Lethal Heating: 03/26/20

26/03/2020

New 3d View Of Methane Tracks Sources And Movement Around The Globe

NASA - Ellen Gray

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

NASA’s new 3-dimensional portrait of methane concentrations shows the world’s second largest contributor to greenhouse warming, the diversity of sources on the ground, and the behavior of the gas as it moves through the atmosphere. Combining multiple data sets from emissions inventories, including fossil fuel, agricultural, biomass burning and biofuels, and simulations of wetland sources into a high-resolution computer model, researchers now have an additional tool for understanding this complex gas and its role in Earth’s carbon cycle, atmospheric composition, and climate system.

Since the Industrial Revolution, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have more than doubled. After carbon dioxide, methane is the second most influential greenhouse gas, responsible for 20 to 30% of Earth’s rising temperatures to date.

“There’s an urgency in understanding where the sources are coming from so that we can be better prepared to mitigate methane emissions where there are opportunities to do so,” said research scientist Ben Poulter at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

Credit: NASA/Scientific Visualization Studio. This video can be downloaded at NASAs Scientific Visualization Studio .

A single molecule of methane is more efficient at trapping heat than a molecule of carbon dioxide, but because the lifetime of methane in the atmosphere is shorter and carbon dioxide concentrations are much higher, carbon dioxide still remains the main contributor to climate change. Methane also has many more sources than carbon dioxide, these include the energy and agricultural sectors, as well as natural sources from various types of wetlands and water bodies.

“Methane is a gas that’s produced under anaerobic conditions, so that means when there’s no oxygen available, you’ll likely find methane being produced,” said Poulter. In addition to fossil fuel activities, primarily from the coal, oil and gas sectors, sources of methane also include the ocean, flooded soils in vegetated wetlands along rivers and lakes, agriculture, such as rice cultivation, and the stomachs of ruminant livestock, including cattle.

“It is estimated that up to 60% of the current methane flux from land to the atmosphere is the result of human activities,” said Abhishek Chatterjee, a carbon cycle scientist with Universities Space Research Association based at Goddard. “Similar to carbon dioxide, human activity over long time periods is increasing atmospheric methane concentrations faster than the removal from natural ‘sinks’ can offset it. As human populations continue to grow, changes in energy use, agriculture and rice cultivation, livestock raising will influence methane emissions. However, it’s difficult to predict future trends due to both lack of measurements and incomplete understanding of the carbon-climate feedbacks.”

Researchers are using computer models to try to build a more complete picture of methane, said research meteorologist Lesley Ott with the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at Goddard. “We have pieces that tell us about the emissions, we have pieces that tell us something about the atmospheric concentrations, and the models are basically the missing piece tying all that together and helping us understand where the methane is coming from and where it’s going.”

To create a global picture of methane, Ott, Chatterjee, Poulter and their colleagues used methane data from emissions inventories reported by countries, NASA field campaigns, like the Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) and observations from the Japanese Space Agency’s Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT Ibuki) and the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument aboard the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5P satellite. They combined the data sets with a computer model that estimates methane emissions based on known processes for certain land-cover types, such as wetlands. The model also simulates the atmospheric chemistry that breaks down methane and removes it from the air. Then they used a weather model to see how methane traveled and behaved over time while in the atmosphere.

The data visualization of their results shows methane’s ethereal movements and illuminates its complexities both in space over various landscapes and with the seasons. Once methane emissions are lofted up into the atmosphere, high-altitude winds can transport it far beyond their sources.

When they first saw the data visualized, several locations stood out.

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

In South America, the Amazon River basin and its adjacent wetlands flood seasonally, creating an oxygen-deprived environment that is a significant source of methane. Globally, about 60% of methane emissions come from the tropics, so it’s important to understand the various human and natural sources, said Poulter.

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Over Europe, the methane signal is not as strong as over the Amazon. European methane sources are influenced by the human population and the exploration and transport of oil, gas and coal from the energy sector.

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

In India, rice cultivation and livestock are the two driving sources of methane. “Agriculture is responsible for about 20% of global methane emissions and includes enteric fermentation, which is the processing of food in the guts of cattle, mainly, but also includes how we manage the waste products that come from livestock and other agricultural activities,” said Poulter.

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

China’s economic expansion and large population drive the high demand for oil, gas and coal exploration for industry as well as agriculture production, which are its underlying sources of methane.

