01/07/2020

'Nowhere To Hide': South Pole Warms Up With Climate Change A Factor

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

The South Pole, the most remote part of the planet, has been warming at triple the global average, as natural variability joins with climate change to produce an abrupt shift in temperature trends.

The findings, published Tuesday in the Nature Climate Change journal, show surface temperatures at the South Pole were stable in the first couple of decades of instrument records into the 1980s.

Natural variability and climate change are producing an abrupt shift in temperature trends at the South Pole. Credit: AP

 A record-breaking cold for a spell then made way for even warmer temperature anomalies from the early 2000s. For the 1989-2018 period, the mercury rose an average of 0.6 degrees per decade, or three times the global warming rate, the researchers found.

The report on the flipping of temperature trends at the most southerly point comes as abnormal warmth continues to bake the planet's other polar extreme. The Russian town of Verkhoyansk last week reported 38 degrees, the warmest reading ever recorded within the Arctic Circle.

For Antarctica, the recent accelerated warming is estimated to be about two-thirds the result of natural variability with the role of rising greenhouse gases contributing about one-third, said Kyle Clem, a post-doctoral research fellow at New Zealand's Victoria University.

The rapid warming "lies within the upper bounds of natural variability", Dr Clem said. "It's extremely rare and it appears very likely that humans played a role."

The research shows "there's no place on earth that's immune to global warming", he said. "There's nowhere to hide - not even up on the Antarctic Plateau."

Sitting at 2835 metres above sea level - or 600 metres higher than Mt Kosciuszko - on a rocky continent, the South Pole is exposed to different weather processes than its polar opposite. By contrast, the North Pole rests on shifting sea ice with the seabed more than four kilometres below.

How the South Pole suddenly got a lot warmer
Graphic: Stephen Kiprillis. Source: Nature Climate Change

Dr Clem, along with other researchers from the US and the UK, found changing circulation patterns in the Pacific and Southern Ocean determine which parts of Antarctica warm or cool.

For instance, the western tropical Pacific has periods when is warmer or cooler than usual.

The warmer period - known as the negative phase of the so-called Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation - set in about 2000. During this phase, there is more storm activity in the tropics which in turn spawns more high- and low-pressure systems that send heat far into the high latitudes.

The circumpolar westerly winds, which have been strengthening and contracting polewards under climate change - also play a role in amplifying the transfer of warmth into Antarctica.

Antarctica reveals wide regional temperature variability

Source: Nature Climate Change

When those two patterns align, as they have in recent decades, the South Pole warms but some parts, such as western Antarctica warm at a slow pace or even cool, as the frigid air shifts around.

Michael Mann, Director of the Earth System Science Centre at the University of Pennsylvania, said the study provided "a very detailed and useful analysis" of the forces at play in the far south.

If anything, though, the researchers' use of model simulations to reach conclusions about regional trends probably understates the role of human-caused climate change.

A lab at the South Pole: The most southerly point of the planet has warmed a triple the pace of the rest of the world over the past three decades, scientists say. Credit: Icecube/NSF

"In short, what the authors attribute to natural internal cycles might just be a shift in atmospheric circulation that is actually due to human-caused climate change but isn’t accurately captured in the average over models," Professor Mann said, in an email that included those italics.

The recent polar extremes - including eastern Siberian temperatures above 40 degrees - were important because "what happens in the poles doesn’t stay in the poles", the prominent climate scientist said.
Changes at the South Pole itself were not as critical as the warming of the Southern Ocean, which is leading to the collapse of the West Antarctic ice shelves and the destabilisation of the interior ice sheet.

"This was not well predicted by climate models, meaning we are further along when it comes to the destabilisation of ice sheets and the commitment to rising sea levels than we expected to be at this point," Professor Mann said.

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The World’s Climate Catastrophe Worsens Amid The Pandemic

Washington Post - Ishaan Tharoor

Smoke rises from wildfires near the Berezovka River in Russia on June 23. (Maxar Technologies/Reuters)

We may be living inside the biggest annual carbon crash in recorded history. The quarantines, shutdowns and trade and travel stoppages prompted by the spread of the coronavirus led to a historic plunge in greenhouse gas emissions. In some places, the environmental change was palpable — smog lifted from cities free of traffic congestion, rivers ran clear of the murk that long clogged their banks.

But the romantic vision of nature “healing” itself was always an illusion. As my colleagues reported earlier this month, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are the highest they’ve been in human history, and possibly higher than in the past 3 million years. The specter of man-made climate change looms all the more ominously over a planet in the grips of a viral pandemic.

