Tag: climate control

The Arctic Is Burning Like Never Before & That’s Bad News For Climate Change

Wildfires blazed along the Arctic Circle this summer, incinerating tundra, blanketing Siberian cities in smoke and capping the second extraordinary fire season in a row. By the time the fire season waned at the end of last month, the blazes had emitted a record 244 megatonnes of carbon dioxide — that’s 35% more than last year, which also set records. One culprit, scientists say, could be peatlands that are burning as the top of the world melts.

Peatlands are carbon-rich soils that accumulate as waterlogged plants slowly decay, sometimes over thousands of years. They are the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth; a typical northern peatland packs in roughly ten times as much carbon as a boreal forest. When peat burns, it releases its ancient carbon to the atmosphere, adding to the heat-trapping gases that cause climate change.Dramatic sea-ice melt caps tough Arctic summer

Nearly half the world’s peatland-stored carbon lies between 60 and 70 degrees north, along the Arctic Circle. The problem with this is that historically frozen carbon-rich soils are expected to thaw as the planet warms, making them even more vulnerable to wildfires and more likely to release large amounts of carbon. It’s a feedback loop: as peatlands release more carbon, global warming increases, which thaws more peat and causes more wildfires (see ‘Peatlands burning’). A study published last month1 shows that northern peatlands could eventually shift from being a net sink for carbon to a net source of carbon, further accelerating climate change.

The unprecedented Arctic wildfires of 2019 and 2020 show that transformational shifts are already under way, says Thomas Smith, an environmental geographer at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “Alarming is the right term.”

Zombie fires

The fire season in the Arctic kicked off unusually early this year: as early as May, there were fires blazing north of the tree line in Siberia, which normally wouldn’t happen until around July. One reason is that temperatures in winter and spring were warmer than usual, priming the landscape to burn. It’s also possible that peat fires had been smouldering beneath the ice and snow all winter and then emerged, zombie-like, in the spring as the snow melted. Scientists have shown that this kind of low-temperature, flameless combustion can burn in peat and other organic matter, such as coal, for months or even years.

Because of the early start, individual Arctic wildfires have been burning for longer than usual, and “they’re starting much farther north than they used to — in landscapes that we thought were fire-resistant rather than fire-prone”, says Jessica McCarty, a geographer at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Sources: Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service/European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts; Hugelius, G. et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 117, 20438–20446 (2020)

Researchers are now assessing just how bad this Arctic fire season was. The Russian Wildfires Remote Monitoring System catalogued 18,591 separate fires in Russia’s two easternmost districts, with a total of nearly 14 million hectares burnt, says Evgeny Shvetsov, a fire specialist at the Sukachev Institute of Forest, which is part of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Krasnoyarsk. Most of the burning happened in permafrost zones, where the ground is normally frozen year-round.

To estimate the record carbon dioxide emissions, scientists with the European Commission’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service used satellites to study the wildfires’ locations and intensity, and then calculated how much fuel each had probably burnt. Yet even that is likely to be an underestimate, says Mark Parrington, an atmospheric scientist at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Reading, UK, who was involved in the analysis. Fires that burn in peatland can be too low-intensity for satellite sensors to capture.

The problem with peat

How much this year’s Arctic fires will affect global climate over the long term depends on what they burnt. That’s because peatlands, unlike boreal forest, do not regrow quickly after a fire, so the carbon released is permanently lost to the atmosphere.

Smith has calculated that about half of the Arctic wildfires in May and June were on peatlands — and that in many cases, the fires went on for days, suggesting that they were fuelled by thick layers of peat or other soil rich in organic matter.How peat could protect the planet

And the August study1 found that there are nearly four million square kilometres of peatlands in northern latitudes. More of that than previously thought is frozen and shallow — and therefore vulnerable to thawing and drying out, says Gustaf Hugelius, a permafrost scientist at Stockholm University who led the investigation. He and his colleagues also found that although peatlands have been helping to cool the climate for thousands of years, by storing carbon as they accumulate, they will probably become a net source of carbon being released into the atmosphere — which could happen by the end of the century.

Fire risk in Siberia is predicted to increase as the climate warms2, but by many measures, the shift has already arrived, says Amber Soja, an environmental scientist who studies Arctic fires at the US National Institute of Aerospace in Hampton, Virginia. “What you would expect is already happening,” she says. “And in some cases faster than we would have expected.”

