06/06/2020

NASA Climate Change Warning: Rising Sea Levels Accelerating

The Express - 

NASA has warned of climate change and rising sea levels, stating the ice caps are melting at an accelerating rate.

The poles are melting. (Image: EXPRESS)

Globally, as it stands, sea levels are rising at about 8mm a year due to melting ice and , and while that does not seem like much, the implications for future generations could be huge. Between 1993 and 2014, sea levels rose by 66mm (2.3 inches) – or roughly 3mm per year.

If it continues at the current rate, or gets faster, it could mean coastal cities such as New York could be submerged by the end of the century.

Global warming is contributing to a loss of ice cover in the Arctic and Antarctic circles and researchers believe Greenland could be one of the worst affected.

The ice covering Greenland is up to three kilometres thick in certain places, covering an area seven times the amount of the UK.

If all of this ice were to melt, it would cause sea levels to rise by a staggering seven metres, which could have major implications for the UK.

has now revealed that the ice is melting at an accelerating rate in what could be a devastating snowball effect.

NASA climate change warning: Rising sea levels ACCELERATING (Image: NASA)


Earth is heating up. (Image: EXPRESS)





NASA said: "A small glacier in the Arctic region of Norwegian archipelago Svalbard, as photographed by NASA's Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX). This is one of the seven regions where ice loss is accelerating, causing the depletion of freshwater resources.

"Seven of the regions that dominate global ice mass losses are melting at an accelerated rate, a new study shows, and the quickened melt rate is depleting freshwater resources that millions of people depend on.

"The impact of melting ice in Greenland and Antarctica on the world's oceans is well documented.

"But the largest contributors to sea level rise in the 20th century were melting ice caps and glaciers located in seven other regions: Alaska, the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, the Southern Andes, High Mountain Asia, the Russian Arctic, Iceland and the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard. The five Arctic regions accounted for the greatest share of ice loss."

The planet is continuing to warm, with scientists stating the global temperature has risen by roughly 0.15-0.20C per decade.



This has led to the visible loss of ice in the polar caps but frozen water is also melting beneath the surface, scientists have warned.

Permafrost is a permanently frozen layer beneath the surface, which affects 18 million square kilometres in the upper reaches of the northern hemisphere.

The layer of ice contains rocks, soil, sand and stores the remains of plants and microbes which have been stored in the permafrost for millions of years.

However, with this means the carbon dioxide (CO2) from dead plants and microbes has also become trapped in Earth’s natural freezer – and with permafrost beginning to melt at an alarming rate, this CO2 will eventually be released into the atmosphere.

Current estimates suggest there is up to 1.5 trillion metric tons of carbon stored in permafrost.

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(AU) Shared Community Battery May Be Trialled In Solar-Powered Canberra Suburb To Stabilise Energy Supply

ABC News - Markus Mannheim 
 
Solar power will be mandatory in the new Canberra suburb of Jacka, on the city's northern fringe. (ABC News: Briana Shepherd)

Key Points
  • The ACT Government is considering a community battery for the suburb of Jacka, to be shared among households

  • Research suggests shared, mid-sized batteries are a cheaper, more effective way for homes to store solar energy

  • The network operator is looking for ways to stop households flooding the grid with excess solar power
Australia is home to the planet's biggest battery. 

It is also the world's leading market for household batteries.

But Canberra researchers suggest medium-sized batteries — shared between several hundred homes — could be just as crucial for the energy grid's future.

The ACT Government is considering giving residents of a new suburb shared access to such a battery, which would be about as big as a shipping container.

The proposal would benefit up to 500 homes in Jacka, a community that will have solar cells on every roof.

If it goes ahead, it will store households' unused energy, earning them more money and preventing their excess electricity from destabilising the power grid — a problem of growing concern to the grid's operator.

It will also allow more people to benefit from battery technology, which to date has been used almost exclusively by wealthy households.

A concept image of a residential community battery. (Supplied: ARENA/Synergy)


'Cheaper and more efficient'

 Community-scale batteries are not yet used in Australia's biggest energy network, which includes South Australia and all eastern states.

However, modelling by Australian National University (ANU) researchers shows the mid-sized batteries can be cheaper and more effective than household batteries.

A research leader of the ANU's battery and grid integration program, Marnie Shaw, says Australia has the world's highest rate of rooftop-solar generation, and needs ways to store that electricity.

"Batteries save households money because they allow you to use solar energy that you produce during the day later in the evening when you need it, and that energy will be cheaper than buying energy from the grid," she said.

"So having any kind of battery storage will be cheaper for households.
"But community batteries can provide that household storage for potentially more houses more efficiently, and potentially be less costly."
Dr Marnie Shaw's modelling suggests community batteries can save households more money and better protect the power grid. (ABC News)

 An ANU simulation of a battery linked to 200 homes suggested each household would save about $15 a month in power costs in today's energy market.

But one of the main beneficiaries would be the power network itself, as the battery would substantially reduce the amount of solar energy flooding the grid during daylight hours.

Batteries can stabilise the grid

 Last month, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) said it needed the power to stop households exporting their excess electricity at critical periods, to avoid damaging the grid.

Its chief executive, Audrey Zibelman, said AEMO would do this only during emergencies.

"This is very temporary, very limited and, really … a last-resort control we need if we were worried the system would otherwise go black," she told 7.30.


However, the growing use of batteries is already beginning to solve this problem.

