Climate Feedback

Daniel Cressey; cross-posted from The Great Beyond

The world’s carbon dioxide ‘sinks’ are not able to keep up with the amount of the greenhouse gas being produced, according to a paper published in Nature Geoscience.

Reviewing the recent literature Corinne Le Quéré, of the University of East Anglia, and colleagues report that between 1959 and 2008 43% of each year’s carbon dioxide emissions have remained in the atmosphere with the rest being absorbed by land and ocean sinks. However in the last 50 years they suggest that the fraction remaining in the atmosphere has increased from about 40% to 45%.

They also found that a 29% rise in carbon emissions between 2000 and 2008 can be attributed to a large extent to burning coal and the growth of the so-called ‘emerging economies’.

“The Earth’s carbon sinks are complex and there are some gaps in our understanding, particularly in our ability to link human-induced CO2 emissions to atmospheric CO2 concentrations on a year-to-year basis,” says Le Quéré (press release). “But, if we can reduce the uncertainty about the carbon sinks, our data could be used to verify the effectiveness of climate mitigations policies.”

Continue reading "That (carbon) sinking feeling" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 18, 2009
Categories: Biosphere feedbacks, Climate Science, Daniel Cressey, Ocean science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

Climate negotiators are in Barcelona, Spain, this week for the last bout of negotiating prior to the two-week Copenhagen meeting. In December this year, parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will descend on Copenhagen to wrangle over the details of a new global climate deal — a potential successor to the Kyoto Protocol. See Nature’s Road to Copenhagen special for more coverage.

“The clock has almost ticked down to zero and, as always, time will fly. These last five days are critical on the road to success to Copenhagen. They need to be used wisely.”

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, tells the meeting to make progress (AFP).

“A good deal for the climate is still possible. All that is missing is political will, not least from the US, which under President Obama has fallen far behind the rest of the world, and is threatening to undermine a planet-saving agreement in Copenhagen.”

Damon Moglen, of Greenpeace US, comments after his organisation stormed the town’s Sagrada Familia to unveil banners (AFP).

“I feel it [is] very hard to imagine how the US president can receive the Nobel peace prize on December 10 in Oslo only a few hundred kilometres [from Copenhagen] if he has sent an American delegation to Copenhagen with no offer.”

Connie Hedegaard, Denmark’s environment minister, takes aim at America (Guardian).

“Climate change is a ticking time bomb. Global leaders need to act now to stop the needless deaths of millions of children.”

David Mepham, Save the Children’s policy director, says climate change could kill 250,000 children in 2010 and over 400,000 by 2030 (Daily Telegraph).

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 02, 2009
Categories: Daniel Cressey, In the News, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Climate guru and NASA scientist James Hansen has been arrested after taking part in a protest against mountaintop coal mining.

Hansen, along with actress Daryl Hannah and other protesters, apparently planned to deliberately trespass on the property of mining company Massey Energy in the appropriately named Coal River Valley, West Virginia (press release).

However, a counter protest by miners and coal industry supporters forced them to change their plans. Instead, according to the Charleston Gazette, they sat down in the road outside Massey Energy's Goals Coal preparation plant in Raleigh County and were arrested for obstructing the police and impeding traffic.

Some reports say Hansen and other actually did trespass. Another account alleges a coal supporter assaulted members of the Hansen protest group.

Hansen, of course, has a long history of opposing coal power. He even appeared with Hannah before at a climate change protest, where Nature reporter Jeff Tollefson noted “Hansen says he is willing to get arrested”.

Willing and able, it seems.

More
Photos of the protest and arrests – RAN
A Plea To President Obama: End Mountaintop Coal Mining - Hansen on the Enivronment 360 blog

Cross-posted by Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

Image: Hansen at a previous protest / Jeff Tollefson

Posted by Olive Heffernan on June 24, 2009
Categories: Daniel Cressey, In the News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Republicans and Democrats have been wrangling this week over proposed legislation to tackle climate change. In the course of this spat it emerged that the former were considering frustrating the latter by forcing the entire 900 page bill and its 400 amendments to be read aloud.

Faced with this perceived ‘delaying tactic’ Democrat Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, did what any self respecting person in his position would do … he hired someone who can read really, really fast.

