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Al Gore’s goal to beat climate change – get Trump out of office!

Al Gore’s New Campaign To Save The Planet Is Focused On Getting Donald Trump Out Of Office

“For those of us concerned about the future of the Earth’s climate and balance, this election is extremely important,” Gore said.

Zahra HirjiBuzzFeed News Reporter – 19 Feb 20, Former vice president Al Gore is launching a voter registration campaign this week to increase voter turnout in November, focusing on young people concerned about the rapidly warming planet.This new effort by Gore, who starred in the 2006 climate documentary An Inconvenient Truth and won a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his climate activism, comes amid dire scientific warnings about the climate crisis and a new explosion in climate activism, driven mostly by young people skipping school and challenging politicians to take action. …

“Young people in particular have been both more concerned about climate than other age groups and traditionally less likely to vote in large percentages,” said Gore. “I want to do everything I possibly can to contribute to the registration and turnout and voting by those who are concerned about the climate crisis.”

The effort will initially focus on key battleground states. Gore will kick off with a voter registration rally on Wednesday at the Texas Southern University, a historically black public college in Houston, followed by visits to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on March 10 and the University of Pittsburgh on March 17. Voter registration drives are also being planned at eight additional college and university campuses in Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas over the coming months, and Gore plans to add more sites in the future.

And although he’s largely focused on influencing the presidential election, Gore will encourage voters to consider climate across the ballot…..

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zahrahirji/al-gore-climate-voter-registration-2020

February 20, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, politics, USA | Leave a comment

UK’s new nuclear projects headed to be submerged due to climate change?

Speeding Sea Level Rise Threatens Nuclear Plants https://www.ecowatch.com/sea-level-rise-nuclear-plants-2645160125.html?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2 Climate News Network, Feb. 15, 2020 By Paul Brown

The latest science shows how the pace of sea level rise is speeding up, fueling fears that not only millions of homes will be under threat, but that vulnerable installations like docks and power plants will be overwhelmed by the waves.

New research using satellite data over a 30-year period shows that around the year 2000 sea level rise was 2mm a year, by 2010 it was 3mm and now it is at 4mm, with the pace of change still increasing.

The calculations were made by a research student, Tadea Veng, at the Technical University of Denmark, which has a special interest in Greenland, where the icecap is melting fast. That, combined with accelerating melting in Antarctica and further warming of the oceans, is raising sea levels across the globe.

The report coincides with a European Environment Agency (EEA) study whose maps show large areas of the shorelines of countries with coastlines on the North Sea will go under water unless heavily defended against sea level rise.

Based on the maps, newspapers like The Guardian in London have predicted that more than half of one key UK east coast provincial port — Hull — will be swamped. Ironically, Hull is the base for making giant wind turbine blades for use in the North Sea.

The argument about how much the sea level will rise this century has been raging in scientific circles since the 1990s. At the start, predictions of sea level rise took into account only two possible causes: the expansion of seawater as it warmed, and the melting of mountain glaciers away from the poles.

In the early Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports back then, the melting of the polar ice caps was not included, because scientists could not agree whether greater snowfall on the top of the ice caps in winter might balance out summer melting. Many of them also thought Antarctica would not melt at all, or not for centuries, because it was too cold.

Both the extra snow theory and the “too cold to melt” idea have now been discounted. In Antarctica this is partly because the sea has warmed up so much that it is melting the glaciers’ ice from beneath — something the scientists had not foreseen.

Alarm about sea level rise elsewhere has been increasing outside the scientific community, partly because many nuclear power plants are on coasts. Even those that are nearing the end of their working lives will be radio-active for another century, and many have highly dangerous spent fuel on site in storage ponds with no disposal route organized.

Perhaps most alarmed are British residents, whose government is currently planning a number of new seaside nuclear stations in low-lying coastal areas. Some will be under water this century according to the EEA, particularly one planned for Sizewell in eastern England.

The agency’s report says estimates of sea level rise by 2100 vary, with an upper limit of one meter generally accepted, but up to 2.5 meters predicted by some scientists. The latest research by Danish scientists suggests judiciously that with the speed of sea level rise continuing to accelerate, it is impossible to be sure.

