CLIMATE - 10 Key Clean Energy Statements From Obamas Climate Speech

Obama spent a long time (rightfully so) setting the stage in his climate and energy speech by discussing the threats of global warming and climate change. But, on a hot and sunny summer day in DC, Obama also trumpeted a strong plan to use more clean energy. Here were 10 of his key statements about clean energy (imho):US just doubled solar & wind electricity: "Over the past 4 years, we've doubled the electricity we generate from zero-carb ...
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/06/26/10-key-clean-energy-statements-fro

CLIMATE - 8 Images to Understand the Drought in the Southwest

In states like Missouri, last summer's drought was downright scary. Farmers saw their corn shrivel in the fields, ranchers ran out of feed for their cattle, and commerce on the Mississippi River slowed to a crawl, as barges struggled to avoid newly exposed rocks on the low-flowing river. But this spring brought relief. And now, after one of the wettest springs on record, life will return to a different sort of normal for many Midwestern farmers, as they deal with the problem of having too much water.
Yet in the Southwest, drought is following a different, and increasingly familiar story. In Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas, drought conditions have actually gotten worse since August. And thanks in part to the increase in global temperatures, it takes longer to recover from droughts like this, scientists say.
This is what the extent of drought looks like in the U.S. today - with virtually no drought conditions present along and to the east of the Mississippi River.

U.S. Drought Monitor June 18, 2013.
Credit: NOAA/USDA

This comes from the U.S. Drought Monitor, which combines a variety of short-term and long-term impacts (such as measured rainfall, reservoir levels, and vegetation health) to paint a picture of how drought looks across the country. Many of the remnants of the 2012 drought are still in place all across the West. Notice the large area of "Exceptional Drought" (D4) in brown that crosses into six states, and the vast swaths of "Severe" (D2 in red) and "Extreme Drought" (D3 in orange) that stretch across California, Nevada and most of the Rocky Mountain states. In the 10 Western states, 77.50 percent of the land area is now under some form of drought.

A Dry Spring

Much of the short-term dryness comes from the fact that much of the West has seen little or no rain this spring:
As the map below on the left shows, huge areas of the Southwest, especially in California, Arizona, and New Mexico, have seen less than 1 inch of rain since mid-April. That's unusual, even for the driest parts of the desert. From the map on the left, you can see that it's less than 10 percent of the rainfall that normally falls over southern Arizona during this period

Credit: High Plains Regional Climate Center

And, unfortunately, that has been a continuing trend. Much of the Southwest has been in an on-again, off-again drought for nearly a decade. That means that the short-term impacts of a dry year are in place alongside more severe long-term impacts, making the drought far more difficult to deal with.
Short-term impacts are already apparent. According to the USDA, 75 percent of last winter's wheat crop was rated in poor or very poor condition in Texas. In Arizona, 79 percent of the pastures and rangeland were in poor or very poor condition, which is bad news for the livestock that rely on that grass for grazing throughout the summer. In New Mexico, that number was 93 percent.

Growing Risk for Wildfires

In the medium term, months of heat and dried grassland put the region at risk for wildfires. This season, Colorado has already seen the most destructive fire in state history. The Black Forest fire, now nearly contained, has burned more than 14,000 acres of land, and destroyed more than 500 homes. And as that fire dwindles, a new blaze has been raging in southern Colorado. The image below shows the areas of the country that are most at risk for wildfires this season (you can also track the development of wildfires with Climate Central's live fire tracker):

Credit: USDA Forest Service

Shrinking Reservoirs and a Decade of Drought

But it's the long-term impacts that are reverberating throughout the West. They also take the most time from which to recover. Years of low rainfall and decades of agricultural irrigation and population growth are draining the water resources the Southwest draws from throughout the year. Aquifers and reservoirs shrink a little more with each year of drought, and require more and more rain to replenish them in subsequent years.

Credit: CLIMAS, via Zack Guido

This graph shows historical water levels in the Elephant Butte Reservoir on the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico. Compare that with the graph below, which shows a technical measure of drought (the "standardized precipitation-evapotranspiration index" or SPEI) over that same period. Consecutive wet years, like the years from 1983-1988 allow the reservoir to recover, but a few abnormally dry years can quickly drain the reservoir again.
Note the historical droughts in the 1950s, and 1970s, and how shortly after 2010, the reservoir was once again nearing those low levels.
This summer, the reservoir is at less than 10 percent of capacity.

Credit: CLIMAS, via Zack Guido

The SPEI graph shows a balance of how much rain falls vs. how quickly it evaporates. It measures two components of drought: precipitation, and evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration is the combination of evaporation (how water is removed from the atmosphere) and transpiration (how plants remove water from the soil). The clumps of red bars shows the multi-year droughts of the 1930s, 1950s, and today, where evapotranspiration has far outpaced precipitation.

Global Warming Means More Evaporation

The SPEI can also be used to show how climate change is affecting the frequency of droughts in the Southwest.
According to an analysis by Climate Central, average annual temperatures have been increasing faster in the Southwest than in any other part of the country. Since 1970, temperatures in Arizona have been climbing at a rate of 0.639 °F per decade. As a result, rates of evapotranspiration have been increasing as well.
This graph shows the SPEI in Arizona over the same timeframe, but this time it takes out the precipitation component (SPI), and just shows evapotranspiration. The red bars show how quickly moisture disappeared from the atmosphere in each year:
{image6}
Notice how much evaporation has increased over the past 30 years (shown in red, facing down). This does not mean that there has been a period of 30-year drought in the Southwest, or that the drought from the past 10 years has been worse than the droughts from the 1950s. Instead, it shows that as the climate got warmer, the rain that fell disappeared more rapidly. In other words, in a warming world, it takes more rain to stave off a drought.
{image7}
Comparing these two graphs makes it easy to see how the increase in evapotranspiration corresponds with the steady rise in temperatures in the Southwest.

