Climate Feedback

“15 percent of all Washington lobbyists spent at least some of their time on global warming in 2008.”
The Center for Public Integrity, an investigative journalism organization based in Washington DC, reports that the number of lobbyists working to influence US federal climate policy has ballooned 300% in five years.

"We want to switch the current perception of Bangladesh from the iconic vulnerable country — where all these journalists fly to to see vulnerability — to make it the iconic adaptive country, so everyone flies there to see how they are coping."
Saleemul Huq's pitch for the new International Centre for Climate Change and Development that he plans to start in Bangladesh.

"The CDC considers climate change a serious public health concern."
This opinion goes on the record as US Congressional testimony for the first time, after being censored by the Bush administration in 2007. Howard Frumkin of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the testimony Wednesday.

Ag smarts versus cow farts
The Australian agriculture ministry will invest $27 million to fight methane emissions from livestock.

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 27, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

During the last ice age, the northern and southern polar regions danced between warm and cold periods, but the two were out of step with each other. When the Arctic cooled, the Antarctic warmed and vice versa. To explain this polar offset, paleoclimate researchers have proposed that the answer lies in the oceanic conveyor-belt system of currents that transport heat around the globe.

A new paper by Stephen Barker of Cardiff University and his colleagues (subscription) offers evidence to support this model. That team describes a detailed record of the end of the ice age, as witnessed by plankton and geochemical proxies from a site in the South Atlantic Ocean at 41 degrees S. Those indicate that the changes there happened abruptly, just as they did in the North. Past studies of records from Antarctica had suggested that the transitions were gradual in the far South, which potentially presented a problem for the conveyor-belt model, says Jeffrey Severinghaus in a News and Views this week. The new data, however, suggests that in the mid-latitudes, the southern Atlantic see-sawed from cold to warm and back quite quickly, matching predictions made by the conveyor model.

It also points toward a mechanism for how the ice age ended. The trigger would have been the periodic Milankovitch changes in Earth’s orbit, which increased the amount of sunlight hitting the northern high latitudes during summer starting around 22,000 years ago. The extra energy started melting the northern ice sheets, thus dumping considerable amounts of freshwater into the North Atlantic. That, in turn, slowed the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)—the conveyor belt that carries cold water from the North Atlantic into the deep ocean and eventually to Antarctica. With an anemic AMOC, the Southern Ocean warmed up and released carbon dioxide stored in the deep ocean, thereby turning up the earth’s thermostat enough to melt the northern ice sheets, suggest Barker and colleagues.

Severinghaus goes even farther. If the slow-down in AMOC did cause a massive discharge of carbon dioxide from the southern Ocean, that should give us pause, he says. Models predict that AMOC should weaken in response to global warming, which could release enough carbon dioxide to finish off some of the ice sheets left standing from the last glacial period, he suggests. Moreover, current climate projections do not take into account this positive feedback, which could amplify the warming effects of the pollution we put into the atmosphere.

Posted by Richard Monastersky on February 26, 2009
Categories: Ocean science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

March 1 marks the official end of the 2-year-long International Polar Year so the news team at Nature is taking the opportunity to look back at the US $1.2 billion research program, which involved over 60 nations. A leader urges nations to build upon the achievements of the IPY and to carry out some of its unfinished business. In a feature story, Quirin Schiermeier assesses the overall polar year and looks forward toward some of the challenges ahead. A second feature by me surveys research in the Arctic that integrated indigenous peoples and their traditional knowledge. And a gallery feature by our art department spectacularly illustrates some of the projects at both poles, while evoking the sense of a remote research outpost. The photos and news in that gallery bring back memories of previous visits I’ve made to stations in Greenland and Antarctica.

The IPY leaders have produced their own 16-page report, available here, summarizing some of the key research findings, many of which Nature has already reported. Finally, don’t miss a special gallery of IPY-related photos that the World Meteorological Organization has on its site.

Rich Monastersky

Posted by Richard Monastersky on February 25, 2009
Categories: Climate Science | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

NASA’s long-awaited carbon dioxide detector, the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), crashed into the ocean near Antarctica today following a launch failure.

The $280 million mission would have provided much needed information on the origin and fate of carbon dioxide emissions. The instruments aboard the satellite were designed to measure carbon dioxide at a precision higher than any current space-based measurements of a trace gas, and would have helped scientists to identify sources and sinks of the greenhouse gas. Although the project was intended as a science mission, its results would also have been relevant to policymakers.

