International climate ministers meet to discuss green recovery post COVID-19 https://www.miragenews.com/international-climate-ministers-meet-to-discuss-green-recovery-post-covid-19/ This week environment ministers from 30 countries will meet in a two-day (27 – 28 April) online conference to discuss how to organise a green economic recovery after the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic is over. They will also aim to agree on how to proceed with ambitious carbon reductions despite the postponement of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26).
The ‘Petersberg Climate Dialogue’ will be hosted by Svenja Schulze, Germany’s Federal Environment Minister and Alok Sharma, the UK Secretary for Business and Energy and designated President of COP26.
Helen Clarkson, CEO of The Climate Group, an international non-profit with a mission of accelerating climate action said:
“The impact of COVID-19 has been devastating. As the world seeks to address the longer-term impact of this crisis, there is an opportunity for governments to help rebuild society differently. A side effect of the reduced economic activity we are seeing is cleaner air and clearer skies – through positive international cooperation we can begin to understand how we keep those things without compromising on economic growth.
“We have received signals from our partners, including 300 of the world’s largest businesses, that their commitment to climate action overwhelmingly remains in spite of the challenging circumstances. Just last week, nine members of our global electric vehicles initiative EV100, including the likes of Ingka Group, Unilever and LeasePlan, called on the EU to retain 2020 CO2 targets for cars, vans and trucks.
“Electric vehicles and renewable, efficient energy are profitable, long term investments. We need these smart green stimulus policies to not just maintain momentum but rapidly ramp-up investment to another level, and help deliver the halving of emissions we need in this decade.”
Ukraine Continues Fighting Fires Near Defunct Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, Radio Free Europe, 27 Apr 20 KYIV — Firefighters in Ukraine continue to battle a series of fires near the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant nearly a month after they broke out.
The State Service for Emergency Situations said on April 27 that brigades were still working to extinguish fires in the Lubyanskiy, Paryshivskiy, Dytyatkivskiy, and Denysovytskiy forest districts in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
“The main efforts are focused on the localization of two fire sites, smoldering stumps, wood segments, and peat-boggy soil,” the service said, adding that radiation in the area does not exceed permissible levels.
The fires began on April 3 in the western part of the uninhabited exclusion zone before spreading to nearby forests.
Eleven of 12 hottest years have occurred since 2000, new climate report warns, Independent, Isabelle Gerretsen@izzygerretsen 23 Apr 20
Last year was the hottest year on record for Europe after scorching heatwaves led to record-breaking temperatures in February, June and July
Eleven out of the 12 hottest years to date have all occurred since 2000, according to a new report by the European Union’s climate monitoring service.
Last year was the hottest year on record for Europe after scorching heatwaves led to record-breaking temperatures in February, June and July, scientists from the Copernicus Climate Change Service (CS3) said in the annual European State of the Climate report.
“The number of days with high heat stress levels are increasing in both northern and southern Europe,” they said.
The findings highlight a continuing trend of warming over four decades in Europe which the Copernicus scientists say is being caused by rising greenhouse gases……
An intense heatwave at the end of July led to record melting of Greenland’s ice sheet and all-time records being broken in northern Scandinavia, the Copernicus report noted.
According to recent research, Greenland’s ice sheet and the polar ice caps are melting six times faster than they were in the 1990s. The high melt rate fits with the worst-case scenario outlined by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which states that sea levels will rise 17cm without sweeping reductions in greenhouse gas emissions…..
Concentrations of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere continue to increase. “It is only possible to find concentrations as high as they were in 2019 by going back millions of years in history,” the Copernicus scientists said.
Professor Martin Siegert, co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, told The Independent that the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is “unnaturally high”.
This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to devastate the U.S. economy, national environmental organizations are stepping up to support labor unions and frontline workers across the country in their push for personal protective equipment, sick and hazard pay, safe working conditions, and other forms of relief as the crisis intensifies.
The Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS), which partners labor and environmental groups, is facilitating a loose coalition of more than 100 unions and environmental organizations working to pressure the Trump administration to do more to protect frontline workers. The groups are also supporting nine days of action from Earth Day to May Day to demonstrate the interconnection of climate justice and worker justice……… This story is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to devastate the U.S. economy, national environmental organizations are stepping up to support labor unions and frontline workers across the country in their push for personal protective equipment, sick and hazard pay, safe working conditions, and other forms of relief as the crisis intensifies.
Disappearing Alaskan sea ice is significant for Arctic marine ecosystem, Science Daily , April 22, 2020, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Summary:
A new study shows that plant materials originating in Arctic sea ice are significantly incorporated into marine food webs that are used for subsistence in local communities of the greater Bering Strait region. The research has the potential to demonstrate the importance of sea ice ecosystems as a source of food in Arctic waters in Alaska and beyond.
A new study shows that plant materials originating in Arctic sea ice are significantly incorporated into marine food webs that are used for subsistence in local communities of the greater Bering Strait region.
The study led by scientists from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science traced persistent biological compounds that are uniquely generated by microscopic plants in sea ice and found that the compounds are present throughout the base of the food web. The research has the potential to demonstrate the importance of sea ice ecosystems as a source of food in Arctic waters in Alaska and beyond.
“It is widely thought that the loss of sea ice habitat will have far-reaching implications for Arctic ecosystems,” said lead author Chelsea Wegner Koch, a graduate research assistant and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
“As sea ice breakup occurs earlier and forms later each year, the open water period is expanding and the sources of food are shifting away from sea ice and towards greater proportions of open water production. This production in the absence of sea ice differs in the quality, quantity, and timing of delivery to the seafloor,” she said.
Efforts to account for the proportional shifts in contributions of ice algae have been incomplete due to the lack of a specific tracer that can be definitively assigned to ice algae rather than open-water phytoplankton. The compounds reaching the seafloor that were studied are associated with food for a range of seafloor animals that in turn provide food for ecologically and culturally important organisms, such as the bearded seal, Pacific walrus, gray whale and spectacled eider that forage on the shallow sea floor. …… https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200422151134.htm
Coronavirus has led to reduced pollution, re-emerging wildlife and plunging oil prices and shown the size of the task facing humanity Oliver Milman. @olliemilman, Wed 22 Apr 2020 The skies are clearing of pollution, wildlife is returning to newly clear waters, a host of flights have been scrapped and crude oil is so worthless that the industry would have to pay you to take it off their hands – a few months ago, environmentalists could only dream of such a scenario as the 50th anniversary of Earth Day hove into view.
But this disorientingly green new reality is causing little cheer given the cause is the coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged much of the world.
“This isn’t the way we would’ve wanted things to happen, God no,” said Gina McCarthy, former head of the US Environmental Protection Agency in the Obama administration. “This is just a disaster that pointed out the underlying challenges we face. It’s not something to celebrate.”
Wednesday’s annual Earth Day event, this year largely taking place online, comes as public health restrictions to prevent the spread of Covid-19 have resulted in a sharp dip in air pollution across China, Europe and the US, with carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels heading for a record 5% annual drop.
The waters of Venice are now clear, lions lounge on roads normally frequented by safari-goers in South Africa and bears and coyotes wander around empty accommodation in Yosemite national park in California.
These would perhaps be the sort of outcomes seen had stringent environmental policies been put in place in the wake of the first Earth Day in 1970, which saw 20 million Americans rally in support of anti-pollution measures.
Instead, the pain of the Covid-19 shutdown has highlighted how ponderous the world’s response has been – the expected cut in emissions, for example, is still less than what scientists say is needed every year this decade to avoid disastrous climate impacts for much of the world.
“It’s the worst possible way to experience environment improvement and it has also shown us the size of the task,” said Michael Gerrard, an environmental law expert at Columbia University.
