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‘Unprecedented’ climate extremes are everywhere. Our baselines for what’s normal will need to change

November 28, 2024 , https://theconversation.com/unprecedented-climate-extremes-are-everywhere-our-baselines-for-whats-normal-will-need-to-change-244298

Extreme temperature and rainfall events are increasing around the world, including Australia. What makes them extreme is their rarity and severity compared to the typical climate.

A region’s “climate” is defined by a 30-year average of mainly rainfall and temperature. Increasingly, these climate definitions have become less appropriate – we need to look at events over shorter time periods to gain a more accurate picture.

We can see this in the recent worldwide proliferation of extreme flooding and prolonged heatwaves.

Using southern Australia as a prime example, our newly published research in Academia Environmental Sciences and Sustainability shows that machine learning techniques can help identify key climate drivers, supporting a redefinition of climate in a warming world.

Increasing ‘flash’ events

In Australia, eastern coastal regions of Queensland and New South Wales continue to receive record downpours and flash floods, interspersed by dry periods of a few months to a few years.

In stark contrast, southern coastal regions are drying and facing more extreme heatwaves. With already parched vegetation and catastrophic fire dangers, this region is experiencing drought conditions due to decreased cool season rainfall and increased temperatures.

Notably, flash droughts and flash floods have adversely affected both agricultural crop yields and grazing pasture quality. Flash droughts greatly reduce moisture for germination. Flash floods ruin crops close to harvest time.

The problem with these “flash” events is just how difficult they are to forecast. To make more accurate seasonal and annual predictions for rainfall and temperatures, we need to update our climate models. But how do we know which climate drivers need to be included?

Seeking a new normal

To keep track of typical climate conditions and provide context for weather and climate forecasts, the World Meteorological Organization uses a set of data products known as climatological standard normals.

They define climate as averages of monthly, seasonal and annual weather-related variables such as temperature and rainfall, over consecutive 30-year periods.

Climate normals can be used to assess how typical of the current climate a particular event was in a given location. It’s how we arrive at temperature anomalies.

For example, to tell whether a year was relatively “hot” or “cool”, we look at the anomaly – the difference between the average temperature for the calendar year in question, compared to the climate normal.

But extreme variations are now occurring in periods of ten years or even shorter. Consequently, multiple increases and decreases can cancel each other out over a 30-year period. This would hide the large changes in statistics of weather variables within that period.

For example, large rainfall changes in average monthly, seasonal and annual amounts can be hidden within 30-year averages. Global warming often amplifies or diminishes the impacts of multiple climate driver phases within approximately ten-year periods. When averaged over 30 consecutive years, some information is lost.

What did we find?

Over the past decade or so, machine learning (where computers learn from past data to make inferences about the future) has become a powerful tool for detecting potential links between global warming and extreme weather events. This is referred to as attribution.

Machine learning techniques are simple to code and are well-suited to the highly repetitive task of searching through numerous combinations of observational data for possible triggers of severe weather events.

In our new study, machine learning helped us untangle the dominant climate drivers responsible for recent flash flood rainfall on the east coast of Australia, and a lack of rainfall on the southern coast.

Along the southern coast, the cool season from May to October is typically produced by mid-latitude westerly winds. In recent years these winds were farther away from the Australian continents, resulting in the recent drought of 2017–19 and flash drought of 2023–24.

In contrast, after the 2020–22 La Niña, the east coast continues to experience wetter conditions. These come from generally higher than average sea-surface temperatures off the east coast and Pacific Ocean, due to the presence of onshore winds.

Machine learning identified the dominant drivers of the scenario above: the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the Southern Annular Mode, the Indian Ocean Dipole, and both local and global sea surface temperatures.

A key finding was the prominence of global warming as an attribute, both individually and in combination with other climate drivers. Climate drivers and their combinations can change with increasing global warming over shorter periods that contain extremes of climate. Hence, the use of 30-year periods as climate normals becomes less useful.

Finding regional attributes for better forecasting

Climate models often disagree on the climate drivers likely to be relevant to extreme events.

