Lethal Heating: 12/12/20

12/12/2020

(AU) Record Spring Heat A One-In-500,000 Chance Without Climate Change

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

Climate change added as much as 1.7 degrees of warming to Australia's record hot spring, dwarfing the role of natural variability, analysis by the National Environmental Science Program shows.

Australia's average mean temperatures in spring were 2.03 degrees above the 1961-90 average, exceeding the previous warmest spring in 2014 by almost a quarter of a degree, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

Spring ended with some severe heatwave conditions but for the season as a whole it was also remarkably warm. Credit: Andrew Miskelly, via Weatherzone

The warmth was particularly unusual because it occurred even as the bureau declared that a La Nina pattern had taken hold in the Pacific by late September.

During a typical La Nina event, conditions tend to turn wetter and cooler than average as rain systems shift westwards towards the Australian continent.

Applying advances in climate modelling, researchers at the Science Programme's Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub found the likelihood of such an extreme spring happening without the additional greenhouse gases humans have pumped into the atmosphere was more than one in 500,000.

David Karoly, the hub's leader, said the bureau's 2-degree anomaly for spring was in comparison with its 1961-90 benchmark.

However, taking the longer perspective out to 1910 when the bureau was founded, the actual warming was more like 2.3 degrees, with climate change contributing about 1.7 degrees to that tally.

The relative lack of rainfall, particularly across northern Australia, contributed to the unusual spring heat.

Almost all the warming for Australia has occurred since 1960, with the warming rate now about 0.2 degrees per decade, Professor Karoly said.

The development of better climate models means scientists can increasingly provide estimates of the contribution to global heating to extreme weather soon after the events, particularly for heatwaves.

"We are getting more experienced," Professor Karoly said. "It helps us to do rapid attribution because we have more climate simulations.

With new methods also being developed by the Bureau of Meteorology, quick assessments of the climate change contribution will become increasingly common in the future, he said.

The latest work built on research developed with Sophie Lewis, a former climate scientist now working for the ACT government, that assessed the 2013 spring, then a record for Australia.

Beachgoers sprawled on the sand to soak up the sunshine at Nielsen Park in Vaucluse. Credit: Edwina Pickles

Last month also smashed records for Australia-averaged heat, with mean temperatures 2.47 degrees above the 1961-90 yardstick used by the Bureau. That was 0.4 degrees warmer than the previous hottest November, set in 2014.

Professor Karoly said the likelihood of such a warm November happening without climate change was about one in 2000.

The higher odds than the one-in-half-a-million for the spring as a whole is that natural monthly variable is greater than for a three-month season as a whole, he said.

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(AU) UN Defends Excluding Morrison From Climate Summit, Canberra Livid With Johnson Over Snub

Sydney Morning Herald - Bevan Shields

London: The United Nations has defended the decision to block Prime Minister Scott Morrison from speaking at a climate summit this weekend, while also taking a swipe at the amount of money being offered to low-lying island nations in the Pacific.

While Morrison told Parliament on Thursday that he was not bothered by the snub, the government is privately furious and much of its anger is directed towards British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is hosting the conference in partnership with the UN and France.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is facing pressure to make significant climate policy pledges ahead of a United Nations summit with world leaders.

Johnson invited Morrison to speak at the December 12 summit several weeks ago but walked away from the offer this week amid a behind-the-scenes diplomatic tussle over whether Australia's climate change policies were insufficient to warrant a speaking slot.

Morrison had planned to use his speech to announce that Australia would drop its controversial plan to use Kyoto carryover credits to achieve its 2030 emissions reduction targets.

Selwin Hart, the special adviser to UN secretary-general António Guterres on climate action, said Australia had not met the threshold needed to speak.

"We will not be commenting on the participation of individual leaders," he said.

"But the three co-hosts - the UN, UK and France - provided all member states with very clear guidance from the outset that speaking slots would go to countries and other actors who show the most ambition right now."

Hart would not be drawn on what the UN thought of Morrison's planned announcement or what the UN wanted to see from Australia on climate change.

However he did repeat the UN's position that countries should sign up to achieving net zero emissions by 2050 ahead of a major climate summit in Glasgow next November.

Morrison has recently embraced the idea of net zero emissions but has only said it can be achieved in the second-half of the century.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was also excluded from the list of nearly 80 world leaders given permission to address Saturday's summit.

China, which is building dozens of new coal-fired power plants, was given a spot.

"Rather than focussing on those countries that are not on that list as of now, we really should be celebrating those that have decided to come forward this early - many of them from the developing world who despite the challenges of the pandemic, [are] on the frontlines of the climate crisis including many countries in the Pacific - to make bold and ambitious commitments around net zero," Hart said.

"Some have brought these commitments forward and I think we should celebrate those leaders who have come forward and decided to take this ambitious step before COP26.

"We have a long way to go before Glasgow and we hope that this coalition around net zero by mid-century will grow."