Monsoon Season and a Chance of Relief

Drought in the West is still ongoing, and forecasters don't see a clear end in sight. However, the upcoming monsoon season may bring some relief to parts of the Southwest, especially in Arizona.
Below is the three-month Seasonal Drought Outlook, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). On the whole, the outlook is overwhelmingly pessimistic. Drought is likely to persist across Colorado, California, the Rockies and eastern New Mexico, and since NOAA is predicting above-average temperatures in the Southwest for the rest of the summer, the drought impacts are only going to get worse.
{image8}
Monsoons develop in the Southwest every summer, almost like clockwork. As warm summer temperatures push the jet stream farther north, a rotating high-pressure system moves north from Mexico and settles over the Southwest, drawing in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico. That moisture feeds storms that develop throughout the summer, bringing in much-needed rain in short, heavy bursts that allow plants to grow.
Parts of Arizona, like Tucson, get as much as half of their annual rainfall between July and mid-September, when the monsoon season ends.
NOAA's measurements show that high-pressure system is already in place over the Southwest. But how wet the 2013 summer monsoon season will be is notoriously hard to predict.
John J. Brost, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Tucson, has been looking at all the factors that go into predicting the strength of the monsoon season, but none are showing a clear signal. Three of the major climate models are forecasting an average amount of precipitation. The current combination of ocean currents - including a neutral El Niño - is a combination that has corresponded with a dry season in the Southwest before, but not always.
Given all this, Brost predicts that the current climate "possibly favors drier conditions, but it's not clear right now."
So with an average-to-dry season ahead, the monsoons can only do so much to fix the long-term drought problems.
"Drought takes a while to get into, and it takes a while to get out of," said Zack Guido, a climate researcher at the University of Arizona, in an interview, "The fire season will be quelled by the monsoon when it comes. And I would suspect that if we get a decent monsoon, the summer grasses will be OK. The long-term stuff won't get better, unless we get a dumping. We really need a few seasons of above-average rain to make a difference."
Reservoir supply usually comes from winter rains, and snow in the Rio Grande. Snowpack in the Rio Grande basin was far below average this winter, meaning reservoir levels will continue to decline throughout the summer, unless several major storms pass through.
Even so, Guido said, "an average monsoon season would be nice, too."
Related Content
The Heat Is On: U.S. Temperature Trends
Ongoing Coverage of the Historic Drought in the U.S.
Western Drought Intensifies, Leads to Deadly Wildfires
Interactive Wildfires Map Tracks the Blazes in Colorado

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/8-images-to-understand-the-drought-

CLIMATE - All-Time Heat Records Broken in . . . Alaska?!

A massive dome of high pressure, sometimes referred to as a "heat dome," has set up shop over Alaska, bringing all-time record temperatures just a few weeks after parts of the state had a record cold start to spring. In some cases, towns in Alaska were warmer on Monday and Tuesday than most locations in the lower 48 states.

Forecast temperature anomalies on June 19 from the GFS computer model.
Click image to enlarge. Credit: WeatherBell.com.

For example, Talkeetna set an all-time high temperature record of 96°F on Monday, smashing its previous mark of 91°F set a day earlier, and previously set in June of 1969. In fact, it was warmer in Talkeetna, which is about 110 miles north of Anchorage, than it was in Miami, based on data from the National Weather Service (NWS). (As Weather Underground's Christopher Burt notes, there was an unofficial observation of 98°F on Monday, which would rank among the hottest all-time temperature records for the state.)
In Valdez, which sits along the cool waters of Prince William Sound, the temperature reached a remarkable 90°F Monday, beating the previous all-time mark of 87°F. And in Seward, another coastal port, the temperature hit 88°F, breaking the previous all-time high of 87°F that was set on July 4, 1999.
Here is how the National Weather Service described the Valdez record (the ALL CAPS style is from the original public statement):

EXCITEMENT ABOUNDED THIS AFTERNOON ACROSS NORTHEASTERN PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND AS UNUSUALLY HOT TEMPERATURES WERE FELT ACROSS THE REGION. FOR THE PAST SEVERAL DAYS . . . HIGH TEMPERATURE RECORDS HAVE BEEN TIED OR BROKEN . . . BUT TODAYS TEMPERATURES SOARED BEYOND ANYTHING PREVIOUSLY SEEN IN THIS AREA.
IN VALDEZ . . . THE DAILY HIGH TEMPERATURE RECORD OF 75 DEGREES SET IN 1997 WAS SHATTERED WHEN . . . AT 45 MINUTES AFTER 3 PM...THE MERCURY IN OUR THERMOMETER SHOT UP TO 90 DEGREES. AFTER A BRIEF DIP BACK INTO THE UPPER 80S . . . THE MERCURY AGAIN REGISTERED 90 DEGREES AT 15 MINUTES BEFORE 6 PM.
THIS ALSO CRUSHED THE ALL-TIME RECORD HIGH TEMPERATURE FOR ANY DAY OF THE YEAR . . . AND FOR THE MONTH OF JUNE . . . WHICH WAS 87 DEGREES AND WAS ACHIEVED TWICE . . . ON BOTH THE 25TH AND THE 26TH OF JUNE IN 1953. A LOCAL WEATHER SPOTTER IN TOWN RECORDED A HIGH TEMPERATURE OF 87 DEGREES NEAR THE HOSPITAL DURING THE MID-AFTERNOON HOURS TODAY AS WELL. SUN-WORSHIPERS WERE OUT IN FORCE THROUGH THE MID TO LATE EVENING HOURS . . . AS THE TEMPERATURE AT 10 PM WAS STILL AN ASTOUNDING 77 DEGREES.

Extreme heat was also felt across the interior of Alaska, where hot temperatures are expected to continue this week until the large high pressure area, or ridge in the jet stream, weakens and moves away. The heat, combined with low relative humidity and the chance for thunderstorms, is raising the risk of wildfires across parts of Alaska.

A map of the upper level air flow at about 18,000 feet. The bright red area over Alaska corresponds to an unusually strong area of High Pressure bringing warmer-than-average temperatures.
Click image to enlarge. Credit: WeatherBell.com.

