Lethal Heating: 06/16/16

16/06/2016

May 2016 Sets New Records

Global temperature records were broken yet again in May 2016, according to data just released by NASA, which also reported that it was the hottest (northern hemisphere) spring on record. The Japan Meteorological Agency ranked May 2016 as close second to May 2015.
The heat has been especially pronounced in the Arctic, resulting in a very early onset of the annual melting of Arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet. Snow cover in the northern hemisphere was exceptionally low.
The record temperatures in May were accompanied by other extreme events, including very heavy precipitation in parts of Europe and the southern USA, and widespread and severe coral reef bleaching.
"The state of the climate so far this year gives us much cause for alarm," said David Carlson, Director of the World Climate Research Programme. "Exceptionally high temperatures. Ice melt rates in March and May that we don't normally see until July. Once-in-a-generation rainfall events. The super El Niño is only partly to blame. Abnormal is the new normal."
"The rapid changes in the Arctic are of particular concern. What happens in the Arctic affects the rest of the globe. The question is will the rate of change continue? Will it accelerate? We are in uncharted territory."

Advances in research and observations have increased our understanding of the climate system, and there has also been progress in the science of "attribution" to determine whether a specific extreme weather event was linked to human-caused climate change or to natural climate variability.
The strong El Niño – which has now dissipated – fuelled the high temperatures witnessed so far in 2016. But the underlying cause of global warming remains greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activities.
The human-caused rise in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is being given an extra boost this year by the El Niño say a team of climate scientists led by the UK's Met Office, in a paper published in Monday's edition of the journal: Nature Climate Change. As a result, 2016 will be the first year with concentrations above 400 parts per million (ppm) all year round in the iconic Mauna Loa carbon dioxide record.
Richard Betts, of the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Exeter, is the lead author on the paper. He said: "The atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is rising year-on-year due to human emissions, but this year it is getting an extra boost due to the recent El Niño event. This warms and dries tropical ecosystems, reducing their uptake of carbon, and exacerbating forest fires. Since human emissions are now 25% greater than in the last big El Niño in 1997/98, this all adds up to a record CO2 rise this year."

Temperatures
May was the hottest May on record. Above-average temperatures were especially pronounced in high northern latitudes, according NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. It was the hottest spring (March-April-May) on record. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration still has to issue its global temperature figures for May.
Alaska had its warmest spring on record by a wide margin. According to Finnish Meteorological Institute statistics, the average temperature in May was 3-5°C higher than usual in most parts of Finland. The all-time record for the average temperature in May was broken at about 20 observation stations. Most recently, Nuuk in Greenland, saw a June record of 24.8°C on 9 June.
Australia had its warmest autumn on record at 1.86 °C above average, according to the Bureau of Meteorology. More than 53% of the country experienced highest on record mean temperatures, because of strong El Niño Water temperatures to the north and northwest of Australia.

Snow and ice cover
May 2016 set a new record low for the month for the period of satellite observations, at 12.0 million square kilometers (4.63 million square miles), following on previous record lows this year in January, February, and April, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. May's average ice extent is 580,000 square kilometers (224,000 square miles) below the previous record low for the month set in 2004, and 1.39 million square kilometers (537,000 square miles) below the 1981 to 2010 long-term average.
During the month, daily sea ice extents tracked about 600,000 square kilometers (232,000 square miles) below any previous year in the 38-year satellite record. The monthly average extent for May 2016 is more than one million square kilometers (386,000 square miles) below that observed in May 2012.
The Northern Hemisphere had exceptionally low snow coverage for both April and May of 2016 and a record low spring (March, April, and May), as reported from 50 years of mapping by Rutgers University's Global Snow Lab.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced on May 20 that Barrow, Alaska recorded the earliest snowmelt (snow-off date) in 78 years of recorded climate history. Typically snow retreats in late June or early July, but this year the snowmelt began on May 13, ten days earlier than the previous record for that location set in 2002.

Precipitation
From period 28 to 31 May, France witnessed exceptional rainfall. For instance, the department of Loiret saw 92.9 mm in 3 days which is without precedent in the past 30 years. Such amounts are only seen once every 10-50 years according to Météo-France. Paris received 3 months worth of rainfall in a month and May was the wettest month since 1960.
Southeast Texas had record flooding. An additional 2-5 inches of rain in the last 24 hours in Southeast Texas where intense storms in the previous 24 hours had totals exceeding 10 inches is causing record floods.

