Ocean Waves And Winds Are Getting Higher And Stronger

University of Melbourne - Professor Ian Young | Dr Agustinus Ribal

Using billions of satellite measurements, new research shows ocean waves and the winds that generate them have been increasing for the last 30 years

Getty Images

During extreme storms, ocean waves can be more than 20 metres high, or as tall as a five-storey building.
More than being just a product of our weather systems, waves are critical for ocean shipping, the stability of beaches, coastal inundation or flooding and determining the design of coastal and offshore structures.

Extreme wave conditions are increasing around the world. Picture: Getty Images

But our new research, published in Science, shows that these waves, and the winds that generate them, are increasing in magnitude and have been doing so for the last 30 years.
These new measurements show that global average wave conditions are increasing but, more importantly, extreme wave conditions are increasing even more rapidly with the largest increases occurring in the Southern Ocean.
We found that extreme winds in the Southern Ocean have increased by approximately 1.5 metres per second or 8 per cent over the last 30 years. Similarly, extreme waves in this same region have increased by 30 centimetres or 5 per cent. Generally, winds are increasing at a faster rate than the waves.
In addition to the increases in the Southern Ocean, extreme winds have also increased in the equatorial Pacific and Atlantic, and the North Atlantic by approximately 0.6 metres per second over the 30 year period.
These changes in ocean wind and wave climates were determined by creating and analysing a database of satellite measurements of wind speed and wave height.
We used data from a total of 31 satellites that were in orbit between 1985 and 2018. For more than thirty years, these satellites made approximately 4 billion measurements of wind speed and wave height.

Global trends in extreme (90th percentile) wind speed (top) and wave height (bottom) over the period 1985-2018. Areas which a red indicate increasing values, whereas blue indicates decreases. Picture: Supplied

Although the data set is huge, to be useful all the satellites needed to be very precisely calibrated. This was done by comparing the satellite measurements with more than 80 ocean buoys deployed around the world. This is the largest and most detailed database of its type ever compiled.
Importantly, within the combined database, there are three different forms of satellites – altimeters, radiometers and scatterometers. They used different methods to measure ocean waves, so combining them provides an even more robust data set.
The increases in extreme wave height are less uniform than the winds. In addition to increases in the Southern Ocean, the heights of extreme waves are also increasing in the North Atlantic. The rate of increase in wind speed and wave height is shown in the graphs above.
Although increases of 5 per cent for waves and 8 per cent for winds may not seem like much, if sustained into the future such changes to our climate will have major ramifications. The potential impacts of climate induced sea level rises are well known. What most people don’t understand is that the actual flooding events are caused by storm surges and breaking waves associated with storms.
The increased sea level just makes these wind and wave events more serious and more frequent. Increases in wave height and other properties such as wave direction will further increase the probability of coastal flooding. Changes like these will also cause enhanced coastal erosion, putting at risk coastal settlements and infrastructure.

Changes in the Southern Ocean can have impacts that are felt around the world. Picture: Getty Images

We still don’t know if the historical increases will be sustained into the future. One of the important uses of the extensive satellite database will be to calibrate and validate the next generation of global climate models which are now including ocean wave predictions. Early results from such models yield similar results to the historical record and particularly point to changes in the Southern Ocean.
Changes in the Southern Ocean are important, as this is the origin for swell that dominates the wave climate of the South Pacific, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and determines the stability of beaches for much of the Southern Hemisphere.
Changes in the Southern Ocean can have impacts that are felt around the world, with storm waves increasing coastal erosion, and putting costal settlements and infrastructure at risk.
International research teams including the University of Melbourne, are now working to develop the next generation of global climate models to project changes in winds and waves over the next 100 years.
We need a better understanding of how much of this change is due to long-term climate change, and how much is due to multi-decadal fluctuations, or cycles.

Links

• Exploring the birthplace of monster waves
• Protecting our coasts naturally
• Heating up: How rises in global temperature could damage the Reef
• Global warming could accelerate towards 1.5℃ if the Pacific Ocean gets cranky
• Heating up: How rises in global temperature could damage the Reef
• Breeding baby corals for warmer seas

Australia’s Election Is A Chance To Regain Our Leadership On Climate Change

Washington Post - Richard Glover

Students protested in March against a coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef and the inadequate progress to address climate change in Sydney. (Saeed Khan/AFP/Getty Images)

