The State Of The Climate In 2021

BBC Future - Isabelle Gerretsen | Data Research Miriam Quick

After the turbulent year of 2020, BBC Future takes stock on the state of the climate at the beginning of 2021. 

As the world turns to renewable energy, climate change is already being felt across the world (Credit: Getty Images)

From unprecedented wildfires across the US to the extraordinary heat of Siberia, the impacts of climate change were felt in every corner of the world in 2020.

We have come to a "moment of truth", United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres said in his State of the Planet speech in December. "Covid and climate have brought us to a threshold."

BBC Future brings you our round-up of where we are on climate change at the start of 2021, according to five crucial measures of climate health.

1. CO2 levels

The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere reached record levels in 2020, hitting 417 parts per million in May.

The last time CO2 levels exceeded 400 parts per million was around four million years ago, during the Pliocene era, when global temperatures were 2-4C warmer and sea levels were 10-25 metres (33-82 feet) higher than they are now.

"We are seeing record levels every year," says Ralph Keeling, head of the CO2 programme at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which has been tracking CO2 concentrations from the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii since 1958. "We saw record levels again this year despite Covid."

The effect of lockdowns on concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere was so small that it registers as a "blip", hardly distinguishable from the year-to-year fluctuations of the carbon cycle, according to the World Meteorological Organization, and has had a negligible impact on the overall curve of rising CO2 levels.

"We have put 100ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere in the last 60 years," says Martin Siegert, co-director of the Grantham Institute for climate change and the environment at Imperial College London.

That is 100 times faster than previous natural increases, such as those that occurred towards the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago.

"If we keep tracking the worst-case scenario, by the end of this century levels of CO2 will be 800ppm. We haven't had that for 55 million years. There was no ice on the planet then and it was 12C warmer," says Siegert.

CO2 emissions have risen rapidly since the 1970s (Credit: European Commission JRC EDGAR/Crippa et al. 2020/BBC) LARGE IMAGE

2. Record heat

The past decade was the hottest on record. The year 2020 was more than 1.2C hotter than the average year in the 19th Century. In Europe it was the hottest year ever, while globally 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest.

Record temperatures, including 2016, usually coincide with an El Niño event (a large band of warm water that forms in the Pacific Ocean every few years), which results in large-scale warming of ocean surface temperatures.

But 2020 was unusual because the world experienced a La Niña event (the reverse of El Niño, with a cooler band of water forming). In other words, without La Niña bringing global temperatures down, 2020 would have been even hotter.

The exceptionally warm temperatures triggered the largest wildfires ever recorded in the US states of California and Colorado, and the "black summer" of fires in eastern Australia.

"The intensity of those fires and number of people being killed is truly significant," says Siegert.

High temperature anomalies have become greater and more frequent in recent years on land, air and sea (Credit: NOAA/BBC) LARGE IMAGE

3. Arctic ice

Nowhere is that increase in heat more keenly felt than in the Arctic. In June 2020, the temperature reached 38C in eastern Siberia, the hottest ever recorded within the Arctic Circle.

The heatwave accelerated the melting of sea ice in the East Siberian and Laptev seas and delayed the usual Arctic freeze by almost two months.

"You definitely saw the impact of those warm temperatures," says Julienne Stroeve, a polar scientist from University College London.

On the Eurasian side of the Arctic Circle, the ice did not freeze until the end of October, which is unusually late.

The summer of 2020 saw sea ice area at its second lowest on record, and sea ice extent (a larger measure, which includes ocean areas where at least 15% ice appears) also at its second lowest.

As well as being a symptom of climate change, the loss of ice is also a driver of it. Bright white sea ice plays an important role in reflecting heat from the Sun back out into space, a bit like a reflective jacket.

But the Arctic is heating twice as quickly as the rest of the world – and as less ice makes it through the warm summer months, we lose its reflective protection. In its place, large areas of open dark water absorb more heat, fueling global warming further.

Everything is interconnected. If one part of the climate system changes, the rest of the system will respond – Julienne Stroeve

Multi-year ice is also thicker and more reflective than the thin, dark seasonal ice that is increasingly taking its place. Between 1979-2018, the proportion of Arctic sea ice that is at least five years old declined from 30% to 2%, according to the IPCC.

"White ice reflects a lot of energy from the Sun and helps slow the rate of global warming," says Michael Meredith, a polar researcher at the British Antarctic Survey. "We are accelerating global warming by reducing the amount of Arctic sea ice."

