9 February 2016, Climate Home, Climate-linked bushfire warning as Tasmania’s ancient forests blaze. Trees 1,000 years old have been caught in the weeks-long blaze, sparked by lightning strikes in unusually dry conditions. More than 100,000 hectares have been blackened. The inferno comes as evidence mounts that human-caused climate change is raising the risk of bushfires, warned think tank the Climate Institute. “It points to the need for a two-pronged strategy,” said CEO John Connor: “To be working hard to cut carbon pollution while, at the same time, building greater resilience to bushfires caused by the global warming already locked in.” The Climate Institute drew on research by lead science agency CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology. They had found an increase in the frequency and severity of fires in more than 42% of southern Australia since 1973. With high levels of future warming, models show the number of “very high” fire days in Tasmania could more than double. It threatens world heritage forests that have not evolved to cope with cycles of fire and regrowth, unlike Australia’s hardier eucalyptus. Tasmania’s parks service, in a review of the response to severe bushfires in 2013, said dry lightning had taken over from arson as the major cause. But that should not be seen as a natural phenomenon to be left unmanaged, it argued, “if human-induced climate change is a contributing factor”. Conservationists are calling for a public inquiry into the authorities’ handling of fire risk. Michael Grose from CSIRO told the Guardian Australia human activity was making dry, fire-friendly conditions more likely. “Hotter temperatures, reduced rainfall in key seasons [and] worse fire weather, are all consistent with what is projected with climate change, particularly under a high-emission scenario,” he said. Read More here
25 January 2016, The Guardian. Sea level rise from ocean warming underestimated, scientists say. Thermal expansion of the oceans as they warm is likely to be twice as large as previously thought, according to German researchers. The amount of sea level rise that comes from the oceans warming and expanding has been underestimated, and could be about twice as much as previously calculated, German researchers have said. The findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed US journal, suggest that increasingly severe storm surges could be anticipated as a result. Sea level can mount due to two factors – melting ice and the thermal expansion of water as it warms. Until now, researchers have believed the oceans rose between 0.7 to 1mm per year due to thermal expansion. But a fresh look at the latest satellite data from 2002 to 2014 shows the seas are expanding about 1.4mm a year, said the study. “To date, we have underestimated how much the heat-related expansion of the water mass in the oceans contributes to a global rise in sea level,” said co-author Jurgen Kusche, a professor at the University of Bonn. The overall sea level rise rate is about 2.74mm per year, combining both thermal expansion and melting ice. Read More here