Lethal Heating: 12/14/19

14/12/2019

(AU) Australia's Bushfires Have Emitted 250m Tonnes Of CO2, Almost Half Of Country's Annual Emissions

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn

Exclusive: forest regrowth can reabsorb emissions from fires but scientists fear natural carbon ‘sinks’ have been compromised

The NSW fires emitted about 195m tonnes of CO2 since 1 August, with Queensland’s bushfires adding 55m tonnes, almost half of Australia’s annual emissions. Photograph: Lauren Dauphin/Nasa Earth Observatory/AFP via Getty

Bushfires in New South Wales and Queensland have emitted a massive pulse of CO2 into the atmosphere since August that is equivalent to almost half of Australia’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, Guardian Australia can reveal.
Analysis by Nasa shows the NSW fires have emitted about 195m tonnes of CO2 since 1 August, with Queensland’s fires adding a further 55m tonnes over the same period.

In 2018, Australia’s entire greenhouse gas footprint was 532m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Experts say the pulse of CO2 from this season’s bushfires is significant, because even under normal conditions it could take decades for forest regrowth to reabsorb the emissions.
But scientists have expressed doubt that forests already under drought stress would be able to reabsorb all the emissions back into soils and branches, and said the natural carbon “sinks” of forests could be compromised.

The figures were provided to Guardian Australia by Dr Niels Andela, a scientist at the Nasa Goddard Space Flight Center and a collaborator in the Global Fire Emissions Database.
The GFED uses data from satellites that have detected fire hot spots and combines it with historic estimates of emissions from fires.
Andela stressed the estimates did come with large uncertainties, as the methodology was still under development, but he said it was “widely applied”.
More than 2.7m hectares of land has been burned in this NSW bushfire season, with authorities warning there will be more fires with little prospect of rain in coming months.
Separate GFED data provided to Guardian Australia on “active fire detections” from Nasa satellites shows the remarkable early start and large extent of fires in the NSW fire season compared with the past 15 years.
Andela said CO2 emissions from fires in grasslands and savannas are absorbed in only a few years, but it can take many decades for forested areas to regrow and absorb CO2 that was lost in blazes.
He said fires could also shift vegetation patterns of ecosystems that were already under stress.
Dr Pep Canadell, of the CSIRO climate science centre and the executive director of the Global Carbon Project, said: “This pulse of fire emissions should indeed be of concern. Any additional carbon emissions to the atmosphere, with no guarantee that it will be removed back by regrowing vegetation in a later stage, is of concern, particularly in an Australia under climate change.
“Thus, it is important to understand both risks – the emissions from fires but also the potential long-term loss of CO2 sink capacity of the terrestrial vegetation due to the incomplete recovery of burned landscapes due to permanent degradation. These emissions are very significant.”
He said the long-term average of emissions from fires in Australia was about 380m tonnes of CO2 per year, but he said NSW was a minor contributor to this total, with most emissions coming from the Top End, “where thousands of savanna fires take place every year”.
He said that in an average year, emissions from NSW would contribute no more than 5% to the Australia-wide total.
In Australia’s greenhouse gas inventory, the government reported 340m tonnes of emissions from “wildfires” each year for the whole country from 2013 to the latest reporting year of 2017.
Emissions from bushfires are considered to be neutral because when forests regrow after fires, they absorb a similar amount of CO2 as they did when they burned.
But Canadell said this was “most likely an optimistic view of the world” because it didn’t consider that many burned areas never recovered to their prefire state “and therefore never end up accumulating as much carbon as they had before.”
He said in some cases, such as the Tasmanian fires of 2015, peat that was burned “may take thousands of years to recover the carbon if the climatic conditions are suitable – the latter an unlikely assumption under the rapid climate changes we are already observing and are predicted.”
Prof David Bowman, a fire ecologist at the University of Tasmania, said that under normal conditions the regrowth would reabsorb the CO2. But he said the ongoing drought, combined with climate change, meant conditions were not normal.
“Drought-stressed trees recover less well – carbohydrates reserves are exhausted – and under climate change tree growth may be slow and fires more frequent, meaning less tree biomass and even loss of forest cover.
“This is a nasty negative feedback cycle of a biosphere carbon sink becoming a source [of carbon].”