The loss of ice is believed to be disrupting weather patterns around the world already. According to the Grantham Institute, it is possible – though not conclusively shown – that 2018 Arctic conditions provoked the "Beast from the East" winter storm in Europe in 2018 by altering the jet stream, a current of air high in the atmosphere.

"Temperature difference between the equator and poles drives a lot of our large-scale weather systems, including the jet stream," says Stroeve. And because the Arctic is warming faster than lower latitudes, there is a weakening of the jet stream.

"Everything is interconnected. If one part of the climate system changes, the rest of the system will respond," says Stroeve.

The Arctic sea ice has been diminishing rapidly since detailed records began in the 1970s, in a feedback cycle of warming and melting (Credit: NSIDC/BBC) LARGE IMAGE

4. Permafrost

Across the northern hemisphere, permafrost – the ground that remains frozen year-round for two or more years – is warming rapidly.

When air temperatures reached 38C (100F) in Siberia in the summer of 2020, land temperatures in several parts of the Arctic Circle hit a record 45C (113F), accelerating the thawing of permafrost in the region.

Both continuous permafrost (long, uninterrupted stretches of permafrost) and discontinuous (a more fragmented kind) are in decline.

Permafrost contains a huge amount of greenhouse gases, including CO2 and methane, which are released into the atmosphere as it thaws.

Soils in the permafrost region, which spans around 23 million square kilometres (8.9 million square miles) across Siberia, Greenland, Canada and the Arctic, hold twice as much carbon as the atmosphere does – almost 1,600 billion tonnes.

Much of that carbon is stored in the form of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with a global warming impact 84 times higher than CO2.

"Permafrost is doing us a big favour by keeping that carbon locked away from the atmosphere," says Meredith.

Thawing permafrost also damages existing infrastructure and destroys the livelihoods of the indigenous communities who rely on the frozen ground to move around and hunt.

It is thought to have contributed to the collapse of a huge fuel tank in the Russian Arctic in May, which leaked 20,000 tonnes of diesel into a river.

As ground temperatures rise even fractionally, permafrost around the world begins to thaw and release greenhouse gases (Credit: Biskaborn et al. 2019/Nature Communications/BBC) LARGE IMAGE

5. Forests

Since 1990 the world has lost 178 million hectares of forest (690,000 square miles) – an area the size of Libya. Over the past three decades, the rate of deforestation has slowed but experts say it isn't fast enough, given the vital role forests play in curbing global warming.

In 2015-20 the annual deforestation rate was 10 million hectares (39,000 square miles, or about the size of Iceland), compared to 12 million hectares (46,000 square miles) in the previous five years.

"Globally forest areas continue to decline," says Bonnie Waring, senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute, noting that there are big regional differences. "We are losing a lot of tropical forests in South America and Africa [and] regaining temperate forests through tree planting or natural regeneration in Europe and Asia."

Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia are the countries losing forest cover most rapidly. In 2020, deforestation of the Amazon rainforest surged to a 12-year high.

An estimated 45% of all carbon on land is stored in trees and forest soil. "Soils globally contain more carbon than all plants and atmosphere put together," says Waring. When forests are cut down or burned, the soil is disturbed and carbon dioxide is released.

The World Economic Forum launched a campaign this year to plant one trillion trees to absorb carbon. While planting trees might help cancel out the last 10 years of CO2 emissions, it cannot solve the climate crisis on its own, according to Waring.

"Protecting existing forests is even more important than planting new ones. Every time an ecosystem is disturbed, you see carbon lost," she says.

Allowing forests to regrow naturally and rewilding huge areas of land, a process known as natural regeneration, is the most cost-effective and productive way to capture CO2 and boost overall biodiversity, according to Waring.

World deforestation rates are slowing slowly overall, but in some of the world's most pristine forests it is still rapid (Credit: FAO/BBC) LARGE IMAGE 

As well as showing how much the climate has changed already, these five climate indicators also point the way to the solutions that can curb global warming to safer levels by the end of the century.

As Guterres noted in his December State of the Planet speech, "Let's be clear: Human activities are at the root of our descent towards chaos. But that means human action can help solve it."

