BBC: Australians may have to leave coastal areas as rising sea levels threaten homes, according to a new report

Australia coastal living at risk

About 80% of Australians live in coastal areas

Australians may have to leave coastal areas as rising sea levels threaten homes, according to a new report.

BBC, October 27, 2009

The parliamentary committee report says urgent action is needed, as seas are expected to rise by 80 cm (31 inches).

About 80% of Australians live in coastal areas, and the report recommends new laws banning further development in coastal regions.
Correspondents say the authorities are divided over whether to retreat from rising seas or defend the coastline.

Coastal identity
The report, entitled Managing Our Coastal Zone in a Changing Climate, urges the authorities to consider "the possibility of a government instrument that prohibits continued occupation of the land or future building development on the property due to sea hazard."
 
It estimates that Aus$150 bn ($137 bn) worth of property is at risk from rising sea levels and more frequent storms in future years.

RISK TO AUSTRALIA'S COASTAL POPULATIONS Queensland: 250,000 buildings at risk New South Wales: 200,000 buildings at risk Western Australia: 94,000 buildings at risk Victoria: 80,000 buildings at risk South Australia: 60,000 buildings at risk Northern Territory: 900 buildings at risk Tasmania: 20% of coastline at risk

There are almost 50 recommendations in the report, ranging from a national coastline plan and greater co-operation between different authorities to a revised building code to cope with storm surges and soil erosion.

It does not say the government should force people to move inland but proposes that an independent group look into whether the government could -- and should -- do just that.

Australia's major cities are all in coastal areas, as well as the homes of some six million people outside the main population centres, according to the report, which was issued late on Monday after 18 months of study.

Alan Stokes, the task force's executive director, said banning development in certain areas was necessary if the government wanted to prevent a major loss of life in the event of natural disasters such as tsunamis.

"There's no doubt Australia will remain and continue to be a coastal community," he said.

"But we may have to be a bit more considerate about which parts of the coast we develop further and which ones we don't," he added.

Last week the government reintroduced carbon trading legislation which was rejected in August and is among a package of bills aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions by up to 25% by 2020.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded by the UN, estimates that a global rise in sea level of some 80 cm is possible by 2100.

Link:   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8327224.stm

Seth Borenstein: In hot water -- world sets ocean temperature record in August 2009

In hot water: World sets ocean temperature record (Update)

by Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer, August 20, 2009

The water temperature was 72 °F -- more like Ocean City, Md., this time of year. And Ocean City's water temp hit 88 °F, toasty even by Miami Beach standards.


Kramer, 26, who lives in the seaside town of Scarborough, said it was the first time he's ever swam so long in Maine's coastal waters.

It's not just the ocean off the Northeast coast that is super-warm this summer. July was the hottest the world's oceans have been in almost 130 years of record-keeping.

The average water temperature worldwide was 62.6 °F, according to the National Climatic Data Center, the branch of the U.S. government that keeps world weather records. June was only slightly cooler, while August could set another record, scientists say. The previous record was set in July 1998 during a powerful El Nino.

Meteorologists said there's a combination of forces at work: A natural El Nino weather pattern just getting started on top of worsening man-made global warming, and a dash of random weather variations. The resulting ocean heat is already harming threatened coral reefs. It could also hasten the melting of Arctic sea ice and help hurricanes strengthen.

The Gulf of Mexico, where warm water fuels hurricanes, has temperatures dancing around 90 °F. Most of the water in the Northern Hemisphere has been considerably warmer than normal. The Mediterranean is about three degrees warmer than normal. Higher temperatures rule in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The phenomena is most noticeable near the Arctic, where water temperatures are as much as 10 °F above average. The tongues of warm water could help melt sea ice from below and even cause thawing of ice sheets on Greenland, said Waleed Abdalati, director of the Earth Science and Observation Center at the University of Colorado.

Breaking heat records in water is more ominous as a sign of global warming than breaking temperature marks on land, because water takes longer to heat up and does not cool off as easily as land.

"This warm water we're seeing doesn't just disappear next year; it'll be around for a long time," said climate scientist Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria in British Columbia. It takes five times more energy to warm water than land.

The warmer water "affects weather on the land," Weaver said. "This is another yet really important indicator of the change that's occurring."

Georgia Institute of Technology atmospheric science professor Judith Curry said water is warming in more places than usual, something that has not been seen in more than 50 years.

Add to that an unusual weather pattern this summer where the warmest temperatures seem to be just over oceans, while slightly cooler air is concentrated over land, said Deke Arndt, head of climate monitoring at the climate data center.

The pattern is so unusual that he suggested meteorologists may want to study that pattern to see what's behind it.

The effects of that warm water are already being seen in coral reefs, said C. Mark Eakin, coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's coral reef watch. Long-term excessive heat bleaches colorful coral reefs white and sometimes kills them.

Bleaching has started to crop up in the Florida Keys, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Typically, bleaching occurs after weeks or months of prolonged high water temperatures. That usually means September or even October in the Caribbean, said Eakin. He found bleaching in Guam Wednesday. It's too early to know if the coral will recover or die. Experts are "bracing for another bad year," he said.

The problems caused by the El Nino pattern are likely to get worse, the scientists say.

An El Nino occurs when part of the central Pacific warms up, which in turn changes weather patterns worldwide for many months. El Nino and its cooling flip side, La Nina, happen every few years.

During an El Nino, temperatures on water and land tend to rise in many places, leading to an increase in the overall global average temperature. An El Nino has other effects, too, including dampening Atlantic hurricane formation and increasing rainfall and mudslides in Southern California.

Warm water is a required fuel for hurricanes. What's happening in the oceans "will add extra juice to the hurricanes," Curry said.

Hurricane activity has been quiet for much of the summer, but that may change soon, she said. Hurricane Bill quickly became a major storm and the National Hurricane Center warned that warm waters are along the path of the hurricane for the next few days.

Hurricanes need specific air conditions, so warmer water alone does not necessarily mean more or bigger storms, said James Franklin, chief hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

Link:  http://www.physorg.com/news169993833.html

Novel analysis confirms climate "hockey stick" graph: A new analysis creates a better look at rising temperatures

Novel analysis confirms climate "hockey stick" graph

A new analysis creates a better look at rising temperatures

by David Appell, Scientific American, November 2009 issue

The “hockey stick” graph has been both a linchpin and target in the climate change debate. As a plot of average Northern Hemisphere temperature from two millennia ago to the present, it stays relatively flat until the 20th century, when it rises up sharply, like the blade of an upturned hockey stick. Warming skeptics have long decried how the temperatures were inferred, but a new reconstruction of the past 600 years, using an entirely different method, finds similar results and may help remove lingering doubts.

The hockey stick came to life in 1998 thanks to the work of Michael Mann, now at Pennsylvania State University, and his colleagues (and many other climate scientists who subsequently refined the graph). Reconstructing historical temperatures is difficult: investigators must combine information from tree rings, coral drilling, pinecones, ice cores and other natural records and then convert them to temperatures at specific times and places in the past. Such proxies for temperature can be sparse or incomplete, both geographically and through time. Mann’s method used the overlap, where it exists, of recent proxy data and instrument data (such as from thermometers) to estimate relations between them. It calculates earlier temperatures using a mathematical extrapolation technique [see “Behind the Hockey Stick,” by David Appell, Insights; Scientific American, March 2005].

