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'Peak water' and glacial melt pose thorny problem downstream
A Peruvian watershed has likely passed 'peak water,' dropping river flows 30 percent. New lakes are draining the Himalaya, and say good-bye to Rocky Mountains' glaciers.
By Douglas Fischer
Daily Climate editor
SAN FRANCISCO – New data underscores the bleak prospects facing glaciers across the world as emissions continue to rise. In many instances, particularly the tropics, researchers expect the ice serving as key mountain reservoirs will disappear or severely degrade, leaving downstream communities to cope with scarce and unreliable supplies.
We are going to be witness over the next century to the disappearance of glaciers in western North America. - Garry Clarke, University of British Columbia
Exhibit A is the Andes, where the glacial runoff provides water for hundreds of thousands throughout Peru and Ecuador. Where scientists once thought the region had 10 years to 40 years to adapt to reduced runoff, that time is now up, said Michel Baraër of McGill University in Montreal.
"We have passed peak water," he said on Wednesday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. "As a consequence, (during) the dry season, we will get lower discharge and increased variability in flow."
Meanwhile, accelerated melting rates suggest North American glaciers will not survive the century, said Garry Clarke, emeritus professor at the University of British Columbia.
And in the Himalaya, the increasing emergence of mid-glacier lakes has become a rising concern for researchers who say the lakes fill, drain and refill at surprising rates.
The drop in the Rio Santo, in northern Peru, could leave river flows during the dry season 30 percent below current levels.
Considering that 80 percent of the water in the Rio Santo is diverted near its mouth for agriculture, that spells trouble. "Instead of having 10, 20, 40 years to find water to use, or some sort of adaptation, in fact this time does not exist," Baraër said.
More at the linkA Peruvian watershed has likely passed 'peak water,' dropping river flows 30... more-
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French Alpine glaciers in retreat
Glaciers in the French Alps have lost a quarter of their area in the past 40 years, according to new research.
In the late 1960s/early 1970s, the ice fields slipping down Mont Blanc and the surrounding mountains of the European range covered some 375 sq km.
By the late 2000s, this area had fallen to about 275 sq km.
The research has been presented at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting, the world's largest annual gathering of Earth scientists.
It mirrors some findings of retreat occurring in other sectors of the Alps which sit across the borders of several nations, but predominantly Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Germany, France, and Italy.
The new French Alps glaciers inventory was produced by Marie Gardent, from the University of Savoie, and colleagues.
It assessed the roughly 600 glaciers in broad areas incorporating the Ecrins, Belledonne, Vanoise, Ubaye and Grande Rousse Arves massifs, as well as the famous Mont Blanc Massif in the north.
The team drew upon map archives, past satellite imagery and aerial photographs. Manual inspection was used to check the automatic delineation methods employed in the pictures was correct.
"We use manual delineation to verify the satellite data because there can be a problem with debris cover on a glacier," explained Ms Gardent.
"Automatic delineation from satellite data will sometimes say there is no glacier when in fact we know there is one there. Also, deep shadows can hide the glacier margins."
A great deal of effort is now going into monitoring the status of Alpine glaciers The only existing glacial inventory from the French Alps was published four decades ago within the context of the World Glacier Inventory. It found the overall area of ice to be about 375 sq km.
By 1985-86, in spite of a short advancing period in the late 70s/early 80s, glacial coverage had decreased to a value close to 340 sq km, the new survey shows.
Since then, the withdrawal has accelerated, with the area being reduced to about 275 sq km in the late 2000s.
Nasa's Landsat spacecraft looks down on Mt Blanc and La Mer de Glace snaking off to the north-west
This represents an average loss of some 26% over the last 40 years. The retreat is not uniform across the French Alps, however. The greatest losses have been seen in the southern sectors. In the Belledonne Massif, for example, glaciers have almost completely disappeared; and in the Ecrins Massif, glacial retreat is more than three times stronger than in the Mont Blanc Massif.
More at the linkGlaciers in the French Alps have lost a quarter of their area in the past 40 years,... more-
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Protests at climate change summit at Durban
Thousands of demonstrators have marched through the South African city of Durban demanding faster action on climate change.
The annual UN climate summit is being held at the city's convention centre.
Protesters were particularly angered by the stance of rich countries such as the US and Canada.
In London. former UK Deputy Prime Minister Lord Prescott said the approach of these nations was "appalling".
Halfway through this summit, some progress has been made, but a few countries including the US, Canada and Saudi Arabia are holding out on important issues such as the future of the Kyoto Protocol.
Fourteen years ago, Lord Prescott played a leading role in the UN summit in Kyoto that brought the protocol into existence.
Speaking to the BBC, he was scathing about nations trying to delay progress now.
"Let's have a reassessment of it by 2015." he said. "But if you don't finish in time for the ending of Kyoto Two, which is next year, 2012, then, you know, it will actually wither on the vine and that's what Canada and America wants - and one or two other rich countries.
"It's a conspiracy against the poor. It's appalling. I'm ashamed of such countries not recognising their responsibilities."
The European Union wants talks on a new global agreement covering all nations to start as soon as possible.
It is backed by most of the world's poorest countries and small island states vulnerable to rising sea levels.
But even if resistance from the US and others can be overcome, it is hard to envisage anything being agreed that can start to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions before 2020.
And that is the timeframe science suggests is necessary if the most dangerous climate impacts are to be avoided.Thousands of demonstrators have marched through the South African city of Durban... more-
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Climate change: vulnerable countries consider "occupying" Durban talks
Diplomats from some developing countries may "occupy" the UN climate negotiations that begin on Monday in Durban by staging sit-ins and boycotts over the lack of urgency in the talks.
The move follows a call by the former president of Costa Rica for vulnerable countries to refuse to leave the talks until "substantial" progress has been made.