The loss of OCO marks a huge setback for the climate science community, and especially for the scientists who have worked so hard to get the satellite off the ground. Geoff Brumfiel reports over on Nature News (subscription):

It's a major setback," says Paul Palmer, a climate scientist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, who is part of the OCO science team. It will be particularly devastating for the tight-knit group of scientists and engineers who have devoted much of the past decade to the project. "These guys have sweated OCO for seven or eight years," he says.

The data from OCO would also have complemented those being collected by another satellite launched in January. The Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT), a project of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, will now have to verify its measurements of methane, water vapour and carbon dioxide against those taken from ground-based stations.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on February 24, 2009
Categories: Climate Science, Features, GHG emissions, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Technology | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

When it comes to describing how human activities are altering the Earth’s climate, aerosol emissions can tie your tongue in knots. Airborne pollution particles grouped under the "aerosol" heading come in a wide assortment - and some, as this NRCC article explains, tend to absorb sunlight and heat up the atmosphere, while others are more reflective and cooling. On top of that, it’s been thought to make a difference whether this potpourri of pollutants ends up drifting in clear skies or above clouds. Coming in now are the first experimental data that show just how important the effect of cloudiness is.

A study out this week in Nature Geoscience (subscription) uses a new type of satellite data to look at the smoky haze wafting above the southeast Atlantic, mostly from fires in southern Africa, during July-October of 2006 and 2007. The findings confirm what models had suggested: aerosols over cloudier patches of ocean have a net warming effect, but they switch to cooling over unclouded ocean.

Simply put, a veil of aerosols darkens white clouds, but it lightens the dark surface of the sea, and this difference in reflectivity swaps the outcome. The authors, led by Duli Chand of the University of Washington, estimate that 40% cloud cover is the turning point where the southeastern Atlantic’s aerosol cocktail starts adding to greenhouse warming rather than subtracting from it. Cloud cover in the study averaged 48%, and the spatial distribution of clouds and aerosols also overlapped significantly. The overall warming that this produces is about three times what it would be if clouds and aerosols were floating around independently instead of near each other, the group finds.

Continue reading "Untangling aerosol effects" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 23, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Atmospheric Science, Regional climate | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from The Great Beyond

Lucky American readers can now get an instant carbon-guilt trip, all courtesy of Google and NASA.

Researchers at Purdue University in Indiana, with funding from NASA, have shoehorned a wealth of data on carbon dioxide emissions into the interactive globe tool that is Google Earth. It’s a timely move, given that the Environmental Protection Agency seems to be preparing to regulate carbon dioxide for the first time (NY Times) and NASA is about to launch its Orbiting Carbon Observatory (Nature Reports Climate Change).

The data for this new addition to Google Earth comes from the Vulcan system which graced this blog last year (see: ‘Vulcan’ shows carbon dioxide’s death-grip - April 08, 2008).

“From a societal perspective, Vulcan provides a description of where and when society influences climate change through fossil-fuel carbon dioxide emissions,” says researcher Kevin Gurney of Purdue (press release).

“Users can see their county or state in relation to others, and see what aspects of economic activity are driving fossil-fuel emissions. Vulcan could help demystify climate change and empower people in the same way as seeing the miles-per-gallon number on the dashboard of a hybrid car.”

At the moment this is limited just to the United States, although Canadian and Mexican versions are being prepared. There is not a whisper though of ‘Project Hestia’, the global version of Vulcan that is supposedly in the works.

More coverage

Google Earth maps carbon dioxide emissions – LA Times

Scientists map CO2 emissions with Google Earth – AFP

Boilermappers: Purdue Researchers Put Emissions on Google Earth – WSJ

Daniel Cressey

Image: Purdue University/Google Earth

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 20, 2009
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Daniel Cressey, GHG emissions, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Climate change 'could reverse malaria patterns'
At the AAAS meeting, researchers say daily temperature fluctuations altered by climate change could kill off the malaria parasite in some areas and introduce it in others.

“I think that it is possible for us to create a set of clean energy mechanisms that allow us to use things not just like oil sands, but also coal.”
Obama touts carbon capture and storage. After a discussion with Candian PM Stephen Harper on importing oil from Canada's tar sands, the White House announced a forthcoming US-Canada pact on clean energy technology, including CCS.