Links

• The mystery of Siberia’s exploding craters
• Why the Arctic is smouldering
• The batteries that could make fossil fuels obsolete
• How Iceland is turning CO2 into stone
• How shrubs can fight climate change
• China's massive solar farms transforming world energy
• The rise of zero-carbon shipping
• The people ditching planes for trains
• How to reduce emissions from your fridge
• The revolutionary plan to save the Congo Basin
• The vast rewilding of the Kazakh stepp

Climate Crisis: 2020 Was Joint Hottest Year Ever Recorded

The Guardian - Damian Carrington

Global heating continued unabated despite Covid lockdowns, with record Arctic wildfires and Atlantic tropical storms

The Arctic and northern Siberia saw particularly extreme average temperatures in 2020, with a large region 3C higher than the long-term average. Photograph: NASA/EPA

The climate crisis continued unabated in 2020, with the joint highest global temperatures on record, alarming heat and record wildfires in the Arctic, and a record 29 tropical storms in the Atlantic.

Despite a 7% fall in fossil fuel burning due to coronavirus lockdowns, heat-trapping carbon dioxide continued to build up in the atmosphere, also setting a new record.

The average surface temperature across the planet in 2020 was 1.25C higher than in the pre-industrial period of 1850-1900, dangerously close to the 1.5C target set by the world’s nations to avoid the worst impacts.

Only 2016 matched the heat in 2020, but that year saw a natural El Niño climate event which boosts temperatures. Without that it is likely 2020 would have been the outright hottest year. Scientists have warned that without urgent action the future for many millions of people “looks black”.

The temperature data released by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) showed that the past six years have been the hottest six on record. They also showed that Europe saw its hottest year on record, 1.6C above the long-term average, with a searing heatwave hitting western Europe in late July and early August.

2020 tied with 2016 as the hottest year on record
Average annual global temperature (deg C) relative to 1850-1900

Guardian graphic. Source: ERA5 / Copernicus Climate Change Service

The Arctic and northern Siberia saw particularly extreme average temperatures in 2020, with a large region 3C higher than the long-term average and some locations more than 6C higher. This resulted in extensive wildfires, with a record 244m tonnes of CO₂ released within the Arctic Circle. Arctic sea ice was also significantly lower, with July and October seeing the smallest extent on record for those months.

“[The year] 2020 stands out for its exceptional warmth in the Arctic,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of C3S. “It is no surprise that the last decade was the warmest on record, and is yet another reminder of the urgency of ambitious emissions reductions to prevent adverse climate impacts.”

“The extraordinary climate events of 2020 show us we have no time to lose,” said Matthias Petschke, at the European commission. “It will be difficult, but the cost of inaction is too great.”

A record 29 tropical storms formed in the Atlantic Ocean in 2020. Photograph: AP

“Despite the absence of the cyclical boost of El Niño to global temperatures [we are] getting dangerously close to the 1.5C limit,” said Prof Dave Reay, at the University of Edinburgh.

“Covid lockdowns around the world may have caused a slight dip in emissions, but the CO₂ accumulating in the atmosphere is still going up fast. Unless the global economic recovery from the nightmares of 2020 is a green one, the future of many millions of people around the world looks black indeed.”

The level of CO₂ in the atmosphere reached a new record in 2020, with the cut in emissions due to Covid lockdowns described as a “tiny blip” by the UN’s World Meteorological Organisation. Vincent-Henri Peuch, director of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, said: “Until the net global emissions reduce to zero, CO₂ will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere and drive further climate change.”

The UK Met Office issued a forecast on Friday that CO₂ levels will pass a new milestone in 2021 – being 50% higher than before the Industrial Revolution. Its scientists said CO₂ will exceed 417 parts per million (ppm) for several weeks from April to June, which is 50% higher than the 278 ppm in the late 18th century when industrial activity began.

This is despite the expectation that weather conditions brought by the counterpart of El Niño, La Niña, will see higher natural growth in tropical forests that will soak up some of humanity’s emissions.

“The human-caused buildup of CO₂ in the atmosphere is accelerating,” said Prof Richard Betts at the Met Office. “It took over 200 years for levels to increase by 25%, but now just over 30 years later we are approaching a 50% increase. Global emissions will need to be brought down to net zero within about the next 30 years if global warming is to be limited to 1.5C.”