A key feature of machine learning is the ability to deal with multi-source data by identifying regional attributes. We can combine possible climate-driver predictors with high-resolution climate model predictions, especially after the climate model data are downsized to cover specific regions of concern. This can help with extreme event forecasting at a local scale.

Scientists are continuously developing new methods for applying machine learning to weather and climate prediction.

The scientific consensus is that global warming has dramatically increased the frequency of extreme rainfall and temperature events. However, the impacts are not uniform across the world, or even across Australia. Some regions have been more affected than others.

Currently there is no single alternative definition to the traditional 30-year climate normal, given the variable impacts across the planet. Each region will need to determine its own relevant climate time period definition – and machine learning tools can help.

November 30, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Huge COP29 climate deal too little too late, poorer nations say

 Richer countries have promised to raise their funding to help poorer
countries fight climate change to a record $300bn (£238bn) a year, but the
deal has come under criticism from the developing world.

The talks at the UN climate summit COP29 in Azerbaijan ran 33 hours late, and came within
inches of collapse. The agreement falls well short of the $1.3tr developing
countries were pushing for. The African Group of Negotiators described the
final pledge as “too little, too late”, while the representative from India
dismissed the money as “a paltry sum”.

But after two weeks of often bitter
negotiations in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, poorer nations did not stand
in the way of a deal. Five key takeaways from COP29 climate talks. The
promise of more money is a recognition that developing nations bear a
disproportionate burden from climate change, but also have historically
contributed the least to climate change.

 BBC 24th Nov 2024, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0gx4przejo

November 27, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

COP29: Baku breakthrough disappoints, but should still trigger a fresh wave of climate finance.

Green groups have condemned the COP29 finance package as a betrayal of
developing nations, but it has the potential to provide a big chunk of the
trillions of dollars of climate investment the world needs. Is new climate
accord delivered in Baku ‘bad deal’? Would no deal have been better? Did
the new finance package agreed at COP29 amount to a ‘global Ponzi scheme’?
As ever, it’s complicated.

 Business Green 24th Nov 2024 https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4382153/cop29-baku-breakthrough-disappoints-trigger-fresh-wave-climate-finance

November 25, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

The 1.5C Climate Goal Is Dead. Why Is COP29 Still Talking About It?

 The battle to keep global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius has been a
rallying cry for climate action for nearly a decade. Now, with the planet
almost certain to blow past the target, diplomats and campaigners at the
COP29 summit have found themselves awkwardly clinging to a goal that no
longer makes sense.

The evidence has become harder and harder to ignore.
This year will once again be the hottest on record as greenhouse gas
emissions continue to soar and Earth will likely register an average
reading of 1.5C above pre-industrial levels for the first time.

A study released this month using a new technique for measuring the rise in
temperatures suggests the world was already 1.49C hotter at the end of
2023.

“1.5C has been deader than a doornail” for a while now, said Zeke
Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth. Many of his peers agree.

The United Nations has concluded that the world is on track to warm roughly
3.1C before the end of the century if nothing changes. That report was
released just before representatives from nearly 200 countries gathered in
Baku, Azerbaijan for the UN’s annual global climate conference, where
they have been mired in bitter negotiations over how to raise money to help
developing nations combat global warming.

 Bloomberg 18th Nov 2024, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-11-18/cop29-what-does-1-5c-s-failure-mean-for-climate-negotiations

November 21, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Climate crisis to blame for dozens of ‘impossible’ heatwaves, studies reveal

 At least 24 previously impossible heatwaves have struck communities across
the planet, a new assessment has shown, providing stark evidence of how
severely human-caused global heating is supercharging extreme weather.

The impossible heatwaves have taken lives across North America, Europe and
Asia, with scientific analyses showing that they would have had virtually
zero chance of happening without the extra heat trapped by fossil fuel
emissions.

Further studies have assessed how much worse global heating has
made the consequences of extreme weather, with shocking results. Millions
of people, and many thousands of newborn babies, would not have died
prematurely without the extra human-caused heat, according to the
estimates.

