Showing posts with label David Spratt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Spratt. Show all posts

Thursday, September 3, 2015

As 2015 smashes temperature records, it's hotter than you think


by David Spratt

Spanish version

There is an El Niño in full swing which helps push average global temperatures higher, and records are being broken, but just how hot is it? For several years, we have heard that global warming has pushed temperatures higher by around 0.8 to 0.85 degrees Celsius (°C).

But in 2015, that number is not even close.

Even before this year's strong El Niño developed, 2015 was a hot year. The first few months of the year broken records for the hottest corresponding period in previous years all the way back to the start of the instrumental record in 1880. Each month, new records fell.



With the July data in, NOAA, the US Government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reported that July was the hottest month among the 1627 months on record since 1880, and the first seven months of the year was the hottest January-July on record:
The July average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces was 0.81°C above the 20th century average. As July is climatologically the warmest month for the year, this was also the all-time highest monthly temperature in the 1880-2015 record, at 16.61°C, surpassing the previous record set in 1998 by 0.08°C.

The July globally-averaged sea surface temperature was 0.75°C above the 20th century average. This was the highest temperature for any month in the 1880-2015 record, surpassing the previous record set in July 2014 by 0.07°C. The global value was driven by record warmth across large expanses of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

The year-to-date temperature combined across global land and ocean surfaces was 0.85°C above the 20th century average. This was the highest for January-July in the 1880-2015 record, surpassing the previous record set in 2010 by 0.09°C.
In addition the year-to-date globally-averaged land surface temperature beat the previous record in 2007 by a whopping 0.15°C, and the year-to-date globally-averaged sea surface temperature surpassed the previous record of 2010 by 0.06°C. Every major ocean basin observed record warmth in some areas.

And, as Joe Romm has reported, "It was especially hot for the 6 billion of us up here in the northern hemisphere, where the first seven months of 2015 were a remarkable 0.3°F (0.17°C) warmer than the first seven months of any year on record — and nearly a half degree Fahrenheit warmer than any year before 2007".

El Niño may be strongest on record


So this year, records are not being broken. They are being smashed, as a strong El Niño (and perhaps the strongest on record) is set to persist through to 2016. El Niño conditions are characterised by a warm band of water across the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean and facilitate the transfer of heat from the ocean surface layer to the atmosphere and are associated with a hotter climate.

The NOAA's most recent El Niño update (Climate Prediction Center / NCEP 17 August 2015) reports that:
All multi-model averages suggest that El Niño 3.4 will be above +1.5ºC (a “strong” El Niño) during late 2015 into early 2016.
(El Niño 3.4 is the zone of longitudes 120 to 150W along the equatorial Pacific Ocean).



As the chart above illustrates, the projected strength of the El Niño (yellow line) is slightly above the previous strongest such event in 1997 (red dots).

So hot will 2015 be? The NOAA has already reported that the first seven months of the year was almost 0.1°C above the previous record. This is a huge amount in a field where changes are often measured in one-hundredths of a degree.

With a 90% chance of the El Niño persisting into 2016, it is as close as a certain bet can be that 2015 will be the hottest year on the instrumental record.

And there is probably an even-money chance that the margin will exceed 0.1°C. This would be an incredible result with scientists shocked at the margin by which records are being broken. Former NASA climate science chief James Hansen says:
We can already predict that the 2015 global temperature will exceed the prior warmest year (2014) by an unusually wide margin (~ 0.1°C), exceeding 1998 (“El Niño of the century”) even further.
And there is a good chance that 2016 will beat 2015 to become the hottest year on record.

It's hotter than you think

But much hotter has it got already? The convention is to talk about the amount of warming "above pre-industrial", that is, before the steam-and-coal industrial revolution, around 1750.

But the instrumental record used by the major agencies in the US, the UK and Japan does not start till 1880, and it is this period that is often used to provide a "pre-industrial" baseline. So when we hear that warming so far up to (the average of) the last decade as being 0.8°C or 0.85°C, it is the warming from a 1880 baseline (see light green column in figure below of 0.87°C, based on the NOAA dataset since 1880).

But the climate around 1750 and 1880 were not the same. Research using proxy data and modelling shows that between 1750 and 1880 the global average temperature increased by ~0.2°C.


 When that is added (dark green column), we find that the real warming from pre-industrial 1750 to the average of the last decade is 1.07°C. It is a shock to see that we are more than half way to the unsafe 2°C "guardrail" favoured by international policy-makers.

The warming over 1750 pre-industrial to 2014 was 1.17°C.

And for the first seven months of 2015, the margin is a staggering 1.26°C higher than the pre-industrial level. Yes, it is a strong El Niño period, and it may drop back for a short while, but 2016 could be just as hot and we may be entering a new phase of accelerated warming.

Greenhouse emissions continue to soar to record levels, and attempts to clean up and retire some of the world's dirtiest coal power plants may result in a lowering of the production of aerosols (including black-carbon soot, organic carbon, sulphates, nitrates, as well as dust from smoke, manufacturing and windstorms) which at the moment provide a temporary (~1 week) cooling of 0.8-1°C.

The leading climate researcher Michael E. Mann says that as fossil fuel use is curtailed, the aerosol cooling impact will lessen. Mann says that "if the world burns significantly less coal…we would have to limit CO2 to below roughly 405 ppm", a level we will reach in two years.

A climate emergency requiring levels of action far beyond anything that is currently perceived by policy makers? As temperatures soar to record levels and it is hotter than most people understand, you can bet on that.

Earlier posted at ClimateCodeRed.org


As 2015 smashes temperature records, it's hotter than you think | by David Spratt http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/09/as-2015-smashes-temperature-records-its-hotter-than-you-think.html

Posted by Sam Carana on Thursday, September 3, 2015

Thursday, April 23, 2015

It's time to 'Do the math' again

By David Spratt

Have we gone mad? A new report released today explains why contemporary climate change policy-making should be characterised as increasingly delusional.

As the deadline approaches for submissions to the Australian government's climate targets process, there is a flurry of submissions and reports from advocacy groups and the Climate Change Authority.

Most of these reports are based on the twin propositions that two degrees Celsius (2°C) of global warming is an appropriate policy target, and that there is a significant carbon budget and an amount of "burnable carbon" for this target, and hence a scientifically-based escalating ladder of emission-reduction targets stretching to mid-century and beyond.

A survey of the relevant scientific literature by David Spratt, "Recount: It's time to 'Do the math' again", published today by Breakthrough concludes that the evidence does not support either of these propositions.

The catastrophic and irreversible consequences of 2°C of warming demand a strong risk-management approach, with a low rate of failure. We should not take risks with the climate that we would not take with civil infrastructure.

There is no carbon budget available if 2°C is considered a cap or upper boundary as per the Copenhagen Accord, rather than a hit-or-miss target which can be significantly exceeded; or if a low risk of exceeding 2°C is required; or if positive feedbacks such as permafrost and other carbon store losses are taken into account.

