(BBC) Climate Change: 'Fragile Win' At COP26 Summit Under Threat

BBC News - Matt McGrath

COP President Alok Sharma acknowledges the applause at the end of marathon talks in Glasgow in November. Jeff J Mitchell

COP26 President Alok Sharma has warned that progress made during the summit is at risk of "withering on the vine".

Mr Sharma said that the agreements reached at the Glasgow climate meeting had been a "fragile win" for the world.

But unless the commitments made are turned into action this year, the chances of keeping global temperatures in check will be lost.

Quoting from the popular film, Don't Look Up, he said this was no time to "sit tight and assess".

The UN's COP26 climate summit in November ended with a deal being struck in a bid to stave off severe climate change. This pact was the first ever UN climate deal to explicitly plan to reduce coal - the worst fossil fuel for greenhouse gases.

But the pledges didn't go far enough to limit temperature rise to 1.5C, seen by scientists as the threshold for dangerous impacts from global warming.

Twelve weeks to the day after the start of COP26 (so named because it was the 26th meeting of the Conference of the Parties), Alok Sharma delivered his first major speech since the gathering, at a Chatham House event in Central London.

Mr Sharma is essentially in charge of the negotiations process until the next major conference, COP27, in Egypt in November.

He highlighted the fact that, despite the pandemic, and frayed international relations, countries had worked together at COP26 to deliver the Glasgow Climate Pact.

That agreement, he said, was a significant achievement.

Around 120 world leaders came to COP26 on the banks of the Clyde in November 2021. OLI SCARFF

In Glasgow, countries had agreed to return with new and improved carbon-cutting plans for 2030 by the time of the next major summit in Egypt in November.

The hope is that every nation will increase their national efforts in line with limiting global warming below 1.5C.

Mr Sharma also underlined the progress made in Glasgow on getting rid of the most polluting fossil fuel.

"When my team and I were deliberating on whether we should aim to consign coal power to history, I was warned we would never get the word 'coal' in a COP text," Mr Sharma said.

"Yet every country at COP has agreed to phase-down coal power."

But the achievements in Glasgow will not survive if global leaders don't take concrete action this year, he explained.

"Unless we honour the promises made, to turn the commitments in the Glasgow Climate Pact into action, they will wither on the vine,"Mr Sharma told the audience.

"We will have mitigated no risks. We will have seized no opportunities. Instead, we will have fractured the trust built between nations. And 1.5C will slip from our grasp. So my absolute focus for the UK presidency year is delivery."

Mr Sharma outlined four key priorities for this year, the first of which involves getting countries to increase their actions on cutting carbon. He would be concentrating on getting the richer G20 group of nations to do more.

Alok Sharma meets with the incoming Eqyptian President of COP, Sameh Shoukry. AFP

There must also be a renewed focus on helping countries to adapt to climate change, and to make advances on the issue of loss and damage.

Money was critical to progress, he reiterated.

Come November, leaders of the richer countries must be able to show that the $100bn (£74bn) promised every year from 2020 would finally be delivered.

At a number of points in his speech, Mr Sharma referred to the South African deal put together at COP26.

Countries, including the UK, are stumping up the cash for South Africa to transition away from coal. Mr Sharma indicated that this approach may well be used again.

"Where we can support them, as we're doing with South Africa, in going from coal to a clean energy transition, that's something that developed countries are going to have to do, increasingly."

Links

• COP26 What was agreed at COP26?
• Evasive words and coal compromise, but deal shows progress
• Green label plan for gas and nuclear prompts EU row
• COP26: South Africa hails deal to end reliance on coal
• How extreme weather is linked to climate change
• (BBC) Climate Change: Storm Clouds Gather After COP26
• (Pursuit: University of Melbourne) What We Now Know About Climate Change After 2021
• (AU SMH) Glasgow Was A Success, Pity About Australia: Paris Accord Author
• (NBC) Australia’s Dismal Climate Record Comes Under COP26 Spotlight
• (Al Jazeera) ‘Declaration Of War’: Pacific Islands Blast COP26 Pledges

(INVERSE) Arctic Ice Study Reveals Consequences Of Climate Change Can Last Thousands Of Years

INVERSE - Tara Yarlagadda

It's a matter of millennia, not centuries.

IN 2004, HOLLYWOOD made paleoclimatology — the study of Earth’s ancient climate — pop-culture famous with scientist Jack Hall, who analyzes the Antarctic past only to discover an imminent Ice Age in The Day After Tomorrow. But this kind of work isn’t a Hollywood invention.

Paleoclimatology can help us understand the consequences of present and future climate change. New research on Greenland’s ice sheet shows just how far into the future we can peer — and it isn’t a rosy picture.