Martin Tingley of Harvard University calls his approach “much easier to handle and to propagate uncertainties”—that is, to calculate how the inherent limitations of the data affect the temperature calculated at any given time. The method can easily be modified to answer other questions in climate science, such as about precipitation and drought, and can even make projections into the future given rates of buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Written with his thesis adviser Peter Huybers, his paper was submitted to the Journal of Climate.

Tingley and Huybers’s new method, which Mann describes as “promising,” makes the assumption that nearby proxies can be simply related, or “chained,” either to data from nearby places or to data from the same place taken a few years before or after. For example, temperatures at neighboring places as measured in the last century seem correlated in a way that drops off approximately exponentially, with a “half-distance” (akin to the concept of half-life) of about 4,000 kilometers.

Tingley assumes a simple, linear relation between the proxy data values and the true temperature. This relation is then determined from proxy data and (where they exist) instrument data, using a methodology known as Bayesian statistics. Huybers explains that with Bayesian descriptions, “we attempt to estimate how probable certain temperatures were in the past given the sets of observations available to us.”

The sheer amount of computation, however, is daunting, involving heavy matrix algebra. Initial values for proxies and temperatures (where they have a known overlap) are input, and the methodology works backward to refine the relations at other times. To determine past temperatures, Tingley typically had to manipulate about one million matrices, each consisting of 1,296 columns and 1,296 rows.

Focusing on the past 600 years of proxy data between 45 and 85 degrees north latitude, Tingley’s initial results, presented at a conference earlier this year, find that the 1990s were the warmest decade of the period and that 1995 was the warmest year. (The El Niño year 1998 was the warmest year for North America and Greenland but not for northern Eurasia.) He also found that the 20th century had the largest rate of warming of any century and that the 1600s had the largest rate of change overall (and larger than previous reconstructions), albeit in the cooling direction thanks to the so-called Little Ice Age.

Qualitatively, Tingley’s result resembles the same basic hockey-stick shape as previous reconstructions, except that it has more variability in the past. Perhaps more important, his analysis suggests that a similar treatment of all available proxy data in the Northern Hemisphere in the past two millennia should produce a statistically superior hockey-stick result. Ting­­­ley, now a postdoctoral student at the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute in Research Triangle Park, N.C., plans to extend his method to examine the history of droughts in the southwestern U.S., as well as temperatures over wider areas and times.

Link to article:  http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=still-hotter-than-ever

Seth Borenstein: Global cooling rejected by statisticians

Statisticians reject global cooling

Some skeptics claim Earth is cooling despite contrary data

by Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer, October 26, 2009

WASHINGTON - An analysis of global temperatures by independent statisticians shows the Earth is still warming and not cooling as some global warming skeptics are claiming.

The analysis was conducted at the request of The Associated Press to investigate the legitimacy of talk of a cooling trend that has been spreading on the Internet, fueled by some news reports, a new book and temperatures that have been cooler in a few recent years.

In short, it is not true, according to the statisticians who contributed to the AP analysis.

The statisticians, reviewing two sets of temperature data, found no trend of falling temperatures over time.

2005 hottest year recorded

U.S. government data show the decade that ends in December will be the warmest in 130 years of record-keeping, and 2005 was the hottest year recorded.

The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It has been a while since the superhot years of 1998 and 2005. So is this a longer climate trend or just weather's normal ups and downs?

In a blind test, the AP gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time.

"If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a microtrend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect," said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.

Yet the idea that things are cooling has been repeated in opinion columns, a BBC news story posted on the Drudge Report and in a new book by the authors of the best-seller "Freakonomics." Last week, a poll by the Pew Research Center found that only 57% of Americans now believe there is strong scientific evidence for global warming, down from 77% in 2006.

Global warming skeptics base their claims on an unusually hot year in 1998. Since then, they say, temperatures have dropped — thus, a cooling trend. But it is not that simple.

Temps rising once more

Since 1998, temperatures have dipped, soared, fallen again and are now rising once more. Records kept by the British meteorological office and satellite data used by climate skeptics still show 1998 as the hottest year. However, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA show 2005 has topped 1998. Published peer-reviewed scientific research generally cites temperatures measured by ground sensors, which are from NOAA, NASA and the British, more than the satellite data.

The recent Internet chatter about cooling led NOAA's climate data center to re-examine its temperature data. It found no cooling trend.

"The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," said NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming."

The AP sent expert statisticians to analyze NOAA's year-to-year ground temperature changes over 130 years and the 30 years of satellite-measured temperatures preferred by skeptics and gathered by scientists at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Statisticians who analyzed the data found a distinct decades-long upward trend in the numbers, but could not find a significant drop in the past 10 years in either data set. The ups and downs during the last decade repeat random variability in data as far back as 1880.

Saying there's a downward trend since 1998 is not scientifically legitimate, said David Peterson, a retired Duke University statistics professor and one of those analyzing the numbers.

Identifying a downward trend is a case of "people coming at the data with preconceived notions," said Peterson, author of the book "Why Did They Do That? An Introduction to Forensic Decision Analysis."

Satellite data tends to be cooler

One prominent skeptic said that to find the cooling trend, the 30 years of satellite temperatures must be used. The satellite data tends to be cooler than the ground data. Key to that is making sure that 1998 is part of the trend, he added.

What happened within the past 10 years or so is what counts, not the overall average, contends Don Easterbrook, a Western Washington University geology professor and global warming skeptic.

"I don't argue with you that the 10-year average for the past 10 years is higher than the previous 10 years," said Easterbrook, who has self-published some of his research. "We started the cooling trend after 1998. You're going to get a different line depending on which year you choose.

"Should not the actual temperature be higher now than it was in 1998?" Easterbrook asked. "We can play the numbers games."

That's the problem, some of the statisticians said.

Grego produced three charts to show how choosing a starting date can alter perceptions. Using the skeptics' satellite data beginning in 1998, there is a "mild downward trend," he said. But doing that is "deceptive."

Conflicting data analyses

The trend disappears if the analysis is begun in 1997. And it trends upward if you begin in 1999, he said.

Apart from the conflicting data analyses is the eyebrow-raising new book title from Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, "Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance."

A line in the book says: "Then there's this little-discussed fact about global warming: While the drumbeat of doom has grown louder over the past several years, the average global temperature during that time has in fact decreased."

That led to a sharp rebuke from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which said the book mischaracterizes climate science with "distorted statistics."

Levitt, a University of Chicago economist, said he does not believe there is a cooling trend. He said the line was just an attempt to note the irony of a cool couple of years at a time of intense discussion of global warming. Levitt said he did not do any statistical analysis of temperatures but "eyeballed" the numbers and noticed 2005 was hotter than the last couple of years. Levitt said the "cooling" reference in the book title refers more to ideas about trying to cool the Earth artificially.

Moving averages over 10 years important

Statisticians say that in sizing up climate change, it's important to look at moving averages of about 10 years. They compare the average of 1999-2008 to the average of 2000-2009. In all data sets, 10-year moving averages have been higher in the last five years than in any previous years.

