Melting Polar Ice

Last December’s annual UN climate summit, in South Africa, saw the EU team up alongside at least 80 nations, primarily small island states and Least Developed Countries (LDCs), in a new “rainbow coalition” pressing for a new global deal that would eventually restrict all nations’ emissions. At a small informal meeting in Brussels last week, just over 30 nations from the coalition took stock of the situation, with members of the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) urging the EU to adopt the 30% target as soon as possible. “There was agreement that it’s got to go up to 30%,” Tony de Brum, Minister in Assistance of the Marshall Islands, told BBC News. “We don’t want to be intrusive or over-reaching, but we said ‘we don’t think the disagreement in your group is so overwhelming – when 26 say yes and one says no, we think you could probably bring along the dissident, so please don’t come to us with this kind of excuse’.” However, EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said moving to a 30% target this year would be “very, very challenging”. Some from Aosis and the LDCs are wondering why the EU cannot simply find a way of moving forward on climate change without one of its member states, given that it recently agreed a new fiscal compact that excludes two.

Meanwhile, the Ecofin group of EU finance ministers is also meeting this week to discuss financial contributions for developing countries. The EU has pledged – and according to its own analysis, largely committed – 7.2bn euros ($9.3bn) over the period 2010-12 as its share of the “fast-start finance” package agreed at the UN summit in Copenhagen in 2009. The expectation had been that the developed world, including the EU, would begin to ramp up contributions from public and private sources in order to meet the long-term target, also agreed at Copenhagen, of providing $100bn per year by 2020. However, a leaked draft of the Ecofin agreement seen by BBC News shows that EU ministers have not agreed what they will provide in the way of finance after 2012, nor how they will provide it. The draft talks in terms of developed nations “needing to identify” a pathway to the $100bn target. Some money could be raised through the recently introduced charge on aviation emissions, but this is not certain. “At a critical moment in the fight against climate change, Europe looks to be sitting back rather than stepping up,” said Lies Craeynest of Oxfam. “To build a partnership for climate action with poor countries, the EU must finally move to its promised 30% emissions reductions target, and outline new milestones for scaling up its climate finance.”

The coming two weeks of talks at UN climate convention (UNFCCC) headquarters in Bonn – an annual event – will see negotiators beginning work on the pathway towards agreeing a new global deal in 2015, known as the Durban Platform. Discussions will also focus on developed countries’ commitments to cut emissions under the Kyoto Protocol, whose current targets expire at the end of this year.

In December, the EU promised to put its existing 20% target under the protocol – a key demand of developing countries that appreciate its legal nature. Among other developed countries, Japan and Russia have indicated they will not take the Kyoto path, while Canada said it would leave the protocol at the end of the year. The US left about a decade ago. That means that the EU and its coalition partners are keen to bring remaining developed countries into the fold.

Along with the EU, Norway, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand have submitted plans to the UNFCCC detailing how they might turn their existing unilateral voluntary commitments into the legal form required by the Kyoto Protocol. But the language of the Australian and New Zealand submissions suggests they have not formally decided to take this step, with New Zealand especially linking its decision to progress on the Durban Platform. However, a number of major developing countries including China and India are lukewarm about the new process. And with China and the US seeking changes of leadership over the next 12 months, many observers are not expecting much progress to be made either in Bonn or at the annual end-of-year UN climate summit, to be hosted by Qatar.

From the BBC

As the host G8 nation, the US national academy has taken the lead this year, working with counterparts to draw up a co-ordinated message for the summit. For the past seven years, science academies representing countries that are attending the summit have issued statements to inform delegates of vital science and technology matters. This year, they are targeting leaders attending not just the G8 summit but also the G20, the Rio+20 environmental summit, and other important events. In past G8 summits, the views of the collective academies have been influential. World leaders including Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have previously met with representatives of the global science community and the text from their statements has ended up in the final summit communiques. “I think most governments pay attention to science,” says Dr Clegg. “The fact we have a consensus of a great diversity of countries is an indication of the importance of priorities that we as leaders of the global science community place on these issues”.

The three so-called “G-Science” statements say that priority should be given to finding ways of finding a coherent way of simultaneously meeting water and energy needs, building resilience to natural disasters and developing better ways of measuring greenhouse gas emissions in order to see if individual countries are meeting their international obligations to reduce emissions. The first G-Science statement called on leaders to consider water and energy as closely linked issues. Otherwise, it says, there will be shortages of both. The statement recommends that governments pursue policies that integrate the two, emphasise conservation and encourage regional and global cooperation.