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

The Arctic and high-latitude regions are responsible for about 20% of global methane emissions. “What happens in the Arctic, doesn’t always stay in the Arctic,” Ott said. “There’s a massive amount of carbon that’s stored in the northern high latitudes. One of the things scientists are really concerned about is whether or not, as the soils warm, more of that carbon could be released to the atmosphere. Right now, what you’re seeing in this visualization is not very strong pulses of methane, but we’re watching that very closely because we know that’s a place that is changing rapidly and that could change dramatically over time.”

“One of the challenges with understanding the global methane budget has been to reconcile the atmospheric perspective on where we think methane is being produced versus the bottom-up perspective, or how we use country-level reporting or land surface models to estimate methane emissions,” said Poulter. “The visualization that we have here can help us understand this top-down and bottom-up discrepancy and help us also reduce the uncertainties in our understanding of the global methane budget by giving us visual cues and a qualitative understanding of how methane moves around the atmosphere and where it’s produced.”

The model data of methane sources and transport will also help in the planning of both future field and satellite missions. Currently, NASA has a planned satellite called GeoCarb that will launch around 2023 to provide geostationary space-based observations of methane in the atmosphere over much of the western hemisphere.

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(US) Editorial: Climate Change Is Just As Real As Covid-19. Now’s The Last, Best Chance For Our Government To Treat It That Way

Los Angeles Times - LA Times Editorial Board

A resident walks past shadows cast by trees during a sunny day in Beijing on March 3. China’s far-reaching efforts to control the spread of the new coronavirus have resulted in a steep drop in carbon emissions and other pollutants. (Ng Han Guan / Associated Press)

There is no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic is the crisis of the moment, and a terribly serious one at that, threatening not only human lives but also the global economy.

But it’s not the only crisis the world is facing, and we ought not, while confronting the immediate menace, disregard the other immense threat looming over us: global warming. Rather, somewhat counterintuitively, we should use the current pandemic to learn some lessons and glean some insights about the other perils we will soon be facing.

We’re not suggesting that climate change contributed to the coronavirus outbreak; there seems to be no direct link, although experts say a warming world could accelerate pandemics of insect-borne diseases (the coronavirus is spread person to person). But the global response to this pandemic does show that the world can come together to confront a shared threat. That could bode well for addressing climate change — if we treat it as seriously.

The pandemic is putting a chokehold on economic activity in hard-hit regions of the world — China, Europe and here in the U.S. When factories and businesses are closed, workers and customers stay home (here in California and in New York, by order of the governors). With few people traveling long distances, airlines slash flights. Sure, people and businesses continue to use energy, but not at the levels they did just a month ago. And that reduction in energy use in turn reduces fossil fuel consumption and emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Little of this will be long-lasting. Once the epidemic subsides, economic activity will resume and so, presumably, will emissions.

But the crisis offers opportunities for change, and we ought to be mindful of them as the pandemic and the economic crisis play out. Businesses are learning how much of their workforce can do their jobs remotely, which offers guidance for how they might operate in the future with a lighter carbon footprint. Consumers are undergoing a forced experiment in changed patterns of shopping and consumption.

Congress and President Trump also are negotiating a series of bailouts and other support packages to help people and businesses survive. They should take this opportunity to press for changes in how some of these industries operate.

The airline industry, for instance, should be asked to do more to reduce its carbon emissions, which have soared in recent years and will continue to rise as air travel itself is projected to increase. A September paper from the International Council on Clean Transportation used industry data to conclude that commercial air operations account for 2.4% of global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels, and that industry emissions in 2018 were 32% higher than five years before.

One available emissions-reducing alternative is the use of so-called sustainable aviation fuels, including biofuels, but they are more expensive than conventional jet fuel. And airline companies can be pressured to adopt aggressive plans to replace older, higher-polluting planes. That would be in line with the demand for increased fuel efficiency commitments that the Obama administration attached to its bailout package for the auto industry.

Of course, extracting climate-friendly concessions will vary by the industry seeking bailout help, so we won’t get too prescriptive here. The main imperative for the government is to keep climate policy in mind as it devises a plan to rescue the economy.

But wait, you think. This is the Trump administration, which at best shrugs at the science and ignores global warming. True enough, but Congress also is involved, and it can place climate considerations on the table
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Here’s a good place to start: The government should not be bailing out the oil and gas industry at a time when we should be focusing on expanding production of renewable energy and the infrastructure to store and deliver it.

