Interesting New Stuff

A few interesting items from this week's batch of new AGU journal papers:

• Evidence that anthropogenic global warming driven by greenhouse gases is likely responsible for the weakening of the East Asia summer monsoon.
• Brazil's carbon emissions from land use change are about 11 times larger than its emissions from fossil fuel burning, but they are losing land due to agricultural expansion at about the global average rate. Carbon emissons from these changes in Brazil reached at high as 0.47 gigatonnes of carbon per year. [By comparison, total worldwide emissions from fossil fuels are now about 8 GtC/yr.] Three-fourths of these land use emissions came from land other than the Amazon rainforest. And they calculate that current carbon stored in remaining native vegetation of Brazil is not greater than 91.8 ± 27.5 GtC.
• A new forecasting system may have foreseen the 2011 heat wave in the central U.S.

Also, Jeff McMasters writes about an "unprecedented" April heat wave in eastern and central Europe. Moscow reached 28.6°C (84°F) on Sunday April 29th, "the hottest April reading in the city since record keeping began 130 years ago."

And, what would happen if you put your hand in the CERN Large Hadron Collider?