STATE COLLEGE, Pa. ? The full story about what happened in the Penn State child-sex abuse scandal will only come out through the civil lawsuits that now appear inevitable, and the matter raises novel and challenging legal issues, according to lawyers with experience in similar litigation.
Lawyers for people who say former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky victimized them have been surfacing and speaking out in recent days, raising the likelihood the criminal charges currently pending against him will eventually be followed by civil lawsuits.
Sandusky is accused of abusing eight boys, some on campus, over 15 years, allegations that were not immediately brought to the attention of authorities even though high-level people at Penn State apparently knew about them.
The scandal resulted in the ousting of school President Graham Spanier and longtime coach Joe Paterno, and has brought shame to one of college football's legendary programs.
Athletic Director Tim Curley was placed on administrative leave, and Vice President Gary Schultz, who was in charge of the university's police department, stepped down.
Schultz and Curley are charged with lying to the grand jury and failure to report to police, and Sandusky is charged with child sex abuse. All maintain their innocence.
One of the first tasks will be to winnow out any claimants who may seize upon the scandal in hopes of financial gain.
"It does happen that people who come out of the woodwork do not have a real case," said Gerald J. Williams, a Philadelphia lawyer who has handled civil rights cases involving child abuse. "But by the same token, in this kind of case, there are often a lot of people who have just been quiet about their encounters with the defendant."
Reed Smith, a Pittsburgh-based law firm with more than 1,700 attorneys, said Thursday it had been retained by the board of trustees, although a Penn State spokesman downplayed the threat of civil exposure.
"Nobody here is spending any time thinking about that or talking about that," said university relations vice president Bill Mahon.
Legal experts said Sandusky, the school and other likely defendants would all face different levels and types of possible legal problems in civil court. That would hinge on the evidence produced by the discovery process, which in civil litigation generates much more information than in a criminal trial, where defendants have a broader right against self-incrimination.
"You're going to see everybody pointing at somebody else to try and get themselves out of it," said Slade McLaughlin, a Philadelphia lawyer who has pursued claims in the Philadelphia Catholic priest abuse case. "When you've got 19, 20 kids coming out, saying `He did it, he did it,' I don't understand why anyone at Penn State in their right mind would say, `Let's fight this.'"
McLaughlin said he based those numbers on direct conversations with lawyers who have already lined up clients, as well as with investigators for those lawyers who are currently combing for potential evidence to use when lawsuits are ready to be filed. He does not currently represent any accusers, but expects to become involved in the near future.
"I've heard there are people out there going to the rallies, scouting around, talking to people who went to The Second Mile gatherings," McLaughlin said. The Second Mile is a charity Sandusky founded for at-risk children where, according the attorney general's office, he met the eight boys he is accused of sexually abusing.
Lynne Abraham, the former Philadelphia district attorney who has been hired by The Second Mile, said the charity might be destroyed by the scandal.
"If we can reconstitute ourselves ... will the public and donors have faith in us?" she said. "The need doesn't go away if an organization closes. The need just goes someplace else."
Harrisburg lawyer Ben Andreozzi, whose firm specializes in sexual abuse litigation, represents at least one male client who accuses Sandusky of severe sexual assault. He told the Legal Intelligencer he and another lawyer are in "active communication" with other potential clients.
State police said one adult has contacted them.
Justine Andronici, a lawyer with the Centre County Women's Resource Center in Bellefonte, on Thursday confirmed a story in The Harrisburg Patriot-News that she and attorney Andy Shubin were working to help people who have come forward to accuse Sandusky in the wake of a Monday night television interview during which he denied criminal wrongdoing.
At least three other Pennsylvania lawyers have told the AP in recent days that they have been in contact with purported victims or their representatives about potential lawsuits.
"I've been doing this for 24 years, and I've never seen this activity," said Altoona lawyer Richard M. Serbin, who has pursued well over 150 claims against Catholic and non-Catholic religious institutions, and others, across the state. "Some of the people I've seen on TV that are supposedly handling these cases, I've never even heard of."
The myriad of legal issues raised in the scandal includes whether Penn State, a "state-related" university that is getting more than $272 million from state government this year, will be able to assert government status that might limit liability.
"They are not entitled to sovereign immunity," said Matthew Casey, a Philadelphia lawyer who has handled catastrophic injury cases. "It doesn't mean that they won't attempt to invoke sovereign immunity, but the appellate case law is pretty clear on that."
The response by Penn State officials to reports of abuse will probably form a key part of any legal battle, as well as the circumstances surrounding Sandusky's abrupt retirement in 1999 at the height of his coaching career.