 Guardian 18th Nov 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/18/climate-crisis-to-blame-for-dozens-of-impossible-heatwaves-studies-reveal

November 20, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Almost 500 carbon capture lobbyists granted access to Cop29 climate summit

More lobbyists for the controversial technology were present this year, despite debate about its viability

Dharna Noor in Baku, 16 Nov 2024
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/16/500-carbon-capture-lobbyists-cop29-climate

At least 480 lobbyists working on carbon capture and storage (CCS) have been granted access to the UN climate summit, known as Cop29, the Guardian can reveal.

That is five more CCS lobbyists than were present at last year’s climate talks, despite the overall number of participants shrinking significantly from about 85,000 to about 70,000.

CCS lobbyists at Cop29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, outnumber the core national delegations from powerful nations including the US and Canada. Nearly half of the lobbyists were granted access as members of national delegations, affording them greater access to negotiations, including 55 who were invited as “guests” by the Azerbaijani government, which is hosting this year’s climate summit, and given what some at the conference are calling “red-carpet treatment.”

The figure, calculated by the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and shared exclusively with the Guardian, comes amid concern from activists that the climate summit is too heavily featuring “false solutions”.

“We are witnessing fossil-fuel greenwashing by those attempting to delay the inevitable fossil fuels phase-out,” said Rachel Kennerley, a campaigner at CIEL. “This large presence of lobbyists is a confirmation that the carbon capture industry is working hard to promote the misguided CCS technology. But governments and companies simply cannot ‘clean’ their coal, oil, and gas by capturing and ‘managing’ emissions.”

On Friday, it was revealed that 1,773 coal, oil, and gas lobbyists have been granted access to the climate talks, including 132 invited by the host country, as the Guardian reported. Many CCS lobbyists granted access appear on the fossil fuel lobbyist list as well.

CCS has been heavily promoted at Cop29, and has also featured heavily in national decarbonisation plans submitted this week, including the UK’s and the UAE’s.

The oil and gas industry has long advocated for CCS. If it is treated as a primary vehicle for decarbonisation, it could allow companies to continue selling fossil fuels and thereby preserve their main business models.

But activists have long derided the technology, noting it does not yet exist at scale and doesn’t address the local harms of fossil fuel extraction, and that it can be dangerous. And despite its branding as a climate solution, it has so far mostly been used to recover carbon from oil wells and then inject it back underground to help squeeze more fuel from depleted fields – a process known as enhanced oil recovery.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s leading climate authority, has said CCS – or CCUS, which includes carbon “utilisation” for fertiliser production or enhanced oil recovery – should play a role in global decarbonisation plans. But last year, the group’s leader said that over-reliance on the technologies could lead the world to surpass climate tipping points.

In 2022, the research organisation Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found underperforming carbon capture projects outnumbered successful ones by large margins. This year, they found the use of fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage is unlikely to be economically competitive with renewable-based solutions.

“The significant number of CCS lobbyists at Cop29 highlights the fossil fuel industry’s substantial investment in attempting to secure its future, despite the urgent need to phase out fossil fuels,” Kennerley said. “Investing in this expensive and unreliable technology will lock in fossil fuels and waste precious time and money that we cannot afford. Large-scale CCS transport and storage also comes with significant health and safety risks.”

Negotiators approved rules on the use of carbon markets on the first day of the negotiations this week. Carbon market rules fall under article 6 of the 2016 Paris climate agreement, and a subsection of article 6 allows for carbon credits to stem from emissions reductions and removals. CIEL is concerned that the subsection could open the door for the increased reliance on CCS. And the campaigners worry that lobbyists are pushing negotiators to enshrine rules that could boost financing for the technologies.

For the analysis, CIEL pored over the UN’s list of individuals registered to attend Cop29 and disclosed affiliations, totalling up all those who were involved in CCS and CCUS projects as per an International Energy Agency database, and other companies and organisations that have a public track record advocating for the technologies.

Fossil fuel industry documents released by a 2021 US congressional investigation suggest that oil bosses have long been aware of CCUS’s limitations – and its potential as a lifeline for fossil fuels.

Olivia Powis, CEO of the Carbon Capture & Storage Association said: “COP29 is an important opportunity for climate experts, business leaders and governments to address climate change and adopt technologies that reduce emissions.”