On Tuesday June 18, McGrath set a record high of 91°F, beating the old record of 84°F set in 1962. Record highs were also broken or tied at Eielsen Air Force Base and Tanana, the NWS said.
On Sunday, Tanana, Delta Junction, Northway, and McGrath all set set record-high temperatures.
The 90°F and 91°F readings in McGrath, a small town located about 220 miles northwest of Anchorage, are extremely unusual, and it comes on the heels of record cold that occurred during late May.
On May 18, McGrath set a record for the coldest temperature recorded there so late in the season, at 15°F. Fairbanks had an average temperature for the month of May that was 5.1°F below average.
In Nome, the high temperature reached 84°F Monday, breaking the record for June. The highest recorded temperature there for any month is 86°F, which could be within reach Tuesday.
Alaska is one of the fastest-warming states in the U.S., largely because the nearby Arctic region is warming rapidly in response to manmade global warming and natural variability. In recent years, Alaska has had to content with large wildfires, melting permafrost, and reduced sea ice, among other climate-related challenges.
Related Content
As Sea Ice Declines, Winter Shifts in Northern Alaska
Record Warmth in Eastern U.S., Temps Tumble in Alaska
NOAA to Map Alaska's Increasingly Ice-Free Arctic Waters
Coverage of 2012 Summer Heat Waves

http://www.climatecentral.org/blogs/all-time-heat-records-broken-in-al

CLIMATE - Heat Wave May Threaten World's Hottest Temp. Record

A brutal and potentially historic heat wave is in store for the West as parts of Nevada, Arizona and California may get dangerously hot temperatures this weekend and into next week. In fact, by the end of the heat wave, we may see a record tied or broken for the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth.
The furnace-like heat is coming courtesy of a "stuck" weather pattern that is setting up across the U.S. and Canada. By early next week, the jet stream - a fast-moving river of air at airliner altitudes that is responsible for steering weather systems - will form the shape of a massive, slithering snake with what meteorologists refer to as a deep "ridge" across the Western states, and an equally deep trough seting up across the Central and Eastern states.

Heat forecast graphic from the NWS forecast office in Phoenix, Ariz.
Credit: NWS.

All-time records are likely to be threatened in normally hot places - including Death Valley, Calif., which holds the record for the highest reliably recorded air temperature on earth at 134°F. That mark was set on July 10, 1913, and with forecast highs between 126°F to 129°F this weekend, that record could be threatened. The last time Death Valley recorded a temperature at or above 130°F was in 1913.
Las Vegas and Phoenix, two cities well-known for their hot and dry summers, are also predicted to approach record territory. Last Vegas' all-time high temperature record is 117°F and Phoenix's high is 122°F. Excessive heat warnings are in effect in both cities from Friday through Monday.
Las Vegas could come close to tying its record for the longest stretch of days at or above 110°F, which is 10 straight, set in 1961. Phoenix may approach its record for the number of consecutive days at or above 116°F, which is four, set in 1990. Reliable weather records began there in 1896. Forecast highs in Phoenix range between 115°F to 120°F for Friday through Sunday.
"While hot temperatures are a regular feature in this part of the country, a heat wave of this proportion and duration is not common," the NWS forecast office in Phoenix said on its website.

Forecast atmospheric pressure dpeartures from average (geopotential height anomalies) at about 18,000 feet for Friday, June 28. The red area shows the "heat dome" or area of higher than average pressure, across the West.
Click image to enlarge. Credit: Weatherbell.com

Heat waves are one of the most well-understood consequences of manmade global warming, since as global average surface temperatures increase, the probability of extreme heat events increases by a greater amount.
One study, published in the Proceedings of the American Academy of Sciences in 2012, found that the odds of extremely hot summers have significantly increased in tandem with global temperatures. Those odds, the study found, were about 1-in-300 during the 1951-1980 timeframe, but that had increased to nearly 1-in-10 by 1981-2010.
The heat during the weekend and during the first week in July will also affect inland areas of Southern California, where excessive heat watches and warnings have been issued. The NWS said on Wednesday that the heat dome may remain in place through the 4th of July holiday, potentially locking the near-record high temperatures in place for a week or more, raising the risk of wildfires.
The heat is also likely to aggravate already dire drought conditions in the Southwest. Fortunately, the hot weather is not likely to affect Colorado and parts of New Mexico, where the largest wildfires have been burning to date.

Forecast jet stream winds for Monday, July 1. The blue/green shading shows the areas of strongest winds, with the jet stream shunted north into Canada across the West, then down near the Gulf of Mexico, and back up the East Coast.
Click image to enlarge. Credit: Weatherbell.com.

Such extreme heat also poses a major public health threat, since extreme heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the U.S. The NWS has warned that little relief from the hot temperatures can be expected at night, especially in urban areas, where temperatures may not drop below 90°F overnight.
At the same time, downstream from the heat dome, a sharp dip in the jet stream will help set up repeated rounds of heavy rainfall as well as cooler-than-average temperatures for Central and Eastern states, where flooding will be more of a concern than record heat.
Extreme weather events, from floods to drought to heat waves, are often associated with blocked or "stuck" weather patterns. Such features were present during the deadly Russian heat wave of 2010, the European heat wave of 2003, and more recently during Hurricane Sandy, and the Alaskan heat wave and related flooding in Canada, for example.
Some computer-model projections show the ridge of high pressure this week extending all the way northward into Alberta, Canada while the trough retrogrades, or moves from east-to-west, which is the opposite of the typical movement of weather systems in the northern hemisphere. Calgary, Alberta is beginning to recover from record flooding, and this weather means that the same area that just experienced a deluge could be in store for unusually hot weather, and the public health hazards that come along with it.
Some scientists think the jet stream in the Northern Hemisphere is becoming more prone to such extremes due to the changes wrought by melting Arctic sea ice from global warming, and it's an active area of scientific research.
Related Content
Hansen Study: Extreme Weather Tied to Climate Change
2012 Heat Wave is Historic, If Not Unprecedented|
A Closer Look at Arctic Sea Ice Melt and Extreme Weather
Arctic Warming is Altering Weather Patterns, Study Shows
8 Images to Understand the Drought in the Southwest

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/heat-wave-to-threaten-worlds-hottes

CLIMATE - Joe Romm On Obama Climate Speech (+ Video; Transcript Of Obamas Speech)

Dr Joe Romm is a leading voice on climate and energy policy and politics issues. As his Climate Progress bio notes, under President Bill Clinton, Dr Romm was "acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy in 1997, where he oversaw $1 billion in R&D, demonstration, and deployment of low-carbon technology." And, very notably, Dr Romm has been a leading critic of President Obama on climate change matters. S ...
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/06/26/joe-romm-on-obamas-climate-speech-

CLIMATE - President Obama proposes new climate change plan. (VIDEO)

Today, President Obama announced his new climate change plan, which includes a proposal to establish new rules for cutting carbon pollution from existing power plants. Read the plan and watch the speech here.
http://www.treehugger.com/energy-policy/president-obamas-climate-chang

CLIMATE - Record 2012 Greenland Melt Challenges Climate Models

A weather pattern that may have become more common in recent years was largely responsible for causing last summer's record melt in Greenland, according to a new study. The research, published this week in the International Journal of Climatology, found that a giant protective dome of high pressure established itself above Greenland throughout the summer of 2012, leading to above-average temperatures and more abundant sunshine than in a typical summer season.