How people react to the return of normalcy after the pandemic will help define the crises racking the environment, according to Gerrard. “A key question will be do we have a green recovery, do we seize the opportunity to create jobs in renewable energy and in making coastlines more resilient to climate change?” he said. “The current US president clearly has no inclination to do this.”
McCarthy, now head of the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted that some Indian people were seeing the Himalayas for the first time due to the veil of air pollution lifting.
“You wonder if people will want to go back to what it was like before,” she said. “The pandemic has shown people will change their behavior if it’s for the health of their families. This has been the lost message on climate, that it’s a human problem, not a planetary problem. We have to show you can have a stable environment and your job, too.”
The problems in the natural world haven’t suddenly vanished – this week various researchers found that the Arctic is very likely to be free of sea ice in summers before 2050, that the bushfires that torched Australia earlier this year released more carbon than the country’s annual CO2 output and that the first quarter of 2020 was the second-warmest on record.
Donald Trump has signaled that he will try to provide a bailout to the US oil and gas industry, with $25bn already handed out by the US government to prop up airlines. In China, it’s not certain that the wildlife-packed “wet markets” where Covid-19 is believed to have originated will be shut down.
Conservationists warn that returning the world to its pre-pandemic settings will quickly wipe out any environmental benefits of the shutdown.
“It’s a serious wake-up call,” said Thomas Lovejoy, an ecologist who coined the term “biological diversity”. “We bulldoze into the last remaining places in nature and then are surprised when something like this happens. We have done this to ourselves by our continual intrusion into nature. We have to re-chart our course.”
This story is a part of Covering Climate Now’s week of coverage focused on Climate Solutions, to mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The Guardian is the lead partner in Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration committed to strengthening coverage of the climate story.
As businesses shut down and many work from home around the world, electricity demand has reduced in COVID-19 hotspots. This could have a knock-on effect for the renewable sector.China, where the outbreak first took hold, is the world’s biggest electricity consumer. Output from factories has been substantially diminished with many unable to return to their jobs in manufacturing. Due to the curtailing of industrial electricity use, cuts in energy consumption for 2020 could be equivalent to the power used by the whole of Chile, according to IHS Markit.
In Europe, peak power consumption has also gone down. Italy, Spain, and the UK have all seen an average 10 per cent drop in energy usage with bars, restaurants, offices and factories, which remain closed as social distancing measures continue.In particular, fossil fuel based sources of electricity have been impacted by reduced requirements. Coal, usually one of the cheapest options, has now become the most expensive fuel in the world in the face of cheap green alternatives and natural gas, according to Bloomberg Green.
Renewable energy sources seem to have been given an unexpected boost. Around 40 per cent of the electricity generated in the UK on Sunday 5th March came from wind farms, with nearly a fifth being provided by solar energy. This was due to the unusually sunny day, says the National Grid ESO carbon intensity tracker.
These conditions have meant that renewable sources generated more than enough energy to cover the country’s reduced needs. Green supplier, Octopus Energy, even paid some customers to use energy during the day, using a scheme that has previously only been available during the night when demand is very low.
“In most economies that have taken strong confinement measures in response to the coronavirus – and for which we have available data – electricity demand has declined by around 15%, largely as a result of factories and businesses halting operations,” Dr Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency wrote in a blog post.
“In this way, the recent drop in electricity demand fast-forwarded some power systems 10 years into the future, suddenly giving them levels of wind and solar power they wouldn’t have had otherwise without another decade of investment in renewables.”
He went on to explain that this increase in renewable energy usage could even help some countries figure out how to deal with the drop in power that comes from the sun setting or a strong wind dying down. Previously, these kinds of fluctuating energy sources have proved challenging for those who work to keep our lights on. Managing them more ntelligently by shutting off solar panels at midday when there is more electricity than usual and slowing down wind power as demand decreases at night are just some options Dr Birol suggests.