A recent study published in the journal PLOS ONE simulated changes to the Greenland ice sheet — an immense body of ice spanning 1.63 million kilometers — between the last interglacial period 125,000 years ago and the year 2100.

The research reveals for the first time the extent of the delayed response that could come if the Greenland ice sheet melts due to shifting temperatures, posing striking implications for the effect of present climate change on melting Arctic ice.

“The evolution of the ice sheet in the past tells us that the response of ice volume to climate change is delayed by several millennia,” Hu Yang, a co-author on the study and a researcher at the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research, tells Inverse.

WHAT’S NEW — The scientists identified three key findings from their simulations, which modeled the Greenland ice sheet over time.

1. The ice sheet reached its maximum and minimum volumes around 17 to 18,000 years and 5 to 6,000 years ago, respectively — even though extreme climate change had begun occurring several thousand years prior to these dates.
2. The scientists conclude changes to the Greenland ice sheet lagged behind the actual climate change events by “several millennia.”
3. In more recent history, between 8,000 years ago and the pre-industrial era, the researchers find that Greenland’s climate grew colder, and the Greenland ice sheet also grew in volume until the second half of the twentieth century, even though temperatures began rising in the 1850s after the Industrial Revolution.

In other words, there was a lag in the effect of global warming on the ice sheet’s volume.

All of this means we won’t necessarily see Greenland’s ice sheet melt in real-time as global temperatures dangerously rise. Rather, we might have to wait millennia to see the full effects of climate change on the ice sheet.

“The results show that [Greenland ice sheet] delayed the climate change in the past, and will delay human-induced climate change as well,” Yang says.

The study also reveals how past climate change — paleoclimate — has lingering effects on the present-day melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

“Its evolution is not only controlled by present climate changes but also influenced by past climate,” he adds.

Analyzing how the Greenland ice sheet responded to past climate events could help scientists understand the effects of present-day global warming on the ice sheet. Getty

HOW THEY MADE THE DISCOVERY — Using various earth system and ice sheet models, including one created by the research team’s Alfred Wegener Institute, the researchers simulate changes to the volume of the Greenland ice sheet between 125,000 years ago and the year 2100.

“The current study qualitatively gives a picture of how ice sheets evolve in the past and will possibly evolve in the future,” Yang says.

WHY IT MATTERS — Earth’s past informs the present, and there is no better evidence of that truism than the researchers’ chilling new findings on this massive Arctic ice sheet.

Scientists have already established the link between melting ice in both Greenland and the Arctic circle and global warming. We’re already seeing the effects of such ice melt as rising sea levels pose an imminent threat to coastal cities.

“Within this century, melting of the Greenland ice sheet could, in the worst case of warming, possibly increase the sea level by tens of centimeters,” Yang says.

But according to this new study, we might not see the worst effects of ice melt in our lifetime, leading us to potentially underestimate the devastating effects of climate change on both this monumental ice sheet and sea-level rise.

“More significant sea-level rise from melting could be irreversible and last for several millennia, even if we can stop or reverse the warming,” Yang grimly concludes.

The worst effects of climate change on melting Greeland ice may not be seen for millennia, the researchers conclude. Shutterstock

WHAT’S NEXT — As with any significant initial finding, there are some caveats that future work will have to address.

The researchers acknowledge their model underestimates warming temperatures by 1 degrees Celsius, would could, in turn, underestimate the impacts of the climate crisis on the changing Greenland ice sheet.

“The estimated amplitude of ice mass changes has large uncertainty,” Yang explains. “In the future, we would use better models and combine [on-ground] observations to reduce the uncertainty.”

Nonetheless, ice sheet simulations like this one will continue to be a crucial method for accurately predicting the long-term effects of global warming on the sea-level rise from the Greenland ice sheet.

If we want to truly understand the impact of the climate crisis on ice melt, we need to shift our timeline of analysis from centuries to millennia, the researchers argue.

“The most worrying melting of [the ice sheet] will not occur within decades, or centuries — it could last for [a] thousand years,” Yang says.

