ApocaDocuments (8) for the "Climate Chaos" scenario from this week
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Thu, Jul 7, 2011
from NOAA, via MotherJones:
Scary Maps of the New Climate Normal
NOAA just updated its Climate Normals for the United States. Per agreement of the World Meteorological Organization, "normals" are calculated per decade, rather than per year. NOAA's latest update is crunched from three-decades-worth of weather data between 1981 to 2010.
The new annual normal temperatures for the US strongly reflect a warming world....
Parts of the Great Plains, the Mississippi Valley, and the Northeast experienced slightly cooler July maximums from 1981-2010 compared to 1971-2000 (top map).
Far more striking are the January minimums (bottom map). Nighttime January temps were higher everywhere except the Southeast. Warmer nights were most pronounced in the northern plains and northern Rocky Mountains.
In some places the new normal were several degrees warmer than the old normal.
As you can see in the maps above, based on average year-round temperatures, every state experienced warmer temperatures in 1981-2010 compared to 1971-2000. ...
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Yes, but what is the mean? or the mode? or the pangaiatic min-max hypotenuse that proves natural variation?
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Thu, Jul 7, 2011
from Telegraph.co.uk:
UN refugee agency warns of crisis 'of unimaginable proportions' in Somalia drought
Scores of Somali children are dying on the journey or within a day of arrival at refugee camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, as they flee the region's worst drought in decades, according to the UN's refugee agency.
High levels of malnutrition, combined with ongoing violence in the war-torn Horn of Africa nation, are threatening "a human tragedy of unimaginable proportions", the UNHCR warned.
Following several seasons of failed rains and spiralling global food prices, drought has hit more than 12 million people across Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.
Thousands of Somali refugees are making perilous journeys of hundreds of miles to seek assistance: 54,000 people crossed into Ethiopia and Kenya in June alone. Levels of serious malnutrition amongst newly arrived children in Ethiopia are exceeding 50 per cent, while in Kenya levels are reaching 30 to 40 per cent. ...
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If it can't be imagined, does it exist?
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Wed, Jul 6, 2011
from Environmental Health News:
Scientists warn that chemicals may be altering breast development
Exposure to chemicals early in life may alter how breast tissue develops and raise the risks of breast cancer and lactation problems later in life, scientists concluded in a set of reports published Wednesday.
The scientists are urging federal officials to add new tests for industrial chemicals and pesticides to identify ones that might disrupt breast development. In some cases, they said, mammary glands are more sensitive to effects of hormone-disrupting chemicals than any other part of the body, so low levels of exposure may be causing breast changes. ...
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Just so they're getting bigger.
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Tue, Jul 5, 2011
from EnvironmentalResearchWeb:
Going beyond the IPCC 'worst case'
In order to see how climate models react over a wide range of greenhouse gas concentrations, researchers in the US have modelled emissions scenarios that are significantly higher than the IPCC's "worst case" scenarios. They found - perhaps unsurprisingly - that the extent of climate change will be significantly worse than for the IPCC's A1FI scenario.
"Relative to the A1FI scenario, our highest scenario results in an additional 2 deg C (3.6F) of global mean warming above A1FI levels by 2100, a complete loss of Arctic summer sea ice by 2070 and an additional 43 percent sea level rise due to thermal expansion above A1FI levels by 2100," said Ben Sanderson from the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the US....
The team also assumed that the shares of primary energy derived from different fuel sources remain fixed over time at 2000 levels; that is, the carbon intensity of energy supply is assumed to remain constant.
In the second scenario (AllCoal), the researchers make more extreme assumptions. They maintain the A1FI per capita energy projection, but assume population follows the UN high scenario as implemented in the IPCC A2 scenario, reaching 15 billion by 2100. They also make the bounding assumption that all new demand for primary energy is satisfied by coal.
"This assumption is not intended to represent a plausible future, but a useful thought experiment that could help inform the exploration of upper bounds on emissions," said Sanderson. "It is astounding, for example, that this combination of assumptions leads to emissions in 2100 that are about four times those in the A1FI scenario, or about 105 gigatonnes of carbon per year." ...
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"Astounding" only if you believe in common sense directing the actions of societies.
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Tue, Jul 5, 2011
from Guardian:
Thawing Arctic opens up new shipping routes on the 'roof of the world'
Cold is the new hot in shipping circles as melting sea ice opens up prospects for trade between China and the west to move across the roof of the world.