These new findings have also put the spotlight on more reliable and often neglected sources of green energy, like hydropower, which are essential to making sure we have a consistent supply of energy. In exceptional situations like the current pandemic, where a fluctuation in energy supply could put lives and employment at even greater risk, this is particularly important.
Over-reliance on promises of new technology to solve climate change is enabling delay, say researchers. They argue instead for cultural, social and political transformation to enable widespread deployment of both behavioral and technological responses to climate change.
Overreliance on promises of new technology to solve climate change is enabling delay, say researchers from Lancaster University.
Their research published in Nature Climate Change calls for an end to a longstanding cycle of technological promises and reframed climate change targets.
Contemporary technological proposals for responding to climate change include nuclear fusion power, giant carbon sucking machines, ice-restoration using millions of wind-powered pumps, and spraying particulates in the stratosphere.
Researchers Duncan McLaren and Nils Markusson from Lancaster Environment Centre say that: “For forty years, climate action has been delayed by technological promises. Contemporary promises are equally dangerous. Our work exposes how such promises have raised expectations of more effective policy options becoming available in the future, and thereby enabled a continued politics of prevarication and inadequate action.
“Prevarication is not necessarily intentional, but such promises can feed systemic ‘moral corruption’, in which current elites are enabled to pursue self-serving pathways, while passing off risk onto vulnerable people in the future and in the global South.
The article describes a history of such promises, showing how the overarching international goal of ‘avoiding dangerous climate change’ has been reinterpreted and differently represented in the light of new modelling methods, scenarios and technological promises.
The researchers argue that the targets, models and technologies have co-evolved in ways that enable delay: “Each novel promise not only competes with existing ideas, but also downplays any sense of urgency, enabling the repeated deferral of political deadlines for climate action and undermining societal commitment to meaningful responses.
They conclude: “Putting our hopes in yet more new technologies is unwise. Instead, cultural, social and political transformation is essential to enable widespread deployment of both behavioural and technological responses to climate change.”
The researchers map the history of climate targets in five phases: “stabilization,” followed by a focus on “percentage emissions reductions,” shifting to “atmospheric concentrations” (expressed in parts per million), “cumulative budgets” (in tonnes of carbon dioxide), and currently “outcome temperatures.”
In the first phase (around Rio, 1992) technological promises included improved energy efficiency, large-scale enhancement of carbon sinks, and nuclear power
In the second phase around the Kyoto summit (1997) policy promises focused on cutting emissions with efficiency, fuel switching and carbon capture and storage (CCS).
In the third phase (around Copenhagen, 2009), CCS became linked to bioenergy, while policy focused on atmospheric concentrations.
Phase four saw the development of sophisticated global carbon budgeting models and the emergence of a range of putative negative emissions technologies.
Policy in phase five focused increasingly on temperature outcomes, formalised with the Paris accord of 2015.
UNIVERSITY OF HAMBURG The Arctic Ocean in summer will very likely be ice free before 2050, at least temporally. The efficacy of climate-protection measures will determine how often and for how long. These are the results of a new research study involving 21 research institutes from around the world, coordinated by Dirk Notz from the University of Hamburg, Germany.The research team has analyzed recent results from 40 different climate models. Using these models, the researchers considered the future evolution of Arctic sea-ice cover in a scenario with high future CO2 emissions and little climate protection. As expected, Arctic sea ice disappeared quickly in summer in these simulations. However, the new study finds that Arctic summer sea ice also disappears occasionally if CO2 emissions are rapidly reduced.
“If we reduce global emissions rapidly and substantially, and thus keep global warming below 2 °C relative to preindustrial levels, Arctic sea ice will nevertheless likely disappear occasionally in summer even before 2050. This really surprised us” said Dirk Notz, who leads the sea-ice research group at University of Hamburg, Germany.
