16 December 2015, CSIRO ECOS CSIRO and Ngadju tackle bushfires in the Great Western Woodlands. Old and new ways of fire management are coming together to help protect one of the most unique woodlands on the planet. Members of the Ngadju community began working with CSIRO about four years ago to help prevent fires in the Great Western Woodlands (GWW) in south-western Australia. The GWW is the largest remaining tract of dry climate woodland on Earth. The region receives as little as 250 mm rain per year. Owing to the variable rainfall and lack of readily accessible groundwater suitable for livestock, much of the region has remained virtually unchanged since European settlement. However during recent years, the GWW has experienced an increase in the frequency of large, intense wildfires causing fire-sensitive old-growth woodlands to be lost at an alarming rate. Leslie Schultz from Ngadju Conservation believes climate change is contributing to the increase in fires. “The heat we get now is harsher and when it does come, there’s less rain—this can only spell trouble for the Woodlands,” he said. Les said the relationship between Ngadju and CSIRO was born from his own experience of “burning off country”—something he learnt from his elders. “We need to control the country so it doesn’t control us,” Les said. “We want to incorporate our traditional land management methods. We managed our country not with rakes, shovels and bulldozers but with fire.” The insight and the benefits of utilising Indigenous fire knowledge was no more apparent than during the recent devastating bushfires in Western Australia. These fires damaged large areas of the GWW directly. In the nearby community of Esperance one fire led to the loss of four lives, with reportedly more than 280,000 hectares of farmland burnt, along with houses, sheds, machinery and almost 5,000 livestock. Ngadju mobilised to help fight these fires and provided valuable insight into the current landscape. They also currently operate a small ranger team in the GWW and undertake a mix of contract land management. Read More here
Category Archives: Impacts Observed & Projected
15 December 2015, YALE Climate Connections, More Glum News on Arctic Warming. Arctic’s trailing climate indicators are seen as the leading indicators for climate elsewhere on Earth. News from the Arctic hasn’t gotten any better in the 10 years since NOAA began producing an annual Arctic Report Card, and this year’s collection of results and essays is no exception. NOAA released its latest report December 15 at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. “The Arctic is warming twice as fast as other parts of the planet,” said Rick Spinrad, NOAA chief scientist, adding “what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.” The average Arctic temperature change, 2.3 degrees F (1.3 degrees C) above average, continues to outpace change in the rest of the world, a phenomenon known as “Arctic amplification.” Since the beginning of the 20th century, Arctic warming is now a hefty 5.4 degrees F (3.0 degrees C), leading to significant changes to the region. “One could argue that the trailing indicators in the Arctic are the leading indicators for the rest of the climate,” Spinrad said. Two items from the report, which was written by 72 authors from 11 different countries, were highlighted here: a mysterious browning of Arctic tundra, and the impact of change on walruses. “Greenness” – a measure of photosynthetic activity by satellites — has been declining since 2001 (see Figure below), with a sharp drop-off in the past two to four years, running counter to the notion that more carbon dioxide is unequivocally good for plant life. “We don’t have an answer yet” to the declining greenness, said Howard Epstein, a scientist from the University of Virginia. “A drop in greenness for any given year isn’t alarming, or even two years in a row.” But four years makes for a noticeable trend. Read more here
11 December 2015, The Conversation, Climate and the rise and fall of civilizations: a lesson from the past. 2015 will likely be the hottest year on record, beating the previous record set only in 2014. It is also likely to be the first year the global average temperature reaches 1℃ above pre-industrial temperatures (measured from 1880-1899). Global warming is raising temperatures, and this year’s El Niño has pushed temperatures higher still. Although 2015 is unusually hot, 1℃ symbolically marks the halfway point to 2℃, widely considered to be the threshold of “dangerous” climate change. In fact an additional 0.5-1℃ is actually masked by sulphur aerosols which we have added to the atmosphere alongside greenhouse gases. A temperature level of 1℃ (above pre-industrial levels) is similar to or warmer than the peak temperatures of the early Holocene epoch approximately 8,000-7,200 years ago. Studies of the early Holocene provide clues to what was such a world like. The climate roller-coaster The last ice age (or Last Glacial Maximum) peaked around 26,000 years ago. The earth warmed over the coming millennia, driven by an increase in radiation from the sun due to changes in the earth’s orbit (the Milankovic cycles) amplified by CO₂ released from warming water, which further warmed the atmosphere. But even as the earth warmed it was interrupted by cooler periods known as “stadials”. These were caused by melt water from melting ice sheets which cool large regions of the ocean. Marked climate variability and extreme weather events during the early Holocene retarded development of sustainable agriculture. Sparse human settlements existed about 12,000 – 11,000 years ago. The flourishing of human civilisation from about 10,000 years ago, and in particular from 7,000 years ago, critically depended on stabilisation of climate conditions which allowed planting and harvesting of seed and growing of crops, facilitating growth of villages and towns and thereby of civilisation. Read More here
10 December 2015, Science Daily, Trees either hunker down or press on in a drying and warming western US climate. In the face of adverse conditions, people might feel tempted by two radically different options — hunker down and wait for conditions to improve, or press on and hope for the best. It would seem that trees employ similar options when the climate turns dry and hot. Two University of Washington researchers have uncovered details of the radically divergent strategies that two common tree species employ to cope with drought in southwestern Colorado. As they report in a new paper in the journal Global Change Biology, one tree species shuts down production and conserves water, while the other alters its physiology to continue growing and using water. As the entire western United States becomes warmer and drier through human-made climate change, these findings shed light on how woody plants may confront twin scourges of less water and hot weather. The authors, UW biology graduate student Leander Anderegg and biology professor Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, wanted to understand if different tree species employ similar coping strategies for drought, and how these strategies would affect their future ranges in a warmer and drier climate. They compared how two common tree species differ in terms of shape, growth rate and physiology across wet and dry portions of their native ranges. “We really wanted to identify the entire suite of strategies that a plant can use to grow in drier environments, as well as which of these strategies each tree would employ,” said Hille Ris Lambers. Read more here