Coral bleaching
The Coral Sea (including the Great Barrier Reef), and the Tasman Sea were highest on record for extended periods since late summer 2016, according to Australia's Bureau of Meteorology. These warm waters have also contributed to surface temperature warmth over Australia and unprecedented bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, according to Australia's independent Climate Council.
There has been widespread bleaching of reefs in many other parts of the world.

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Election 2016: Behind The Battlelines There's Surprising Agreement On Climate Change

Fairfax - Peter Martin

Every so often elections matter. The last one mattered big-time for carbon emissions.
In 2013, we voted to end the carbon tax. In its two years of life, emissions from electricity generation fell an exceptional 10.6 per cent. We now know that in the 21 months since they've climbed 5.6 per cent.

Illustration: Joe Benke

The extraordinary turnaround is appallingly timed for a country which in April signed the Paris Accord agreeing to attempt to hold the increase in global temperatures to between 1.5 and 2 degrees.
Pitt&Sherry energy analyst Hugh Saddler, who compiled the figures, says they are the result of an abrupt change in the mix of electricity generation "away from hydro and back to brown and black coal as removal of the carbon price changed the relative costs".
And a change in attitudes. The political messages that we helped create assured us that saving energy was no longer that important.

Illustration: John Shakespeare

"Many energy consumers appear to have lost interest in taking further steps to use energy more efficiently," Saddler says. "The impact of political leadership is not confined to policy decisions on carbon prices or renewable energy targets – it has an effect on energy consumption behaviour that should not be underestimated."

In Paris we agreed to work towards cutting net global emissions to zero by the second half of the century. Although our first offering was only to cut Australia's emissions to 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, the Paris process ensures that we will be asked to repeatedly revise it in line with what other countries are doing to meet the overarching target.

Steam rises from stacks at the Hazelwood power station, Latrobe Valley. Photo: Arsineh Houspian

Which means we need the means to achieve those reductions. "Direct Action", handouts from the $2.55 billion emissions reduction fund, won't do the trick. For one thing, a process by which bureaucrats assess grants and hand out money for worthy projects is inherently non-scalable. If we end up needing three times or 10 times or 20 times as many grants we would need three times or 10 times or 20 times the decision-making time. Even if we had it, the decision makers would get snowed by "anyway projects". They've no way of telling whether they are paying for work that would be done anyway. Upgrading lighting and increasing fuel efficiency makes sense and would happen whether or not the Commonwealth doled out money for it.
To its credit the Coalition is onto it. It'll review its emissions reductions policies next year, shortly after the election. It has more to work with than its rhetoric about direct action suggests. Buried within the Coalition's legislation, and to date dormant, are the bones of an emissions trading scheme. Big firms that emit more than a baseline will be required to buy credits from groups that are planting and conserving forests to suck emissions back in. A few simple tweaks would enable them to buy credits from competitors that had cut their emissions below the baseline and from overseas. It would be emissions trading as envisioned by the Rudd government and now being forwarded by Bill Shorten. If the baseline was progressively reduced as Labor proposes it would be indistinguishable.
But it wouldn't be enough, and Labor to its credit now recognises this. Its policy is to cut emissions to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 in accordance with advice from the Climate Change Authority. Whereas the Labor of old, and its climate change advisor, Ross Garnaut, thought all that would be needed would be to gradually tighten targets and let prices work their magic, it now recognises that in the real world that means firms closing, people suddenly losing their jobs, and lobbying to remove the scheme at the next election.
That's why its policy includes all sorts of other measures to ensure emissions fall more quickly and with more certainty than trading alone would achieve. Some borrow from direct action. In order to build renewables up to 50 per cent of generation by 2030 it will consider reverse auctions, where firms bid for a government-guaranteed price in order to build, the firms that ask for the lowest price winning. And it'll pay the dirtiest brown coal-fired power stations to close, although out of a levy placed on other power stations rather than its own funds.
It'll identify the regions likely to lose jobs (Victoria's Latrobe Valley is a prime candidate, housing Hazelwood, perhaps the world's dirtiest power station) and work with other employers to create alternative jobs ahead of time.
The Climate Institute's John Connor calls the approach "scaffolding". It is designed to ensure emissions come down predictably, rather than suddenly and frighteningly as the target date for zero net emissions approaches.
What's odd about the election we're in is that each side appears to have learnt from the other and each is likely to introduce a similar mix of policies should it find itself in office, assuming each genuinely supports the agreement signed in Paris.
There's less to vote about, but more chance of achieving lasting progress.

Election 2016: Opponents in agreement. The major parties seem to agree on something this election as The Age's Economics Editor Peter Martin explains.