"If we can build [a zero-emissions] station in Antarctica, we can do that elsewhere in our society.”
Alain Hubert, project director of a new Antarctic research station that runs on wind and solar power.

“According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.”
Washington Post columnist George Will dismisses global warming threats.

"It is disturbing that the Washington Post would publish such information without first checking the facts.”
The Arctic Climate Research Center responds that global sea ice levels are 1.34 million square kilometres less in February 2009 than in February 1979. (h/t TPMuckracker, where there’s more Will-debunking on offer)

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 20, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Massive economic collapse is by no means the preferred method for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but there’s no denying that shuttering plants, halting shipments and laying off workers gets the job done. Indeed, the crisis is poised to provide a reprieve, however temporary, from the alarmingly rapid growth in emissions witnessed in recent years.

It’s too early to assess the overall impact, but New Carbon Finance, a branch of the London-based consultancy New Energy Finance, has put out a pair of analyses ( press releases here and here) that provide a little insight into what is happening in the United States and Europe. Emissions fell by 1.3 percent in the US and by 3 percent in Europe last year, according to NEF's calculations, and things look even better (okay, worse) in 2009.

The estimates are fairly simple in the United States. Gasoline consumption in the transportation sector fell by 3.2 percent thanks to the spike in oil prices. Emissions from the electricity sector declined by 2.4 percent due to lower industrial demand, more renewables and even less use of the nation's remaining oil-fired power stations. And given that emissions track fairly well with overall economic activity, this is just the beginning. Citing projections that the US economy could shrink by 1.6 to 2 percent next year, NEF says it could be several years before emissions return to previous levels.

The picture is more complex in Europe, which has not only a floundering economy but also an emissions trading system at work. NEF suggests the economic downturn is responsible for a little less than a third of the decline (due to reduced industrial output) and attributes the rest to the European trading scheme (including a shift away from coal and toward natural gas-fired electricity).

What all of this means in the long run is anybody's guess at this point. We might not have a global picture for some time, but it's safe to say that emissions in places like China and India and other rapidly developing economies will, at a minimum, slow their previously meteoric rise. On the other hand, the capital we need to fund clean energy technologies moving forward has dried up, and there could be less political will to institute regulations that are really going to drive that investment. The question might well be whether we'll be facing the right direction when we climb out of this hole a few years hence.

Posted by Jeff Tollefson on February 20, 2009
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Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

The US could soon offer one-stop shopping for climate information, in the form of a central National Climate Service (see Nature story here) that would consolidate data and forecasts from multiple sources.

The idea of a National Climate Service is old, dating back to the late 1970s, but Jane Lubchenco might finally make it a reality. At her 12 February nomination hearing, Lubchenco said she would work toward creating such a service under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the agency she is slated to lead.

What exactly would a National Climate Service do? For starters, it would synthesize climate data that is currently fragmented across multiple NOAA programmes, the US Geological Survey, the US Department of Agriculture, and university research groups. It would also take a "user-oriented" approach, tailoring new research and data analysis toward urgent problems such as drought, flood risk, agriculture, and vector-borne disease transmission. Finally, it would attempt to improve predictions of climate-change impact at the local or regional level, where demand for information is growing.

Translating global forecast data to the community level is key, says Larry Larson, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers in Madison, Wisconsin. Scientists are predicting climate change and sea level rise worldwide, he says, but the question he often gets from members is: "What does that mean to me?"

Providing answers will require a better climate observing system, says Chet Koblinsky, director of NOAA's Climate Program Office. Existing systems are ad-hoc because many of them were originally set up for other purposes, he says, and some parameters such as soil moisture are not well-monitored. Ed Sarachik, a climate scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle, warns that "without a climate observing system, you're going to hit a wall."

A National Climate Service might also invite a larger role from the private sector, says Richard Anthes, president of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Companies could do the work of analyzing data for specific uses, the same way the Weather Channel interprets NOAA's National Weather Service data for the public.

