16/02/2022

(United Nations) Adapting To Climate Change ‘Happening Worldwide’, Essential

United Nations - Climate and Environment

Bricks are salvaged from a home damaged by erosion in Bangladesh. Climate Visuals Countdown/Moniruzzaman Sazal
The impacts of climate change are already “very visible” and “happening worldwide”, the head of the UN weather agency told the start of the 55th Session of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which convened on Monday.

The meeting opened to approve the report of the second IPCC Working Group focusing on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability to climate change which will be added to the Sixth Assessment Report later this month.

The report of the first IPCC Working Group, which focussed on the physical science of climate change, influenced the work of the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow, COP26, last year. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General Petteri Taalas reminded delegates that during COP26, “there was not a single head of State who questioned the scientific facts”, saying the message had got through and “has been heard”.

Disaster impacts

The WMO chief noted that some areas of the world such as tropical latitudes and developing countries, especially in Africa, Southern Asia, and the Pacific islands, are particularly vulnerable to climate change.

Last year WMO published a report on disaster statistics, which demonstrated that for the past 50 years, 4.5 billion people have experienced a major weather-related disaster over the past 20 years.

And while there has been a drop in casualties thanks to improved early warning services, dramatic increases in economic losses have occurred.

Only a week ago, in Madagascar, deadly Cyclone Batisirai was a Category 4 storm “and had severe impacts on the economy and human well-being”, said Mr. Taalas.

“We have to be careful how we communicate these facts. We have to separate impacts from natural variability to impacts from climate change”.

Moving target

According to earlier thinking, 2°C was an ambitious enough climate change target.

However, the UNFCC’s previous special report revealed that the impact of 1.5°C would be “a game changer”.

“After that, 1.5°C became the desired outcome of climate mitigation work for the coming years”, said the WMO chief.

However, despite that COP26 was the second most successful conference after Paris, he observed that the 1.5°C target is “barely alive”.

“The work needs to continue”, he spelled out.

Adaptation imperative

Citing a growing trend of rising sea levels, glaciers melting and continuing disasters, the top WMO official underscored the importance of adaptation.

“Climate change impacts are related to economy, food security, infrastructure, the biosphere and health”, he said. “We have to adapt to climate change. That means droughts, flooding, tropical storms, heatwaves, water shortages, coastal inundation”.

Later this year, COP27 will take place in Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt, followed next year by COP28 in the United Arab Emirates.

“We hope to hear more pledges at those conferences. We are working for such a goal. The next COP will have a more Africa flavour. It is the most vulnerable continent”, he said.

Stepping up, stepping in

Explaining that “major gaps” in African countries and Caribbean islands are obstacle for climate adaptation, Mr. Taalas said that WMO is focussing attention on Multi-hazard Early Warning services to forecast the impacts of disasters.

He drew attention to a new financing mechanism to enhance observation systems, a new water and climate coalition that pays attention to water shortages and an enhanced partnership with the UN Disaster Risk Reduction office (UNDRR) to form “a centre of excellence on climate change and disasters”.

“We are working together with financing institutions like World Bank, European Union, UNDP, Green Climate Fund, to allocate more finance to early warning services”, stated the WMO chief.

Destruction and flooding caused by Hurricane Iota left thousands of people homeless across Nicaragua.© UNICEF/Inti Ocon/AFP-Services




Laying out 'past and future changes'

The Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Inger Anderson, also cited COP26 in pointing out that “the work of the IPCC underpins climate action”.

She noted that the first Working Group’s report “kept up the pressure on world leaders” and its relevance was clear in many of the delegates’ statements as well as in the final decision taken at Glasgow.

“Now it is the turn of Working Group II to lay out the latest evidence on how past and future changes to Earth’s climate system impact life on our planet”, Ms. Anderson said.

“This report on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability will integrate more strongly across the natural, social and economic sciences…highlight[ing] the role of social justice and indigenous knowledge”, she added.

Delivering across time zones

Chairing the meeting, Hoesung Lee informed the participants that this was the final phase of a "strict and meticulous review process" of the report.