"I have called on all vulnerable countries to 'occupy' Durban. We need an expression of solidarity by the delegations of those countries that are most affected by climate change, who go from one meeting to the next without getting responses on the issues that need to be dealt with," said José María Figueres.
"We went to Copenhagen [in 2009] with the illusion we could reach an equitable agreement. We went to Cancún [in 2009] where we saw slight but not sufficient progress. Frustration is now deep and building. Now we hear that we will need more conferences. Sometime we have to get serious. We should be going to Durban with the firm conviction that we do not come back until we have made substantial advances."
Spokespeople for developing country negotiating blocs declined to comment on the call for a revolt, but one ambassador said from Durban: "The Occupy Wall Street movement and the Occupy the Climate Change negotiations movement confront the same problem. We need this if we want to have any positive result. Otherwise it will be worse than Cancún."
But he warned: "In the corridors [here] there is talk of occupying the meeting rooms, but there could be sanctions. So it needs to be big inside in order to have impact and nobody is punished. We are at the beginning."
Seyni Nafo, spokesman for the important 53-country Africa group said: "We understand the [financial] situation in Europe and Japan but it seems climate change is now not on the global agenda. Action that might make it visible must be considered. We are exploring a lot of avenues and options. You have to take that seriously."
Frustrations mounted last month when, after months of tense negotiations, developing countries appeared to have succeeded in their demand for access to a multi-billion dollar Green Fund to help them adapt to climate change. But at the last minute the US and Saudi Arabia withdrew their support.
Resentment was further stoked this week when the Guardian revealed that rich countries had decided to shelve plans for a global agreement on climate change within the next few years, instead pushing for an agreement by the end of 2015 or 2016, and not coming into effect until 2020 despite scientists saying that this risked catastrophic climate change.
A possible postponement of a deal was condemned on Tuesday by the UN environment chief, Achim Steiner, who said it would be a "political choice" rather than one based on science.
Jorge Argüello, chair of the powerful G77 and China coalition of 131 countries, said: "[We] trust to see in Durban a fair and equal treatment of all issues that are important to all parties. A serious imbalance in the progress of issues can clearly not be conducive to a successful, comprehensive and balanced outcome."
"The climate change process is too crucial to the survival of humanity and the dignity of each of us, it is sad to see some parties using it just as a toy in a promotional agenda. The African leaders have expressed in different fora that Durban can not become the grave of the Kyoto Protocol, and we are completely supportive of that ambition."
Sheik Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh, said: "Climate change caused over 300,000 additional deaths last year. We the vulnerable countries suffer the most for our limited coping capacities. Bangladesh and other vulnerable countries cannot wait for international response to climate causes ... we are implementing 134 climate change adaptation and mitigation action plans."
More at the linkDiplomats from some developing countries may "occupy" the UN climate... more-
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Glaciers: Then and Now
Video at the link
Rivers of ice: Vanishing glaciers
Stunning images from high in the Himalayas - showing the extent by which many glaciers have shrunk in the past 80 years or so - have gone on display at the Royal Geographical Society in central London.
Between 2007 and 2010, David Breashears retraced the steps of early photographic pioneers such as Major E O Wheeler, George Mallory and Vittorio Sella - to try to re-take their views of breathtaking glacial vistas.
The mountaineer and photographer is the founder of GlacierWorks - a non-profit organisation that uses art, science and adventure to raise public awareness about the consequences of climate change in the Himalayas.Video at the link Rivers of ice: Vanishing glaciers Stunning images from high in... more-
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Melting ice is Earth's warning signal-and we cannot ignore it
Ice is the white flag being waved by our planet, under fire from the atmospheric attack being mounted by humanity. From the frosted plains of the Arctic ice pack to the cool blue caverns of the mountain glaciers, the dripping away of frozen water is the most crystal clear of all the Earth's warning signals.
It relies on neither the painstaking compiling of temperature records back through history nor the devilish complexity of predicting the future with supercomputers. Ice on Earth is simply and unambiguously disappearing. Last week saw the annual summer minimum of the Arctic ice cap, which has now shrunk to the lowest level satellites have ever recorded. The ice at the roof of the human world is faring little better: mountain glaciers are diminishing at accelerating and historic rates.
The lower glaciers are doomed. Kilimanjaro may be bare within a decade, with the Pyrenees set to be ice-free by mid-century and three-quarters of the glaciers in the Alps gone by the same date. As you climb higher, and temperatures drop, global warming will take longer to erode the ice into extinction. But at the "third pole", in the Himalayas, the ice is melting as evidenced by dozens of swelling milky blue lakes that threaten to burst down on to villages when their ice dams melt.
The threat posed is far greater than even this terrifying prospect: a quarter of the world's people rely on Himalayan meltwater, which helps feed the great rivers that plunge down into Asia. The Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Brahmaputra, Ganges and Indus nourish billions and will eventually lose their spring surges.
Melting ice is the cause of another of the greatest long-term threats posed by climate change: rising sea level. The deep freezes of Greenland and west Antarctica store enough water to raise the oceans by 20 feet. That would flood many of the world's greatest cities from New York to Shanghai, but remains for now a distant prospect.
More at the linkIce is the white flag being waved by our planet, under fire from the atmospheric... more-
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Dealing with climate change by reviving ancient Andean agriculture
Ancient Andean crops and farming methods are revived as Peruvians struggle to deal with the effects of climate change.
Story from PRI's The World. Listen to audio above for full report.
To get to some of Peru's most remote Andean communities, you head out over pockmarked dirt roads from a small town already 10,000 feet up. Up – up – up — past llamas and alpacas and sheep and cows. The vegetation thins out and the air becomes even thinner. Your lungs clamor for oxygen and you're offered coca leaves to help adjust to the altitude.