Another complicating factor is the statute of limitations in these kinds of cases for juvenile victims. Until August 2002 the clock ran out at age 20, but that year the Legislature raised the limit to 30. Prosecutors accused Sandusky of crimes from 1994 to 2009, and it's unclear whether civil allegations will date back further.
Serbin said Pennsylvania's law remains one of the weakest in the country, from the standpoint of child abuse victims. When it was changed nine years ago, the new provisions were not made retroactive, and courts tend to enforce the time limits strictly.
"So some of these cases may already be stale, and my hunch is, some of them are," Serbin said.
Several experts predicted any civil cases will wind up in Centre County Common Pleas Court ? not federal court ? and that judges will be sympathetic to having the cases captioned anonymously, if that is what the accusers want.
Some lawyers suggested Penn State, a large institution that can afford a vigorous legal defense, should consider reaching out to victims in an effort to avoid lawsuits.
"New facts are going to come out, I'm sure, in the civil litigation," Casey said. "It's one of the reasons that Penn State and the other potential defendants may decide to do whatever they can to prevent that from happening, and people going under oath. It's very dangerous."
Mahon said that has not been a subject of discussion.
"We don't have the identities of victims, other than maybe some of them going to the press," he said.
Lawyers had different theories regarding whether to file a lawsuit immediately, or after criminal charges have been resolved. Some say delays never helps plaintiffs, but others believe details that emerge from the criminal cases will strengthen their hand. Publicity now, of course may also generate additional clients.
So many facts remain unknown that it is difficult to say how much a legitimate claim of sexual abuse against a child might be worth in the eyes of a jury, and the grand jury report showed a vast range of alleged actions by Sandusky, from apparent sexual overtures to an eye-witnessed attack in the team's locker room showers.
"I know whatever number ends up being on it, it's going to be a very, very large number," said Williams, the Philadelphia plaintiffs' lawyer. "Because of the nature of the liability, the nature of the cases, and the nature of the damages."
___
Scolforo reported from Harrisburg. Maryclaire Dale in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
Previous study indicated a high prevalence of ocular fundus pathology among patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD), while the relationship between them has never been explored in a Chinese Population.
METHODS:
This cross-sectional study included 9 670 participants enrolled in a medical screening program. Ocular fundus examination was performed by ophthalmologists using ophthalmoscopes. The presence of eGFR less than 60 mL/min/1.73 m2 and/or proteinuria was defined as CKD.
RESULTS:
Compared to participants without CKD, participants with CKD had higher prevalence of retinopathy (28.5% vs. 16.3%, P<0.001), glaucoma suspect (3.1% vs. 1.8%, P=0.004), age-related macular degeneration (1.7% vs. 0.9%, P=0.01) and overall eye pathology (32.0% vs. 19.4%, P<0.001). After adjusting for potential confounders, the odds ratio of proteinuria for overall eye pathology and retinopathy was 1.29 (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.07-1.55) and 1.37 (95% CI 1.12-1.67), respectively. The results were robust after excluding participants with hypertension or with diabetes.
CONCLUSIONS:
Ocular fundus pathology is common among Chinese patients with CKD. Regular eye exam among persons with proteinuria is warranted.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Kim Cattrall was on stage recently when her past loudly interrupted.
"The curtain went up and somebody yelled out, 'Love 'ya, Sam!'" the actress says with a wry smile.
The "Sam" in question is, of course, the man-eater Samantha Jones from "Sex and the City." The trouble was that Cattrall wasn't playing Samantha on this night: She was trying to be Amanda in a production of Noel Coward's "Private Lives."
Momentarily shaken, Cattrall pressed on. "You just go to yourself, 'Oh, that's sweet.' And then you go, 'OK, let's go. Who's got the first line?' You're in character. It's just what you do."
Since putting down her last cosmopolitan in the second "Sex and the City" movie, Cattrall has politely been trying to shake off Samantha and remind people that she's also a veteran theater actress.
That mission will get easier when "Private Lives" opens Thursday at the Music Box Theatre. Cattrall steps into the role played by respected actresses including Gertrude Lawrence, Maggie Smith and Elizabeth Taylor.
It's the tale of a divorced couple who discover they have adjoining rooms while honeymooning with their new spouses and rekindle their romance. Cattrall stars opposite Paul Gross, star of the TV shows "Due South" and "Slings and Arrows."
Cattrall, 55, in person is as thoughtful and sincere as Samantha is not, a beauty with a regal air whose stunning appeal hasn't faded in the years since she was an ingenue in "Police Academy," ''Mannequin" and "Porky's."
