Lethal Heating: 05/12/16

12/05/2016

Antarctic Ice Shows Australia’s Drought And Flood Risk Is Worse Than Thought

The Conversation - Anthony Kiem | Carly Tozer | Tessa Vance

The past century hasn't seen the worst drought that Australia's climate can throw at us. CSIRO/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY

Australia is systematically underestimating its drought and flood risk because weather records do not capture the full extent of rainfall variability, according to our new research.
Our study, published today in the journal Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, uses Antarctic ice core data to reconstruct rainfall for the past 1,000 years for catchments in eastern Australia.
The results show that instrumental rainfall records – available for the past 100 years at best, depending on location – do not represent the full range of abnormally wet and dry periods that have occurred over the centuries.
In other words, significantly longer and more frequent wet and dry periods were experienced in the pre-instrumental period (that is, before the 20th century) compared with the period over which records have been kept.

Reconstructing prehistoric rainfall
There is no direct indicator of rainfall patterns for Australia before weather observations began. But, strange as it may sound, there is a link between eastern Australian rainfall and the summer deposition of sea salt in Antarctic ice. This allowed us to deduce rainfall levels by studying ice cores drilled from Law Dome, a small coastal ice cap in East Antarctica.
How can sea salt deposits in an Antarctic ice core possibly be related to rainfall thousands of kilometres away in Australia? It is because the processes associated with rainfall variability in eastern Australia – such as the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), as well as other ocean cycles like the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) – are also responsible for variations in the wind and circulation patterns that cause sea salt to be deposited in East Antarctica (as outlined in our previous research).
By studying an ice record spanning 1,013 years, our results reveal a clear story of wetter wet periods and drier dry periods than is evident in Australia's much shorter instrumental weather record.
For example, in the Williams River catchment, which provides water for the Newcastle region of New South Wales, our results showed that the longest dry periods lasted up to 12 years. In contrast, the longest dry spell since 1900 lasted just eight years.
Among wet periods, the difference was even more pronounced. The longest unusually wet spell in our ice record lasted 39 years – almost five times longer than the post-1900 maximum of eight years.

Busting myths about drought and flood risk
Although this does not tell us when the next major wet or dry period will happen, it does help us predict how often we can expect such events to occur, and how long they might last. This is critical information for water resource managers and planners, especially when our millennium-long record tells a very different story to the post-1900 instrumental record on which all water infrastructure, planning and policy is based.
Our results challenge the underlying assumptions that govern water resource management and infrastructure planning. These assumptions include:

that droughts longer than five years are rare;
that droughts or flood-dominated periods cannot last longer than about 15 years;
that drought and flood risk does not change over time, so a century of instrumental records is enough to gain a full understanding of the situation.

The fact that these assumptions are probably wrong is a concern. These principles are used to make crucial decisions, not just about predicting the likelihood and severity of droughts and floods themselves, but also about the design of infrastructure such as roads, reservoirs and buildings. Our study suggests that these decisions are being taken on the basis of incomplete information.
What's more, Australia's increasing population and development will mean that water demands and exposure to droughts and floods are likely to have been different in the past to what they are now (and will be in the future).
Therefore, given that the factors used to quantify risk are most likely wrong, it implies that current hydroclimatic risk assessments are not representative of the true level of risk.
This raises serious questions about water security and the robustness of existing water resource management, infrastructure design and catchment planning across eastern Australia and in other places where hydroclimatic risk is assessed on records that do not capture the full range of possible variation.
Water is a precious resource, meaning that we need the best knowledge about what our rainfall patterns are capable of delivering. Our findings can be used to better characterise and manage existing and future flood and drought risk. Forewarned is forearmed.

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Coalition Climate Plan 'Assumes Emissions Trading', Says Government Modeller

The Guardian - Lenore Taylor

The government is campaigning against Labor's emissions trading scheme but its own Direct Action will only work with large funding increases or as an ETS

The environment minister released the modelling by Energetics days before the election was called, saying it was proof critics of the government's climate policy were wrong. Photograph: Victor Fraile/Reuters

