25 January 2016, New Scientist, US east coast snowstorms linked to slowdown of Atlantic current. The record snowfall that paralysed much of the east coast of the US on the weekend could be partly due to a slowing of the Atlantic currents that transport heat northwards towards Greenland and Europe. Winter storms like Jonas, as some are calling it, are caused when cold air from Canada collides with warm, moist air flowing up from the tropical Atlantic. Because the waters off the east coast are much warmer than normal for this time of year, the winds blowing onshore carried more moisture than usual, which is why the snowfalls were so high – breaking records in several places. New York’s JFK airport recorded 77 centimetres on 23 January, for instance, the most ever recorded on a single day. Nearly 30 deaths have been blamed on the storm, from car accidents to heart attacks while shovelling snow. Flooding risk The remnants of Jonas are now heading across the Atlantic to the UK, where it is feared they will cause yet more flooding. Global warming is the obvious explanation for the unusual warmth, and computer models are likely to show that storm Jonas was made much more likely because of climate change.The El Niño that helped push global temperatures to record-smashing levels last year may also have played a part. But there may be more to it. Read More here
Yearly Archives: 2016
24 January 2016, Climate Home, 8 climate change takeaways from Davos. As global elite gather at the World Economic Forum1, moving to counter climate change competes with economic fears. It is the first major meeting of politicians and business leaders since 195 nations struck a landmark deal to limit carbon emissions in Paris in December. Thousands of luminaries have come to a Swiss ski resort to unpack the opportunities and challenges of the future. ‘Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ is the theme meant to guide high-powered panel sessions. Among talk of robotics, 3D printing and nanotechnology, the Paris agreement should merit mention. It aims to radically shrink the usage of fossil fuels, which the world consumes for 87% of its energy. Innovation is crucial to neutralise carbon emissions in the next half-century. As the forum nears its end, here’s what we conclude. 1. Market turmoil dominates” A global selloff of stocks has crowded out much discussion of a new global warming pact at the World Economic Forum. Markets have plunged more than US$4 trillion in value since 1 January – the worst start in yearly trading since the 2009 financial crisis – on weak Chinese growth and low oil prices. Opinion is divided on the impact of cheap crude on climate plans. Benchmark prices of $30 a barrel are “very detrimental for any [clean energy] policy”, according to Total chief Patrick Pouyanne. But analysts Climate Home asked are not worried. 2. Climate action is the smaller conversation: A climate change-induced disaster was named the greatest threat to the global economy in 2016, in a WEF survey ahead of the event, but that wasn’t fully borne out in discussions. Cutting carbon is an “issue for mainstream business, but of course not everyone is paying attention,” says Paul Simpson at the Carbon Disclosure Project. Read More here
23 January 2016, Carbon Brief, Arctic and Med face hotspot worries. Uneven heating of the Earth’s surface as a result of climate change could see some regions facing seriously high rises in average temperatures. Forget the notion of a 2˚C global average temperature rise. In parts of the Arctic, regional average warming passed that limit 15 years ago. New research suggests that if the world really does warm to an average of 2˚C, then mean temperatures in the Mediterranean region could be 3.4˚C warmer than in pre-industrial times. And in some parts of the Arctic, 2˚C average warmingcould translate as a 6˚C rise. Sonia Seneviratne, head of the land-climate dynamics group at Switzerland’sInstitute for Atmospheric and Climate Science (ETH Zurich), and colleaguesreport in Nature journal that they have been thinking about the meaning of a 2˚C global average warming. Because it is an average, some regions will inevitably be hotter than this average. So she and her fellow researchers have been trying to calculate what further emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – the exhausts from fossil fuel combustion that drive global warming – will mean for the people who live in specific parts of the planet. Average warming They focused on what climate models could tell them about extremes of temperature and precipitation in selected regions on the global map. The answer is disconcerting: to limit average temperature rises for the Mediterranean to 2˚C, the world will have to sharply reduce its fossil fuel combustion and contain the global average warming to 1.4˚C. Since the planet is already on average 1˚C warmer than it was in pre-industrial times, this puts the challenge of climate change in an ever more urgent context. Professor Seneviratne pointed out two years ago that extremes might be more significant in climate change than global averages.” We could potentially see even greater regional variation than these findings show” And she is not the only researcher to look for the significance of local climate change implicit in a shift in planetary averages. A team of oceanographers in 2013 examined much the same pattern of variation and predicted that, for some regions,real and enduring climate change could arrive by 2020. Read More here
22 January 2016, Climate News Network, Plutonium’s global problems are piling up. Increasing worldwide stockpiles of surplus plutonium are becoming a political embarrassment, a worrying security risk, and a hidden extra cost to the nuclear industry. Two armed ships set off from the northwest of England this week to sail round the world to Japan on a secretive and controversial mission to collect a consignment of plutonium and transport it to the US. The cargo of plutonium, once the most sought-after and valuable substance in the world, is one of a number of ever-growing stockpiles that are becoming an increasing financial and security embarrassment to the countries that own them. So far, there is no commercially viable use for this toxic metal, and there is increasing fear that plutonium could fall into the hands of terrorists, or that governments could be tempted to use it to join the nuclear arms race. All the plans to use plutonium for peaceful purposes in fast breeder and commercial reactors have so far failed to keep pace with the amounts of this highly-dangerous radioactive metal being produced by the countries that run nuclear power stations. The small amounts of plutonium that have been used in conventional and fast breeder reactors have produced very little electricity − at startlingly high costs. Read More here