“To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, as per the Paris Agreement, it is essential that we utilise all net zero transitional technologies available,” she said. “CCUS has an important role to play in the reduction of emissions levels through technologies that remove CO2 from the atmosphere, as well as reduce levels of CO2 in the atmosphere through the decarbonisation of industries such as chemicals and cement.”

The Guardian has also contacted the Global CCS Institute for comment.

November 18, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

**Evaluation of Nuclear as a Solution**

in evaluating solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy
security, two important questions that arise are

(1) should new nuclear
electricity-producing plants be built to help solve these problems, and

(2)
should existing, aged nuclear plants be kept open as long as possible to
help solve the problems?

This section discusses these issues after nuclear
power is explained.

In sum, before accounting for waste storage or meltdown
damage costs, a new nuclear lant costs about 3 to 4 times that of a new
onshore wind farm, takes 7 to 21 years longer between planning and
operation than a wind farm, and produces nine to 37 times the emissions per
unit electricity generated as a wind farm.

Thus, funds spent on new nuclear
means much less electricity, a much longer wait, and a much more emissions
than the same funds spent on WWS. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change similarly concludes that the economic, social, and technical
feasibility of nuclear power have not improved over time.

 Stanford University 30th Oct 2024, https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/WWSStillNMN/SNMN-WhyNotNuclear.pdf

November 16, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

‘No sign’ of promised fossil fuel transition as emissions hit new high

There is “no sign” of the transition away from burning fossil fuels
that was pledged by the world’s nations a year ago, with 2024 on track to
set another new record for global carbon emissions.

The new data, released
at the UN’s Cop29 climate conference in Azerbaijan, indicates that the
planet-heating emissions from coal, oil and gas will rise by 0.8% in 2024.
In stark contrast, emissions have to fall by 43% by 2030 for the world to
have any chance of keeping to the 1.5C temperature target and limiting
“increasingly dramatic” climate impacts on people around the globe.

The world’s nations agreed at Cop28 in Dubai in 2023 to “transition away”
from fossil fuels, a decision hailed as a landmark given that none of the
previous 27 summits had called for restrictions on the primary cause of
global heating. On Monday, the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, told the
summit in Baku: “History will judge us by our actions, not by our
words.”

Guardian 13th Nov 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/12/cancel-drilling-north-sea-oilfields-court-greenpeace-uplift-rosebank-jackdaw

November 15, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Fossil Fuel Giants Paying Thousands to Sponsor COP29 Events

Oil and gas giants are paying tens of thousands of dollars in order to
sponsor events at this year’s flagship climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan.
This year’s conference began on Monday (11 November). Over the course of
the 11-day summit, known as COP29, negotiators and leaders across the globe
will put in place commitments to address the climate crisis and assist the
worst-hit countries.

The International Emissions Trading Association
(IETA), a business lobby comprised of some of the world’s largest fossil
fuel producers and greenhouse gas emitters, is hosting a series of events
in its COP29 BusinessHub pavilion, sponsored by oil and gas giants
including Chevron, ExxonMobil, SOCAR, and TotalEnergies.

DeSmog 12th Nov 2024 https://www.desmog.com/2024/11/12/fossil-fuel-giants-paying-thousands-to-sponsor-cop29-events-baku/

November 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

This year has been masterclass in human destruction, UN chief tells Cop29

This year has been “a masterclass in human destruction”, the UN
secretary general has said as he reflected on extreme weather and record
temperatures around the world fuelled by climate breakdown.

António Guterres painted a stark portrait of the consequences of climate breakdown
that had arisen in recent months. “Families running for their lives
before the next hurricane strikes; workers and pilgrims collapsing in
insufferable heat; floods tearing through communities and tearing down
infrastructure; children going to bed hungry as droughts ravage crops,”
he said.

“All these disasters, and more, are being supercharged by
human-made climate change.” Guterres was addressing scores of world
leaders and high-ranking government officials from nearly 200 countries
gathered in Azerbaijan for the Cop29 UN climate summit. Over a fortnight of
talks, nations will try to find ways to raise the vast sums of money needed
to tackle the climate crisis. Developing countries want guarantees of $1tn
a year in funds by 2035 to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and adapt
to the impacts of extreme weather.

