European Ski Industry at Risk from Climate Change
On December 13, the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said global warming
could devastate the ski resorts of Europe within decades,
especially in lower-lying areas. The OECD said Germany is most
at risk, followed by Austria, Italy, France and Switzerland.
According to one climatologist, alpine resorts are experiencing
the warmest weather in 1,300 years.
Banks in Switzerland are already
refusing to lend money to ski outfits below an altitude of 1500
meters, said Shardul Agrawala, an official conducting a two-year
OECD investigation into the threat from rising temperatures.
OECD said its work was a first,
systematic cross-country study of the Alpine region, covering
666 slopes. The study found a one-degree rise in temperature
would knock the number with decent snow cover down to 500. That
was a change likely to take place by 2020-2025, according to
best estimates, said Agrawala. A two-degree rise would reduce
the number of viable slopes to 400, something that could occur
by 2050. Making artificial snow was environmentally damaging and
would in any case be useless above a certain temperature, the
OECD said.
Click on the following link for the
full news story: Reuters
China Wants to Slow Its
GHG Emissions
On December 12, speaking to an
energy conference in Australia, Zhang Guobao, vice-chairman of
the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC),
said "Because we're a coal dominant country, we have to
take responsibility for lowering greenhouse emissions."
Zhang, a top Chinese energy policy
maker, said Beijing would need to trim economic growth and hit
energy efficiency targets to achieve a reduction. Zhang said,
"China plans to reduce its energy consumption per unit of
GDP by 20 percent by 2010."
According to Reuters,
climate change is rarely mentioned as a priority by China's top
leaders and carbon dioxide emissions are not targeted in the
11th five-year plan for growth to 2010, despite lobbying from
both inside and outside the government. However, Beijing has
pledged to change its energy supply structure, including
investments in cleaner coal, nuclear power, energy efficiency
and renewables.
Click on the following link for the
full news story: Reuters
Planting Temperate Forests May Exacerbate Warming
A study released December 11 by
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Carnegie Institution and
Universite Montpellier II finds that while planting trees in
some regions can help reduce global warming, planting trees in
other regions can actually cause temperatures to rise. The study
cautions that new forests in mid- to high-latitude locations
could actually create a net warming. It also confirms that
planting more trees in tropical rainforests could help slow
global warming worldwide.
Lead author Govindasamy Bala said,
"Our study shows that tropical forests are very beneficial
to the climate because they take up carbon and increase
cloudiness, which in turn helps cool the planet." But
forests also are dark and absorb sunlight, warming the Earth.
The study concludes that, by the year 2100, forests in mid- and
high-latitudes will make some places up to 10°F warmer than
would have occurred if the forests did not exist. "The
darkening of the surface by new forest canopies in the high
latitude boreal regions allows absorption of more sunlight that
helps to warm the surface," said Bala. "In fact,
planting more trees in high latitudes could be counterproductive
from a climate perspective."
Gore Plans to Launch 'Carbon Freeze' Grassroots Movement
Al Gore is planning to launch a
grassroots political movement in January to achieve a freeze on
carbon dioxide emissions. "I intend to launch an ongoing
campaign of mass persuasion at the beginning of 2007....I think
we need a mass movement in the United States. I think it ought
to start at the grass roots," Gore said at a meeting of
Greentech Innovation Network, which is a group of environmental
entrepreneurs, policymakers and academics organized by the
venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield &
Byers. The proposed movement will include a range of actors from
entrepreneurs and activists to political leaders, and will
strive to put pressure on policy makers to devise stronger
policies to deal with climate change.
2005 Carbon Emissions Are
a Quarter Over 1990 Levels
According to the US Carbon Dioxide
Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), worldwide carbon emissions
increased by about three percent in 2005. Global emissions rose
by about 200 million tons to a level of 7.9 billion tons of
carbon in 2005, which is 28 percent above 1990 emissions levels.
"The rate of acceleration is quite phenomenal....Half of
all emissions have been since 1980. I think people lose track of
the rate of acceleration. You tend to think of (this as)
something that's been going on -- it's not," said Gregg
Marland, senior staff scientist at CDIAC, which provides
emissions data. According to a Reuters article, Marland
submitted the CDIAC data to a congressional committee in
September but the figures have not been published yet.
Click on the following link for the
full news story: Reuters
Arctic Ice Has Not Recovered Completely After Summer
Melt
A study published in the December 12
issue of Geophysical Research Letters says that the
Arctic ice has not recovered enough after the summer melt this
year. Last month, the frozen portion of the sea was two million
square kilometers (the size of Alaska) less than the historical
average. One of the modeling scenarios in the study, conducted
by a team of scientists from the National Center for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR), the University of Washington and McGill
University, shows that summer ice may disappear from the Arctic
by 2040. The simulation shows that the sea ice extent area may
decrease by almost 70 percent in ten years, and by 2040 most of
the Arctic may be without ice in September. The winter ice may
also go down in thickness from 12 feet to less than 3 feet.
"As the ice retreats, the ocean
transports more heat to the Arctic and the open water absorbs
more sunlight, further accelerating the rate of warming and
leading to the loss of more ice. This is a positive feedback
loop with dramatic implications for the entire Arctic
region," said the lead researcher, Dr Marika Holland of
NCAR. According to Holland, a rapid retreat may result even if
one year is slightly warmer than normal. The decadal rate of sea
ice decline in September is now about -8.6 percent, or 60,421
square kilometers every
year. At this rate, the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in
September by 2060, even
when it is assumed that there is no acceleration in the decline
rate.
Hydrates Found in Shallower Depths Raise Concerns About
Methane Release
According to a study presented at
the December meeting of the American Geophysical Union,
scientists have found methane hydrate deposits at far shallower
depths than expected. In a drilling experiment off the coast of
Vancouver Island, Canada, geologists found hydrates at a depth
of 60-120 meters in the sea, which is less than half the depth
at which they typically exist in a stable form. "This
methane can potentially release quickly, in geologic terms. Not
in our lifetime, but definitely faster than people had predicted
earlier," said Dr. Michael Riedel of McGill University in
Montreal, who co-led the experiment. The deeper the hydrates,
the higher the pressure under which they exist resulting in
greater stability.
Click on the following links for the
full news stories: Nature and
BBC
Sea Level Rise May Be More Than IPCC Projections
According to a new research published in the December 14 online
edition of Science, sea level may rise by 0.5-1.4
meters above the 1990 level in 2100. This value is greater than
the 0.09-0.88 meter projected rise by 2100 by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The upper
limit of the new projection is 59 percent more than the IPCC
estimate. Dr. Stefan Rahmstorf, Potsdam Institute for Climate
Impact Research, says that the main uncertainty in projections
is introduced because of the difficulty in predicting the
response of large ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica to
higher temperatures. Rahmstorf said, "the rate of sea level
rise is approximately proportional to the magnitude of warming
above the pre-industrial temperature" and this relationship
holds good for temperature and sea level changes seen during the
20th Century.
Click on the following links for the
full news stories: Science
and BBC
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Briefings
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