Modelling hailed by the Liberal party as proof its Direct Action plan could meet Australia's long-term climate promises in fact assumes the Coalition would turn its policy into a type of emissions trading scheme, according to the authors.
The environment minister, Greg Hunt, released the modelling, by the Energetics consulting firm, just days before the election was called and told the Australian newspaper it was proof that critics of the government's policy – who say it has no hope of reaching Australia's target without changes – were totally wrong.
Malcolm Turnbull and Hunt are now campaigning against Labor's plan for an emissions trading scheme, saying it is a "massive carbon tax" that will force huge rises in household electricity prices, while claiming their own policy can meet its 2030 target with no such impost.
The Energetics modelling found that the government's emissions reduction fund and so-called "safeguards mechanism" could achieve around half the emissions reductions required between 2020 and 2030 to reach the government's target of cutting emissions by 26% to 28%, around 500m tonnes.
But Peter Holt, associate at Energetics, told Guardian Australia that the policies would only achieve those reductions with changes – either large funding top-ups to the ERF (estimated by others at at least $6bn) or a strengthening of the safeguards mechanism so it turned into a baseline and credit emissions trading scheme.
The economist Danny Price – who has advised the government on Direct Action – agrees with Holt's assessment that despite the government's scare campaign against Labor's ETS, it is going to have to introduce a similar version of emissions trading itself to meet its international pledges.
Holt said the modelling was "bottom up" – looking at what sectors had the potential to deliver emissions reductions and then allocating those reductions to the policies that could conceivably achieve them. But the estimated reductions from the ERF and the safeguards mechanism "relied on the assumption that the policies would be adjusted to achieve that outcome".
"To achieve the government's target we would need to see the safeguards mechanism coming into play, either with declining 'baselines' that put more stringent conditions on large emitters, so it formed a baseline and credit emissions trading scheme, or else we would need to see a lot more money put into the emissions reduction fund, or a combination of the two," Holt said.
That means the modelling confirms exactly what Malcolm Turnbull said of Direct Action when he told Lateline in 2011: "If you want to ... cut carbon emissions ... in a very substantial way to the levels that the scientists are telling us we need to do by mid-century to avoid dangerous climate change, then a direct action policy where ... industry was able to freely pollute, if you like, and the government was just spending more and more taxpayers' money to offset it, that would become a very expensive charge on the budget in the years ahead."
The Climate Institute thinktank also said the "turbo-charging" assumed in the Energetics modelling would require "at least another $6bn" tipped into the emissions reduction fund, through which the government buys emissions reductions, or stronger safeguards to introduce a form of emissions trading for industry and electricity generators by tightening emissions "baselines" and forcing companies who exceeded them to buy permits.
"This modelling is chock full of heroic assumptions that the government is hoping it won't be asked about in detail during the election campaign," said the Climate Institute's chief executive, John Connor.
"They include the need for either billions of extra dollars or some form of emissions trading scheme, which sends a penalty or price signal to companies."
Price – whom the government recently appointed to the Climate Change Authority and who acted as an adviser on Direct Action – has also said the Coalition was likely to be forced to move to a form of emissions trading scheme similar to the one now proposed by Labor for the electricity industry.
"The government's Direct Action plan – its safeguard mechanism – could be modified to create exactly this same type of scheme," he said. "I've always thought that was the most likely way for them to go after the review they have scheduled for 2017, because they are obviously going to have to make changes to meet even their existing targets and this is a low-cost way to do it.
Under Direct Action the "safeguards mechanism" is supposed to ensure that increased emissions from heavy industry and electricity generators do not undo the reductions bought through the government's $2.5bn scheme, by setting baselines for their emissions.
At the moment the baselines are lenient, ensuring industries don't "go rogue" but not seeking to force them to reduce their greenhouse emissions from existing levels. But many observers, including business groups, expect they will have to be tightened after 2017 to gradually reduce industrial emissions. And that would turn Direct Action into much the same scheme as Labor is proposing.
The government has already spent 67% of its $2.5bn ERF to achieve only 7% of the emission reductions it needs to meet its Paris target. It did not allocate any more money to the scheme in the budget.
In its report, Energetics found that land use and energy efficiency could contribute significant emissions reductions by 2030.
"Energetics' analysis found that improved land management and low emissions farming practices and low carbon transport are capable of contributing the most to Australia's total low-cost abatement by 2030. In total the two groups account for just over 50% of Australia's total identified abatement potential," the report said.
"The remaining abatement opportunities were allocated to the ERF and safeguard mechanism ... ERF projects could help to reduce emissions at safeguard facilities; and safeguard facilities can purchase [carbon credits] to offset their emissions and help them to meet their safeguard obligations."

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'Dismay': NASA Appeals To CSIRO Not To Cut Global Climate Efforts

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

The US space agency NASA has appealed to CSIRO to abandon plans to cut a key monitoring program that it says will undermine Australia and the world's ability to monitor and predict climate change.

The cost to our international reputation is immense
Kim Carr, ALP's shadow science minister

Brent Holben, the project scientist in charge of NASA's Aerosol Robotic Network, urged CSIRO to reconsider any plans it had to cut or withdraw its contribution to the program, according to a letter obtained by Fairfax Media.