Posted by Alex Witze on February 19, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Due to launch 24 February, NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory will measure carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere with a precision high enough to detect the origin and fate of carbon emissions. In a Q&A on Nature Reports Climate Change today, principal investigator David Crisp explains why we need to put this greenhouse gas under satellite scrutiny:

From ground-based monitoring stations, we know that slightly less than half the carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere in the last 50 years has actually stayed there. But there aren't enough ground stations to tell us where the carbon sinks are. About a quarter is being absorbed by the oceans and by trees, but we don't know where the rest is going. Now, one might worry about whether these sinks will continue to be sinks. It'd be nice if we could study them and determine whether they're going to continue to do us this wonderful favour.

Sink studies on the ground are already turning up surprises, like the finding in a Nature paper this week that undisturbed tropical forests seem to be absorbing much more carbon than expected. Crisp says researchers can get a more complete picture from space, where “we can observe the entire Earth using the same instrument.”

On top of the scientific value, he says, "If we can identify sources and sinks of CO2, I'm sure we're going to discover some low-hanging fruit for policymakers."

Continue reading "Interview: David Crisp" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 19, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Tropical forests which (still) cover around 10% of the global land area contain more carbon per hectare than any other form of vegetation. It’s obvious from that that their growth or decline has a huge impact on the global carbon budget.

Cutting down forests will add carbon to the atmosphere, no matter which kind of land cover replaces the jungle. But what’s happening in tropical forests that have long been undisturbed by logging, storms or fire? Theoretically, the carbon balance of such old-growth forest – if tree growth and death are in equilibrium, that is - should be next to zero.

But apparently it’s not. In a paper in Nature today (subscription), a team led by Simon Lewis of Leeds University in Britain reports that tree biomass in intact African forests increased between 1968 and 2007. Across 79 plots monitored in ten countries large living trees added an average 0.63 tonnes of carbon per hectare each year. Scaled up to the continent, and including roots, smaller trees and dead wood, African forests seem to have stored 340 million tonnes of carbon per year during recent decades. Previous studies suggested that Amazonian forests are accumulating biomass and carbon at a similar rate. Globally, intact tropical forests seem to take up 1.3 billion tonnes of carbon per year – equivalent to almost 20% of annual carbon dioxide emissions worldwide.

Continue reading "Jungle Fit!" »

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on February 18, 2009
Categories: Categories, Biosphere feedbacks, Deforestation, GHG emissions, Mitigation, Quirin Schiermeier, Topics | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Last week I noted that the new bosses in Washington DC, in their swift stride towards distinctly post-Bush environmental policies, had yet to touch the outgoing administration’s 11th-hour battle against applying the Clear Air Act to greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

They didn’t maintain the suspense very long.

Yesterday the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, said the EPA would put up for review a December memo on the issue from ex-EPA admin Stephen Johnson - and that the agency is set to announce new thinking on this type of regulation.

Continue reading "Greenhouse gases up for a rethink at the EPA" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 18, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Researchers have discovered new hot spots for emissions of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide: barren patches of peat dotted across northern tundra. And warming in the Arctic - just as it threatens to multiply emissions of carbon dioxide and methane from thawing permafrost and drying bogs - could accelerate the output of this lesser-known climate change culprit, according to a study in Nature Geoscience this week (subscription).

Nitrous oxide is the other other greenhouse gas. In the new paper, Pertii Martikainen of the University of Kuopio in Finland and colleagues call it third most important behind carbon dioxide and methane, noting that it contributes a reported 6% to global warming. It’s not been considered a player at all in the Arctic, where the few scientists who’ve looked for the gas have found negligible emissions. But that’s because they’ve been looking in the wrong places, say Martikainen’s team.

Continue reading "New Arctic feedback: vicious peat circles" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 17, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Biosphere feedbacks, Cryosphere, GHG emissions | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from In the Field

A leader of the the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change told the AAAS annual meeting in Chicago on Saturday that the world's climate is likely to change much faster than predicted, leaving the world with two choices: start cutting carbon emissions earlier, or make the cuts deeper.

The comments came the morning after former U.S. Vice President Al Gore called on scientists at the meeting to help convey a sense of urgency about climate change to policy makers and the public.

"We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations," said Chris Field, co-chair of the IPCC's second working group and a professor at Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science.

This is because the rate at which carbon is entering the atmosphere is increasing much faster than the IPPC modeled in its last report, issued in 2007. That report estimated that world temperatures could increase by between 1.1 to 6.4 degrees Celsius by 2100. But the surge in the use of coal to generate power in developing countries, combined with climate impacts on natural carbon sinks, such as oceans, forests and tundra, mean that future climate impacts will likely be more severe than the IPPC realized, Field said.