She's built a career switching from commercial films to theater, but the Samanthas in her career seem to stick more in the popular consciousness than her role in "Three Sisters." She's been in "View From the Bridge" at the Lee Strasberg Institute, in a Donmar Warehouse production of David Mamet's "The Cryptogram" and played a quadriplegic sculptor in a London production of "Whose Life Is It Anyway?"
"If you look at my resume, you'll see my theater and film ? they look like two different actors in a lot of ways," she says. "I knew from a very early age that if I wanted to be viable in the theater world, people know who you are if you have film credits."
Richard Eyre, the director of "Private Lives" and who helmed "Mary Poppins" and Indiscretions" on Broadway and also was head of the Royal National Theatre, has long been hoping to work with Cattrall.
"Quite often people think actors who have celebrity because of a TV career have not proved themselves on the stage. But she was a stage actress before she became a television actress," he says. "It doesn't go away."
The two didn't initially intend to team up for the Coward play. They actually planned to work on a production of Henrik Ibsen's "Ghosts," which created a sensation by raising the taboo topic of venereal disease. But they found out there was another production of "Ghosts" in the works that had booked a theater in London.
While searching for an alternative work, Cattrall was sent "Private Lives" by messenger. "I read like the first 15, 16 pages and I called Richard and I said, 'We've got to do this. Let's leave syphilis behind,'" she says with a laugh.
"It really made me laugh. I loved the clip of it. I loved the barb of it. I loved the screwball comedy of it. I had been doing such heavy things and I thought this would be really, really great."
A successful run in London led to a stint in Toronto and now Broadway, a trans-national trip that has significance for Cattrall, who was born in Britain, grew up in Canada and now lives in New York. "This play is hitting every major stop. It's really quite astounding," she says.
While Coward plays are often considered to be frothy and mannered, Cattrall sees "Private Lives" to be ahead of its time. There are very dark elements, including allusions to wife-beating, and Cattrall's character has a feminist streak. "What he's really writing about is heterosexual relationships and the obsession of love," she says of Coward.
Cattrall, who made her Broadway debut in "Wild Honey" with Ian McKellen in 1986, has found plenty of work since "Sex and the City" began winding down. She was in a stage production of "Antony and Cleopatra" for director Janet Suzman, in the miniseries "Any Human Heart" on PBS, and in the films "Meet Monica Velour" and Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer" opposite Pierce Brosnan and Ewan McGregor.
The theater is where she feels happiest, though. For one thing, there are fewer Samantha Jones parts, which she now gets offered a lot. "The theater, for me, especially now, is where the best parts are," she says.
"I love Samantha but I don't think the writing could surpass what we were given on a weekly basis. And secondly, I feel like I did it to the best of my ability. To revisit it outside the actual creative team, I don't think would be that satisfying for me."
She likes to cite a lesson she learned from actor Jack Lemon. When they met, she asked him the secret of his longevity in show business. His reply is something she's taken to heart: Take things that scare you.
But she doesn't want to be preachy about it.
"I'm not interested in educating people about me and what I've done and haven't done. They can read it in the Playbill," she says. "What I want for them is, hopefully, to be entertained and have an experience that will possibly have them buy another ticket to a straight play."
Story of lymphatic system expands to include chapter on valve formationPublic release date: 14-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Summer Freeman summer.freeman@stjude.org 901-595-3061 St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists show that a gene essential for normal development of the lymphatic system also plays a critical role in forming the valves that help maintain the body's normal fluid balance
A century after the valves that link the lymphatic and blood systems were first described, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have detailed how those valves form and identified a gene that is critical to the process.
The gene is Prox1. Earlier work led by Guillermo Oliver, Ph.D., a member of the St. Jude Department of Genetics, showed Prox1 was essential for formation and maintenance of the entire lymphatic vasculature. The lymphatic vasculature is the network of vessels and ducts that help maintain the body's fluid balance and serves as a highway along which everything from cancer cells to disease-fighting immune components moves. Oliver is senior author of the new study, which appeared in the October 15 edition of the scientific journal Genes & Development.
The new research suggests that Prox1 is also essential for proper formation of the one-way valves that control movement of fluid and nutrients from the lymphatic system into the blood stream. Researchers found evidence that the Prox1 protein also has a role in formation of the venous valves.
"Understanding how valves form is crucial to efforts to develop treatments for valve defects that affect both children and adults," said the paper's first author, R. Sathish Srinivasan, Ph.D., a research associate in the St. Jude Department of Genetics. Those defects are linked to a variety of problems including lymphedema and deep vein thrombosis, which are blood clots that form deep in veins and have the potential for causing life-threatening complications. Lymphedema is the painful and sometimes disfiguring swelling that can occur when lymph flow is disrupted.