Links

• Global heating could stabilize if net zero emissions achieved, scientists say
• Floods, storms and searing heat: 2020 in extreme weather
• (AU) Last Decade Hottest On Record For Australia With Temperature Almost 1c Above Average
• (AU) 2020 Annual Climate Statement - Bureau of Meteorology
• Disasters Caused US$210 Billion In Damage In 2020, Showing Growing Cost Of Climate Change
• 10 Steamy Signs In 2020 That Climate Change Is Speeding Up
• The Climate Emergency: 2020 In Review
• These Stunning NASA Satellite Images Capture 2020's Extreme Climate Events
• (AU) Australia Records Fourth-Warmest Year In 2020, Despite La Niña
• Floods, Storms And Searing Heat: 2020 In Extreme Weather
• This Year Was A Disaster For The Planet
• The World’s 10 Most Destructive Climate Disasters Of 2020

(AU) Research Reveals Shocking Detail On How Australia’s Environmental Scientists Are Being Silenced

The Conversation - Don Driscoll | Bob Pressey | Euan Ritchie | Noel D Preece

Authors provided

Authors Don Driscoll is Professor in Terrestrial Ecology, Deakin University Bob Pressey is Professor and Program Leader, Conservation Planning, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University Euan Ritchie is Associate Professor in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation, Centre for Integrative Ecology, School of Life & Environmental Sciences, Deakin University Noel D Preece is Adjunct Asssociate Professor, James Cook University

Ecologists and conservation experts in government, industry and universities are routinely constrained in communicating scientific evidence on threatened species, mining, logging and other threats to the environment, our new research has found.

Our study, just published, shows how important scientific information about environmental threats often does not reach the public or decision-makers, including government ministers.

In some cases, scientists self-censor information for fear of damaging their careers, losing funding or being misrepresented in the media. In others, senior managers or ministers’ officers prevented researchers from speaking truthfully on scientific matters.

This information blackout, termed “science suppression”, can hide environmentally damaging practices and policies from public scrutiny.

The practice is detrimental to both nature and democracy.

When scientists are free to communicate their knowledge, the public is kept informed. University of Queensland/AAP

Code of silence

Our online survey ran from October 25, 2018, to February 11, 2019. Through advertising and other means, we targeted Australian ecologists, conservation scientists, conservation policy makers and environmental consultants. This included academics, government employees and scientists working for industry such as consultants and non-government organisations.

Some 220 people responded to the survey, comprising:

• 88 working in universities
• 79 working in local, state or federal government
• 47 working in industry, such as environmental consulting and environmental NGOs
• 6 who could not be classified.

In a series of multiple-choice and open-ended questions, we asked respondents about the prevalence and consequences of suppressing science communication.

About half (52%) of government respondents, 38% from industry and 9% from universities had been prohibited from communicating scientific information.

Communications via traditional (40%) and social (25%) media were most commonly prohibited across all workplaces. There were also instances of internal communications (15%), conference presentations (11%) and journal papers (5%) being prohibited.

A Video explaining the research findings.

‘Ministers are not receiving full information’

Some 75% of respondents reported having refrained from making a contribution to public discussion when given the opportunity – most commonly in traditional media or social media. A small number of respondents self-censored conference presentations (9%) and peer-reviewed papers (7%).

Factors constraining commentary from government respondents included senior management (82%), workplace policy (72%), a minister’s office (63%) and middle management (62%).

Fear of barriers to advancement (49%) and concern about media misrepresentation (49%) also discouraged public communication by government respondents.

Almost 60% of government respondents and 36% of industry respondents reported unduly modified internal communications.

One government respondent said:

Due to ‘risk management’ in the public sector […] ministers are not receiving full information and advice and/or this is being ‘massaged’ by advisors (sic).

University respondents, more than other workplaces, avoided public commentary out of fear of how they would be represented by the media (76%), fear of being drawn beyond their expertise (73%), stress (55%), fear that funding might be affected (53%) and uncertainty about their area of expertise (52%).

One university respondent said:

I proposed an article in The Conversation about the impacts of mining […] The uni I worked at didn’t like the idea as they received funding from (the mining company).

A university researcher was dissuaded from writing an article for The Conversation on mining. Dave Hunt/AAP 

Critical conservation issues suppressed

Information suppression was most common on the issue of threatened species. Around half of industry and government respondents, and 28% of university respondents, said their commentary on the topic was constrained.

Government respondents also reported being constrained in commenting on logging and climate change.

One government respondent said:

We are often forbidden (from) talking about the true impacts of, say, a threatening process […] especially if the government is doing little to mitigate the threat […] In this way the public often remains ‘in the dark’ about the true state and trends of many species.

University respondents were most commonly constrained in talking about feral animals. A university respondent said:

By being blocked from reporting on the dodgy dealings of my university with regards to my research and its outcomes I feel like I’m not doing my job properly. The university actively avoids any mention of my study species or project due to vested financial interests in some key habitat.