"We have higher emissions, and we have a less friendly natural system to picking up these higher emissions, and they both mean that looking forward, the challenge of stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide is getting more complicated than we thought it was before," Field said.

Continue reading "AAAS: Climate issue getting "more complicated"" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 16, 2009
Categories: Climate Science, Climate prediction, Deforestation, Energy, Erika Check Hayden, GHG emissions | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from The Great Beyond

At a talk yesterday in Washington, plant ecologist Christian Körner showed just how variable temperatures can be in the mountains, even between patches of land that are close together.

This could offer possible escape routes for animals impacted by global warming, as potentially they wouldn’t have to move as far as people think to reach a cooler place to live, he says.

Korner’s lab explains the image as follows:

Using a high resolution thermal imaging camera, this picture illustrates the large variation of temperatures in an alpine landscape at 2500m elevation in the Swiss Alps. Topography and plant cover engineer massive deviations from ambient conditions when the sun is out, permitting plants and animals to thrive in an otherwise cold world. By short distance migration plants and animals can select thermal microhabitats that would otherwise be hundreds of meters of elevation apart.

The image is based on unpublished data by Sebastian Leuzinger and Christian Körner, of the University of Basel in Switzerland and is used courtesy of Körner, who was speaking at the ‘Twenty-First Century Ecosystems: Systemic Risk and the Public Good’ symposium.

Roberta Kwok

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 13, 2009
Categories: Biodiversity and Ecology, Roberta Kwok | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"It is an idea whose time has come and I would like to make it happen."
A National Climate Service to provide information on local climate change impacts gets thumbs up from Jane Lubchenco, nominated head of NOAA, at her Senate confirmation hearing.

"The art world is made of materials that bugs like."
Jose-Luis Ramirez of UN University on how climate-driven ecological changes threaten art treasures of the tropics.

"Overplaying natural variations in the weather as climate change is just as much a distortion of the science as underplaying them to claim that climate change has stopped or is not happening."
Scientists making exaggerated claims of catastrophic change distract from the genuine threat of global warming, says the UK Met Office's Vicky Pope.

Northern Ireland environment minister receives no-confidence vote
Sammy Wilson, who has denied human-caused climate change, was censured after he banned a TV ad for emissions cuts.

"Without a massive turnaround in policies, aside from the tragic loss of life and property, we will be asking firefighters to put themselves at an unacceptable risk."
The United Firefighters Union of Australia calls on PM Rudd for tougher climate policy to avoid more frequent bushfires.

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 13, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, In the News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Signs of our interesting times: airlines and oil companies are apparently now queuing up to have their greenhouse gas emissions regulated.

A communiqué to the upcoming UN climate conference in Copenhagen has been signed by three European airlines and an Asian one - British Airways, Air France/KLM, Virgin Atlantic and Cathay Pacific - along with the European airport operator BAA. Calling themselves the Aviation Global Deal Group, they say they recognize “the need to find a global solution to our emissions that meets environmental and developmental needs whilst ensuring a level playing field in our markets.” Namely, they want carbon dioxide emissions from aviation to be regulated with a sectoral approach that applies to their overseas competitors.

As things stand, the EU’s emissions trading scheme is due include plane exhaust starting in 2012, which should make it more expensive to fly through Europe. For long-haul flights from Asia by carriers like Cathay Pacific, the EU will count total emissions rather than just gases released in European airspace, Reuters notes.

Across the pond, the New York Times reports that oil companies are in much the same mood, aiming to shape low-carbon policies they see as inevitable under Obama.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 12, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Climate Policy, In the News, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from The Great Beyond
Around 400 cities across Europe have signed up to an agreement to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by more than the EU’s overall target of 20% by 2020 (from 1990 levels).

The ‘covenant of mayors’ initiative, ceremonially launched on 10 February in Brussels, is the brainchild of the European Commission. Participating cities – so far including London, Paris, and Madrid – will submit action plans within a year, including an inventory of baseline CO₂ emissions. They’ll have to publicly report once every two years on progress, and will get kicked out of the covenant if external evaluators fail them.