"To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous," said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University.

Ben Santer, a climate scientist at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Livermore National Lab, called it "a concerted strategy to obfuscate and generate confusion in the minds of the public and policy-makers" ahead of international climate talks in December in Copenhagen.

President Barack Obama weighed in on the topic Friday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He said some opponents "make cynical claims that contradict the overwhelming scientific evidence when it comes to climate change, claims whose only purpose is to defeat or delay the change that we know is necessary."

Early this year, climate scientists in two peer-reviewed publications statistically analyzed recent years' temperatures against claims of cooling and found them invalid.

Not all skeptical scientists make the flat-out cooling argument.

"It pretty much depends on when you start," wrote John Christy, the Alabama atmospheric scientist who collects the satellite data that skeptics use. He said in an e-mail that looking back 31 years, temperatures have gone up nearly 0.75 °F (0.4 °C). The last dozen years have been flat, and temperatures over the last eight years have declined a bit, he wrote.

Oceans influence short-term weather

Oceans, which take longer to heat up and longer to cool, greatly influence short-term weather, causing temperatures to rise and fall temporarily on top of the overall steady warming trend, scientists say. The biggest example of that is El Nino.

El Nino, a temporary warming of part of the Pacific Ocean, usually spikes global temperatures, scientists say. The two recent warm years, both 1998 and 2005, were El Nino years. The flip side of El Nino is La Nina, which lowers temperatures. A La Nina bloomed last year and temperatures slipped a bit, but 2008 was still the ninth hottest in 130 years of NOAA records.

Of the 10 hottest years recorded by NOAA, eight have occurred since 2000, and after this year it will be nine because this year is on track to be the sixth-warmest on record.

The current El Nino is forecast to get stronger, which probably will pushing global temperatures even higher next year, scientists say. NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt predicts 2010 may break a record, so a cooling trend "will be never talked about again."

Link to article:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33482750/

A. Levermann et al., PNAS, 2009, Basic mechanism for abrupt monsoon transitions

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, published online before print October 26, 2009; doi: 10.1073/pnas.0901414106

Basic mechanism for abrupt monsoon transitions

Anders Levermann*, Jacob Schewe, Vladimir Petoukhov, and Hermann Held

Edited by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany and approved August 18, 2009 (received for review February 11, 2009.

Abstract

Monsoon systems influence the livelihood of hundreds of millions of people. During the Holocene and last glacial period, rainfall in India and China has undergone strong and abrupt changes. Though details of monsoon circulations are complicated, observations reveal a defining moisture-advection feedback that dominates the seasonal heat balance and might act as an internal amplifier, leading to abrupt changes in response to relatively weak external perturbations. Here we present a minimal conceptual model capturing this positive feedback. The basic equations, motivated by observed relations, yield a threshold behavior, robust with respect to addition of other physical processes. Below this threshold in net radiative influx, R_c, no conventional monsoon can develop; above R_c, two stable regimes exist. We identify a nondimensional parameter l that defines the threshold and makes monsoon systems comparable with respect to the character of their abrupt transition. This dynamic similitude may be helpful in understanding past and future variations in monsoon circulation. Within the restrictions of the model, we compute R_c for current monsoon systems in India, China, the Bay of Bengal, West Africa, North America, and Australia, where moisture advection is the main driver of the circulation.

*Correspondence e-mail: anders.levermann@pik-potsdam.de

Link to abstract:  http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/10/23/0901414106.abstract

Activists turn up the heat on climate: Effort to raise awareness of warming risks

Activists turn up the heat on climate

Effort to raise awareness of warming risks

Environmentalists like Aleksandar Sopov of Somerville (right) participated yesterday in International Day of Climate Action. (John Tlumacki/ Globe Staff) 

By Jeannie Nuss and Hannah McBride Boston Globe Correspondents / October 25, 2009

Schools of environmentalists clad in snorkels, inner tubes, swim caps, and wellies flocked to Boston Harbor yesterday to raise awareness about climate change.

A man wrapped in a wet suit slid belly down near the crowd of 200 people gathered at Christopher Columbus Park, home to one of more than 5,200 events in 181 countries organized for the 350.org International Day of Climate Action.

“I want the earth to survive,’’ said 60-year-old Susan McLucas, a red snorkel pushing up her gray hair. “I don’t want our children and grandchildren to have to rush for higher ground.’’

As people hoisted green and yellow kayaks in the air, Seth Itzkan of Medford held a hockey stick and a poster that read: “Bring back the ice!’’

“People need to understand how important ice is to our climate,’’ Itzkan said. “We need a healthy North Pole.’’

Billed as the world’s largest political environmental effort, yesterday’s events sought to push 350 -- the parts per million some leading scientists say is the safe limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere -- into the spotlight. (The carbon dioxide rate hung at 387 parts per million yesterday, according to 350.org.) Industrial pollution kicks up the rate.

The international gatherings, organized by 350.org founder and Lexington native Bill McKibben, ranged from a submerged group of scuba divers in the Great Barrier Reef in Australia to a potluck in Wellfleet.

“We’re taking the most important number in the world and trying to make it the most well known,’’ said McKibben, who was interviewed by phone yesterday from New York.

Red-shirted climbers in Middlebury, Vt., took their cause to the hills, forming a large 3, 5, and 0 on a craggy mountain.

In Massachusetts, dozens of college students toting sleeping bags pitched tents last night on quads at Northeastern University and Tufts, to rally for clean energy.

The students, part of The Leadership Campaign, plan to reconvene on Boston Common tonight and every Sunday until world leaders meet at Copenhagen in December to craft a new pact for global warming.

Craig Altemose, a 25-year-old Harvard graduate student who organized the sleep-out, said he was inspired by 20-somethings who molded the face of protests during civil rights movements.

“People were killed by the police and hit with rifles,’’ he said. “What we’re doing is sleeping outside. Sure it’ll be cold.

“This is about a lot more than drowning polar bears and melting glaciers,’’ Altemose added.

Sunday school students, grandparents, and tourists rang a 2,400-pound bell more than 350 times at King’s
Chapel along the Freedom Trail in Boston, one of scores of churches tolling for climate change.

In New Bedford, a 15-foot sailboat hoisted a sail emblazoned with a 350 logo.

Organizers in the fishing city hoped to open up discussion about ocean acidification, a climate change phenomena that could dissolve shells of scallops and oysters.

An actress dressed as Henry David Thoreau was among 50 people picking up bits of trash and spreading seaweed in a giant 350 on a beach in Wellfleet.

Kite surfers and an Australian shepherd named Dune joined in the festivities and photos.

Harriet Korim, a 63-year-old former Wellfleet recycling commissioner along for the cleanup, said people can take baby steps like forgoing beach bonfires to reduce their carbon footprint and bring carbon levels down to 350 (or even 349, the phone exchange in Wellfleet).

“I figure I can do a virtual beach fire,’’ she said, while whipping up a fish chowder with carrots, fennel, and mushrooms for the potluck.

“Instead of having meetings and demonstrations that are the same old, same old, we’re organizing the things we love,’’ she said.

