(Nature) Scientists Raise Alarm Over ‘Dangerously Fast’ Growth In Atmospheric Methane

Nature - Jeff Tollefson

As global methane concentrations soar over 1,900 parts per billion, some researchers fear that global warming itself is behind the rapid rise.

Tropical wetlands, such as the Pantanal in Brazil, are a major source of methane emissions. Credit: Carl De Souza/AFP via Getty

Methane concentrations in the atmosphere raced past 1,900 parts per billion last year, nearly triple pre-industrial levels, according to data released in January by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Scientists says the grim milestone underscores the importance of a pledge made at last year’s COP26 climate summit to curb emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas at least 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide.

The growth of methane emissions slowed around the turn of the millennium, but began a rapid and mysterious uptick around 2007.

The spike has caused many researchers to worry that global warming is creating a feedback mechanism that will cause ever more methane to be released, making it even harder to rein in rising temperatures.

“Methane levels are growing dangerously fast,” says Euan Nisbet, an Earth scientist at Royal Holloway, University of London, in Egham, UK.

The emissions, which seem to have accelerated in the past few years, are a major threat to the world’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5–2 °C over pre-industrial temperatures, he says.

Source: NOAA

Enigmatic patterns

For more than a decade, researchers have deployed aircraft, taken satellite measurements and run models in an effort to understand the drivers of the increase (see ‘A worrying trend’).

Potential explanations range from the expanding exploitation of oil and natural gas and rising emissions from landfill to growing livestock herds and increasing activity by microbes in wetlands.

“The causes of the methane trends have indeed proved rather enigmatic,” says Alex Turner, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Washington in Seattle. And despite a flurry of research, Turner says he is yet to see any conclusive answers emerge.

One clue is in the isotopic signature of methane molecules. The majority of carbon is carbon-12, but methane molecules sometimes also contain the heavier isotope carbon-13.

Methane generated by microbes — after they consume carbon in the mud of a wetland or in the gut of a cow, for instance — contains less C (carbon) than does methane generated by heat and pressure inside Earth, which is released during fossil-fuel extraction.

Scientists have sought to understand the source of the mystery methane by comparing this knowledge about the production of the gas with what is observed in the atmosphere.

By studying methane trapped decades or centuries ago in ice cores and accumulated snow, as well as gas in the atmosphere, they have been able to show that for two centuries after the start of the Industrial Revolution the proportion of methane containing C increased,

But since 2007, when methane levels began to rise more rapidly again, the proportion of methane containing C began to fall (see ‘The rise and fall of methane’).

Some researchers believe that this suggests that much of the increase in the past 15 years might be due to microbial sources, rather than the extraction of fossil fuels.

Source: Sylvia Michel, University of Colorado Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research

Back to the source

“It’s a powerful signal,” says Xin Lan, an atmospheric scientist at NOAA’s Global Monitoring Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, and it suggests that human activities alone are not responsible for the increase.

Lan’s team has used the atmospheric C data to estimate that microbes are responsible for around 85% of the growth in emissions since 2007, with fossil-fuel extraction accounting for the remainder.

The next — and most challenging — step is to try to pin down the relative contributions of microbes from various systems, such as natural wetlands or human-raised livestock and landfills.

This might help determine whether warming itself is contributing to the increase, potentially through mechanisms such as increasing the productivity of tropical wetlands.

To provide answers, Lan and her team are running atmospheric models to trace methane back to its source.

“Is warming feeding the warming? It’s an incredibly important question,” says Nisbet. “As yet, no answer, but it very much looks that way.”

Global Biogeochem

Regardless of how this mystery plays out, humans are not off the hook. Based on their latest analysis of the isotopic trends,

Lan’s team estimates that anthropogenic sources such as livestock, agricultural waste, landfill and fossil-fuel extraction accounted for about 62% of total methane emissions since from 2007 to 2016 (see ‘Where is methane coming from?’).

Global Methane Pledge

This means there is plenty that can be done to reduce emissions. Despite NOAA’s worrying numbers for 2021, scientists already have the knowledge to help governments take action, says Riley Duren, who leads Carbon Mapper, a non-profit consortium in Pasadena, California, that uses satellites to pinpoint the source of methane emissions.