A report by campaigners who oppose building nuclear power stations on Britain’s vulnerable coast expresses extreme alarm, saying both nuclear regulators and the giant French energy company EDF are too complacent about the problem.

The report said: “Polar ice caps appear to be melting faster than expected, and what is particularly worrying is that the rate of melting seems to be increasing. Some researchers say sea levels could rise by as much as six meters or more by 2100, even if the 2°C Paris target is met.

“But it’s not just the height of the rise in sea level that is important for the protection of nuclear facilities, it’s also the likely increase in storm surges. An increase in sea level of 50cm would mean the storm that used to come every thousand years will now come every 100 years. If you increase that to a meter, then that millennial storm is likely to come once a decade.

Bearing in mind that there will probably be nuclear waste on the Hinkley Point C site [home to the new twin reactors being built by EDF in the West of England] until at least 2150, the question neither the Office of Nuclear Regulation nor EDF seem to be asking is whether further flood protection measures can be put in place fast enough to deal with unexpected and unpredicted storm surges.”

February 18, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

Climate change to continue hitting UK with bigger storms

UK must prepare for more intense storms, climate scientists say

Government urged to create more natural drainage systems to cope with impact of crisis, Guardian, Jonathan Watts 17 Feb 20, Britain must brace for more storms like Dennis and Ciara because rainfall will be more intense in a climate-disrupted future, scientists have warned.They said the government needed to increase the creation of more natural drainage systems if it wanted to avoid having to raise the level of sea and river defences every few years to counter the growing threat of flooding and storm surges.

Storm Dennis killed at least three people and flooded many parts of the country at the weekend. Politicians from all parties have acknowledged the link to the climate crisis, but differ over how to respond.

The new environment secretary, George Eustice, said on Sunday that the UK was already spending billions of pounds on flood infrastructure, but that there was a limit to how effective this could be in the face of a worsening threat……

Dr Mohammad Heidarzadeh, the head of coastal engineering and resilience at Brunel University, said the UK’s flood defences were not suited to the current situation, which is characterised by high frequency and high intensity climate events.

“While the interval for major floods was 15-20 years in the past century in the UK, it has dramatically shortened to two-to-five years in the past decade. Therefore, it is no surprise that several flood defence systems were overtopped or damaged by flood water,” he said……

After Storm Desmond devastated parts of Scotland, the Lake District and Northern Ireland in 2015, scientists estimated human-driven change to the climate made extreme rain about 40% more probable. Similar attribution studies for the latest downpours will need more time, but the overall trends towards more extreme weather are well established.

Compared with 50 years ago, the Met Office says the maximum daily deluge each year has risen by 17% from 64mm to 75mm, while the longest wet spell has increased from an average of 12.4 days to 12.9 days. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/feb/17/uk-must-prepare-for-more-intense-storms-climate-scientists-say

February 18, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

Global Optimism – The Future We Choose

Observer 15th Feb 2020, Christiana Figueres is a founder of the Global Optimism group and was head of the UN climate change convention when the Paris agreement was achievedin 2015.

Your new book is called The Future We Choose. But isn’t it too
late to stop the climate crisis? We are definitely running late. We have
delayed appallingly for decades. But science tells us we are still in the
nick of time. We can only choose it this decade.

Our parents did not have this choice, because they didn’t have the capital, technologies and understanding. And for our children, it will be too late.

So this is the decade and we are the generation. If we all reduce our emissions,
collectively we give a signal to the market. Obviously, corporations have
their own responsibilities but it’s helpful to have a strong demand from
the public. Once you get governments, corporations and the public moving in
the same direction towards low carbon, it can grow exponentially [such as
with renewable energy and electric cars]. People reducing their emissions
– by flying less, eating less meat and using clean energy, for example
– is important.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/15/christiana-figueres-climate-emergency-this-is-the-decade-the-future-we-choose

February 17, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change | 1 Comment

Giant iceberg ‘calves’ from Antarctic ice shelf

Shrinking Antarctic ice shelf Pine Island Glacier sheds giant iceberg, ABC News, Digital Story Innovation Team By Mark Doman 14 Feb 20, In one of the fastest-changing areas of the Antarctic ice sheet, satellites have captured the formation of a giant, 300-square-kilometre iceberg.

