by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 28, 2012 | Climate Change
By Institute of Physics
Sea-levels are rising 60 per cent faster than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) central projections, new research suggests.
While temperature rises appear to be consistent with the projections made in the IPCC’s fourth assessment report (AR4), satellite measurements show that sea-levels are actually rising at a rate of 3.2 mm a year compared to the best estimate of 2 mm a year in the report.
These findings, which have been published today, 28 November, in IOP Publishing’s journal Environmental Research Letters, are timely as delegates from 190 countries descend on Doha, Qatar, for the United Nation’s 18th Climate Change Conference this week.
The researchers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Tempo Analytics and Laboratoire d’Etudes en Géophysique et Océanographie Spatiales, state that the findings are important for keeping track of how well past projections match the accumulating observational data, especially as projections made by the IPCC are increasingly being used in decision making.
The study involved an analysis of global temperatures and sea-level data over the past two decades, comparing them both to projections made in the IPCC’s third and fourth assessment reports.
Results were obtained by taking averages from the five available global land and ocean temperature series.
After removing the three known phenomena that cause short-term variability in global temperatures – solar variations, volcanic aerosols and El Nino/Southern Oscillation – the researchers found that the overall warming trend at the moment is 0.16°C per decade, which closely follows the IPCC’s projections.
Satellite measurements of sea-levels showed a different picture, however, with current rates of increase being 60 per cent faster than the IPCC’s AR4 projections.
Satellites measure sea-level rise by bouncing radar waves back off the sea surface and are much more accurate than tide gauges as they have near-global coverage; tide gauges only sample along the coast. Tide gauges also include variability that has nothing to do with changes in global sea level, but rather with how the water moves around in the oceans, such as under the influence of wind.
The study also shows that it is very unlikely that the increased rate is down to internal variability in our climate system and also shows that non-climatic components of sea-level rise, such as water storage in reservoirs and groundwater extraction, do not have an effect on the comparisons made.
Lead author of the study, Stefan Rahmstorf, said: “This study shows once again that the IPCC is far from alarmist, but in fact has under-estimated the problem of climate change. That applies not just for sea-level rise, but also to extreme events and the Arctic sea-ice loss.”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 20, 2012 | Climate Change
By Michael D. Lemonick / The Guardian
The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a record 390.9 parts per million (ppm) in 2011, according to a report released Tuesday by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO). That’s a 40 percent increase over levels in 1750, before humans began burning fossil fuels in earnest.
Although CO2 is still the most significant long-lived greenhouse gas, levels of other heat-trapping gases have also climbed to record levels, according to the report. Methane, for example hit 1813 parts per billion (ppb) in 2011, and nitrous oxide rose to 324.2 ppb. All told, the amount of excess heat prevented from escaping into outer space was 30 percent higher in 2011 than it was as recently as 1990.
These are sobering numbers, not because they come as any sort of surprise, but rather because they don’t. Scientists have known about the heat-trapping properties of CO2 since the mid-1800s. They’ve been documenting the steady rise of CO2 pumped largely out of smokestacks and exhaust pipes since the 1950s.
About half of the excess CO2 going into the atmosphere so far has been absorbed by plants and the oceans, but, said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud in a press release, ” . . . this will not necessarily continue in the future” as these natural “sinks” for CO2 reach their capacity.
The CO2 that remains in the atmosphere, meanwhile, takes centuries to dissipate, which is why the numbers continue to climb. As a result of all the extra CO2 pumped into the air, worldwide average temperatures have already risen by 1.8°F since 1900.
Yet despite all of this knowledge, the world has largely failed to act on reducing emissions. The best they could do at a UN-sponsored climate meeting in Copenhagen in 2009 was to agree to a non-binding target of limiting the world’s greenhouse-gas-triggered temperature increase to no more than 2°C (3.6°F) above preindustrial levels to limit the potential damage. Just a year later, it was already clear that they wouldn’t come close to making it.
Frustrated with this global inaction, the World Bank released a report on Sunday saying that without significant emissions reductions, the world’s average temperature could climb by 4°C (7.2°F) by as early as 2060. The report highlighted the dire consequences for human health and safety — including dangerous sea level rise, heat waves, and other extreme weather events.