By: Alexandra Witze

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National Geographic

Here at the bottom of the world, a place all but free of human settlement, humanity is scrambling one of the ocean’s richest wildernesses. Fossil-fuel burning thousands of miles away is heating up the western peninsula faster than almost anywhere else. (Only the Arctic compares.) Hear National Geographic photographer Cristina Mittermeier share her love and fears for this beautiful place. ➡

Subscribe: http://bit.ly/NatGeoSubscribe​ #NationalGeographic​ #Antarctica​ #ClimateChange​ About National Geographic: National Geographic is the world’s premium destination for science, exploration, and adventure. Through their world-class scientists, photographers, journalists, and filmmakers, Nat Geo gets you closer to the stories that matter and past the edge of what’s possible.

Get More National Geographic: Official Site: http://bit.ly/NatGeoOfficialSite​ Facebook: http://bit.ly/FBNatGeo​ Twitter: http://bit.ly/NatGeoTwitter​ Instagram: http://bit.ly/NatGeoInsta​ Read the full article “The Big Meltdown” featured in National Geographic magazine’s November issue. https://on.natgeo.com/2J7VGvS​ See Antarctica Like Never Before | National Geographic https://youtu.be/Q_mCHs79B6c​ National Geographic https://www.youtube.com/natgeo

A Group of Big Businesses is Backing a Carbon Tax. Could It Be a Solution to Climate Change?

The long list of big companies backing a carbon tax as a solution to climate change grew this week with financial giant J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. endorsing a legislative plan billed as a centrist approach to reducing emissions.

The announcement comes as the Climate Leadership Council (CLC), the organization behind the proposal, which was first released in 2017, redoubles efforts to promote the plan before an expected introduction in Congress as the conversation around various climate solutions heats up in Washington.

The CLC announced new backers—including former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz and former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres—and released internal poll numbers showing bipartisan voter support for the plan. Supporters now include a broad coalition of companies, from oil giants like ExxonMobil to tech behemoths like Microsoft, major environmental groups like Conservation International, and a range of economists and political leaders.

“The markets can and will do much to address climate change,” David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, a founding member of the CLC, told TIME in an emailed statement. “But given the magnitude and urgency of this challenge, governments must put a price on the cost of carbon.”

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The thinking behind the plan is straight forward. Economists have long argued that a carbon tax, which makes companies pay for what they pollute and gives them an incentive to stem carbon emissions, is the most efficient way to reduce such emissions. But carbon tax proposals have been met with opposition in the past from across the political spectrum, including from some Democrats, in large part because they increase energy costs. The CLC proposal would give the money collected by the tax back to taxpayers in the form of a quarterly dividend, an effort to make it more politically palatable.

On Feb. 13, the CLC provided additional details about the plan, including introducing a new mechanism that would rapidly increase the price on carbon if targets are not met. Backers say the plan will cut U.S. emissions in half by 2035. “We think it has a compelling economic logic,” says Janet Yellen, the former chair of the Federal Reserve and a backer of the plan, in an interview.

But despite the growing coalition, actually passing the plan remains a challenging uphill battle. While more and more Republicans have stopped denying the science of climate change, many continue to insist that they would never support anything resembling a carbon tax. Meanwhile, many leading Democrats, including presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have downplayed the role a carbon tax might play in future climate legislation. Many Democrats argue that the time has passed for such a market-driven approach to climate change, arguing that they are too little, too late and that a corporate-backed plan shouldn’t be trusted.

Still, big corporations increasingly see a carbon tax—especially a proposal like the CLC plan—as the simplest solution to a thorny problem. With clear science, activists in the streets and voters experiencing extreme weather events in their own backyards, business leaders see new climate rules as all but an inevitability, if not at the U.S. federal level then in states or other countries where they have operations.

The CLC proposal offers a business-friendly approach: nixing many existing climate regulations, a “border carbon adjustment” that would create a fee on imports from countries without a carbon price, and a dividend system that pays out the revenue collected by the carbon tax back to taxpayers. “If we do one without the other,” says Shailesh Jejurikar, CEO of Procter & Gamble’s Fabric & Home Care division, “it doesn’t work.”

Still, even as more than a dozen Fortune 500 firms support the legislation, many other businesses and influential business groups continue to either oppose a carbon tax or haven’t taken a position at all. That’s particularly true of the fossil fuel industry’s trade groups like the American Petroleum Institute, which officially has no position. Even though major oil companies like ExxonMobil and Shell have joined the CLC initiative, independent oil companies, oil refiners and other related companies remain largely opposed.