For more than a decade, the lymphatic system has been a focus of Oliver's laboratory. The laboratory's contributions through the years include evidence that leaky lymphatic vessels might contribute to obesity. Oliver and his colleagues also demonstrated how the lymphatic system forms from Prox1-producing cells destined to become lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) when they leave the developing veins and migrate throughout the body.
The investigators also showed the Coup-TFII gene is essential to the process. The Coup-TFII protein binds to the promoter region of the Prox1 gene. The binding switches on production of the Prox1 protein that is required to create and maintain the lymphatic system.
The newer research builds on that earlier work from Oliver's laboratory. The latest study focused on the lymphovenous valves. These valves are found at just two locations in the body, on either side of the chest just under the clavicle bone where the lymphatic vessels intersect with the subclavian and internal jugular veins.
Working in mice, investigators discovered that these lymphovenous valves form from a newly identified subtype of endothelial cell found in developing veins. Like the LECs that form the lymphatic system, the newly identified endothelial cells make Prox1. But while the LECs leave the veins and migrate throughout the body, these endothelial cells stay put to form the lymphovenous valves.
Researchers demonstrated the process requires two copies of the Prox1 gene. That ensures adequate levels of the Coup-TFII-Prox1 complex and with it enough Prox1 to build and maintain the lymphatic system. Mice engineered to carry a single copy of Prox1 either did not survive or were born without lymphovenous and venous valves.
"If you have only one copy of Prox1 you are going to have a reduction in the Coup-TFII Prox1 complex and so a dramatic reduction in the number of cells available to build the lymphatic system. That explains the defects we see," Srinivasan said.
###
The study was supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health and ALSAC.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is internationally recognized for its pioneering research and treatment of children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. The hospital's research has helped push overall survival rates for childhood cancer from less than 20 percent when the institution opened to almost 80 percent today. It is the first and only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children, and no family ever pays St. Jude for care. For more information, visit www.stjude.org.
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?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Story of lymphatic system expands to include chapter on valve formationPublic release date: 14-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Summer Freeman summer.freeman@stjude.org 901-595-3061 St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists show that a gene essential for normal development of the lymphatic system also plays a critical role in forming the valves that help maintain the body's normal fluid balance
A century after the valves that link the lymphatic and blood systems were first described, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists have detailed how those valves form and identified a gene that is critical to the process.
The gene is Prox1. Earlier work led by Guillermo Oliver, Ph.D., a member of the St. Jude Department of Genetics, showed Prox1 was essential for formation and maintenance of the entire lymphatic vasculature. The lymphatic vasculature is the network of vessels and ducts that help maintain the body's fluid balance and serves as a highway along which everything from cancer cells to disease-fighting immune components moves. Oliver is senior author of the new study, which appeared in the October 15 edition of the scientific journal Genes & Development.
The new research suggests that Prox1 is also essential for proper formation of the one-way valves that control movement of fluid and nutrients from the lymphatic system into the blood stream. Researchers found evidence that the Prox1 protein also has a role in formation of the venous valves.
"Understanding how valves form is crucial to efforts to develop treatments for valve defects that affect both children and adults," said the paper's first author, R. Sathish Srinivasan, Ph.D., a research associate in the St. Jude Department of Genetics. Those defects are linked to a variety of problems including lymphedema and deep vein thrombosis, which are blood clots that form deep in veins and have the potential for causing life-threatening complications. Lymphedema is the painful and sometimes disfiguring swelling that can occur when lymph flow is disrupted.
For more than a decade, the lymphatic system has been a focus of Oliver's laboratory. The laboratory's contributions through the years include evidence that leaky lymphatic vessels might contribute to obesity. Oliver and his colleagues also demonstrated how the lymphatic system forms from Prox1-producing cells destined to become lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) when they leave the developing veins and migrate throughout the body.
The investigators also showed the Coup-TFII gene is essential to the process. The Coup-TFII protein binds to the promoter region of the Prox1 gene. The binding switches on production of the Prox1 protein that is required to create and maintain the lymphatic system.
The newer research builds on that earlier work from Oliver's laboratory. The latest study focused on the lymphovenous valves. These valves are found at just two locations in the body, on either side of the chest just under the clavicle bone where the lymphatic vessels intersect with the subclavian and internal jugular veins.
Working in mice, investigators discovered that these lymphovenous valves form from a newly identified subtype of endothelial cell found in developing veins. Like the LECs that form the lymphatic system, the newly identified endothelial cells make Prox1. But while the LECs leave the veins and migrate throughout the body, these endothelial cells stay put to form the lymphovenous valves.