Via TPM, here is a video of what happened next:

Continue reading 'Climate change: the need for speed (reading) ' on Nature's The Great Beyond blog

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 22, 2009
Categories: Climate Policy, Daniel Cressey, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Climate change could force birds to migrate hundreds of extra miles, according to new research. The extra distance might even be deadly.

Modelling by Stephen Willis, of Durham University, and his colleagues shows that the breeding ranges of Sylvia warblers will shift consistently north as the Earth warms. Non-breeding ranges showed no consistent directional shift, meaning longer migrations.

“From 2071 to 2100, nine out of the 17 species we looked at are projected to face longer migrations, particularly birds that cross the Sahara desert,” says Willis (press release). “Our findings show that marathon migrations for some birds are set to become even longer journeys. ... The added distance is a considerable threat.”

According to the team’s paper in Journal of Biogeography, trans-Saharan migrants face an average extra flight of 413 km. The researchers write that the challenge facing many species is “unprecedented”.

Continue reading 'Birds face longer migrations due to climate change' on Nature's The Great Beyond blog.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on April 15, 2009
Categories: Biodiversity and Ecology, Daniel Cressey, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Arctic sea ice continues to shrink, according to the latest satellite data. And in a scenario all too familiar to people of a certain age, the ice that is left has been replaced by a younger, thinner version of itself.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, the maximum extent of Arctic sea ice last winter was the fifth lowest on record. All sixth lowest maximums have occurred in the last six years (press release).

This year’s maximum was 15.16 million square kilometres, which is smaller than the 1979-2000 average by an area roughly the size of Texas (or France). Younger, thinner ice which melts every year is now 70% of Arctic sea ice, says the NSIDC, meaning melting is easier. In the 1980s and 90s this type of ice was between 40 and 50% of the total.

Read the rest of this post at Nature's The Great Beyond blog.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on April 07, 2009
Categories: Climate Science, Cryosphere, Daniel Cressey, Regional climate | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from The Great Beyond

This week’s UN hosted climate change talks in Bonn, Germany, are well underway. According to New Scientist this climate summit is “more important than the G20”.

So what’s going on in Bonn?

This meeting is the first of five sessions leading up to what the UN says will be an “ambitious and effective international climate change deal” to be finalised in Copenhagen in December (pdf). The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has already started its ‘countdown to Copenhagen’ timer.

However, as Reuters pointed out on Wednesday, delegates from 175 nations even managed to argue about what they were arguing about. The question is whether they should come up with a ‘treaty’, a ‘protocol’ an ‘agreement’, a ‘deal’, or a ‘decision’ to succeed the Kyoto protocol.

The first two would imply something legally binding, says the news wire, while the last would be non-binding. “It certainly has big legal implications,” Yvo de Boer, head of the UNFCCC, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Whatever the eventual wording is, developing nations think the more developed world should be trying harder. “We believe that by 2020 the [developed nations] should reduce their emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels,” says Chinese delegate Xu Huaqing (Reuters).

Current US plans are much less ambitious than this, points out the BBC, being merely to limit emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

“It is not the point in time in 2020 that matters - it is a long-term trajectory against which the science measures cumulative emissions,” says Jonathan Pershing, head of the US delegation. “The president has also announced his intent to pursue an 80% reduction by 2050.”

Continue reading "What’s going Bonn?" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on April 03, 2009
Categories: Climate Science, Conferences and Meetings, Daniel Cressey, Features, GHG emissions, In the News, Mitigation, UN climate talks, Bonn, April 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross posted from The Great Beyond

A controversial experiment which poured iron into the Southern Ocean has also poured cold water on the idea that such ‘ocean fertilization’ can mitigate against climate change.

The Lohafex project was investigating suggestions that carbon dioxide can be removed from the atmosphere by promoting algal blooms with iron. Despite protests from some groups, researchers aboard the Polarstern research vessel carried out their experiment this month.

However, the Alfred-Wegener institute, which was backing Lohafex, says “only a modest amount of carbon sank out of the surface layer by the end of the experiment. Hence, the transfer of CO2 from the atmosphere to the ocean to compensate the deficit caused by the LOHAFEX bloom was minor compared to earlier ocean iron fertilization experiments.”