Link to article: http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/green/articles/2009/10/25/activists_turn_up_the_heat_on_climate/

James Hrynyshyn: Explaining plummeting belief in anthropogenic climate change

Explaining plummeting belief in anthropogenic climate change

by James Hrynyshyn, The Island of Doubt, October 23, 2009

Another depressing poll result from one of the more reputable sources:

The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 30-Oct. 4, 2009, among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones [excellent!] and landlines, finds that 57% think there is solid evidence that the average temperature on earth has been getting warmer over the past few decades. In April 2008, 71% said there was solid evidence of rising global temperatures.

Why the drop?

According to the experts that appear in the Guardian's story, it's the economy and corporate propaganda:

Michael Dimock, the associate director of the Pew Centre, said the economic crisis and the struggles over healthcare reform had squeezed out climate change and the environment as issues of concern. "The public is just not as focused on global warming and environmental [issues] as they have been in the past." But James Hoggan, a PR executive and author of Climate Cover-Up, blamed an intense lobbying campaign against global warming legislation now before the Senate. "I would say a big part of this problem is this campaign to mislead Americans about climate science," he said. "This is a very sophisticated group of people who know how to create doubt and confusion and they have done a very good job of it."

Both hypotheses are probably valid -- to an extent. But I have simpler explanation. Here're a couple of graphs that will explain it. First, the average annual temperature of the United States, as generated by a nifty little online tool at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

It's a very short time frame because we're not trying to explain global warming and this is actually more data than we need. It's important to note that we're only talking about the United States here precisely because my hypothesis is that many if not most Americans only care about what's happening at home.

Here's the same graph, with the Pew numbers, expresses in percentages who accept that there is "solid evidence of global warming," superimposed on the NCDC data. I use these because they were the easiest to extract from the report. Support for anthropogenic global warming is also falling.

Back in 2005 and 2006, when the U.S. was breaking every record in the books for warm summers and winter, people were more likely to believe the scientists because there was no conflict with their own experiences. That's no longer true, so support for the science declines.

Figuring out how to get people to disregard their own sensory data in favor of graphs in a PowerPoint presentation, newsmagazine (or a blog post) is proving tricky. And just so we don't leave anyone with misleading impressions, here's a graph from NASA of global temperatures. The heavy red line is the five-year mean, which better expresses trends.

Link to blog post:  http://scienceblogs.com/islandofdoubt/2009/10/explaining_plummeting_belief_i.php

James Hansen on Climate Tipping Points and Political Leadership

by James Hansen, solveclimate.com, July 15th, 2009

In my opinion, it is still feasible to solve the global warming problem before we pass tipping points that would guarantee disastrous irreversible climate change. But urgent strong actions are needed.

It is clear that the required course is technically feasible, and it would have great benefits to the public in developing and developed countries. The geophysical facts practically dictate the way.

Unfortunately, knowledge and understanding of the situation are not widespread. In addition, there is a minority of people, termed “fossil interests,” who benefit from business-as-usual. These fossil interests have enormous influence on governments worldwide, far outside their fair role in democracies.

Climate Situation
 
Our global climate is nearing tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear, and there
is a potential for rapid changes with effects that would be irreversible – if we do not promptly slow fossil fuel emissions during the next few decades.

Tipping points are fed by amplifying feedbacks. As Arctic sea ice melts, the darker
ocean absorbs more sunlight and speeds melting. As tundra melts, methane a strong greenhouse gas, is released, causing more warming. As species are pressured and exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.

We already have caused atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase from 280 to 387 ppm (parts per million). What science has revealed in the past few years is that the safe level of carbon dioxide in the long run is no more than 350 ppm. The optimum CO2 level to support civilization may be less than 350 ppm, but more precise knowledge is not needed immediately for the purpose of establishing present policies.

The conclusion that CO2 must be reduced to a level below 350 ppm was startling at first, but obvious in retrospect.

Earth’s history shows that an atmospheric CO2 amount of say 450 ppm eventually would yield dramatic changes, including sea level tens of meters higher than today.

For reference, 450 ppm yields global warming about 2°C (3.6°F) above the preindustrial level. Such a level of atmospheric CO2 and global warming imply that we would hand our children and grandchildren a condition that would run out of their control, a situation that should be unacceptable to humanity.
Fossil Fuels
Human-made sources of atmospheric carbon dioxide are summarized in the graph at right. The dark portions of the bars are the portions of the fuels that have been burned with the carbon put into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. The size of fossil fuel reserves (the fossil fuel not yet extracted from the ground) has significant uncertainty.

An important point is that the size of recoverable reserves depends upon whether drilling is allowed in off-shore regions, public lands, polar regions, and the deepest ocean. Similarly, the amount of coal reserves that is practically minable is uncertain and depends upon the degree to which ever more destructive mining practices are allowed. Unconventional fossil fuels (tar sands, oil shale, methane hydrates), not shown the first graph, are similar to coal in their high carbon content and have reserves that may be comparable in size to coal or even larger.

Despite uncertainties in reserve sizes, it is clear that if we burn all the fossil fuels, or even
half of the remaining reserves, we will send the planet toward an ice-free state with sea level about 250 feet higher than today. It would take time for complete ice sheet disintegration to occur, but a chaotic situation would be created with changes occurring out of control of future generations.

Oil may already be about half depleted, i.e., the world may be close to peak oil production (implying that the IPCC estimate of reserves is closer to the truth than the EIA estimate). In either case, common sense suggests that the largest oil pools will be exploited and the carbon dioxide, which is emitted mainly from tailpipes, will end up in the atmosphere.

Gas, the least carbon intensive and cleanest burning fossil fuel, also surely will be exploited.

The obvious conclusion is that the only practical way to avoid climate catastrophe is to terminate emissions from the largest fossil fuel source: coal, the dirtiest of the fossil fuels. If coal emissions are phased out between 2010 and 2030, global fossil fuel emissions would begin to fall rapidly as shown in the chart below.

The rate of emissions (shown in billions of tons of carbon on the left and in percent of 2008 emissions on the right) depends upon how much oil and gas is used. The (red) curve showing larger emissions is based on the assumption that the larger reserve estimates of EIA are valid and all of the CO2 is emitted to the atmosphere. These emission scenarios have been converted to atmospheric CO2 amounts using a simplified version of the Bern carbon cycle model.

The next chart shows that atmospheric CO2 would peak at only ~400 ppm in ~2025, if the IPCC oil and gas reserves are accurate and if coal emissions are phased out uniformly over the period 2010-2030.
If, however, the EIA oil and gas reserves are accurate (and if coal emissions are phased out), atmospheric CO2 will peak early in the second half of this century and atmospheric CO2 will be about 30 ppm higher than with the IPCC reserve estimates.

The EIA reserve estimates may be realistic if we choose to go after every last drop of oil by drilling off-shore, on public lands, in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, and in the deepest oceans, for example. With these larger reserves exploited, future generations, including our grandchildren, likely will be forced to seek ways to extract that extra 30 ppm of CO2 from the atmosphere. In the referenced paper we discuss the costs of air capture and disposal of CO2, estimating a cost of about $200 per ton of carbon. Thus the cost of removing 30 ppm would be about $12 trillion dollars, a burden that would be passed to our descendants.