Researchers demonstrated the process requires two copies of the Prox1 gene. That ensures adequate levels of the Coup-TFII-Prox1 complex and with it enough Prox1 to build and maintain the lymphatic system. Mice engineered to carry a single copy of Prox1 either did not survive or were born without lymphovenous and venous valves.
"If you have only one copy of Prox1 you are going to have a reduction in the Coup-TFII Prox1 complex and so a dramatic reduction in the number of cells available to build the lymphatic system. That explains the defects we see," Srinivasan said.
###
The study was supported in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health and ALSAC.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is internationally recognized for its pioneering research and treatment of children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases. The hospital's research has helped push overall survival rates for childhood cancer from less than 20 percent when the institution opened to almost 80 percent today. It is the first and only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children, and no family ever pays St. Jude for care. For more information, visit www.stjude.org.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Erratic, extreme day-to-day weather puts climate change in new lightPublic release date: 15-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Morgan Kelly mgnkelly@princeton.edu 609-258-5729 Princeton University
The first climate study to focus on variations in daily weather conditions has found that day-to-day weather has grown increasingly erratic and extreme, with significant fluctuations in sunshine and rainfall affecting more than a third of the planet.
Princeton University researchers recently reported in the Journal of Climate that extremely sunny or cloudy days are more common than in the early 1980s, and that swings from thunderstorms to dry days rose considerably since the late 1990s. These swings could have consequences for ecosystem stability and the control of pests and diseases, as well as for industries such as agriculture and solar-energy production, all of which are vulnerable to inconsistent and extreme weather, the researchers noted.
The day-to-day variations also could affect what scientists could expect to see as the Earth's climate changes, according to the researchers and other scientists familiar with the work. Constant fluctuations in severe conditions could alter how the atmosphere distributes heat and rainfall, as well as inhibit the ability of plants to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, possibly leading to higher levels of the greenhouse gas than currently accounted for.
Existing climate-change models have historically been evaluated against the average weather per month, an approach that hides variability, explained lead author David Medvigy, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at Princeton. To conduct their analysis, he and co-author Claudie Beaulieu, a postdoctoral research fellow in Princeton's Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, used a recently developed computer program that has allowed climatologists to examine weather data on a daily level for the first time, Medvigy said.
"Monthly averages reflect a misty world that is a little rainy and cloudy every day. That is very different from the weather of our actual world, where some days are very sunny and dry," Medvigy said.
"Our work adds to what we know about climate change in the real world and places the whole problem of climate change in a new light," he said. "Nobody has looked for these daily changes on a global scale. We usually think of climate change as an increase in mean global temperature and potentially more extreme conditions -- there's practically no discussion of day-to-day variability."
The Princeton findings stress that analysis of erratic daily conditions such as frequent thunderstorms may in fact be crucial to truly understanding the factors shaping the climate and affecting the atmosphere, said William Rossow, a professor of earth system science and environmental engineering at the City College of New York.
"It's important to know what the daily extremes might do because we might care about that sooner," said Rossow, who also has studied weather variability. He had no role in the Princeton research but is familiar with it.
Rossow said existing climate-change models show light rain more frequently than they should and don't show extreme precipitation. "If it rains a little bit every day, the atmosphere may respond differently than if there's a really big rainstorm once every week. One of the things you find about rainstorms is that the really extreme ones are at a scale the atmosphere responds to," he said.
Although climate-change models predict future changes in weather as the planet warms, those calculations are hindered by a lack of representation of day-to-day patterns, Rossow said.
"If you don't know what role variability is playing now, you're not in a very strong position for making remarks about how it might change in the future," he said. "We're at a stage where we had better take a look at what this research is pointing out."
Medvigy and Beaulieu determined sunshine variation by analyzing fluctuations in solar radiation captured by the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project from 1984 to 2007. To gauge precipitation, the researchers used daily rainfall data from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project spanning 1997 to 2007.
Medvigy and Beaulieu found that during those respective periods, extremes in sunshine and rainfall became more common on a day-to-day basis. In hypothetical terms, Medvigy said, these findings would mean that a region that experienced the greatest increase in sunshine variability might have had partly cloudy conditions every day in 1984, but by 2007 the days would have been either sunny or heavily cloudy with no in-between. For rainfall, the uptick in variation he and Beaulieu observed could be thought of as an area experiencing a light mist every day in 1997, but within ten years the days came to increasingly fluctuate between dryness and downpour.