Currently, the North Pole is covered by sea ice year round. Each summer, the area of the sea ice cover decreases, in winter it grows again. In response to ongoing global warming, the overall area of the Arctic Ocean that is covered by sea ice has rapidly been reduced over the past few decades. This substantially affects the Arctic ecosystem and climate: The sea-ice cover is a hunting ground and habitat for polar bears and seals, and keeps the Arctic cool by reflecting sunlight.
How often the Arctic will lose its sea-ice cover in the future critically depends on future CO2 emissions, the study shows. If emissions are reduced rapidly, ice-free years only occur occasionally. With higher emissions, the Arctic Ocean will become ice free in most years. Hence, humans still have an impact on how often the Arctic loses its year-round sea-ice cover.
Technical details: The simulations used in this study are based on so-called SSP Scenarios (shared socio-economic pathways), which will also be used for the next IPCC report. Scenarios SSP1-1.9 and SSP1-2.6 are used to simulate a rapid reduction of future CO2 emissions, while scenario SSP5-8.5 is used to simulate largely unchanged future CO2 emissions. The study is based on simulations from the most recent generation of climate models, collected within the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6).
Green energy could drive Covid-19 recovery with $100tn boost, Speeding up investment could deliver huge gains to global GDP by 2050 while tackling climate emergency, says report, Guardian, Jillian Ambrose, Mon 20 Apr 2020 Renewable energy could power an economic recovery from Covid-19 by spurring global GDP gains of almost $100tn (£80tn) between now and 2050, according to a report.The International Renewable Energy Agency found that accelerating investment in renewable energy could generate huge economic benefits while helping to tackle the global climate emergency.
The agency’s director general, Francesco La Camera, said the global crisis ignited by the coronavirus outbreak exposed “the deep vulnerabilities of the current system” and urged governments to invest in renewable energy to kickstart economic growth and help meet climate targets.
The agency’s landmark report found that accelerating investment in renewable energy would help tackle the climate crisis and would in effect pay for itself.
Investing in renewable energy would deliver global GDP gains of $98tn above a business-as-usual scenario by 2050 by returning between $3 and $8 on every dollar invested.
It would also quadruple the number of jobs in the sector to 42m over the next 30 years, and measurably improve global health and welfare scores, according to the report.
“Governments are facing a difficult task of bringing the health emergency under control while introducing major stimulus and recovery measures,” La Camera said. “By accelerating renewables and making the energy transition an integral part of the wider recovery, governments can achieve multiple economic and social objectives in the pursuit of a resilient future that leaves nobody behind.”
The report also found that renewable energy could curb the rise in global temperatures by helping to reduce the energy industry’s carbon dioxide emissions by 70% by 2050 by replacing fossil fuels.
Renewables could play a greater role in cutting carbon emissions from heavy industry and transport to reach virtually zero emissions by 2050, particularly by investing in green hydrogen……
The call for a green economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis comes after a warning from Dr Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency, that government policies must be put in place to avoid an investment hiatus in the energy transition.
Climate Change Multiplies the Threats of Infectious Diseases,BY Daniel Ross, Truthout, April 19, 2020
As the novel coronavirus continues to rage like a wildfire across the planet, its devastating toll has left many asking whether climate change — another multifaceted phenomenon with global reach — has played a part in spreading, even triggering, the pandemic. Some, like Katharine Hayhoe, a climate change scientist and professor of public policy at Texas Tech University, have been able to provide answers.
“Climate change didn’t cause the pandemic, and climate change directly causes very few of them,” Hayhoe told Truthout. “But what climate change does is it interacts with, and in many cases has the potential to exacerbate the impacts.”
For those well-versed in the mechanics of climate change, this comes as no surprise — scientists, policy makers and other experts have long acknowledged the links between global warming and the spread of infectious diseases, promulgating the sorts of findings described in the wide-ranging 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, detailing what efforts are needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Dig down, and this multilayered issue has knock-on effects — from the way rising temperatures exacerbate certain health problems to the disruptions that extreme weather events have on the global supply chain — that are inextricably linked with one another. What’s more, the governmental response to the coronavirus crisis, say experts, offers a troubling glimpse into what might happen in the future as the global thermometer inches upwards.