Researchers monitoring satellite imagery of the Pine Island Glacier (PIG), in west Antarctica, first noticed two large rifts forming in the shelf in 2019.

Over the next few months, as the glacier moved out towards the Amundsen Sea, the rifts expanded, eventually leading to the splitting of the iceberg from the glacier on February 9.

Within a day, the iceberg had broken up into smaller pieces.

Only one of the pieces was large enough to be named (B-49) and tracked by the United States National Ice Centre.

It comes just days after a station on the Antarctic Peninsula logged its hottest day on record, registering a temperature of 18.3 degrees Celsius.

The peninsula, which juts out to the north-east of the Pine Island Glacier, is among the fastest-warming regions on the planet. Temperatures there have increased almost 3C over the last 50 years, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.

Last month, scientists also recorded unusually warm water beneath the Thwaites Glacier, a neighbour to Pine Island.

While the calving of icebergs from shelves such as the Pine Island Glacier is a natural process in the life of a giant glacier, the rate at which this glacier and others in the region have been disintegrating is a cause of concern for scientists.

Previously the ice shelf calved once a decade. By the early 2000s, it started calving once every five years. But since 2013, the glacier has calved five times, according to Stef Lhermitte, a remote sensing scientist from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands……. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-13/antarctic-ice-shelf-pine-island-glacier-sheds-giant-iceberg/11957770

February 15, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ANTARCTICA, climate change, oceans | Leave a comment

Sellafield and Drigg, Today and tomorrow’s Flood Warning.

Radiation Free Lakeland 10th Feb 2020, Sellafield and Drigg, Today and tomorrow’s Flood Warning. This is why there
should be no new nuclear wastes arriving at Sellafield, no new so called
Small Modular Reactors on this floodplain ….and no new coal mine deep
under the Irish Sea. Cumbria (and the fallout is planetary) is ALREADY
under intolerable risks. Today’s flood warnings …fingers crossed.

https://mariannewildart.wordpress.com/2020/02/10/sellafield-and-drigg-today-and-tomorrows-flood-warning/

February 13, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

Coronovirus, bats, and the Climate Change connection

The Wuhan Coronavirus, Climate Change, and Future Epidemics…...TIME, 10 Feb 2020,

“………The strain of coronavirus that’s spreading now is different than Candida for many reasons, but its likely animal vector—bats—provides an interesting example of how temperatures relate to the spread of infectious disease. Like humans, bats are mammals that maintain a warm body temperature that protect them from disease. But while our body temperature rests around 98.6°F and spikes a few degrees when we’re sick, bats’ body temperatures can regularly jump to as high as 105°F.

That means they can carry a whole slew of pathogens without suffering from them. In the near future, as global temperatures inch up, bats will continue to be protected by their body heat, while the pathogens they carry are better able to harm us.

For decades, scientists have recognized that climate change would lead to a range of public health consequences. A 1992 report from the National Academy of Sciences, for example, cited a number of ways climate change could lead to the spread of infectious disease and described the lack of resources devoted to studying the impact of climate change on disease as “disturbing.” Four years later, a widely-cited paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association warned that climate change could increase the spread of everything from malnutrition to malaria, and called for concerted study between doctors, climate scientists and social scientists. That same year the World Health Organization published a 300-page tome on the topic, looking at a slew of ties between climate and health, but at the same time noting that the links are “complex and multifactorial.”https://time.com/5779156/wuhan-coronavirus-climate-change/

February 11, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | China, climate change | 1 Comment

Some climate models now predict unexpected , unprecedented spike in global temperatures

A few climate models are now predicting an unprecedented and alarming spike in temperatures — perhaps as much as 5 degrees Celsius, Business Insider, CONNOR PERRETT FEB 9, 2020

A handful of climate projections are predicting much higher rise in global temperatures than scientists have seen in the models before.
While there’s concern over the number, some scientists hope the latest projections are outliers.
A 2-degree rise in temperature could lead sea level to jump, coral reefs to die, and water to become dangerously scarce in some parts of the world. Some models right now predict a 5-degree rise.

