Olive Heffernan

Over on Yale E360, IPCC chair Rajendra Pachauri responds to the allegations of inaccuracies in the panel’s 2007 assessment report. Specifically, he addresses the accusations of error referred to (somewhat absurdly) as Glaciergate, Amazongate and Africagate. Pachauri – who has recently been cleared of allegations of financial irregularity – writes:

On Glaciergate:

AR4 stated that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035. This figure was incorrect and unfortunately based on a single unsubstantiated source. When this error came to light, the IPCC expressed its regret and noted it on its website. The error was contained in a single sentence and in one graphic representation out of AR4’s nearly 3,000 pages.

It did not appear in any of the IPCC summaries relied on by policymakers. In those summaries, the language states: “Glacier melt in the Himalayas is projected to increase flooding, and rock avalanches from destabilized slopes, and to affect water resources within the next two to three decades. This will be followed by decreased river flows as the glaciers recede.” This statement remains valid, as does the fact that widespread loss of glacial mass and reduction in snow cover will accelerate throughout the 21st century largely as a result of human activities that are warming our Earth’s atmosphere.

On Amazongate:

The IPCC was accused of exaggerating the extent to which the Amazon rainforest could be damaged by a decrease in rainfall. The paragraph in question correctly stated: “By mid-century, increases in temperature and associated decreases in soil water are projected to lead to gradual replacement of tropical forest by savanna in eastern Amazonia. Semi-arid vegetation will tend to be replaced by arid-land vegetation.”

This was a classic case in which the controversy was initiated not by scientists but by the mainstream media, which badly distorted the facts. Blogs and other articles argued incorrectly that a report, the “Global Review of Forest Fires,” should not have been cited as a reference, because

it was published by two non-governmental organizations. But the paragraph in question accurately presented results in the literature it cited. It was a small part of a long, well-referenced discussion of Amazonian risk. Although the “Global Review of Forest Fires” was not a peer-reviewed document, it nevertheless was an important compilation, assembling information from more than 100 sources, including peer-reviewed scientific papers and reports from governments and non-governmental organizations, as well as news articles.

On March 18, 18 respected rainforest scientists from Brazil, the U.S., and the U.K. issued a lengthy statement reaffirming the IPCC’s conclusion that up to 40 percent of the Amazon rainforest is at risk because of climate change. Their statement can found online.

On Africagate:

Another alleged exaggeration of AR4 was that climate change could reduce crop yields in parts of Africa by up to 50 percent. The only concern here was that in condensing the material from the underlying Working Group II Summary for Policymakers for the Synthesis Reports, the important qualifying phrase “by climate variability and change” was omitted from a statement that read: “Agricultural production, including access to food, in many African countries is projected to be severely compromised.” This is no way diminished or altered the scientific basis or the policy relevance of the statement included in the synthesis report.

The full piece by Pachauri is here. Yale E360 also has some other views of what the IPCC ought to do to restore its integrity in the wake of the recent allegations.

Olive Heffernan

I’m due to travel to Japan this Friday for a conference on Climate Change Effects on Fish and Fisheries. If I get there, I’ll be providing regular updates from the conference here on Climate Feedback. But that’s beginning to look like a big ‘if’. The volcanic ash cloud from Eyjafjallajökull is still keeping planes grounded across the UK and could do for several days to come.

That’s bad news for a lot of people, but could it be good news for the climate?

Over on Treehugger, Matthew McDermott writes:

Resurgence magazine has posted on their Facebook page an interesting stat attributed to the Plane Stupid: "200,000 tonnes per a day of CO2 emissions have been prevented as a result of cancelled flights – that’s the same as 100,000 households would create in a whole year”. How that figure was derived isn’t entirely clear in terms of what assumptions were made, is that just passenger flights, et cetera.