The second statement says more can be done to minimise the impact of major international disasters, such as a tsunami or nuclear accident. In addition to regular risk surveillance, the G-Science statement recommends building “resilience” to catastrophic events by, for example, improving public health systems.

The third statement calls for more accurate and standardised methods to estimate human and natural sources and sinks of greenhouse gases. It recommends that all countries produce annual reports of their greenhouse gas emissions and sinks. The academies also call for greater international cooperation to share new technologies and scientific data.

The statements have been signed by the leaders of the national science academies of Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Morocco, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the US.

From the BBC

Brazil’s farmers have long pushed for changes, arguing that uncertainty over the current legislation has undermined investment in the agriculture sector, which accounts for more than 5% of GDP. Severe environmental restrictions have also forced many smaller farmers off their land, they argue. Rural producers would have “more stability and political support,” said Deputy Paulo Piau, who drew up the Chamber’s version of the bill. “Production and the environment will only benefit from that. With a confused law there is no benefit,” he said.

But opponents said the new law was a step back. “Over the years, we have slowed deforestation and intensified production. Now we are going to modify all the things that resulted in the decrease of deforestation by changing the legislation,” said Deputy Sarney Filho. Greenpeace urged President Rousseff to veto the changes, saying: “It is unbelievable that the forest code is being eroded weeks before Brazil hosts the Rio summit (on sustainable development).”

Several former environment ministers had warned that Brazil would miss its emissions targets if the code were weakened, Greenpeace noted. Deforestation of the Amazon has slowed in recent years, as a result of better law enforcement, with authorities using satellite images to track clearance. Under the Forest Code, which dates back to 1965, landowners must conserve a percentage of their terrain forested, ranging from 20% in some regions to 80% in the Amazon. This provision remains, but environmentalists say other changes to the code will erode key protections. Under the new bill, farmers will be able to cultivate land closer to hilltops and riverbanks, which are especially vulnerable to erosion if trees are chopped down. The bill also provides an amnesty from fines for illegally clearing trees before July 2008, although larger landholders would have to replant most of the cleared area or preserve the same amount of land elsewhere. President Rousseff faces a political dilemma, correspondents say, as she seeks to combine support for economic development, but also uphold environmental pledges made during her election campaign in 2010.

From the BBC

The report Tracking Clean Energy Progress, says: “The current trend of increasing emissions is unbroken with no stabilisation of GHG [greenhouse gas] concentrations in sight.” It projects that if this continues, “energy use will almost double in 2050, compared with 2009, and total GHG emissions will rise even more. Long-term temperature rise is likely to be at least 6C.” Mr Jones presented a traffic light scorecard. Of 11 technologies to reduce emissions, only renewable power – particularly from wind and solar – merited a green for being on track. Fuel economy, electric vehicles and industry were given an amber. Most of the chart is red, including biofuels for transport; building efficiency; nuclear power; carbon capture and storage in industry and power generation; and cleaner conventional coal.

Mr Jones said countries were still ignoring easy gains in energy efficiency. It is less “sexy” than some other policies, he admitted – but it is especially good at creating local jobs. Coal is another concern for the IEA. Energy-hungry emerging economies are still building old-style power plants with an efficiency of just 35% whilst modern plants running at very high temperatures like those built in Japan are 50% efficient or more. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) – in which CO2 emissions are captured and pumped into underground rocks – is described as “woefully off pace”.

Under their scenario for stabilising global temperature rise at 2C, the IEA envisages CCS providing 19% of global emissions cuts. Mr Jones said that 65 CCS plants are on the drawing board, but not one is operating at scale. Only four small projects carry out sufficient monitoring to demonstrate permanent storage of CO2, he said. “CCS remains trapped in its infancy. Many fear it will remain stillborn,” he explained. This would be grave, he said, as so many countries will rely on coal-fired power stations for the next 40-50 years until they wear out. Mr Jones said the main reason for the CCS failure is lack of government will. But one government source told BBC News it was difficult for politicians to provide the billions needed to kickstart CCS when the investment did not actually provide energy – unlike renewables. Mr Jones said countries needed to be bold with their investments and policies, even during a recession to reap the benefit of plentiful clean power in later years.

