2010 on course to be joint hottest year since 1850

This year likely to match 1998 temperatures as UN scientists predict more floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels   

• World will warm faster than predicted in next five years – study 

• Greenhouse gases at 'highest level' since pre-industrial times  

Reuters 

Guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 November 2010

This year is so far tied for the hottest year in a record dating back to 1850 in a new sign of a warming trend, the three major institutes which calculate global warming estimates told Reuters.

UN climate talks resume next week in Cancún, Mexico, where expectations are no longer for a comprehensive deal to slow warming, but smaller progress for example to curb deforestation, in a bid to agree a pact next year or later.

The previous conference in Copenhagen last year fell short of hopes, but about 140 countries have agreed a non-binding deal to try to limit warming to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels.

Temperatures are now about 0.8C above pre-industrial levels, and 2010 is about 0.5C above the 1961-1990 average, near the record, with two months' data still to collect.

Even with a possible cool end to the year, 2010 is expected to be no lower than third in a record where 1998 and 2005 are warmest. The UN panel of climate scientists says higher temperatures mean more floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels.

"I think it's too close to call. Based on these numbers it'll be second, but it depends on how warm November and December are," said Dr Phil Jones, director of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), at the University of East Anglia, which says 1998 was the record year so far.

By contrast, scientists at Nasa say surface temperatures through October were above the previous record year, which it says was 2005. Differences between years are only a few hundredths of a degree.

"I would not be surprised if most or all groups found that 2010 was tied for the warmest year," said Nasa's Dr James Hansen.

And the US National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said 2010 was a "dead-heat" for the record. "Our data show 2010 being virtually tied with 1998, through October," said Deke Arndt, from NCDC.

The three institutes use similar observations, but in slightly different ways. For example, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies takes greater account of Arctic weather stations, where warming has been fastest.

Some sceptics have argued that because the last temperature peak was in 2005 or 1998, that global warming must have stalled.

Most scientists reject that view, saying that whether or not 2010 is the hottest year is less important than the long-term trend, which is up, due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. The period 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record.

Scientists also point to natural variation, and in particular the El Nino Pacific weather phenomenon associated with warm weather worldwide. 1998 was a strong El Nino year.

"The trend is overwhelming, particularly over the past 50 years," said Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN panel of climate scientists. "I wouldn't read these numbers for a particular year as very compelling, we have to take a historical view," he told Reuters.

In one of the biggest bets on climate change, James Annan, a climate scientist at the Frontier Research Centre for Global Change in Japan, has a $10,000 wager made in 2005 with two Russian solar physicists who are sceptical about global warming.

He will win if average world temperatures are higher from 2012-17 than they were from 1998-2003. "Things are progressing smoothly," he said.

The UN's World Meteorological Organisation will publish an estimate on 2 December of where 2010 ranks. It compiles data from a wider range of sources, both measured temperatures and climate models. It lists 1998 and 2005 as the warmest years. "We have indications that it would match one of the three warmest years," said Omar Baddour, head of climate data management operations in Geneva.

Greenhouse gases at record levels: UN agency

ABC News Online, 25 November 2010

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says concentrations of the main greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have reached their highest level since pre-industrial times.

Concentrations of the gases continued to build up in 2009 - the latest year of observations - despite the economic slowdown, the UN weather agency said in its latest Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.

Rises in the amount of greenhouse gases increase radiation in the atmosphere, warming the surface of the Earth and causing climate change.

"The main long-lived greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, have reached their highest recorded levels since the beginning of the industrial age, and this [is] despite the recent economic slowdown," WMO deputy secretary general Jeremiah Lengoasa said.

Total radiative forcing of all long-lived greenhouse gases - the balance between radiation coming into the atmosphere and radiation going out - increased by 1.0 per cent in 2009 and rose by 27.5 per cent from 1990 to 2009, the WMO said.

The growth rates for carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide were smaller than in 2008, but this had only a marginal impact on the long-lasting concentrations.

Carbon dioxide is the single most important greenhouse gas caused by human activity, contributing 63.5 per cent of total radiative forcing.

Its concentration has increased by 38 per cent since 1750, mainly because of emissions from burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and changes in land use, the WMO said.

Natural emissions of methane due, for example, to the melting of the Arctic icecap or increased rainfall on wetlands - themselves caused by global warming - are becoming more significant, it said.

This could create a "feedback loop" in which global warming releases large quantities of methane into the atmosphere which then contribute to further global warming.

These natural emissions could be the reason why methane has increased in the atmosphere over the past three years after nearly a decade of no growth, the WMO said.

Human activities such as cattle-rearing, rice planting, fossil-fuel exploitation and landfills account for 60 per cent of methane emissions, with natural sources accounting for the rest.

