Tag: Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change (IPCC)

A third of Antarctic ice shelf risks collapse as our planet warms

CNN: A third of Antarctic ice shelf risks collapse as our planet warms.

More than a third of the Antarctic ice shelf risks collapsing into the sea if global temperatures reach 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels as climate change warms the world, a new study from the UK’s University of Reading has warned.

In a forecasting study, scientists found that 34% of the area of all Antarctic ice shelves, measuring some half a million square kilometers, could destabilize if world temperatures were to rise by 4 degrees. Some 67% of the ice shelf area on the Antarctic Peninsula would be at risk of destabilization under this scenario, researchers said.
Ice shelves are permanent floating platforms of ice attached to areas of the coastline, formed where glaciers flowing off the land meet the sea. They can help limit the rise in global sea levels by acting like a dam, slowing the flow of melting ice and water into the oceans.
The study was published Thursday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. [No study link is provided.]

Report: The push for standing forest protections in US climate policy

Inside Climate News: The push for standing forest protections in US climate policy. Researchers say “proforestation” policies are the fastest and most effective way to draw excess CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Bob Leverett walked away from the trunk, looking up through the canopy, trying to get eyes on the crown.

He crushed the thick pine needle duff with each step, while a light drizzle tapped on the leaves above him, and birds called from a distance. Then he saw it, the top of the tree, and measured its height with a small instrument he raised to his eye. He would combine this measurement with others to calculate the mass of the tree, a monolithic white pine in western Massachusetts. Once he found the mass, he could approximate how much carbon it contained, carbon the tree had been pulling out of the atmosphere, in the form of carbon dioxide, for well over 100 years.

The drizzle stopped by the time he finished taking his measurements, so that only sporadic drops of water fell as they lost their balance in the canopy. He attended to his calculator and then his eyes moved up the furrowed grey-brown trunk, “Twenty tons, roughly, of carbon dioxide absorbed from the atmosphere. That’s the contribution of that whopping big tree,” Leverett, co-founder of the Native Tree Society, told EHN.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1.5°C special report released in 2018 found that, in addition to dramatic emissions reductions, humans must quickly find a way to remove a tremendous amount of existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to stay below a 1.5°C rise in average global temperatures and avoid the worst climate change related harms.

In 2019, Moomaw and his co-authors published a scientific review finding that the capacity of forested lands to sequester carbon dioxide could be increased significantly. They say the fastest way to do this is through what they call “proforestation,” the natural growth and development of standing forest ecosystems.

Report: The push for standing forest protections in US climate policy

Daily Climate: The push for standing forest protections in US climate policy. Researchers say “proforestation” policies are the fastest and most effective way to draw excess CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Bob Leverett walked away from the trunk, looking up through the canopy, trying to get eyes on the crown.

He crushed the thick pine needle duff with each step, while a light drizzle tapped on the leaves above him, and birds called from a distance. Then he saw it, the top of the tree, and measured its height with a small instrument he raised to his eye. He would combine this measurement with others to calculate the mass of the tree, a monolithic white pine in western Massachusetts. Once he found the mass, he could approximate how much carbon it contained, carbon the tree had been pulling out of the atmosphere, in the form of carbon dioxide, for well over 100 years.

The drizzle stopped by the time he finished taking his measurements, so that only sporadic drops of water fell as they lost their balance in the canopy. He attended to his calculator and then his eyes moved up the furrowed grey-brown trunk, “Twenty tons, roughly, of carbon dioxide absorbed from the atmosphere. That’s the contribution of that whopping big tree,” Leverett, co-founder of the Native Tree Society, told EHN.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1.5°C Special report released in 2018 found that, in addition to dramatic emissions reductions, humans must quickly find a way to remove a tremendous amount of existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in order to stay below a 1.5°C rise in average global temperatures and avoid the worst climate change related harms.

Yal Climate Connections, January 8, 2021

Articles include:  global 2020 wildfire season;  Add risk management to National Climate Assessment;  IPCC’s upcoming major climate assessment;  plight of trees in a warming climate;  Mobile app helps Inuit hunters monitor ice conditions;  Wildfires torch dwindling sage-grouse habitat;  COVID-19 & online meetings;  Wisconsin city, a renewable energy leader;  private charging stations.

Study: Hurricanes could reach farther inland due to climate change

CBC discusses a study suggesting that Hurricanes could reach farther inland due to climate change. Storms will be ‘bigger, stronger, and move longer distances,’ ocean expert says.

Hurricanes that make landfall are maintaining their strength longer because of climate change, a new study suggests, meaning such storms could have more of an impact than in the past.

The reason storms are maintaining their strength, according to researchers at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), is the increase in sea surface temperatures.

A hurricane needs several things to form, the main one being warm water. When warm, moist air rises from that water, it’s replaced by cooler air which in turn warms and rises. Clouds form and then, under the right conditions, begin to rotate with the spin of Earth. Given enough warm water, the cycle continues and a hurricane forms.