The primary implication, however, concerns coal. The reason that CO2 peaks at only 400-425 ppm in these scenarios is the assumption that coal emissions will be phased out linearly between 2010 and 2030. Such a scenario is technically possible, but only with policies that lead to availability of appropriate alternative technologies and incentives for using them.

We must move beyond fossil fuels at some point. Why not do it sooner, for the benefit of our children?

Political Leadership
 
Political meetings may produce lofty goals for reduced carbon dioxide emissions by some future date. But these are of practically no significance if the goals and the actions of the nations are inconsistent with geophysical constraints.

For example, I spoke with a German Minister. We found that we were in good agreement with the startling conclusion that we are already moving into dangerous levels of atmospheric CO2. Yet Germany plans to build more coal-fired power plants. His rationalization was that they could “tighten the carbon cap” on cap and trade.

I pointed out that, if coal emissions continued, that cap would somehow have to force Russia to leave its oil in the ground. I asked how he would convince Russia to do that.

He had no answer.

The overwhelming practical requirement, for the sake of future generations, humanity itself, and the other species on the planet, is phase-out of coal emissions over the next 20 years.

The correct fundamental approach is a rising price on carbon emissions, as needed to achieve these objectives. The Waxman-Markey bill fails the test in the same way as the German plans: it builds in approval of new coal-fired power plants. There is no need for these plants except to enrich utility and coal special interests – they are included only because the monstrous 1400-page absurdity was hatched in Washington after energetic insemination by special interests.

Officials in the Obama administration privately admit that the science demands much more rapid emission cuts than Waxman-Markey would yield, but they say that their hands are tied by a recalcitrant Congress.

Is that so? Has President Obama provided direction or guidelines for what he expects from Congress?

This is a problem that demands strong leadership. The only special interest that should be calling the tune is the public’s special interest. Mountaintop removal should be banned. We should move rapidly to terminate coal use except where all emissions are captured.

The truth is that the climate problem cannot be solved without taking on special interests, specifically the coal industry. That is possible. The coal industry is but a fraction of what it once was; alternative industries will be far more beneficial to the nation and provide better jobs.

President Franklin Roosevelt, for the general good, took on more powerful special interests.

Margaret Thatcher showed that the coal industry is not omnipotent. This does not mean that coal workers should be abandoned – on the contrary, it would be straightforward to have programs in the affected states that provide support and opportunities for all of today’s coal workers.

President Obama is our best hope, perhaps the only hope, of achieving real change in the near term. But we have to level with him.

Civil Resistance
 
Another truth that has become apparent: our climate/environment leaders are not people located in Washington. The leaders are members of the public who understand the situation and have the courage to act on it.

I met a couple of them recently:

Tim DeChristopher, the University of Utah student, who, realizing that it makes no sense to be going after the last drop of oil on pristine public lands, outbid the oil companies for drilling rights. He has been charged with two felonies (because he had no money to pay for the drilling rights) and is threatened with 10 years in prison (he is facing about $100,000. in legal costs -- you can contribute to his defense at peacefuluprising.org).

You can see a rationale for Tim’s defense in the above charts. The efforts of fossil interests to go after every last drop of oil may leave his generation with a $12 trillion cleanup bill – that’s just for restoring the air (removing 30 ppm of CO2), without consideration of payment for damage due to rising seas – and what is the price of species exterminated?

Larry Gibson, the Mountain Man near Coal River Mountain who refuses to let Massey Energy blow up the mountain where he lives and his relatives are buried. These are the people with real courage – it made me nervous just to ride in Gibson’s pickup in hostile territory. Larry and I both have pleaded not guilty to charges of obstruction during the protest on June 23 and are requesting a trial.

On the subject of civil resistance (Mahatma Gandhi explained why civil resistance, as opposed to civil disobedience, is a better philosophy), a recent note from Damian Carrington of the Guardian and Observer reads:

Given your involvement in the Kingsnorth trial, I thought you would be interested to know the result of the trial of the 29 people that stopped a coal train going to Drax. They were found guilty of the main charge after the judge ruled out the necessity defence. We have covered the trial extensively (unlike our competitors) and you can if you wish read more here. Their closing statement is quite something. I would very much like to include your reaction to the verdict. Could you send me a line or two?

I responded that they are right to keep the focus on the necessity defense.

Civil resistance is not easy, but if governments continue to abdicate their responsibility to citizens, in favor of special interests, it seems essential. Strength comes from realization of rightness of course, and should be increased, not diminished, by temporary setbacks.

(Excerpted from Strategies to Address Global Warming)

Link:  http://solveclimate.com/blog/20091023/international-day-climate-action-spreads-across-177-countries 

Mike Hulme: Why the World Disagrees on Climate Change

Why the World Disagrees on Climate Change

by John Lorinc, Green Inc., blog at the New York Times, October 23, 2009

  Mike Hulme, a climate expert and the author of a new book, says we have “almost exactly orthogonal positions emerging about what the preferred strategies should be” to combat climate change.

 

Mike Hulme, a professor at the University of East Anglia School of Environmental Sciences in Britain and a veteran climate adviser, has climbed way above the global warming debate to decode the nature of discord over climate change in a new book: “Why We Disagree About Climate Change.”

With a global summit on the topic, COP15, less than two months away — and the prospects for reaching an agreement there growing increasingly dim — it would seem ripe territory for analysis, and Mr. Hulme examines why different societies approach the topic from sharply different vantage points shaped by culture, spirituality, history and politics.

Green Inc. spoke recently to Mr. Hulme, who is in India lecturing about his book. Excerpts from that conversation follow.
•

Q. In looking to reduce carbon emissions, are industrialized societies predisposed to large-scale technical fixes like geo-engineering?

 

A. There’s an influential strata of our society that do instinctively turn in that direction. I don’t think they’re the only influential strata. These technologies divide opinion in the West just as much as any climate solution.

There are people in the environmental community who have been arguing for 30 or 40 years, since Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” against large-scale intrusions into the natural cycle.

For me, this is exactly a case again of why we disagree about climate change. We have almost exactly orthogonal positions emerging about what the preferred strategies should be. They’ve got ideologically different ways of approaching solutions. Those are difficult differences to reconcile.

 

Q. Can you decode some of the debate taking place over geo-engineering solutions?

 

A. The risk of solar radiation management – the aerosols, the mirrors in space, cloud whitening – is that we fall far, far short of adequate knowledge of how the climate system works in order to undertake what I call this intrusive surgery on the planet.

It’s like surgeons conducting a series of experiments on the human body without knowing what they were doing, or doing it blindfolded.

 

Q. Do you see any evidence of emerging consensus?

 

A. If I look at the headlines, I don’t see convergence. But there are other ways that could be more fruitful, that would take the attention away from these mega multilateral negotiating sessions such as COP15, where we seemingly have to stitch together a deal that is so complex that it taxes the skills of even the most skilled negotiators. 

Those sorts of approaches are actually going nowhere. If we moved to more bilateral or sectoral approaches that don’t all have to be singing from the same hymn sheet, they can be doing their own thing in their own sector, for their own motives. Then we’re more likely to see progress being made.

It won’t likely be on the scale that some of the advocates argue it should be. But it will start making some tangible progress outside of the gridlock.

