29 November 2016, The Age, Farmers demand the Coalition government does more on climate change. A thumping majority of Australian farmers have concluded they are witnessing the effects of climate change, urging the Coalition government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prepare the country for a future that is drier, less predictable and more prone to bushfires. This is according to a survey of 1300 primary producers across states and agricultural sectors, conducted by advocacy group Farmers for Climate Action with the co-operation of the National Farmers Federation. It found 88 per cent of respondents want rural and regional politicians to start advocating for stronger climate change action. Two thirds have seen changes in rainfall over their time on the land and half have seen an increase in droughts and floods.Nine in 10 are concerned about damage to the climate and eight in 10 support Australia moving towards 100 per cent renewable energy. Read More here
Category Archives: Impacts Observed & Projected
29 November 2016, Carbon Brief, Guest post: Misleading media coverage of Antarctic sea ice paper. Dr Jonathan Day is a polar climate scientist at the University of Reading. His work focuses on understanding and predicting changes in sea ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. Last week, my colleague Tom Edinburgh and I published an article estimating the extent of Antarctic sea ice in the early 1900s, using sea ice observations recorded by explorers of the time. It received an overwhelming amount of coverage in the media. This was largely because it combined a human-interest story about the conditions faced by the early Antarctic explorers with an illuminating result regarding the thorny issue of Antarctic sea ice trends. Despite significant increases in global average temperature, sea ice in the Antarctic has been slightly increasing in extent over recent decades (1979 – present). Although much of the coverage was very well reported, there were other examples of the results being wrongfully interpreted, perhaps wilfully so. Some of the errors led to confusion, such as conflating sea ice with land ice. Others attempted to cast doubt on the link between greenhouse gases and global mean temperature, which was inappropriate and misleading. Read More here
28 November 2016, Geophysical Research Letters (REPORT) Pine Island Glacier has undergone several major iceberg calving events over the past decades. These typically occurred when a rift at the heavily fractured shear margin propagated across the width of the ice shelf. This type of calving is common on polar ice shelves, with no clear connection to ocean-ice dynamic forcing. In contrast, we report on the recent development of multiple rifts initiating from basal crevasses in the center of the ice shelf, resulted in calving further upglacier than previously observed. Coincident with rift formation was the sudden disintegration of the ice mélange that filled the northern shear margin, resulting in ice sheet detachment from this margin. Examination of ice velocity suggests that this internal rifting resulted from the combination of a change in ice shelf stress regime caused by disintegration of the mélange and intensified melting within basal crevasses, both of which may be linked to ocean forcing. Read More here
26 November 2016, Climate News Network, Bolivian water crisis as glaciers vanish. Bolivia has declared a state of emergency as climate impacts shrink glaciers and leave cities without water. The government of Bolivia, a landlocked country in the heart of South America, has been forced to declare a state of emergency as it faces its worst drought for at least 25 years. Much of the water supply to La Paz, the highest capital city in the world, and the neighbouring El Alto, Bolivia’s second largest city, comes from the glaciers in the surrounding Andean mountains. But the glaciers are now shrinking rapidly, illustrating how climate change is already affecting one of the poorest countries in Latin America. The three main dams that supply La Paz and El Alto are no longer fed by runoff from glaciers and have almost run dry. Water rationing has been introduced in La Paz, and the poor of El Alto − where many are not yet even connected to the mains water supply − have staged protests. The armed forces are being brought in to distribute water to the cities, emergency wells are being drilled, and schools will have to close two weeks ahead of the summer break President Evo Morales sacked the head of the water company for not warning him earlier of the dangerous situation, but the changes produced by global warming have been evident for some time. Read More here