This was not just about preventing the potential of dangerous climate change, he said. Investment in clean energy would bring energy security, reduce dependency on oil and save money that would be needed to adapt to climate change.
“Five trillion dollars of investment is needed in a decade. In the long term it will lead to net savings. Delay is false economy,” he said. He said one bright spot had been the emergence of wind and solar photovoltaics. In both technologies, he said, costs are plummeting as firms scale up production prompted by government policy.

Globally, more than $1 trillion had been invested in clean energy, and in Europe investment in renewables now outstrips that for fossil fuels. But the meeting’s chairman, the UK Energy Secretary Ed Davey, warned that renewables investment fell significantly in the first quarter of 2012. He said: “The risk is that recession delays low-carbon investment, leaving us a high-carbon legacy even when the global economy recovers, making meaningful action on climate change more expensive.” Mr Davey also announced today a £35m fund to prompt small entrepreneurs in the UK to devise low carbon. The first wave is in energy efficiency for buildings, including advanced lighting, heat pumps and ventilation technologies.

Mr Davey earlier told BBC Today programme that the government was relying on the Green Deal to provide insulation to millions of homes, to cut emissions. The Green Deal has been under fire from some people sceptical that the climate will change as much or as fast as projected. The government also announced that it would allocate up to 60 million to support CCS in emerging markets. The IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, published in 2007, gave estimates for warming of between 1.8C and 4C under different scenarios during the 21st Century. The IEA projections are based on work done with the modelling group developing scenarios for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. The 2C target is designed to offer an 80% likelihood on best estimates of staying within the 2C threshold.

From the BBC.

CCS is widely seen as an important part of a low-carbon electricity system. “CCS is seen as the key to many scenarios of how to mitigate climate change, whether that’s the UK meeting its targets on cutting emissions or global targets that keep warming below 2C,” said the report’s lead author Dr Jim Watson, director of the energy research group at Sussex University. “But unlike other low-carbon technologies, CCS doesn’t exist at the commercial scale. We don’t know when they will be technically proven at full scale, and whether costs will be competitive with other low-carbon options. “So it is vital that the government’s commitment leads to several full-scale CCS projects as soon as possible; only through such learning by doing will we know whether it is a serious option for the future.” Other countries including Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, the US and China are also exploring the technology.

The government opened its first competition for CCS funds in 2007, but abandoned it four years later when the last contender – the Longannet coal-fired power station near Edinburgh – withdrew, saying the economics did not work out. The new government scheme is far more flexible over what types of technology are eligible for funding, which the report says is the right approach. Equally, it says, the single £1bn fund will not be enough to take the industry from its current fledgling state to the government’s target of having 10GW of UK generation capacity equipped with CCS by 2030.

Equipping coal- and gas-fired plant with CCS makes them considerably more expensive to run. The plant itself becomes less efficient, meaning more fuel has to be burned to produce the same amount of electricity. The CO2 must be transported to its resting place – probably in liquid form through a pipeline – and a disposal site must be properly explored beforehand and monitored afterwards to make sure nothing escapes. The report says the economic incentives for this extra investment will have to come from reforms to the electricity market that the government is working out at the moment, designed to supply additional and enduring support through guaranteeing prices for low-carbon electricity. It also says the UK is well placed to lead the global market in skills and technology, and perhaps even sell some of the copious storage capacity that exists below the UK seabed to other countries. “The UK has a huge amount of potential storage, amounting to about 700 years worth of emissions,” said another of the report’s authors, Prof Stuart Haszeldine from Edinburgh University. “But that is as yet unproven; and no commercial company is going to go ahead and build a CCS facility costing maybe £1bn if they don’t know they’ll be able to inject CO2 for 30 years into that site.”

Proving that a site is suitable for CO2 storage needs the same type of exploration needed in oil and gas exploration, he said – and investigating a single site could cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and take five to 10 years, meaning that a programme for doing it should be developed soon. The government will also have to work out rules on liability for leakage, he said, that are fair to both companies and the public purse. Matthew Spencer, director of the Green Alliance, which produced its own analysis of CCS recently, agreed that investors needed support and confidence. “Levels of interest from business are phenomenal, despite the years of prevarication,” he told BBC News.
“We’ve lost a lot of time, and investors have to have much more certainty now if we’re not to lose them; but we do have a good story in the UK of a rapidly growing industry. “If the government pulls out the stops, we think 10GW is feasible.”