Back in February 2017, Scott Morrison, now the prime minister of Australia, brought a lump of coal to Parliament. He waved it around.
“This is coal,” Morrison told his fellow legislators. “Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared.”
Morrison went on to mock the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, over his party’s enthusiasm for renewable energy. “If Bill Shorten becomes the prime minister,” Morrison said, “all the lights will go off around the country.”
Such sentiments may have won votes two years ago, but they seem less sure-fire today. Morrison’s government is facing an election on May 18 and climate change is a key issue among voters.
In a recent survey, 23 percent of respondents cited the environment as one of their key concerns, sharply up from the 14 percent recorded in 2016, at the time of the last election. The latest polls predict the coalition government’s defeat, with the Labor Party heading for a clear victory.
Young voters, who have registered in record numbers, are particularly passionate about the issue, with 39 percent of respondents under that age of 35 now rating the environment as their No. 1 concern.
Why the shift? Australia is the middle of a particularly savage drought. This past January was the nation’s hottest on record, and large swaths of the country received a fifth of their normal rainfall. There were wildfires in Tasmania and floods in Queensland. Temperatures in March also broke records.
Along parts of the iconic Darling River, the stagnant water turned toxic over summer. Several million fish died and in December and January, their bloated bodies floating to the surface. In one video, two distressed locals each cradled a huge, dead Murray Cod, one declaring some of the dead fish to be 100 years old. An expert panel from the Australian Academy of Science disagreed with that age assessment, yet still assessed the fish as being up to 25 years old — meaning they had endured, and survived, many previous dry spells.
This drought, in other words, was different.
Adding to the change in mood is a growing cynicism about government fear-mongering over renewables. For some years, Morrison’s side has sounded shrill when discussing the cost of a low-carbon economy.
Barnaby Joyce, a significant figure in the governing coalition, at one point predicted a tax on carbon would make a single cow or sheep cost as much as a house. In 2011, Tony Abbott, who later became prime minister, declared the science around climate change was “absolute crap” and said a carbon price would wipe large industrial towns such as Whyalla “off the map.”
Such predictions have moderated over time, yet the government’s wariness about carbon-reduction has continued.
Just this month, a massive new coal mine has been approved for Queensland, despite its potential impact on Australia’s most significant natural wonder: the already damaged Great Barrier Reef.
More bizarrely, in terms of a pro-business government, there were suggestions that a coal-fired power plant be forcibly acquired from its private owners — just to keep it open. The private company, AGL, resisted, citing business reasons for its desire to shift to renewables.
The Labor Party also faces criticism. It has failed in the past to follow through on its climate change commitments. This time around, some point to Labor’s unwillingness to predict the cost of its carbon-abatement plans.
The government, meanwhile, claims to be on track to meet the country’s carbon-reduction targets. Its leadership — whatever the arguments over policy — now accepts the science of anthropogenic climate change.
And yet some still argue that Australia, because of its small population, has a negligible impact on global warning. To me, this is the worst argument for doing nothing.
It’s true that Australia was responsible for just 1.1 percent of global emissions in 2016, ranking Australia No. 16 among the most polluting countries in the world. And yet, per capita, we’re among the worst.
More to the point, as I’ve argued before, it’s pathetic and absurd to say small countries have no role in solving big problems.
Australia could have adopted the same “little us” argument during World War II. Who needs the Australians when such valiant work was being done by others — the Brits, the Russians, the Americans, the Canadians? It’s true, I suppose, that the Allies would have won without the Australians — the nearly 1 million of our people who served; the 27,073 who were killed in action.
But how is that an argument for not doing your bit?
The unstated thought: Important battles should be left to others. Smaller nations can stand on the sidelines and freeload.
Australia is more at risk from climate change than almost any other country in the developed world. It’s taken us a while, but — with this election — many Australians are signaling a desire to put their shoulder to the wheel.

Links

• The 10 things that worry voters most - and how that's changed since the last election
• Vote Compass finds voters are split on economy and environment as most important issue
• Joyce's $100 roast prediction rubbished
• Australia one of the countries most exposed to climate change, bank warns
• A Climate Reckoning Is Coming To Our Political Hothouse
• Experts Find 'Integrity Issues' With Coalition's Direct Action Policy
• The Next Reckoning: Capitalism And Climate Change
• The Carbon Brief Profile: Australia
• Now Adani Has Been Approved, These Are The Nine At-Risk Coalition Seats Most Concerned About Climate Change
• In Australia, Climate Policy Battles Are Endlessly Reheated
• Coalition Hits Bottom Of Barrel With Fake News Campaign Against Electric Cars
• Electric Vehicles An Opportunity For Local Government
• News Corp Launches Offensive Against Labor's Climate Policy Amid Glowing Budget 2019 Previews
• The Challenge Facing Labor On Climate Change
• ALP Climate Policy Requires Serious Scrutiny
• Hopes Emerge For A 'Great Era Of Bipartisanship' On Clean Energy Policy
• Australia Stops Payments To Green Climate Fund
• Coalition's Climate Solutions Fund Must Last A Further Five Years

It Looks Like Banksy Just Created An Extinction Rebellion Mural

Grist - Kate Yoder

Isabel Infantes / AFP / Getty Images

Banksy, the famously anonymous street artist, appears to have lent his (or maybe her) talents to sounding the alarm about the climate crisis.
A new mural showed up in central London near Hyde Park on Thursday night, and a Banksy collector thinks it’s legit. The mural depicts a young girl with a just-planted seedling who’s holding a tiny sign bearing the symbol of Extinction Rebellion, a new group using civil disobedience to draw attention to government inaction on climate change. The words alongside it say “From this moment despair ends and tactics begin.”
The child is stenciled on a concrete block at the Marble Arch landmark, where Extinction Rebellion protestors had recently set up camp. Over the past week and a half, activists have barricaded roads and bridges across London, demanding that the British government set a target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. More than a thousand of them have been arrested in the nonviolent protests.
Banksy has not yet confirmed that the mural is authentic, but the artist has created artwork about similar themes, like rising seas and sooty air, before.
Back in 2009, for instance, Banksy depicted a classic climate denial statement — “I don’t believe in global warming” — sinking into the water of a canal in north London.

Zak Hussein / PA Images via Getty Images

Another Banksy artwork last December took on air pollution. Painted on the corner of a garage in Port Talbot, one of the most polluted towns in the U.K., it looked like a kid enjoying the snow. Until you see around the corner, when it becomes clear that the “snow” is actually debris from a flaming dumpster.

Matt Cardy / Getty Images

So if Banksy is an activist trying to raise awareness about our present peril, well, unlike his or her identity, that’s not a well-kept secret.

Links

• London Extinction Rebellion mural is a Banksy, says expert
• Art work from Banksy, poking fun at climate change deniers
• Street artists are joining the fight to save the environment
• Banksy's Latest Mural Is a Haunting Take on Air Pollution
• Climate change is real by unknown artist
• UNICEF - Street art as a messenger for climate change action