“What it underscores in the first instance is how underprepared we are,” said Sherri Goodman, a senior fellow at the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program and Polar Institute.
As a former first deputy undersecretary of defense in environmental security, she coined the term “threat multiplier” to describe climate change’s kaleidoscopic impacts.
“Our systems — institutional, infrastructure, health, emergency response — could all be overwhelmed from the climate crisis,” Goodman said, warning that the time for wholesale climate resiliency preparedness is upon us. “What we have now is history accelerating itself — things are happening so fast.”
“Where Can These People Go?”
Perhaps most salient in terms of current events is the issue of zoonotic diseases spread between animals and humans, like the COVID-19 virus, which is believed to have originated in bats before being transferred to humans via scaly animals like pangolins. As the world’s population growth continues to rise, natural habitats will continue to be encroached upon and destroyed, not only removing valuable carbon sinks like rainforests but creating environments in which notorious zoonotic disease carriers like bats and rats thrive.
Climate change is also likely to encourage the spread — both in terms of seasonal risk and geographic reach — of “vector-borne” diseases. These are illnesses like West Nile Virus and Lyme Disease that are borne by mosquitoes, ticks and fleas, and already account for a significant number of deaths annually.
According to Sheri Weiser, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), there’s still much to learn about how rising temperatures are impacting the spread of infectious diseases. “But we know the common cause of climate change and COVID-19 — the globalization that’s driving fossil fuel emissions — contributes to the pre-conditions that pave the way for viruses like that,” Weiser said.
Indeed, there’s already an extensive library of medical literature detailing how climate change can impact human health. Extreme weather events — a symptom of a warming planet — can lead to fluctuating temperatures which have been shown to contribute to and worsen cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, kidney disorders and a host of other illnesses. On top of that, extreme heat and humidity can limit the effectiveness of certain medications used to treat these conditions………
the Trump administration’s slash-and-burn approach to the scientific wing of the federal government is the elephant in the room during the COVID-19 pandemic.
New Statesman 16th April 2020, To tackle the climate crisis, the world cannot return to normal after
Covid-19. This moment must be used to build a new economic consensus founded on justice, care and sustainability. The same fractures exposed by this pandemic are the fault lines along which the battle for climate justice is fought.
Many of the people most vulnerable in the current crisis will be worst affected by environmental breakdown, while those who are enriched by this pandemic are likely to benefit in the future. Reports this week that UK hedge funds are cashing in on Covid-19 ring eerily similar to now regular stories of investors betting on climate collapse, water
scarcity and crop failure, and investing in the infrastructures and technologies of disaster.
And just as many nations and communities have been abandoned in our response to this pandemic, it is all too easy to imagine a future in which communities from Jakarta to east Yorkshire are left to fend for themselves amid accelerating climate breakdown. Indeed, to imagine it one has only to look at the present.
Post-crisis stimulus should be directed towards green infrastructure and innately low carbon forms of work like health and social care, proven so vital and so undervalued by this crisis. Debts must be written off to allow those countries most vulnerable to climate crisis to build resilience against it. And having exposed austerity as an ideological choice, rather than a necessity, we must ensure these mistakes are never repeated, and social safety nets are both valued and strengthened.
Rapid Transition Alliance 16th April 2020, Andrew Simms: In the debate over the global response to Covid19 a battle of hashtags has broken out between those urging a quick return to ‘normal’, and those saying that ‘normal’ had many problems and the crisis has revealed both the need and an opportunity for changing direction, and a shift of economic purpose.
New areas of ‘smoldering’ reported near Chernobyl nuclear plant, Accu Weather, By Courtney Spamer, AccuWeather meteorologist, Apr. 18, 2020 Amassive fire that broke out in northern Ukraine at the beginning of April is no longer said to be threatening the infamous Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the region. However, officials are monitoring hot spots as winds whip through the region.