The researchers observed at least some increase in variability for 35 percent of the world during the time periods analyzed. Regions such as equatorial Africa and Asia experienced the greatest increase in the frequency of extreme conditions, with erratic shifts in weather occurring throughout the year. In more temperate regions such as the United States, day-to-day variability increased to a lesser degree and typically only seasonally. In the northeastern United States, for instance, sudden jumps from sunny to bleak days became more common during the winter from 1984 to 2007.
In the 23 years that sunshine variability rose for tropical Africa and Asia, those areas also showed a greater occurrence of towering thunderstorm clouds known as convective clouds, Medvigy said. Tropical areas that experienced more and more unbalanced levels of sunshine and rainfall witnessed an in-kind jump in convective cloud cover. Although the relationship between these clouds and weather variations needs more study, Medvigy said, the findings could indicate that the sunnier days accelerate the rate at which water evaporates then condenses in the atmosphere to form rain, thus producing heavy rain more often.
Storms have lasting effect on daily weather patterns
Although the most extreme weather variations in the study were observed in the tropics, spurts of extreme weather are global in reach, Rossow said. The atmosphere, he said, is a fluid, and when severe weather such as a convective-cloud thunderstorm "punches" it, the disturbance spreads around the world. Weather that increasingly leaps from one extreme condition to another in short periods of time, as the Princeton research suggests, affects the equilibrium of heat and rain worldwide, he said.
"Storms are violent and significant events while they are individually localized, their disturbance radiates," Rossow said.
"Wherever it's raining heavily, especially, or variably is where the atmosphere is being punched. As soon as it is punched somewhere in the tropics it starts waves that go all the way around the planet," he said. "So we can see waves coming off the west Pacific convection activity and going all the way around the planet in the tropical band. The atmosphere also has the job of moving heat from the equator to the poles, and storms are the source of heat to the atmosphere, so if a storm's location or its timing or its seasonality is altered, that's going to change how the circulation responds."
These sweeping atmospheric changes can interact with local conditions such as temperature and topography to skew regular weather patterns, Rossow said.
"Signals end up going over the whole globe, and whether they're important in a particular place or not depends on what else is happening," he said. "But you can think of storms as being the disturbances in an otherwise smooth flow. That's why this is a climate issue even though we're talking about daily variability in specific locations."
The impact of these fluctuations on natural and manmade systems could be as substantial as the fallout predicted from rises in the Earth's average temperature, Medvigy said. Inconsistent sunshine could impair the effectiveness of solar-energy production and with fluctuating rainfall also included harm agriculture, he said. Wetter, hotter conditions also breed disease and parasites such as mosquitoes, particularly in tropical areas, he said.
On a larger scale, wild shifts in day-to-day conditions would diminish the ability of trees and plants to remove carbon from the atmosphere, Medvigy said. In 2010, he and Harvard University researchers reported in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that erratic rain and sunlight impair photosynthesis. That study concluded that this effect upsets the structure of ecosystems, as certain plants and trees particularly broad-leafed trees more than conifers adapt better than others.
In the context of the current study, Medvigy said, the impact of variability on photosynthesis could mean that more carbon will remain in the atmosphere than climate models currently anticipate, considering that the models factor in normal plant-based carbon absorption. Moreover, if the meteorological tumult he and Beaulieu observed is caused by greenhouse gases, these fluctuations could become self-perpetuating by increasingly trapping the gases that agitated weather patterns in the first place.
"We have not yet looked for direct ties between weather variability and increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, but I would not be surprised if they are connected in some way," Medvigy said.
"Increases in variability diminish the efficiency with which plants and trees remove carbon dioxide from the air," he said. "All of a sudden, the land and the atmosphere are no longer in balance, and plants cannot absorb levels of carbon dioxide proportional to the concentrations in the environment. That will affect everybody."
###
The study was published online Oct. 14 by the Journal of Climate, and was funded by grants from the Princeton Carbon Mitigation Initiative and the Fonds Qubcois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Erratic, extreme day-to-day weather puts climate change in new lightPublic release date: 15-Nov-2011 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Morgan Kelly mgnkelly@princeton.edu 609-258-5729 Princeton University
The first climate study to focus on variations in daily weather conditions has found that day-to-day weather has grown increasingly erratic and extreme, with significant fluctuations in sunshine and rainfall affecting more than a third of the planet.
Princeton University researchers recently reported in the Journal of Climate that extremely sunny or cloudy days are more common than in the early 1980s, and that swings from thunderstorms to dry days rose considerably since the late 1990s. These swings could have consequences for ecosystem stability and the control of pests and diseases, as well as for industries such as agriculture and solar-energy production, all of which are vulnerable to inconsistent and extreme weather, the researchers noted.