Over the next two weeks, Governments and scientists collectively will deliver a "sound, tested and robust summary...critically important for policymakers around the world,” he said.

“I have no doubt that we will see constructive and collaborative work in the next two weeks as we work across all time zones to deliver this report.”.

This UNFCCC Adaptation Committee video aims at raising awareness on climate change adaptation. 19min 34sec

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(USA LA Times) Western Megadrought Is Worst In 1,200 Years, Intensified By Climate Change, Study Finds

Los Angeles Times - Ian James

Tree stumps rise from parched earth in the Nevada ghost town of St. Thomas, which was submerged after the construction of Hoover Dam in the 1930s but has reemerged as the water level at Lake Mead has fallen to its lowest point in history amid an ongoing megadrought. (Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

The extreme dryness that has ravaged the American West for more than two decades now ranks as the driest 22-year period in at least 1,200 years, and scientists have found that this megadrought is being intensified by humanity’s heating of the planet.

In their research, the scientists examined major droughts in southwestern North America back to the year 800 and determined that the region’s desiccation so far this century has surpassed the severity of a megadrought in the late 1500s, making it the driest 22-year stretch on record.

The authors of the study also concluded that dry conditions will likely continue through this year and, judging from the past, may persist for years.

The researchers found the current drought wouldn’t be nearly as severe without global warming. They estimated that 42% of the drought’s severity is attributable to higher temperatures caused by greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere.

“The results are really concerning, because it’s showing that the drought conditions we are facing now are substantially worse because of climate change,” said Park Williams, a climate scientist at UCLA and the study’s lead author. “But that also there is quite a bit of room for drought conditions to get worse.”

Williams and his colleagues compared the current drought to seven other megadroughts between the 800s and 1500s that lasted between 23 years and 30 years.

Comparing the West’s longest droughts
A study found the current 22-year dry spell across southwestern North America has become more severe than a megadrought in the 1500s.
Soil moisture is shown in cumulative standard deviations from the 800-2021 average. Williams, et al. Sean Greene Los Angeles Times
They used ancient records of these droughts captured in the growth rings of trees.

Wood cores extracted from thousands of trees enabled the scientists to reconstruct the soil moisture centuries ago.

They used data from trees at about 1,600 sites across the region, from Montana to California to northern Mexico.

The study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, adds to a growing body of research that shows the American West faces major challenges as the burning of fossil fuels continues to push temperatures higher, intensifying the drying trend.

Williams was part of a team that published a similar study in 2020.

At the time, they found the drought since 2000 was the second-worst after the late 1500s megadrought. With widespread heat and dryness over the past two years, the current drought has passed that extreme mark.

Some scientists describe the trend in the West as “aridification” and say the region must prepare for the drying to continue as temperatures continue to climb.

Williams said the West is prone to extreme variability from dry periods to wet periods, like a yo-yo going up and down, but these variations are now “superimposed on a serious drying trend” with climate change.

“The dice have been loaded so heavily toward drying,” he said.

The average temperature in southwestern North America since 2000 has been 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the average during the previous 50 years, the researchers said.

The warmer temperatures have compounded the drought by increasing evaporation, drying soils and leaving less water flowing in streams and rivers.

Higher temperatures make the atmosphere thirstier, drying out soil and vegetation in much the same way that “our house plants dry out when we turn on the heater,” Williams said.

The scientists pointed out that the flow of the Colorado River during the 2020 and 2021 water years shrank to the lowest two-year average in more than a century of recordkeeping.

The river supplies water across seven states, from Wyoming to California, and to northern Mexico. But it has been chronically overused, and the drought has compounded the problems.

Over the past year, its two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, declined to their lowest levels on record.

“We need to understand that the water budget of the West is changing beneath our feet rapidly,” Williams said. “We need to be prepared for a much drier future and to not rely so much on hope that when it gets wet again, we can just go back to business-as-usual water management.”

The hot, dry years have taken a major toll on water supplies and landscapes throughout California and the West. California’s reservoirs have dropped during the past two years. In Utah, the Great Salt Lake has declined to record-low levels.