Effective policy making can only be based on recognising that climate change is already dangerous, and we have no carbon budget left to divide up. Big tipping-point events irreversible on human time scales such as in West Antarctica and large-scale positive feedbacks are already occurring at less than 1°C of warming. It is clear that 2°C of climate warming is not a safe cap.

In reality, 2°C is the boundary between dangerous and very dangerous climate change and 1°C warmer than human civilisation has ever experienced.

In the lead up to the forthcoming Paris talks, policy makers through their willful neglect of the evidence are in effect normalising a 2.5–3°C global warming target.

This evidence in "Recount: It's time to 'Do the math' again" demonstrates that action is necessary at a faster pace than most policy makers conceive is possible.



Related

- It's time to 'Do the math' again
http://www.climatecodered.org/2015/04/its-time-to-do-math-again.html

- RECOUNT - It's time to 'Do the math' again
http://media.wix.com/ugd/148cb0_938b5512abfa4d4e965ec8cc292893f7.pdf

- Two degrees of warming closer than you may think
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/02/two-degrees-of-warming-closer-than-you-may-think.html

- The real budgetary emergency and the myth of "burnable carbon"
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-real-budgetary-emergency-and-the-myth-of-burnable-carbon.html

It's time to 'Do the math' again | by David Spratt http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2015/04/its-time-to-do-math-again.html

Posted by Sam Carana on Thursday, April 23, 2015

Sunday, February 8, 2015

Two degrees of warming closer than you may think

by David Spratt

It has taken a hundred years of human-caused greenhouse emissions to push the global temperature up almost one degree Celsius (1C°), so another degree is still some time away. Right? And there seems to have been a "pause" in warming over the last two decades, so getting to 2C° is going to take a good while, and we may have more time that we thought. Yes?

Wrong on both counts.

The world could be 2C° warmer in as little as two decades, according to the leading US climate scientist and "hockey stick" author, Dr Michael E. Mann. Writing in Scientific American in March 2014 (with the maths explained here), Mann says that new calculations "indicate that if the world continues to burn fossil fuels at the current rate, global warming will rise to 2C° by 2036" and to avoid that threshold "nations will have to keep carbon dioxide levels below 405 parts per million", a level we have just about reached already. Mann says the notion of a warming "pause" is false.

Global temperature over the last 1000 years: the "hockey stick"

Here's why 2C° could be just 20 years away.

Record heat

2014 was the hottest year in the instrumental record. The US government agencies NASA and NOAA announced the 2014 record on 16 January, noting that "the 10 warmest years in the instrumental record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000".



NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) says that since 1880, "Earth’s average surface temperature has warmed by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8C°), a trend that is largely driven by the increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) and other human emissions into the planet’s atmosphere. The majority of that warming has occurred in the past three decades."

GISS Director Gavin Schmidt says that this is “the latest in a series of warm years, in a series of warm decades. While the ranking of individual years can be affected by chaotic weather patterns, the long-term trends are attributable to drivers of climate change that right now are dominated by human emissions of greenhouse gases".

2014 was also Australia’s third-hottest year on record, according to the Bureau of Meteorology: "Overall, 2014 was Australia's third-warmest year on record: the annual national mean temperature was +0.91 °C above average… All States, except the Northern Territory, ranked in the four warmest years on record."

The 2014 record was achieved in neutral ENSO conditions

Fluctuations in the ENSO cycle affect global temperature, with El Niño conditions (a mobile blister of Pacific Ocean heat that affects wind patterns and currents and reduces rainfall in eastern Australia) correlating with warmer global temperatures. Former NASA climate science chief Dr James Hansen and colleagues note that the record global temperature in 2014 "was achieved with little assistance from the tropical ENSO cycle, confirms continuing global warming... and with the help of even a mild El Niño 2015 may be significantly warmer than 2014."

And El Niño conditions are likely to became more frequent with more warming. Last year, Wenju Cai, a climate researcher for Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), warned that the frequency of extreme El Niño events could double with climate change, in a paper that presented "evidence for a doubling in the occurrences in the future in response to greenhouse warming".

There is no "pause" in warming

In releasing the data on 2014's record warmth, NASA charted warming since 1970 and demonstrated that there has been no "pause" or slowing in warming, contrary to the million-times-repeated claims of the climate warming denial industry.

Joe Romm of Climate Progress says this chart (below) shows that: "The human-caused rise in surface air temperatures never paused, never even slowed significantly. And that means we are likely headed toward a period of rapid surface temperature warming. "




A year ago, Prof Matthew England of University of NSW suggested that temperatures were likely to rise quickly:
Scientists have long suspected that extra ocean heat uptake has slowed the rise of global average temperatures, but the mechanism behind the hiatus remained unclear…. But the heat uptake is by no means permanent: when the trade wind strength returns to normal –- as it inevitably will –- our research suggests heat will quickly accumulate in the atmosphere. So global [surface] temperatures look set to rise rapidly….
The oceans are warming very rapidly

Of all the additional heat trapped by higher levels of greenhouse gases, more than 90 per cent goes to warming the oceans, and thus ocean heat content (OHC) is by far the most significant and reliable indicator of global warming. By contrast only two per cent goes to warming the atmosphere, so small heat exchanges between oceans and the atmosphere (caused by changing sea surface, ocean circulation and wind conditions) can have a significant impact on atmospheric temperature, but not on ocean temperature.

The NOAA's State of the Climate for 2014 reports:
During 2014, the globally-averaged sea surface temperature was 1.03°F (0.57°C) above the 20th century average. This was the highest among all years in the 1880-2014 record, surpassing the previous records of 1998 and 2003 by 0.09°F (0.05°C).


The rate of OHC incease appears to be accelerating, with Romm noting that:
... ocean warming has sped up, and sea level rise has accelerated more than we thought, and Arctic sea ice has melted much faster than the models expected, as have the great ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
And as Matthew England has told us, when the trade wind strength returns to normal, some ocean heat will quickly accumulate in the atmosphere.

You can check all the NOAA ocean heat content charts here.

Human greenhouse gas emissions are not slowing

Data from the Global Carbon Project shows annual carbon dioxide emissions are continuing to increase, and that the rate of increase since 2000 is at least double that of the 1990-99 decade. Emissions are projected to continue on the current growth path till 2020.


Fossil fuel emissions 1990-2014 and projected to 2019

To summarise the story so far: 2014 was a record hot year (without El Nino conditions); there has been no pause in warming; ocean heat content is rising at an increasing rate; global annual carbon dioxide emissions are continuing to grow; and more frequent El Nino conditions and a return to more normal trade wind strength will release some ocean heat to the atmosphere; so we are likely headed for a period of rapid surface temperature warming.

But there is more to the story.

