a long-term rise in global temperatures. Each successive year will not necessarily be warmer than the year before, but on the current course of greenhouse gas increases, scientists expect each successive decade to be warmer than the previous decade.

“The U.S. temperatures in the summer of 2012 are an example of a new trend of outlying seasonal extremes that are warmer than the hottest seasonal temperatures of the mid-20th century,” Hansen said. “The climate dice are now loaded. Some seasons still will be cooler than the long-term average, but the perceptive person should notice that the frequency of unusually warm extremes is increasing. It is the extremes that have the most impact on people and other life on the planet.”

In fact, according to Reuters, Americans are feeling the impact of climate change already—consequences that affect “health, infrastructure, water supply, agriculture and especially more frequent severe weather.”

But studies show we can do something about it. Nature Climate Change has an article this week describing how cutting emissions can reduce impacts from climate change. (Read more at Scientific American.) And New Scientist reports that while global talks breakdown over the subject, individual nations are doing something about it. Let’s hope the trend continues.

Want to engage more in the changing climate? Tomorrow Science will host a live chat, “Can We Conquer Climate Change?” Sign in here.

Image: NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio

With the AGU meeting in town, it was a great week for science news! We covered several topics on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday—and we’ll highlight a few more of them here for you.

Monday’s sessions included several discussions about the 2011 Tohoku tsunami in Japan—its effects on the local population and on far-reaching areas as well as how we can forecast future events.

One of the biggest surprises came during a presentation by Satoko Oki of the Earthquake Research Institute. She collected data from Japanese residents before and after the 2011 tsunami and found them less prepared for tsunamis after the Tohoku hit! When polled post 2011, they misidentified the minimum wave height from which to evacuate. They had correctly identified the minimum height less than a year before. The 80beats blog in Discover identifies the problem succinctly:

The Tohoku tsunami was so large–about 130 feet–that it may have dragged people’s expectations of what’s dangerous higher.

Another presentation revealed why the tsunami was so devastating—it was a “merging tsunami.” NASA researchers found that the tsunami doubled in intensity over rugged ocean ridges, amplifying its destructive power at landfall. This animation on NASA’s website illustrates the direction and power quite well.

The discovery helps explain how tsunamis can cross ocean basins to cause massive destruction at some locations while leaving others unscathed. The data raise hope that scientists may be able to improve tsunami forecasts.

Switching perspective from the oceans to outer space… NASA and NOAA held a joint workshop Tuesday on preparing for the solar max. As solar storms increase over the next 20 months or so, we can be prepared for what might and might not happen. This might remind you of a press briefing held earlier this year at the AAAS meeting that we covered here. It certainly reminded us how active the Sun can be, even during quiet times, as shown in this beautiful NASA video of SDO’s first year in space.

Finally, the Academy’s own Peter Roopnarine presented at the meeting on his research on oysters in the Gulf of Mexico. With colleagues, Peter has been testing for contaminants in the shells of oysters before and after the spill and hopes to model the spread of contaminants to other species through the food web. Check out this Science in Action video to learn more.

Image: Samuel Morse/US Air Force/Wikipedia

An international panel, speaking about solar storms at the recent AAAS Meeting, began their presentation by saying, “Don’t panic.”

Despite the fact that the sun is increasing its activity and will enter the solar maximum in 2013, space weather technology and satellites are improving so that solar storms will be easier to predict and prepare for.

Sunspots appear leading to and during the solar maximum and can erupt into solar flares or coronal mass ejections that can cause geomagnetic storms here on Earth– affecting radio communications, GPS signals, and radar systems. They can even knock out power grids and destroy satellites.

There are eleven space weather centers around the world that track these storms. These centers originated in the 1940s, during World War II. They provide an early warning system of coming storms to governments, airlines, power companies, cellphone providers and other clients. Similar to hurricanes and other Earth-originated storms, they have a measuring system to track the severity of solar storms. You can see the categories here.

With the STEREO satellites and SDO now constantly watching the sun, storms can be tracked across its entire globe, giving the space weather centers a head start. Depending on the type of storm, it can take hours or days for the effects to reach Earth.

Two weeks ago, a large solar flare captured by SDO allowed scientists to warn airlines to re-route flights away from the poles, where the effects are felt most. SDO also captured an amazing flare last Thursday. Since the flare occurred away from Earth, no storms will reach us currently. However as sunspot 1163 (the origination of the flare) turns towards Earth, we could get hit, according to SpaceWeather.com.

NOAA, working with FEMA and other government agencies, is getting better at modeling possible severe solar storm scenarios and trying to, through conferences like these, raise awareness, not incite panic.

Image: SDO/NASA

But what about the opposite? The US Geological Survey had a conference and issued a press release this month about preparing for severe flooding in our state. Flooding that could cause more damage and be even deadlier than a large earthquake.

What the what? How is this possible?

Atmospheric rivers, my friend, atmospheric rivers.

According to NOAA:

Atmospheric Rivers are narrow corridors of concentrated moisture in the atmosphere and are a key process linking weather and climate. When atmospheric rivers strike land, they produce flooding rains that can disrupt travel, induce mud slides, and cause catastrophic damage to life and property.

The USGS goes on to say that atmospheric rivers are:

a hurricane-like phenomenon that occurs on the west coast.

And the Sacramento Bee defines the phenomenon this way:

a focusing of high-powered winds that drag a fire hose of tropical moisture across the Pacific Ocean, pointed directly at California for days on end.

The big, wet storms we had in northern and southern California in December were due to a series of atmospheric rivers, but apparently only a tame series.

It can get much worse, says USGS,

Beginning on Christmas Eve, 1861, and continuing into early 1862, an extreme series of storms lasting 45 days struck California. The storms caused severe flooding, turning the Sacramento Valley into an inland sea. A storm comparable to that of 1861-1862 could occur again.