Continue reading "Results cast doubt on potential ‘climate fix’" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on March 24, 2009
Categories: Daniel Cressey, Features, In the News, Ocean science, Technology | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from The Great Beyond

New Yorkers beware! A new study published in Nature Geoscience says the north-eastern US coast will be in more trouble from global warming than previously believed.

Looking at the predictions from a whole set of different climate models, researchers Jianjun Yin, Michael Schlesinger and Ronald Stouffer found that changes in ocean circulation will result in higher sea levels in the region, over and above expected global sea level changes. Depending on whether greenhouse gas emissions are low or high, an additional rise of between 15 and 21 cm can be expected by 2100, they say.

“Some parts of lower Manhattan are only 1.5 meters above sea level,” says Yin, a researcher at Florida State University (National Geographic). “Twenty centimetres of extra rise would pose a threat to this region.”

The graphic right shows dynamic sea level rises at coastal cities worldwide in the medium greenhouse-gas emission scenario, due to the knock on effects of changes in the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.

“Our results show that the northeast coast of the United States is among the most vulnerable regions to future changes in sea level and ocean circulation, especially when considering its population density and the potential socioeconomic consequences of such changes,” write the researchers. “It should be noted that the impact of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet on the [Atlantic meridional overturning circulation] is not taken into account here.”

Continue reading "Will warming wash-away Wall Street?" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on March 17, 2009
Categories: Daniel Cressey, Extreme Events, Features, In the News, Research | 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)

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

There’s nothing like a good climate change-denial article to get the internet all riled up, and boy has Erika Lovley done some riling.

She’s penned not one but two articles for the right-leaning Politico newspaper, which are being torn to shreds as we speak.

The one generating most ire is the frankly spectacular ‘Scientists urge caution on global warming’. This claims there is “a growing accumulation of global cooling science and other findings that could signal that the science behind global warming may still be too shaky to warrant cap-and-trade legislation”.

David Roberts on the Gristmill blog calls Lovley’s pieces, “two of the most jaw-droppingly moronic stories I've ever seen”. The version of his story on the Huffington Post website comes with the headline, “Politico Reporter Erika Lovley Embarrasses Politico, Self, Profession of Journalism, Humanity”.

You know this isn't going to end well for her don't you?

Continue reading "Lovley’s day for a climate bunfight " »

Posted by Anna Barnett on November 26, 2008
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Daniel Cressey, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross posted from the Great Beyond

Let us get one thing clear right at the start: lemmings do not commit mass suicide by leaping off cliffs into the sea. However, their populations do undergo massive size fluctuations, leading to mass migrations where the cute critters may go swimming to find new food sources.

At least, they used to undergo massive population explosions. In a paper published this week in Nature a group of researchers analyse the absence of such events since 1994. The culprit, you guessed it, is climate change.

Nils Stenseth and colleagues show that changes in winter weather and snow go hand-in-hand with changes in Lemmus lemmus populations. They further show that when the regular explosion of lemming numbers doesn’t occur predators such as foxes switch their attention to other species, leading to knock-on effects throughout the eco-system.

“A relatively small effect on one particular species is having a broad effect on the system,” Stenseth, a researcher at the University of Oslo, told Reuters.

In a News and Views piece analysing the research, Tim Coulson and Aurelio Malo, of Imperial College London, explain that lemmings like to scurry about in a gap that warm ground melts between it and the snow layer above it. This so-called subnivean space is relatively warm and keeps the rodents safe from things that would like to eat them.

What Stenseth and colleagues found was that climate change seems to have eliminated the subnivean space and, worse, created a sheet of ice over the moss on which lemmings like to nibble.

“The critical reader will complain that the story is based on correlations. Although this is true, it is often the only way to study populations and the consequences of changing climate for ecosystems,” write Coulson and Malo. “The collection of detailed long-term data on the dynamics of free-living populations of animals and plants rarely attracts the same excitement as genomics or particle physics, yet such data are vital in characterizing the consequences of climate change for the natural world on which we depend.”