One of the biggest challenges to this measure—or any carbon tax for that matter—is the growing interest in other approaches to climate legislation. Republicans this week pushed legislation to plant trees and expand tax incentives for capturing carbon, measures that wouldn’t match the scale of the challenge but allow Republicans to offer a different message on the issue.

Earlier this month, Representative David McKinley, a Republican from West Virginia, and Kurt Schrader, an Oregon Democrat, called for legislation that would lead to an 80% reduction in emissions from the power sector by 2050 using a combination of regulation and funding for innovation and infrastructure. And more than 30 Democratic senators introduced a bill to require the Environmental Protection Agency to come up with a plan for the U.S. to eliminate its carbon footprint by 2050. “This is the quickest way we can jumpstart government-wide climate action,” Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, who introduced the legislation, said on the Senate floor.

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None of these measures are likely to become law anytime soon, and any legislative approach to addressing climate change will involve intense debate on Capitol Hill.

Even some backers of the carefully crafted CLC plan acknowledge it’s not likely to pass in its current form. “Inevitably, Congress will have some of its own ideas in terms of the implementation,” Moniz, who endorsed the CLC proposal this week, tells TIME.“ “I would welcome seeing that negotiation start in earnest.” Indeed, even having a discussion in Congress indicates a new climate for climate in Washington.

By Justin Worland February 13, 2020

Source: A Group of Big Businesses is Backing a Carbon Tax. Could It Be a Solution to Climate Change?

A revenue neutral carbon tax would automatically encourage consumers and producers to shift toward energy sources that emit less carbon. Carbon taxes are economically efficient because they make people pay for the costs they create. And a revenue neutral carbon tax would keep the government from using new revenue to subsidize other programs. For more information, visit the PolicyEd page here: https://www.policyed.org/intellection…. Additional resources: Read “Why We Support a Revenue-Neutral Carbon Tax” by George P. Shultz, Gary S. Becker, available here: https://hvr.co/2uMzTTl Read why enacting a carbon tax would free up private firms to find the most efficient ways to cut emissions in “A Conservative Answer to Climate Change” by George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III, available here: https://on.wsj.com/2loUAhM Read “There Is One Climate Solution That’s Best For The Environment – And For Business” by George P. Shultz and Lawrence H. Summers, available here: https://wapo.st/2JRoLJv Watch as George P. Shultz, James A. Baker III, and Henry Paulson discuss “Is There Deal Space for Carbon Pricing In 2017?” Available here: https://hvr.co/2NHPF90 Listen as George Shultz joins The World Today to explain why he supports a carbon tax, available here: https://ab.co/2ObRBYN John Cochrane discusses George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III oped “A Conservative Answer to Climate Change.” Availabler here: https://bit.ly/2LMPdpF Read “Let the Carbon-Dividends Debate Begin” by George P. Shultz and Ted Halstead, available here: https://bit.ly/2O95UNH Visit https://www.policyed.org/ to learn more. – Subscribe to PolicyEd’s YouTube channel: http://bit.ly/PolicyEdSub – Follow PolicyEd on Twitter: http://bit.ly/PolicyEdTwit – Follow PolicyEd on Instagram: http://bit.ly/PolicyEdInsta

With Second Warmest November, 2019 is Likely to Be Second Warmest Year Ever Recorded

 

Greta Thunberg might have been been named TIME’s Person of the Year for drawing global attention to climate change, but the climate continues to speak for itself. Last month was the second-hottest November in recorded history, and 2019 is likely to be the second warmest year ever.

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Monday that last month was 1.66 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average, making it the second hottest November since record-keeping began 140 years ago.

And there’s more bad news: 2019 through November has been the second-hottest year on record, and the season (September through November) has been the second-hottest in recorded history. Both the season and the year to date were 1.69 degrees Fahrenheit above average, coming in just behind 2016 and 2015, respectively, and the average sea surface temperature was the second-warmest for the year to date.

Scientists say that record temperatures are yet another sign that the climate is changing, but they’re even more troubling when you look at other recent records. For instance, the five hottest Novembers have all taken place since 2013. In some regions, this was the hottest November in history; Africa, South America and the Hawaiian Islands all experienced their hottest Novembers on record.