The day-to-day variations also could affect what scientists could expect to see as the Earth's climate changes, according to the researchers and other scientists familiar with the work. Constant fluctuations in severe conditions could alter how the atmosphere distributes heat and rainfall, as well as inhibit the ability of plants to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, possibly leading to higher levels of the greenhouse gas than currently accounted for.
Existing climate-change models have historically been evaluated against the average weather per month, an approach that hides variability, explained lead author David Medvigy, an assistant professor in the Department of Geosciences at Princeton. To conduct their analysis, he and co-author Claudie Beaulieu, a postdoctoral research fellow in Princeton's Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, used a recently developed computer program that has allowed climatologists to examine weather data on a daily level for the first time, Medvigy said.
"Monthly averages reflect a misty world that is a little rainy and cloudy every day. That is very different from the weather of our actual world, where some days are very sunny and dry," Medvigy said.
"Our work adds to what we know about climate change in the real world and places the whole problem of climate change in a new light," he said. "Nobody has looked for these daily changes on a global scale. We usually think of climate change as an increase in mean global temperature and potentially more extreme conditions -- there's practically no discussion of day-to-day variability."
The Princeton findings stress that analysis of erratic daily conditions such as frequent thunderstorms may in fact be crucial to truly understanding the factors shaping the climate and affecting the atmosphere, said William Rossow, a professor of earth system science and environmental engineering at the City College of New York.
"It's important to know what the daily extremes might do because we might care about that sooner," said Rossow, who also has studied weather variability. He had no role in the Princeton research but is familiar with it.
Rossow said existing climate-change models show light rain more frequently than they should and don't show extreme precipitation. "If it rains a little bit every day, the atmosphere may respond differently than if there's a really big rainstorm once every week. One of the things you find about rainstorms is that the really extreme ones are at a scale the atmosphere responds to," he said.
Although climate-change models predict future changes in weather as the planet warms, those calculations are hindered by a lack of representation of day-to-day patterns, Rossow said.
"If you don't know what role variability is playing now, you're not in a very strong position for making remarks about how it might change in the future," he said. "We're at a stage where we had better take a look at what this research is pointing out."
Medvigy and Beaulieu determined sunshine variation by analyzing fluctuations in solar radiation captured by the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project from 1984 to 2007. To gauge precipitation, the researchers used daily rainfall data from the Global Precipitation Climatology Project spanning 1997 to 2007.
Medvigy and Beaulieu found that during those respective periods, extremes in sunshine and rainfall became more common on a day-to-day basis. In hypothetical terms, Medvigy said, these findings would mean that a region that experienced the greatest increase in sunshine variability might have had partly cloudy conditions every day in 1984, but by 2007 the days would have been either sunny or heavily cloudy with no in-between. For rainfall, the uptick in variation he and Beaulieu observed could be thought of as an area experiencing a light mist every day in 1997, but within ten years the days came to increasingly fluctuate between dryness and downpour.
The researchers observed at least some increase in variability for 35 percent of the world during the time periods analyzed. Regions such as equatorial Africa and Asia experienced the greatest increase in the frequency of extreme conditions, with erratic shifts in weather occurring throughout the year. In more temperate regions such as the United States, day-to-day variability increased to a lesser degree and typically only seasonally. In the northeastern United States, for instance, sudden jumps from sunny to bleak days became more common during the winter from 1984 to 2007.
In the 23 years that sunshine variability rose for tropical Africa and Asia, those areas also showed a greater occurrence of towering thunderstorm clouds known as convective clouds, Medvigy said. Tropical areas that experienced more and more unbalanced levels of sunshine and rainfall witnessed an in-kind jump in convective cloud cover. Although the relationship between these clouds and weather variations needs more study, Medvigy said, the findings could indicate that the sunnier days accelerate the rate at which water evaporates then condenses in the atmosphere to form rain, thus producing heavy rain more often.
Storms have lasting effect on daily weather patterns
Although the most extreme weather variations in the study were observed in the tropics, spurts of extreme weather are global in reach, Rossow said. The atmosphere, he said, is a fluid, and when severe weather such as a convective-cloud thunderstorm "punches" it, the disturbance spreads around the world. Weather that increasingly leaps from one extreme condition to another in short periods of time, as the Princeton research suggests, affects the equilibrium of heat and rain worldwide, he said.
"Storms are violent and significant events while they are individually localized, their disturbance radiates," Rossow said.