Extent of surface melt over Greenland's ice sheet on July 8, 2012 (left) and July 12, 2012. In just a few days, the melting had dramatically accelerated and an estimated 97 percent of the ice sheet surface had thawed.
Credit: Nicolo E. DiGirolamo, SSAI/NASA GSFC, and Jesse Allen, NASA Earth Observatory

As was first reported by Climate Central, 98 percent of Greenland's ice surface experienced melting between July 8-15, 2012, an astonishing feat considering that this included the frigid high-altitude zones where temperatures occasionally exceed the freezing mark, but for relatively short periods of time.
The new study, along with other recent work, points to the unsettling possibility that the Arctic climate system is evolving in ways that have not been anticipated by sophisticated climate models. Scientists have been using those models to project the future melting of the vast Greenland ice sheet, which with 680,000 cubic miles of ice, is a critical factor in determining the eventual course of sea level rise.
To illustrate the importance of the Greenland ice sheet to sea level rise, consider that if all of the ice were to melt - which won't happen anytime soon - the oceans would rise by more than 20 feet, endangering the world's coastal cities from New York to Shanghai.
According to the study, the summer of 2012 featured the strongest blocking high pressure area on record for that region since 1948. Blocking highs act much like an offensive line keeping rushers away from the quarterback in football, preventing weather systems from moving into or through an area. They can lock in warmer-than-average conditions for weeks or months, and have been linked to deadly extremes such as the Russian heat wave of 2010.
Summertime blocking highs have been increasingly frequent in the vicinity of Greenland since 2007, but long-term trends across the northern hemisphere have not shown a statistically significant increase in blocking patterns, researchers say.
The new study, which was led by Edward Hanna, a researcher at the University of Sheffield in the U.K., found that the high pressure area was related to a particular phase in a climate pattern known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), and this pumped warmer-than-average air northward across the western flank of the ice sheet throughout much of June, July, and August. Numerous surface weather stations throughout Greenland set records for the warmest summer, although the network of temperature sensors on the island is quite sparse and contains discrepancies, according to the study.
Although the study pins the blame on atmospheric phenomena, rather than ocean dynamics, for causing the record Greenland melt, its findings are nevertheless consistent with other recent research that has shown that Arctic sea ice loss may promote the formation of blocking highs in the northern mid-latitudes, like the one that dominated last summer in Greenland.
Jennifer Francis, a professor at Rutgers University whose work has shown that diminishing Arctic sea ice may be altering the jet stream in the Northern Hemisphere, told Climate Central that the new study bolsters the case she and her colleagues have been making.
"His findings seem very consistent with the research I've been involved with, particularly our observations of an increasing tendency for ridging in the north Atlantic during summer. While I agree with him that sea ice loss, per se, may not be the primary driver of this behavior, I think it's likely that Arctic Amplification IS playing an important role," she said in an email conversation.
Arctic amplification refers to the tendency for temperature changes in the Arctic to be magnified, leading to more warming. For example, when sea ice melts it exposes darker surface waters, which absorb more of the sun's incoming energy, causing temperatures to increase further and in turn melt more ice. And so on. This feedback loop helped lead to the lowest recorded Arctic sea ice extent on record in 2012, and has primed the Arctic for further warming to come.

The calving front of one of Greenland's many glaciers, as seen from a NASA research aircraft.
Credit: NASA IceBridge via Flickr.

As Hanna explained, the hypothesis that Francis (who was not involved in Hanna's study) and her colleagues have put forward is that by warming the Arctic more rapidly than areas further to the south, there is less of a temperature gradient between northern and southern latitudes, which in turn may tend to weaken the North Atlantic polar jet stream and make it more wobbly and stationary at times. And a wobbly jet stream is more prone to getting stuck, leading to weather patterns that hang around for longer than they otherwise would.
"Greenland tends to lie under a northward-moving branch of this recently wavier jet stream, which draws warmer air masses up the western flank of the ice sheet," Hanna said in an email message.
The new study also raises important questions about the accuracy of complex computer models of the climate system, since it found that the latest generation of climate models don't reproduce the increase in the Greenland melt rate that has occurred since 2000, and do not project that similar atmospheric circulation patterns will occur with regularity in the coming years to decades.
That could mean that the models are missing some key piece of information or process taking place in the Arctic climate system, or it may indicate that the past several years, during which time the Greenland ice sheet has sped up its shedding of ice mass raising global sea levels, are an anomaly.
"The next 5-10 years will reveal whether or not 2012 was a one-off, rare event resulting from the natural variability of the NAO or part of an emerging pattern of new extreme high melt years," the study said.
Jason Box, an expert on the Greenland ice sheet who first called attention to the extensive melt data from last summer, but was not involved in the new study, said that most computer model simulations may be too optimistic about the future of the ice sheet. If that's true, then it's disturbing news, considering that Greenland is thought to be the largest contributor to sea level rise through 2100, and has the potential to raise sea levels by several feet in worst-case scenarios.
"Here's the important implication: it takes general-circulation models until the end of year 2100 to produce the climate we observed in the past 6 summers over Greenland, suggesting that if this type of persistent amplified wave behavior continues - which seems plausible - Greenland will melt 'faster than forecast,' " Box said.
Hanna, for one, said the jet stream changes could become a more typical feature of Arctic summers as global warming continues. "I believe there is a strong possibility, according to meteorological theory, that the anomalous circulation seen last year (and indeed for the past six summers) over Greenland will become more entrenched in future summers. Of course, the real climate system is complex, and there will always be year-to-year variation," Hanna said.
Related Content
Greenland Ice Sheet Near Critical 'Tipping Point'
The Story Behind Record Ice Loss in Greenland
Widespread Greenland Melting A Sign of Things to Come
Arctic Warming is Altering Weather Patterns, Study Shows
A Closer Look at Arctic Sea Ice Melt and Extreme Weather

http://www.climatecentral.org/site/40

CLIMATE - U.S. Airports Face Increasing Threat From Rising Seas

When Hurricane Sandy struck New York City on October 29, 2012, the dark waters of Flushing Bay poured over the edges of LaGuardia Airport, flooding parts of the facility's 7,000-foot long east-west runway, and damaging lighting and navigation systems. The floodwaters created an eerie image of jetways ending in water, as if they had been converted into boat ramps.
This was not the first time that LaGuardia suffered major flooding during a storm, nor will it be the last. Due to climate change-related sea level rise, LaGuardia and other coastal hubs throughout the U.S. face a growing risk of flooding during even modest storms.