From the BBC

The team behind the study says its work further strengthens ideas about global warming. “At the end of the last ice age, CO2 rose from about 180 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere to about 260; and today we’re at 392,” explained lead author Dr Jeremy Shakun. “So, in the last 100 years we’ve gone up about 100 ppm – about the same as at the end of the last ice age, which I think puts it into perspective because it’s not a small amount. Rising CO2 at the end of the ice age had a huge effect on global climate.”

The study covers the period in Earth history from roughly 20,000 to 10,000 years ago. This was the time when the planet was emerging from its last deep chill, when the great ice sheets known to cover parts of the Northern Hemisphere were in retreat. The key result from the new study is that it shows the carbon dioxide rise during this major transition ran slightly ahead of increases in global temperature. This runs contrary to the record obtained solely from the analysis of Antarctic ice cores which had indicated the opposite – that temperature elevation in the southern polar region actually preceded (or at least ran concurrent to) the climb in CO2. This observation has frequently been used by some people who are sceptical of global warming to challenge its scientific underpinnings; to claim that the warming link between the atmospheric gas and global temperature is grossly overstated. But Dr Shakun and colleagues argue that the Antarctic temperature record is just that – a record of what was happening only on the White Continent. By contrast, their new climate history encompasses data from all around the world to provide a much fuller picture of what was happening on a global scale. This data incorporates additional information contained in ices drilled from Greenland, and in sediments drilled from the ocean floor and from continental lakes. These provide a range of indicators. Air bubbles trapped in ice, for example, will record the past CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Past temperatures can also be inferred from ancient planktonic marine organisms buried in the sediments. That is because the amount of magnesium they would include in their calcite skeletons and shells was dependent on the warmth of the water in which they swam.

“Our global temperature looks a lot like the pattern of rising CO2 at the end of the ice age, but the interesting part in particular is that unlike with these Antarctic ice core records, the temperature lags a bit behind the CO2,” said Dr Shakun, who conducted much of the research at Oregon State University but who is now affiliated to Harvard and Columbia universities. “You put these two points together – the correlation of global temperature and CO2, and the fact that temperature lags behind the CO2 – and it really leaves you thinking that CO2 was the big driver of global warming at the end of the ice age,” he told BBC News.

Dr Shakun’s team has now constructed a narrative to explain both what was happening on Antarctica and what was happening globally:

This starts with a subtle change in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun known as a Milankovitch “wobble”, which increases the amount of light reaching northern latitudes and triggers the collapse of the hemisphere’s great ice sheets;
This in turn produces vast amounts of fresh water that enter the North Atlantic to upset ocean circulation
Heat at the equator that would normally be distributed northwards then backs up, raising temperatures in the Southern Hemisphere
This initiates further changes to atmospheric and ocean circulation, resulting in the Southern Ocean releasing CO2 from its waters
The rise in CO2 sets in train a global rise in temperature that pulls the whole Earth out of its glaciated state

Prof Eric Wolff from the British Antarctic Survey was the chief scientist on the longest Antarctic ice core, which was drilled at Dome Concordia in 2001/2002. This core records eight ice ages, not just the most recent, stretching back some 800,000 years. He was not involved in the Nature study. Prof Wolff told this week’s Science In Action programme on the BBC World Service: “It looks as though whatever kicked off this whole sequence of events to get out of the ice age was something really, in global terms, rather minor and regional, and yet it led to a sequence of events that led to a complete change in the way the surface of the Earth looked, with ice sheets disappearing. “So, that just reminds us that although climate might seem quite steady to us because it’s been relatively steady for the last few thousand years, it is actually capable of undergoing big changes. And as one famous palaeoclimatologist put it: ‘we poke it at our peril’.”

From the BBC

“It’s like the Rambo of the food crops,” report author Andy Jarvis, of the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture, said. He told the BBC: “Whilst other staples can suffer from heat and other problems of climate change, cassava thrives.”

