Climate Change News & Discussions

[Yuli Ban]

This thread will discuss issues relating specifically to climate change, especially anthropogenic climate change, the disastrous effects thereof, and efforts to mitigate the worst effects. However, natural climate change and the natural cycle of Earth also counts.

World's largest iceberg has just broken off an Antarctic ice shelf

An iceberg bigger than Majorca that calved off an Antarctic ice shelf has been spotted by satellites, and declared the world’s largest iceberg.

The finger-shaped iceberg, which is about 4320 square kilometres in size, isn’t thought to have been caused by anthropogenic climate change.

Named A-76, the iceberg broke off the Ronne ice shelf into the Weddell Sea in recent days, according to the European Space Agency. The area has been spared an influx of warm ocean water affecting other parts of western Antarctica, which is threatening to release huge glaciers such as one called Thwaites.

“It’s not an area that is undergoing any significant change because of global heating. The main message is it’s part of a natural cycle,” says Alex Brisbourne, a glaciologist at the British Antarctic Survey.

The finger-shaped iceberg is about 4320 square kilometres in size
ESA/Earth Observation

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Climate change: Millions of homes at risk of subsidence by 2070, warns British Geological Survey

Wednesday 19 May 2021

Millions of homes are at risk of subsidence in the next fifty years as a result of climate change, the British Geological Survey (BGS) has warned.

New analysis finds that the number of buildings across Britain highly or extremely likely to suffer "shrink-swell" is set to double from 3% in 1990 to 6.5% by 2030.

By 2070, more than four million properties (10% of the national total) risk being highly or extremely likely to face subsidence.

"Shrink-swell" refers to the flux of soil volume when ground moisture levels change. Experts fear the phenomenon will worsen as the UK faces more extreme weather from climate change.

https://news.sky.com/story/climate-chan ... y-12310644

[Ozzie guy]

I had to get an uber to a appointment due to a climate protest.
I respect their effort but I don't think their tactics will get them anywhere based on my political beliefs.

https://ibb.co/album/bbYL38

[Time_Traveller]

Australian alpine plants face bleak future from rapid climate change

May 24, 2021



Native Australian alpine plants may not be able to adapt or migrate quickly enough to survive rapid changes in climate change, a UNSW study has found.

The study of 21 plants from Kosciuszko National Park, published in Ecology and Evolution, found that 20 were not responding to warming conditions.

Only one species—the Star plantain (Plantago muelleri)—showed that it was adapting to warmer conditions by displaying an increase in plant size.

The second plant that showed evidence of a change in plant traits was the Cascade Everlasting (Ozothamnus secundiflorus), but it decreased in leaf thickness over a 125-year time period.

https://phys.org/news/2021-05-australia ... rapid.html

[weatheriscool]

Infertility poses major threat to biodiversity during climate change, study warns
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-infertili ... rsity.html
by University of Liverpool

A new study by University of Liverpool ecologists warns that heat-induced male infertility will see some species succumb to the effects of climate change earlier than thought.

Currently, scientists are trying to predict where species will be lost due to climate change so they can plan effective conservation strategies. However, research on temperature tolerance has generally focused on the temperatures that are lethal to organisms, rather than the temperatures at which organisms can no longer breed.

[Time_Traveller]

Turkey struck by ‘sea snot’ because of global heating

Tue 25 May 2021

When seen from above, it looks like a brush of beige swirled across the dark blue waters of the Sea of Marmara. Up close, it resembles a creamy, gelatinous blanket of quicksand. Now scientists are warning that the substance, known as sea snot, is on the rise as a result of global heating.

The gloopy, mucus-like substance had not been recorded in Turkish waters before 2007. It is created as a result of prolonged warm temperatures and calm weather and in areas with abundant nutrients in the water.

The phytoplankton responsible grow out of control when nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus are widely available in seawater. These nutrients have long been plentiful in the Sea of Marmara, which receives the wastewater of nearly 20 million people and is fed directly from the nutrient-rich Black Sea.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... al-heating

[wjfox]

Amsterdam bans fossil fuel ads from its metro

May 13, 2021 · 3:15 PM EDT

People passing through Amsterdam’s busy metro system will no longer see ads for greenhouse gas-intensive products such as gas-powered cars and cheap flights around Europe.