There’s also the question of how the absence of contrails – or condensation clouds – from commercial airplanes will affect the climate in the short term. Remember that post 9/11 contrail study, which supposedly showed that the average daily temperature over the continental US suddenly widened in the 3 days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, when all commercial air traffic was banned from American skies? Its main conclusion – that daily highs and lows in temperature were more extreme in the absence of contrails – has since been refuted, but the flight ban over Europe should provide another opportunity to test the hypothesis.

And then, of course, there’s the ash from Eyjafjallajökull itself. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 cooled global temperatures by about half a degree over the following months, which has led some to propose pumping sulphate aerosols into the atmosphere as a means of artificially cooling the climate. Katharine Sanderson writes on The Great Beyond:

So will the ash from have a lasting effect on our climate? Probably not according to Alan Robock, a meteorologist from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, US. “So far, the emissions have been so small, that I expect no climate impacts,” he says. On April 14, there was 0.004 megatons of sulphur dioxide, as compared to 20 megatons for Mount Pinatubo in 1991, and it was emitted into the troposphere, where its lifetime is only a week or so, as opposed to 1-2 years for the stratosphere for Pinatubo. The ash will also fall out quickly, so I expect no climate impact, unless the eruption gets much stronger.

Also on The Great Beyond, Daniel Cressey offers some assistance in pronouncing Eyjafjallajökull.

Image details: Volcanic ash, from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland, is currently shrouding the whole of Northern Europe. Flying at around 30,000 feet, this Icelandair flight FI450 skirted the edge of the vast grey ash cloud (to the right of the jet engine) offering a rare glimpse of the cause of the air-travel disruption in Europe. Photo by Tom Bradwell of the British Geological Survey.

Olive Heffernan

In what is anticipated to be the most closely contested election since 1992, Conservative leader David Cameron will, on May 6th, attempt to oust Gordon Brown and end 13 years of Labour Party rule in the UK. But if – as some are predicting – Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg manages to wrestle enough votes from Cameron and Brown, there is a chance of a coalition forming between two parties.

Some of the major issues the election could be won on are the economy, immigration and crime. On the environment, climate change remains a key issue. The Telegraph has a breakdown of the energy and climate policies of the main parties, which I’ve included in summary form below. And the Guardian is offering readers a chance to pose their suggestions for environmental policies the parties ought to adopt in their election campaign. You can add to the list of ‘environmental demands’ here. Or you can join the Guardian debate with the three leading party’s climate and energy ministers, being held in London this Wednesday. Details of how you can pose your questions virtually – via Twitter or Facebook – are available here. I’ll be popping along and will be back here later in the week with a postmortem. Also of interest is climatologist Myles Allen’s piece on why he won’t be voting Green.

Labour’s energy and climate-change policies include:

• Achieving around 40 per cent low-carbon electricity by 2020

• Creating 400,000 new green jobs by 2015

• Making greener living easier and fairer through ‘pay as you save’ home energy insulation

• Energy-bill discounts for pensioners

• Banning recyclable and biodegradable materials from landfill

Key Conservative environment policies include:

• Working towards zero waste

• Providing incentives to recycle

• Encouraging sustainable water management

• Work for reform of the Common Fisheries Policy

• Offering every household a Green Deal

• Transforming electricity networks with ‘smart grid’ and ‘smart meter’ technology

• Expanding offshore wind and marine power

Key Liberal Democtrats environmental policies include:

• Pledging that at least 20 per cent of energy and 40 per cent of electricity will come from renewable sources by 2020 rising to 100 per cent by 2050

• Seeking to toughen limits on pollution across Europe

• Introduce a supermarket ombudsman to get a fair deal for farmers

• Ensuring guaranteed fair prices for energy consumers

• Making energy suppliers ensure homes are well insulated

• Roll-out of smart metering in five years

• More investment in public transport to cut emissions

Olive Heffernan

Last week, I posted here on sea level rise and what’s in store for the 21st Century. Among scientists, that’s still a contentious issue, with current estimates ranging from about 18 cm to more than 200 cm by 2100 (see Figure 1 from a commentary by Stefan Rahmstorf; references are listed in full in the text).