Extreme heat has contributed to explosive wildfires. And in the Mojave Desert, scientists have attributed major declines in bird populations to hotter, drier conditions brought on by climate change.

Even without climate change, the past two decades would have been a “bad luck period” naturally for the region, Williams said. But without the influence of climate change, he said, “this drought wouldn’t even be coming close to matching the worst of the megadroughts.”

Some of the long droughts included those from 1213 to 1237 and from 1271 to 1300. During that century, the Indigenous people who lived and farmed in villages in the Four Corners region are thought to have left their cliffside homes because of drought.

A history of megadroughts
The West is in the most severe 22-year megadrought in at least 1,200 years, and climate change is playing a major role.

The trend shown is a 22-year average. Williams, et al. Sean Greene LOS ANGELES TIMES
The scientists studied data compiled over decades by hundreds of other researchers, who extracted wood cores by boring into long-lived trees such as Douglas firs, piñon pines, ponderosa pines and blue oaks.

They found the current drought has included two years — 2002 and 2021 — that rank among the driest in the past 1,200 years.

And with the surge in drying over the past year, Williams said, these 22 years have already been drier on average than most of the longer megadroughts.

The late 1500s drought ended abruptly after 23 years when wet conditions swept across the region. But the current drought shows no signs of subsiding.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor website, 96% of the Western U.S. is now abnormally dry or worse, and 88% of the region is in drought.

The scientists projected it’s highly likely the drought will continue at least through this year.

They considered a hypothetical future scenario based on soil moisture during all 40-year periods in the past 1,200 years and then superimposed the same amount of climate change-driven drying that has occurred in recent years.

They found that in 94% of their simulations, the drought continued for at least a 23rd year. And in 75% of the simulations, the drought lasted 30 years.

“When it’s in a very depleted state, it takes a long time to fill the bucket back up,” Williams said. “It would take exceptional luck to end this drought in the next few years. There’s only been a couple of examples of that type of luck in the last 1,200 years of data that we have.”

Williams coauthored the study with researchers Benjamin Cook and Jason Smerdon of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

They used 29 climate models to estimate the influence of higher temperatures unleashed by climate change.

When they analyzed how the drought would have evolved without climate change, they found that the region would have emerged from drought during wet years in 2005 and 2006, and then drought would have set in again in 2007, Williams said.

The scientists used a 10-year running average in assessing long-term trends, so a single wet year, such as 2019, wasn’t enough to end the run of mostly parched years.

The research focused on the entire region, but there were differences depending on the area. While the dryness has been most extreme in areas from Arizona to the Rocky Mountains, the study showed that much of California experienced one of the driest 22-year periods, though not the absolute driest.

Williams said the research should serve as a warning that the drying could get much worse in the years and decades to come.

“The big megadroughts that occurred last millennium occurred in the absence of climate change,” Williams said. "When such megadroughts return, they’ll be occurring “in a world where the atmosphere is also artificially warmer because of human-caused climate change, which would be absolutely catastrophic.”

Isla Simpson, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research who wasn’t involved in the study, said she thinks the methods are solid and the findings make an important contribution to previous science.

“It’s really useful to have this update, given how severe the last two years have been,” Simpson said.

She said the current drought has occurred in part due to low precipitation, but it’s really the effect of higher temperatures that has worsened the drying and is “very clear climate change signal.”

“We have emerged out of the climate of the 20th century in terms of temperature, which will have an impact on evaporation and soil moisture,” Simpson said. There will still be the natural swings from dry to wet, she added, “but we’re experiencing this variability now within this long-term aridification due to anthropogenic climate change, which is going to make the events more severe.”

Williams said the research points to real problems in the chronic overuse of water sources like the Colorado River, which fueled the growth of cities from Los Angeles to Phoenix over the past century.

He said the widespread depletion of groundwater is another symptom of overdrawing the region’s critical water reserves.

Many people in the West may not feel like they’re living through a megadrought, he said, because “we have all of these buffers in our system now, like groundwater and large reservoirs.”

“But we are utilizing those backstops so rapidly right now that we’re at real risk of those backstops not being there for us in 10 or 20 years,” he said, “when either this event still hasn’t ended, or when the next megadrought has already begun.”