What LaGuardia Airport could look like at high tide with 5 feet of sea level rise, an amount that could occur by 2100, according to some estimates.
Click on the image to enlarge. Credit: Nickolay Lamm/StorageFront interpretation of Climate Central data.

A draft federal assessment of climate change impacts, which was released on Jan. 11, named a dozen major U.S. airports as being particularly vulnerable to sea level rise-related flooding risks, including all three of the major New York-area airports. And just last week, a new report found that the New York metropolitan area may face a greater amount of sea level rise during the next several decades than was anticipated just a few years ago.
The region's two other major airports also experienced storm-surge flooding during Hurricane Sandy, albeit to a lesser degree. John F. Kennedy International Airport saw flooding from Jamaica Bay, and Newark (N.J.) International Airport was hit by the storm surge that coursed through New York Harbor and into Newark Bay, flooding the eastern sections of the busy international gateway, and parts of the neighboring port, where waters reached 4 feet above ground level.
All three hubs closed on Oct. 28, before the storm hit, causing a ripple effect of tens of thousands of flight cancellations around the world. Newark and JFK Airports were able to resume limited service on Oct. 31, while LaGuardia was the last to reopen at a reduced capacity a day later. According to FlightStats.com, more than 20,000 flights nationwide were canceled due to Hurricane Sandy with roughly half of those cancellations coming from the New York-area airports.

U.S. Airports Most Vulerable to Sea Level Rise San Francisco Int'l (SFO) Oakland International (OAK) Honolulu International (HNL) New Orleans Louis Armstrong Int'l (MSY) Tampa International (TPA) Miami Int'l (MIA) Ft. Lauderdale Int'l (FLL) Ronald Reagan Washington National (DCA) Newark Liberty Int'l (EWR) LaGuardia (LGA) Philadelphia Int'l (PHL) John F. Kennedy Int'l (JFK)

The trio of airports serve more passengers annually than any other metropolitan area in the world, other than London. Passenger traffic at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's four commercial airports - which includes the underutilized Stewart International Airport in Orange County, N.Y. - totaled 109.4 million in 2012. LaGuardia alone accounted for 25.7 million passengers during the year, with more than 1,000 daily landings and takeoffs, according to Port Authority figures.
The New York area's high-capacity airports may have been the first to get hit, but Hurricane Sandy should serve as a wakeup call to officials in charge of other low-lying airports across the country, since the latest climate science shows coastal airports face a growing danger from storm-surge impacts such as sea levels rise. More flooding will cause more delays, potentially costing billions of dollars in the years ahead from lost revenue and storm cleanup operations. The impact of weather-related delays on air travel already costs more than $4 billion annually.
The threat isn't that sea level rise will gradually breach the defenses surrounding each airport. Instead, at least during the next few decades, scientists say that sea level rise will be more of an enabler of storm-surge flooding, making it easier for even minor storms to produce more damaging surges and flooding. And when powerful storms hit, the threat is multiplied since they likely will produce unprecedented surges, much as Hurricane Sandy did in New York.
According to the draft National Climate Assessment, 12 of the nation's largest airports have at least one runway with an elevation within 12 feet of current sea levels. In addition to the three airports in and around New York, the other vulnerable airfields listed are in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Miami, San Francisco, Honolulu, New Orleans, Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale and Oakland.
Those airports face critical challenges ahead, beginning with conducting risk assessments for long-lasting infrastructure, such as new terminals, runways, and maintenance facilities. Planners are studying options to better protect low-lying runways and airport buildings, such as navigation systems to allow aircraft to land in low visibility, and hardening or raising tank farms for storing aviation fuel.
Some, such as the managers of New York City's airports as well as San Fransisco and Oakland International Airports, have taken initial steps to assess their vulnerabilities, often in association with broader regional studies. Most, though, have not yet begun that work, putting them behind the curve.
The risk assessments that have been carried out so far are sobering, and once again, LaGuardia Airport is front and center.
One of the reports released on June 11 in conjunction with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's $20 billion city-wide climate resilience proposal found that for LaGuardia Airport, at least, Sandy was not a worst-case scenario. The storm struck at low-tide along the western part of Long Island Sound, while it was high tide along the New Jersey coast and in other parts of New York City. LaGuardia flooded to a level of about 14 feet above Mean Lower Low Water, or about 9 feet above ground level.
A computer-model simulation from the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., found that had the storm hit at LaGuardia's high tide, which was just nine hours earlier, the floodwaters would have reached a height of up to 12 feet above ground level. That most likely would have breached the terminal buildings, leading to a longer and more expensive shutdown of the facility after the storm subsided.

What LaGuardia could look like at high tide with 12 feet of sea level rise, an amount that could occur by 2100, according to some estimates.
Click on the image to enlarge. Credit: Nickolay Lamm/StorageFront interpretation of Climate Central data.

Futhermore, a new analysis from the New York City Panel on Climate Change found that sea level in New York City may increase by as much as 11 inches by the 2020s, and more than 2.5 feet by the 2050s. That would dramatically boost coastal flooding risks, and render LaGuardia's current levees useless against even minor storms.
"More and more of the City's airport infrastructure will be at risk as storm surges will move from flooding outlying runways to threatening the terminal buildings," said a transportation sector breakdown accompanying the report.
If sea level rise matches the high-end estimate of 31 inches by the 2050s, then today's 1-in-100 year flood, which has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year, may occur about five times more often.
While much of JFK Airport is outside of the city's updated 100-year flood zone, as sea levels rise that is likely to change, the panel's report showed.
Since 1900, relative sea level has already risen by about 13 inches in New York City, due to manmade climate change and land-elevation shifts.
Climate studies examining Newark Airport have been more limited, since the climate assessments conducted by New York City have only focused on airports within its jurisdiction. The Port Authority, however, has found that Newark is also going to be at greater risk of storm-surge flooding as seas rise, but it is not considered to be as imperiled as LaGuardia. A 2012 New York State Climate Assessment also found that Newark is at slightly greater risk of flooding in severe storms compared to JFK.