“The new group must not be confused with the World Mayors Council on Climate Change, the United Cities and Local Governments initiative on climate change, the Cities of Ambition climate change group, the climate leadership group of the C40 cities, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, the Cities for Climate Protection group, or any other grouping of cities talking about climate change,” John Vidal notes in The Guardian.

The commission’s Pedro Ballesteros Torres told the New York Times that there was a “name-and-shame” aspect to the covenant (though it doesn’t appear to have any other force). “For a mayor to be told a city is noncompliant would be a very strong thing,” he said.

Continue reading "European cities sign climate change covenant" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on February 12, 2009
Categories: Richard Van Noorden | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It is common by now: Every time the weather goes crazy in one part of the world or another, bringing death and destruction through storms, floods or wildfires - such as those still raging in Australia - speculations run wild as to whether it is due to climate change. My Briefing over at Nature news has sparked another such debate.

Raging fires have caused death and destruction in Australia. Image: Punchstock

So would the extreme heat and prolonged drought that has turned the state of Victoria into a deadly tinderbox have happened even if the region hadn’t warmed by a centigrade or so over the last century? Would the record-breaking European heatwave of 2003 have been as disastrous as it has been? Would Hurricane Katrina have been able to gather such destructive power in a cooler world?

The simple answer is: We don’t know. You can’t decide in hindsight whether a discrete event – a spell of extreme summer heat in a greenhouse gas-forced climate, or, come to that, two sixes thrown with a pair of manipulated die – would or would not have happened had the probabilities not been altered beforehand.

But you can bet anything you like that uneven probabilities will have an effect on how often you throw a six. And the same applies to weather: Changing the physics of the climate system will inevitably result in more frequent atmospheric conditions X and less frequent conditions Y.

Climate change, from everything we know, will very likely increase summer heat and drought in subtropical Australia. So there is indeed every reason to believe that bushfires, although they have always been common in the region, will become more severe. And as an ever increasing number of Australians are building homes in suburban areas backing onto bushland and eucalyptus groves, the fires could become even more damaging in the future.

Urban planners must take this into account. Besides, a method called ‘prescribed burning’ - also called back-burning in Australia – offers some hope of mitigation. But, as one comment to my Briefing points out, deliberate burning of dead leaves, timber and grass is a quite controversial means of bushfire control, and has recently declined following agitation by environmental groups.

Quirin Schiermeier

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on February 11, 2009
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The LA Times reports that two US federal agencies in the business of financing international fossil fuel projects like oil refineries and power plants have agreed to start scrutinizing the carbon output of these big emitters.

Export-Import Bank of the United States and the Overseas Private Investment Coporation - finance agencies that help drive US exports and aid development overseas - had been fighting a seven-year lawsuit by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and four US cities. The plaintiffs argued that carbon dioxide emissions from projects funded by the two organizations are hurting these cities economically: “global warming, the suit argued, influences Santa Monica's water supply, the sea level near Oakland's airport and the snow on Rocky Mountain ski slopes” near Boulder, Colorado, according to the LAT story. They said these impacts should have been assessed ahead of time under the National Environmental Policy Act, the seminal US environmental law.

The agencies settled the suit Friday, a few weeks into Obama’s tenure - no coincidence, suggests Bill Hewitt over on his blog. “There’s a new sheriff in town,” agrees Salon’s Andrew Leonard, pointing out that last week the Obama EPA started its own lawsuit over a coal power plant upgrade in Kansas that allegedly failed to add in required pollution controls. The finance agencies’ settlement is intriguing because the battle they're conceding is reminiscent of others that Bush’s people fought tooth and nail until their very last days. Earlier in this suit over fossil fuel funding, says the LAT, the Bush administration argued that "alleged impacts of global climate change are too remote and speculative" to be part of project reviews. We heard essentially the same rationale in December when they pre-empted the possibility of using impacts on endangered species as the basis for limiting emissions. A parallel struggle over regulating power plant carbon footprints under the Clean Air Act (see this post and subsequent developments) has yet to be addressed by the Obama team.

The settlement has the agencies committing $250 million each to renewable energy projects, reports the LAT. Friends of the Earth announced that the EIB has promised to take emissions into account when evaluating new ventures and to develop a carbon policy, while OPIC will aim to reduce its projects’ greenhouse gas emissions 20% over the next ten years. That could add up: an earlier LA Times investigation (h/t DeSmogBlog), based on data from Friends of the Earth, counted up at least 12 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from just a subset of the projects the two funded in 1993-2006.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 10, 2009
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"I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen. We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California."
US Energy Secretary Steven Chu warns of the threat posed to vineyards and farms from warming.