It’s well understood that, because of climate change, ocean temperatures have risen. According to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, between 1971 and 2010, sea surface temperatures rose by roughly 0.11 C and will continue to rise as the oceans take up roughly 90 per cent of the excess heat produced by a warming climate.

All of that translates into more fuel for hurricanes. And that means it takes hurricanes longer to run out of gas as they move inland.

“Fifty years ago, for a hurricane to decay [once it made landfall], it took 17 hours. Now, if the landfall is at the same intensity and every other thing is the same … it would take 33 hours,” said Pinaki Chakraborty, a professor of fluid mechanics at OIST and co-author of the study, published in the journal Nature Research on Wednesday.

Report: How Coal Country Can Adapt to the Energy Transition

Environmental and Energy Institute (EESI) discusses How Coal Country Can Adapt to the Energy Transition.

From international bodies to town halls, focus has been increasingly directed toward deploying clean energy and decarbonizing the economy following reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that countries must drastically cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions within the next decade to limit global average temperature rise to 1.5°C (2.7°F). While widespread, rapid decarbonization is essential, communities that have developed with the coal industry as their backbone are already feeling the burden of the energy and economic transition. Policymakers at all levels of government are interested in mitigating harm to coal-dependent communities. This issue brief characterizes broad issues for communities in transition and surveys federal and regional policies, programs, and proposals intended to provide workforce development opportunities, diversify local economies, and alleviate economic hardship.

Download issue brief (PDF with endnotes).

Report: Balancing nitrogen between food production and climate change

The Hill discusses Balancing nitrogen between food production and climate change.

Soil health and its pivotal role in growing food has recently met with the need to address another global challenge: climate change.

Providing food is a major source of greenhouse gases, emitting almost 40 percent as much as anthropogenic emissions from fossil fuels in areas not related to food production. Greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural soils are a major factor in this, accounting for 60 percent of agricultural emissions. Only a few years ago, at the UN climate convention in Paris, it dawned on the global community that soils not only harbor the opportunity to reduce emissions but also to sequester carbon. A fact well known among Earth scientists is that several times more carbon resides in soils on a global scale than in all vegetation and the atmosphere combined. Increasing organic carbon in soil by a relatively small proportion would thereby make a large difference to global climate. A much-needed global agenda was born that included not only scientists but particularly policy makers, industry and the farm and ranch community to promote carbon farming.

The opportunities are largely untapped: IPCC’s Special Report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius from 2018 only offers a 20 percent decrease in nitrous oxide from agriculture over the next 80 years.

Report: Global heating threatens UK wildlife’s ability to adapt and survive

The Guardian discusses Global heating threatens UK wildlife’s ability to adapt and survive. Restoring and connecting habitat across Britain could save a fifth of species by 2030, says report by Rewilding Britain.

Global heating is shifting Britain’s climatic zones by up to 5km each year, outpacing wildlife’s ability to adapt and survive, according to a new report by Rewilding Britain.

If species cannot adapt to higher temperatures or relocate elsewhere, they will be threatened with extinction.

But research by the rewilding charity suggests that restoring and connecting species-rich wild habitat across 30% of Britain’s land and sea by 2030 could save a fifth of species from climate-driven habitat loss, decline or extinction.

Rewilding Britain is calling for the creation of core rewilding areas, where as many natural processes, habitats and related species are restored as possible, across at least 5% of the UK, with a mosaic of nature-friendly land and seas across another 25%.

According to the report, the climate velocity – the speed at which species must migrate to stay in the same climate zone – is 5km a year on UK land and at least 10km a year in UK seas, based on calculations from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Such rates are more than 800 times faster than the scientific estimates of how quickly species recolonised land after the retreat of the last Ice Age.

Yale Climate Connections, October 16, 2020

Articles include: carbon-capture technology will save its coal plant;  action needed soon on climate change;  September 2020 warmest September ever;  Dakota Access Pipeline protector, not a protestor;  small business on the front line of sea-level rise; What is an IPCC report?;  ‘Youth Climate Leaders’.

Study: Populism Is the Key to Climate Action

New Republic discusses how Populism Is the Key to Climate Action. Recent research on persuasion offers a manual for how to turn red states green.

Forty-nine percent of West Virginians are “worried” about global warming, and 64 percent think citizens should be doing more to address it. That’s in the state that’s least worried about climate change—everywhere else, the numbers are higher still. 

Getting people to care about climate change isn’t the primary problem anymore (although it would always help to see those numbers grow). The upcoming battle is over what sort of story voters craft around climate: whom they blame for the problem; what action they will support; and whether scientists, activists, and politicians can work together against fossil fuel industry influence to make a new, low-carbon society.

A review paper published in September by researchers at Yale’s Climate Change Communication lab tried to summarize and organize what we know about how to persuade people to support robust climate policy. While more research is needed, useful themes are already emerging from the data. It’s enough, if climate-motivated donors and activists have the will, to launch a full-scale strategy to make the most of the nine-ish years we have before 2030—the year when, according to estimates from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, catastrophe could become unavoidable. And since right now the Democratic Party is the only major party remotely interested in robust climate policy, this will mean changing Democratic tactics as well.