I started to look into this issue in detail some months ago in preparation for a talk I was giving here at Nature. Given the knowledge that sea levels will rise this century, whether by a little or a lot, I also became curious about the extent to which coastal states are preparing for the impacts.

Regions will experience sea level rise differently, depending on factors such as whether the coastline is gaining or loosing sediment and the extent to which it is developed. The most vulnerable regions worldwide are large deltas such as the Netherlands and Bangladesh, countries with large low-lying well-developed coastal plains such as the US and China, and small island states such as Tuvala and Carteret Islands. And in terms of cities, Miami tops the list.

But in spite of its vulnerability, coastal development continues virtually unabated in Miami. In the first of two features Mark Schrope reports from Florida, a state that could be losing billions each year by 2050 if it continues business as usual. Florida, say experts, could serve as a case study for what happens if you don’t prepare for sea level rise. From Schrope’s feature:

“Right now Florida is showing almost no leadership on responding sensibly to storms and to rising sea level,” says Robert Young, a coastal geologist at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, North Carolina. Orrin Pilkey of Duke University in North Carolina, a well-known proponent of greater constraints on coastal development, is even more forthright. “I call it an outlaw state,” he says. “Florida has been particularly irresponsible and it’s going to pay the price very soon.”

Worse than just ignoring the threat of sea level rise, Florida state has taken drastic action to ensure that waterside properties damaged in storms can be rebuilt in the same locations time and time again.

Planners and lawmakers in Florida would do well to learn from neighbouring Louisiana, one of a number of locations worldwide now adopting a ‘soft’ approach to self-defence. In the case of Louisiana, this means allowing the water to flood certain parts of the state during high storms in order to protect more valuable land elsewhere. Similar ‘ecological engineering’ approaches are being considered in the Netherlands, a nation that has traditionally hardened its coastline as a protective measure against an encroaching ocean.

But as Mason Inman reports in a second feature in the same issue, such hard defences are now under threat. Mason writes:

Ecological engineering approaches are often cheaper than fortifying coastlines with concrete walls or defending cities with ever-stronger levees, advocates say. And in the long run, they could be more effective. A similar philosophy is now being adopted in parts of the United States and Asia, and if its proponents are right, ecological engineering could become one of the main tools for adapting to rising seas. “With sea level rise, it’s not going to be possible for us to do engineering as usual,” says William Mitsch of The Ohio State University in Columbus. “It will be too much to try to fight head on, with hard defences to protect all the settled coasts.” Ecological approaches, he says, are “more about adapting to what’s happening, rather than fighting it”.

Ultimately, better projections are needed to determine the likely extent of future sea level rise. But in the absence of such information, incremental adaptation using soft approaches might be the best solution both from an environmental and a political point of view.

Olive Heffernan

Over on NRCC today, Mason Inman reviews two books on geoengineering – two of the first, in fact, to cover this field for a popular audience. The first is Hack the Planet by Eli Kintisch, a reporter for Science magazine, and the second is How to Cool the Planet by Jeff Goodell, a contributing editor and reporter to Rolling Stone magazine and author of Big Coal.

The release of these books, both out this month, has been timed well, given that the geoengineering genie is now out of the bottle, as climate modeler Raymond Pierrehumbert puts it in Kintisch’s Hack the Planet. Just last month, experts met for the first time – at the Asilomar conference centre in Monterey, California – to consider how the field can be regulated. Meanwhile, governments are holding parliamentary hearings on the subject and venture capitalists are looking to it as an investment opportunity. It’s a far cry from the state of play just two or three years ago, when climate intervention was still considered by most to be an outlandish idea.