"The phase-out law will be abolished. The ban in the nuclear technology law on new construction will also be abolished."
Citing concerns about climate change and energy dependence on Norway and other suppliers, the Swedish government plans to overturn a nearly 30-year-old moratorium on new nuclear power plants.

"What's important is the UK's impact on global warming and that includes other issues like aviation and consumption."
Green Alliance director Stephen Hale, criticizing the government for not counting imports, shipping and aviation in figures that show greenhouse gas emissions falling 1.7% in 2007.

"I have relearned a basic lesson re interviews – which will have to be fewer and more guarded."
Climate scientist James Hansen becomes wary of the media, following the upset over his refusal to back protesters opposing the expansion at Heathrow airport.

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 06, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, In the News, Olive Heffernan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted on behalf of Roberta Kwok

Scientists have found a new way to estimate past climate: snakes.

In case you haven't seen the media flurry, researchers have uncovered the remains of a gigantic snake in northeastern Colombia (which news outlets have described as "Super-snake", "Bus-sized boa", and "Granddaddy of the snake world", among other things). The newly named Titanoboa cerrejonensis would have measured 13 metres long and weighed about 1,135 kilograms, making it the biggest known snake, living or extinct.

Why does this matter for climate predictions? The snake lived 58 to 60 million years ago, around the Palaeocene when the Earth's upper latitudes were much warmer than they are today. This was a time when ice at the poles had melted and crocodiles roamed the Arctic. But, as climate scientist Matthew Huber describes in a Nature News & Views article, researchers are less sure how hot the tropics were during that time.

Vertebrate paleontologist Jason Head of the University of Toronto in Canada and his colleagues, who reported the snake discovery in Nature, reasoned that such a large snake could only survive at a certain temperature. Snakes rely on external heat from their environment to help fuel their metabolism. The bigger the snake, the more heat it requires, which is why you don't see pythons in Minnesota.

The researchers used a model relating animal body size and ambient temperature to determine how hot the tropics must have been to support the snake. Today's tropics average 26-27 degrees Celsius, and the largest "verifiable" modern anaconda is 7.3 metres long, the study says. Assuming Titanoboa had a similar metabolic rate to today's snakes, the team calculated, the Palaeocene tropics must have been 30-34 degrees Celsius.

"We've taken the snake and turned it into a giant thermometer," says Head.

The finding suggests that as Earth's higher latitudes warmed up during the Palaeocene, the tropics got hotter as well. This goes against the argument that the Earth has a 'thermostat' mechanism that keeps tropical temperatures steady. And while the comparison between the natural global warming of the Palaeocene and modern human-induced global warming is "very tenuous", Head says, it might mean that today's tropics will heat up just as fast as the rest of the world, potentially leading to more extinctions around the equator.

Lisa Sloan, a climate scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, calls the study "intriguing". Although it would have been nice to get estimates from other large Palaeocene creatures as well, she says, the approach has "a lot of potential" for future research.

Image: Jason Bourque

Posted by Alex Witze on February 05, 2009
Categories: Palaeoclimate, Roberta Kwok | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The data on 2008 venture capital investment are predictably grim, but in a year of financial heartbreak, the cleantech sector stands out as one of the rare winners.

According to a MoneyTree report, US venture capitalists invested 52% more money in the sector in 2008 than in 2007, bringing the year’s total to $4.1 billion. Compare that to the 8% drop in overall venture capital investment during 2008.

Meanwhile, the folks at Cleantech Group, LLC have international numbers spanning North America, Europe, China, and India. Their 2008 total: $8.4 billion – 38% higher than in 2007.

Cleantech Group says that solar power companies were the biggest winners, capturing $3.3 billion in venture capital funds last year. After that came biofuels ($904 million), transportation ($795 million), wind ($502 million), smart grid ($345 million), agriculture ($166 million), and water ($148 million). US solar companies swept up four of the top five deals: together, NanoSolar, Solyndra, SoloPower, and Solar Reserve garnered $859 million. (The outlier in the top five list was WinWinD, a Finnish wind power company.)

