Word: suddenly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...imposed a new constitutional settlement upon it. Japan may have "embraced defeat," to adapt the title of John Dower's book on the postwar period, but let nobody suppose that this had nothing to do with a naked assessment by Japanese leaders of their interests, rather than in a sudden passion for all things American...
...three months after the Congress returned to power, a powerful politician's sudden death has thrown Gandhi's party a challenge: who will it choose to succeed Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister of the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, who died in a helicopter crash? And will merit or family ties dictate the decision...
There's just one problem: that's not how climate change is likely to unfold. Instead, scientists worry about potential tipping points - triggers that, once reached, could lead to sudden and irrevocable changes in the climate, almost without warning. It's the same phenomenon of sudden collapse that can be seen in any number of complex systems that seem perfectly stable, until they're not - ecosystems, financial markets, even epileptic seizures. The trick is to identify the warning signs that indicate a tipping point - and collapse - are about to be reached and to take action to avoid them. (Read "Heroes...
...know that change is at hand? The Nature researchers noticed one potential signal: the sudden variance between two distinct states within one system, known by the less technical term squealing. In an ecological system like a forest, for example, squealing might look like an alternation between two stable states - barren versus fertile - before a drought takes its final toll on the woodland and transforms it into a desert, at which point even monsoons won't bring the field back to life. Fish populations seem to collapse suddenly as well - overfishing causes fluctuations in fish stocks until it passes a threshold...
...climate terms, squealing may involve increased variability of the weather - sudden shifts from hot temperatures to colder ones and back again. General instability ensues and, at some point, the center ceases to hold. "Before we reached a climate tipping point we'd expect to see lots of record heat and record cold," says Carpenter. "Every example of sudden climate change we've seen in the historical record was preceded by this sort of squealing...