An increasing amount of seaborne traffic is beginning to move on the so-called Northern Sea Route which traverses the Siberian coast. There are also hopes of opening up more of the North West Passage above Canada.
The attraction of the voyage is that it is one-third of the distance of more traditional routes through the Suez Canal. This means less carbon-dioxide (CO2) emissions and less fuel. It also means less pirates....
Canadian and American maritime experts say 2 percent of global shipping could be diverted to the Arctic by 2030, rising to 5 percent by 2050.
Already cruise ships are bringing tourists and income to countries such as Greenland. But they are also raising concerns about safety and pollution from oil spills. There is a widespread view that it is only a matter of time before there is a potential emergency: a passenger ship in trouble and potential evacuation into freezing seas. ...
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What a positive development for trade, growth, and the sustainability of a consumer society!
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Tue, Jul 5, 2011
from UEA, via ScienceDaily:
Evaluation of Climate Policy Is Skyrocketing but in an 'Undeveloped and Unsystematic' Way, Says Study
Published in the international journal Policy Sciences, a meta-analysis by a team of researchers from across Europe offers the very first systematic cataloging of the emerging patterns of policy evaluation undertaken in different parts of the European Union.
In the last decade or so the politics surrounding the development of new policies has attracted unprecedented attention. Many new targets and policies have been adopted. But a lot less is known about what is being done to check that the resulting policies are actually delivering on their promises.
The findings reveal that a culture of evaluation is emerging: the number of evaluations produced has grown spectacularly in recent years. Data collected for six EU states and for the EU as a whole reveal an eightfold increase in the number of reports produced between 2000 and 2005....
"The most striking finding of our analysis is just how undeveloped and unsystematic are most current evaluation practices. Great efforts have been made to inform and understand policy making procedures in Europe, but most policy evaluation remains piecemeal and non-consultative."
As the political pressure on policy makers to describe and explain what is being done to tackle climate change increases, calls will grow for evaluation to be undertaken in a more open and transparent fashion.
"At present, policy systems in Europe seem ill-prepared to rise to that challenge," said Prof Jordan. ...
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I just evaluated it systematically.
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Tue, Jul 5, 2011
from CBC:
China's pollution temporarily slowed climate change
Scientists have come up with a possible explanation for why the rise in Earth's temperature paused for a bit during the 2000s, one of the hottest decades on record.
The answer seems counterintuitive. It's all that sulphur pollution in the air from China's massive coal-burning, according to a new study.
Sulphur particles in the air deflect the sun's rays and can temporarily cool things down a bit. That can happen even as coal-burning produces the carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming....
But sulphur's cooling effect is only temporary, while the carbon dioxide from coal burning stays in Earth's atmosphere a long time.
Chinese coal consumption doubled between 2003 and 2007, and that caused a 26 per cent increase in global coal consumption, Kaufmann said....
Sulphur quickly drops out of the air if it is not replenished, while carbon dioxide remains for a long time, so its warming effects are beginning to be visible again, he noted. The plateau in temperature growth disappeared in 2009 and 2010, when temperatures lurched upward. ...
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Now we have no excuse not to be subjects of King Coal!
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Mon, Jul 4, 2011
from University of Arizona, via EurekAlert:
Warming ocean layers will undermine polar ice sheets faster than expected
Warming of the ocean's subsurface layers will melt underwater portions of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets faster than previously thought, according to new University of Arizona-led research. Such melting would increase the sea level more than already projected.
The research, based on 19 state-of-the-art climate models, proposes a new mechanism by which global warming will accelerate the melting of the great ice sheets during this century and the next.
The subsurface ocean layers surrounding the polar ice sheets will warm substantially as global warming progresses, the scientists found. In addition to being exposed to warming air, underwater portions of the polar ice sheets and glaciers will be bathed in warming seawater....
"Ocean warming is very important compared to atmospheric warming because water has a much larger heat capacity than air," Yin said. "If you put an ice cube in a warm room, it will melt in several hours. But if you put an ice cube in a cup of warm water, it will disappear in just minutes."...
Co-author Jonathan T. Overpeck said, "This does mean that both Greenland and Antarctica are probably going melt faster than the scientific community previously thought." ...
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You mean that isn't the second hand?
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