Continue reading "Climate change hits loveable lemmings" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 06, 2008
Categories: Biodiversity and Ecology, Daniel Cressey, Features, Journal Club | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

Cyclones appear to be responsible for a large amount of organic carbon tied up in ocean sediments.

In a paper published in Nature Geoscience, Robert Hilton and colleagues report on the impact of cyclone-induced floods on carbon in the LiWu River in Taiwan. They found that between 77 and 92% of non-fossil carbon eroded from the LiWu catchment area was moved during floods linked to cyclones.

As increased sea surface temperatures from global warming could increase the intensity of cyclones, this could create negative feedback, with bigger cyclones locking up more organic carbon in sediments. Sadly this is not going to stop global warming.

Continue reading "Cyclones’ carbon capturing" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on October 20, 2008
Categories: Atmospheric Science, Climate Science, Daniel Cressey, Earth science, Hurricanes, Ocean science | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross posted from The Great Beyond

Criminal damage in the name of climate change is not a criminal offence, according to a shock ruling from a British court.

A jury yesterday acquitted six Greenpeace activists who claimed that the threat of global warming was a ‘lawful excuse’ for the damage they caused while protesting at a coal power plant (see this blog post for background).

Climate change scientist James Hansen had previously backed the six: he released a statement declaring “We will need our Mercedes-driving lawyer friends to tell us if the verdict has greater significance -- but the jurors were common people, not politicians.

“The main point, that the government, the utility, and the fossil fuel industry, were aware of the facts [of climate change] but continued to ignore them are more generally valid worldwide. It raises the question of whether the right people are on trial.”

Eco-warriors’ UK paper of choice The Independent says the verdict “will have shocked ministers and energy companies”. In the Guardian, veteran environment correspondent Jon Videl says it will “embarrass the government and lead to more direct action protests against energy companies”.

Continue reading "Shock climate change verdict acquits Hansen’s heroes " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on September 11, 2008
Categories: Daniel Cressey, Features, In the News, Politics, Society, Technology | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Cross posted from The Great Beyond

The contentious ‘hockey stick’ climate change graph has again been upheld as broadly accurate, doubtless to the rage of climate denialists/sceptics/whatevers.

A team led by Michael Mann of Penn State University has looked at a whole range of proxies for surface temperatures over the last 2,000 years in an attempt to counter criticism of the graph, which showed a long ‘handle’ and a sharp upturn (the blade).

Their findings? As the Christian Science Monitor puts it: “It still looks a lot like the much-battered, but still rink-ready stick of 1998. Today the handle reaches further back and it’s a bit more gnarly. But the blade at the business end tells the same story.”

The previous hockey stick had been accused of relying too much on data from tree rings so this PNAS study may silence some of the critics when it appears later.

Continue reading "Jolly hockey sticks " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on September 02, 2008
Categories: Climate Science, Climate variability, Daniel Cressey, Features, In the News, Palaeoclimate | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

A paper in this week’s Nature predicts that, rather than warming, North Atlantic sea surface temperatures may actually decrease slightly in the next decade. What’s more, the paper suggests global surface temperatures may not actually increase either.

Has global warming stopped? Is this a nail in Al Gore’s coffin?

Well, no.

Despite headlines such as ‘Doubt is cast over global warming’ and ‘Global warming could stop NATURALLY for ten years, say scientists’ that is not what this paper is about.

What this new paper by Noel Keenlyside, of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Germany, sets out to do is incorporate data on short term variations in climate into our models of climate change. By doing this they push us into the arena of creating shorter term predictions, in this case of the next decade.

In a “News and Views” commentary on the piece in the same issue of Nature Richard Wood explains:

Keenlyside and colleagues’ model uses a very simple ocean initialization method in which they add heat to or remove it from the ocean surface until sea surface temperatures across the globe are close to observed values. They use their model to produce a set of retrospective ‘forecasts’ starting from earlier states, which they test against what actually happened. Their system produces refined temperature predictions a decade ahead for large parts of Europe and North America.

Whether their prediction of a plateau for warming for a decade in North America and Europe is correct or not, their research may signal a shift that many climate researchers have been calling for for awhile now — toward service-oriented climate science ...