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Revealed: First Mammal Species Wiped Out By Human-Induced Climate Change

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

Exclusive: scientists find no trace of the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that was the only mammal endemic to Great Barrier Reef

The Bramble Cay melomys has become extinct, Australian scientists say. Photograph: Queensland government

Human-caused climate change appears to have driven the Great Barrier Reef's only endemic mammal species into the history books, with the Bramble Cay melomys, a small rodent that lives on a tiny island in the eastern Torres Strait, being completely wiped-out from its only known location.
It is also the first recorded extinction of a mammal anywhere in the world thought to be primarily due to human-caused climate change.
An expert says this extinction is likely just the tip of the iceberg, with climate change exerting increasing pressures on species everywhere.
The rodent, also called the mosaic-tailed rat, was only known to live on Bramble Cay a small coral cay, just 340m long and 150m wide off the north coast of Queensland, Australia, which sits at most 3m above sea level.
It had the most isolated and restricted range of any Australian mammal, and was considered the only mammal species endemic to the Great Barrier Reef.
When its existence was first recorded by Europeans in 1845, it was seen in high density on the island, with sailors reporting they shot the "large rats" with bows and arrows. In 1978, it was estimated there were several hundred on the small island.
But the melomys were last seen in 2009, and after an extensive search for the animal in 2014, a report has recommended its status be changed from "endangered" to "extinct".
Led by Ian Gynther from Queensland's Department of Environment and Heritage Protection, and in partnership with the University of Queensland, the survey laid 150 traps on the island for six nights, and involved extensive measurements of the island and its vegetation.
In their report, co-authored by Natalie Waller and Luke Leung from the University of Queensland, the researchers concluded the "root cause" of the extinction was sea-level rise. As a result of rising seas, the island was inundated on multiple occasions, they said, killing the animals and also destroying their habitat.
It was estimated the area of the cay above high tide has decreased from 4ha in 1998 to 2.5ha in 2014. And worse for the melomys, they lost 97% of their habitat in just 10 years, with vegetation cover declining from 2.2ha in 2004 to just 0.065ha in 2014.
"For low-lying islands like Bramble Cay, the destructive effects of extreme water levels resulting from severe meteorological events are compounded by the impacts from anthropogenic climate change-driven sea-level rise," the authors said in their report.
Globally, averaged sea level has risen by almost 20cm between 1901 and 2010, a rate unparalleled in any period during the last 6,000 years. But around the Torres Strait, sea level appears to have risen at almost twice the global average rate between 1993 and 2014.
"Significantly, this probably represents the first recorded mammalian extinction due to anthropogenic climate change," the researchers said in their report, quietly published on the Queensland government's website last week.
As a result, the Queensland government website now recommends suggested recovery actions not be taken. "Because the Bramble Cay melomys is now confirmed to have been lost from Bramble Cay, no recovery actions for this population can be implemented," it says.
Although small, the island is significant for many people and animals. It is the most important breeding ground for green turtles and a number of seabirds in the Torres Strait, the researchers said, and has long been visited by its traditional custodians, the Darnley Islanders, who caught fish, turtles and birds.
The authors said the IUCN lists one other mammal that was driven to extinction, partly by extreme weather – the Little Swan Island hutia – but introduced cats on the island were considered the main driver of extinction.
In contrast, the researchers say the melomys was driven to extinction due "solely (or primarily) to anthropogenic climate change".
The one hope for the species, the authors say, is that there might be an undiscovered population in Papua New Guinea. They say the melomys might have arrived on Brambles Cay on rafting debris from the Fly River region of Papua New Guinea. If that is true, then either the Brambles Cay melomys, or a close relative, may still live undiscovered there.

There is absolutely no doubt we will lose species due to the increasing pressures being exerted by climate change.

John White, Deakin University

The authors recommend targeted surveys in Papua New Guinea be carried out, to see if they are there.
John White, an ecologist from Deakin University in Australia, who was not involved in the study, said this extinction is the tip of the iceberg. "I am of absolutely no doubt we will lose species due to the increasing pressures being exerted by climate change," he said. "Species restricted to small, low lying islands, or those with very tight environmental requirements are likely to be the first to go."
A report in 2015 found one sixth of the world's species face extinction due to climate change, and scientists have warned that the world is on the edge of the sixth mass extinction.
"Certainly, extinction and climatic change has gone hand in hand throughout the history of the world," he said. "So, if this is one of the first, it is more than likely not going to be the last."

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