A reservoir of heat already in the system

Increased levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases create an energy imbalance between incoming and outgoing radiation, which is resolved by elements of the earth system (land and oceans) absorbing the additional heat until the system reaches a new balance (equilibrium) at a higher temperature. But that process takes time, due to thermal inertia (as with an electric oven: once energy is applied, it takes time for all the structure to heat up and is not instantaneous). As a rule of thumb, about one-third of the heating potential of an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide will be felt straight away, another third take around 30 years, and the last third is not fully realised for a century.

Thus there is more warming to come for the carbon dioxide already emitted, amounting to about another 0.6°C of warming. And because the rate of emissions is increasing, that figure is also increasing.

From this we can conclude that around 1.5°C of warming is locked into the system for current CO2 levels, though very large-scale carbon drawdown could reduce levels slowly over decadal time frames.

As well as long-lived CO2, there are other greenhouse gases with shorter lifetimes, particularly methane (lifetime approx. 10 years) and nitrous oxide (lifetime approx. 100 years). Because emissions of these gases are also continuing unabated, they also contribute to warming temperatures on decadal time frames.

In fact, the current level of greenhouse gases if maintained is already more than enough to produce 2°C of warming over time: in 2008 two scientists, Ramanathan and Feng, in On avoiding dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system: Formidable challenges ahead found that if greenhouse gases were maintained at their 2005 levels, the inferred warming is 2.4˚C (range 1.4˚C to 4.3˚C).

The current level of greenhouse gases is around 400 parts per million (ppm) CO2, and 470 ppm CO2 equivalent (CO2e) when other greenhouse gases are included. The last time CO2 levels were as high as they are today, humans didn't exist, and over the last 20 million years such levels are associated with major climate transitions. Tripati, Roberts et al. found that, big changes in significant climate system elements such as ice sheets, sea levels and carbon stores are likely to occur for the current level of CO2:
During mid-Miocene climatic optimum [16-14 million years ago] CO2 levels were similar to today, but temperatures were ~3–6°C warmer and sea levels 25 to 40 metres higher than at present… When CO2 levels were last similar to modern values (greater than 350 ppmv to 400 pmv), there was little glacial ice on land, or sea ice in the Arctic, and a marine-based ice mass on Antarctica was not viable…
But the question remains as to how quickly this warming will occur, and for that we need to look at two further factors: climate sensitivity and the role of aerosols.

Climate sensitivity

The measure of how much warming occurs for an increase in greenhouse gases is known as climate sensitivity, and is expressed as the temperature rise resulting from a doubling of greenhouse gas levels.

As Michael E. Mann explains:
Although the earth has experienced exceptional warming over the past century, to estimate how much more will occur we need to know how temperature will respond to the ongoing human-caused rise in atmospheric greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide. Scientists call this responsiveness “equilibrium climate sensitivity” (ECS). ECS is a common measure of the heating effect of greenhouse gases. It represents the warming at the earth's surface that is expected after the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere doubles and the climate subsequently stabilizes (reaches equilibrium)… The more sensitive the atmosphere is to a rise in CO2, the higher the ECS, and the faster the temperature will rise. ECS is shorthand for the amount of warming expected, given a particular fossil-fuel emissions scenario.
As discussed previously here, some elements of the climate system respond quickly to temperature change, including the amount of water vapour in the air and hence level of cloud cover, sea-level changes due to ocean temperature change, and the extent of sea-ice that floats on the ocean in the polar regions. These changes amplify (increase) the temperature change and are known as short-term or “fast” feedbacks, and it is on this basis that (short-term) ECS is well established as being around 3°C for a doubling of greenhouse gas levels (see, for example, Climate sensitivity, sea level, and atmospheric carbon dioxide).

But there are also longer-term or “slow” feedbacks, which generally take much longer (centuries to thousands of years) to occur. These include changes in large, polar, land-based ice sheets, changes in the carbon cycle (changed efficiency of carbon sinks such as permafrost and methane clathrate stores, as well as biosphere stores such as peat lands and forests), and changes in vegetation coverage and reflectivity (albedo). When these are taken into account, the sensitivity is significantly higher at 4.5°C or more, dependent on the state of the poles and carbon stores. Importantly, the rate of change at present is so fast that some of these long-term feedbacks are being triggered now on short-term timeframes (see Carbon budgets, climate sensitivity and the myth of "burnable carbon").

Mann says uncertainty about ECS can arise from questions of the role of clouds and water vapour, with the most recent IPCC report simply giving a range of 1.5–4.5°C but no "best-fit" figure. Factors such as changing rates of heat flux between oceans and atmosphere (including the El Nino/La Nina cycle), and volcanic eruptions, can cloud the short-term picture, as has the focus on the non-existent "pause".

What would happen if ECS is a bit lower that the "best-fit" value of 3°C of warming for doubling of greenhouse gas levels? Mann explains:
I recently calculated hypothetical future temperatures by plugging different ECS values into a so-called energy balance model, which scientists use to investigate possible climate scenarios. The computer model determines how the average surface temperature responds to changing natural factors, such as volcanoes and the sun, and human factors—greenhouse gases, aerosol pollutants, and so on. (Although climate models have critics, they reflect our best ability to describe how the climate system works, based on physics, chemistry and biology. And they have a proved track record: for example, the actual warming in recent years was accurately predicted by the models decades ago.)

I then instructed the model to project forward under the assumption of business-as-usual greenhouse gas emissions. I ran the model again and again, for ECS values ranging from the IPCC's lower bound (1.5°C) to its upper bound (4.5°C). The curves for an ECS of 2.5 degrees and 3°C fit the instrument readings most closely. The curves for a substantially lower ECS did not fit the recent instrumental record at all, reinforcing the notion that they are not realistic.

To my wonder, I found that for an ECS of 3°C, our planet would cross the dangerous warming threshold of 2°C in 2036, only 22 years from now. When I considered the lower ECS value of 2.5°C, the world would cross the threshold in 2046, just 10 years later.
This is charted as:

Michael E. Mann's graph of future temperature for different climate sensitivities. Click to enlarge.
Mann concludes that "even if we accept a lower ECS value, it hardly signals the end of global warming or even a pause. Instead it simply buys us a little bit of time—potentially valuable time—to prevent our planet from crossing the threshold."

As I have explained repeatedly, including in Dangerous climate warming: Myth and reality, 2°C is far from a safe level of warming. In fact, a strong case is made that climate change is already dangerous at less than 1°C of warming and, in James Hansen's analysis, “goals of limiting human made warming to 2°C and CO2 to 450 ppm are prescriptions for disaster” because significant tipping points – where significant elements of the climate system move from one discrete state to another – will be crossed.

Aerosol's Faustian bargain

Mann also indicated what level of CO2 would be consistent with 2°C of warming:
These findings have implications for what we all must do to prevent disaster. An ECS of 3°C means that if we are to limit global warming to below 2°C forever, we need to keep CO2 concentrations far below twice pre-industrial levels, closer to 450 ppm. Ironically, if the world burns significantly less coal, that would lessen CO2 emissions but also reduce aerosols in the atmosphere that block the sun (such as sulfate particulates), so we would have to limit CO2 to below roughly 405 ppm.
The aerosol question is central but often not well understood. Human activities also influence the greenhouse effect by releasing non-gaseous substances such as aerosols (small particles) into the atmosphere. Aerosols include black-carbon soot, organic carbon, sulphates, nitrates, as well as dust from smoke, manufacturing, windstorms, and other sources.