I am sure that this is an excellent paper by world class scientists. But when I look at the broader significance of the paper what I see is that there is in fact nothing that can be observed in the climate system that would be inconsistent with climate model predictions. If global cooling over the next few decades is consistent with model predictions, then so too is pretty much anything and everything under the sun.

Cross posted by Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 01, 2008
Categories: Climate Science, Climate prediction, Climate variability, Daniel Cressey, In the News | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

The BBC is facing allegations that it altered a news story about climate at the behest of an activist. A series of emails from BBC reporter Roger Harrabin and activist Jo Abbess were posted on the Campaign Against Climate Change website on April 4th. After a series of back and forths Harrabin writes “Have a look in 10 minutes and tell me you are happier. ... We have changed headline and more”. The original headline - Global Warming ‘dips this year’ – changed to the current Global Temperatures ‘to decrease’. Needless to say as soon as these emails were noticed they were picked up by unhappy sceptic bloggers (here, here and here for example). The BBC told us:

A minor change was made to the "Global temperatures 'to decrease'" piece on our website to better reflect the science. A few people including the report's authors, the world meteorlogical organisation, pointed out to us that the earlier version had been ambiguous.

Harrabin was contacted by Abbess who asks for corrections to it, sometimes in quite a heavy handed fashion, for example:

It would be better if you did not quote the sceptics. Their voice is heard everywhere, on every channel. They are deliberately obstructing the emergence of the truth.

And also:

I am about to send your comments to others for their contribution, unless you request I do not. They are likely to want to post your comments on forums/fora, so please indicate if you do not want this to happen. You may appear in an unfavourable light because it could be said that you have had your head turned by the sceptics.

The News Sniffer site highlights some changes other than the headline*. These were already annoying some sceptics even before the emails surfaced.

Making corrections to an article in response to a complaint is not necessarily wrong.

It’s certainly a bit much to string up Harrabin as a result of this exchange. I’ve certainly gone over things I’ve written and thought “I wish I’d put that differently.”

To my mind there are only two questions to be answered here.

The first of these is should the BBC have flagged the article as having been changed? The answer here is yes if they thought the original version was wrong, and no if they thought they were just altering for readability. As they think the change is minor then there isn’t really a need to flag it**.

The second question is why on earth Abbess put up the email exchange. Anyone could have predicted the response from the sceptics out there...

*

Old version [top three paragraphs]	New version
Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.	Global temperatures for 2008 will be slightly cooler than last year as a result of the cold La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.
The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.	The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.
This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory. But experts say we are still clearly in a long-term warming trend - and they forecast a new record high temperature within five years.	But this year's temperatures would still be way above the average - and we would soon exceed the record year of 1998 because of global warming induced by greenhouse gases.

** Here’s an extract from a blog post by a BBC editor from 2006:

When we make a major change or revision to a story we republish it with a new timestamp, indicating it’s a new version of the story. If there’s been a change to a key point in the story we will often point this out in the later version (saying something like "earlier reports had said...").

But lesser changes - including minor factual errors, corrected spellings and reworded paragraphs - go through with no new timestamp because in substance the story has not actually progressed any further. This has led to accusations we are "stealth editing" - a sinister-sounding term that implies we are actively trying to hide what we are doing. We’re not. It’s just that continually updating the timestamp risks making it meaningless, and pages of notes about when and where minor revisions are made do not make for a riveting read

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

Posted by Anna Barnett on April 09, 2008
Categories: Communicating Climate Change, Daniel Cressey, In the News | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Europe and the US could be headed for a trade war over climate change.

In a speech yesterday José Barroso, president of the European Commission, said he would be ready to force companies outside the EU to buy carbon allowances to ensure that companies inside were not disadvantaged by Europe’s tougher emissions targets (speech).

While this apparently went down well with the audience (of European businessmen) it hasn’t gone down so well with America.

Reuters highlights that US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said that an earlier version of the EU plans seemed to be an excuse to close the European market and amounted to something like protectionism. More worryingly, the notes for speech delivered by Schwab last week contains the statement, “The unilateral imposition of restrictions can lead to retaliation, and dramatically impact economic growth and markets worldwide – while accomplishing nothing or worse when it comes to advancing environmental objectives.”