"Wherever it's raining heavily, especially, or variably is where the atmosphere is being punched. As soon as it is punched somewhere in the tropics it starts waves that go all the way around the planet," he said. "So we can see waves coming off the west Pacific convection activity and going all the way around the planet in the tropical band. The atmosphere also has the job of moving heat from the equator to the poles, and storms are the source of heat to the atmosphere, so if a storm's location or its timing or its seasonality is altered, that's going to change how the circulation responds."
These sweeping atmospheric changes can interact with local conditions such as temperature and topography to skew regular weather patterns, Rossow said.
"Signals end up going over the whole globe, and whether they're important in a particular place or not depends on what else is happening," he said. "But you can think of storms as being the disturbances in an otherwise smooth flow. That's why this is a climate issue even though we're talking about daily variability in specific locations."
The impact of these fluctuations on natural and manmade systems could be as substantial as the fallout predicted from rises in the Earth's average temperature, Medvigy said. Inconsistent sunshine could impair the effectiveness of solar-energy production and with fluctuating rainfall also included harm agriculture, he said. Wetter, hotter conditions also breed disease and parasites such as mosquitoes, particularly in tropical areas, he said.
On a larger scale, wild shifts in day-to-day conditions would diminish the ability of trees and plants to remove carbon from the atmosphere, Medvigy said. In 2010, he and Harvard University researchers reported in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that erratic rain and sunlight impair photosynthesis. That study concluded that this effect upsets the structure of ecosystems, as certain plants and trees particularly broad-leafed trees more than conifers adapt better than others.
In the context of the current study, Medvigy said, the impact of variability on photosynthesis could mean that more carbon will remain in the atmosphere than climate models currently anticipate, considering that the models factor in normal plant-based carbon absorption. Moreover, if the meteorological tumult he and Beaulieu observed is caused by greenhouse gases, these fluctuations could become self-perpetuating by increasingly trapping the gases that agitated weather patterns in the first place.
"We have not yet looked for direct ties between weather variability and increased carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere, but I would not be surprised if they are connected in some way," Medvigy said.
"Increases in variability diminish the efficiency with which plants and trees remove carbon dioxide from the air," he said. "All of a sudden, the land and the atmosphere are no longer in balance, and plants cannot absorb levels of carbon dioxide proportional to the concentrations in the environment. That will affect everybody."
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The study was published online Oct. 14 by the Journal of Climate, and was funded by grants from the Princeton Carbon Mitigation Initiative and the Fonds Qubcois de la Recherche sur la Nature et les Technologies.
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When Denmark?s new government ministers presented themselves to Queen Margrethe II last month, the incoming development minister established his green credentials by rolling up to the palace in a tiny, three-wheeled, electric-powered vehicle. The photo opportunity made a powerful statement about the minister?s commitment to the environment?but probably not the one he intended.
Christian Friis Bach?s electric-powered vehicle was incapable of covering the 30 kilometers from his house to the palace without running out of power. So he put the electric minicar inside a horse trailer and dragged it behind his gasoline-powered Citro?n for three-quarters of the trip, switching back to the minicar when he neared the television cameras. The stunt produced more carbon emissions than if he had ditched the electric car and horse trailer and driven a regular car the entire distance. The story is not uncommon. Under the United Kingdom?s Labor government in 2006, Conservative party leader David Cameron attracted attention for trying to ?green? his credentials by cycling to work; the tactic went awry when it emerged that a car trailed him carrying his briefcase.
But environmental hypocrisy in current politics runs deeper than photo opportunities. In Denmark, as across the developed world, politicians are promising that a transition to a greener economy can help to fix the globe?s financial mess. In the United States, President Obama touts ?green jobs.? Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has introduced a carbon tax to ?enable economic growth without increases in carbon pollution.? And David Cameron was elected prime minister in part on a promise to lead the United Kingdom?s ?greenest government ever.?
COMPTON, Calif. ? Some parents have filed complaints with the Parent-Teacher Association after a former adult film star said she read to children in a classroom at a Los Angeles County elementary school.
Sasha Grey, a 23-year-old ex-porn actress who has appeared in mainstream shows like HBO's "Entourage," was a guest earlier this month at Compton's Emerson Elementary School for Read Across America Day.
The Grey tweeted Nov. 2 that she spent the day reading to students in the first and third grades.
KTLA-TV ( http://bit.ly/uZ5zY8) quoted parents questioning whether it was appropriate to have Gray at the school. Parent Dudley Wheaton wondered why the school couldn't find a fireman or a police officer to read to students.
Grey has not appeared in porn films in over two years. She has been a regular on "Entourage" and appeared in the 2009 film "The Girlfriend Experience."
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Public release date: 14-Nov-2011
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