Last week, the Amsterdam City Council instituted a ban on these ads in the city’s subway system, which advocates hope will pave the way for larger, more comprehensive ad bans across the Netherlands and beyond.

This particular ban will impact the hundreds of large-screen TV ads that play to the 4 million weekly passengers that use the metro each week.

“We have a dwell time of between four and eight minutes at platforms,” said Radjen van Wilsem, the chief executive officer of CS Digital Media, the company that places ads in the metro. “In that dwell time, as an advertiser, you have a lot of time to tell your story.”

The stories in those ads will no longer promote a fossil-fuel-loving lifestyle. About 10% of the ads will be discontinued, such as ads for petrol-powered rental cars from companies like Sixt, Avis and Budget.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2021-05-13/ ... -its-metro

[Time_Traveller]

Airships for city hops could cut flying’s CO2 emissions by 90%

Wed 26 May 2021



For those fancying a trip from Liverpool to Belfast or Barcelona to the Balearic Islands but concerned about the carbon footprint of aeroplane travel, a small Bedford-based company is promising a surprising solution: commercial airships.

Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV), which has developed a new environmentally friendly airship 84 years after the Hindenburg disaster, on Wednesday named a string of routes it hoped to serve from 2025.

The routes for the 100-passenger Airlander 10 airship include Barcelona to Palma de Mallorca in four and a half hours. The company said the journey by airship would take roughly the same time as aeroplane travel once getting to and from the airport was taken into account, but would generate a much smaller carbon footprint. HAV said the CO2 footprint per passenger on its airship would be about 4.5kg, compared with about 53kg via jet plane.

Other routes planned include Liverpool to Belfast, which would take five hours and 20 minutes; Oslo to Stockholm, in six and a half hours; and Seattle to Vancouver in just over four hours.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/ ... ions-by-90

[weatheriscool]

The last 30 years were the hottest on record for the United States

The U.S. Southwest sweltered under months of blistering temperatures in 2020, including a record-breaking June heat wave (shown) in Phoenix.

There’s a new normal for U.S. weather. On May 4, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced an official change to its reference values for temperature and precipitation. Instead of using the average values from 1981 to 2010, NOAA’s new “climate normals” will be the averages from 1991 to 2020.

This new period is the warmest on record for the country. Compared with the previous 30-year-span, for example, the average temperature across the contiguous United States rose from 11.6° Celsius (52.8° Fahrenheit) to 11.8° C (53.3° F). Some of the largest increases were in the South and Southwest — and that same region also showed a dramatic decrease in precipitation (SN: 8/17/20).

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/cli ... ted-states

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Climate change is erasing 'flammability barrier' that protects high-elevation forests

May 27, 2021

Wildfires in the western United States are increasingly happening at high elevations, in mountainous areas that were previously too wet to burn, according to a new study.

Scientists say climate change and ongoing drought conditions in the West are drying out high-elevation forests, making them particularly susceptible to blazes. With several Western states plunging deeper into a megadrought, and experts predicting a hot and dry summer, the findings add to a distressing outlook for this year's wildfire season.

For their study, which was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers examined records from 1984 to 2017 of all fires in the western U.S. that were larger than 1,000 acres. They found that the amount of scorched land increased across all elevations during that period, but observed that the biggest increase was at elevations above 8,200 feet.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environ ... o-rcna1046

[weatheriscool]

Court orders Shell to slash CO2 emissions in landmark climate ruling
Source: CNN

London -- A Dutch court has ruled that Royal Dutch Shell must dramatically reduce its carbon emissions in a landmark climate decision that could have far reaching consequences for oil companies.

The company must slash its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 from 2019 levels, according to a judgment from a district court in The Hague on Wednesday. That includes emissions from its own operations and from the energy products it sells.

This is the first time that a court has ruled a company needs to reduce its emissions in line with global climate goals, according to Friends of the Earth Netherlands, an environmental campaigning group that brought the case against Shell (RDSA).

The verdict could pave the way for similar cases to be brought in other countries, holding oil companies liable for greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/26/business ... index.html

[weatheriscool]

Victoria to enter a COVID-19 lockdown as cases from Melbourne outbreak grow
Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Victorian government has announced a seven-day lockdown today in a bid to curb the state's growing coronavirus outbreak.