<img alt=“Goodell cover.jpg” src=“https://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/Goodell%20cover.jpg” width=“167” height=“250” align=“right”//>

While the idea of doing trials to test the various proposed methods for climate control is now more mainstream, it’s still contentious for two reasons: the potential side-effects, and also the fear that it will turn our attention away from the urgency of mitigation. So for the most part, geoengineering is still an armchair activity, as Kintisch puts it, and as a result the pool of people involved in still relatively small. Despite that fact, however, Kintisch and Goodell cover the subject from decidedly different perspectives, according to Inman. He writes:

“Both books cover a lot of the same ideas and quote many of the same sources, and both have in-depth chapters about two particular options: fertilizing the oceans with iron, and ships spewing cloud-brightening particles. Kintisch’s book, though, offers up more examples of geoengineering…Kintisch also digs deeper than Goodell into explaining the details of how geoengineering might work — and why it would be so difficult to do well. A reporter for the journal Science who regularly covers geoengineering for the journal’s ScienceInsider blog, Kintisch likewise takes an insider’s view in Hack the Planet. That’s not to say Kintisch argues in favour of geoengineering, but that he writes from firmly within the world of science, and for an audience who’s comfortable with science, too. He never explains the term ‘hack’ in the title, for example, which is borrowed from computer hacking and reflects the idea that geoengineering involves interfering with fundamental aspects of the climate to change how the whole system works. For this reason, scientists and other science-literate readers — especially those who already have some familiarity with geoengineering — will probably prefer Kintisch’s book over Goodell’s.

In contrast, Goodell’s book takes a step back, presenting an outsider’s view —unsurprising, as he is a regular reporter for Rolling Stone, the music and politics magazine. This perspective allows Goodell to be a guide to those who might reject the whole idea of geoengineering as far-fetched or crazy. “You don’t need a Ph.D. in physics to understand the basic insanity of this undertaking,” Goodell writes, while emphasizing that the outlook for the planet is so bad that we have to think about these options anyway. Of the two authors, Goodell does a better job of taking the reader on a journey. Most chapters in How to Cool the Planet feature a central character, from geoengineer David Keith tinkering in his lab at the University of Calgary to environmentalist and scientist James Lovelock strolling the countryside around his quaint English home. By digging into their stories, Goodell portrays geoengineering as a human endeavour, carrying hefty doses of uncertainty, doubt and fear."

The full review is freely available here.

Daniel Cressey

The UK’s information watchdog has told a university it has to release the tree ring data at the centre of a long running freedom of information fight.

Douglas Keenan, an independent researcher, has been attempting to get Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) to give him data including the width of rings and the location of trees used by its climate researchers (see: Keenan’s website). The university refused and Keenan appealed to the Information Commissioner (see: Climate researcher vs FOI, part two, Nature).

Now the Commissioner has ruled that all the grounds cited by the university for withholding the data are not valid. “The Commissioner requires QUB to disclose the withheld information … within 35 calendar days of the date of this Notice.” it says in a ruling dated 29 March (pdf).

The ruling also states that there were “a number of procedural breaches” in the handling of Keenan’s request.

“This has taken three years, but it is worth it,” said Keenan in an email. “It is an important victory for FoI [Freedom of Information] on research data. Also, for global warming studies, the data is extremely valuable for reconstructing temperatures over past millennia."

“The University has received the Information Commissioner’s Decision Notice on this matter and is considering its position,” QUB said in a statement.

Image: photo by Steve & Jemma Copley via Flickr under creative commons.

Cross-posted by Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

The integrity of research by the ‘climate-gate’ scientists has been upheld by the latest report into the email theft affair, despite the inquiry team expressing surprise that few professional statisticians were involved in work that is “fundamentally statistical”.

This inquiry, headed by Ron Oxburgh, is one of a number into the aftermath of emails leaked from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. It was established to consider allegations that papers emanating from CRU had manipulated data dishonestly to support pre-determined conclusions on climate change.