What LaGuardia could look like at high tide with 25 feet of sea level rise, an amount that would require a worst-case scenario involving melting of large parts of Greenland and Antarctica.
Click image to enlarge. Credit: Nickolay Lamm/StorageFront interpretation of Climate Central data.

Klaus Jacob, an expert in natural disasters at Columbia University and an advisor to New York state as well as the city, said that in addition to considering the impacts of sea level rise on the airport grounds, officials also need to take into account the networks of access roads and public transportation systems that transport airport workers and passengers to and from the facilities.
For example, Jacob said that although JFK Airport itself has a lower risk of flooding in today's typical storms compared to LaGuardia, its access roads could flood more easily from heavy rains during storm situations, potentially leading to situations where passengers and airport workers are cut off from the airport.
"While the airport itself may not be jeopardized, the access to it may be jeopardized," Jacob said in an interview. "The Federal Aviation Administration may not take note of that, but in terms of operations it may cause significant problems."
On the opposite side of the country, there have been several studies looking at transportation infrastructure in the San Francisco Bay region, home to two major airports on the federal government's "most vulnerable" list: San Francisco International and Oakland International Airport.
According to one study published by the Adapting to Rising Tides Project, funded by the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Coastal Services Center, general aviation facilities and runways at Oakland International Airport are likely to be inundated by new daily high tides with just 16 inches of sea level rise, which is within the range of most mid-century projections.
During a storm event, the airport could see flooding at a height of between 1 to 7 feet above ground level at various locations around the airport, including flooding of the longest runway, which is used by most jetliners. In addition, storm events coming on top of the 16 inches of sea level rise could render the main airport access roads impassable, the report found.
With 55 inches of sea level rise, which some studies project could occur by 2100 depending on how quickly the polar ice caps melt, the entire airport would be exposed to flooding during the daily high tide, the report found. That scenario would render the airport unusable on a regular basis unless new flood protection measures were in place.
Oakland International and San Francisco International Airport - the 7th-largest U.S. airport by passenger volume - were both built on land reclaimed from wetlands, and are about 10 feet above the current local sea level.
Climate change acts as a storm-surge risk magnifier in other locations, too, and not just in New York and the San Francisco Bay region. For example, Climate Central research shows that there is a greater than 30 percent chance that the water level will exceed 8 feet above the average local high-tide line at least once by 2030 in Washington, D.C., which would flood parts of Washington Ronald Reagan National Airport. And in Tampa, which is long overdue for a major hurricane strike, a Climate Central report says that there is a 40 percent chance that the water level, including the effects of a storm surge plus sea level rise, will top 5 feet above the average local high tide line at least once by 2030. That would flood part of Tampa-St. Petersburg International Airport, in addition to MacDill Air Force Base, home to the U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East.

Solutions

Girding an airport against the threat of a damaging surge is not as easy as simply building a tall sea wall, since jetliners would have to be able to clear such a wall or levee when landing or taking off, Jacob said. One possible solution could be for the runways to be raised or partially elevated, in combination with the construction of a dike and levee system.
Jacob, who led part of a New York State sponsored assessment of sea level rise that was released in 2012, said he is unaware of any national or local strategic planning efforts underway by airport management agencies or regulators to prepare for sea level rise and increased risks of flooding, indicating that most of this work is just beginning to get underway in an ad hoc fashion.
Multiple phone calls and emails to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates New York's airports, went unreturned. However, Port Authority documents indicate that the agency is aware of the risk posed by sea level rise, and is increasingly incorporating that into their planning procedures and existing sustainability policy.
Mayor Bloomberg's climate resilience plan includes working with non-city agencies such as the Port Authority to ensure they are including climate change-related threats, including sea level rise, into their capital projects.
The federal Transportation Research Board has also urged airport managers, such as the Port Authority, to include climate-change adaptation in long-term planning, given the long lifespan of infrastructure built today.
There are a handful of airports here and abroad providing inspiration. San Francisco airport officials have been discussing the possibility of extending the airport's runways onto floating platforms to increase runway length. That may have an added benefit of allowing the runways to rise with the sea level. In addition, a partial seawall and planned levees around San Francisco International Airport are expected to give that airport additional protection during the next couple of decades, depending on the rate and extent of sea level rise.
In St. Paul, Minn., the airport has suffered from frequent flooding from the Mississippi River, having been inundated three times during the past 15 years. To prevent the recurrence of such flooding, the airport installed a modular floodwall, which can be easily added to when floods threaten. A similar modular system is planned for protecting the Lower East Side of Manhattan from flooding, and could be constructed low enough to avoid interfering with aircraft takeoffs and landings. Such a system, also known as an integrated flood-protection system, would function much like building blocks, with some permanent structures installed and other temporary measures that could be added before a storm strikes.
Other airports that have incorporated flood-protection measures include Raratonga Airport in the Cook Islands, which installed a wave-protection barrier, and Brisbane International Airport in Queensland, Australia, which uses a combination of strategies, including pumps and strategically elevated land.
Whatever the solutions may be, one thing is clear: the ocean increasingly wants to be another passenger coming into low-lying coastal airports, and it will be up to this generation of engineers and airport managers to keep the water out.
Related Content
Surging Seas: Sea Level Rise Analysis By Climate Central
Ongoing Coverage of Hurricane Sandy
Cutting Short-Lived Pollutants Can Slow Sea Level Rise
Climate Change Could Cripple New York's Transportation

http://www.climatecentral.org/news/coastal-us-airports-face-increasing

EARTH - "With six feet of sea-level rise, South Florida is toast."

Throughout Earth's history, the shape of the continents has changed dramatically. With the planet's temperatures rising, we can expect to see some of these geological changes in our lifetimes - especially when it comes to low-lying areas like Florida. Here's what might be in store for that state.
Jeff Goodell has a fascinating article over at Rolling Stone about what will happen to Miami over the next 30 years as storm surges get higher and sea levels rise too.
Goodell writes:

Sea-level rise is not a hypothetical disaster. It is a physical fact of life on a warming planet, the basic dynamics of which even a child can understand: Heat melts ice. Since the 1920s, the global average sea level has risen about nine inches, mostly from the thermal expansion of the ocean water. But thanks to our 200-year-long fossil-fuel binge, the great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica are starting to melt rapidly now, causing the rate of sea-level rise to grow exponentially. The latest research, including an assessment by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, suggests that sea level could rise more than six feet by the end of the century. James Hansen, the godfather of global-warming science, has argued that it could increase as high as 16 feet by then - and Wanless believes that it could continue rising a foot each decade after that. "With six feet of sea-level rise, South Florida is toast," says Tom Gustafson, a former Florida speaker of the House and a climate-change-policy advocate. Even if we cut carbon pollution overnight, it won't save us. Ohio State glaciologist Jason Box has said he believes we already have 70 feet of sea-level rise baked into the system.