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said publicly that he was asked to speak at the climate summit by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Credit: PA

Johnson offered Morrison the chance to speak even though France, the UN and other supporting partners like Italy and Chile had a say on who made the final list.

The government is furious that Johnson was unable to guarantee the promise. There had already been tensions between the UK and Australia over climate in the weeks since Downing Street publicly claimed Johnson had urged Morrison to take "bold action" during a phone call on October 28.

"He has thrown us under the bus," one government official said on Thursday.

Downing Street did not respond to questions on Thursday.

Diplomatic sources not authorised to speak publicly said Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was determined to not let Australia speak.

Morrison plans to outline his climate policy to an online meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum on Friday night instead.

He told Parliament on Thursday that Australia's climate and energy policy would be set in Australia's national interest, "not to get a speaking slot at some international summit".

Japan, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru and Cambodia are the only countries in the Asia-Pacific region given a speaking slot.

Hart said the UN wanted to see more commitments on climate financing and appeared to take a swipe at Australia for not doing more to help its Pacific neighbours.

"Ten years ago developed countries promised to mobilise $US100 billion per year in new climate finance to support mitigation and adaptation in the developing world," he said.

"That goal has not yet been met and therefore its absolutely crucial that as we head towards Glasgow there is renewed commitment around climate finance mobilisation for the developing world as well as support for those countries -including many in the Pacific that are already dealing with climate disruption and who face and uncertain future as a result of the climate crisis."

Morrison last year pledged to redirect more than half a billion dollars in foreign aid towards renewable energy projects and disaster relief throughout the Pacific.

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Climate Change: EU Leaders Set 55% Target For CO2 Emissions Cut

BBC

Poland's coal-fired Belchatow power station is among the EU's big polluters. AFP

EU leaders have agreed on a more ambitious goal for cutting greenhouse gases - reducing them by 55% by 2030, rather than 40%.

The new target was reached after difficult all-night talks in Brussels.

Poland, heavily reliant on coal, won a pledge of EU funding to help it transition to clean energy.

The EU Commission will draw up detailed plans for all 27 member states to contribute to the 55% target, measured against 1990 CO2 emission levels.

EU Council President Charles Michel hailed the agreement, tweeting "Europe is the leader in the fight against climate change".

It is part of a global effort to tackle climate change by cutting atmospheric pollution, especially carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

The Paris climate deal, signed in 2016, aims to keep global temperature rise well under 2C, preferably within a maximum rise of 1.5C.

'Only a small improvement'

Environmental campaign groups say the 55% target does not go far enough. And the European Parliament, yet to debate the new target, has called for a 60% cut.

Sebastian Mang of Greenpeace said "the evidence shows that this deal is only a small improvement on the emission cuts the EU is already expected to achieve".

Greenpeace is urging a minimum cut of 65% in EU carbon emissions. That figure was also advocated by Johannes Wahlmüller of Austrian green group Global 2000.

EU move adds to global momentum

Analysis - Matt McGrath, BBC Environment Correspondent

There are two key questions about this new target for 2030: is it significant and is it enough?

It is undoubtedly a major step forward for the EU, the world's third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. It puts the Union on track to reach a net-zero emissions goal by 2050. The fact that they have been able to bring the more reluctant countries like Poland along is also a positive.

But is it sufficient to satisfy the science and to avoid dangerous levels of warming? That's more debatable. Many green groups and the European Parliament argue that the EU should have gone much further to 65-70% if they really are serious about keeping the rise in temperatures under 1.5C this century.

The announcement is hugely timely, coming just a day before the fifth anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement. And right now, thanks to China and the new incoming US administration, there is a great deal of positive news on climate change. This EU decision certainly adds weight to that momentum.

The UK government plans to slash UK emissions by 68% over the next decade.

Meanwhile, Australia has said it will achieve its 2030 emissions pledge, made under the Paris deal, without resorting to using old carbon credits.

Australia overachieved on previous climate targets, meaning it built up credits to offset against carbon emissions. But there was international opposition to the idea of using those credits instead of adopting more ambitious clean energy measures.

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In September the EU Commission set out its blueprint for reaching the 55% target by 2030, and said at least 30% of the EU's €1.8tn (£1.64tn; $2.2tn) long-term budget would be spent on climate-related measures.

To reach the 55% target, it says, annual investment in the energy system will need to be about €350bn higher across the EU.

The volume of fossil fuel imports to the EU needs to fall by more than 25% compared to 2015 levels, it says.

According to the Commission, by 2030 the proportion of renewable sources in power generation needs to rise to about 66% and fossil fuel sources diminish to under 20%.

In the first half of this year, the EU figure for electricity generation from renewables was 40% and that for fossil fuels was 34%.

Currently in the EU the burning of fossil fuels in the energy sector accounts for just over 75% of total EU greenhouse gas emissions, most of it CO2, the Commission says.

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