The fire began to burn in the region back on April 3, near the town of Pripyat, located over two hours north of the country’s capital of Kiev and near the border with Belarus.
Police say they arrested a 27-year-old man who is being accused of starting the fire last week. On Monday, police said that another local resident burned waste and accidentally set dry grass ablaze.
The location of the fire was reportedly only one kilometer (less than one mile) away from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the site of the world’s largest nuclear catastrophe back in April 1986.
However, Greenpeace Russia, on Monday, warned that the fire being in close proximity of the power plant posed a radiation risk.
“Higher-than-usual” radiation levels were first reported by the AP on April 5, and are being carefully monitored as the fire continues.
According to Reuters, Chernobyl tour operator, Yaroslav Yemelianenko, shared on Facebook that the fire was only two kilometers away from where “the most highly active radiation waste of the whole Chernobyl zone is located.” He called on officials to warn people of the danger.
Emergency services said on Tuesday morning that there were still some acreage “smoldering” in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, but that the zone contained no open fire.
Acting Chairman of the State Environmental Inspectorate, Yegor Firsov, later said that the fire in the Chernobyl exclusion zone was extinguished, and cited some rain that moved through the region as one helpful factor.
Hundreds of firefighters, as well as several planes and helicopters, battled the blaze for 10 days.
………Strong winds increased the difficulty in containing what’s left of the blaze and new areas of “smoldering” were reported in the Exclusion Zone, but did not pose a threat to any critical facilities, reported officials……..
Dry weather across much of eastern Europe has allowed for a more volatile environment for fire to thrive.
Through April 13, only two percent of the month’s normal rainfall has fallen in Kiev. Since the beginning of 2020, the city has been much drier than normal, only recording 81 mm of rain instead of the average 150 mm.
2020 expected to be Earth’s warmest year on record, scientists say, Doyle Rice, USA TODAY, 17 Apr 20,
This year’s warmth is “unusual,” given the lack of a strong El Niño.
Already, through the first three months of the year, it’s the second-warmest on record.
There’s a 99.9% chance that 2020 will end among the five warmest years on record.
Federal scientists announced Thursday that 2020 has nearly a 75% chance of being the warmest year on record for the planet Earth.
Already, through the first three months of the year, it’s the second-warmest on record, trailing only the El Niño fueled year of 2016, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.
This year’s warmth is “unusual,” given the lack of a strong El Niño, a natural warming of tropical Pacific Ocean water that influences temperatures worldwide, according to Deke Arndt of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
He said both February and March were the warmest months on record without an El Niño present. The long-term trend of ongoing heat the planet continues to see is primarily because of the emission of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels, he said.
Even if 2020 ends up not being the warmest year, NOAA said there’s a 99.9% chance that 2020 will end among the five warmest years on record.
The warmth has been nearly global so far this year: “Record-hot January-through-March temperatures were seen across parts of Europe, Asia, Central and South America, as well as the Atlantic, Indian and western Pacific Oceans,” NOAA said. “No land or ocean areas had record-cold temperatures during this period.”
International climate ministers meet to discuss green recovery post COVID-19 https://www.miragenews.com/international-climate-ministers-meet-to-discuss-green-recovery-post-covid-19/ This week environment ministers from 30 countries will meet in a two-day (27 – 28 April) online conference to discuss how to organise a green economic recovery after the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic is over. They will also aim to agree on how to proceed with ambitious carbon reductions despite the postponement of this year’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP26).
Ukraine Continues Fighting Fires Near Defunct Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, Radio Free Europe, 27 Apr 20 KYIV — Firefighters in Ukraine continue to battle a series of fires near the defunct Chernobyl nuclear power plant nearly a month after they broke out.
Eleven of 12 hottest years have occurred since 2000, new climate report warns, Independent, Isabelle Gerretsen @izzygerretsen 23 Apr 20