Acting Premier James Merlino said contact tracers had identified 10,000 primary and secondary contacts linked to the outbreak.

Mr Merlino said there would be only five reasons people would be allowed to leave their homes:

Food and supplies
Authorised work
Care and caregiving
Exercise for up to two hours with one other person
Getting vaccinated

Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-27/ ... /100169172

[weatheriscool]

World may breach 1.5C warming within 5 years: WMO
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-world-bre ... s-wmo.html
by Patrick Galey

There is a 90 percent chance of at least one year between 2021-2025 being the hottest on record, according to the Met Office's updated predictions.

The world may temporarily breach the 1.5-Celsius warming mark within the next five years, according to an updated assessment of global climate trends released Thursday.

The World Meterological Organization and Britain's Met Office said there was a 40 percent chance of the annual average global temperature surpassing 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures—the aspirational warming limit of the Paris climate accord.

According to the Met Office's updated global 10-year climate prediction, there is a 90 percent chance of at least one year between 2021-2025 being the hottest on record.

The annual average global temperature over the next five years is likely to be at least 1C warmer than pre-industrial levels, within a range of 0.9C-1.8C warmer, it said.

"These are more than just statistics," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Four-day working week would slash UK carbon footprint, report says

Thu 27 May 2021

The introduction of a four-day working week with no loss of pay would dramatically reduce the UK’s carbon footprint and help the country meet its binding climate targets, according to a report
The study found that moving to a four-day week by 2025 would shrink the UK’s emissions by 127m tonnes, a reduction of more than 20% and equivalent to taking the country’s entire private car fleet off the road.

The shorter working week has gained traction among economists, businesses and some politicians in the past few years. The consumer goods company Unilever announced a year-long trial in New Zealand starting last December and the government’s of Spain and Scotland launched national level pilot schemes.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... int-report

[Time_Traveller]

Rapid heating of Indian Ocean worsening cyclones, say scientists

Thu 27 May 2021

India’s cyclone season is being made more intense by the rapidly heating Indian Ocean, scientists have warned.

Last week India was battered by Cyclone Tauktae, an unusually strong cyclone in the Arabian Sea, resulting in widespread disruption. This week, another severe storm, Cyclone Yaas, formed in the Bay of Bengal, leading to more than a million people being evacuated into safe shelters.

The Indian subcontinent has been facing the brunt of costly and deadly tropical cyclones for decades. But scientists say global heating is accelerating the rate of ocean warming, leading to an increased number of cyclones and rapid intensification of weak storms, with severe repercussions for the country.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... scientists

[weatheriscool]

Global warming already responsible for one in three heat-related deaths
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-global-re ... eaths.html
by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Between 1991 and 2018, more than a third of all deaths in which heat played a role were attributable to human-induced global warming, according to a new article in Nature Climate Change.

The study, the largest of its kind, was led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the University of Bern within the Multi-Country Multi-City (MCC) Collaborative Research Network. Using data from 732 locations in 43 countries around the world it shows for the first time the actual contribution of man-made climate change in increasing mortality risks due to heat.

Overall, the estimates show that 37% of all heat-related deaths in the recent summer periods were attributable to the warming of the planet due to anthropogenic activities. This percentage of heat-related deaths attributed to human-induced climate change was highest in Central and South America (up to 76% in Ecuador or Colombia, for example) and South-East Asia (between 48% to 61%).

[Time_Traveller]

Satellites may have been underestimating the planet's warming for decades

about 8 hours ago



The global warming that has already taken place may be even worse than we thought. That's the takeaway from a new study that finds satellite measurements have likely been underestimating the warming of the lower levels of the atmosphere over the last 40 years.

Basic physics equations govern the relationship between temperature and moisture in the air, but many measurements of temperature and moisture used in climate models diverge from this relationship, the new study finds.

That means either satellite measurements of the troposphere have underestimated its temperature or overestimated its moisture, study leader Ben Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, said in a statement.

"It is currently difficult to determine which interpretation is more credible," Santer said. "But our analysis reveals that several observational datasets — particularly those with the smallest values of ocean surface warming and tropospheric warming — appear to be at odds with other, independently measured complementary variables." Complementary variables are those with a physical relationship to each other.

In other words, the measurements that show the least warming might also be the least reliable.

https://www.space.com/satellites-undere ... al-warming