And then, after four hypnotic hours, you've arrived – at a patch of sparse farmland near the town of Pomacocha, at 13,000 feet an outpost at pretty much the upper limits of agriculture.
For centuries, Pomacocha's thousand or so residents have grown corn in the fertile valleys below the town and potatoes on slopes that push against the sky above, fed by seasonal rains and glacial streams.
But climate change is hitting the high Andes hard. Temperature and precipitation swings are becoming more extreme, the glaciers are shrinking fast, and a tough place to farm is becoming even tougher.
So to help them deal with an uncertain future, residents are looking back in time—to before the arrival of Europeans.
From a field of brown soil, Pomacocha resident Mariano Ccaccya unearths a small, pink potato—a huaña, one of the first to be grown here in decades. The huaña is the native potato in this part of Peru, but Ccaccya says it had fallen out of favor in recent decades and was about to disappear.
Huaña are bitter, Ccaccya says, and it takes a lot of work to make them palatable. But he says there are good reasons to grow them in times of increasing uncertainty.
Ccaccya, who's the local head of a nonprofit group that's leading an effort to revive ancient Andean crops, says huañas can be stored for two or three years, more than four times as long as most other potatoes. Ccaccya's colleague Adripino Jayo says huañas also resist frost, hail, extreme rain and drought.
"It's very, very strong," Jayo says. "Now that we're in the crisis of climate change, it's worth recovering these potatoes."
Others think so too. Jayo and Ccaccya's organization, Cusichaca Andina, recently won a grant from the World Bank to further its efforts to promote a variety of resilient ancient Andean crops, including quinoa, amaranth, and different types of potatoes and squashes.
But changing what's grown here is only part of the plan. Cusichaca Andina is also looking to the past to try to change how crops are grown.
On a steep slope in a valley about two hours from the potato fields, Jayo pulls away a stand of brush to reveal an overgrown rock wall. He says the stones are part of a long-abandoned system of agricultural terraces, built into Peru's mountains by the Incas more than 500 years ago.
Terraces like these once blanketed thousands of square miles of the Andes, and were described in the 17th century book The Royal Commentaries of the Incas, by Garcilaso de la Vega.
"They built level terraces on the mountains and hillsides, wherever the soil was good," De la Vega wrote. "And these are to be seen today in Cusco and in the whole of Peru."
Just a small fraction of the terraces are still used today. After the European conquest, Spanish crops and agricultural systems largely displaced traditional ones.
But here in Pomacocha, old terraces are being restored, and new ones are being built.
Ccaccya says they have a lot of benefits. The terraces help channel water for irrigation while avoiding erosion. They can hold water for months, which is crucial in a place with only intermittent access to water. And plants grown on them are more productive, he says.
Cusichaca Andina is also working on reviving another ancient technology for holding and transporting scarce water—Incan irrigation systems that Garcilaso de la Vega called "extraordinary."
"The Cisterns, or Conservatories, were about twelve foot deep, in channels made of hewn stone," de la Vega wrote, "and rammed in with earth so hard, that no water could pass between… But the Spaniards little regarded the convenience of these works, but rather out of a scornful and disdaining humor, have suffered them unto ruin, beyond all recovery."
Centuries later, the digging and hammering of a handful of men near Pomacocha suggests that the ruin of the Incan irrigation channels was perhaps not quite beyond all recovery. The workers are chiseling and lining up stones along a long-abandoned canal once used to divert water from a nearby spring.
"It's always been here," Jayo says, pointing at the stone canal. "It's probably from pre-Incan times, but it's still useful for irrigation, with a little help."
Cusichaca Andina and other groups in the Andes have recovered these and other ancient agricultural treasures through a combination of archaeology and exploring local traditions. And they're teaching communities throughout the Peruvian high Andes how to rebuild and use them, along with other ancient agricultural techniques.
It's all part of an effort to increase the resilience and food security.
But the leaders of Cusichaca Andina realize they can only make a small dent in a vast need. Jayo says the Peruvian government has a big role to play as well.
"We see the difficulties in the national context," Jayo says. He says the group wants politicians in Lima to apply what it's doing across all of the Andes.
So far national politicians haven't picked up that slack.
But the work here may have relevance to mountainous regions beyond Peru. For instance Cusichaca Andina's founder, British archaeologist Ann Kendall, recently traveled to China. The world's largest country faces huge challenges from climate change and water shortages. And it also happens to have its own system of ancient mountain terraces that Kendall thinks may just be waiting to be revived.
Read the rest of this story and view a slideshow of Pomacocha farmers on The World website.
more at the link.Ancient Andean crops and farming methods are revived as Peruvians struggle to deal... more-
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Second giant ice island set to break off Greenland glacier
New photographs taken of a vast glacier in northern Greenland have revealed the astonishing rate of its breakup, with one scientist saying he was rendered "speechless."
In August 2010, part of the Petermann Glacier about four times the size of Manhattan island broke off , prompting a hearing in Congress.
Researcher Alun Hubbard, of the Centre for Glaciology at Aberystwyth University, U.K., told msnbc.com by phone that another section, about twice the size of Manhattan, appeared close to breaking off.
In 2009, scientists installed GPS masts on the glacier to track its movement.
Taken nearly two years after the picture above, this photo shows the extent of the ice loss. The channel is about ten miles wide.
But when they returned in July this year, they found the ice had been melting so quickly — at an unexpected 16-and-a-half feet in two years — that some of the masts stuck into the glacier were no longer in position.
Hubbard, who has been working with Jason Box, of Ohio State University, and others, said in a statement issued by the Byrd Polar Research Center that scientists were still trying to work out how fast the glacier was moving and the effect on the ice sheet feeding the glacier.
'Really weird'
But he said he was taken aback by the difference between 2009 and 2011 when he visited the glacier in late July.