What's interesting about this article is that Goodell does an amazing job tracking the economic and urban infrastructural efforts to preserve Miami in the face of rising waters. He makes it clear that this isn't some pie-in-the-sky problem - or something to be debated in Congress. It's a problem that's as concrete as preparing for the next earthquake in California or the next round of tornadoes in the midwest.
It's a great longread for your afternoon - highly recommended.
http://io9.com/with-six-feet-of-sea-level-rise-south-florida-is-toas-5

EARTH - A view of Earth that'll make you go whoa

From ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano comes an absolutely gorgeous view of our planet from space.

Parmitano captured this view of a cloud-covered Earth yesterday from the International Space Station. He arrived aboard humanity's orbital outpost back in May, as a member of Expedition 36. He's been tweeting photos from low-Earth orbit ever since - follow him on Twitter for regular updates!

[ESA and Luca Parmitano via Amy Shira Teitel]

http://io9.com/a-view-of-earth-thatll-make-you-go-whoa-58516362

ENERGY - 100% Renewable Energy And Beyond!

While many countries still discuss whether or not a 100% renewable energy system - or "just" a 100% renewable electricity supply - is even theoretically possible, Germans seem no longer bothered by such unscientific doubts. To make matters "worse," some of them (including myself) are even convinced that a transition to a 100% renewable energy system can and should be accomplished within only a few decades' time.Some people might find this di ...

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/06/26/100-renewable-energy-and-beyond

ENERGY - Breakthrough NREL Lab Could Solve Renewables-Grid Integration Problems

Grid integration is the million-dollar question for clean energy - as renewables, electric vehicles, and the smart grid scale up, how will they impact reliability?ESIF exterior rendering via NRELWell, we now have a million-dollar answer from the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). NREL has launched the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF), a revolutionary research facility dedicated solely to researching ...

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/06/25/breakthrough-nrel-lab-could-solve-

ENERGY - Top Solar Power Countries Per Capita GDP (CleanTechnica Exclusive)

Following up on my top solar power state rankings, below are rankings of the top solar power countries per capita and per GDP. These solar power by country rankings are key to seeing who the solar power leaders are in relative terms. It's great that giant countries like the US and China are investing in solar, but how do their investments really compare when we compare to country populations and GDP? That's the important question - that is, ...

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/06/26/solar-power-by-country-solar-ranki

ENERGY - Why Obamas Plan To Accelerate Permitting For Renewable Energy Is A Big Deal

President Obama is expected to make commitments for streamlining the permitting process for renewable energy projects on federal land during his talk at Georgetown University today.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/06/25/why-obamas-plan

ENERGY - Will Europe Heed To Calls For 100% Renewable Energy Target For 2050?

European legislators have been urged to set a 100% renewable energy target for 2050 by the Global Alliance for 100% Renewable Energy. The Alliance, launched in Europe recently, criticised the EU legislators for not setting aggressive long-term renewable energy targets.Middelgruden Offshore Wind Farm in DenmarkCredit: United Nations Photo | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0Alliance members, which include World Future Council, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar ...

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/06/25/will-europe-heed-to-calls-for-100-

HOMES - 3 tents and a shed create a beautiful, luxury home

These temporary dwellings in Sonoma County became a beautiful, and quite luxurious, home.
http://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/3-tents-and-shed-create-b

HOMES - In San Jose, Buy A House, Get A Tesla

Real estate agents are always thinking up novel ways to sell homes, throwing brunches, cocktail parties, and offering interior design services. Now, a realtor in San Jose is offering a Tesla Model S to the person who buys a $1.35 million home.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michelinemaynard/2013/06/25/in-san-jose-bu

HOMES - Passive House, Passivhaus, whats in a name?

We have been asking that question for a while and it keeps coming up.
http://www.treehugger.com/green-architecture/passive-house-passivhaus-

MOVIES - How Our Visions of Virtual Reality Have Changed in the Past 40 Years

The other day, Second Life celebrated its 10-year anniversary. But long before that venerable virtual world came into existence, we were dreaming up images of virtual reality and cyberspace.
Top image: Tron vs. Tron Legacy
It seems like there are a few basic ways to represent "cyberspace" and virtual reality. You can have basic reality, with the occasional glitches or incongruities. You can create a surreal dreamscape that is clearly not "reality" as we know it. You can use actual computer graphics, or try to approximate computer graphics somehow using animation. Or you can just go for something extremely cartoony.
As computer animation and CG effects became more sophisticated, in the 1990s, the scope for film-makers and designers to create "computerized" looking worlds became greater - but by some point in the late 2000s, CG animation and motion-capture start being convincing enough that we no longer accept a virtual world that looks obviously computer-y or excessively 8-bit. To some extent, the evolution of our imagery around virtual worlds reflects our increased computing power and our greater sophistication when it comes to imagining our interactions with computers in general.
Just look at the difference between Tron and Tron Legacy.
Note: I apologize in advance if any of these images are mis-categorized, since some of the series we're dealing with here have had lots of different installments. Also, I'm sure we left out some important stuff - please let us know what we missed below!

Welt am Draht (World on a Wire), 1973

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's famous TV miniseries depicts a simulated world inside a supercomputer, populated with thousands of "identity units," who believe they're people. There are strange shrill sounds and messages pop onto the screen, but mostly the dislocation of a virtual world is conveyed through dreamlike imagery and odd camera angles, such as having the camera low to the ground, moving slowly on a dolly.

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Doctor Who, "The Deadly Assassin" (1976)

This landmark episode of Doctor Who saw the Doctor going inside the Time Lord computer network, known as the Matrix - only to find a nightmarish virtual world, where he's hunted and attacked. After a bit, the Matrix settles down into looking like a regular jungle - but at first, it's a bit more surrealistic, with eyes appearing in cliffsides and mirrors hidden under the sand, showing clown faces.