But the potential disruption to people and property are so enormous that the report is, if not a wake-up call, at least another attempt to rouse world leaders after too many false starts and stops.
It calls not just for a reduction in CO2 emissions, but also for an aggressive program to reduce other drivers of global warming that might be easier to control including not just short-lived but powerful greenhouse gases like methane, but also heat-absorbers such as black carbon — essentially, soot.
Unlike CO2, which stays in the atmosphere for a century or more, black carbon and other so-called “short-lived climate forcers” act on timescales of weeks to a few years, meaning that reducing them would yield much faster benefits.
The World Bank report also calls attention to the fact that poor people and poor nations are at the greatest risk from the dangers posed by rising greenhouse-gas levels and the changes in climate that are likely to result.
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/20/co2-record-high-2011-un-report
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Nov 10, 2012 | Climate Change
By Juli Berwald / National Geographic News
In the wake of superstorm Sandy, climate change is on a lot of people’s radar. By some accounts, warmer ocean temperatures intensified the hurricane as it plowed up the Gulf Stream, and rising seas may have exacerbated flooding.
Now, a new climate-change study in the journal Science says warming is here to stay. And future warming will likely be on the high side of predictions, the researchers conclude.
Atmospheric scientists John Fasullo and Kevin Trenberth studied global humidity patterns to get at an elusive question: When atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels double—as is expected by late this century—how much warmer will it become?
Estimates of this temperature increase, called equilibrium climate sensitivity, hover around 5 degrees F (2.8 degrees Celsius) by about 2100. But predictions vary more than twofold, from 3 to 8 degrees F (1.7 to 4.4 degrees Celsius).
The difference matters because higher temperatures mean larger problems with sea level rise and extreme weather, as well as large-scale changes in ocean circulation—which could in turn mean big changes on the ground.
With a 3 degree F increase, for example, New York City would feel more like Richmond, Virginia. With an 8 degree F increase, New Yorkers would experience temperatures like those in Atlanta, Georgia.
(Opinion: “Climate Change Wins Big in 2012 Elections.”)
Clouds May Hold Climate-Change Key
Since the first report on climate sensitivity in 1979, no one has been able to narrow down its range. To try to solve the mystery, Fasullo and Trenberth—both of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado—looked to the skies.
Clouds are key in pinpointing the level of temperature rise expected, Fasullo said. They exert a major influence on Earth’s energy budget. Since they’re white, clouds reflect sunlight, cooling Earth. Depending on how high they are in the atmosphere, they can also act like a blanket, holding in heat.
Yet clouds change shape, size, and brightness quickly, making modeling them difficult. Satellite observations of clouds are sketchy, and contain errors.
To sidestep these problems, Fasullo and Trenberth decided to look instead at how clouds are made. They form from water vapor in environments of high relative humidity. Conveniently, high-quality relative humidity data is readily available from satellites. (Related: “Global Warming Supercharged by Water Vapor?”)
Eye of the Coming Storm?
The team’s research focused on areas in the atmosphere called dry zones.
Hovering several thousand feet above Earth’s surface, in the troposphere—the part of the atmosphere where clouds can form—dry zones play a primary role in the future climate.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the dry zone occupies latitudes between 10 and 30 degrees, on the level of Venezuela and Florida, respectively.
The scientists compared the observed relative humidity in the dry zones to 16 different climate models used in the most recent study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Fasullo and Trenberth found that the three models that best matched the humidity observations were the same ones that predict the hottest future, with temperatures increasing 8 degrees F before century’s end. The least accurate models overpredicted relative humidity and projected lower increases in temperature.
Fasullo used the analogy of an eye: “The dry zones are like the iris of the climate system. With warming, the iris dilates, decreasing cloud cover and allowing in more heat.” Models that don’t provide for that expansion of the dry zone fail to accurately depict observed data, he explained.
Karen Shell, a climate scientist from Oregon State University who was not involved in the research, agreed that Fasullo and Trenberth’s workaround made sense. “It’s a promising technique. It’s one study, but if this relationship holds up, it implies the climate sensitivity is on the higher end of the range.”