"Although I knew what to expect in terms of ice loss from satellite imagery, I was still completely unprepared for the gob-smacking scale of the break-up, which rendered me speechless," he said in the statement.
"I'm very familiar with the glacier. It's very hard to sort of envisage something so big not being there ... to come back and basically see an ice shelf has disappeared, which is 20 kilometers across (about 12 miles) ... I was speechless and started laughing because I couldn't sort of believe it," Hubbard added, speaking to msnbc.com.
"It was really weird when the helicopter first came over," he added.
Hubbard told msnbc.com that he had gone to the glacier to recover instruments used to monitor the glacier and time-lapse photographs.
.."What I saw there is this ice shelf is riddled with rifts and cracks. You can see another big rift another 10 to 15 kilometers (6 to 9 miles) back into" the glacier, he said.
Hubbard said the large rift, which the researchers have dubbed "The Big Kahuna," was getting bigger. He was cautious about predicting when it would create a new vast ice island, but said it could happen "maybe next year, something like that."
'Abnormally warm'
He said while sea glacier's "calving" of ice bergs was a natural process, they were witnessing something out of the ordinary.
"The break-off last year is bigger than anything seen for at least 150 years," Hubbard said.
"This region (northern Greenland) is experiencing temperatures which are abnormally warm ... I think the far northwest of Greenland is seeing a kind of new regime of climate," he added.
The Humbolt Glacier, the widest in the northern hemisphere, is also retreating, Hubbard said. He said he was not a climate scientist, but said the pattern of ice melting in the area was "a definite consequence of climate change and global warming."
More at the linkNew photographs taken of a vast glacier in northern Greenland have revealed the... more-
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"Happy" Bhutan alarmed by Himalayan climate change
Bhutan's prime minister has issued a dire warning about the impact of Himalayan climate change, saying it could wreck the tiny kingdom's ambitious plans to be a world leader in hydropower.
The isolated, mountainous nation sandwiched between India and China is famed for pursuing "happiness" for its citizens instead of orthodox economic growth, with environmental protection central to its development model.
Bhutan, home to 700,000 people, is already a carbon-neutral electricity producer, with almost all of its power generated at plants that capture energy from the cascading streams that criss-cross its spectacular landscape.
But Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley told AFP the country was powerless to prevent changes caused by shifting weather patterns which threaten regional water supplies and plans to harness the energy of the Himalayan snowmelt.
"The glaciers are retreating very rapidly, some are even disappearing. The flow of water in our river system is fluctuating in ways that are very worrying," he said in an interview in his office in the capital Thimphu.
"In the summer they overflow their banks in a way that used to never happen in the past and in the winter they shrivel and almost dry up.
"The climate is changing, global warming is real and the impact on our hydrology is very severe."
The increase in meltwater caused by warmer summers has also led to the creation of lakes high in the mountains that threaten people in the valleys below.
The government is building an early warning system to alert authorities to any possible breach of the natural dams that hold back the water.
More at the linkBhutan's prime minister has issued a dire warning about the impact of Himalayan... more-
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Arctic death spiral: sea ice passes defacto tipping point
The recent scientific literature makes clear that while that death spiral could theoretically be reversed, it would require policies that climate science deniers have successfully demonized, policies many in the traditional media regularly pooh pooh or undercut.
So we have passed a de facto tipping point, “the critical point in an evolving situation that leads to a new and irreversible development.” If that wasn’t obvious from observations, then it should have been clear from a December study in Nature widely misunderstood by the media. That study showed sea ice extent crashing by two thirds by the 2030s and then collapsing to near-zero shortly thereafter — unless we cut global GHG emissions about 60% to 70% almost immediately and have further cuts after that, an implausible assumption the authors never spelled out clearly (as I explain here).
Now comes a new study that has also proven an irresistible source of confusion to both the deniers and the media, “A 10,000-Year Record of Arctic Ocean Sea-Ice Variability—View from the Beach” (subs. req’d). The news release is as misleading as the Nature article:
“The bad news is that there is a clear connection between temperature and the amount of sea ice. And there is no doubt that continued global warming will lead to a reduction in the amount of summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean. The good news is that even with a reduction to less than 50% of the current amount of sea ice the ice will not reach a point of no return: a level where the ice no longer can regenerate itself even if the climate was to return to cooler temperatures,” [lead author Svend] Funder says.
Huh? How precisely is the climate going to return to cooler temperatures? It really bugs me when scientists who are very sophisticated in one arena — here, proxy reconstructions of ice coverage of part of the Arctic — exhibit magical thinking in another area.
The best recent models show staggeringly high Arctic warming this century if we stay on our current emissions path (see M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F). Cooling ain’t in the cards. Quite the reverse.
The Nature article projected a 50% decline in sea ice within 2 decades no matter what we do on emissions — and then total collapse even on a scenario with significant emissions reductions. As an aside, since that study almost certainly underestimated the rate of sea ice loss — for instance, it ignores black carbon, a major source of ice loss — I tend to think that the actual summer ice loss will be somewhere between what that study projected and the oversimplified quadratic projections in the figure above.
The BBC, which promised better coverage on climate change, failed to deliver this time — as can be seen in its story, “Arctic ‘tipping point’ may not be reached.”
NYT opinion blogger Andy Revkin wrote one of the worst pieces in his career, “On Arctic Ice and Warmth, Past and Future,” which quickly became a darling of the hard-core anti-science deniers for these absurd lines:
But even as I push for an energy quest that limits climate risk, I’m not worried about the resilience of Arctic ecosystems and not worried about the system tipping into an irreversibly slushy state on time scales relevant to today’s policy debates. This is one reason I don’t go for descriptions of the system being in a “death spiral.”