Industry respondents, more than those from other sectors, were constrained in commenting on the impacts of mining, urban development and native vegetation clearing. One industry respondent said:

A project […] clearly had unacceptable impacts on a critically endangered species […] the approvals process ignored these impacts […] Not being able to speak out meant that no one in the process was willing or able to advocate for conservation or make the public aware of the problem.

Information suppression on threatened species was common.

The system is broken

Of those respondents who had communicated information publicly, 42% had been harassed or criticised for doing so. Of those, 83% believed the harassers were motivated by political or economic interests.

Some 77 respondents answered a question on whether they had suffered personal consequences as a result of suppressing information. Of these, 18% said they had suffered mental health effects. And 21% reported increased job insecurity, damage to their career, job loss, or had left the field.

One respondent said:

I declared the (action) unsafe to proceed. I was overruled and properties and assets were impacted. I was told to be silent or never have a job again.

Another said:

As a consultant working for companies that damage the environment, you have to believe you are having a positive impact, but after years of observing how broken the system is, not being legally able to speak out becomes harder to deal with.

Scientists want to have a positive impact on environmental outcomes. Elaine Thompson/AP

Change is needed

We acknowledge that we receive grants involving contracts that restrict our academic freedom. And some of us self-censor to avoid risks to grants from government, resulting in personal moral conflict and a less informed public. When starting this research project, one of our colleagues declined to contribute for fear of losing funding and risking employment.

But Australia faces many complex and demanding environmental problems. It’s essential that scientists are free to communicate their knowledge on these issues.

Public servant codes of conduct should be revised to allow government scientists to speak freely about their research in both a public and private capacity. And government scientists and other staff should report to new, independent state and federal environment authorities, to minimise political and industry interference.

A free flow of information ensures government policy is backed by the best science. Conservation dollars would be more wisely invested, costly mistakes avoided and interventions more effectively targeted.

And importantly, it would help ensure the public is properly informed – a fundamental tenet of a flourishing democracy.

Links

• Let there be no doubt: blame for our failing environment laws lies squarely at the feet of government
• Conservation scientists are grieving after the bushfires -- but we must not give up
• Australian scientists say logging, mining and climate advice is being suppressed
• Australia's environmental protection laws should mention climate change, government told
• Censored: Australian scientists say suppression of environment research is getting worse
• Consequences of information suppression in ecological and conservation sciences

(AU) Black Summer Bushfires Made Worse By Climate Change, Risk To 'Rapidly Intensify'

Sydney Morning Herald - Peter Hannam

Last year's Black Summer bushfires were made worse by climate change, and future risks will likely rapidly intensify for south-eastern Australia without significant efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, researchers say.

The review paper, published Thursday in the Communications Earth & Environment journal, found the warming climate contributed to elevating the threat, from drying out fuel loads to worsening bushfire weather.

The risk of bushfires will intensify faster than expected, researchers say. Credit: Nick Moir

"There are multiple ways where the effects of climate change are acting to increase fire risks," said Nerilie Abrams, a climate scientist at Australian National University and lead author of the paper. "What you expect to see is not just a gradual increase...but a very rapid intensification of fire risks."

In particular, the projected continued reduction in winter and spring rainfall was likely to pre-condition south-eastern Australia, particularly in Victoria, to forest fire.

Bushfires

Is there a link between climate change and bushfires?

Increased forest dieback in response to heat stress and the reduction in cool-season rainfall would add to the risks, the paper said.

Fire weather could also worsen, with "some evidence that these extreme front events [that draw heat from inland Australia to the coast] will become more frequent in southern Australia", the report said.

Similarly, the number of days favouring extreme pyrocumulonimbus clouds – fire-induced storm cells –forming over firegrounds are also projected to have "significant increases" under a high greenhouse gas emissions future.

During the satellite era up to 2019, 60 such fire-induced weather events were recorded or suspected in Australia, the researchers found. During the 2019-20 fire season, at least 29 such events occurred including at least 18 in a single week.

While communities can make some changes to adapt to the rising fire risks, they should also address what is driving the increase, specifically the rising greenhouse gas emissions, scientists said. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The week-long flurry had "previously undocumented impacts on winds and chemical composition into the stratosphere, and a planetary-scale radiative forcing effect equivalent to a moderate volcanic eruption", the paper found.

Driving the increased fire risk was how the warming climate was forecast to alter natural climate variability, such as increasing the likelihood of extreme El Nino events and positive phases of the so-called Indian Ocean Dipole that typically reduce rainfall in south-eastern Australia.