Aerosols have a net cooling effect because they reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the ground, and they increase cloud cover. This effect is popularly referred to as ‘global dimming’, because the overall aerosol impact is to reduce, or dim, the sun’s radiation, thus masking some of the effect of the increased greenhouse gas levels. This is of little comfort, however, because aerosols last only about ten days before being washed out of the atmosphere by rain; so we have to keep putting more and more into the air to maintain the temporary cooling effect.

Unfortunately, the principal source of aerosols is the burning of fossil fuels, which causes a rise in CO2 levels and global warming that lasts for many centuries. The dilemma is that if you cut the aerosols, the globe will experience a pulse of warming as their dimming effect is lost; but if you keep pouring aerosols together with CO2 into the air, you cook the planet even more in the long run. A Faustian bargain.

There has been an effort to reduce emissions from some aerosols because they cause acid rain and other forms of pollution. However, in the short term, this is warming the air as well as making it cleaner. As Mann notes above, likely reductions in coal burning in coming decades will reduce aerosol levels and boost warming

Some recent research suggest aerosol cooling is in the range of 0.5–1.2°C over the long run:
  • Leon Rotstayn in The Conversation explains that "results from CSIRO climate modelling suggest that the extra warming effect from a decline in aerosols could be about 1°C by the end of the century". 
  • Present-day aerosol cooling effect will be strongly reduced by 2030 as more stringent air pollution controls are implemented in Europe and worldwide, and as advanced environmental technologies come on stream. These actions are projected to increase the global temperature by 1°C and temperatures over Europe by up to 2–4°C, depending on the severity of the action. This is one of the main research outcomes of the European Integrated project on Aerosol Cloud Climate and Air Quality Interaction project. 
  • In 2011, NASA climate science chief James Hansen and co-authors warned that the cooling impact of aerosols appears to have been underestimated in many climate models and inferred that: "Aerosol climate forcing today is inferred to be −1.6±0.3Wm−2," which is equivalent to a cooling of about 1.2°C. In that case, they wrote, "humanity has made itself a Faustian bargain more dangerous than commonly supposed". 
Conclusion

Michael E. Mann's analysis is sobering, especially when aerosols are accounted for.

The world is already hitting 400 ppm CO2 (the daily average at the measuring station at Mauna Loa first exceeded 400 ppm on 10 May 2013 and currently rising at a rate of approximately 2 ppm/year and accelerating), so the message is very clear that today we have circumstances that can drive us to 2°C of warming, and that emissions from now on are adding to warming above 2°C and towards 3°C or more. This reinforces my conclusion last year that there is no carbon budget left for 2°C of warming, and claims to the contrary are a dangerous illusion.

Mann concludes in not dis-similar terms:
The conclusion that limiting CO2 below 450 ppm will prevent warming beyond 2°C is based on a conservative definition of climate sensitivity that considers only the so-called fast feedbacks in the climate system, such as changes in clouds, water vapor and melting sea ice. Some climate scientists, including James E. Hansen… say we must also consider slower feedbacks such as changes in the continental ice sheets. When these are taken into account, Hansen and others maintain, we need to get back down to the lower level of CO2 that existed during the mid-20th century — about 350 ppm. That would require widespread deployment of expensive “air capture” technology that actively removes CO2 from the atmosphere.

Furthermore, the notion that 2°C of warming is a “safe” limit is subjective. It is based on when most of the globe will be exposed to potentially irreversible climate changes. Yet destructive change has already arrived in some regions. In the Arctic, loss of sea ice and thawing permafrost are wreaking havoc on indigenous peoples and ecosystems. In low-lying island nations, land and freshwater are disappearing because of rising sea levels and erosion. For these regions, current warming, and the further warming (at least 0.5°C) guaranteed by CO2 already emitted, constitutes damaging climate change today.

[Originally posted at Climate Code Red

Thursday, May 22, 2014

The real budgetary emergency and the myth of "burnable carbon"

by David Spratt


How fast and how profoundly we act to stop climate change caused by human actions, and work to return to a safe climate, is perhaps the greatest challenge our species has ever faced, but are we facing up to what really needs to be done?

We have to come to terms with two key facts: practically speaking, there is no longer a "carbon budget" for burning fossil fuels while still achieving a two-degree Celsius (2°C) future; and the 2°C cap is now known to be dangerously too high.


No Carbon Budget Left - David Spratt from Breakthrough  -  "We have no carbon budget left
for burning of fossils fuels - emergency action is now the only viable path"  - 
David Spratt

For the last two decades, climate policy-making has focused on 2°C of global warming impacts as being manageable, and a target achievable by binding international treaties and incremental, non-disruptive, adjustments to economic incentives and regulations (1).

But former UK government advisor Professor Sir Robert Watson says the idea of a 2°C target "is largely out of the window”, International Energy Agency chief economist Fatih Birol calls it "a nice Utopia", and international negotiations chief Christiana Figueres says we need "a miracle". This is because, in their opinions, emissions will not be reduced sufficiently to keep to the necessary "carbon budget" (2).

The carbon budget has come to public prominence in recent years, including in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report in 2013, as being the difference between the total allowable greenhouse gas emissions for 2°C of warming, and the amount already emitted or spent. The budget varies according to the likelihood of overshooting the target: the higher the risk, the bigger the budget. In the IPCC report, no carbon budget is given for less than a one-in-three chance of failure.

At that one-in-three risk of failure, the IPCC says the total budget is 790 GtC (gigatons, or one billion tons, of carbon), less emissions to 2011 of 515 GtC, leaving a budget of 275 GtC in 2011, or ~245 GtC in 2014 (3).

What is less well understood is that if the risk is low, there is no carbon budget left (4).

Breakthrough National  Climate Restoration
Forum 21-22 June,  Melbourne
Climate change with its non-linear events, tipping points and irreversible events – such as mass extinctions, destruction of ecosystems, the loss of large ice sheets and the triggering of large-scale releases of greenhouse gases from carbon stores such as permafrost and methane clathrates – contains many possibilities for catastrophic failure.

Ian Dunlop, a former senior risk manager and oil and coal industry executive, says the management of catastrophic risk has to be very different from current processes. As serious, irreversible outcomes are likely, this demands very low probabilities of failure: management of catastrophic risk "must centre around contingency planning for high-impact and what were regarded as low-probability events, which unfortunately are now becoming more probable… Major, high-risk industrial operations, such as offshore oil exploration, provide a model, with detailed contingency planning and sequential barriers being put in place to prevent worst-case outcomes" (5).