In recent days, early coronavirus scoffers — including the president — have come around to the reality that this pandemic is a deadly threat and have finally begun taking strong steps to address it.

Yet global warming is a larger and longer-lasting threat to humankind. We have about a decade, according to the experts, to make significant reductions in carbon emissions to avoid the worst ramifications of climate change. The world already is seeing the effects in longer and more severe droughts in some places, record flooding in others, stronger and more intense tropical storms and regional temperature rises that are making parts of the word nearly uninhabitable.

The science confirms all this, as it has confirmed the spread and dangers from the novel coronavirus. So maybe accepting the reality of COVID-19 will lead the administration to recognize the reality of climate change and work with Congress to begin addressing it in meaningful ways.

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Water Is An Under-Used Weapon In Climate Change Fight, UN Says

Reuters - Megan Rowling

Residents of the village of Shangshak in India's northeast Manipurcarry state carry water home on Saturday after finding four springs dry. | AP

BARCELONA - Using water more efficiently in everything from daily life to agriculture and industry would help reduce planet-warming emissions and curb climate change - a potential benefit that has yet to be widely recognised, the United Nations said on Sunday.

In a report issued on World Water Day, U.N. agencies said global warming would “affect the availability, quality and quantity of water for basic human needs”, threatening the right to water and sanitation for “potentially billions of people”.

But as well as using limited supplies more wisely and fairly, policymakers and businesses should also seek to manage water resources better to economise on the electricity and fuel needed to pump, clean and deliver water, the report said.

“If you save water, you’re saving energy and reducing the greenhouse gases to produce that energy to bring the water,” said Richard Connor, the report’s editor.

Using less energy cuts down further on the water needed to produce electricity, creating a virtuous circle, he said.

Even more water can be saved by switching to less-thirsty clean power sources like wind instead of fossil fuels, he added.

Water use has increased six-fold over the past century and is rising by about 1% a year, said the United Nations World Water Development Report 2020.

It outlined ways water could be used and recycled more effectively to limit emissions, alongside looking after nature.

Restoring and protecting wetlands, for example, is of “critical importance” because they store twice as much carbon as forests, while also preventing floods, purifying water and providing a habitat for animals and birds, the report said.

Conservation agriculture - a green farming approach that causes minimal disturbance to the soil - also helps reduce carbon emissions and the huge amounts of water needed for crop irrigation in intensive farming systems.

Treating more wastewater would also make a big difference, said the report, noting 80%-90% of wastewater is discharged to the environment without any form of treatment.

Untreated wastewater is a major source of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, while wastewater treatment accounts for an estimated 3%-7% of all emissions, due to the energy and biochemicals required for the process.

The best solution, the report said, is to invest in modern techniques that extract methane from organic matter in wastewater and use this biogas to generate the energy needed to treat the water - a method already used in some water-scarce countries like Jordan, Mexico, Peru and Thailand.

As a result, public utilities there have reduced carbon emissions by thousands of tonnes, while making financial savings and providing a higher-quality service, it added.

Policy ‘Disconnect’
One of the main barriers to these types of approaches is a lack of cooperation between government officials working on climate change and those tasked with managing water.

“The disconnect remains abundantly clear at the policy level,” said Connor.

For example, the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change does not mention water, the U.N. report noted.

The national climate action plans submitted by countries under that pact generally acknowledge the importance of water, but few have so far presented and costed specific projects, it added.

“When it comes time to move from talk to action - be it finance or otherwise - the talk falls on deaf ears and water gets put aside and ... left behind,” said Connor.

More concrete efforts to adapt to rising water stress and cut emissions from water use will require joint planning between climate change and water specialists, as well as greater investment to put them into practice, the report said.

Water management, water supply and sanitation services are under-funded, it added - but by tackling global warming as well as water challenges, projects could aim to capture a larger share of climate finance.

In 2016, only 2.6% of $455 billion invested in climate change measures was allocated to water management, it noted.

That may be starting to change. In the past four years, the Green Climate Fund, for example, has approved two projects in Sri Lanka to upgrade village irrigation systems, protect water catchments, and promote climate-smart farming practices.

"Water does not need to be a problem – it can be part of the solution," said Audrey Azoulay, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

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