The main source of my Arctic comfort level — besides what I learned while camped with scientists on the North Pole sea ice — is the growing body of work on past variations* in sea ice conditions in the Arctic. The latest evidence comes in a study in the current issue of Science. The paper, combining evidence of driftwood accumulation and beach formation in northern Greenland with evidence of past sea-ice extent in parts of Canada, concludes that Arctic sea ice appears to have retreated far more in some spans since the end of the last ice age than it has in recent years.
“Not worried about the resilience of Arctic ecosystems“? Seriously?
Exactly what Arctic ecosystems are going to survive the accelerated warming humans are imposing, warming that will occur at twice the rate of the planet as a whole? And that is compounded by ocean acidification, which is equally devastating in the Arctic.
Revkin’s wishy-washy “energy quest” can’t stop either of those disasters. Indeed, Revkin never tells you what CO2 concentrations target he is questing for, but he endlessly criticizes those of us who actually spell out a target, like 450 ppm (or lower) and a path to achieve it. He dismisses such targets as a “magically safe level of carbon dioxide” — a reductio ad absurdum meant to put him above the fray, allowing him to critique all those trying to avert 800+ ppm — a CO2 level he once told me is where he expects we’ll end up.
Indeed in 2008, he himself quoted Nobelist Sherwood Rowland who thinks we’re headed toward 1000 ppm, an unimaginable catastrophe. Back then he wrote, “Keep in mind that various experts and groups have said risks of centuries of ecological and economic disruption rise with every step toward and beyond 450 parts per million.” Now, by failing to identify even a range we should aim for, say 400 to 500 ppm or policies that could plausibly keep us near such a range — and worse, by mocking those of us who do — he is effectively endorsing the acceptability of the 800 to 1000 ppm range.
The science is clear that human-caused Arctic warming has overtaken 2,000 years of natural cooling, as a “seminal” 2009 Science study found” [see figure below]:
In short, “greenhouse gas emissions are overwhelming the system,” as David Schneider, a visiting scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and one of the co-authors of the 2009 Science article put it.
Oh, but Revkin says he’s “not worried about the system tipping into an irreversibly slushy state on time scales relevant to today’s policy debates.”
Well, NOAA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) are worried, and unlike Revkin, they have published science to back them up — see NSIDC bombshell: Thawing permafrost feedback will turn Arctic from carbon sink to source in the 2020s, releasing 100 billion tons of carbon by 2100.
More at the linkThe recent scientific literature makes clear that while that death spiral could... more-
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Signs of Arctic climate change increasing: NOAA state of the Arctic report
Worldwide, 2010 was one of the two warmest years on record, says the 2010 State of the Climate report, released June 27 by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
On the Arctic, the State of the Climate shows how 2010 marked the end of the warmest decade since instrument records began in 1900.
The summer of 2010 in Greenland reveals the speed and breadth of the environmental change occurring in the Arctic, the report says.
In Greenland, warm air from the south was responsible for the longest period and largest area of ice sheet melt since at least 1978, and the highest melt rate since at least 1958, it says/
High summer air temperatures and a longer melt season also occurred in the Canadian Arctic, where loss from small glaciers and ice caps continued to increase.
A combination of low winter snow accumulation and high spring air temperatures also resulted in a record minimum spring snow, says the report, compiled by 400 scientists from 45 countries.
This year’s update on climate information from every continent tracks 41 climate indicators, including the temperature of the lower and upper atmosphere, precipitation, greenhouse gases, humidity, cloud cover, ocean temperature and salinity, sea ice, glaciers, and snow cover.
These indicators show “a continuation of the long-term trends scientists have seen over the last 50 years, consistent with global climate change,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.
The Arctic section of the State of the Climate says:
• Arctic sea ice extent in September 2010 was the third lowest of the past 30 years. After a record minimum summer sea ice cover in 2007, the upper Arctic Ocean remains relatively warm and fresh, instead of salty, “a condition that is affecting marine biology and geochemistry;”
• observations of changes to tundra vegetation indicate “continued increases in greening,” associated with more ice-free, coastal waters and higher tundra land temperatures;
• on Sept. 19, 2010, ice extent shrank to its annual minimum of 4.6 million square kilometres. That’s the third-lowest minimum recorded since 1979, higher only than 2008 and the record minimum in 2007. There has been a substantial loss of old, thick ice in the Arctic Basin compared to the late 1980s, with the pack ice in the central Canada Basin changing from a multi-year to a seasonal ice cover;
• “surface air temperatures through the 2010 summer were higher than normal throughout the Arctic, though less extreme than in 2007;”
• vegetation changed and increased on Baffin Island;
• there was more warming in relatively cold permafrost than in warm permafrost in 2010; and,
• a combination of low winter snow accumulation and above-normal spring temperatures created new record-low spring snow cover duration over the Arctic since satellite observations began in 1966;
You can read a full report and a highlights document online.Worldwide, 2010 was one of the two warmest years on record, says the 2010 State of the... more-
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NASA to embark on last leg of Arctic sea study
The US space agency said Tuesday it is sending a team of scientists on the second and final mission of a NASA field study of how melting Arctic ice is changing the life cycles of sea creatures.
The five-week mission, which kicks off Saturday, focuses on tiny organisms called phytoplankton, whose population blooms can offer clues about the wider health of the ocean ecosystem and how a warming climate may change the ocean's ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.
Phytoplankton blooms in the Arctic have been observed to peak as many as 50 days earlier than they did a dozen years ago, a development that could have implications for the larger food web, scientists have said.
The microscopic organisms are the base of the food chain and drive the food and reproductive cycles of fish, seabirds and polar bears. How larger animals may react to phytoplankton changes remains unknown.
Phytoplankton are also important because through the process of photosynthesis they remove about half of the harmful carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels worldwide.