We’ve painted ourselves into a corner with these negotiations. Even now, I’m hearing from the environmental advocates that they’re resigned that COP isn’t going to produce anything. There’s a real mood of despair, almost, that it isn’t going to deliver. So I think we need to move out of that kind of negotiating framework.

Link to Green, Inc., blog post at The New York Times:  http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/why-the-world-disagrees-on-climate-change/

NOAA: 2009 Arctic Report Card for Greenland

Dear Readers,

I don't know what's up with Greenland, but it is very difficult to find the numbers for the 2008-2009 mass balance loss. The report below, in the last figure, gives only two-dimensional figures for loss of some of the outlet glaciers. Maybe they are waiting for the meeting of the AGU in December or for later in November before Copenhagen -- I sure am not privy to the reasons for this lack of information.

NOAA's 2009 Arctic Report Card for Greenland

J. E. Box, L.-S. Bai, R. Benson, I. Bhattacharya, D. H. Bromwich (Byrd Polar Research Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, U.S.A.) J. Cappelen (Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark), D. Decker (Byrd Polar Research Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, U.S.A.), N. DiGirolamo (Science Systems Applications Inc. and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, U.S.A.), X. Fettweis (Department of Geography, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium), D. Hall (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, U.S.A.), E. Hanna (Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, U.K.), T. Mote (Department of Geography, University of Georgia, Atlanta, GA, U.S.A.), M. Tedesco (Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, City College of New York, New York, NY, U.S.A.), and R. van de Wal and M. van den Broeke (Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands)

October 19, 2009

Summary

An abnormally cold winter across the southern half of Greenland led to substantially higher west coast sea ice thickness and concentration. Even so, record-setting summer temperatures around Greenland, combined with an intense melt season (particularly across the northern ice sheet), led the 2008 Greenland climate to be marked by continued ice sheet mass deficit and marine-terminating ice disintegration.

Regional surface temperatures 

Temperature anomalies were mixed and exhibited seasonal variability (Fig. 5.17). Annual mean temperatures for the whole ice sheet were +0.9 °C, but were not abnormal, given a rank of 23 of 51 years over the 1958-2008 period (Box et al. 2006). Persistent warm anomalies were evident over the northern ice sheet in all seasons. Temperatures were abnormally cold over the southern ice sheet in winter. Coastal meteorological stations around Greenland with a consistent 51-yr period (1958-2008) (Cappelen 2009) indicate a record-setting warm summer in 2008. The Upernavik (Nuuk) summer temperature was the warmest (second warmest) on record since 1873, respectively.

Figure G1. (a) winter and (b) summer near-surface (2 m) air temperature anomalies with respect to the 1971–2000 base period, simulated by Polar MM5 after Box et al. (2006). (Click each image for larger version)

Table G1. 2008 Summer 700-hPa temperature and winter precipitation anomalies (relative to 1948–2008 NCEP reanalysis means) for glaciated regions of the Arctic (excluding Greenland). Inferred sign of surface mass balance is based on comparison of historical mass balance records for each region with NCECEP reanalysis temperature and precipitation anomalies. Anomalies in melt duration and the timing of melt onset and freeze-up (relative to 2000–2004 climatology) derived from QuikSCAT data. For timing, negative anomalies indicate an earlier-than-normal date.

Upper-air temperatures 

Upper-air sounding data available from the Integrated Global Radiosonde Archive (Durre et al. 2006) indicate a continued pattern of lower tropospheric warming and lower stratospheric cooling 1964-onward (Box and Cohen 2006). Lower tropospheric warm anomalies in all seasons, particularly in spring along western Greenland, were accompanied by relatively small midtropospheric cool anomalies. Winter tropopause temperatures (200 hPa) were above normal. Lower stratospheric (above 100 hPa) temperatures were lower than normal.

Surface melt extent and duration

Passive (SMMR and SSM/I, 1979–2008) and active (QuikSCAT, 2000–08) microwave remote sensing (Bhattacharya et al. 2009, submitted to Geophys. Res. Lett.; Liu et al. 2005) indicate abnormally high melt duration over the north and northeast ice sheet and along the east and west coasts above Greenland’s most productive three outlet glaciers in terms of ice discharge into the sea: Kangerlussuaq, Helheim and Jakobshavn (Fig. G2). Lower-than-normal melt duration is evident over much of the upper elevations of the ice sheet. New records of the number of melting days were observed over the northern ice sheet, where melting lasted up to 18 days longer than previous maximum values. Anomalies near the west coast are characterized by melting up to 5–10 days longer than the average (Tedesco et al. 2008).

Figure G2. 2008 Greenland ice sheet surface melt duration anomalies relative to the 1989–2008 base period based on (a) SSM/I and (b) QuikSCAT (2000–08 base period), after Bhattacharya et al. (2009, submitted to Geophys. Res. Lett.). (Click each image for larger version)

The average daily melt extent, after Mote and Anderson (1995) and Mote (2007), for 2008 was 424,000 km², about 2.4% greater than the 1989–2008 average of 414,000 km², representing the lowest average melt extent since 2001. Significantly more melt occurred in 2008 in the northeast (45.6% greater than the 1989–2008 average) and northwest (29.7%), but less occurred in the two east-central regions (−16.8% and −25.4%) and in the southeast (−21.1%). Melt extent in 2008 was also above the 1979–2007 average. The trend in the total area of melt during 1979–2008 is approximately +15,900 km² yr⁻¹ and is significant at the 95% confidence interval (p < 0.01).

Precipitation anomalies

Annual PT anomalies in 2008, determined using Polar MM5 data assimilation modeling (Bromwich et al. 2001, Cassano et al. 2001, Box et al. 2006), were positive (negative) up to 750 mm (−250 mm) over the eastern (western) ice sheet, respectively. More PT than normal occurred in isolated areas in extreme southeast, east, north, and northwestern Greenland. The overall anomaly indicated approximately 41 Gt more PT than normal for the 1971–2000 standard normal period.

Surface albedo

Melt season (day 92–274) surface albedo anomalies, derived using the Liang et al. (2005) algorithm applied to daily cloud-free MODIS imagery, indicate a lower surface albedo around the ablation zone (except the east ice sheet) (Fig. G3) resulting from the combined effect of the positive summer surface melt intensity anomaly and, in most areas, less winter snow coverage. A positive albedo anomaly is evident for the ice sheet accumulation zone and is consistent with above-average solid precipitation and/or less-than-normal melting/snow grain metamorphism.

Figure G3. Surface albedo anomaly Jun–Jul 2008 relative to a Jun–Jul 2000–08 base period. (Click image for larger version)		Figure G4. 2008 surface mass balance anomalies with respect to the 1971–2000 base period, simulated by Polar MM5 after Box et al. (2006). (Click image for larger version)

Surface mass balance

Polar MM5 climate data assimilation model runs spanning 51 years (1958–2008), calibrated by independent in situ ice-core observations (Bales et al. 2001, Mosley-Thompson et al. 2001, Hanna et al. 2006) and ablation stakes (van de Wal et al. 2006), indicate that 2008 total precipitation and net snow accumulation was slightly (6%–8%) above normal (Table G2). In accordance with a +0.9 °C 2008 annual mean surface temperature anomaly, the fraction of precipitation that fell as rain instead of snow, surface meltwater production, and meltwater runoff were 142%–186% of the 1971–2000 mean. Consequently, and despite 6%–9% (39–50 Gt) more snow accumulation than normal, the surface net mass balance was substantially (145 Gt) below normal. 2008 surface mass balance ranked ninth-least positive out of 51 years (1958–2008).