Meaning hotter …
From National Geographic Daily News: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/11/121108-climate-change-clouds-science-model-relative-humidity/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 12, 2012 | Climate Change
By Inderscience Publishers
Biofuels will serve the interests of large industrial groups rather than helping to cut carbon emissions and ward off climate change, according to research to be published in the International Journal of Environment and Health this month.
Simone Vieri of the University “La Sapienza” of Rome, Italy, explains that, in its policies to combat climate change, the European Union has planned to increase to 10% the share of fuel derived from biofuels on the market by 2020. It has focused attention on first-generation biofuels, made from the conversion of plant material which can be grown specifically for fuel production, such as corn, soy, sugarcane or palm oil. It has given only a secondary role to second-generation biofuels, made from agricultural and woody crop biomass, including waste and by-products.
Vieri suggests that, “In 2020 the EU won’t be able to keep to its 10% biofuels goal using only European agricultural production, but will have to continue importing the greatest part of raw materials, or biofuels.”
In this frame, Vieri explains that, “The EU’s decision to focus on the first-generation biofuels, raises many doubts.” In particular, the approach seems to favour several issues. For instance, it favours production systems that are in competition with traditional agriculture for use of resources and production factors, he says. Additionally, to encourage agro-industrials models, such as those on which the production of first generation biofuels is based, might compromise the possibility of developing models based on multifunctional agriculture and, then, on the production of energy from agriculture waste and by-products rather than from dedicated products.
The adoption of first-generation biofuels sometimes leads to exploitation of human and environmental resources of poorer countries, adds Vieri, as they are commonly the source of many of the agricultural raw materials used for production of biofuels. Moreover, agricultural production processes that change land use can lead to zero net benefit in terms of emissions reduction.
Other problems that arise when reliance is placed on first-generation biofuels lie with the economics. Financial market speculation strengthens the link between the price of oil and the price of the main agricultural raw materials, Vieri says. Furthermore, an increase, or instability of agricultural products’ prices, weighs heavily on poorer nations and their food security.
In this context “the choice to promote first generation biofuels is an example of how politics places the protection of the interests and profit strategies of a restricted number of subjects before the costs and benefits to be had on a wider scale,” adds Vieri.
Vieri adds that the “green economy” model might break new ground if it were to prove able to facilitate reduced emissions and allow economic growth and development with direct benefit to society itself rather than the profits of multinationals.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 9, 2012 | Climate Change
By Phys.org
Richard York, a researcher with the Department of Sociology and Environmental Studies Program at the University of Oregon, has found that a measured reduction in CO2 emissions during economic downturns is not on par with the increase in CO2 emissions that is apparent during boon times.
York made this discovery after analyzing the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of several nations during the period 1960 to 2008, and then comparing these values with the countries’ corresponding annual measures of CO2 emissions. The results are published in the journal Nature Climate Change.
Conventional thinking held that greenhouse gas emissions will tumble at the same rate as they rise depending on economic conditions. York wasn’t convinced: accordingly, he decided to study the ups and downs of the economies of 150 of the world’s major countries over the course of nearly a half century.
He then compared each country’s GDP and carbon emission measures over time. What he found was that, on average, CO2 emissions rose by 0.73 percent for every 1 percent rise in GDP during economically prosperous times, but fell just 0.43 percent for every 1 percent fall in GDP during economically depressed periods , indicating that greenhouse gasses fall at roughly half the rate that they rise.
York has a theory regarding this observed phenomenon— CO2 emission levels are partly based on a country’s economic and infrastructure history. If a country builds factories, cars and roads during strong economic times, this infrastructure and machinery will still be there when the economy experiences a dip. And, while the new assets may be used less during difficult times, there is very little chance they won’t be used at all. Therefore, carbon emissions, while somewhat decreased, will never return to their pre-development levels.
York’s findings are likely to dampen one of the few bright spots surrounding the economic malaise currently impacting many countries, particularly Europe. The hope—that slow economic growth was decreasing the amount of CO2 being added to the atmosphere, thereby minimizing global warming, and as some have suggested, weather volatility—may be little more than wishful thinking. York concludes by suggesting that, based on his results, governments worldwide will likely need to rethink their predictions regarding CO2 emissions.