Last month, for instance, Carbon Mapper and the Environmental Defense Fund, an advocacy group in New York City, released data revealing that 30 oil and gas facilities in the southwestern United States have collectively emitted about 100,000 tonnes of methane for at least the past 3 years, equivalent to the annual warming impact of half a million cars.

These facilities could easily halt those emissions by preventing methane from leaking out, the groups argue.

At COP26 in Glasgow, UK, more than 100 countries signed the Global Methane Pledge to cut emissions by 30% from 2020 levels by 2030, and Duren says the emphasis must now be on action, including in low- and middle-income countries across the global south.

“Tackling methane is probably the best opportunity we have to buy some time,” he says, to solve the much bigger challenge of reducing the world’s CO₂ emissions.

Links

• (AU ABC) Calls To Reject 'Gassy' Extension Of Whitehaven Coal's Narrabri Mine Over Methane Concerns
• (AU ABC) Victoria's First Seaweed Farm Aims To Reduce Livestock Emissions
• (The Conversation) Methane In The Atmosphere Is At An All-Time High – Here’s What It Means For Climate Change
• (AU Bloomberg Green) These Australian Coal Mines Are Methane Super-Emitters
• (AU The Conversation) Australia’s Refusal To Sign A Global Methane Pledge Exposes Flaws In The Term ‘Net-Zero’
• Global Methane Pledge
• Global CH4 Monthly Means

(AU SMH) TikTok Takes On Climate As New Social Activism Sweeps The Net

Sydney Morning Herald - Laura Chung

Tara Bellerose spends 15 to 20 hours a week making videos for Instagram and TikTok from her farm in rural south-west Victoria.

 Inspiration comes from all around the 23-year-old, with each video taking about two hours to make.

The final product is a short video that is engaging, fast and contains colourful captions, images or filters tackling one of the biggest threats facing humanity: climate change.

“There is nothing really to it,” she says. “I don’t have any other hobbies, this is my hobby.”

“I am trying to teach people about animals and wildlife and what the earth has to offer. You can’t force people to change, people don’t like being forced to do stuff, but if you suggest and say, ’look how beautiful our reefs are and how cool these animals are... you can make people care.”

Tara Bellerose, 23, uses her large social media following to talk about the climate crisis.

As a third-generation farmer, Ms Bellerose has seen the impacts of climate change first hand, with floods and droughts impacting crop growth. “Dad says the weather is different from when he was my age,” she says.

“When I saw the effect of humanity, I wanted to learn more, and use my platform to teach people about the ‘invisible’ day-to-day impacts we have as humans and try to show them the creatures they don’t see but harm indirectly.”

She’s been on social media since 2016, but it wasn’t until she watched David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II in 2018 that she pivoted her content to address the climate crisis.

Tara Bellerose is turning to social media to talk about the effects of climate change.

Ms Bellerose has a large following: 585,000 followers on TikTok, 12,000 followers on Instagram and 33,000 subscribers on YouTube. But there’s an ugly side to social media.

She’s been subject to death threats - at one stage she was getting one a week. One such message sent last year said: “I hope you kill yourself or get hit by a truck. I really hope that happens to you. Or you get malaria and just die because you are a waste of space. You shouldn’t exist.”

But Ms Bellerose is matter-of-fact about it - she’s tackling an existential crisis, something that’s much bigger than a keyboard warrior. It’s also part of making controversial content, she says.

American climate influencer Alaina Wood says she started using TikTok during the pandemic but never intended to make content addressing climate change

American climate influencer Alaina Wood says she’ll decide what content to produce based on what’s trending online, what she’s passionate about or what she wants to teach the public about.

It can take her a minimum of four hours to research, script, film and edit one video.

The 25-year-old Tennessee resident started using Tiktok at the start of the pandemic to pass the time and never intended to post videos about the climate crisis.

“I started communicating about the climate crisis after I saw videos on TikTok insinuating that people have to be 100 per cent vegan, zero waste, and car free to be an environmentalist,” she says.