The US approach has also been backed by the UK, most recently by energy minister Malcolm Wicks saying today the government was “against any measures which might look like trade barriers” and warning that some in Europe “could use this as a kind of secret weapon, as it were, to bring about protectionism” (listen to Wicks on BBC or read his comments on Reuters). Barroso also appears to be picking a fight with his own trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson. Mandelson is on record as saying the restrictions are not the way forward (BBC)*.

Continue reading "Climate change trade war" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on January 23, 2008
Categories: Carbon markets, Daniel Cressey, Features, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Climate change is being blamed for problems at the annual ice festival in Harbin, China. Huge intricate sculptures are disappearing before the thousands of tourists that flock to the festival get to see them.

“"The average temperature of winter in Harbin is 5 degrees Celsius higher than historical records,” says Yin Xuemian, a senior meteorologist at the Heilongjiang Observatory (Reuters). “In December 2002, ice lanterns in Harbin melted right after they were sculpted. [In 2006] Lots of money and energy were spent on redoing the sculptures. As the temperature rises, the period of ice and snow activities have shortened dramatically.”

AFP says this year’s festival has been a big success. Participants are concerned though, one told China Daily, “We’re all worried that the things will just collapse.” The festival is supposed to run until February. “We're worried it won't last that long this year,” Sun Lei, an official involved in the festival, told the BBC.

A rise of 5 C is pretty large. Estimates are generally far lower although these tend to be averaged over large areas. See Late-Twentieth-Century Climatology and Trends of Surface Humidity and Temperature in China.

Alternatively, you can geek out with the raw data from NASA's GISS Surface Temperature Analysis, which allows you to make maps of the trends. There’s even monitoring data from Harbin itself, although this isn’t totally up to date.

Image: Getty

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

Posted by Olive Heffernan on January 10, 2008
Categories: Daniel Cressey, In the News | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

If you like coral reefs you should enjoy them while you can, they won’t be around for long. Global warming and the ocean acidification that comes with it will decimate reefs by the end of this century, according to a new review article in Science.

“The impact of climate change on coral reefs is much closer than we appreciated. It's just around the corner,” says study author Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, of the University of Queensland. “... The warmer and more acidic oceans caused by the rise of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels threaten to destroy coral reef ecosystems, exposing people to flooding, coastal erosion and the loss of food and income from reef-based fisheries and tourism. And this is happening just when many nations are hoping that these industries would allow them to alleviate their impoverished state.” (Reuters ... Telegraph)

Although there is no new original research here, when all the numbers are brought together they are pretty frightening. Atmospheric carbon dioxide will exceed 500 parts per million sometime between 2050 and 2100. This will drive global temperatures up at least 2°C, “values that significantly exceed those of at least the past 420,000 years during which most extant marine organisms evolved” says the paper.

It adds ominously, “Under these conditions, reefs will become rapidly eroding rubble banks such as those seen in some inshore regions of the Great Barrier Reef, where dense populations of corals have vanished over the past 50 to 100 years.”

It seems obvious that penguins will be in trouble if global warming continues. If you like it cold and icy then a hotter planet is not going to work in your favour.

A new report from environmental group WWF highlights the problems the dinner-jacketed birds face. “As the ice melts, these icons of the Antarctic will have to face an extremely tough battle to survive,” says Emily Lewis-Brown, Marine and Climate Change Officer at WWF-UK (press release).

WWF says overfishing and a reduction in sea ice is putting the Emperor, Gentoo, Chinstrap, and Adélie penguins under pressure. The report is actually just a two page document timed to coincide with Bali and it has long been known that penguins have, in the words of 2001 paper published in Nature (subscription required), “potential high susceptibility to climate change”.

No new science then, still it’s a good time and a good peg, and it is getting coverage, along with two men dressed as penguins in Bali who danced around to the song “Hot, Hot, Hot”.