If a risk-averse (pro-safety) approach is applied – say, of less than 10% probability of exceeding the 2°C target – to carbon budgeting, there is simply no budget available, because it has already been used up. A study from The Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research shows that "the combination of a 2°C warming target with high probability of success is now unreachable" using the current suite of policy measures, because the budget has expired (6).

This is illustrated in Figure 1 where, as we move to the right (greater probability of meeting target) along the blue line which is the 2°C carbon budget, we reach a point around 90% probability (blue circle) where the total budget intersects with what we have already emitted.



As well, on-going greenhouse emissions associated with food production and deforestation are often conveniently pushed to one side in discussing carbon budgets. UK scientists have shown that if some reasonably optimistic assumptions are made about deforestation and food-related emissions for the rest of the century, then most emission reduction scenarios are incompatible with holding warming to +2ºC, even with a high 50% probability of exceeding the target. In other words, food and deforestation has taken up the remaining budget, leaving no space for fossil fuel emissions (7).

In addition, the carbon budget analysis makes optimistic and risky assumptions about the stability of Arctic, and of polar and other carbon stores such as permafrost. As one example, the modelling discussed in the IPCC report projects an area of summer Arctic sea-ice cover in the year 2100 higher that actually exists at the moment, yet there is a great deal more warming and sea-ice loss to come this century! In fact, many Arctic specialists think the Arctic will be sea-ice free in summer within the next decade, with consequences for global warming that the carbon budget calculations have significantly underestimated. (8)

Australian Climate Council member Prof. Will Steffen says the IPCC carbon budget may "be rather generous". The IPCC report says the modelling used does not include explicit representation of permafrost soil carbon decomposition in response to future warming, and does not consider slow feedbacks associated associated with vegetation changes and ice sheets. Recent research suggests these events could happen well below 2°C of warming, so they should be taken into account, but they are not.

Accounting for the possible release of methane from melting permafrost and ocean sediment implies a substantially lower budget (9). This reinforces the need to take a pro-safety, risk-averse approach to the carbon budget, especially since some research suggests that Arctic permafrost may be vulnerable at less than 2°C or warming (10).

For all these reasons – that is, prudent catastrophic risk management, accounting for food production and deforestation emissions, and for Arctic sea ice and carbon store instability – the idea of "burnable carbon" – that is, how much more coal, gas and oil we can burn and still keep under 2°C – is a dangerous illusion, based on unrealistic, high-risk, assumptions.

A second consideration is that 2°C of warming is not a safe target. Instead, it's the boundary between dangerous and very dangerous (11), and 1°C higher than experienced during the whole period of human civilisation (12), illustrated in Figure 2. The last time greenhouse gas levels were as high as they are today, modern humans did not exist (13), so we are conducting an experiment for which we have no direct observable evidence from our own history, and for which we do not know the full result.



However, we do understand that many major ecosystems will be lost, a 2°C sea-level rise will eventually be measured in the tens of metres (14), and much of human civilisation and large, productive river delta systems will be swamped. There is now evidence to suggest that the current conditions affecting the West Antarctic ice sheet are sufficient to drive between 1.2 and 4 metres of sea rise (15), and evidence that Greenland will contribute more quickly (16), and they are just two contributors to rising sea levels.

It is now clear that the incremental-adjustment 2°C strategy has run out of time, if for no other reason than the "budget" for burning more fossil fuels is now zero, yet the global economy is still deeply committed to their continuing widespread use.

We all wish the incremental-adjustment 2°C strategy had worked, but it hasn't. It has now expired as a practical plan.

We now have a choice to make: accept much higher levels of warming of 3–5°C that will destroy most species, most people and most of the world's ecosystems; a set of impacts some more forthright scientists say are incompatible with the maintenance of human civilisation.

Or we can conceive of a safe-climate emergency-action approach which would aim to reduce global warming back to the range of conditions experienced during the last 10,000 years, the period of human civilisation and fixed settlement. This would involve fast and large emissions reduction through radical energy demand reductions, whilst a vast scaling-up of clean energy production was organised, together with the remaking of many of our essential systems such as transport and food production, with the target being zero net emissions. In addition, there would need to be a major commitment to atmospheric carbon dioxide drawdown measures. This would need to be done at a speed and scale more akin to the "war economy", where social and economic priority is given to what is perceived to be an overwhelming existential threat.

After 30 years of climate policy and action failure, we are in deep trouble and now have to throw everything we can muster at the climate challenge. This will be demanding and disruptive, because there are no longer any non-radical, incremental paths available.

Prof. Kevin Anderson and Dr Alice Bows, writing in the journal Nature, say that "any contextual interpretation of the science demonstrates that the threshold of 2°C is no longer viable, at least within orthodox political and economic constraints" and that "catastrophic and ongoing failure of market economics and the laissez-faire rhetoric accompanying it (unfettered choice, deregulation and so on) could provide an opportunity to think differently about climate change" (17).

Anderson says there is no longer a non-radical option, and for developed economies to play an equitable role in holding warming to 2°C (with 66% probability), emissions compared to 1990 levels would require at least a 40% reduction by 2018, 70% reduction by 2024, and 90% by 2030. This would require "in effect a Marshall plan for energy supply". As well low-carbon supply technologies cannot deliver the necessary rate of emission reductions and they need to be complemented with rapid, deep and early reductions in energy consumption, what he calls a radical emission reduction strategy (18). All this suggests that even holding warming to a too-high 2°C limit now requires an emergency approach.

Emergency action has proven fair and necessary for great social and economic challenges we have faced before. Call it the great disruption, the war economy, emergency mode, or what you like; the story is still the same, and it is now the only remaining viable path.


keynote speaker, David Spratt, explains why there is no carbon budget left to burn.

Sources:
This article was originally published at ClimateCodeRed.org
Above video, NO CARBON BUDGET LEFT TO BURN, was uploaded by Breakthrough.