Several recent climate models have suggested the Earth’s climate could warm to a far higher temperature than scientists previously predicted, according to a report from Bloomberg.

The startling anomaly first appeared in models from the National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), which suggested that if Earth’s atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration doubles (as it’s expected to do by the end of the century), the planet could wind up 5.3 degrees hotter. That’s 33% higher than the group’s previous estimate.

About a fifth of new climate-model results published in the past year have indicated similarly stark global temperature spikes, according to Bloomberg. The UK-based Met Office Hadley Centre predicted a 5.5 degrees of warming, the US Department of Energy calculated a 5.3°-degree jump, French scientists estimated a 4.9-degree increase, and a model from Canadian scientists predicted the largest rise: 5.6 degrees

Scientists hope the models are an “overshot,” Bloomberg reported. It will take scientists a significant amount time – at least months – to figure out how to interpret the results.

The climate models estimate “climate sensitivity,” which tells scientists how much warmer the planet will get as a result of rising CO₂ concentrations. For four decades, the expected temperature rise if CO2 levels double has been about 3 degrees.

These models have a proven track record of accurately forecasting climate change. A recent study from the American Geophysical Union found that climate projections over the past five decades have largely been accurate – actual climate observations aligned with the models’ predictions.

Still, there’s a hope among climate scientists that the new projections are outliers. About a dozen other models are still due to be released, Bloomberg reported, and they could help paint a clearer picture……. https://www.businessinsider.com.au/global-warming-climate-models-higher-than-usual-confusing-scientists-2020-2?r=US&IR=T

February 11, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | 2 WORLD, climate change | Leave a comment

Delhi’s disaster – disappearing water supplies

Delhi is facing a water crisis. Ahead of day zero, the city’s residents have turned to the mafia and murder https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-08/delhi-water-crisis-leads-to-mafia-murder-and-mutiny/11931208

By South Asia correspondent James Oaten and Som Patidar

On a crisp Delhi morning, dozens of women, men and children in one of the city’s poorest areas gather on the side of the road holding plastic bottles and buckets.

They’re waiting for a water truck to arrive, clearly identifiable with its large tank on the back and hoses sprouting from the top like tentacles.

When it does, the residents will have just a few minutes to fill their containers as much as possible to hopefully secure enough water for the day.

In winter, when Delhi is cool, the situation is relatively calm.

But in summer, when temperatures surge past 40 degrees Celsius, the situation becomes much more desperate.

Fights have broken out. People have been killed.

What it’s like to live with limited access to water

We are getting water now as it is winter, but the crisis deepens in summer,” mother-of-three Babli Singh explained.

The Delhi government has in recent years tried to supply water to unauthorised colonies by drilling water bores, but this is a short-term solution that exacerbates a bigger problem.

Elsewhere, private enterprises — known locally as the “water mafia” — have been able to profit from the despair by building their own bores.

The activity is illegal, but there has been little to nothing done to crack down on the practice.

The ABC saw one such private enterprise drilling in a street, and the workers explained they were digging deeper than ever in an effort to find new water.

Locals have been forced to borrow money to pay for water

Ms Singh is one of the many families that had to pay the so-called water mafia to get their home connected to an illegal bore water supply.

Her father-in-law, Inder Dev Singh, said he feels forgotten.

“We are not getting any help from the government,” he explained.

“The government has been promising us a water pipeline for a long time. We paid for our own private pipeline.”

“We have to run behind water tankers. Sometimes I do not get water.”

Ms Singh and her family of nine live in what’s considered Asia’s largest “unauthorised colony,” Sangam Vihar — which is home to well over 1 million residents and is located in Delhi’s southern outskirts.

The buildings and infrastructure here were never designed or approved by a government agency.