The mission, known formally as "Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment," or ICESCAPE, combines satellite data with on-site measurements of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas along Alaska's coast.
More at the link.The US space agency said Tuesday it is sending a team of scientists on the second and... more-
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Must see climate video connects the dots- while NY Times reporting on Arizona wildfires does not
Last month, 350.org founder Bill McKibben published a must-read op-ed about the failure of the media and others to connect any dots between recent extreme weather events and climate change. Stephen Thomson of Plomomedia has combined McKibben’s words with striking images.
Underscoring McKibben’s point is an uber-lame New York Times story today, “As Arizona Fire Rages, Officials Seek Its Cause,” which, you guessed it, is dot free. Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters wrote Friday, “The return of critical fire conditions this weekend means that the Wallow fire will likely become Arizona’s largest wildfire in history.”
Before taking on the NYT piece, let’s look at the video:
McKibben’s piece is a nice work of rhetoric. After April saw records set for most tornadoes in a month and in 24 hours, I examined the climate-tornado link in great detail here, looking at the data, the literature, and expert analysis. That piece concluded:
1.When discussing extreme weather and climate, tornadoes should not be conflated with the other extreme weather events for which the connection is considerably more straightforward and better documented, including deluges, droughts, and heat waves.
2.Just because the tornado-warming link is more tenuous doesn’t mean that the subject of global warming should be avoided entirely when talking about tornadoes.
The NY Times has been doing some very good science reporting recently (see NY Times Bombshell: “The latest scientific research suggests” climate change is “helping to destabilize the food system”). But their overall reporting team is not connecting the dots (see, for instance, my May piece “New York Times blows the Dust Bowl story“).
The NYT had promised two years ago to do more coherent reporting, as the Columbia Journalism Review noted at the time:
Environmental S.W.A.T. Team
On Thursday, The New York Times will launch a new, crack environmental reporting unit that will pull in eight specialized reporters from the Science, National, Metro, Foreign, and Business desks in a bid for richer, more prominent coverage.
Not.
The more prominent coverage simply never happened, as I detailed in the second half of my January piece, Silence of the Lambs: Media herd’s coverage of climate change “fell off the map” in 2010, which shows that in all of 2010 none of “the largest lead headlines” in the paper dealt with climate. As professor Robert Brulle, an expert on environmental communications, wrote me at the time:
Apparently, the editorial board of the NY Times has yet to fully grasp the importance of global climate change to our collective survival. As the science becomes stronger and more dire, the editors of the NY Times bury their head deeper into the sand.
Today’s Arizona story is a case in point. Now I don’t necessarily think that every single story written on the record Arizona wildfires must focus on or even mention climate change. But the NYT story is quite specifically on the “cause” of the fires. Worse, the newspaper has no difficulty repeating dubious right-wing myths as to the cause of the fires
Many wildfires are caused by humans — and investigators say this one may have been started by two unattended campfires — distinguishing them from hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes….
Residents heaped plenty of blame on Mother Nature as harsh winds spread the flames and low humidity left the forest full of fuel. But residents and experts also pointed their fingers at a variety of policies that they said had contributed to wildfires that seem to have grown in intensity over the years.
Some complained that it was environmentalists who had caused the forests to become tinderboxes by preventing the thinning of trees as they sought to protect wildlife. Others, like William Wallace Covington, a forestry expert at Northern Arizona University, countered that the leading factor was the grazing of forest grass for generations. The government’s longstanding practice of quickly extinguishing forest fires was also seen as adding to the thick clusters of highly combustible trees.
Seriously.
You would never know from the NYT that this standard right-wing talking point has actually been examined in the scientific literature and found wanting. Back in 2006, Science magazine published a major article analyzing whether the recent soaring wildfire trend was due to a change in forest management practices or to climate change. The study, led by the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, concluded:
Robust statistical associations between wildfire and hydroclimate in western forests indicate that increased wildfire activity over recent decades reflects sub-regional responses to changes in climate. Historical wildfire observations exhibit an abrupt transition in the mid-1980s from a regime of infrequent large wildfires of short (average of 1 week) duration to one with much more frequent and longer burning (5 weeks) fires. This transition was marked by a shift toward unusually warm springs, longer summer dry seasons, drier vegetation (which provoked more and longer burning large wildfires), and longer fire seasons. Reduced winter precipitation and an early spring snowmelt played a role in this shift.
That 2006 study noted global warming (from human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide) will further accelerate all of these trends during this century.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhCY-3XnqS0&feature=player_embedded
continuedLast month, 350.org founder Bill McKibben published a must-read op-ed about the... more-
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The reality of global climate change/biodistress is upon us
And we have to stop allowing the same people to shut this conversation down. We are no where near prepared for adaptation and what this will bring in the future, nevermind the present. Even if we completely stopped greenhouse gas emissions today, what we have already put up in the atmosphere over the last century would continue to play out. And yet, we continue to spew out 70 million tons of this every day as if it doesn't matter and continue listening to those whose political and economic lives depend on making this a rote issue. Well it isn't rote, and it is now upon us. And this government is doing nothing. And that is simply unacceptable. And that will be a consideration when I vote in any election.
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excerpt:
"Joplin, Mo., was prepared. The tornado warning system gave residents 24 minutes’ notice that a twister was bearing down on them. Doctors and nurses at St. John’s Regional Medical Center, who had practiced tornado drills for years, moved fast, getting patients away from windows, closing blinds, and activating emergency generators. And yet more than 130 people died in Joplin, including four people at St. John’s, where the tornado sucked up the roof and left the building in ruins, like much of the shattered city.