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Tron (1982)

The classic "human sucked inside the computer" movie, Tron was one of the first films to use computer graphics to help tell the story - but it also uses strange fluorescent lighting, weird sets and old-school animation and compositing to create the sense of a strange virtual environment.

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Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994)

There had been other depictions of holographic realities before this show came along - but this was a show that regularly depicted life inside a computer-generated environment, which looked indistinguishable from "real" matter - until, of course, the inevitable holodeck malfunction.

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Ghost in the Shell: Man-Machine Interface (1991-1997)

This comic shows the world inside the computer, featuring cool vector-graphics tunnels and lots of information whizzing around - basically, the classic image that probably pops into your mind when you think of "Cyberspace."

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Lawnmower Man (1992)

The images of Cyberspace in this film actually make Tron, a decade earlier, look even slicker and more visually inventive by comparison. Instead of a representation of what a sophisticated virtual world might look like, we get a version that's more like a cheap-looking computer game of the era.

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Freejack (1992)

This movie is mostly about temporal body-snatching and car chases - but it also features a showdown between Emilio Estevez and Anthony Hopkins inside cyberspace, with the winner getting control over Estevez's body. Instead of the cheesy computer graphics of Lawnmower Man, we get a surreal landscape with stuff rezzing and de-rezzing around us, as Hopkins requires it.

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Red Dwarf, "Back to Reality" (1992)

In this episode, the crew discovers that they've been living inside a virtual simulation, and nothing that's happened is real. I think. This is another storyline in which the virtual world looks just like the real one.

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Ghost Rider 2099 (1994)

Instead of having a supernatural origin, this version of Ghost Rider "dies" and goes into cyberspace, where he visits a strange realm beyond most people's understanding. And he gets reborn into a new, cybernetic body to take down the cruel and corrupt. Check out these great early 1990s depictions of cyberspace.

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VR Troopers (1994)

This show from the makers of Power Rangers basically involved a similar group of helmeted teens - except that this time, they're fighting mutants inside a virtual world.

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Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

This William Gibson movie adaptation is generally regarded as a huge disappointment - but at the time, its depictions of Cyberspace were regarded as emblematic and ground-breaking.

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Virtuosity (1995)

And meanwhile, this film showed Russell Crowe as a computer-generated serial killer who escapes from a virtual sushi bar, only to be hunted by an obsessed Denzel Washington.

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Ghost in the Shell films and Stand Alone Complex (1995-2006)

When Ghost in the Shell came to anime movies and a TV series, the saga of Motoko Kusanagi became even more stylized and the representations of "Cyberspace" became more complex and grittier.

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Serial Experiments Lain (1998)

In this classic anime, Lain explores "The Wired," a virtual world that's connected to everything, and discovers some haunting secrets. Some of the coolest cyber-imagery ever.

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Rez (Video Game, 2001)

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The Thirteenth Floor (1999)

The cyberpunk movie that completely slipped through the net, thanks to the frenzy over The Matrix. In this film, as in some other recent ones, there are multiple layers of virtual reality - but you can't necessarily tell them from "real" reality at a glance, thus moving things closer to the sense of VR as heightened reality.

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The Matrix (1999)

In retrospect, the way everything inside the Matrix has this slightly greenish hue is kind of beautiful, it adds to the sense of things being not quite right. This film comes up with some inventive ways to merge CRT computer screen imagery with "virtual" depictions of reality - and also shows how a virtual world could give you de facto superpowers.

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Existenz (1999)

And the third VR movie of 1999.... David Cronenberg's mind-bending film takes a movie trope - getting sucked inside the video game - and turns it into this creepy surreal thing where video game controllers are like weird fleshy things, and you have to create a port in your spine using equipment in a gas station. The master of body horror makes the virtual feel physical, tactile, even visceral.

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The Tribe (1999-2003)

In this Australian-New Zealand post-apocalyptic show, all the kids eventually get hooked on a virtual game, and people's minds are manipulated using virtual reality.

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Avalon (2001)

In this live-action movie directed by Mamoru Oshii, a woman goes inside a virtual reality game to find a hidden level - and once again, VR is dreamlike and unsettling rather than cartoony and graphics-y. For obvious reasons, this VR world looks very anime-influenced - but in fact, in the post-Ghost in the Shell world, VR looked more and more like anime in a lot of cases.

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.hack (2002-present)

This complicated anime/video game franchise takes place inside a virtual MMORPG which is attacked by a virus - thus crashing all but one server, and causing disasters. In the earliest stories, a character gets trapped inside "The World" and unable to log out.

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Code Lyoko (2003-2007)

In this French animated series, a group of kids travel to the virtual world of Lyoko, where they fight an evil AI called XANA and its humanoid agent, Aelita. This looks like another move back towards the cartoony end of VR depictions, especially since it's aimed at kids.

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Doctor Who, "Forest of the Dead" (2008)

Doctor Who returned to the Matrix in 1986's "Trial of a Time Lord," but it wasn't until 22 years later that the show gave us a brand new virtual world (unless I'm forgetting something.) First Donna Noble and then the deceased River Song get stuck inside a simulation created by the Library, in which people can be "saved" from the Vashta Nerada. Except it doesn't always work out exactly, and some people are imperfect copies.

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Caprica (2009)

This Battlestar Galactica spinoff had a ton of ideas - but virtual reality, which looked like the least interesting part of the show at first, became the most fascinating instead. Early on, we visited a VR club where young people could fight and commit human sacrifice and have orgies. But later on, things got even more interesting when we ventured to New Cap City, a noir (and gray-tinged) version of Caprica City, in which it's kill or be killed. Except for the unkillable Tamara Adama, that is.

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Tron Legacy (2010)

This reimagined version of Tron took all the shininess of the original and gave it a more fetishy sheen - all of a sudden everything was like a bondage club instead of an old screwball comedy. The compupter graphics are miles ahead of 1982's version, and for the first time the tradeoff between realism and computer imagery is non-existent. This is neither cartoony nor surreal, just pure video game swooshiness.

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Adventure Time, "Guardians of Sunshine" (2011)

And finally, here's another "sucked inside the video game" story - we've left a few of these lut, including the lamentable TV movie Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase. And this time around, we've come full-circle - the graphics are deliberately 8-bit and silly looking, because that's how you can tell it's the inside of a computer instead of just the regular cartoon. Plus it's sort of retro and hilarious.

So... what did we leave out?

http://io9.com/how-our-visions-of-virtual-reality-have-changed-in-the-