The root crop is already one of the most widely consumed staple foods on the continent. But the report also stresses the need for more research to make cassava more resistant to pests and disease. Last November, UN scientists warned that a virus was attacking the crop, nearing an epidemic in parts of Africa. Viral infections have periodically wiped out the crop in some regions leading to famine.
‘Fallback crop’

Originally from South America, cassava was first introduced to sub-Saharan Africa by Portuguese traders in the 17th Century. It grows in poor soils and with little water. According to the researchers of the report Is Cassava the Answer to African Climate Change Adaptation?, it is now the second most important source of carbohydrate on the continent, where it is consumed by around 500 million people every day.

Cassava outperformed six other staple crops in sub-Saharan Africa – potato, maize, bean, banana, millet, and sorghum – in 24 climate prediction models, the report says. The plant grows well in high temperatures and if drought hits it “shuts down” until the rains come again, the scientists said.

“We have very few good stories where we see crops doing equal or better under climate change and finally we’ve found one with cassava,” Mr Jarvis told the BBC’s Network Africa programme. He said this was good news for Nigeria, Africa’s biggest grower, with “36-37 mega [million] tonnes of production every year”, and the Democratic Republic of Congo the next largest producer. Cassava could be now a “fallback when other crops are failing”, Mr Jarvis said. “In East Africa, maize is preferred by a lot of farmers, cassava can be a back-up plan – a plan B.” The root, rich in starch, is grown less in southern Africa, where there are cold temperatures during the winter months. But this could change, Mr Jarvis said.

In a statement, he added: “Hopefully, these findings will be a clarion call to the scientific community for renewed focus on cassava.”

From the BBC

Melting Polar Ice

There was a marked deterioration in ice cover between the summers of 2006 and 2007, which still holds the record for the lowest extent on record; and it has not recovered since. The current winter is roughly tracking the graph of 2007, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). The new study is not the first to propose a causal relationship between low Arctic ice in autumn and Europe’s winter weather. But it has gone further than others in assessing the strength of the link.

Through observations and computer modelling, the team headed by Jiping Liu from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, US, and the Insitute of Atmospheric Physics in Beijing has also elucidated the mechanisms involved. “For the past four winters, for much of the northern US, east Asia and Europe, we had this persistent above-normal snow cover,” Dr Liu told BBC News. “We don’t see a predictive relationship with any of the other factors that have been proposed, such as El Nino; but for sea ice, we do see a predictive relationship.”

How it happens

If less of the ocean is ice-covered in autumn, it releases more heat, warming the atmosphere. This reduces the air temperature difference between the Arctic and latitudes further south, over the Atlantic Ocean. In turn, this reduces the strength of the northern jet stream, which usually brings milder, wetter weather to Europe from the west. It is these “blocking” conditions that keep the UK and the other affected regions supplied with cold air.

The researchers also found that the extra evaporation from the Arctic Ocean makes the air more humid, with some of the additional water content falling out as snow.

“I agree with the study – I have no beef with the case that declining Arctic sea ice can drive easterly winds and produce colder winters over Europe,” commented Adam Scaife, head of monthly to decadal prediction at the UK Met Office. Research in other institutions, including the Met Office, confirmed the argument, he said. Dr Scaife was involved with another study published last year that showed how small, natural changes in the Sun’s output can also affect winter weather. And he emphasised that the declining Arctic ice cover was just one of several factors that could increase blocking. “You can hit a bell with anything, and you still produce the same note,” he told BBC News. “This is no bigger than the solar effect or the El Nino effect. But they vary, whereas Arctic ice is on a pretty consistent downward trend.”

The picture is further complicated by the involvement of the Arctic Oscillation, a natural variation of air pressure that also changes northern weather. The oscillation is not understood well enough to predict – and even if it were, any pattern it has may be changing due to escalating greenhouse gas concentrations. Nevertheless, the research suggests that on average, winters in the UK and the rest of the affected region will be colder in years to come than they have been in recent decades.

Various computer simulations have generated a range of dates by which the Arctic might be completely ice-free in summer and autumn, ranging from 2016 to about 2060. A few years ago, one projection even showed 2013 was possible, though this now appears unlikely. So a related question is whether UK winters will get colder and snowier still as the melting progresses. “It’s possible that future winters will be colder and snowier, but there are some uncertainties,” cautioned Dr Liu.

His team’s next research project is to feed Arctic ice projections and the mechanisms they have deciphered into various computer models of climate, and see whether they do forecast a growing winter chill.

From the BBC.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/a-siegel/climate-change-science-_b_1290259.html