Notes
  1. Jaeger, C.C. and J. Jaeger (2011), "Three views of two degrees", Reg. Environ. Change, 11: S15-S26; Anderson, K. and A. Bows (2012) “A new paradigm for climate change”, Nature Climate Change 2: 639-70
  2. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19348194; http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/29/carbon-emissions-nuclearpow; http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/climate-pioneers-see-little-chance-of-avoiding-dangerous-global-warming-20131105-2wyon.html
  3. IPCC (2013) "Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Climate Change 2013; The Physical Science Basis: Summary for Policymakers"
  4. "For a 90% probability of not exceeding 2C of warming the carbon budget had reduced to zero by 2012, using a multi-agent (that is, the well-mixed greenhouse gases, including CO2 and CH4)", Raupach (2013, unpublished), based on Raupach, M. R., I.N. Harman and J.G. Canadell (2011) "Global climate goals for temperature, concentrations, emissions and cumulative emissions", Report for the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. CAWCR Technical Report no. 42. Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Melbourne; Rogelj, J., W. Hare et al. (2011) "Emission pathways consistent with a 2°C global temperature limit", Nature Climate Change 1: 413-418 show at Table 1 no feasible pathways for limiting warming to 2°C during the twenty-first century with a "very likely" (>90%) chance of staying below the target, without carbon drawdown.
  5. Dunlop, I. (2011), "Managing catastrophic risk", Centre for Policy Development, 
  6. http://cpd.org.au/2011/07/ian-dunlop-managing-catastrophic-risk/
  7. Raupach, M. R., I.N. Harman and J.G. Canadell (2011) "Global climate goals for temperature, concentrations, emissions and cumulative emissions", Report for the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. CAWCR Technical Report no. 42. Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Melbourne. 
  8. Anderson, K. and A. Bows (2008) “Reframing the climate change challenge in light of post-2000 emission trends”, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 366: 3863-3882; Anderson, K. and A. Bows (2011) “Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world”, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 369: 20–44
  9. Wadhams, P. (2012) “Arctic ice cover, ice thickness and tipping points”, AMBIO 41: 23–33; Maslowski, W., C.J. Kinney et al. (2012) "The Future of Arctic Sea Ice", The Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 40: 625-654
  10. IPCC (2013) "Working Group I Contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report Climate Change 2013; The Physical Science Basis;
  11. Vaks, A., O.S. Gutareva et al. (2013) “Speleothems Reveal 500,000-Year History of Siberian Permafrost”, Science 340: 183-186; Schaefer, K., T. Zhang et al. (2011) "Amount and timing of permafrost carbon release in response to climate warming", Tellus 63:165-180
  12. Anderson, K. and A. Bows (2011) “Beyond ‘dangerous’ climate change: emission scenarios for a new world”, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 369: 20–44
  13. Marcott, S.A, J.D. Shakun et al. (2013) "A Reconstruction of Regional and Global Temperature for the Past 11,300 Years", Science 339: 1198-120; Hansen, J., P. Kharecha et al. (2013) "Assessing 'dangerous climate change': Required reduction of carbon emissions to protect young people, future generations and nature", Plos One 8: 1-26
  14. Tripadi, A.K., C.D. Roberts et al. (2009), "Coupling of CO2 and Ice Sheet Stability Over Major Climate Transitions of the Last 20 Million Years", Science 326: 1394-1397
  15. Rohling, E. J.,K. Grant et al. (2009) “Antarctic temperature and global sea level closely coupled over the past five glacial cycles”, Nature GeoScience, 21 June 2009 `af
  16. NASA (2014), "NASA-UCI Study Indicates Loss of West Antarctic Glaciers Appears Unstoppable", Media release, 12 May 2014, http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/may/nasa-uci-study-indicates-loss-of-west-antarctic-glaciers-appears-unstoppable, accessed 19 May 2014; Rignot, E., J. Mouginot et al. (2014) "Widespread, rapid grounding line retreat of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith and Kohler glaciers, West Antarctica from 1992 to 2011", Geophysical Research Letters, doi: 10.1002/2014GL060140; Joughin, I., B.E. Smith et al. (2014), "Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica", Science 344: 735 -738
  17. NASA (2014), "Hidden Greenland Canyons Mean More Sea Level Rise", Media release, 19 May 2014, http://www.nasa.gov/press/2014/may/hidden-greenland-canyons-mean-more-sea-level-rise, accessed 19 May 2014; Morlighem, M., E. Rignot et al. (2014), "Deeply incised submarine glacial valleys beneath the Greenland ice sheet", Nature Geoscience, doi:10.1038/ngeo2167
  18. Anderson, K. and A. Bows (2012) “A new paradigm for climate change”, Nature Climate Change 2: 639-70
  19. Anderson, K. (2014) "Why carbon prices can’t deliver the 2°C target", 13 August 2013, http://kevinanderson.info/blog/why-carbon-prices-cant-deliver-the-2c-target, accessed 19 May 2014; Anderson, K. (2012) "Climate change going beyond dangerous – Brutal numbers and tenuous hope", Development Dialogue, September 2012; Anderson, K. (2011) "Climate change going beyond dangerous – Brutal numbers and tenuous hope or cognitive dissonance", presentation 5 July 2011, slides available at http://www.slideshare.net/DFID/professor-kevin-anderson-climate-change-going-beyond-dangerous; plus (7) above.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Is climate change already dangerous?

by David Spratt

Download PDF 
(23 pages)
In a compelling survey, this report answers the question many are afraid to ask: is climate change already dangerous?

This science survey measures the current manifestations and impacts of climate change against the "safe boundaries" metric; surveys the literature on tipping points and non-linear climate events; and provides a detail study of significant recent events in the Arctic.

Three big questions are asked and answered:
  • Is climate change dangerous for just the current increase in global temperature?
  • Is climate change dangerous for the further increases in temperature already implied by the current level of greenhouse gases?
  • By looking at events in climate history where greenhouse gas levels were similar to today, can further light be shone on the "already dangerous" question?
The answers are both shocking, and necessary, if climate policy-making is to escape the delusional paradigm within which it is stuck.

In a concluding section, this report argues that with clear evidence that climate change is already dangerous, we are in an emergency and face "…an unavoidably radical future". And we know from past experience that societies, once in emergency mode, are capable of facing up to and solving seemingly impossible problems.


This post was originally published at:

Monday, August 26, 2013

The astounding global warming impact on our oceans that will reduce cloud cover and bring tears to your eyes

Ocean acidification will just not kill significant ocean ecosystems, but add even more to global warming

by David Spratt




Another significant global warming positive feedback that will add even more to future temperature rises has been identified by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg, Germany. End result: Perhaps another half a degree of warming this century.

New research just published in Nature Climate by Katharine Six and her colleagues shows that as oceans become more acidic (by absorbing increasing volumes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to form carbonic acid), the amount of a compound called dimethylsulphide (DMS) in the ocean decreases.

So what? The researchers say that marine DMS emissions are the largest natural source of atmospheric sulphur, and changes in their strength have the potential to alter the Earth’s radiation budget. They establish:
… observational-based relationships between pH (acidity) changes and DMS concentrations to estimate changes in future DMS emissions …
Global DMS emissions decrease by about 18(±3)% in 2100 compared with pre-industrial times as a result of the combined effects of ocean acidification and climate change. The reduced DMS emissions induce a significant additional radiative forcing, of which 83% is attributed to the impact of ocean acidification, tantamount to an equilibrium temperature response between 0.23 and 0.48 K. Our results indicate that ocean acidification has the potential to exacerbate anthropogenic warming through a mechanism that is not considered at present in projections of future climate change.
Shorthand: by reducing DMS production in the oceans, acidification could add up to another half a degree of warming this century. And that's on top of the 4-to-6 degrees Celsius warming that is now being projected for the emissions path on which the world now seems stubbornly stuck.