"[T]he potential exists for more frequent years with extreme hot and dry conditions in southeast Australia, beyond that expected from mean temperature and rainfall trends alone," the research found. "If this potential is realised, fuels in south-east Australia will be dry from winter to summer more often, and dangerous fire weather during fire seasons will occur more frequently.

Professor Abrams said that, while communities can seek to add adapt to the rising bushfire risks, it was important that governments examined why they were increasing and how they might be limited.

“We don’t expect every summer to be like 2019-2020 – and this La Niña year is a good example of that," she said.

‘‘However, ... if we can bring ourselves onto a low greenhouse gas emission pathway, these projected climate changes won’t be as extreme and will be easier to adapt to than if we were on a high-emissions pathway.’’

Links

• Connections of climate change and variability to large and extreme forest fires in southeast Australia
• Australia’s Angry Summer: This Is What Climate Change Looks Like
• Indian Ocean Dipole linked to global warming in new research by Australian scientists
• Indian Ocean phenomenon spells climate trouble for Australia 
• Australia’s Black Summer a climate wake-up call
• Australian Bushfires: More Frequent, Prolonged, Severe Courtesy Climate Change, Warn Experts
• Wet, wet, wet in La Niña, but 2020 was still Australia’s fourth-hottest year

Kenya Faces $62bn Bill To Mitigate Climate-Linked Hunger, Drought And Conflict

The Guardian - Peter Muiruri

Country accounts for less than 0.1% of global emissions but suffers disproportionately from related disasters, say new report

Power-generating wind turbines in Loiyangalani in northern Kenya. Photograph: Thomas Mukoya/Reuters

Kenya needs $62bn (£46bn) to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis in the next 10 years, according to a government document sent to the UN framework convention on climate change. It equates to almost 67% of Kenya’s GDP.

The report illustrates the scale of the challenge as the country aims to cut greenhouse gases by 32% within the next decade. It will rely on international sources to fund close to 90% of the expenditure. Securing such a colossal amount of often contentious climate financing from rich countries yet to honour their commitments to the $100bn target pledged during the 2015 Paris agreement will be a tall order.

Kenya accounts for less than 0.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions and has a per capita emission of less than half the global average. But low-emitting countries such as Kenya are suffering the most from the effects of climate change, and are poorly equipped to effectively respond or build resilience to key hazards such as drought and flooding.

For example, a 2011 drought in Kenya caused damage estimated at $11bn, while another in 2014-18 left 3.4 million people in food insecurity and half a million lacking access to water. In 2018, floods displaced 230,000 people in Kenya, including 150,000 children, drowned 20,000 livestock and led to the closure of 700 schools.

Villagers transport supplementary food provided by the UN World Food Programme during the drought in 2011. Photograph: David Bathgate/Corbis/Getty Images

The country also lost 8,500 hectares (21,000 acres) of crops in a country where 84% of the land is “arid and semi-arid, with poor infrastructure and other developmental challenges, leaving less than 16% of the land to support over 80% of the population”.

Such losses, the document says, continue to knock about 3-5% off the country’s GDP. Food security, warns the report, will worsen because Kenyan farmers are almost entirely weather-dependent. In addition, major rivers are seeing reduced flow as glaciers on the country’s biggest water tower, Mount Kenya, shrink. They are already down to 17% of their original size and will disappear in 30 years, the report says.

Erratic rainfall has hampered hydroelectric generation and forced Kenya to look at exploiting 400m tonnes of coal reserves with proposals to build two power plants: one using local coal and the other imported coal. Providing cheap fuel will come with negative environmental and social impacts.

The report says: “The use of coal is accompanied by strong environmental impacts, such as high emissions of sulphur dioxide, heavy metals and harmful greenhouse gases. The country is therefore faced with choosing between the exploitation of her fossil fuel resources to realise her development objectives and forgoing their exploitation for environmental reasons. To forgo all the benefits of exploiting the fossil fuel resources, Kenya will need significant international support.”

Greenpeace and environmental activists demonstrate in Nairobi against the construction of a coal power plant in Lamu on Kenya’s coast in 2019. Photograph: Simon Maina/AFP/Getty Images

The climate crisis is also having an impact on national security with the scramble for meagre natural resources leading to violent conflicts. The report says: “Increased intensities and magnitudes of climate-related risks in Kenya aggravate conflicts, mostly over natural resources. This has frequently forced the country to reallocate development resources to address climate-related emergencies.”