Table G2. Greenland ice sheet surface mass balance parameters: 2008 departures from 1971–2000 average (adapted from Box et al. 2006). Estimates by Hanna et al. (2008) are included for comparison.

Surface mass balance anomalies indicate a pattern of increased marginal melting with noteworthy departures in excess of 1-m water equivalence per year from normal across the northern ice sheet (Fig. G4). The pattern of steepening mass balance profile is consistent with observations from satellite altimetry (Zwally et al. 2005) and airborne altimetry (Krabill et al. 2000), satellite gravity retrievals (e.g., Luthcke et al. 2006) and climate projections (Solomon et al. 2007).

Marine-terminating glacier area changes

Daily surveys of Greenland ice sheet marine terminating outlet glaciers from cloud-free MODIS imagery (http://bprc.osu.edu/MODIS/) indicate that the 34 widest glaciers collectively lost 106.4 km² of marine-terminating ice between the end of summer 2008 and the end of summer 2009 (Figure G4). This is equivalent to an area 20% larger than Manhattan Island (87.5 km²), New York. The largest individual glacier losses are observed at: Humboldt (-37 km²); Zachariae Isstrom (-31 km²); and Midgard (-16 km²). The 2000-2009 rate (106 km²) has been linear (R = −0.98) despite the fact that a few individual glaciers exhibit erratic annual net ice area changes. The cumulative area change from end-of-summer 2000 to 2009 is −990 km², an area 11.3 times that of Manhattan Island.

Figure G4. Cumulative annual area changes for 34 of the widest Greenland ice sheet marine-terminating outlets.

Link to report on Greenland:  http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/greenland.html

NOAA: Arctic Report Card -- Update for 2009

Dear Readers,

The post below is number 1,500 since this blog started in 2007.  Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that I would have posted so many articles here.  Nor could I have imagined that this blog would receive an average of nearly 500 visitors per day, with upwards of 800 pages per day viewed, now bringing total page views to nearly 200,000.

Over time, as the scientific articles have accumulated here, this blog has become a database for the advanced layperson seeking more knowledge of climate science.

I admit that I cannot nor do I try to cover all of the vast number of aspects of the science of climate change.  The blog's focus has been on the Arctic and on changing patterns of atmospheric and oceanic circulation all around the globe, although many other subjects are covered.

It is to be hoped that the blog's contents have been found useful by you, the reader.

I salute all of you for seeking the truth.

Sincerely,

Tenney Naumer

NOAA: Arctic Report Card -- Update for 2009

Warming of the Arctic continues to be widespread, and in some cases, dramatic.

Linkages between air, land, sea, and biology are evident.  

Link to first webpage here:  http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/

Please click on the headings below to go to the various sections of the report.

Atmosphere
Large scale wind patterns impacted by loss of summer sea ice

There is evidence that, by creating a new major surface heat source, the recent extreme loss of summer sea ice extent is having a direct feedback effect on the general atmospheric circulation into the winter season (Francis et al., 2009). Fall air temperature anomalies of greater than +1.0 °C were observed well up into the atmosphere (Figure 3A), when averaged over 2003–2008 relative to a 1968–1996 base period. The higher temperatures in the lower troposphere decrease the atmospheric air density and raise the height of upper-air-constant-pressure levels over the Arctic Ocean (Figure 3B). These increased heights north of 75° N weaken the normal north-to-south pressure gradient that drives the normal west-to-east airflow in the upper troposphere. In this sense, the effect of higher air temperatures in the lower Arctic atmosphere is contributing to changes in the atmospheric circulation in both the Arctic and northern mid-latitudes. For example, Honda et al. (2009) suggest a remote connection between loss of Arctic sea ice and colder temperatures over eastern Asia.

The climate of the Arctic is influenced by repeating patterns of sea level pressure that can either dominate during individual months or represent the overall atmospheric circulation flow for an entire season. The main climate pattern for the Arctic is known as the Arctic Oscillation (AO) with anomalous winds that blow counter-clockwise around the pole when the pattern is in its positive phase. A second wind pattern has been more prevalent in the 21st century and is known as the Arctic Dipole (AD) pattern (Wu et al., 2006; Overland et al., 2008). The AD pattern has anomalous high pressure on the North American side of the Arctic and low SLP on the Eurasian side. This implies winds blowing more from south to north, compared to the AO, and increasing transport of heat into the central Arctic Ocean. The AD pattern occurred in all summer months of 2007 and helped support the major 2007 summer reduction in sea ice extent (Overland et al., 2008). Fall 2008 and winter/spring 2009 showed a return of the AO pattern, but also considerable month to month variability in the presence of these various climate patterns.

Sea Ice
Multi-year sea ice is being replaced by first year sea ice

Ocean
Upper ocean remains warm and less salty

Land
Increased runoff in Siberia, less snow in North America

Greenland
Ice sheet loss continues

Biology
High Arctic species impacted by loss of sea ice

Link to complete report (pdf file):  http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/ArcticReportCard_full_report.pdf

NOAA issues Arctic report, cites ‘drastic changes’: Loss of sea ice 'messing with that thermostat for the whole globe'

U.S. issues Arctic report, cites ‘drastic changes’

Loss of sea ice 'messing with that thermostat for the whole globe'


msnbc.com staff and news service reports, October 22, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal scientists on Thursday issued their annual "Arctic Report Card," citing "consistent evidence" of warming in three key indicators: the atmosphere, sea ice and Greenland's ice sheet.

"The Arctic we see today is very different from the Arctic we saw even five years ago," Jackie Richter-Menge, the report’s chief technical editor, said in a statement. "It’s a warmer place with less thick and more mobile sea ice, warmer and fresher ocean water, and increased stress on caribou, reindeer, polar bears and walrus in some regions."

The Obama administration was quick to echo the findings. "Scientists are seeing drastic changes in the region from just five years ago and at rates faster than anticipated," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a statement accompanying the report card.

Richard Spinrad, head of research at NOAA, said the report shows that warming temperatures are changing wind patterns in the Arctic, melting sea ice and glaciers, and affecting ocean and land life.

The Arctic is a sort of natural regulator in terms of the amount of heat stored in the ocean and ice, Spinrad told reporters, and "especially the loss of sea ice is messing with that thermostat for the whole globe."

A particular problem is the disappearance of old, thick sea ice that has been present for thousands of years, added James Overland of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Research Laboratory. "It's very difficult to get that (ice) back," he said.

Among the findings of the update:

• Air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean reached an unprecedented 7 °F above normal in October-December of 2008.
• There is evidence that the higher air temperatures are causing changes in the air circulation in both the Arctic and northern mid-latitudes.
• The area covered by sea ice this summer was 25% below the average from 1979 to 2000 and was the third lowest since satellite records were begun in 1979.
• The melting ice resulted in an unprecedented amount of fresh water in the surface layer of the Arctic Ocean.
• "Record-setting summer temperatures around Greenland" led to further melt of the ice sheet.
• The amount of land covered by snow in the winters of 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 continued the trend toward shorter snow seasons due to earlier spring melt, although there is considerable annual and regional variability.