Rather, residents simply built their homes on a small plot of land with whatever resources they could muster, mostly concrete and brick.

It’s a claustrophobic environment, with dusty roads so congested and narrow that cars often cannot enter.

Essential services are also lacking, with the vast majority of residents relying on tanker water for drinking and groundwater for cleaning and washing.

But with reserves so low, there’s real concern underground supplies will run dry in just a few months.

“Our children go to school without a bath for four or five days,” Ms Singh said.

“We are suffering. Life is very hard.”

The rise of the ‘water mafia’

Delhi is one of 21 Indian cities that could run out of groundwater this summer, according to a 2018 government thinktank report.

If and when this happens, it will be known as “day zero”.

The water woes are a product of years of booming population growth, drought and mismanagement.

During the summer, that pipe is only turned on for two hours, giving the family a small but crucial window to fill up a large underground tank they installed themselves.

The water is drinkable if it is boiled first, he explained.

Buying extra water is an option, but in an area where work is infrequent and wages are low, people often need to borrow money to buy extra allocations.

“Water is supposed to be free,” Mr Singh explained.

“[The private providers] do not want us to get a [government] water by pipeline as they are earning lot of money by providing water by tankers.

“There will be a time when there will be no water.

“There is no life without water. We will have to move.”

A man was shot in a dispute over water

The issue of water often only gets attention during the summer, when the situation becomes amplified.

In the summer of 2018, a man was shot in Sangam Vihar during a dispute over water.

In the same year, in another part of Delhi, a group of men and a juvenile were arrested for beating to death a father and son in another water dispute.

Videos of skirmishes and violence also regularly emerge in summer on social-media application WhatsApp.

This year, the issue is getting unseasonal attention as Delhiites head to the polls for local government elections.

Political candidates, keen on securing votes from the city’s poorest, have made sweeping promises to build pipes to deliver water to every house in Delhi.

“It does not get the respect it deserves,” explained Jyoti Sharma, who heads up the water security not-for-profit organisation, FORCE.

“Water is central to everything we do. But everybody takes it for granted. So, it does not get the attention it deserves. It’s just these few election days that it’s being talked about.”

Ms Sharma says there have been some positive steps in recent years, including forcing large homes to capture rainwater, and directing recycled water into rivers and ponds to recharge underground reserves.

But it’s not enough to reverse the depleting trend.

She worries about “day zero” but thinks it won’t occur this summer.

“I am an Indian,” she explains.

“And what I have learnt is we do manage to find a way out of the difficult spots we put ourselves in.

“I’m hoping day zero will not happen. I am hoping it will not happen.”

February 11, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, India | Leave a comment

Climate emergency plans must have a ‘no new nuclear’ clause

The nuclear and fossil fuel industry are mutually intertwined.

“There is no such thing as a zero or near-zero-emission nuclear power plant”

the mean value is about 66 grams of carbon dioxide for every kWh produced by nuclear power. This compares to about 9g for wind, 32g for solar and 443 for gas.

“This puts nuclear as the third highest carbon emitter after coal-fired plants and natural gas….

No new nuclear https://theecologist.org/2020/feb/06/no-new-nuclear

Radiation Free Lakeland, 6th February 2020

Campaigners demand a ‘no new nuclear’ clause in climate emergency planning. Climate activists across the world are uniting to protect the planet from continuing fossil fuel use. There is much talk of a green industrial revolution and a Green New Deal. This sounds good, but what does it mean?

Kevin Frea, co-chair of the Climate Emergency Network and deputy leader of Lancaster City Council has worked hard to sign local councils up declaring a climate emergency. He said: “This movement is being led by every political group and is involving local people in planning the actions needed to cut carbon.”

But there’s an important thing missing here. Last September members of Radiation Free Lakeland lobbied Lancaster City Council asking the council to include a No New Nuclear clause in their climate emergency planning. Continue reading →

February 10, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, UK | Leave a comment

Arctic ice melt is changing ocean currents

Arctic ice melt is changing ocean currents https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200207095705.htm

Date: February 7, 2020
Source: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Summary:: Using 12 years of satellite data, NASA scientists have measured how the influx of cold, fresh water is affecting the Beaufort Gyre, a major Arctic current.; A major ocean current in the Arctic is faster and more turbulent as a result of rapid sea ice melt, a new study from NASA shows. The current is part of a delicate Arctic environment that is now flooded with fresh water, an effect of human-caused climate change.