Reporting on the latest finding, Eliot Barford in Nature explains that:
Acidification would lead certain marine organisms to emit less of the sulphur compounds that help to seed the formation of clouds and so keep the planet cool.
Atmospheric sulphur, most of which comes from the sea, is a check against global warming. Phytoplankton — photosynthetic microbes that drift in sunlit water — produces a compound called dimethylsulphide (DMS). Some of this enters the atmosphere and reacts to make sulphuric acid, which clumps into aerosols, or microscopic airborne particles. Aerosols seed the formation of clouds, which help cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight.
But this idea that warming will have a DMS impact is not new. As far back as 1994, James Lovelock and Lee Kump published a paper in Nature on Failure of climate regulation in a geophysiological model, with conclusions far more eye-watering that this new research.

Lovelock has explained in The Revenge of Gaia that as the ocean surface temperature warms to a temperature over 12 degrees Celsius (°C), "a stable layer of warm water forms on the surface that stays unmixed with the cooler, nutrient rich waters below". This purely physical property of ocean water, he says, "denies nutrients to the life in the warm layer, and soon the upper sunlit ocean water becomes a desert".

This chlorophyll-deprived, azure-blue water is currently found predominantly in the tropics, which lacks the richness of the marine life of the darker, cooler oceans. In this nutrient-deprived water, ocean life cannot prosper and, according to Lovelock, soon "the surface layer is empty of all but a limited … population of algae". Algae (such as phytoplankton), which constitute most of the ocean’s plant life, are the world’s greatest carbon sinks, devouring carbon dioxide while releasing DMS, which is transformed into an aerosol that contributes to greater cloud formation and, hence, affects weather patterns. The warmer seas and fewer algae that Lovelock predicts are likely to reduce cloud formation and further enhance positive climate feedbacks.

This process should be distinguished from the phenomenon of green, red, or brown algal blooms, which can occur in fresh and marine environments when phytoplankton assume very dense concentrations due to an excess of nutrients in the water. The dead organic material becomes food for bacteria, which can deprive the water of oxygen, destroying the local marine life and creating a dead zone.

Because algae thrive in ocean water below 10°C, the algae population reduces as the climate warms. Lovelock says that severe disruption of the algae–DMS relation would signal spiralling climate change. Lovelock and Kump’s modelling of climate warming and regulation published in Nature in supported this view:
[A]s the carbon dioxide abundance approached 500 parts per million, regulation began to fail and there was a sudden upward jump in temperature. The cause was the failure of the ocean ecosystem. As the world grew warmer, the algae were denied nutrients by the expanding warm surface of the oceans, until eventually they became extinct. As the area of ocean covered by algae grew smaller, their cooling effect diminished and the temperature surged upwards.
Lovelock and Kump (1994) Figure 2
According to Lovelock, the end-result was a temperature rise of 8°C above pre-industrial levels, which would result in the planet being habitable only from Melbourne to the South Pole (going south), and from northern Europe, Asia, and Canada to the North Pole (going north).

On current projections and a high fossil-fuel-use pathway, 500 parts per million carbon dioxide (ppm CO2) in the atmosphere will be exceeded by mid-century. Already the concentration has just hit 400 ppm CO2 (compared to the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm CO2), greenhouse emissions are still growing each year and are currently adding more than 2 ppm CO2 annually.

And the reaction to this astounding paper? In personal correspondence, Kump says their research was generally ignored – and never refuted. I guess that's how cognitive dissonance expresses itself.

Of course reduced DMS production is not the only, or most imminent impact of global warming on our oceans.

In 2013, Frieler, Meinshausen et al. showed that “preserving more than 10% of coral reefs worldwide would require limiting warming to below +1.5°C (atmosphere–ocean general circulation models (AOGCMs) range: 1.3–1.8°C) relative to pre-industrial levels”. Obviously at less than 10%, the reefs would be remnant and reef systems as we know them today would be a historical footnote. Contrast this finding of impacts at 1.5°C or warming, compared to the current, forlorn attempts to hold warming to not more tha 2°C!

Already, the data suggests the global area of reef systems has already been reduced by half. A sober discussion of coral reef prospects can be found in Roger Bradbury’s “A World Without Coral Reefs” and Gary Pearce’s “Zombie reefs as a harbinger for catastrophic future”. Bradbury’s article opening is sharp:
“It’s past time to tell the truth about the state of the world’s coral reefs, the nurseries of tropical coastal fish stocks. They have become zombie ecosystems, neither dead nor truly alive in any functional sense, and on a trajectory to collapse within a human generation. There will be remnants here and there, but the global coral reef ecosystem — with its storehouse of biodiversity and fisheries supporting millions of the world’s poor — will cease to be.”
And on all of this, not one word will be uttered during Australia's current national election campaign. I mean, who in their right mind thinks elections are about our collective future?


David Spratt studied at Australian National University.
David co-authored the book Climate Code Red (2008).  

Above article was posted earlier at ClimateCodeRed.org

References

- Rising ocean acidity will exacerbate global warming, Eliot Barford, August 25, 2013

- Global warming amplified by reduced sulphur fluxes as a result of ocean acidification, Six et al., August 25, 2013

- Limiting global warming to 2 °C is unlikely to save most coral reefs, Frieler et al., September 16, 2012
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n2/full/nclimate1674.html

- The Revenge of Gaia, James Lovelock, 2006
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revenge_of_Gaia

- Failure of climate regulation in a geophysiological model, James Lovelock and Lee Kump, June 30, 1994
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v369/n6483/abs/369732a0.html

Related

- Arctic melt hits food security in bitter taste of life on a hotter planet, by David Spratt, July 11, 2013

- Climate Plan

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Arctic melt hits food security in bitter taste of life on a hotter planet

by David Spratt
Arctic melt has pushed the Jet Stream into a more
meandering, S-shape pattern, dragging 
down and
stalling cold and wet conditions 
over Europe

A wet summer and autumn, followed by a cold winter and spring, in the UK and Ireland have hit wheat and potato production and cattle feed, a foretaste of how climate change can affect food security, even in the developed economies.

And the culprit in this drama is rapid Arctic melting, which has destabilised the Jet Steam and brought extreme weather – unusual cold, heavy snowfall, record rain and hot spells — to much of northern Europe and North America, and record heat to the Arctic. Following Superstorm Sandy’s battering of the US north-east coast in 2012, flooding in June across central Europe was the worst in 400 years.

Rapid Arctic melting – sea-ice volume in September 2012 was down by four-fifths compared to the summer average 30 years ago – has help change the Jet Stream, the river of high altitude air that works to separates Arctic weather from that of northern Europe, Russia and Canada, and which governs much northern hemisphere weather.

The ice loss has added to ocean and atmospheric heat, pushing the Jet Stream into a more meandering, S-shape pattern, dragging down and stalling cold and wet conditions over Europe, and bringing record heat to the Arctic, as was dramatically experienced in Alaska last month.