These cheerful numbers don’t mean that the financial crisis has left the industry unscathed. Growth in the industry appears to be slowing down, judging from data in the MoneyTree report. US cleantech investment increased 85% in 2007 compared to 2006, and investment in 2006 was a whopping 160% greater than investment in 2005. In addition, investment in cleantech dropped 14% in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared with the third -- many say the fourth quarter is a more realistic predictor of what’s to come in 2009 than the 2008 totals.

Still, Mark Heesen, president of the National Venture Capital Association says consumer fervor and government support of cleantech will buffer the industry against the growing economic storm. “Even with a tough economic situation, I think cleantech kind of rises above the economic uncertainty,” he said recently.

For the full story on how the cleantech boom is defying the downturn, see the latest issue of Nature.

Heidi Ledford is a reporter with Nature's online news team

Posted by Olive Heffernan on February 05, 2009
Categories: Business, Economics, Heidi Ledford, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Among the many proposed techno-fixes for climate change, ‘air capture’ seems like one of simplest solutions – what could be more straightforward than sucking greenhouse gases out of air and storing them somewhere else?

But various proposals for the direct removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere have largely been sidelined from serious discussions on climate control. Noteworthy scientists and engineers – including those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – have regarded the technology as a non-starter owing to the large amounts of energy involved. After all, energy costs money and unless we find ourselves in ‘climate crisis’ mode, solutions to climate change will be considered on economic grounds as well as on efficacy.

But a new study by Roger Pielke, Jr. (of the University of Colorado and Prometheus blog) shows that air capture could be a cost-competitive mitigation option. His analysis, soon to be published in Environmental Science and Policy [uncorrected proofs available from Pielke], compares the average costs of air capture over the 21st century to other mitigation options (namely international greenhouse gas regulation under the UN framework convention) assuming that technologies available today are used to fully offset net human emissions of carbon dioxide. He runs the analysis for 3 different (and citable) estimates of the cost of air capture – $500, $360 and $100 per ton of carbon. The IPCC estimate falls near the middle of this range.

For the two upper values, the cost of air capture would be comparable to the estimated cost of stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide at 450 ppm or 550 ppm given by Nick Stern in 2007 and by the IPCC in its last report. But if the costs of air capture decrease to $100 per ton of carbon, then it would prove much more cost-effective than stabilizing at 450 ppm or 550 ppm. We must therefore give air capture the same attention as other approaches to mitigation, argues Pielke, Jr.

Continue reading "Could we count on air capture?" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on February 04, 2009
Categories: Economics, Journal Club, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan, Technology | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I may need to start a file for ‘ocean impacts we hadn’t thought of’. First there was the projection that the seas will get noisier as a result of ocean acidification, which whale conservation groups were running with at a UN conference in December. Now researchers report in PNAS that ocean acidification may make fish larvae lose the sense of smell they use to find a home.

Most coastal marine species are swept out to sea during their larval stage and have to find their way to a habitat they can settle down in. Orange clownfish - yes, that’s the famously lost fish from Finding Nemo - must get back to reefs, often ending up in the same ones where they hatched. Philip Munday and Danielle Dixson of James Cook University in Australia have been studying olfactory cues the clownfish may follow.

But they and their colleagues report that clownfish larvae reared in aquariums at pHs of 7.8 and 7.6 don’t respond to smell tests the same way as control fish. These pHs are low compared to the 8.15 the fish live with today, but a business-as-usual rise in carbon dioxide emissions could take the ocean to 7.8 by 2100 and 7.6 in the following century.

Larvae reared at pH 7.8 favour the pungent smell of a swamp tree that clownfish normally avoid. They also fail to discriminate between the smells of their parents and other adults, suggesting that acid-addled Nemos might end up inbreeding more often. The pH-7.6-reared fish don’t swim toward any of the tested scents, suggesting they've stopped smelling altogether.

It’s not just clownfish that smell their way home. If acid damages fish's olfactory capabilities the researchers say, many other coastal marine species could be affected.

One question the paper doesn’t take up is whether an ocean pH of 7.6 would leave any reefs for clownfish to come back to. The danger to reefs, and other better-known impacts of acidification, have meanwhile been highlighted in a declaration by 155 ocean scientists from 26 countries - and they want action.

Continue reading "Ocean acidification disorients fish, riles up scientists" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on February 03, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Biodiversity and Ecology, In the News, Ocean science, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)