Using 12 years of satellite data, scientists have measured how this circular current, called the Beaufort Gyre, has precariously balanced an influx of unprecedented amounts of cold, fresh water — a change that could alter the currents in the Atlantic Ocean and cool the climate of Western Europe. Continue reading →

February 10, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ARCTIC, climate change, Reference | Leave a comment

Permafrost thawing -“fast and dramatic, affecting landscapes in unprecedented ways

Arctic permafrost thaw plays greater role in climate change than previously estimated, https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-02/uoca-apt020320.php

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER ABRUPT THAWING OF PERMAFROST WILL DOUBLE PREVIOUS ESTIMATES OF POTENTIAL CARBON EMISSIONS FROM PERMAFROST THAW IN THE ARCTIC, AND IS ALREADY RAPIDLY CHANGING THE LANDSCAPE AND ECOLOGY OF THE CIRCUMPOLAR NORTH, A NEW CU BOULDER-LED STUDY FINDS.

Permafrost, a perpetually frozen layer under the seasonally thawed surface layer of the ground, affects 18 million square kilometers at high latitudes or one quarter of all the exposed land in the Northern Hemisphere. Current estimates predict permafrost contains an estimated 1,500 petagrams of carbon, which is equivalent to 1.5 trillion metric tons of carbon.

The new study distinguishes between gradual permafrost thaw, which affects permafrost and its carbon stores slowly, versus more abrupt types of permafrost thaw. Some 20% of the Arctic region has conditions conducive to abrupt thaw due to its ice-rich permafrost layer. Permafrost that abruptly thaws is a large emitter of carbon, including the release of carbon dioxide as well as methane, which is more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. That means that even though at any given time less than 5% of the Arctic permafrost region is likely to be experiencing abrupt thaw, their emissions will equal those of areas experiencing gradual thaw.

This abrupt thawing is “fast and dramatic, affecting landscapes in unprecedented ways,” said Merritt Turetsky, director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at CU Boulder and lead author of the study published today in Nature Geoscience. “Forests can become lakes in the course of a month, landslides occur with no warning, and invisible methane seep holes can swallow snowmobiles whole.”

Abrupt permafrost thaw can occur in a variety of ways, but it always represents a dramatic abrupt ecological shift, Turetsky added.

“Systems that you could walk on with regular hiking boots and that were dry enough to support tree growth when frozen can thaw, and now all of a sudden these ecosystems turn into a soupy mess,” Turetsky said.

Why thawing permafrost matters

Permafrost contains rocks, soil, sand, and in some cases, pockets of pure ground ice. It stores on average twice as much carbon as is in the atmosphere because it stores the remains of life that once flourished in the Arctic, including dead plants, animal and microbes. This matter, which never fully decomposed, has been locked away in Earth’s refrigerator for thousands of years.

As the climate warms, permafrost cannot remain frozen. Across 80 percent of the circumpolar Arctic’s north, a warming climate is likely to trigger gradual permafrost thaw that manifests over decades to centuries.

But in the remaining parts of the Arctic, where ground ice content is high, abrupt thaw can happen in a matter of months – leading to extreme consequences on the landscape and the atmosphere, especially where there is ice-rich permafrost. This fast process is called “thermokarst” because a thermal change causes subsidence. This leads to a karst landscape, known for its erosion and sinkholes.

Turetsky said this is the first paper to pull together the wide body of literature on past and current abrupt thaw across different types of landscapes.

The authors then used this information along with a numerical model to project future abrupt thaw carbon losses. They found that thermokarst always involves flooding, inundation, or landslides. Intense rainfall events and the open, black landscapes that result from wildfires can speed up this dramatic process.

