6 September 2016, The Guardian, Asian typhoons becoming more intense, study finds. Giant storms that wreak havoc across China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines have grown 50% stronger in the past 40 years due to warming seas. The destructive power of the typhoons that wreak havoc across China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines has intensified by 50% in the past 40 years due to warming seas, a new study has found. The researchers warn that global warming will lead the giant storms to become even stronger in the future, threatening the large and growing coastal populations of those nations. “It is a very, very substantial increase,” said Prof Wei Mei, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who led the new work. “We believe the results are very important for east Asian countries because of the huge populations in these areas. People should be aware of the increase in typhoon intensity because when they make landfall these can cause much more damage.” Typhoons can have devastating impacts in east Asia. In 2013, typhoon Haiyan hit the Philippines, killing at least 6,300 people and affecting 11 million. Typhoon Nina struck China in 1975, dumping 100cm of rain in a day and leading to 229,000 deaths and 6m destroyed buildings. Last week typhoon Lionrock left 11 people dead in northern Japan and caused power blackouts and property damage, while in July typhoon Nepartak hit Taiwan and China, killing at least nine people and leaving a trail of destruction. Read More here
Category Archives: Impacts Observed & Projected
5 September 2016, DESMOG, Climate Impacts: Melting Glaciers, Shifting Biomes and Dying Trees in US National Parks. Trees are dying across Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks. Glaciers are melting in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska. Corals are bleaching in Virgin Islands National Park. Published field research conducted in U.S. national parks has detected these changes and shown that human climate change – carbon pollution from our power plants, cars and other human activities – is the cause. As principal climate change scientist of the U.S. National Park Service, I conduct research on how climate change has already altered the national parks and could further change them in the future. I also analyze how ecosystems in the national parks can naturally reduce climate change by storing carbon. I then help national park staff to use the scientific results to adjust management actions for potential future conditions. Research in U.S. national parks contributes in important ways to global scientific understanding of climate change. National parks are unique places where it is easier to tell if human climate change is the main cause of changes that we observe in the field, because many parks have been protected from urbanization, timber harvesting, grazing and other non climate factors. The results of this research highlight how urgently we need to reduce carbon pollution to protect the future of the national parks. Melting Glaciers, Dying Trees Human-caused climate change has altered landscapes, water, plants and animals in our national parks. Research in the parks has used two scientific procedures to show that this is occurring: detection and attribution. Detection is the finding of statistically significant changes over time. Attribution is the analysis of the different causes of the changes. Around the world and in U.S. national parks, snow and ice are melting. Glaciers in numerous national parks have contributed to the global database of 168 000 glaciers that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has used to show that human climate change is melting glaciers. Field measurements and repeat photography show that Muir Glacier in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Alaska lost 640 meters to melting from 1948 to 2000. Read More here
5 September 2016, CSIRO ECOS, Wired woodlands signal stress as climate dries. In 2015, the normal ‘breathing’ pattern of the Great Western Woodlands in south-western Australia became erratic. In response to lack of rain, the old-growth woodland started to ‘breathe in’ oxygen and ‘breathe out’ carbon dioxide – the opposite of what occurs in normal plant photosynthesis, and a sign the trees were ailing. Lift your eyes above the orange- and gold-hued gimlets and salmon gums that characterise these woodlands and you can see the key to understanding this reversal of nature; a 36m tower equipped with highly sensitive instrumentation.It’s the technology in that tower that has been tracking the trees’ struggle for survival; collecting data on the activity of the woodland by the second and updating daily CSIRO researchers based in Perth. The tower, run by CSIRO researchers Dr Suzanne Prober and Dr Craig Macfarlane, is a part of Australia’sTerrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) OzFlux Facility. A series of 24 OzFlux towers and 10 associated Supersites have been established as sentinels of change across the country. Toward the TERN goal of creating a national ecosystem observatory, each monitors changes in carbon, water and biodiversity in a nationally significant landscape. Read More here
28 August 2016, climate News Network, US faces rising hurricane bill. Scientists forecast that hurricane damage could increase dramatically in the US as high-income countries are also threatened by extreme weather events. German scientists have just issued a financial weather forecast that in a world of unmitigated climate change, the financial losses for the US per hurricane could triple, and annual losses due to hurricanes could rise eightfold. And, they calculate that however vigorous the US economy, its growth cannot outpace the projected rising costs of hurricane damage in the decades ahead. More than half of all weather-related economic losses around the globe are caused by damage due to tropical cyclones, hurricanes or typhoons, and the lessons of new research in Environmental Research Letters journal is that high-income countries may be no better protected than the poorest in this respect. Read More here