A look at headlines in just the past few days paints a stark picture: The giant plumes of Saharan dust that wafted over the Atlantic and choked a whole swath of the southern United States — where authorities are, as it is, struggling to cope with a surge of infections of a deadly respiratory disease — was a generational event, which some scientists link to deepening, climate change-induced droughts in North Africa.

By Saturday, swarms of locusts reached the environs of the Indian capital New Delhi, marking the latest advance of a vast plague, the scale of which experts haven’t seen in decades. Successive invasions of the desert insects are expected to hit parts of South Asia through the summer, following multiple swarms ravaging countries in East Africa.

Scientists suggest the magnitude of the new swarms is a direct consequence of warming temperatures in the Indian Ocean, which created a pattern of torrential rainfall and cyclones that yielded more fertile breeding grounds for the locusts. Though much of the Indian spring harvest was collected before the locust swarms arrived, the Horn of Africa region could suffer up to $8.5 billion in lost crops and livestock production by the end of the year as a result of this locust outbreak, according to World Bank estimates.
“Nations which were already under threat of food insecurity now face a real danger of starvation,” Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.) said in a statement touting bipartisan legislation in the House to boost aid to African countries affected by the infestation. “There are now up to 26 million people who are at risk of acute food shortages and widespread hunger.”


Earlier this month, record warm conditions in Siberia sparked raging wildfires in the peatlands that ring the Arctic. There have been what some scientists branded “zombie” blazes — fires sparked the previous summer that never fully died out as winter set in and then were reignited as temperatures soared. The Siberian Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world.

“The Arctic is figuratively and literally on fire — it’s warming much faster than we thought it would in response to rising levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and this warming is leading to a rapid meltdown and increase in wildfires,” climate scientist and University of Michigan environmental school dean Jonathan Overpeck told the Associated Press.

The heat and fires have terrifying consequences in the short term, too. It is believed that a monumental Arctic oil spill in Norilsk, north-central Russia, took place after melting permafrost led to a reservoir collapsing toward the end of last month, triggering a leak in the facility that reminded many of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

Then there’s the Amazon rainforest, the proverbial lungs of the world: Experts fear an even greater spread of fires this year than in 2019, with Brazilian authorities amid the pandemic less able to guard against the illegal blazes often set by loggers, miners and would-be farmers.

Brazil isn’t alone in its struggles with the more immediate, invisible threat of the virus. But climate change doesn’t wait. “You may feel, because of the pandemic, that you are living to some degree in 1918,” wrote New York magazine’s David Wallace-Wells, referring to the flu outbreak that rattled the world a century ago. “The Arctic temperatures of the past week suggest that at least part of the world is living, simultaneously, in 2098.”


Optimists say the experience of the pandemic may focus policy minds more clearly on the need for more decisive, collective action on other fronts. “I was so worried about the dangers of going too far,” Sally Capp, lord mayor of the Australian city of Melbourne, recently told the BBC when discussing her reticence in the past over pushing too aggressive a climate platform. “I have become much more resolute about my values, prioritizing humanity and protecting the environment, so they can play a larger role in driving my agenda.”

On Sunday, municipal elections in France showed a surge in support for the left-leaning Greens, the latest sign that climate-minded politics is coming to dominate the agenda in the West’s major cities. But experts warn that even some of the most well-intentioned governments are behind in meeting carbon-slashing goals, while commitments to climate action around the world are not being upheld in any meaningfully consistent or uniform manner.

The Trump administration, of course, is the climate villain of the moment — rejecting international pacts, gutting national environmental protections and regulations, and sidelining and censoring its own climate researchers and scientists.

“With the pandemic raging and public attention somewhat distracted away from continuing climate-destructive anti-scientist manipulations, protecting climate scientists is a more urgent task than ever,” wrote American meteorologist Jeff Masters. “The world-wide coronavirus lockdowns are proof that humanity can act quickly on a global scale to help pass our civilization’s pop quiz. Collectively, we can do so again to help us pass our coming climate change final exam.”

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Their Fate Isn’t Sealed: Pacific Nations Can Survive Climate Change – If Locals Take The Lead

The Conversation -  |  |  |  | 

AAP Image/Mick Tsikas.

Authors
They contribute only 0.03% of global carbon emissions, but small island developing states, particularly in the Pacific, are at extreme risk to the threats of climate change.

Our study, published today in the journal Nature Climate Change, provides the first mega-assessment on the progress of community-based adaptation in four Pacific Island countries: the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati and Vanuatu.

Pacific Island nation communities have always been resilient, surviving on islands in the middle of oceans for more than 3,000 years.