This might be particularly true for those countries that set their goals based on assumptions made at the 2009 Copenhagen summit, which focused on nations working together to combat the problems of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, and which was organized around conventional theories of CO2 emissions in developed and developing nations.
From Phys.org: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-environmentalist-co2-faster-good-falls.html#jCp
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Sep 19, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change
By Inter-Press Service
Limiting climate change to two degrees C won’t save most coral reefs, according to new, state-of-the-art research.
About 70 percent of corals are projected to suffer from long-term degradation by 2030 with two degrees C of warming, the first comprehensive global survey reported Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The planet will get far hotter than two degrees C based on current commitments by countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from burning oil, gas and coal. Humanity is on course to heat up the atmosphere an average of three and even four degrees C, according to the Climate Action Tracker, an international scientific monitor. Those temperature levels are what most scientists consider “catastrophic”.
Global temperatures have risen an average of about 0.8C so far and already melted much of the Arctic and generated costly extreme weather events around the planet. Keeping that global average increase below two degrees is only a matter of “political will” not technology, said Bill Hare, director of Climate Analytics, one of the partners in the Climate Action Tracker.
If humanity wants to keep at least half of the remaining coral reefs, then global temperatures cannot rise to 1.5C. “Limiting global warming to 2 C is unlikely to save most coral reefs,” the paper reports.
“We must realise what is at stake as global temperatures rise,” said co-author Malte Meinshausen of School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne.
“Countries must be as ambitious as possible in their emission reductions to give corals a chance,” Meinshausen told IPS.
Coral reefs are considered by many to be one of the life-support systems essential for human survival. For more than 2.6 billion people, seafood is the main source of protein. Corals act as the nurseries and habitat for many fish species, and are vital for up to 33 percent of all ocean species, according to the World Conservation Union (IUCN).
Reefs also provide vital shoreline protection from storms. Without reefs, for example, Belize would suffer 240 million dollars in damage from storms, according to one estimate.
This study used the very latest climate models and applied them to growing science about the impacts of rising temperatures and acidification levels projected in the decades to come, said co-author Simon Donner, a marine biologist and climatologist at the University of British Columbia.
The increasing ocean acid conditions appear to be reducing coral’s thermal tolerance, Donner said in an interview. Tropical corals have a narrow water temperature range in which they thrive. When water temperature rises only two or three degrees, they “bleach” or turn white.
Corals can survive this, but if the heat stress persists long enough – weeks instead of days – the corals can die in great numbers, as they did in 1998 when 16 percent of the world’s tropical corals died.
Emissions of greenhouse gases are not only warming the oceans, they have also made them 30 percent more acidic. The oceans and the atmosphere are intimately connected. When CO2 is released into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, some of that extra CO2 combines with carbonate ions in seawater, forming carbonic acid. This level of change in ocean chemistry has not happened in millions of years and is beginning to dissolve reefs.
Some corals will undoubtedly survive and some will adapt to the new conditions, although the changes are far more rapid than anything corals have ever experienced, said Donner.
“The bottom line is that humanity will lose the services that corals have provided for thousands of years,” he said.
Even at 1.5 C degrees of warming, only about half corals are likely to survive, the study found. That adds scientific weight to the small island nations’ and other countries’ call for a global target of 1.5 C, Donner said.
Every nation in the world officially agreed to keep global temperature increase below two degrees C at a U.N. climate meeting in Cancun, Mexico in 2010. An alliance of small islands and African countries had lobbied for the global target of less than 1.5 C due to the damages they are expected to suffer if temperatures rise above that mark.
Emissions must begin to decline this decade for either target so it is pointless to debate these targets right now, says Meinshausen. Once emissions are in significant decline, then how fast and how deep those cuts will have relevance for the final target, he said.
“I fear we’re going to miss our only chance to peak emissions this decade,” he said.
Read more from Inter-Press Service: http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/09/deeper-co2-cuts-needed-to-save-corals/