Guardian 12th Nov 2024

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/12/year-masterclass-in-human-destruction-un-chief-tells-cop29

November 14, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Cop29 could change the financial climate for the world’s wealthy polluters

Jillian Ambrose, Energy correspondent. Guardian 10th Nov 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/10/cop29-summit-financial-agenda-wealthy-polluters

This week’s summit will focus on paying for the costs of global heating – and much more money is needed.

About 50,000 government officials, policymakers, investors and campaigners will gather in Azerbaijan this week in the hope of answering a trillion-dollar question: how much money should go each year to helping developing countries cope with climate-related costs?

The aim of the UN’s Cop29 climate talks in Baku, which is being called the “climate finance Cop”, is to establish a new annual climate financing target to replace the current $100bn pledge, set in 2009, which expires at the end of this year. There is one clear consensus already: the existing climate finance available to developing countries is nowhere near enough to withstand worsening climate impacts. The ambition is too low, and in 15 years the annual target has been met in full only once, in 2022.

Campaigners have called for the governments of wealthier countries to contribute to a new collective quantified goal (NCQG) on climate finance. Forecasts of how much this will be vary but are typically $500bn to $1tn a year, or less than 1% of global GDP. Some estimates are as high as $5tn.

“Setting a more ambitious goal will be essential to helping vulnerable countries adopt clean energy and other low-carbon solutions and build resilience to worsening climate impacts,” said the World Resources Institute.

But who should pay? To date, the financial contributions that enable developing countries to pursue low-carbon growth and greater climate resilience have come from countries defined by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) as “high income”. The list includes the UK, US, Japan and Germany. But in the 30 years since it was created, countries including China, India and South Korea have dramatically increased their economic might – and their carbon emissions.

It is likely that the talks will include calls to expand the list of countries contributing to climate financing. But even then the sums involved are too large for government spending ­budgets alone, according to delegates from many wealthy nations.

Instead, the talks aim to reform global climate lending to encourage more private capital to play a part. In an open letter last month, Stephanie Pfeifer, the head of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, said many global investors were beginning to explore ways to unlock and mobilise capital.

“An ambitious finance goal that includes private capital can encourage greater ambition in developing countries’ targets [for helping to limit global warming] by building confidence in accessible funding for both mitigation and adaptation, with the latter being historically underfunded,” she said.

This approach is not without its critics. Climate and humanitarian NGOs have warned that loans, even on favourable term, place the financial burden of the climate crisis on already indebted developing nations, which bear the lowest responsibility for the climate crisis but face the greatest risks. These groups have called for polluting companies to pay their fair share.

“Climate finance is not about charity or generosity but responsibility and justice,” according to Debbie Hillier, a policy lead at the humanitarian NGO Mercy Corps. “It is based firmly on the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities – those who contributed most to the climate crisis must bear the brunt of the solution.”

To this end, a new Climate Finance Action Fund (CFAF) will be under consideration. It aims to draw on voluntary contributions from fossil-fuel-producing countries and companies to support developing nations’ climate projects.

For polluters who would rather not pay, campaigners are calling for climate taxes. Billionaires and fossil fuel giants are in the crosshairs of environmental NGO 350.org, which plans to hold them accountable for their outsize impact on the planet in a new campaign. The group argues that funds generated through taxing the ultra-rich could be used both for domestic policies and programmes to lower carbon emissions, and for international climate finance to ensure “those most responsible for the climate crisis contribute to its solution”.

This approach is likely to prove popular with the public. Oxfam is scheduled to publish a report suggesting that the majority of the British public support higher taxes on private jets and superyachts to help tackle the climate crisis.

The survey, by YouGov, is also expected to show strong public support for increasing taxes on the wealthiest UK individuals to fund action, and hiking taxes on businesses in sectors that produce the most emissions.

The key to whatever form climate finance takes will be accountability – a meaningful climate finance target will mean nothing if the annual goal is never reached.

November 13, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment