Lethal Heating: 03/21/16

21/03/2016

Australian Climate Council Calls For Urgent Action As Records Tumble

The Guardian - Joshua Robertson

Autumn brings no relief following a record-breaking summer driven by rapid global warming, the Climate Council report says

Lake Hume in the Murray Darling Basin. March continued Australia's record-breaking summer into autumn as temperatures remained high. Photograph: The Washington Post/Washington Post/Getty Images

Record hot spells in Australia this month blurred the line between summer and autumn in another sign of rapidly advancing global warming, a Climate Council report says.
The first four days of March saw maximum temperatures in much of the country 4C above average – and 8C to 12C above average in most of southeastern Australia – the report said.
It follows a summer that delivered Perth more 40C days than ever before and 39 consecutive days over 26C for Sydney, a record that more than doubled the previous high.
The Climate Council said the Australian findings reflected worldwide heat records that, among other impacts, threatened the Great Barrier Reef with widespread coral bleaching and drove a record low in Arctic sea ice cover last month.
The report linked prolonged local heat to destructive fires in Tasmania's world heritage forests and a major algae outbreak in the Murray river.
It argued that evidence of escalating heat impacts lent urgency to climate mitigation efforts that remain politically contentious in Australia, including a moratorium on new coalmines.
"As Australians continue to suffer from more frequent and worsening extreme heat events, the path to tackling climate change is becoming more urgent: no new coalmines can be built, existing coalmines and coal-fired power stations must be phased out and renewable energy must be scaled up rapidly," the report said.
The report's release on Sunday came as the federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, took an aerial tour over the Great Barrier Reef to inspect the impact of coral bleaching.
Hunt was due to address reporters after the flyover with the chief executive of the Great Barrier Reef marine park authority, Russell Reichelt.
Tim Flannery, the former Australian climate commissioner who helped found the Climate Council after the commission was abolished by the Abbott government in 2013, said world heat records were an ominous sign the world had shifted from "climate change concern to climate change consequences".
"Scientists have been voicing their concerns for decades and now we are seeing the consequences," Flannery said.
"Our internationally renowned Great Barrier Reef is already experiencing widespread coral bleaching due to record sea surface temperatures.
"Our world heritage ancient forests in Tasmania have been razed by bushfires sparked by tinderbox conditions driven by climate change.
"And, just weeks after health experts warned of the grave dangers posed to Australians through more frequent and severe heatwaves, we've seen hospitals in Perth overwhelmed after four consecutive days over 40°C.
"The window of time we have to act is closing. The world is acting but Australia is so far behind."
She called for an "orderly closure of our ageing and polluting coal-fired power plants" to make way for renewables.
McKenzie said extreme heat events affected farmers' harvests and pushed Australia's bushfire season "well into autumn".
Heat records this month included 10 consecutive days above 30C for Canberra and Melbourne's hottest March night on record at 38.6C.
Brisbane researchers this month predicted the world economy was on track to produce enough carbon emissions by 2020 to lock in a 1.5C rise above pre-industrial levels, and enough by 2030 to lock in a 2C rise.

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'A Tipping Point': Record Number Of Americans See Global Warming As Threat

The Guardian - Oliver Milman

New polling data shows that public concern about climate change is at a new high, as the US emerges from its warmest-ever winter

A man at at a New York rally calling for action on climate change, a day before the start of the historic COP21 conference in Paris. Photograph: Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images

A record number of Americans believe global warming will pose a threat to their way of life, new polling data shows, amid strengthening public acceptance that rising temperatures are being driven by human activity.
"I think a shift in public opinion and consciousness has been underway for several years now," Michael Mann, a prominent climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University, told the Guardian.
A spokesman for 350 Action, the political arm of climate activist group 350.org, said meanwhile that politicians who cast doubt on climate science would soon have to take such polling into account. Republicans, he said, "are going to be screwed if they don't change their tune".
Polling firm Gallup, which has been tracking public sentiment on the topic annually since 1997, found that 41% of US adults feel warming will pose a "serious threat" to them during their lifetimes. This is the highest level recorded by Gallup, a 4% increase on 2015.
A total of 64% of those polled said they worried about global warming a "great deal" or a "fair amount", the highest level of recorded concern since 2008. Just 36% of Americans said they did not fret about it, or only worried a little.
The results show a solidifying belief that changes in the climate are under way, with 59% of people thinking so. A record 65% of Americans said global warming was down to greenhouse gases released by human activity – a 10% leap on last year.
Just 31% said the warming was due to natural causes, the lowest level of such skepticism in 15 years. The March polling involved more than 1,000 adults in all 50 states.
"I suspect it is a confluence of multiple factors," said Mann. "The overall warmth in recent years here in the US, Europe and worldwide is part of it.
"But so too are the increasing number of destructive extreme weather events – floods, droughts, massive wildfires, extreme heat, unprecedented hurricanes … This puts a human face on the issue of climate change."

Climate change denial is simply no longer plausible, and the American people are recognizing that.
Michael Mann

Strikingly, concern over global warming has grown across the political divide, with 9% more Republicans saying they worry about the issue "a great deal" compared to last year. There remains a partisan divide, however, with just 35% of Republicans blaming human activity for global warming, compared to 85% of Democrats. Among independents, 68% accept humans are the main cause of warming, with 64% saying they worry a lot about the topic.
The surge in public concern over rising temperatures following an abnormally warm winter in the US and the historic Paris climate deal in December, in which nearly 200 nations agreed to curb their emissions in order to avoid dangerous sea level rises, droughts, extreme weather events and food insecurity.
The failed Copenhagen climate talks of 2009, along with with what has been called a "constant barrage" of climate science denial in the media, had made the American public increasingly skeptical of the issue. Polling by Gallup from 2014 found that more than 40% of Americans felt that the seriousness of global warming was exaggerated by the media.
But climate campaigners claim the sheer weight of evidence of a warming world is now beginning to overwhelm the messages of doubt put forward by fossil fuel-aligned groups such as the Heartland Institute and conservative media outlets.
Mann said climate scientists were doing well to get their findings heard "despite the fierce headwind of a millions of dollars fossil fuel-industry funded disinformation campaign we have been fighting for years".
"I also think that the profound impacts that climate change is already having and which people are experiencing, has impaired the climate change disinformation machine," he said. "Climate change denial is simply no longer plausible, and the American people are recognizing that."
February smashed a century of monthly global temperature records by a "stunning" margin, according to data released by Nasa this week. On Thursday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the US has just experienced its warmest winter on record, with scientists calling the recent heat "staggering" and similar to "something out of a sci-fi movie".
The warmth, aided by a strong El Niño event, has essentially robbed the Arctic of its winter, reducing ice thickness. In Washington DC, pink cherry blossoms are blooming unusually early; heat sucked up by the oceans is causing havoc for wildlife off the west coast.
Last year was the warmest year on record globally; scientists forecast this record to fall again in 2016. Despite this, climate change has barely featured in the Republican presidential debates. Frontrunner Donald Trump has derided the science as "bullshit" and called climate change a "hoax" invented by the Chinese.
"Sadly, I think that the current Republican party including their likely presidential nominee are entrenched in their climate change denialism," Mann said. "Only a major political shakeup and realignment is likely to change that. But we might very well see that realignment in this election."
A spokesman for 350 Action said: "Climate change is no longer a distant threat, but a clear and present danger. People can see the changes underway right in their neighborhood, whether it's a forest fire bearing down on their backyard or rising seas lapping at their doorstep.
"I think we're reaching a tipping point where that concern manifests into an even stronger demand for immediate action from politicians. Republicans are going to be screwed if they don't change their tune."

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Record Temperatures For March A Warning Of What's To Come, Say Experts

Fairfax - Caitlin Guilfoyle

Feeling the heat: The first four days of March were at least four degrees hotter than average. Photo: Leigh Henningham

This summer has also witnessed a record 39 straight days above 26C in Sydney and the hottest ever March Melbourne night of 38.6C.
Climate Council chief executive Amanda McKenzie says Australia is now experiencing the consequences of climate change, moving past the time for mere concern.
Average global temperatures could be four to six degrees warmer by the end of the century if nothing is done, Ms McKenzie said.
"That is something we just don't want to imagine," she said at the launch of the Climate Council's report, Heat Marches On, on Sunday.
"At the moment we're not even at one degree warming globally and we've seen such huge changes.
"It would be an unimaginable change for human civilisation."
Hot days like those this month put Australia's health at risk, as the vulnerable struggle to cope and bushfires are fuelled by warm conditions, Ms KcKenzie said.
She said reef tourism operators were also affected by widespread coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef, triggered by elevated sea surface temperatures.
"We're seeing the impact in our daily lives around Australia."
"We need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels, coal, oil and gas which are driving climate change and move to more renewable energy."
Professor Tim Flannery said temperatures would become less extreme as the current El Nino cycle began to fade, but the next would be even hotter.
Conditions over the last few months had been unprecedented and inaction from Australia was "quite disgraceful".
State and federal governments must take action, with policies to remove sources of pollution and build cleaner energy systems, Professor Flannery said.
"We've come through the Paris meeting where the world has agreed on action," he said.
"We've had three months in Australia where nothing has happened, but we got the announcement that emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have grown."