“We saw no evidence of any deliberate scientific malpractice in any of the work of the Climatic Research Unit and had it been there we believe that it is likely that we would have detected it,” says the Oxburgh report. “Rather we found a small group of dedicated if slightly disorganised researchers who were ill-prepared for being the focus of public attention.”

This report reviewed 11 publications considered to be representative of the CRU’s output (including two papers published in Nature). These cover direct temperature observations and the tree ring work that has caused many climate change sceptics to get so hot under the collar.

The tree-ring work was considered by the panel to have been “carried out with integrity” and the methods used in the direct temperature work were “fair and satisfactory”. However, the lack of proper statistical input into CRU’s research did displease Oxburgh’s panel.

“We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close collaboration with professional statisticians,” says their report.

In response, a statement from UEA says that specialists gain their own statistical skills. “However, we do see the sense in engaging more fully with the wider statistics community to ensure that the most effective and up-to-date statistical techniques are adopted and will now consider further how best to achieve this,” it adds.

Oxburgh’s panel has already been attacked by some over perceived conflicts of interest – such as its chair also being honorary president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association. The other inquiries into the email theft and subsequent ‘climate-gate’ furore have also been attacked on similar grounds.

Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, said in a statement, “The panel has carried out a thorough investigation of the evidence, and anybody who simply rejects these findings will show that they are motivated by prejudice and ideology rather than by scepticism and a desire to uncover the truth. I think those so-called sceptics and commentators in the media who have attempted to undermine the credibility of climate change science on the basis of the hacked e-mails now need to apologise for misleading the public about their significance.”

Image: CRU building at UEA / wikipedia

Olive Heffernan

A few months back, I was asked to give a talk on sea level rise as part of a routine editorial meeting, where we discuss issues of interest across various publications within the Nature family.

I was excited by the opportunity for two reasons. Firstly, while the factors contributing to sea level rise appear to be well understood, there is little consensus within the scientific community as to exactly how much of an increase we can expect this century. In fact, it’s still a topic over which research scientists routinely clash. But given that there’s agreement that sea level will rise to some extent, I was also interested to know what, if anything, is being done to prepare for it in regions that are most vulnerable. After some research, I discovered that there isn’t exactly a consensus on that either.

Having mulled the topic of sea level rise for some time, I decided it was a topic that I’d like to cover in more detail. The upshot of all this is the latest issue of Nature Reports Climate Change, which attempts to answer my two initial questions:

1) How well can we predict sea level rise?

2) Faced with uncertainty, what’s being done to prepare for the impacts?

To answer the first question (I’ll deal with the second in a subsequent post), I called on some experts who had recently aired their (quite different) opinions on the issue of how much global warming could raise sea levels by 2100.

But first, for those who haven’t followed this issue closely, a bit of background. When the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its assessment report on global warming in 2007, it was faced with a tough decision on what to say about sea level rise. In estimating how sea levels might rise in the future, the panel considered several factors such as how much the oceans will expand as they warm and how much water will be added from melting mountain glaciers and ice caps. But for one potentially important source of sea level rise – the break up of large ice sheets covering Greenland and West Antarctica – there was little information. After some consideration, the IPCC estimated a total sea level rise of 18 to 59 centimetres by the 2090s, a projection that excluded the contribution of the world’s largest ice sheets on the basis that understanding was too limited “to provide a best estimate or an upper bound”.

A number of studies published since the last IPCC assessment report have estimated much higher levels of sea level rise this century – in some cases more than 2 metres by 2100. Rather than considering the various processes that individually contribute to sea level rise, these semi-empirical approaches are based on the idea that the rate of sea level rise is proportional to the amount of global warming and they use past sea level and temperature data to quantify this effect.

Stefan Rahmstorf – who published some of the first work using this method back in 2007 – writes that “the difference between the semi-empirical estimates and the model-based estimates of the IPCC can be attributed largely to the response of continental ice to greenhouse warming”. His most recent study, with Martin Vermeer, gives a median estimate of 124 centimeters of sea level rise by 2100 or 114 centimeters by 2095.