Penguins now threatened by global warming
Penguin colonies in decline because of global warming
The last emperor? Penguin numbers plunge
Penguins face global warming threat
WWF: Climate warming threatens Antarctica Penguins

Image: Adelie penguin from a photo by Michael Van Woert, NOAA NESDIS, ORA

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

Posted by Anna Barnett on December 12, 2007
Categories: Daniel Cressey | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

While the world’s climate experts meet in Bali, the rest of the world is getting on with the serious business of elaborate hoaxes and stating the obvious. First up: activists from the Rising Tide movement successfully impersonated a major business group and pretended they were going to cut carbon emissions by 90%.

“Leading scientists say decisive action must happen now to reduce our emissions. However, corporate interests have stymied substantive action and are derailing genuine efforts of civil society to adequately address climate change,” says Matt Leonard, member of the movement (press release). Wired has a full interview.

The spoof press release was supposedly from the US Climate Action Partnership, which counts General Motors, Shell, and environmentalists’ bête noire Rio Tinto among its members. Both blogs and news sources were taken in: examples with later retractions at Thomson Financial News (story, correction) and It’s Getting Hot In Here (original, correction).

USCAP issued the following terse statement (reproduced in its entirety):
A fraudulent news release was distributed today that misstates the positions of the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP). In addition, the release cites a website that does not represent USCAP or its views. Neither USCAP nor its member organizations were involved in the development of this website or the distribution of today's announcement. This fraudulent website has been shut down.

Below the fold – why it’s all the fault of drunk Canadian divorcees anyway...

Continue reading "Climate hoaxes and divorced Canadian drunks " »

Posted by Anna Barnett on December 04, 2007
Categories: Daniel Cressey, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s not a good time to be a flying fox. Justin Welbergen, from the University of Cambridge, has just published some new research on them and he thinks climate change means they are all going to die.

The issue for the animals, which are not foxes at all but fruit bats, is that they’re just not that good with heat. This is a bit of a problem if you live in an Australia that is getting slowly hotter. Welbergen and his colleagues found that temperature extremes caused mass die-offs, with females and the young being especially vulnerable. When temperatures reached 42.9°C, thousands of the bats keeled over and flapped no more (paper should appear here today).

Climate change may also be benefiting some types of the bat, by allowing them to expand their range by reducing the number of cold nights, which they can’t tolerate. “If so, this provides an example of how climate change may act like a double-edged sword,” write Welbergen and co, “it can cause a species to expand its distribution in response to a reduction in the number of cold nights, while putting the same species at an increased risk from extreme warm events.

It has been acknowledged before that climate change is causing changes in species distributions. Nature Reports Climate Change had an article on this recently, noting that in Australia some possums have been getting so hot they fell out of their trees.

Stefan Klose, one of the research team, told the Daily Telegraph, “In a very dramatic way we see the outcome of extreme climate events that are predicted to increase as a result of climate change by the Intergovermental Panel on Climate Change. These animals are simply not able to cope with higher temperatures and so they die. They are the seed dispersers for Australia's rainforest so the ecosystem effects could be very considerable.”

According to the Times over 30,000 fruit bats have died since 1994 in heat waves “associated with global warming”. Conservation Magazine thinks monitoring roosts when high temperatures are expected is the way forward. This isn’t going to please fruit growers. According to the North Queensland Register a “‘plague” of flying foxes is tormenting the regions’ farmers. A small piece of good news for the animals: lychee farms in North Queensland have been told to dismantle electric grids used to stop bats eating the tasty fruit (ABC).

Image: courtesy of Justin Welbergen

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond.

Posted by Anna Barnett on November 28, 2007
Categories: Daniel Cressey | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This year’s edition of the UN Human Development Report makes bleak reading. Unless we deal with climate change, it says, efforts to reduce poverty will stall then reverse, the poorest countries will suffer first and not even the richest countries will escape global warming. Efforts to improve health and education are also threatened (summary PDF, full report PDF).

“Ultimately, climate change is a threat to humanity as a whole. But it is the poor, a constituency with no responsibility for the ecological debt we are running up, who face the immediate and most severe human costs,” said Kemal Derviş, administrator of the UN Development Programme (press release PDF).

More droughts, floods and storms are already reinforcing existing inequalities in standards of living, says the report. Climate change must be tackled now. “The world lacks neither the financial resources nor the technological capabilities to act. What is missing is a sense of urgency, human solidarity and collective interest,” says the UN (report home page).