Research by Imperial College Business School and Soas University of London for the UN in 2018 showed how developing countries lack the resources required to stem the tide of climate crisis, with the lack of resilience and mitigation measures driving them into unsustainable debt.

“For every 10 dollars paid in interest by developing countries, an additional dollar will be spent due to climate vulnerability. This financial burden exacerbates the present-day economic challenges of poorer countries. The magnitude of this burden will at least double over the next decade,” the research findings state.

Kenya, a member of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, has in recent years seen debt at critical levels with a November economic update from the World Bank showing debt to GDP rising from 62.4% of GDP in June 2019 to 65.6% in June 2020.

Without affordable climate financing, the convention on climate change says any investments in these counties will have to factor risks from climate vulnerability with corresponding increased debt repayments.

Links

• 'A critical situation': Bangladesh in crisis as monsoon floods follow super-cyclone
• 'The water will come back': why Kenya's struggle against flooding is far from over
• Kenya's pastoralists face hunger and conflict as locust plague continues
• Fish ponds and water harvesting: climate-smart farming comes to Kenya
• Scientists turn to tech to prevent second wave of locusts in east Africa
• A humanitarian crisis looms in Africa unless we act fast to stop the desert locust
• Cuts to UK aid: package to drought-hit Kenya to end in 2024
• COP22 host Morocco launches action plan to fight devastating climate change

(AU) Zero Attribution: Australia’s Bureau Of Meteorology Keeps Silent On Climate Science

Michael West Media - Sandi Keane | Tasha May

Meteorological services around the world have embraced climate attribution science, which ascertains the effect of climate change on extreme weather events. Not so Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, which is remarkably coy about its work in this field.

Illustration by Alex Anstey

One of the top 10 breakthrough technologies of 2020, according to the prestigious Massachusetts’s Institute of Technology Tech Review, was climate change attribution science.

Meteorological bureaus around the world have embraced the advancements in meteorological science. New Zealand’s MetService is developing a machine that will be able to determine, within a day or two of an extreme weather event having occurred, the role of climate change in the severity and frequency of the event. The UK’s Met Office has developed a state-of-the-art modelling system for event attribution.

Climate attribution involves understanding and quantifying “how much of the credit or risk for an event (or type of events) should go to global warming and how much should go to natural weather patterns or random climate variability”.

Burying the lead

In contrast to the trend globally towards climate attribution,  Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology seems to have gone to ground at any mention of climate change in connection with the words “unprecedented bushfires”.

The bureau declined, twice, to be interviewed about its research on an Attribution Method for Extreme Events when asked by The Guardian.

And while BoM’s State of the Climate 2020 report notes the fact that “reducing emissions will lead to less warming and fewer impacts”, this only appears of the report’s final page. This fact is also not mentioned in the Key Points at the start of the report.

And, as Michael West Media has reported previously, the BoM’s explainer video “Bushfires and Exceptional heat: what’s driving our weather right now?” fails to mention climate change as a cause of the Black Summer bushfires. Our investigation revealed that this omission is in line with “CEO’s [Andrew Johnson] view the Bureau should not be proactively discussing climate context”.

Modelling greenhouse gas effects

As noted by the Massachusetts’s Institute of Technology’s Technology Review (March/April 2020 edition):

“Thanks to improved climate simulations, accumulating weather data, and more powerful computers, it’s now possible to model worlds with and without the greenhouse gases we’ve added to the atmosphere over the past 150 years.
And that lets researchers conclude that specific weather events, such as the devastating bushfires in Australia, were — within certain upper and lower bounds — more likely and more damaging thanks to global temperature increases.”

The Review’s senior energy editor James Temple acknowledged that previously, “the party line among meteorologists and climate scientists” was that “you can’t attribute any specific weather event to climate change”.

Is Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology leadership team still wedded to the old party line?

BoM is a publicly funded organisation, receiving $263.3 million in 2019-20 from taxpayers. It operates under the Meteorological Act 1955, which states that one of BoM’s key functions is:

• (g)  the promotion of the advancement of meteorological science, by means of meteorological research and investigation or otherwise.

Given the increasing importance of Climate Attribution in meteorological science, it would appear the Bureau is legally bound to promote this science.

Yet CEO Andrew Johnson has stated that “the Bureau should not be proactively discussing climate context [of the Black Summer fires]”.