But, write Jason Lowe and Jonathan Gregory write in a seperate commentary, the question remains as to how much the break up of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets will contribute to sea level this century. On this, the jury is still out, they say. Yes, satellite observations show that both ice sheets are losing mass overall and that the speed of outlet glaciers (which spit large chunks of ice into the ocean) has increased of late, but, say Lowe and Gregory, this may be due to natural variability and, as such, it may not continue.

Rahmstorf attributes the high end of his recent estimate to the fact that as temperatures rise, more ice will melt and some of that will be from ice sheets. Ultimately loss ice will depend on local climate, not on whether that ice is locked up in mountain glaciers or in ice sheets, says Rahmstorf. As he puts it “we’re not going to run out of ice to melt anytime soon”.

Lowe and Gregory, on the other hand, say that high estimates from semi-empirical methods can be attributed to large dynamical changes in ice sheets only if there was a large contribution from ice sheets to sea level in the past. They say that this wasn’t the case (because the contribution from ice sheets has only increased in recent years), and that as such, these studies lack a plausible physical mechanism to explain the projected rise in sea level.

But Rahmstorf contends that, based on recent observations, loss of continental ice could be responsible for as much as 80 percent of future sea level rise, making his estimate of 114 centimetres by 2095 feasible.

I guess the jury is still out. Both commentaries are freely accessible here.

Olive Heffernan

“What we’d like to see is the whole thing being fought on the architecture of a Green New Deal.”

Solarcentury founder Jeremy Leggett on the potential role for climate and environment issues in the election campaigns of Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Gordon Brown.

“[The administration is] very sceptical about the ability to get a full-blown legal deal that replaces the Kyoto Protocol or builds on it, given the state of play back home."

Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists comments on the fact that although UN climate talks have resumed, difficulty in passing domestic legislation in the US could hinder progress.

“Given the scrutiny that climate change science is currently under, attributing biological changes to global warming should surely require the highest standards of proof.”

Dr Jake Gratten at the University of Sheffield, one of the scientists questioning whether climate change is in fact causing sheep to shrink and change colour (and yes, the phrase ‘sheepgate’ has been mentioned).

“If there’s a single central insight in economics, it’s this: There are mutual gains from transactions between consenting adults…but what if a deal between consenting adults imposes costs on people who are not part of the exchange?”

Climate economics 101, plus the rationale for cap-and-trade, courtesy of Nobel laureate Paul Krugman in the New York Times.

Nicola Jones

Just over a year ago, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) published its Global Green New Deal policy brief — a proposal to save the planet at the same time as rescuing the economy. How is that going? Not well enough, according to environmental economist Edward Barbier. Barbier wrote the consultancy report that formed the basis of the UNEP plan, and has a book (A Global Green New Deal: Rethinking the Economic Recovery (Cambridge Univ. Press)) due out on 27 April. He reviews the situation in an opinion piece this week in Nature. <img alt=“greendeal.jpg” src=“https://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/greendeal.jpg” width=“300” height=“404” align=“right”//

Although nations have spent more than US$463.3 billion on green stimulus during the recession, this encompasses just 15% of the total fiscal stimulus (about $3 trillion), and 0.7% of global gross domestic product (GDP). Barbier’s report recommended a global expenditure of 1% GDP on green projects, from investments in alternative energy development to improvement of public transport or energy efficiencies.

A few nations have spent big: South Korea and China allocated 3% of their GDP to green measures. The rest of the group of 20 wealthiest and developing nations (G20) should catch up, says Barbier. Putting more effort into green projects now could improve international competitiveness, and initiating policy measure such as carbon taxes would ease debts, he notes. The G20 must use its June summit meeting in Toronto, Canada, to set things on track, he argues.

The full piece is available to those with a subscription here.