The researchers compared abrupt permafrost thaw carbon release to that of gradual permafrost thaw, trying to quantify a “known unknown.” There are general estimates of gradual thaw contributing to carbon emissions, but they had no idea how much of that would be caused by thermokarst.

They also wanted to find out how important this information would be to include in global climate models. At present, there are no climate models that incorporate thermokarst, and only a handful that consider permafrost thaw at all. While large-scale models over the past decade have tried to better account for feedback loops in the Arctic, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s most recent report only includes estimates of gradual permafrost thaw as an unresolved Earth system feedback.

“The impacts from abrupt thaw are not represented in any existing global model and our findings indicate that this could amplify the permafrost climate-carbon feedback by up to a factor of two, thereby exacerbating the problem of permissible emissions to stay below specific climate change targets,” said David Lawrence, of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and a coauthor of the study.

The findings bring new urgency to including permafrost in all types of climate models, along with implementing strong climate policy and mitigation, Turetsky added.

“We can definitely stave off the worst consequences of climate change if we act in the next decade,” said Turetsky. “We have clear evidence that policy is going to help the north and thus it’s going to help dictate our future climate.”

Other coauthors on the paper include researchers from the University of Guelph, Brigham Young University, the United States Geological Survey, University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Alberta, Northern Arizona University, Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, University of Potsdam, Stockholm University, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

February 6, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | ARCTIC, climate change, Reference | Leave a comment

Sea-level rise – an Unmanaged climate risks to spent fuel from U.S. nuclear power plants.

Author links open overlay panelLisa MartineJenkins RobertAlvarezSarah MarieJordaan

Highlights

•Climate change will result in new risks to nuclear power operations.
•Spent fuel sites will be subject to risks from sea-level rise.
•A long-term spent fuel management plan is needed to mitigate risks.
•Short-term solutions to mitigate risks are recommended.: Abstract

Climate change and its accompanying sea-level rise is set to create risks to the United States’ stockpile of spent nuclear fuel, which results largely from nuclear power. Coastal spent fuel management facilities are vulnerable to unanticipated environmental events, as evidenced by the 2011 tsunami-related flooding at the Fukushima plant in Japan.

We examine how policy-makers can manage climate risks posed to the coastal storage of radioactive materials, and identify the coastal spent fuel storage sites that will be most vulnerable to sea-level rise.

A geospatial analysis of coastal sites shows that with six feet of sea-level rise, seven spent fuel sites will be juxtaposed by seawater. Of those, three will be near or completely surrounded by water, and should be considered a priority for mitigation: Humboldt Bay (California), Turkey Point (Florida), and Crystal River (Florida).

To ensure policy-makers manage such climate risks, a risk management approach is proposed. Further, we recommend that policy-makers 1) transfer overdue spent fuel from cooling pools to dry casks, particularly where located in high risk sites; 2) develop a long-term and comprehensive storage plan that is less vulnerable to climate change; and 3) encourage international nuclear treaties and standards to take climate change into account.

February 6, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

Weather reporters joining the battle against climate change

Weathercasters Are Talking About Climate Change—and How We Can Solve It https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2020/02/weathercasters-are-talking-about-climate-change-and-how-we-can-solve-it/

In recent years there’s been a seismic shift on climate change within the weather reporting community. MADDIE STONE THIS piece was originally published in Grist and appears here as part of our Climate Desk PARTNERSHIP.

For many years, as the science of human-caused climate change grew ever clearer, TV meteorologists avoided discussing the topic on air. Today, many weathercasters bring up climate change regularly. By embracing the science and presenting it in a simple, locally-relevant manner, TV meteorologists have managed to become some of the most effective and trustworthy climate change educators in the country.

Now some meteorologists are taking the conversation a step further and talking not just about the science of climate change, but how we can solve it.

At the 100th annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) in Boston earlier this month, a panel of broadcast meteorologists, climate communicators, and policy experts assembled to discuss how solutions to the climate crisis can be woven into TV weather reporting. While wading into politics on the air can carry career risks for many meteorologists, weathercasters are also uniquely positioned to educate the public about climate solutions in a nonpartisan way, whether that’s by delivering locally tailored forecasts of renewable power production or discussing climate resilience strategies in the wake of a major storm.