Health and safety issue BoM’s Customer Service Charter states that it is “committed to the health and safety of our customers and our people, with a focus on contributing to zero lives lost from natural hazards”.

The 2019-2020 bushfires were directly responsible for the deaths of 33 individuals, according to the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements. Its Report also found that “extensive smoke coverage across much of eastern Australia may have caused many more deaths”.

A report from the World Weather Attribution into ‘Attribution of the Australian bushfire risk to anthropogenic climate change’ found that human-induced climate change altered the likelihood and intensity of fire weather risk in the 2019/2020 bushfires.

The World Health Organisation also states that climate change “is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress”.

Again, it appears the BoM’s inability to publicly acknowledge climate change and the scientific advances in climate attribution undermines this stated goal.

Global comparison

As noted earlier, meteorological services in other countries have recognised the importance of Climate Attribution.

New Zealand’s MetService (The Meteorological Service of New Zealand Limited) supports the consensus view of the World Meteorological Organisation that “long-term climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme weather and climate events and causing sea level rise and ocean acidification”.

MetService is partnering with Bodeker Scientific to develop an Extreme Weather Event Real-time Attribution Machine (EWERAM) whereby “scientifically defensible data will be available to inform quantitative statements about the role of climate change in both the severity and frequency of the event”.

Similarly, the UK Met Office’s EUCLEIA project  aims to provide “critical information to policymakers, public authorities and citizens to guide climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies and to prepare for extreme weather”.

Canada’s Department of Natural Resources, in its 2019 Canada’s Changing Climate Report, acknowledges “attribution studies” as providing “quantitative assessments of the contribution of various climate drivers to observed warming over specified time periods.

“On the basis of such studies, it is extremely likely that human influences, especially emissions of greenhouse gases, have been the dominant cause of the observed global warming since the mid-20th century,” notes the report.

That which shall not be named In response to a Freedom of Information request lodged by Michael West Media, the Bureau of Meteorology said it made its explainer video because:

“We’ve had some strong interest from the community on social media and media groups about what is currently influencing weather across the country.”

This video – “Bushfires and Exceptional heat: what’s driving our weather right now?”  – does not mention climate change. And at the Senate Estimates hearing on March 2 last year, Dr Andrew Johnson, the BoM’s chief executive, seriously downplayed the impact of climate change on the summer’s bushfires when questioned.

In line with its own Charter, which mandates the promotion of the most advanced meteorological science, one would expect the Bureau of Meteorology to be including whatever climate attribution data is available in its answer to this query from the Australian community.

Questions asked of BoM Michael West Media asked the Bureau of Meteorology the following questions:

• Would the BoM like to comment on whether there was any link between climate change and the Black Summer fires?
• Does the BoM consider climate change a political issue and is therefore unable to comment?
• Why did the BoM decline, twice. to be interviewed about its research on an Attribution Method for Extreme Events when asked about it by The Guardian?
• Could the BoM elaborate on what specific climate attribution research is being done and when it will be released to the Australian public?

The Bureau of Meteorology replied with the following statement:

The Bureau operates under the terms of the Meteorological Act 1955, which requires it to conduct research and provide advice on meteorological matters and serve the public interest by working with all sectors of the Australian community and economy. 

Under the Act, the Bureau must also pay particular attention to the needs of the Defence Force, navigation, shipping and civil aviation sectors, as well as primary production, industry, trade and commerce.

The Australian Government Charging Framework requires the Bureau to receive fees for many of its services – these are received from participants across the Australian economy.

The Bureau publishes material that describes a wide range of meteorological phenomena. The Bureau’s latest climate science (including climate attribution work) has been published in State of the Climate 2020.

Special service fee? In response to our investigation last month, some readers suggested that the millions of dollars BoM receives from oil and gas companies was a service fee for special weather monitoring services particular to their business needs.

Michael West Media again contacted BoM to ask how much of the money received from the oil and gas players was spent providing these meteorological services. It responded:

“The Bureau of Meteorology has previously sent you a media statement in answer to your questions. Please refer to that statement.”

Links

• Undue Influence: oil and gas giants infiltrate Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology 
• Climate change attribution
• Extreme event attribution: the climate versus weather blame game
• An Initialized Attribution Method for Extreme Events on Subseasonal to Seasonal Time-Scales
• A change in the weather: new demand for TV presenters to include climate in forecasts
• Bureau of Meteorology: State of the Climate 2020
• Yes, you can blame climate change for extreme weather
• Attribution of the Australian bushfire risk to anthropogenic climate change