"I posted my first climate video in response to these ‘perfect environmentalist’ videos to help people understand that you don’t have to be 100 per cent anything to be a good environmentalist.

“I then started communicating more about science and policy after I noticed the lack of creators doing so on TikTok.”

Ms Wood, who has 9,394 Instagram followers and 294,500 followers on TikTok, is also the co-founder of eco.tok - a collaboration of creators providing education on climate change, activism, and science.

She was recently interviewed by Teen Vogue about her online activism and inspiring collective action - highlighting just how much young people care and are actively leading the climate debate.

Influencer Alaina Wood is using social media to discuss climate.

Curtin University Professor Crystal Abidin digital anthropologist and ethnographer of vernacular internet cultures says Australian social media began to engage with the climate moment during the climate marches and Black Summer bushfires in 2019.

Glasgow summit

When Tishiko went home, she found exposed burial sites and empty fishing grounds. Now she’s going to Glasgow

Young people began sharing their experiences through short videos or through memes, promoting the message of climate activist Greta Thunberg, or expressing outrage over political failings.

She adds that using social media to address the climate crisis can result in greater awareness, but it might not necessarily translate into concrete action given the young age of many users.

“It’s a different type of activism. It’s one way for them to be included and participate in civil society until they have the resources to act or to do something more.”

Links

• The Power of Social Media to Fight Climate Change
• How social media is driving the climate change conversation
• Credibility of climate change denial in social media - Nature
• Eight ways to make your climate change social media posts matter – from a communication expert
• Social media is reducing climate change debates to your views on veganism
• Gen Z, Millennials Stand Out for Climate Change Activism, Social Media Engagement With Issue

(NYT) Conflict And Climate Change Ravage Syria’s Agricultural Heartland

New York Times - Jane Arraf

Drought and a decade of war have brought failing crops and poverty to a region once known as Syria’s breadbasket. Even the bread has changed.

Farmers in northeast Syria say their sheep are thinner, less healthy and selling for much less. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

HASAKA, Syria — At a government bakery in Hasaka, Syria, a faded image of former President Hafez al-Assad looms over the aging machinery and clanging steel chains of the assembly line.

The painting dates from long before the war, when this region of northeast Syria was still under government control.

Outside, a long line of families and disabled men wait for bags of subsidized flat bread, which sells at about a quarter of the market price.

What is new at this bakery, the largest in the region, is the color of the flour dumped into giant mixing bowls: It is now pale yellow instead of the traditional stark white.

“This is a new experiment we started three or four months ago,” said Media Sheko, a manager of the bakery. “To avoid bread shortages, we had to mix it with corn.”

In a region ravaged by ISIS and armed conflict, prolonged drought and drying rivers have made stability even more precarious. Here, the normally abstract idea of climate change can be seen in the city’s daily bread.

The new recipe is not entirely welcome.

At a government bakery in Hasaka, climate change has affected the traditional flatbread, which is now made with corn meal mixed with wheat flour. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

People waiting outside the government bakery in Hasaka, which sells subsidized flat bread at about a quarter of the price of bread from private bakeries. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

“We feed corn to chickens,” said Khider Shaban, 48, a grain farmer near the town of Al Shaddadi, where bare earth has replaced most of the wheat fields because of lack of water. “What are we — chickens?”

The prolonged drought in the region has been linked to climate change worldwide.

But in northeast Syria, the country’s historic breadbasket, its effects have been compounded by more than a decade of war, a devastated economy, damaged infrastructure and increasing poverty, leaving a vulnerable society even more at risk of destabilization.

Across Syria, the U.N.’s World Food Program reported last summer that almost half of the population did not have enough food, a figure expected to rise higher this year.

Many of the fields of red earth have been left fallow by farmers who can no longer afford to buy seeds, fertilizer or diesel to run water pumps to replace the low rainfall of previous years.

The wheat they do grow is lower quality and sells for much less than before the current drought two years ago, according to farmers, government officials and aid organizations.

This semiautonomous breakaway region in northeastern Syria, desperate for cash and stable relations with Damascus, still sells much of its wheat crop to the Syrian government, leaving little for its own population.