ABSTRACT: Using transient climate forcing based on simulations from the Alfred Wegener Institute Earth System Model (AWI-ESM), we simulate the evolution of the Greenland Ice Sheet (GrIS) from the last interglacial (125 ka, kiloyear before present) to 2100 AD with the Parallel Ice Sheet Model (PISM). The impact of paleoclimate, especially the Holocene climate, on the present and future evolution of the GrIS is explored. Our simulations of the past show close agreement with reconstructions with respect to the recent timing of the peaks in the ice volume and the climate of Greenland. The maximum and minimum ice volume at around 18–17 ka and 6–5 ka lag the respective extremes in climate by several thousand years, implying that the ice volume response of the GrIS strongly lags climate change. Given that Greenland’s climate was getting colder from the Holocene Thermal Maximum (i.e., 8 ka) to the Pre-Industrial era, our simulation implies that the GrIS experienced a background growth from the mid-Holocene to the industrial era. Due to this background trend, the GrIS still gains mass until the second half of the 20th century, even though anthropogenic warming begins around 1850 AD. This is also in agreement with observational evidence showing mass loss of the GrIS does not begin earlier than the late 20th century. Our results highlight that the present evolution of the GrIS is not only controlled by the current climate change, but also affected by paleoclimate, especially the relatively warm Holocene climate. We propose that the GrIS was not in equilibrium throughout the entire Holocene and that the slow response to Holocene climate needs to be represented in ice sheet simulations in order to predict ice mass loss, and therefore sea level rise, accurately.

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(USA CBS News) "Mega" Iceberg Releases 152 Billion Tons Of Fresh Water Into Ocean

CBS News - Li Cohen

When the massive A68A iceberg snapped off its ice shelf in July 2017, it was the sixth-largest iceberg on record. Now more than half of it is gone. 

A study published on January 10 in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment shows that the massive block of ice had broken off from Antarctica's Larsen Ice Shelf in 2017 and traveled northeast to South Georgia by 2021.

The iceberg once measured roughly 5,719 square kilometers — nearly half the size of Connecticut — but it started to disintegrate once it arrived to the South Georgia island in the Atlantic Ocean. 

The European Space Agency described it as a "mega" iceberg, saying it stayed relatively the same size for the first two years of its life as it stayed in the cold waters of the Weddell Sea near the Antarctic Peninsula. Then it started its "epic" journey across the Drake Passage, ESA said, and everything changed.

As of January 2021, it had lost roughly 3,200 square kilometers, or more than half of its area. Now, it's a little bigger than Rhode Island.

Researchers from the University of Leeds, Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling and British Antarctic Survey studied the iceberg through satellite imagery and found that throughout those years of travel the iceberg became smaller as it broke apart and gradually melted.

Over its three-and-a-half-year journey, it's estimated that the iceberg lost roughly 544 cubic kilometers of its ice, about a third of which was due to basal melting. 

In the time it's been around South Georgia, researchers found, the iceberg released roughly 152 billion tons of fresh water and nutrients into the ocean over the course of about three months. That amount of water could fill roughly 61 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. 

This significant loss could result in "potentially impacting the island's rich ecosystem," the study says. 

One of the concerns observers had was that the iceberg would collide with the seafloor near the island. Researchers found, however, that the closest the iceberg got to the island was about 38.5 miles offshore in December 2020.

While A68A did not ground itself on the seafloor, researchers aid, it's likely that it did hit the floor in some of the shallower areas as it turned, and is believed to have affected "only a small area." 

It is possible, however, that other icebergs could end up grounded in the area in the future, which could potentially destroy organisms that reside on the seafloor . A grounded iceberg can also disrupt ocean currents and making it difficult for the island's penguins to feed in the sea, researchers said.

Trajectory of A68A and historic icebergs overlain on a bathymetric map. Observing the disintegration of the A68A iceberg from space.

The study's lead author Anne Braakmann-Folgmann said in a statement that the berg released a "huge amount of melt water."

She told CBS News that it's too early to say what the specific impact of A68A will be, but that generally, cold freshwater from icebergs changes the physical properties of ocean water around it, and releases nutrients that can "foster biological production." 

South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are a "haven for wildlife," according to their government, serving as home to roughly 5 million seals and 30 different bird species, a third of which are considered threatened or near-threatened. 

The waters surrounding the islands are also a critical area for migrating whales, fish and Antarctic krill populations, which according to the government, are a "key link" in the Southern Ocean food web. 

"In this case, the penguins, seals and whales feeding in the waters around South Georgia could benefit from more food availability," Braakmann-Folgmann said. "And especially the penguins and seals, who are raising their offspring on the island are dependent on food sources nearby." 

Researchers added, however, that the melting could potentially alter the ocean properties in a way that also impacts currents, which could, in the "worst case," divert krill, a crucial source of food for whales, away from the island. Studies on the matter are still ongoing.

Links

• Mega iceberg released 152 billion tonnes of freshwater
• Observing the disintegration of the A68A iceberg from space
• The A-68 story
• Is this the end of the A-68A iceberg?
• A-68A iceberg thinning at 2.5 cm per day
• Giant A-68A iceberg loses chunk of ice
• Iceberg on collision course with South Georgia