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(AU ABC) Bushfires, Dry Lightning, Rapid Spark And Spread All Indicate Climate Change, Southern Fire Chief Says

ABC Great Southern - Peter Barr | John Dobson
WA's south coast has had several major bushfires in the past week including this near Bremer Bay. (Supplied: Jesse Gread)

Key Points
  • 14 bushfires were sparked during severe thunderstorm in southern Western Australia
  • The regional fire chief handling those fires said climate change was exacerbating conditions
  • At least three homes were lost in most recent bushfires
It was early Friday afternoon when Great Southern District DFES Superintendent Wayne Green took a phone call about a small fire sparked by lightning near Hopetoun on Western Australia's south coast.

"By all accounts, all the feedback and information at that point was they were wrapping it up and getting around it," he said.
"But within five minutes the phone's rung again as a gust of wind had picked up the fire and put it on the other side of the road and it raced straight into town.
DFES superintendent for the Great Southern, Wayne Green. (ABC Great Southern: Kyle Pauletto)

Superintendent Green said the fire became "absolute chaos" for volunteers attempting to protect the town.

That fire and 13 others were sparked by severe thunderstorms which hit the region after temperatures surpassed 44 degrees Celsius in some areas.

The hot and dry conditions, lightning, and gusty wind were a perfect cocktail for disastrous fire conditions.

At least three homes were lost in the bushfires in Jerramungup and Hopetoun on Friday.

Those fires were two of three emergency bushfires burning in the area, along with another further north near Newdegate.

One of several homes destroyed by a bushfire in Hopetoun on Friday. (Facebook: Tamunoibifiri Ibinabobo)

A week of destructive fires It came a week after a major bushfire tore through another area of Superintendent Green's district, bush and farmland near the tourist town of Denmark further west on the south coast.

That fire destroyed four homes and was followed by two more destructive bushfires in Bridgetown and Corrigin a day later, stretching fire fighting resources across the southern half of the state.

The fires on Friday were sparked by lightning with the Bureau of Meteorology recording tens of thousands of strikes across the region.

Superintendent Green said the bushfires were exacerbated by climate change.

"That's definite," he said.
"We've seen the change in our fire behaviour over the last few years."

LINK
In just 2 hours, 68 new incidents arose - most of which were fires sparked by an intense series of lightning strikes. Many of those were in our Great Southern region, with several escalating rapidly to emergency warning level.
Firefighters responded swiftly, defending lives and property as the fires were fanned by strong winds gusting over 100km/hr in high temperatures. Their efforts in Hopetoun, Newdegate, Jerramungup and Bremer Bay (assisted by a Large ...
Superintendent Green said Friday's bushfires sparked and spread rapidly.

"At its peak, we had 14 fires going and trying to get information from 14 different fires, all within a short time frame, is almost impossible," he said.
"I don't want to use the word 'unprecedented' but I can't remember when we've had this many fires from the Wheatbelt down."
"The thing about these [fires] was their proximity to town. We've certainly had this volume of fires before in the landscape … but it was the location of these fires that put a strain on local resources."

Superintendent Green praised the volunteer fire fighters in Jerramungup and Hopetoun.

"To see their towns overrun by fire, to get their community all in one location and keep them safe, reassured, and then get us the right information that we need, puts our minds at ease.

At least two homes were lost in the Hopetoun fire on Friday. (Supplied: Brady Wilson)
Freak storm leaves trail of destruction The storm which sparked the series of fires on Friday produced wind gusts of more than 100kph, damaging property in Hopetoun.

Ravensthorpe shire president Keith Dunlop said authorities were still assessing the damage.
"There were 10 properties damaged by fire, three lost roofs separately due to wind gusts," he said.
The entire roof was blown off the McLeod's property near Hopetoun. (Supplied: Ian and Michelle McLeod)

Ian and Michelle McLeod's property lost its roof during a damaging gust of wind.

Mr McLeod likened the storm to a cyclone.

"I've been in a category 5 cyclone up north, it felt like that," he said.

"It felt like a train had drove over our house … then the whole roof lifted off and went. It was scary."