Ahira Sanchez-Lugo, a NOAA climatologist, said that there is an 85% chance that 2019 will be the second-warmest year on record. This year was warm, in part because there was an El Niño climate phenomenon, which causes temperatures to rise. However, Sanchez-Lugo says that climate change makes this effect even more extreme.

She explained that while rising temperatures due to climate change are like riding an escalator — slowly but steadily increasing — an El Niño is “as if you’re jumping on the escalator.”

Sanchez-Lugo says that these reports are like a health assessment for the Earth, and that there are some warning signs. “We’re seeing that the Earth has a temperature, but not only that, we see that there are symptoms,” says Sanchez-Lugo.

High temperatures can also cause a domino effect on the environment. For instance, sea ice coverage reached near-record lows in the Arctic and Antarctic this November. Without sea ice covering its surface, the ocean absorbs solar radiation and becomes warmer, and some research suggests that receding sea ice can also lead to higher snowfall, says Sanchez-Lugo.

Many record temperatures were set in 2019. This November follows the second-highest October on record, and the month before that tied the warmest September on record. And during July — the hottest month ever recorded globally — regions from the United States to Europe were plagued by oppressive heatwaves.

By Tara Law

Source: With Second Warmest November, 2019 is Likely to Be Second Warmest Year Ever Recorded

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Scientists are warning that a likely El Niño event coupled with climate change could make 2019 the hottest year on record. Samantha Stevenson, a climate scientist and co-author of a study on the impact of El Niño, joined CBSN to discuss the effects of warming temperatures. Subscribe to the CBS News Channel HERE: http://youtube.com/cbsnews Watch CBSN live HERE: http://cbsn.ws/1PlLpZ7 Follow CBS News on Instagram HERE: https://www.instagram.com/cbsnews/ Like CBS News on Facebook HERE: http://facebook.com/cbsnews Follow CBS News on Twitter HERE: http://twitter.com/cbsnews Get the latest news and best in original reporting from CBS News delivered to your inbox. Subscribe to newsletters HERE: http://cbsn.ws/1RqHw7T Get your news on the go! Download CBS News mobile apps HERE: http://cbsn.ws/1Xb1WC8 Get new episodes of shows you love across devices the next day, stream CBSN and local news live, and watch full seasons of CBS fan favorites like Star Trek Discovery anytime, anywhere with CBS All Access. Try it free! http://bit.ly/1OQA29B — CBSN is the first digital streaming news network that will allow Internet-connected consumers to watch live, anchored news coverage on their connected TV and other devices. At launch, the network is available 24/7 and makes all of the resources of CBS News available directly on digital platforms with live, anchored coverage 15 hours each weekday. CBSN. Always On.

Climate Change Models Were Right About Global Warming 30 years Ago

Emissions from a coal fired power station in the Latrobe Valley, Victoria, Australia. New research shows even the earliest climate models were broadly correct in predicting the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and warming. Ashley Cooper/Construction Photography/Avalon/Getty

Even 30 years ago, climate change models were doing a reasonably good job at predicting future global warming, a study has found. Previously, climate change deniers had used model inconsistencies to raise doubts about the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Scientists say their research, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, “should help resolve public confusion around the performance of past climate modeling efforts.”

The team, from the University of California, Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NASA, found that 14 of 17 climate models produced between 1970 and 2007 were broadly correct in their predictions.

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According to the World Meteorological Organization, global temperatures have risen by 1.1 degrees Celsius since the start of the industrial revolution—a trend driven by human activity and specifically, by greenhouse gases emissions. The same report revealed that the global average temperature between 2015 and 2019 was 0.2 degrees Celsius higher than between 2011 and 2015.

Predicting what will happen in the future is tricky because there are many unknowns to factor in—and several directions we as a global society might chose to take. To be accurate, models not only rely on solid physics, but on precise forecasting when it comes to levels of future emissions.

That is where James Hansen’s 1988 models for NASA went wrong. The forecasts were inaccurate because his predictions on future emissions did not account for the Montreal Protocol, which came into effect a year later. This meant his predictions for future warming were also wrong.

The Montreal Protocol banned the use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which were potent greenhouse gases that were depleting the ozone layer.

“If you account for these and look at the relationship in his model between temperature and radiative forcing, which is CO2 and other greenhouse gases, he gets it pretty much dead on,” Hausfather said. “So the physics of his model was right. The relationship between how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere and how much warming you get, was right. He just got the future emissions wrong.”