And farmers who cannot afford to feed and water their animals are selling them off at cut-rate prices.

“This problem of climate change is combined with other problems, so it’s not just one thing,” said Matt Hall, a strategic analyst for Save the Children in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

“There’s a war, there are sanctions, the economy is devastated. And the region can’t pick up the slack by importing wheat because it no longer has the money.”

For thousands of years, the Euphrates River and its largest tributary, the Khabur River, which cuts through Hasaka Province, nurtured some of the world’s earliest farming settlements. But the rivers have been drying up.

The U.S. space agency, NASA, which studies climate change, says the drought that began in 1998 is the worst that some parts of the Middle East have seen in nine centuries.

In northeast Syria, the drought has been particularly acute over the past two years. But lower than average rainfall is only part of the problem.

Irrigation pumps on the Khabur River, which has slowed to a trickle. Now the pumps have to work overtime, using more diesel fuel to get the same amount of water. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Many fields of dried red earth have been left fallow. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Turkey, which controls the region’s water supply from parts of northern Syria that it controls through proxy fighters, has been accused of reducing the flow to the area inhabited by the Kurds, whom it considers an enemy.

Since Turkey captured the Alouk water pumping station, the main water source for Hasaka Province, in 2019, aid agencies say forces under its command have repeatedly shut down the pumps, putting about a million people at risk.

Turkey has denied the accusation, blaming outages on technical problems and the lack of electricity from a dam outside of its control.

Whatever the cause, UNICEF says the water supply has been disrupted at least 24 times since late 2019.

The effects of the drought are on vivid display in the small city of Al Shaddadi, 50 miles south of Hasaka.

The Khabur River, which flows through the town and was so vital in ancient times that it is referred to in the Bible, has been reduced to puddles of murky water.

Muhammad Salih, a president of the municipality, said 70 percent of the farmers in the area left their fields fallow this year because it would cost more to grow crops than they would receive selling them.

The low level of the Khabur, which many farmers depend on to irrigate their fields, means they have to operate their diesel-powered pumps longer to get the same amount of water.

And the cost of diesel fuel has soared, along with prices of other essentials, because of an economic embargo on the region by its neighbors,

Turkey and the government-controlled part of Syria, and American economic sanctions against Syria, which also affect this region.

Mr. Salih also blamed Turkey for reducing the water supply at the Alouk pumping station.

“One day they open the water and 10 days they do not,” he said.

He estimated that 60 percent of the local population was now living under the poverty line. “Some people are eating just one meal a day,” he said.

“This climate change, this drought is affecting the entire world,” he said. “But here in the autonomous administration we don’t have the reserves to cope with it.”

The New York Times

The war against ISIS left entire sections of Al Shaddadi in ruins.

U.S.-led airstrikes destroyed a large residential complex, water pumping stations, schools and bakeries used by ISIS, according to local authorities. The main bakery and some schools have been rebuilt.

Farmers from the countryside drive motorcycles through dusty streets. Women with their faces covered by black niqabs walk past chickens few people can afford to buy anymore.

A man selling chickens in Al Shaddadi. Few people can afford them. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

A dam on the Khabur River south of Hasaka controls the flow of water to villages farther south. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

In the surrounding farmlands, thin stalks of wheat and barley in the few fields planted last fall are less than half their height in pre-drought years.“We can only pray for God to send us rain,” said Mr. Shaban, the wheat farmer.

He said that he had to sell his sheep two years ago at reduced prices because he could not afford feed or water.

“I had to make the choice to give water to my family for drinking or give it to the sheep,” he said.

On a neighboring farm, Hassan al-Harwa, 39, said the high cost of feed meant his sheep were subsisting on straw mixed with a small amount of more nutritious barley instead of the higher-grain diet they used to consume.

Members of the al-Harwa family herd sheep to a well they dug to provide them water. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Hassan al-Harwa said he used to get $200 a head for his sheep. Now, with skinnier sheep and depressed prices, they sell for $70 or less. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

“They should be fatter and healthier,” Mr. al-Harwa said. “When there was rain two years ago, we had enough milk to get milk and cheese but now it is barely enough for their lambs.”