- Reuters

5 Gigatonnes - the gap between climate science and current climate cuts after Copenhagen?

UNEP

The Executive Summary and Full report can be downloaded here.

Helsinki/Mexico City/Nairobi/London/Washington DC, 23 November 2010 - Nations have the chance to deliver almost 60 per cent of the emissions reductions needed to keep global temperatures under a 2 degrees Celsius rise.

But only if the pledges made last year in Copenhagen are fully met.

These are among the findings of a new report compiled by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and jointly authored by over 30 leading scientists from numerous international research institutes.

The report was convened in conjunction with the European Climate Foundation and the National Institute of Ecology-SEMARNAT, Mexico.

The findings, launched in advance of the UN climate convention meeting in Cancun, Mexico, spotlight the size of the 'emissions gap' between where nations might be in 2020 versus where the science indicates they need to be.

UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, said, "I encourage all Parties to make good on their national mitigation pledges, and to further progress within the negotiations as well as through strengthened efforts on the ground to curb emissions. There is no time to waste. By closing the gap between the science and current ambition levels, we can seize the opportunity to usher in a new era of low-carbon prosperity and sustainable development for all."

It is estimated that, in order to have a 'likely' and cost-effective chance of pegging temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius or below over the 21st Century, global emissions will need to have peaked within the next 10 years and be around 44 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2020.

The report, whose compilation was led by the UNEP Chief Scientist, finds that:

• Under a business-as-usual scenario, annual emissions of greenhouse gases could be around 56 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2020. As a point of reference, global emissions were estimated to be around 48 gigatonnes in 2009;
  
  
• Fully implementing the pledges and intentions associated with the Copenhagen Accord could, in the best case identified by the group, cut emissions to around 49 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2020;
  
  
• This would leave a gap of around 5 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent that needs to be bridged over the coming decade-an amount equal to the emissions of all the world's cars, buses and trucks in 2005;
  
  
• In the worst case identified in the report - where countries follow their lowest ambitions and accounting rules set by negotiators are lax rather than strict - emissions could be as high as 53 gigatonnes in 2020, only slightly lower than business as usual projections.

Expect more wild weather, say scientists

The Age, November 19, 2010

Hungry polar bears gathering along the tundra, twice as many record-breaking temperatures and stronger hurricanes are among the latest signs of climate change, scientists say.

And we can expect more rain, more drought and fiercer storms in the future if the world continues on its fossil-fuel gobbling track, they told reporters on a conference call on Wednesday to discuss the year in global warming.

Michael Mann, a leading US scientist, said he just returned from a trip to Churchill, Manitoba, the Canadian shore town famous for its polar bears, where the sea ice they depend on for hunting seals has not yet formed because of warm temperatures.

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"When you go up there you see the bears all along the coast on the tundra awaiting the sea ice to form and it hasn't formed yet," Mann said.

"This was for me a very tangible and personal opportunity to see the impacts of climate change firsthand," he said. "The Arctic is in many respects a harbinger of things to come on our planet."

Mann also pointed to research being presented on Capitol Hill by another climate scientist, Jerry Meehl of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), showing the number of record-breaking hot days is twice as high as the record cold days.

"Heat records are outpacing cold records at a factor of two to one now. That number is expected to increase to 20 to one by late this century if we continue on the course that we are on with fossil fuel burning," Mann said.

Some events, such as the 2003 European heat wave which killed about 35,000 people and this year's heat wave in Moscow would be "extremely unlikely to happen in the absence of climate change," he added.

Hurricane expert Greg Holland said the fiercest storms are already showing an uptick in frequency, and more powerful hurricanes lie ahead.

"If you just look at the Atlantic in the last 10 years, we have experienced three times as many category 5 hurricanes as have occurred in previous history on a relative basis," he said.

"We now have consensus statements coming out from the scientists and indeed a lot of regional research is pointing all in the same direction. There is nothing going in the other direction," he said.

"And that is the very intense hurricanes, the very intense [category] fours and fives are going to increase and they could be doubling or tripling."

Holland also predicted more rain and drought in the coming years.

"As the earth warms up the atmosphere can hold more water; if there is more water available there will be more rain. Paradoxically of course there is as a result of that more drought because the land dries out quicker."

Mark Serreze, of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, said the reduction of sea ice in the Arctic would have a growing impact on temperatures in the rest of the world.

"What we have seen is a rather pronounced reduction in the extent of sea ice. At the end of summer now we have 40 per cent less sea ice than we had say during the 1970s," Serreze said.

"We are losing that insulator so what we are seeing now are big fluxes in heat from the ocean to the atmosphere," he said.

"Since everything is connected together in the climate system what happens up there can influence what happens down here and I am talking about in the middle latitudes."

The other thing that the scientists said was changing, along with climate, was how they confront sceptics who question the reality of climate change and the extent of humans' role in causing it.