Even those who deny the existence of global climate change are having trouble dismissing the evidence of the last year. In the U.S. alone, nearly 1,000 tornadoes have ripped across the heartland, killing more than 500 people and inflicting $9 billion in damage. The Midwest suffered the wettest April in 116 years, forcing the Mississippi to flood thousands of square miles, even as drought-plagued Texas suffered the driest month in a century. Worldwide, the litany of weather’s extremes has reached biblical proportions. The 2010 heat wave in Russia killed an estimated 15,000 people. Floods in Australia and Pakistan killed 2,000 and left large swaths of each country under water. A months-long drought in China has devastated millions of acres of farmland. And the temperature keeps rising: 2010 was the hottest year on earth since weather records began.
From these and other extreme-weather events, one lesson is sinking in with terrifying certainty. The stable climate of the last 12,000 years is gone. Which means you haven’t seen anything yet. And we are not prepared.
Picture California a few decades from now, a place so hot and arid the state’s trademark orange and lemon trees have been replaced with olive trees that can handle the new climate. Alternating floods and droughts have made it impossible for the reservoirs to capture enough drinking water. The picturesque Highway 1, sections of which are already periodically being washed out by storm surges and mudslides, will have to be rerouted inland, possibly through a mountain. These aren’t scenes from another deadly-weather thriller like The Day After Tomorrow. They’re all changes that California officials believe they need to brace for within the next decade or two. And they aren’t alone. Across the U.S., it’s just beginning to dawn on civic leaders that they’ll need to help their communities brave coming dangers brought by climate change, from disappearing islands in Chesapeake Bay to dust bowls in the Plains and horrific hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet only 14 states are even planning, let alone implementing, climate-change adaptation plans, says Terri Cruce, a climate consultant in California. The other 36 apparently are hoping for a miracle.
The game of catch-up will have to happen quickly because so much time was lost to inaction. “The Bush administration was a disaster, but the Obama administration has accomplished next to nothing either, in part because a significant part of the Democratic Party is inclined to balk on this issue as well,” says economist Jeffrey Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. “We [are] past the tipping point.” The idea of adapting to climate change was once a taboo subject. Scientists and activists feared that focusing on coping would diminish efforts to reduce carbon emissions. On the opposite side of the divide, climate-change deniers argued that since global warming is a “hoax,” there was no need to figure out how to adapt. “Climate-change adaptation was a nonstarter,” says Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center. “If you wanted to talk about that, you would have had to talk about climate change itself, which the Bush administration didn’t want to do.” In fact, President Bush killed what author Mark Hertsgaard in his 2011 book, Hot, calls “a key adaptation tool,” the National Climate Assessment, an analysis of the vulnerabilities in regions of the U.S. and ideas for coping with them. The legacy of that: state efforts are spotty and local action is practically nonexistent. “There are no true adaptation experts in the federal government, let alone states or cities,” says Arroyo. “They’ve just been commandeered from other departments.”
cont.And we have to stop allowing the same people to shut this conversation down. We are no... more-
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Melting Away In The Andes
Climate change is all too real in the Peruvian Andes.-
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Arctic Ocean freshwater will cause "unpredictable" changes in climate
A vast expanse of freshwater in the midst of the Arctic Ocean is set to wreak unpredictable changes on the climate in Europe and North America, new scientific analysis has shown.
The water – comprising meltwater from the ice cap and run off from rivers – is at least twice the volume of Lake Victoria in Africa, and is continuing to grow. At some point huge quantities of this water are likely to flush out of the Arctic Ocean and into the Atlantic, which could have significant impacts on the climate. Scientists say they cannot predict when this will happen though.
"This could have an influence on ocean circulation," said Benjamin Rabe of the Alfred Wengener Institute. "It could have an influence on the Gulf Stream."
At present, the freshwater acts as a "lid", preventing the warmer salty water below from meeting the ice, which would melt if the two mixed, according to Rabe. But while it is currently stable, this situation is likely to change as atmospheric circulation patterns shift, and as greater quantities of meltwater spill into the "lake". There were signs of an atmospheric change in 2009 that could have precipitated such an outflow, but that episode did not last.
Laura de Steur, an oceanographer at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, said: "The volume of water discharged into the Arctic Ocean, largely from Canadian and Siberian rivers, is higher than usual due to warmer temperatures in the north causing ice to melt. Sea ice is also melting quickly – another new record low for ocean area covered was recently documented by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, adding even more freshwater to the relatively calm Arctic Ocean."
She added: "Sea ice that is thinner is more mobile and could exit the Arctic faster. In the worst case, these Arctic outflow surges can significantly change the densities of marine surface waters in the extreme North Atlantic. What happens then is hard to predict."
Such an outflow would probably have a measurable impact on the "conveyor belt" or thermohaline circulation, a system of deep ocean and wind-driven currents, including the Gulf Stream, which carries heat from the tropics, said Rabe. An influx of dense, cold freshwater could slow the conveyor belt. If the effect were marked, it would be felt in the form of a change of weather in Europe and America, he said. Europe could find itself cooling, particularly around the Western edges, as the circulations tend to bring warmer air to the continent.
cont.A vast expanse of freshwater in the midst of the Arctic Ocean is set to wreak... more-
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In the shadow of a melting glacier
Climate change causes glacial lake to burst its banks seven times in three years.
The Cachet 2 glacial lake in Chile has drained and refilled seven times in three years.
CECS and Jonathan Leidich (PAEX), 2008.The people living beside the Colonia River in the Aysén region of Chilean Patagonia are under constant threat of a sudden catastrophic flood sweeping down from the mountains above them.
The region has experienced an unprecedented seven events called glacial-lake outburst floods since April 2008. Each time, Lake Cachet 2, which lies on the Colonia glacier, has drained its 200 million cubic metres of water in a matter of hours into the Colonia Lake and River, sending the water on to the river's confluence with Baker River, Chile's largest in terms of volume, and generating a wave as far as 25 kilometres upstream and 100 kilometres downstream to the Pacific Ocean.