“We think this event happens once every 100 or 200 years or so, which puts it in the same category as our big San Andreas earthquakes,” stated Lucy Jones, chief scientist of the USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project, in the recent press release.

To prepare for a storm of this magnitude and greater, USGS has created a model scenario called ARkStorm. The scenario estimates that California’s flood protection system would be overwhelmed and more than $300 billion in damage would result. That could be worse than a large earthquake.

Being prepared is the key.

“The time to begin taking action is now, before a devastating natural hazard event occurs,” said USGS Director, Marcia McNutt. “This scenario demonstrates firsthand how science can be the foundation to help build safer communities. The ARkStorm scenario is a scientifically vetted tool that emergency responders, elected officials and the general public can use to plan for a major catastrophic event to help prevent a hazard from becoming a disaster.”

Image of Sacramento in early 1862 courtesy of the Center for Sacramento History

Earth

The Gulf oil spill—the number of gallons spilled and the controversy surrounding the damage seems to top many lists this year. Nature even named Jane Lubchenco, head of NOAA, its newsmaker of the year for how she handled the crisis.

Natural disasters often took the front page in 2010 with the Haitian earthquake and the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull topping many lists. The hard-to-pronounce Icelandic volcano also made many of the best science images of the year lists.

DiscoveryNews ends the year on a positive note with “How Humans Helped the Earth in 2010,” a slide show with text concerning recent strides in alternative energy, species and habitat conservation efforts and individual efforts to go green (electric cars, white roofs and saving energy).

For more environmental news of the year, New Scientist’s Short Sharp Science has a great review and the Nature Conservancy has a best/worst list on its site.

Life

Teeny, modified life stole the spotlight this year—the J. Craig Venter Institute’s so-called “synthetic cell” and GFAJ-1—the bacteria that incorporates arsenic into its DNA—or so NASA scientists claimed.  Science writer Carl Zimmer discredited the arsenic bacteria paper on Slate; NASA author Felisa Wolfe-Simon defended herself in Science. Fun stuff!

The spread of pesky bedbugs was number six in Discover’s “Top 100 Science Stories of 2010.”

Nature’s great article this past summer on eradicating mosquitoes was among its readers’ top choices of the year.

Looking for something a little bigger and less controversial? New Scientist has “The coolest animals of 2010,” which includes a scorpion-eating bat and a fly thought to be extinct for over 160 years!

NPR found it was a very good year for Neanderthals—their genome was sequenced, brain examined and diet expanded.

Remarkably, the Census of Marine Life tops the BP oil spill in the Deep Type Flow blog’s biggest marine science stories of the year for its sheer numbers:

…over 500 research expeditions covering every ocean, over 2,500 scientists and the discovery of over 6,000 species new to science and published in over 2600 peer-reviewed papers.

Space

ScienceNow’s most popular story of all time, not just 2010, was “Does Our Universe Live Inside a Wormhole?” A wonderful theory that we also covered last spring.

Exoplanets, in part thanks to the Kepler mission, were all over the news this year—whether it had to do with size, atmosphere or number within a star system. Discover’s interview with local exoplanet hunter (and California Academy of Sciences Fellow) Geoff Marcy made number 11(!) on their 100 top stories list.

A little closer to home, Jupiter’s missing stripe and Neptune’s tale of cannibalism are included in New Scientist’s most popular space stories of 2010.

Our Moon and Saturn’s moons made news throughout the year and the top lists on Universe Today and Wired this week.

Universe Today also included SDO’s new views of the sun in their top stories list. Stunning!

Hubble celebrated its 20^th year in space this year by taking even more beautiful images. Several are included in Bad Astronomy’s “Top 14 Astronomy Pictures of 2010.”

Technology

Electric cars and NASA’s new foray into commercial spacecraft are included in Scientific American’s top ten stories of the year.

The Large Hadron Collider was very busy this year, and topped many lists. Another machine at CERN made news (and also topped Nature’s readers’ choice list) when it was able to capture antimatter for a sixth of a second!

Graphene not only garnered a Nobel Prize this year, the material (and it’s potential) also made news and top science lists of the year.

DiscoveryNews put plastics on their 2010 list—whether its finding new ways of removing plastic from the oceans or engineering smarter plastics.

What was your favorite science story of the year? Share with us by adding it to the comment section below!

Image by Les Stone, International Bird Rescue Research Center/Wikipedia

The scientists were in the middle of a multi-year expedition studying coral reefs and natural oil seeps in the Gulf. Even after the disaster struck last spring, they never expected to find what they saw via an automated submersible last Tuesday—corals covered with brown material, probably not oil, but likely tissue and sediment caused by something toxic.

According to National Geographic Daily News,

About 90 percent of 40 large groups of severely damaged soft coral were discolored and either dead or dying, the researchers say.

In addition to the coral, Nature News reports that:

The brittle sea stars that commonly intertwine these soft corals, which are normally seen waving their arms, were discolored and immobile.

The coral community resides about 4,500 feet below the surface (about the same depth as the now capped well) and smack-dab in the path of an oil plume spotted last May.

Samples of the coral will now be tested for signs of oil, dispersant, and other materials to determine the exact cause of the damage. The researchers also plan on returning in December for further study at this site and others.

Jane Lubchenco, the administrator of NOAA, had this to say in a statement:

Given the toxic nature of oil and the unprecedented amount of oil spilled, it would be surprising if we did not find damage.

But the chief scientist from the expedition, Charles Fisher from Pennsylvania State University, expressed surprise (as quoted in Nature):

Honestly, we went out there expecting to find subtle effects. I don’t think any of us really expected to be slapped in the face with it like this.

Image credit: Lophelia II 2010, NOAA OER and BOEMRE