Professor Jennifer Francis, of Rutgers Institute of Coastal and Marine Science, says the Arctic-driven changes to the Jet Stream allows “the cold air from the Arctic to plunge much further south. The pattern can be slow to change because the [southern] wave of the jet stream is getting bigger… so whatever weather you have now is going to stick around”.

In March, new research found that “the severe loss of summertime Arctic sea ice — attributed to greenhouse warming — appears to enhance Northern Hemisphere jet stream meandering, intensify Arctic air mass invasions toward middle latitudes, and increase the frequency of atmospheric blocking events like the one that steered Hurricane Sandy west into the densely populated New York City area”.

And a recent study by Liu et al found that “the recent decline of Arctic sea ice has played a critical role in the recent cold and snowy winters” across the northern hemisphere.

Last September, Francis warned that 2012′s record sea ice melt could lead to a cold winter in the UK and northern Europe. And so it turned out, with farmers copping the consequences:

WET SUMMER AND AUTUMN: Six out of the last seven summers in the UK (since the record-smashing Arctic melt of 2007) have seen below-average temperatures and sunshine, and above-average rainfall. 2012 was the UK’s second wettest year on record, with autumn rain almost 50% higher than long-term average. In Ireland, twice the average amount of rainfall was recorded in many parts of the country during the three summer months of 2012. People across the UK and Ireland will readily tell you that “We haven’t had a summer in four or five years”, and unusually, for them, complain of “bitter” and “terrible” winters, with temperatures dropping as low as –18C in Northern Ireland.

COLD WINTER AND SPRING: “It’s been the longest winter on record in this country. Not since the records began 70 years ago has there been a March as cold as this year’s. It’s been followed by the coldest April in 25 years in some areas of the country,” reported the Irish Examiner on 9 May 2013. The Irish spring in 2103 was coldest in 62 years across most of country, and dull and windy. Spring in the UK this year was the coldest in 50 years.

BAD COMBINATION: This combination of events has wrecked farmer’s schedules. Less growth in a dull 2012 summer – combined with water-logged crops and pastures in autumn – reduced yields, and some crops had to be left in the ground. The spring 2013 growing season, including for apples and pears as well as pasture, started up to six weeks late due to the cold, dull conditions. And waterlogged fields meant that across Ireland cattle were still being kept in their winter sheds in the first week of June, ostensibly a summer month. The consequences – whilst mild compared to climate-change impacts on vulnerable communities in the developing world from the African Sahel to Asia’s changing monsoons – show how easily the security of food production can be disrupted:

WHEAT: In the UK, a wet autumn, hard winter and cold spring has resulted in one of the smallest wheat harvests in a generation, 30% below normal. Britain, generality the third biggest wheat grower in the EU, will be a net importer for the first time in 11 years. Charlotte Garbutt, a senior analyst at the industry-financed Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board says: “Normally we export around 2.5m tonnes of wheat but this year we expect to have to import 2.5m tonnes.” The latest analysis from the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs says total farming income decreased by £737million in 2012 to £4.7bn, as farmers faced both crop losses and higher feed costs.

STOCK LOSSES: Late snowstorms across England, Sotland, Wales and Ireland March 2013, with drifts of up to 5 metres, killed an estimated 40,000 newborn lambs. In ireland’s west, one-quarter more animals died in the first three months of 2013 compared to 2012, with some vets trained to look for suicidal behaviour in farmers.

POTATO SHORTAGE: A wet autumn and poor season in 2012 prevented many crops being harvested in Ireland. Supermarket price-squeezing has also driven some farmers out of the industry, together resulting in reduced yields of at least 30 per cent in 2012. By spring 2013, potato prices had almost tripled in many parts of Ireland, with supplies exhausted and a reliance on imports from central Europe.

Limavady farmer, James Wray, told UTV News that said the changing weather in recent weeks had forced the price up: “This year has been a terrible growing season with loads of crops lost and loads of crops not harvested and any crops that have been harvested have produced low yields. There just isn’t any potatoes left in the country, there are no farmers with potatoes left, so whatever potatoes are about, are very, very expensive. If you go to any of the major supermarkets most of their potatoes are coming in from Europe just to bridge the gap.”

Potato shortages have a particular cultural resonance in Ireland as a consequence of the Irish potato famine of the mid-nineteenth century, which killed a million people and forced another million to emigrate.

FEED SHORTAGE: In the last week of May (the final week of spring), farmers in Ireland’s west were queuing for hay and silage imports from England, France and Netherland as their winter feed became exhausted and a lack of pasture growth in spring due to cold and overcast conditions, and wet fields, prevented cattle from being moved from their winter sheds. More than 13000 tonnes of feed was imported, but even so farmer Enda Stenson said local farmers “have neither money nor fodder”. Many had sold down their herds to be able to buy feed for the remainder.

BEES IN TROUBLE: Bad weather and disease is also threatening honey production, with some beekeepers expecting to produce no honey as bees have been unable to mate and hives are decimated. And bees play a crucial role in pollinating many crops.

Jim Donohoe, of the Federation of Irish Beekeepers’ Associations, told the Irish Independent that the problem was weather related: “We’ve had bad summers before, but because of the wind, rain and lack of sunshine, we’ve had serious problems with colonies wanting to swarm, but the queens being unable to mate with drones which refused to fly because there wasn’t calm conditions. This year, we had a delayed winter where bees couldn’t fly. The flowers were delayed coming out, and that crucial period meant bees died from old age. All of this combines to about 50pc of colonies being lost. If we don’t get milder weather, the losses will be closer to 75pc.

These stories may seem trivial compared to the devastating impact of climate change on global food security and prices, and their political consequences. Writing on Egypt’s new political turmoil, Nafeez Ahmed notes that:

“Food price hikes have coincided with devastating climate change impacts in the form of extreme weather in key food-basket regions. Since 2010, we have seen droughts and heat-waves in the US, Russia, and China, leading to a dramatic fall in wheat yields, on which Egypt is heavily dependent. The subsequent doubling of global wheat prices – from $157/metric tonne in June 2010 to $326/metric tonne in February 2011 – directly affected millions of Egyptians, who already spend about 40% of their income on food. That helped trigger the events that led to the fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011, but the same configuration of factors is worsening.”

And Lester Brown, head of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, has warned that grain harvests are already shrinking as US, India and China come close to ‘peak water’. He says that 18 countries, together containing half the world’s people, are now over-pumping their underground water tables to the point – known as “peak water” – where they are not replenishing and where harvests are getting smaller each year.

Together these stories paint a compelling picture of the threat to food security from climate change, not just in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, but in the heart of the developed world too.


David Spratt studied at Australian National University.
David co-authored the book Climate Code Red (2008).  

David frequently posts at the Climate Code Red website.
Above article was first posted at Reneweconomy.com.au


Related

- Polar jet stream appears hugely deformed - by Sam Carana, December 20, 2012
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/12/polar-jet-stream-appears-hugely-deformed.html

- The Threat of Wildfires in the North - by Sam Carana, June 27, 2013