There's cool environmental science news every week, but I thought these two studies were especially interesting. The first is an excellent example of why temperature fluctuations, more so than simple increases, are an important climate change-related phenomenon to study further (original article here). I was out of the country at that time, so I didn't remember it, although I do recall people talking about it afterward. It just shows how the basic physiology of most organisms can only handle so much!
I found this article very surprising, even after all the reading I've been doing on dams. I never would have thought that all the world's dams store enough water to reduce sea-level rise! That's kind of scary. As Sahagian (from the EES dept. at Lehigh, my graduate alma mater!) noted, we're not going to be building many more dams. But what wasn't mentioned in the article is the fate of existing dams. Dams have a finite existence - the reservoirs behind them fill up with sediment rather quickly. Plus, dams are being torn down in some areas, because people are recognizing that they are not economically feasible and are ecologically destructive. So how will that impact sea level in 100 years or less, when all the reservoirs are losing their capacity due to sedimentation and/or the dams are torn down?
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