"You can review the scientific literature and you will notice that these phenomena are known worldwide in the Himalayas, the Alps, but the difference here, and what is striking, is its recurrence," says Fabián Espinoza, regional director of the country's Bureau of Water Management.
The most recent flood was on 4 March this year. The water level in Colonia Lake rose 3.5 metres in just 28 hours and divided the region in two after cutting across the Austral Highway, the main north-south route in Aysén. The Baker River doubled in volume.
Glaciologist Gino Casassa of the Center for Scientific Studies (CECS) in Valdivia has studied the floods in collaboration with the Chilean Meteorological Office. After three years, he has a clear culprit in mind: the repeated opening and closing of a tunnel 8 kilometres beneath the Colonia glacier, connecting Lake Cachet 2 above the glacier and Colonia Lake below it1.
But why has this phenomenon occurred repeatedly over the past few years in Cachet 2? Casassa's answer is climate change: "The glaciers of Patagonia in general have receded and thinned greatly during the past decades," he says. "The lakes grow at the expense of the ice and generate situations in which there is a danger of draining. In the case of the Colonia glacier, this thinning has weakened the natural dam the glacier constitutes."
César Portocarrero, head of the Department of Glaciology and Water Resources at the National Water Authority of Peru, has studied this phenomenon elsewhere in the Andes. He agrees with Casassa. "We can affirm that there is a direct relation between climate change and the phenomena that have been occurring," he says. "The water generated by the melting of the glaciers circulates between the glacier and rock and serves as a lubricant for the shifting of the ice mass."
continuedClimate change causes glacial lake to burst its banks seven times in three years.... more-
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Flooded Bolivia faces long term water woes
Widespread flooding in Bolivia, which prompted the government to declare a national emergency last week, shows the vulnerability of one of South America's poorest countries to changing weather patterns linked to climate change.
Landlocked Bolivia, which runs from the rugged Andes to the Amazon jungle, faces a variety of climate change-related pressures, from disappearing glaciers to worsening droughts and more intense and unpredictable rainfall. Combined with rising urban demand for water, the problems suggest a long-term water crisis ahead for the country, analysts say.
The latest disaster has killed at least 50 people and left thousands homeless in Bolivia after weeks of heavy rain triggered flooding and mudslides, with 400 houses destroyed in the capital La Paz alone in a mudslide.
In Cochabamba, southeast of La Paz, schools and stadiums were sheltering hundreds of families whose homes were destroyed. In lowland Santa Cruz department, Bolivia's major grain growing region, floods damaged soy, corn and wheat crops. Rivers burst their banks and major roads were unusable.
"We've declared a state of emergency on different levels in different areas of the country," Defence Minister Ruben Saavedra said last week.
The government has allocated $20 million to help survivors.
Defence Minister Saavedra put the crisis in the Cochabamba, Beni, Santa Cruz, La Paz, Chuquisaca and Tarija departments (administrative regions) down to the La Niña weather phenomenon, linked to abnormally cool ocean temperatures in the eastern and central Pacific.
Changing ocean temperatures and increased evaporation linked to climate change may be increasing the frequency and intensity of La Nina and El Nino events, some scientists believe.
snip
Perhaps the most worrying threat to the country’s water supplies, however, has been glacier retreat. Chacaltaya, which at 5,300 m was once the world's highest ski run, is now a rocky, icy slope with a redundant lift.Widespread flooding in Bolivia, which prompted the government to declare a national... more-
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Climate change halves Peru glacier in 23 years
A glacier on Peru's Huaytapallana Moutain shed half its surface ice in just 23 years, officials said Wednesday, reinforcing concerns of climate change's growing threat to fresh water resources.
"Recent scientific studies indicate that between June 1983 and August 2006, the glacier has lost 50 percent of its surface ice," Erasmo Meza, manager of natural resources and the environment in the central Andean region of Junin, told the official Andina news agency.
He said the five square kilometers (1.9 square miles) of ice shrinkage on Huaytapallana, whose steep, jagged glacier and breathtaking lakes are popular tourist draws, was caused by global warming and presents growing problems in agriculture, health, fresh water resources and disaster mitigation.
To prevent further deterioration on the 5,557-meter (18,230-foot) mountain, the regional government of Junin is developing a project to declare Huaytapallana a natural conservation area -- a move Meza said could help prevent damage from a mining company doing a feasibility study in the area.
Glacier studies are often carried out in the Andes, the so-called "Roof of the Americas" region comprising more than 100 peaks above 5,000 meters (16,500 feet).
But the Huaytapallana studies show a sharper rate of glacial melt than other major findings.
cont.A glacier on Peru's Huaytapallana Moutain shed half its surface ice in just 23... more-
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Climate 2010: the graph that should be on the front page of every newspaper
Climate change is worsening, fast.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dr. Peter Gleick is president of the Pacific Institute, an internationally recognized water expert and a MacArthur Fellow.
The National Climate Data Center of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has just announced that for the entire planet, 2010 is the hottest year on record, tied with 2005. And the period 2001 to 2010 is the hottest decade on record for the globe. The actual data are here.
This graph and this information should be on the front page of every newspaper in the world. Every Congressional representative should see it.
And the hottest 10 years on record in order?
2010
2005
1998
2003
2002
2009
2006
2007
2004
2001
How often do you have to get hit on the head before you say “ouch.” Or before you even say “stop hitting me on the head”? For climate deniers, probably forever. We can expect them to talk about how cold the winter is, here or there.But for the rest of us, enough should be enough. The planet has a fever and it’s getting worse.
Peter Gleick
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But by all means, let's just keep burying our heads in the sand.Climate change is worsening, fast. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr. Peter Gleick is... more-
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