The heat is on
Maximum temperature at least 4C above average, from March 1 to 4

Temps 8 to 12C above average for most of southeast Australia
Record 39 straight days over 26C in Sydney
Perth had more 40C days this summer than ever before
Melbourne had hottest March night on record, at peak of 38.6C
Canberra had 10 straight days of 30C or more
Echuca, VIC, and Tocumwal, NSW, sweltered through eight straight days of 38C or more in March, breaking records for any month of the year
Temperature records shattered around the world, with this January and February hotter than any other.

Happy feet of Antarctic penguins in decline

New research by UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre reveals the staggering decline of Adelie penguin numbers at Cape Denison in Antarctica, following the grounding of a 97km iceberg in Commonwealth Bay.

Climate Council Alert: Climate Change And Coral Bleaching

Climate Council - Professor Will Steffen | Dr Martin Rice

In February 2016, sea surface temperatures climbed to an astounding 33°C in the waters off the far north Queensland coast resulting in coral bleaching across the Great Barrier Reef.

We are likely to lose most corals worldwide in as little as 30 to 40 years if we continue to burn fossil fuels and warm the climate at current rates.

This record breaking ocean heat has triggered a global coral bleaching event, which began in the north Pacific in mid-2014 and expanded to the south Pacific and Indian Oceans in 2015 (NOAA 2015b).

Coral reefs are highly vulnerable to a changing climate.
Warmer ocean temperatures are driving an increase in coral bleaching events which can damage and destroy reefs and the species they support.
Oceans cover more than two thirds of the Earth's surface and the increasing heat content of the upper ocean has a very important influence on the global climate and on marine ecosystems (Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2014).
Over the past year or so, the temperature of the surface ocean has risen by 2°C more than normal in a large band across the eastern and central equatorial Pacific Ocean and in parts of the western Atlantic Ocean (NOAA 2015a).

In February 2016, sea surface temperatures climbed to an astounding 33°C in the waters off the far north Queensland coast, resulting in coral bleaching across the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), particularly the most pristine and isolated reefs in the far north (GBRMPA 2016).
Human activities, primarily the emission of greenhouse gases from the combustion of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas), are driving climate change.
Through both rising surface ocean temperatures and increasing ocean acidity, climate change has become the most serious threat to the future viability of coral reefs.
Heat stress through rising sea surface temperatures can cause corals to expel tiny algae, called zooxanthellae, which live inside their tissues and provide corals with most of their colour and energy needs.
If bleaching persists, corals begin to starve and eventually die (GBRMPA 2016).
Bleaching events on the GBR have occurred repeatedly since the late 1970s, while none were observed before the 1970s.
The ability to recover from bleaching events varies among coral species and among regions, but there is only limited evidence so far that corals will be able to adapt fast enough to rising temperatures (Hoegh-Guldberg et al. 2007).
Already the Earth has warmed about 0.9°C above pre-industrial levels, with much of that warming occurring since 1970 (IPCC 2013).
Furthermore, despite the focus on air temperature, warming of the air accounts for only 1 percent of the additional energy stored in the climate system - more than 90 percent of the total energy accumulated since 1971 has been absorbed by the world's oceans, and the upper 75 m - where most of the world's reef-building corals live - has warmed by 0.11°C per decade over the period 1992 to 2010 (IPCC 2013).
We are likely to lose most corals worldwide in as little as 30 to 40 years if we continue to burn fossil fuels and warm the climate at current rates (Hoegh-Guldberg 2016).
We have a clear and urgent choice.
The future of coral reefs around the world depends on how much and how fast we reduce greenhouse gas emissions now, and in the coming years and decades.

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