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(AU) 'Breaking Point': Bushfires To Grow Australia' Carbon Footprint.

AFR - Bo Seo

Climate change is disrupting the natural process of recovery for forests and bushland after a fire, potentially leaving carbon dioxide released by fire stranded in the atmosphere and adding to Australia's emissions footprint.
Natural fires have historically been considered "carbon neutral" because, unlike fossil fuel emissions, most of their carbon output is reabsorbed as vegetation recovers.

There were more than 100 fires burning in NSW on Thursday, half of them uncontained. Sitthixay Ditthavong

But a combination of drought and worsening fire conditions could mean that some of the millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere this bushfire season are never recovered.
Pep Canadell, senior principal research scientist at the CSIRO Climate Science Centre, said gross carbon emissions from fires had declined over the past century as firefighting practices and technology improved.
However, worsening drought and more extreme fire conditions could lead to a "breaking point" after which both gross and net carbon emissions from natural fires could increase, Dr Canadell said.
"You can have as many helicopters as you want, but, at some point, it may be that extreme fire conditions become so common ... that you'll be burning more than is regrown".
Fires unrelated to permanent changes to land use had a gross carbon dioxide contribution of 381 million tonnes in 2013, according to the CSIRO's latest available Australian Terrestrial Carbon Budget.
Australia's total greenhouse gas emissions flatlined in the past year at 532 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Bushfires have destroyed 800,000 hectares of national park in NSW this bushfire season, out of a total of 2.1 million hectares burnt across the state.
There were more than 100 fires burning across NSW on Thursday evening, half of them uncontained, as emergency warnings were issued for a 230,000-hectare blaze at Gospers Mountain and a 32,000-hectare fire at Green Wattle Creek near Warragamba Dam.
The NSW Rural Fire Service said it was too late to leave for residents in Colo Heights and Boree, and they were told to seek shelter as the Gospers Mountain fire approached.
The Bureau of Meteorology said Australia had recorded its lowest level of rainfall for the month of November, and that the dry weather would not break for at least three more months.
Dry conditions and strong winds, which averaged 50km/h on Thursday but also produced 80km/h gusts across the ranges, were set to sustain the dangerous fire conditions on Friday.
Meanwhile, the hazardous air pollution in Sydney, the longest and most widespread on record, was expected to linger around the city basin until Saturday.
Dr Canadell said he was unsure whether Australia had hit the "breaking point", but that "unprecedented" disasters - such as the fires that wiped out Tasmania's ancient alpine ecosystems in 2016 - had already occurred.
The 1000-year-old trees destroyed in these fires, including pencil and king billy pines, do not naturally regenerate.
Swinburne University bioscience professor Mark Adams said he estimated bushfires in 2003 and in 2006-07 had released about 550 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Scientists declined to speculate on gross emissions from this bushfire season, citing incomplete information about what had been burned and to what extent.
But they noted the vegetation in northern NSW and Queensland was less carbon-dense than the areas in Victoria and Canberra that were worst affected by those earlier fires.
Martin Rice, head of research for the Climate Council, said he was unsure how the emissions footprint of natural fires would change, but that the "root cause" of the escalating bushfire risk was the burning of fossil fuels.
"Climate change is not a thing of the future. It's human-induced, and it's happening now," Dr Rice said.
Australia has committed to reducing its carbon footprint by 26 - 28 per cent by 2030 from 2005 levels, down to 441 million - 453 million tonnes, but observers including the United Nations have questioned its ability to meet the target.
Even if bushfires had a net positive contribution to carbon output, it would not count against the anthropogenic, or human-induced, measures of the national greenhouse accounts.
But Dr Canadell said changing conditions could reopen discussions on methods of carbon accounting.
"We cannot say bushfires are human-induced. But we can say that climate change is human-induced, and that it is having an effect on the fires," he said.