The changing nature of bushfires
Firefighters are being forced to adapt to changing bushfire behaviour, as relentless winds and dry conditions mean they have less reprieve at night to get on top of out-of-control blazes. Read more
Bureau of Meteorology senior forecaster Luke Huntington said a trough sparked the thunderstorms on Friday afternoon as temperatures passed 44 degrees.

Mr Huntington said the intense thunderstorms created thousands of lightning strikes.
"We don't see a lot of storms over the southern half of WA and if we do, they're dry thunderstorms that kick off fires," he said.
Several online fundraising pages have been started for those who have suffered property damage.


Youtube How to prepare for bushfires | Emergency Tips 3min 11sec

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(AU ABC) How A 'Motley Crew' Of Citizen Scientists Is Helping To Save The Great Barrier Reef

ABC Far North - Kristy Sexton-McGrath

A boat on the reef
Dozens of boats took part in the Great Reef Census. (Supplied: Johnny Gaskell)
Key Points
  • Volunteers aboard a range of boats have undertaken a 12-week survey of the Great Barrier Reef
  • More than 40,000 images have been captured by snorkellers and recreational divers
  • The images will be posted online for citizen scientists around the world to help analyse
A flotilla of tourist boats, tinnies and superyachts has completed a massive research operation on the Great Barrier Reef in a bid to capture a big-picture snapshot of its health.

Conservation group Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef recruited dozens of vessels to help survey more than 300 reefs from the tip of Queensland down to Lady Elliot Island over a 12-week period.

Snorkellers and recreational divers snapped more than 40,000 photographs for analysis.

Chief executive Andy Ridley said while it was the second Great Reef Census survey of its kind — the first was in 2020 — this year's census was significantly larger, with hundreds more reefs surveyed.

A woman snorkeling while taking photographs of the reef
Researcher Dr Abbi Scott takes photographs as part of the enormous 'citizen scientist' survey of the reef. (Supplied: Grumpy Turtle Creative)

"It was a huge response from the community up and down the reef, with thousands of volunteer hours committed from scientists, dive crews, tourists and fishers who went out to the far edges of the reef to capture this critically important data," Mr Ridley said

He said the number of images submitted for analysis by citizen scientists this time round was well up from the 14,000 images collected in 2020.

Coral reefs
Ribbon Reefs, off the far north Queensland coast, was one of hundreds of reefs surveyed in the census.(Supplied: Grumpy Turtle Creative)

Health of the reef

Katie Chartrand from James Cook University was involved in the survey and said early analysis showed some parts of the Great Barrier Reef had fared much better than others.

"The reefs that we have been looking at in this survey are varied in terms of their health," Dr Chartrand said.
"They have been smashed by cyclones, recent major bleaching events in 2016 and 2017, and others are starting to show really good signs of recovery — so we can see new recruits from this mass spawning event that are helping some of these areas.

"But it's really not enough time to say how that recovery is going."

A crown of thorns starfish on coral
This image of a crown-of-thorns starfish was captured on Swains Reef, on the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. (Supplied: Johnny Gaskell)


The Great Barrier Reef comprises more than 4,000 individual reefs over a distance of 2,300 kilometres.

Following the mass bleaching events of 2016 and 2017, Mr Ridley, along with UQ marine ecology professor Peter Mumby and Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority director Roger Beeden, discussed how the gap in surveying the reef could be filled.

The idea for the Great Reef Census was born.

A group of people underwater holding a sign
Volunteers have been photographing parts of the reef for the 12-week survey. (Supplied: Becky Evers)
Professor Mumby said the survey had shown that coral bleaching continued to be a problem.

"There's nothing we can do to stop bleaching but hopefully we can help reefs recover between these bleaching events," Professor Mumby said.

"One of the pathways to helping recovery is to get large-scale reconnaissance like the survey, that tells us where the reefs are damaged right now, and where the reefs are that are in good shape.
"If you can find those areas then you can try and prioritise attention to those areas."
Later this year, more citizen scientists will be required from around the world — this time to help analyse the 40,000 images collected from the 315 reefs surveyed on the Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef website.

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