In the dark: cutting key climate monitoring program could throw global models out of sync. Photo: NASA

"I understand that CSIRO is undertaking a major restructuring that may lead to the closure of AeroSpan [CSIRO's partner program]," Dr Holben wrote in the letter addressed to Alex Wonhas, a senior CSIRO executive, and dated May 1, 2016.
"The purpose of this letter is to express my dismay about this, on behalf of NASA and the global aerosol community," he said.
Fairfax Media understands the AeroSpan program – which includes eight automated monitoring sites across Australia – is earmarked to be shut along with other micro-meteorology research done by CSIRO's Yarralumla staff in Canberra. (See CSIRO map below of the eight sites.)

The humble automated monitoring stations that CSIRO is looking to shut down. Photo: CSIRO

Understanding aerosols - the distribution and character of airborne particles and clouds - "represent the single greatest source of uncertainty in climate simulations", Dr Holben said.
CSIRO's contribution has largely been to help calibrate and validate satellite readings that cannot easily distinguish between different types of aerosols. These range from dust and industrial pollutants to sea salt.

Inland Australia as seen from the International Space Station. Photo: NASA

In return, Australia has been promised "unfettered access" to international data, such as from European Space Agency's Sentinel satellites.
NASA's letter notes Geoscience Australia has estimated Earth Observation services are worth $5.5 billion to the Australian economy annually, a windfall that will rise to $8.8 billion by 2030.
The cuts are part of 275 jobs to go from CSIRO, many of them in key climate or water roles. The AeroSpan cost to CSIRO is understood to be less than half a million dollars a year and involve just two researchers.
Chief executive Larry Marshall – whose three-year contract extension has been endorsed by the Turnbull government – has said that Australia's primary research agency must divert resources away from climate monitoring and modelling towards adaptation and mitigation.
The NASA letter said measurements of aerosols were "a fundamental component of climate predictions on both regional and global scales".
Climate monitoring has gained additional prominence this week, with the Cape Grim site in north-west Tasmania expected to report within days that baseline carbon-dioxide levels have exceeded 400 parts per million for the first time, as reported by Fairfax Media. CSIRO is also cutting staff at this site.

International angst
Fairfax Media understands that NASA's complaint has been echoed by the European Space Agency, and individual national research organisations from Japan, Italy and Germany.
Some agencies have been warning their own staff for months to take into account the possible impacts of CSIRO's cuts.
"CSIRO has pledged to continue some of these critical measurements but the question arises as to how will quality be assured and will they be adaptable as scientific priorities evolve when the science teams that nurture them are dispersed," a senior US climate scientist from another US agency told Fairfax Media. "Field programs where there have been joint contributions of resources are particularly threatened."
Cutting the AeroSpan program would also harm the work to be done by the new Climate Science Centre CSIRO has recently set up, NASA said.
Steven Sherwood, one of the world's leading researchers into clouds and climate change at the University of NSW, said the CSIRO program cut was "idiotic".
"We don't even know if aerosols are increasing, decreasing or staying the same during the past 20 years," Professor Sherwood said. "If you stop observing now, you'll never know."
He said the biggest single variable in climate model projections was how they treated aerosols and their impact on the brightness of clouds – and therefore how much of the sun's radiatin are being reflected back to space. More and brighter clouds could mean global warming will be less rapid.

'Blowing a hole'
Abandoning the AeroSpan project would end aerosol assessment over an entire continent – Australia – and remove "effective coverage of a much larger region of the Southern Hemisphere", NASA's Dr Holben said.
Fairfax Media sought comment from CSIRO. A spokesman for Science Minister Christopher Pyne said the government "has not been contacted by any of the organisations mentioned with concerns".
"This process has been as a result of decisions taken by the CSIRO made by the experts who run it in line with the organisations priorities and the Australian Government strongly supports the independence of the CSIRO to make its own decisions."
However, Kim Carr, Labor's shadow science minister, said it was "scandalous that the government is trying to wash their hands of their responsibilities". A Shorten government would immediately intervene to halt the cuts to key climate programs by CSIRO, he said.
"A future government will have to attend to the destruction that [these cuts] have caused," he said. "The cost to our international reputation is immense."
Adam Bandt, Greens Science spokesman, said: "Malcolm Turnbull is blowing a hole in humanity's knowledge of the world around us."
"Any cuts must be postponed until after the election, when a new power-sharing Parliament can restore funding to the CSIRO," Mr Bandt said.
Geoscience Australia, one of CSIRO's partners, said it was "aware that the CSIRO is considering changes to its Aerospan service".
"While the cessation of Aerospan would not immediately impact on the ability of Geoscience Australia to deliver our programs, it is an important part of Australia's Earth observation infrastructure and one the international community values," the spokesman said. "At this time there is no proposal in place for Geoscience Australia to take over the role."
Another partner, the Bureau of Meteorology, said "the full details of changes at the CSIRO and potential impacts on Bureau operations are not yet confirmed".

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