Climate action needs “basis of trust”

Commitments made at and since these climate negotiations in Copenhagen won't keep global average temperature rises between 1980 and 2100 below 2°C. Credit: Jan Golinski/UNFCCC

Would you agree to help clean up your street if your neighbours didn’t, and instead kept on filling it up with rubbish? Most people would not. Climate researcher Joeri Rogelj notes that trying to “clean up” the atmosphere is a bit like this, only on an international level. Some countries are more committed to taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than others. However, the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research scientist explains that even they are reluctant to do as much as they might until the world has an agreement containing pledges from all nations.

Saturday round-up: Copenhagen pledges miss 2°C mark

The range of temperatures likely through to 2100 with the greenhouse gas emissions levels agreed in Copenhagen, with the pessimistic (red) and optimistic scenarios (blue) from the emissions graph below. The lighter shaded areas are represent broader temperature ranges that the researchers can be more confident the temperature rise will be in, the darker colours are narrower ranges that it's less certain the temperature will be in. Credit: Nature/Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research

German researchers this week dismissed the greenhouse gas emissions cuts agreed by the summit of world leaders in December as “paltry”. Joeri Rogelj, Malte Meinshausen and colleagues predict that the Copenhagen Accord will in fact lead to a 10-20% overall increase in emissions by 2020. Writing in the prestigious journal Nature on Thursday, the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research scientists also point out two loopholes that could allow higher emissions. “The Copenhagen Accord has a stated aim of keeping global warming to below 2°C, and reviewing a 1.5°C goal by 2015,” Rogelj and Meinshausen write. “Unfortunately, the national emissions-reduction pledges accompanying this document are insufficient to meet this objective.”

Three gaps: Energy, Time and Consumption

Kevin Trenberth of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research Credit: NCAR

Climate researcher Kevin Trenberth is troubled by time, both on the short and longer scale. On the short scale, measurements taken since the beginning of the millennium suggest that the Earth should have heated up more than it already has. Yet because we only have a few years of these measurements, we have never seen this “missing heat” situation happen before, and have no explanation for it.

On the longer scale, Trenberth notes that it takes decades for the full impact of any increase in the Earth’s temperature to emerge, and this is one of the key problems of climate change. “The actions we take now mainly have effects 50 years from now and beyond,” he tells Simple Climate. “Carbon dioxide has a long lifetime and so does the infrastructure that produces it. The oceans and climate system respond slowly.”

Saturday round-up: Hot water awaits?

Global temperatures haven’t risen as much as the amount of energy the planet has absorbed since 2003 would suggest, but the rises may just have been delayed. That’s according to Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).

Kevin Trenberth explains where the sun’s energy goes when it reaches Earth. Credit: NCAR.

In a paper published in Science yesterday they compare satellite data measuring the amount of energy from the sun entering the atmosphere and returning back into space. Since 2000, the Earth has absorbed around 0.9 watts per square metre more at the top of the atmosphere than it has released. “It is this imbalance that produces global warming,” Trenberth and Fasullo write.

Greenland ice loss enters uncharted waters

Ice meets the ocean in Greenland. Credit: Shfaqat Abbas Khan

A vast area of glacier whose size has remained steady throughout the world’s ice ages and the warming periods in between has begun moving faster into the sea. The glaciers in Northwest Greenland have been accelerating since 2005, according to Shfaqat Abbas Khan, of Denmark’s National Space Institute, and his co-workers. While Greenland’s southern glaciers also began moving faster into the sea earlier in the decade, Khan finds the loss in the north especially troubling.

“During previous warmings, all climate models agree that the Southern Greenland ice dome either disappeared entirely or had shrunken to a local ice cap,” he explained. “The northern ice dome is much more stable and has almost not reacted to previous warmings – it has more or less kept its ice volume. Therefore it is striking that it is reacting so rapidly to present warming.”

Saturday round-up: Bloomin’ Early

Recent trends in flowering dates in the UK. Credit: The UK Phenology Network

UK flowers have bloomed earlier over the past 25 years than any other period since 1760, threatening pollinating insects and other creatures depending on them for food. An international team including researchers from Cambridge University and the UK’s Woodland Trust found that overall they flowered 2.2 days earlier than in 1910-1934, the previous earliest-blooming 25-year period. The team, led by Tatsuya Amano of Cambridge and Japan’s National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, also found that the current period’s flowering is 12.7 days earlier than the latest-blooming period, 1835–1859.

“There is a clear advance in the time of first flowering in recent decades,” Amano and colleagues write in a paper published online in the journal Royal Society Proceedings B on Wednesday. The timing changes could cause insects to miss out on their usual pollen supplies, in turn affecting birds for which insects and flowers are food sources. “This situation is critical,” Amano and colleagues write, “possibly leading to an increase in extinction risks.”

Their results show that flowering advances 5 days per 1ºC rise in temperature, matching results published elsewhere. They note that this kind of long-term perspective on the effects of global warming is unusual, which can be a problem. “Conclusions about the impact of climate change based on short-term observations can be misleading,” they write. “The 250-year index developed in this study should provide an important context for investigating ongoing responses to climate change.”

People can’t face change, let alone climate change

A cold winter in the UK has made spring daffodils bloom later, and increased scepticism about climate change. Credit: Royal Horticultural Society

Writing about climate research has revealed a generation gap within my own family, made obvious this weekend by wine-fuelled dinner-table debates. Visiting my nearest and dearest over the Easter national holiday for the first time since I started Simple Climate, they grilled me on the research I’ve covered.

In the UK daffodils are often associated with spring and Easter, but have been late to appear this year thanks to an especially cold winter. Both my parents and my girlfriend’s strongly dislike the cold. Therefore, like so many people across Europe and the US, they currently find it hard to accept that the world is warming overall. However, when I pointed out that climate researchers assess average temperatures across the planet, my stepmum did recall her friends in Australia complaining about January to March being exceptionally warm.

Saturday round-up: Climategate researcher’s science cleared, data sharing questioned

Phil Willis, MP, chair of the Parliament Science and Technology Committee says climate science is so important all data should be shared

Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee has judged Phil Jones, the scientist at the centre of the Climategate controversy, innocent of trying to mislead – but notes that the law may have been broken. It says that the leaked emails that started the row suggest that the the University of East Anglia (UEA)’s Climate Research Unit (CRU), where Jones worked, tried to illegally avoid sharing data. Had the UEA instead worked to make the data and computer code used in its research available, “many of the problems at CRU could have been avoided”, the committee writes.

“There is evidence that CRU has breached the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA),” the committee said on Wednesday. “It would, however, be premature, without a thorough investigation to conclude that UEA was in breach of the Act.” The Information Commissioner’s Office, which enforces the FOIA, has not investigated whether the law was broken because too much time has elapsed. However, the Science and Technology Committee says that this as unsatisfactory reason for leaving the case unresolved. “Much of the reputation of CRU hangs on the issue. The matter needs to be resolved conclusively.”