He added: “Physics we can understand, it is a deterministic system; future emissions depend on human systems, which are not necessarily deterministic.”

This is why many climate models often offer low emission and high emission scenarios.

For the study, Hausfather and colleagues took two things into consideration when calculating the accuracy of the older models—how did they predict future temperatures, and how did they predict the link between temperature and changes in levels of greenhouse gases.

The researchers say that there were some that projected too little warming and others that projected too much warming. However, most were generally correct when it came to predicting global warming, particularly when differences in emission projections were accounted for.

“We find no evidence that the climate models evaluated in this paper have systematically overestimated or underestimated warming over their projection period,” the team wrote.

“The projection skill of the 1970s models is particularly impressive given the limited observational evidence of warming at the time, as the world was thought to have been cooling for the past few decades.”

Hausfather added: “The real message is that the warming we have experienced is pretty much exactly what climate models predicted it would be as much as 30 years ago. This really gives us more confidence that today’s models are getting things largely right as well.”

By

Source: Climate Change Models Were Right About Global Warming 30 years Ago—Including That of NASA Scientist James Hansen

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Global warming turns 120 next year… sort of. Next year will be the 120th anniversary of the first time we figured out that human activity could be causing climate change. Since then, the science has gotten firmer and the politics have gotten murkier, but the outlook for the future remains uncertain. This is the history of manmade global warming in three minutes. (Corrects number of hottest years in history since 1998.) (Video by: Alan Jeffries, Christian Capestany, Eric Roston) –Subscribe to Bloomberg on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/Bloomberg Bloomberg Television offers extensive coverage and analysis of international business news and stories of global importance. It is available in more than 310 million households worldwide and reaches the most affluent and influential viewers in terms of household income, asset value and education levels. With production hubs in London, New York and Hong Kong, the network provides 24-hour continuous coverage of the people, companies and ideas that move the markets.

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Tropical Storm Nestor expected to form on way to Florida Panhandle

A strengthening weather disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico was expected to intensify into Tropical or Subtropical Storm Nestor Friday before making landfall over the Florida Panhandle, bringing strong winds, storm surge flooding, heavy rainfall, and even the chance of tornadoes, according to the National Hurricane Center.

As of 11 a.m. ET, the system had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph, the hurricane center said.

After hitting the Panhandle, the system was then expected to track northeast through the weekend, pounding a swath from Georgia through the Carolinas with heavy rainfall and gusty winds.

Gale-force winds are possible along portions of the Atlantic coast of the southeastern United States by Saturday.

A risk of severe weather, including tornadoes, is also expected along parts of the Florida Gulf Coast late Friday and across northern and central Florida, southeast Georgia and the coastal Carolinas on Saturday, the Weather Channel said.

A cluster or line of strong to severe thunderstorms will likely push into northern Florida on Saturday morning, according to Weather Underground meteorologist Bob Henson. Tornadoes would be possible within this area, as well as in other thunderstorms and squall lines forming just to the east and northeast of Nestor as the storm tracks inland.

The system, labeled Potential Tropical Cyclone 16, was located early Friday about 395 miles southwest of Panama City, Florida, and was moving to the northeast at 22 mph.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, of Florida, warned on Twitter of the possibility of heavy rain and isolated tornadoes and called on residents to prepare for the chance of flooding and power outages.

A tropical storm warning was in effect from the Mississippi and Alabama border to Yankeetown, Florida, about 90 miles north of Tampa, and from Grand Isle, Louisiana to the mouth of the Pearl River.

View image on Twitter

A storm surge warning was also in effect from Indian Pass to Clearwater Beach, Florida. “A storm surge warning means there is a danger of life-threatening inundation from rising water moving inland from the coastline,” the hurricane center said.

High schools from Alabama to the eastern Florida Panhandle canceled or postponed football games scheduled for Friday night, and officials in Panama City tried to assure residents that the storm wouldn’t be a repeat of Category 5 Hurricane Michael last year.

Source: Tropical Storm Nestor expected to form on way to Florida Panhandle

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A disturbance in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico now has an 90 percent chance of development, and is expected to strengthen into Tropical or Subtropical Storm Nestor later tonight or Friday.

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The National Hurricane Center has begun issuing advisories on what is expected to be the season’s next tropical system. Tropical Storm or Subtropical Storm Nestor will form in the Gulf of Mexico later today, bringing rain and wind to Florida this weekend. MORE: http://www.myfoxhurricane.com

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