The annual report also ranks the UN’s members in terms of their development, using life expectancy, educational attainment and adjusted real income. Top of the pile this year is Iceland, bottom is Sierra Leone. As Reuters notes, per capita GDP is 45 times higher in the former than in the latter. Without fail this ranking brings a rash of stories where countries celebrate or mourn their position – details and full ranking below the fold.

Continue reading "Climate change ‘will undermine poverty progress’" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on November 28, 2007
Categories: Adaptation, Climate Policy, Daniel Cressey | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Those bored of playing with Google Earth may be interested in NASA’s new toy – a stunningly detailed map of Antarctica. Claiming to be ten times more detailed than previously available equivalents, the map was painstakingly constructed by the stitching together of 1,100 hand-selected photos from Landsat satellites (NASA press release).

The map was produced in collaboration with the National Science Foundation and the British Antarctic Survey. It’s already attracting media attention (BBC, Bloomberg, ABC, Herald Sun, Wired).

“This innovation, compared to what we had available most recently, is like watching the most spectacular high-definition TV in living colour versus watching the picture on a small black-and-white television,” says Robert Bindschadler, chief scientist of the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at Goddard (NSF press release).

Those who sifted through all the photos and put them together are hoping that the Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica will be rather more than a fun distraction for desk workers avoiding work.

“...LIMA is also a fundamental tool for scientists,” says Scott Borg, director of NSF's division of Antarctic sciences. “It will be used in every discipline from biology to geology to glaciology, both to answer scientific questions and plan fieldwork in the vast unexplored tracts of Antarctica. For educators, students, and the general public, LIMA will bring to life the Antarctic continent like nothing before it.”

The images will apparently eventually make their way to Google Earth, but why wait for that – the map is online now.

Images: top – mosaic of Antarctic shots, bottom – diagram of photos used in LIMA / all courtesy of NASA

Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond.

Posted by Anna Barnett on November 28, 2007
Categories: Climate Science, Daniel Cressey | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The appearance of a massive swarm of jellyfish, and their subsequent decimation of an Irish salmon farm, are this week being blamed on global warming.

Stock worth £1million were suffocated in their cages by the swarm, which is estimated to have covered 25 square kilometres of sea and been up to 10 metres thick. The fish farm's director said “It was unprecedented, absolutely amazing. The sea was red with these jelly fish and there was nothing we could do about, it, absolutely nothing.” says Northern Salmon Company managing director, John Russell (Telegraph). The full story is on The Great Beyond.

This isn't the first time climate change has been linked to jellyfish outbreaks. Last summer, the same jellyfish (Pelagia notiluca) was spotted in unusually high concentrations in the Mediterranean, again prompting speculation about impacts of sea temperature rise (New Scientist). Reuters reported that a volunteer campaign had removed eight tons of jellyfish from the Spanish coastline. Both reports mention temperature and decline in predators as causes.

A recent study linked increasing populations of jellyfish in the North Sea to climate change and predicted that more jellyfish would appear over the next 100 years.

If the two events are truly linked the UK's salmon industry may have to be added to the list of climate change victims.

Image via Wikipedia

Daniel Cressey and Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on November 23, 2007
Categories: Anna Barnett, Daniel Cressey, In the News, Ocean science | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

World experts have gathered in Valencia to produce a synthesis of all the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports released to date (Nature – subscription required). Thus, there is a rash of climate change news.

The Valencia meeting’s report will, according to AFP, “serve as a guide for policymakers for years to come”. Now traditional arguments between Europe, the US and other participants over the exact wordings are already underway (AP).

Even OPEC is getting in on the action. The group of oil producing nations said this week it would assist in cutting or capturing carbon emissions (Reuters). Some reports even say it is mulling over the creation of a $3 billion fund invest in emission capture technology (Times).

In Australia the former head of the country’s Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization’s atmospheric research unit warned before the meeting that current policy is based on science that is already out of date (ABC). “If you think climate change is on the agenda, just wait another couple of years,” he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Cross posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 16, 2007
Categories: Climate Policy, Climate Science, Daniel Cressey, Features, In the News | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)