The Arctic Report Card has been issued annually since 2006.

The 2009 report card cited "many indications of warming" for the three other tracked indicators: wildlife biology, the ocean and land.

Link to AP article:   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33437613/ns/us_news-environment/

Gordon Hamilton, leading researcher on sea level rise from Greenland's melting ice sheet says higher waters coming

Arctic Scientists See Faster Melting, Higher Floodwaters for Tampa-St. Petersburg Area

One of the world’s leading experts on the ice melting in the Arctic came to the Tampa Bay area today to tell what he’s seen, and to demonstrate the implications for the region. He brought with him the most detailed maps and video animations yet of exactly what could go underwater this century in this area.

Nothing compares to being in a small boat, slowly sailing through the glassy waters of a glacial fjord and being surrounded by icebergs larger than the town I live in. And to know that these icebergs are being calved off the ice sheet at a rate three times faster now than just a few years ago The impacts of a meter of sea-level rise for Tampa's physical and economic infrastructure would be very dire We really want to deliver a message that you, as a regular person, should care about this – because it's happening, and it's happening soon But there are solutions, and we’re bringing those, too.

Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL (Vocus) October 22, 2009 -- One of the world’s leading experts on the ice melting in the Arctic came to the Tampa Bay area today to tell what he’s seen, and to demonstrate the implications for the region. He brought with him the most detailed maps and video animations yet of exactly what could go underwater this century in this area.


According to Dr. Gordon Hamilton, a research professor at The University of Maine, the old estimates for rising seas due to global warming were overly optimistic. Fresh data from the poles now indicates between 3 and 4 ft. or more of rise by the year 2100, or sooner, which will have much more of an impact on Tampa Bay and the nation, he said. The scientists also provided a graphic demonstration at the Florida Aquarium of how high the water could get in just a few decades.

Dr. Hamilton is active in current research on the rapid decline of the Greenland ice sheet. He presented his findings at The Tampa Bay Estuary Program’s Area Scientific Information Symposium, at the Sun Spree Resort in St. Petersburg. “Nothing compares to being in a small boat, slowly sailing through the glassy waters of a glacial fjord and being surrounded by icebergs larger than the town I live in. And to know that these icebergs are being calved off the ice sheet at a rate three times faster now than just a few years ago,” said Dr. Hamilton.

Those melting icebergs will have far-reaching effects, according to the scientists. To demonstrate, Dr. Hamilton and Brooks Yeager, Executive Vice President for Policy of Clean Air-Cool Planet, a nonprofit headquartered in Portsmouth, N.H., went to the Florida Aquarium in Tampa. Donning a pair of hip boots, Mr. Yeager, a former Clinton administration official, stood on a boat and raised the Hula Hoop to near his knees, representing the previous estimate by the Nobel prize-winning scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that sea levels would rise approximately 17.3 inches this century. Slowly, as he spoke, he moved the hoop to his waist and then his chest, representing the new range of the rising seas now expected.

“The impacts of a meter of sea-level rise for Tampa's physical and economic infrastructure would be very dire,” said Mr. Yeager, with most of the city's transportation facilities needing protection that would cost billions of dollars. “This area would be devastated by that much change. Much of the area closest to the Bay, as well as the islands and Keys to the west and south, will be swamped with water if we don’t take action now to avert this disaster.

“We really want to deliver a message that you, as a regular person, should care about this – because it's happening, and it's happening soon,” Yeager continued. “But there are solutions, and we’re bringing those, too.”

The speakers recommended a three-pronged approach to addressing climate change:

First, they advocate doing what we can to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases to lessen future global warming, with personal actions at home to reduce energy use and by supporting society’s conversion to clean energy and ultra-efficient homes, vehicles, appliances, and factories.  Second, support both federal legislation to cap carbon dioxide emissions and reduce them through a cap-and-trade mechanism, and U.S. involvement in international efforts in Copenhagen this December to control black carbon from diesel, methane, and tropospheric ozone emissions that scientists believe are accelerating Arctic warming and melting. Finally, they said, we need to begin planning for the infrastructure changes needed to mitigate or minimize the impact on our cities and adapt as much as possible to the climate change from the greenhouse gas emissions already in the atmosphere, such as by respecting a “new flood plain” and preparing to move back from the rising ocean and building sea walls.

The event was part of the “Hip Boot Tour,” which will visit coastal cities from Miami, Fla., to Portland, Maine, to inform and educate Americans about the direct impact they will face from melting ice caused by global warming. The tour will bring leading scientists from their research stations in the Arctic through the cities before culminating with events in New York City and Washington, D.C.

The stops in Tampa and St. Petersburg were sponsored by Clean Air-Cool Planet, the leading science-based, non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated solely to finding and promoting solutions to global warming. It was cosponsored by the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, the Florida Audubon Society, and the Florida Aquarium.

For more information, see the Hip Boot Tour website.

Link:  http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/10/prweb3094114.htm

AAAS: 18 leading scientific organizations send letter to all U.S. senators confirming AGW and serious climate change problems looming in the near future

American Association for the Advancement of Science
1200 New York Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20005, USA
Tel: (202) 326-6600. Fax: (202) 289-4950
www.aaas.org

October 21, 2009

Dear Senator:

As you consider climate change legislation, we, as leaders of scientific organizations, write to state the consensus scientific view.

Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver.

These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. Moreover, there is strong evidence that ongoing climate change will have broad impacts on society, including the global economy and on the environment. For the United States, climate change impacts include sea level rise for coastal states, greater threats of extreme weather events, and increased risk of regional water scarcity, urban heat waves, western wildfires, and the disturbance of biological systems throughout the country. The severity of climate change impacts is expected to increase substantially in the coming decades.¹

If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced. In addition,adaptation will be necessary to address those impacts that are already unavoidable. Adaptation efforts include improved infrastructure design, more sustainable management of water and other natural resources, modified agricultural practices, and improved emergency responses to storms, floods, fires and heat waves.

We in the scientific community offer our assistance to inform your deliberations as you seek to address the impacts of climate change.

Signatures from the leaders of the following organizations:

American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Biological Sciences, American Meteorological Society, American Society of Agronomy, American Society of Plant Biologists, American Statistical Association, Association of Ecosystem Research Centers, Botanical Society of America, Crop Science Society of America, Ecological Society of America, Natural Science Collections Alliance, Organization of Biological Field Stations, Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Society of Systematic Biologists, Soil Science Society of America, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

¹The conclusions in this paragraph reflect the scientific consensus represented by, for example, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and U.S. Global Change Research Program. Many scientific societies have endorsed these findings in their own statements, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Chemical Society, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, and American Statistical Association.

Link to pdf file of this letter:  http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2009/media/1021climate_letter.pdf

Joseph Romm's take on the letter: http://climateprogress.org/2009/10/21/18-leading-scientific-organizations-send-letter-to-senators-affirming-the-climate-is-changing-human-activities-are-the-primary-driver-impacts-are-projected-to-worsen-substantially-and-if-w/#more-13018