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(AU) 'Cause For Great Concern': Australia Ranked Last In Global Assessment On Climate Change Action

SBS - Tom Stayner*

Australia’s record on climate change has been panned in the latest Climate Change Performance Index tracking nation’s efforts to combat global warming.

Activists from School Strike 4 Climate and Extinction Rebellion march towards the Parliament of Western Australia, November 2019. Source: AAP

Australia’s climate change record has been ranked among the bottom five nations in the world in a global assessment of countries' emissions trajectories.
The Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) measures the emissions, renewable energy share and climate policies of 57 countries and the European Union.
It has been released at COP25, the UN climate summit being held in Madrid, as nations attempt to thrash out the way forward on the global Paris framework responding to the crisis.

Energy Minister, Angus Taylor at the COP25 UN Climate Summit in Madrid, Spain.

According to the report, Australia, Saudi Arabia, and the United States give “cause for great concern” over their performance on emissions, renewable energy development and climate policy.
Australia’s climate policy rating was ranked the lowest in the world with analysts noting that “the newly elected government continued to worsen performance at both national and international levels.”
Its policies were given a 0.0 rating, in comparison the United Stated ranked one position higher held a 2.8 rating and the top-performing nation Portugal received a 98.7.
“National experts observe a lack of progress in these areas with the [Australia] government failing to clarify how it will meet the country’s insufficient 2030 emissions reduction target and inaction in developing a long-term mitigation strategy,” the report reads.
"While the government is not proposing any further targets for renewable energy beyond 2020, it continues to promote the expansion of fossil fuels and in April 2019 approved the opening of the highly controversial Adani coalmine."
Across the assessment, Australia ranked 44^th on emissions, 50^th on renewable energy, 52^nd on energy use and 61^st on climate policy.

Australia has defended its record on climate change. EFE

The index’s release came as Energy Minister Angus Taylor told the summit in Madrid Australia was committed to the Paris agreement and on track to meet and beat its targets set for 2030.
"The world needs action to reduce emissions and Australia believes technology will be a key driver of the global transition to lower emissions," he said.
“We can only reduce emissions, as fast as the deployment of commercially viable technology allows. This means, we need to get the right technology to the marketplace, when and where it is needed."
Australia has pledged to reduce emissions by 26 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 as part of the Paris agreement.
However, government projections show more than half that target will be achieved through carryover credits from achieving goals of the previous Kyoto protocol.
The report found the US ranked last, followed by Saudi Arabia and soon after Australia at 56th, although several countries did report falls in emissions last year, largely due to an industry-wide fade out of coal.
While climate performance varied greatly - even within the EU, with Sweden leading the way - the report found that none of the countries surveyed were currently on a path compatible with the Paris climate goals.
The 2015 accord saw nations agree to work towards limiting global temperature rises to "well below" two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
China, the world's largest single emitter, was found to have taken "medium action" due to its high investment in renewables.
However, the index warned that Beijing could slump to the bottom rungs if it follows through on its plan to continue building coal-fired power plants.
Ursula Hagen from the environmental watchdog Germanwatch, who co-authored the accompanying report, said both the US and China were "at a crossroads" on climate.
"The index shows signs of a global turnaround in emissions, including declining coal consumption. However, several large countries are still trying to resist this trend - above all the USA," she said.
"Much will depend on further developments in China and the elections in the USA."
Delegates are gathered at the COP 25 in Madrid to devise ways of putting the Paris plan in action, but key sticking points remain over emissions trading schemes and how the fight against climate change is funded.
"This science-based assessment shows again that in particular the large climate polluters do hardly anything for the transformational shift we need," said Stephan Singer from the Climate Action Network.
He said nations need to implement "deep emissions reductions to curtail the run to potentially irreversible climate change".
The global assessment cited destructive bushfires in Australia as a "pre-summer heatwave hits the country" as one example of the magnitude of the global climate crisis.

*Additional reporting from AFP and AAP.

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