Dr Shaw's early modelling suggests household batteries can lessen potentially damaging energy flows during peak periods by about 25 per cent, while a community battery can be up to twice as effective.

But she says all types of power reserves — home, community and large-scale — are important for the network.
"We need storage at different levels across the electricity grid for the best outcomes."
One of the Hornsdale Power Reserve's biggest successes has been in protecting the grid from voltage surges. (ABC News)

Government keen, but deal not yet done

 The ACT passed a milestone last year when its entire electricity use was matched by purchases from renewable sources.

This means Canberra is now effectively 100 per cent powered by green energy, though still reliant on Australia's main grid.

Deputy Chief Minister Yvette Berry said suburban planning was an important part of fighting climate change.

However, the Jacka battery remained a proposal at this stage, which the Government was examining with the ANU and power utility Evoenergy.

"There's a lot of work to do in that space, because innovation is happening every day in battery storage and solar energy," she said.

"So we want to make sure we get it right.
"But we've got a really great opportunity here in the ACT through the development of a new suburb in Jacka, to try some new and different things."

The Government is also trialling other ways to improve green energy use and efficiency in new suburbs.

In Whitlam, for example, it is subsidising home owners who buy rooftop solar, electric vehicle charging points and efficient appliances.

However, Dr Shaw said one of the main advantages of a community battery, compared with other initiatives, was it could benefit a wider range of people.

"This is one of the problems with household batteries — they require a large upfront investment and that's out of reach for some people."

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12,000 Year Temperature Record

Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO)


Key Points
  • A continuous record of global temperatures dating back 12,000 years that is linked to regional areas provides an important resource for understanding current climatic changes
  • AN ANSTO environmental scientist assisted with locating records from the Australia and New Zealand zone for the database
  • The publicly available online resource includes quality-controlled, published, proxy records from lake and ocean sediment, peak and glacial ice among others directly linked to temperature as a driver
A comprehensive global database of climate records extending back 12,000 years to the Holocene period, has been published.

The resource, which is available online, is needed to place recent warming events into the longer-term context of variability in natural climate.

The research supporting the database was published in Nature Scientific Data.

“On World Environment Day, a database might not be the most dramatic example of scientific research, but the availability of a resource such as this, is, in fact, great news for those of us who are trying to understand the history of our planet’s climate and the challenges we face today,” said Prof Henk Heijnis, Leader of environmental research at ANSTO.

“This repository, which has been established according to the most rigorous protocols, is a thing of scientific beauty and an essential resource for environmental researchers here and elsewhere,” said Heijnis.

Climate change is one part of ANSTO's research to understand environmental change, which also includes landscape reconstruction and human impacts.


Credit: NOAA.Climate.gov
Data: NCEI World Data Service Paleoclimatology

The database includes Australia and other areas in the Southern Hemisphere.

“As well as the 90 plus scientists who worked on the compilation of this database, it captures the contribution of many hundreds of researchers who have collected and analysed environmental samples at sites around the world over many years.”

The compilation of quality-controlled, published, proxy records linked to temperature in this database enables researchers to extract temperature records linked to specific locations on a regional scale.

A large group of close to 100 international contributors led by Prof Darrell Kaufman of Northern Arizona University, which included ANSTO environmental scientist Dr Krystyna Saunders, compiled data from natural archives at 679 global sites according to strict criteria on time frames and record quality.

Saunders, who has expertise in the use of environmental proxies to reconstruct climate and ecosystems, assisted in identifying records from the Southern Hemisphere to complete the repository.

Few global temperature data sets have been compiled based on evidence from such a wide variety of environmental proxies that include ecological, geochemical and biophysical evidence from lake (51%) and marine (31%) sediments, peat (11%), glacier ice (3%), among others.

The synthesised data can be compared with model-based simulations of climate to evaluate if the models provide accurate insights into the mechanisms and feedbacks associated with climate change.

For example, it is expected to be useful in understanding how the ocean-atmosphere circulation has evolved along with past global climate changes.

“There have been composites of temperature reconstructions from sites around the world before, but this is the most comprehensive. There is now a resource available for everyone. For example, if you are interested in Australasia, you can look up sites in the region and choose which are most relevant for your purposes, knowing the data have been assessed and are comparable” said Saunders.

Approximately 10 per cent of the database comprises records from the Southern Hemisphere but only a small proportion comes from Australia.

“The small number from Australia highlights the need for further work. This is something ANSTO environmental researchers and their collaborators are working on; not only for Australia, but at sites around the world.”

“In the past, researchers have been limited to a time slice, whereas now we have a comprehensive and continuous time series, in which temperature has been the main driver of the environmental information in the proxy records,” explained Saunders.

The database includes descriptions of the criteria used to include the records and extensive evidence of their statistical rigour to validate the accuracy of record standardisation. This involves a uniform suite of metadata descriptors across a wide variety of proxy data types.

The database complements the PAGES 2k Consortium database of global paleo-temperature records, which extends back 2000 years and is formatted similarly within the Linked PaleoData structure (LiPD1). Saunders’ previous work was included in this as the only example of a temperature record based on lake sediments that met the criteria for inclusion in Australia.

A diverse group of ANSTO scientists collaborates with academic partners to provide high-resolution data on environmental proxies using X-ray fluorescence scanning and other technique, adding to the database of environmental records in Australia.

ANSTO expects to make the data and related resources available to students through its education program.

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