We can learn a lot from their adaptation methods, but climate change is an unprecedented challenge.

Effective adaptation is critical for ensuring Pacific Islanders continue living fulfilling lives in their homelands. For Australia’s part, we must ensure we’re supporting their diverse abilities and aspirations.

Damage caused by Tropical Cyclone Harold on Santo Island, Vanuatu. AAP Image/Supplied by Luke Ebbs/Save the Children

Short-sighted adaptation responses

Climate change brings wild, fierce and potentially more frequent hazards. In recent months, Cyclone Harold tore a strip through multiple Pacific countries, killing dozens of people, levelling homes and cutting communication lines. It may take Vanuatu a year to recover.

Expert commentary from 2019 highlighted that many adaptation responses in the Pacific have been short-sighted and, at times, even inadequate. The remains of failed seawalls, for example, litter the shorelines of many island countries, yet remain a popular adaptive solution. We cannot afford another few decades of this.

International climate aid commitments from rich western countries barely scratch the surface of what’s needed, yet it’s likely funding will dry up for regions like the Pacific as governments scramble together money for their own countries’ escalating adaptation costs.

This includes Australia, that has long been, and continues to be, the leading donor to the region. Our government contributed about 40% of total aid between 2011 and 2017 and yet refuses to take meaningful action on climate change.

Understanding what successful adaptation should look like in developing island states is urgent to ensure existing funding creates the best outcomes.

Constructing sea walls to protect low-lying Pacific islands from sea level rise is futile. AAP Image/Elise Scott

Success stories

Our findings are based on community perspectives. We documented what factors lead to success and failure and what “best practice” might really look like.

We asked locals about the appropriateness, effectiveness, equity, impact and sustainability of the adaptation initiatives, and used this feedback to determine their success.

The results were mixed. While our success stories illustrate what “best practice” involves, issues still emerged.

Our top two success stories centred on community efforts to protect local marine ecosystems in the Federated States of Micronesia and Vanuatu. Nearby communities rely on these ecosystems for food, income and for supporting cultural practice.

One initiative focused on establishing a marine park with protected areas while the other involved training in crown-of-thorns starfish control. As one person told us:
we think it’s great […] we see the results and know it’s our responsibility.
Initiatives that focus on both the community and the ecosystem support self-sufficiency, so the community can maintain the initiatives even after external bodies leave and funding ceases.

Pele Island, Vanuatu. Can you see coral in the water? The community initiative was aiming to protect this coral ecosystem from crown-of-thorns starfish. Karen McNamara, Author provided

In these two instances, the “community” was expanded to the whole island and to anyone who utilised local ecosystems, such as fishers and tourism operators. Through this, benefits were accessible to all: “all men, all women, all pikinini [children],” we were told.

Standing the test of time

In Vanuatu, the locals deemed two initiatives on raising climate change awareness as successful, with new scientific knowledge complementing traditional knowledge.

And in the Federated States of Micronesia, locals rated two initiatives on providing tanks for water security highly. This initiative addressed the communities’ primary concerns around clean water, but also had impact beyond merely climate-related vulnerabilities.

This was a relatively simple solution that also improved financial security and minimised pollution because people no longer needed to travel to other islands to buy bottled water.

Aniwa, Vanuatu. A communal building in the village has a noticeboard, put up as part of one of the climate-awareness raising initiatives. Rachel Clissold, Author provided

But even among success stories, standing the test of time was a challenge. For example, while these water security initiatives boosted short-term coping capacities, they weren’t flexible for coping with likely future changes in drought severity and duration.

Adaptation needs better future planning, especially by those who understand local processes best: the community.

Listening to locals

For an adaptation initiative to be successful, our research found it must include:
  1. local approval and ownership
  2. shared access and benefit for community members
  3. integration of local context and livelihoods
  4. big picture thinking and forward planning.
To achieve these, practitioners and researchers need to rethink community-based adaptation as more than being simply “based” in communities where ideas are imposed on them, but rather as something they wholly lead.

Communities must acknowledge and build on their strengths and traditional values, and drive their own adaptation agendas – even if this means questioning well-intentioned foreign agencies.

Being good neighbours

Pacific Islands are not passive, helpless victims, but they’ll still need help to deal with climate change.

Pacific Island leaders need more than kind words from Australian leaders.

Last year, Fijian prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, took to Facebook to remind Australia:
by working closely together, we can turn the tides in this battle – the most urgent crisis facing not only the Pacific, but the world.
Together, we can ensure that we are earthly stewards of Fiji, Australia, and the ocean that unites us.
Together, we can pass down a planet that our children are proud to inherit.
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