"There are still many of us who like to sit in our office or go into the field and just do our science and not enter into the fray, but I think that is changing," Serreze said.

"We have to become more involved," he added. "We have to become better communicators. Scientists are not always good communicators of the issues but this is part of a learning curve and we have got to face that."

Mann, a Nobel-Prize winning scientist who was cleared of allegations of misconduct this year stemming from a series of leaked emails between scientists about climate change, said he too had learnt from his experiences.

"One lesson is that if you're a climate scientist and you are willing to play a prominent role in the public discourse on climate change then you'd better have a thick skin," he said.

Garnaut: what if the mainstream science is right?

Crikey, 10 November 2010 Ross Garnaut, University of Melbourne economics fellow and author of the Garnaut Report, writes:

Ross Garnaut laid out an updated case for action on climate change in his 2010 Cunningham Lecture speech at the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia last night -- read the full speech on Crikey's environmental blog Rooted. He concluded his remarks with the following plea ... What if the mainstream science is right? What if the science supported by the overwhelming majority of scientists who are qualified in the various disciplines related to climate, is broadly right? What if all of the Academies of Science in all of the countries of scientific achievement, are not deluded, or enticed into error by the availability to their members of certain types of research grants? If they are broadly right, we would probably see a threat to our prosperity rather larger than any of the issues that do the rounds of public discourse on long-run economic development. The threats would manifest themselves in large problems in a few decades, and as the dominant problem well before the end of this century. The challenges beyond this century are difficult to reconcile with continuity in modern human civilisation. If the mainstream science is broadly right, later in this century we will probably not be squabbling about whether a 37% reduction in allocations to Murray-Darling irrigators is too much; but rather working hard to improve the chance of there being any water at all to allocate. If the mainstream science is broadly right, defence and immigration would probably have radically different contexts. Probably, because there is uncertainty. It may be worse than this, or better. There is no reason to think the chances of better are higher than the chances of worse. We should think about it, because there's a chance that the mainstream science is right. When we think about it, those of us who are not climate scientists would need reasons beyond the current state of knowledge to think anything except that they are probably right. Certainly more likely to be right than people who have not spent the months and years and decades learning the subtleties of this complex area of knowledge. I hope that we here at least -- members of this other learned academy that takes seriously the development and testing and accumulation of knowledge -- can agree that there is enough of a chance that the mainstream physical and biological science is broadly right, to invest in understanding the implications for human society. After all, ours is the Academy that Australians look to for knowledge on how the immense pressures that we are in the process of placing on our societies may change human life on earth. If we thought about the respective credentials of those who line up with the mainstream science, and those who are prepared to take their chances with information from other places, we would think that this issue was at least one of the fateful public policy matters of our time. I suppose that is where I was when I accepted my first commission to prepare the Climate Change Review from Kevin Rudd and all the premiers and chief ministers in April 2007. I was deeply steeped in the question for 18 months after my commission. I was asked to come up with an independent assessment of Australia's interest in domestic and international climate change policy. With an excellent team of mostly young people, I sought to work through the implications of the science being broadly right. The implications for humanity on a global scale and in Australia if there were no effective mitigation; the costs and benefits of various approaches to mitigation. To their credit, the commissioning leaders respected the independence that had been written into my terms of reference, although my conclusions as they came through in interim and draft reports, working papers and the final report, were not always what they would have preferred to hear. I sought to make my premises, logic and sources of information clear for all to see. On a matter as complex as this, and breaking new conceptual ground, I was not going to get it all right at once. I came to the conclusion that we should be doing a great deal at home and abroad to increase the chances of effective mitigation. The extent of interest in the subject, in Australia and abroad, surprised me. More than 10,000 filled the town halls of the mainland capitals to hear about and to discuss the draft report. More than 10,000 sent in submissions. People struggled through unfamiliar lines of logic in the final report, and sent emails to me or stopped me in the street or coffee shop to discuss some detail. It was the extent of community realisation that this was an issue beyond the weft and warp of day-to-day politics that gave us the unusual result in the 2010 election and the chance to have another try. Some of you, my colleagues in the Academy, are already deeply engaged in aspects of this important subject. I hope that more of you join us, at least to the extent of seeking to follow the logic of the 2008 review and the update that will follow. The Australian community will need the engagement of the people who spend their lives with knowledge and analysis to help them to a satisfactory conclusion the second time round. Australia has mostly been a laggard in the great international challenge of climate change mitigation. That has made it less likely that there will be a satisfactory global mitigation. It is unlikely that Australia will come to play its proportionate part in an adequate global effort unless there is a strong independent centre of our public life, that holds some ground for the public interest against the huge investments that will again be made in false information and the distortion of the political process. The learned academies are an essential part of that independent centre. To read the full speech from Ross Garnaut, and join the environmental discussion, head to Rooted