“Broadcasters have an unusually good platform from which to engage,” said Ed Maibach, the director of the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, during the panel. “You not only have the access but consistency of relationships with an audience.”

In recent years there’s been a seismic shift on climate change within the weather reporting community. In a 2011 survey of AMS members and the National Weather Association, less than 20 percent felt sure humans are the primary driver of global warming, a statistic that Maibach attributes, in part, to an “aggressive misinformation campaign by the Heartland Institute,” a climate change–denying think tank. But by 2017 that figure had jumped to 80 percent. That’s thanks largely to the efforts of the educators who organized Climate Matters, a climate reporting resource developed by the nonprofit Climate Central, the AMS, and various governmental and academic partners

February 3, 2020 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, USA | Leave a comment

Why Arctic glaciers are melting away at an accelerating rate

How the ocean is gnawing away at glaciers, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/02/200203114350.htm

Date:: February 3, 2020
Source:: Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research
Summary:: The Greenland Ice Sheet is melting faster today than it did only a few years ago. The reason: it’s not just melting on the surface — but underwater, too. AWI researchers have now found an explanation for the intensive melting on the ice’s underside, and published their findings in the journal Nature Geoscience.; The glaciers are melting rapidly: Greenland’s ice is now melting seven times faster than in the 1990s — an alarming discovery, since climate change will likely intensify this melting in the future, causing the sea level to rise more rapidly.

Accordingly, researchers are now working to better understand the underlying mechanisms of this melting. Ice melts on the surface because it is exposed to the sun and rising temperatures. But it has now also begun melting from below — including in northeast Greenland, which is home to several ‘ice tongues’. Each tongue is a strip of ice that has slid down into the ocean and floats on the water — without breaking off from the land ice. The longest ice tongue, part of the ’79° North Glacier’, is an enormous 80 km long. Over the past 20 years, it has experienced a dramatic loss of mass and thickness, because it’s been melting not just on the surface, but also and especially from below.; Too much heat from the ocean

A team led by oceanographer Dr Janin Schaffer from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven has now identified the source of this intense underwater melting. The conclusions of their study, which the experts have just released in the journal Nature Geoscience, are particularly unsettling because the melting phenomenon they discovered isn’t unique to the 79° North Glacier, which means it could produce similar effects elsewhere. For the purposes of the study, the researchers conducted the first extensive ship-based survey of the ocean floor near the glacier, which revealed the presence of a two-kilometre-wide trough, from the bottom of which comparatively warm water from the Atlantic is channelled directly toward the glacier. But that’s not all: in the course of a detailed analysis of the trough, Janin Schaffer spotted a bathymetric sill, a barrier that the water flowing over the seafloor has to overcome. Once over the hump, the water rushes down the back of the sill — and under the ice tongue. Thanks to this acceleration of the warm water mass, large amounts of heat from the ocean flow past the tongue every second, melting it from beneath. To make matters worse, the layer of warm water that flows toward the glacier has grown larger: measured from the seafloor, it now extends 15 metres higher than it did just a few years ago. “The reason for the intensified melting is now clear,” Schaffer says. “Because the warm water current is larger, substantially more warmth now makes its way under the ice tongue, second for second.”

Other regions are also affected

In order to determine whether the phenomenon only manifests at the 79° North Glacier or also at other sites, the team investigated a neighbouring region on Greenland’s eastern coast, where another glacier, the Zachariæ Isstrøm, juts out into the sea, and where a large ice tongue had recently broken off from the mainland. Working from the surface of an ice floe, the experts measured water temperatures near the ocean floor. According to Schaffer: “The readings indicate that here, too, a bathymetric sill near the seafloor accelerates warm water toward the glacier. Apparently, the intensive melting on the underside of the ice at several sites throughout Greenland is largely produced by the form of the seafloor.” These findings will ultimately help her more accurately gauge the total amount of meltwater that the Greenland Ice Sheet loses every year.

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Materials provided by Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.