Before, he said, each sheep could fetch about $200 in the market. Now they sell for $70 or less, he said, because they are skinnier and because few people can afford to buy them.The next day, four of the lambs had died. Mr. al-Harwa thought it was a virus but with no veterinarian it was hard to be sure.

Across the region, intense poverty and lack of opportunity have contributed to young men joining the Islamic State.

“It’s one small piece of this large, disastrous puzzle,” said Mr. Hall of Save the Children. “The grievances that are exacerbated by climate change are the same ones that drive disillusionment and recruitment” by ISIS.

The persistent drought has also been driving families from farms held for generations to the cities where there are more services but even less opportunity to make a living.

“The water is holding together many of these areas,” Mr. Hall said. “These agricultural communities are the social foundation for many areas. If you take away the agricultural capacity there is nothing holding these towns together.”

A boy from a nearby camp for displaced Syrians plays along the shore of the dam reservoir. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Links

How climate change paved the way to war in Syria

The Effects of Climate Change on the Syrian Uprising

Climate Change and Syria's Civil War

Water, Drought, Climate Change, and Conflict in Syria

Conflict and climate change collide: Why northeast Syria is running dry

(UK The Guardian) How Bad Is Storm Eunice – And Is It A Result Of Climate Breakdown?

The Guardian - Helena Horton | Patrick Greenfield

A rare red warning has been issued as back-to-back storms sweep the UK


Storm Eunice: planes struggle and roofs are ripped off as millions face disruption – video report. 1min 14sec

Storm Eunice is battering parts of the UK, felling trees and scattering roof tiles as forecasters warn of a “significant threat to life”.

But is it caused by climate breakdown, and can we expect an increase in such disruptive storms?

Where has the storm come from?
Eunice brewed in the central Atlantic and was spun up from the Azores towards Europe by the jet stream.

Is it a particularly bad storm?
Yes, gusts of up to 110mph have been recorded at the Needles lighthouse on the Isle of Wight.

This has exceeded the prediction of 90mph winds, and is just under the record 120mph winds that hit during the devastating storm of 1987, during which 18 people died in one day.

Met Office says Eunice has the potential to be the worst storm since then. A rare red alert has been issued by the Met Office, with people asked to stay at home if they can. The government has convened Cobra to discuss response to the likely devastation ahead.

Prof Hannah Cloke, a professor of hydrology at the University of Reading, said: “The Met Office red and amber warnings for high winds should not be taken lightly. Red means you need to act now because there is an imminent danger to life.

"Everyone who lives or works in those areas should be battening down the hatches, literally in some cases, to prevent people from being killed and injured and to protect your homes and businesses.

“Let us be clear what this means. Winds of 70mph will uproot trees, which can block roads and crush cars or buildings. They can pick up roof tiles and hurl them around. If you are hit by one of those you will be seriously hurt or killed.

"Wind that strong will sweep people and vehicles off streets, and topple electricity lines. Do not take any chances. Stay inside.”

There is talk of a deadly ‘sting jet’ coming with the storm, but what is that?
Met Office scientists have said one of these can form. Matt Priestley, a research scientist at the University of Exeter, looking at storm tracks and extratropical cyclones, said they were small areas of very intense winds within a storm’s cyclone that were hard to predict.

“They are generally about 10-20km wide and are generated by specific instabilities within the flight lines of storms and cause very high wind speeds.

“They’re not a feature of all storms. They’re often just a feature of the most intense ones like Storm Eunice. The fact that they are such small scale but can have such high wind speeds makes forecasting them very, very difficult.”

Is Eunice linked to climate breakdown?
Michael Dukes, a forecaster at MetDesk, said it could be. He explained: “Although it is hard to pinpoint climate change as a reason for individual severe weather events, climate models do indicate an increase in these type of storms as the earth continues to slowly warm.

"So this is very much in line with what climate scientists have been warning us about for a number of years now.”

While there is dispute between scientists over whether the storms themselves are likely to increase and become stronger, most agree that the climate crisis will make their impacts worse.

The German climatologist Friederike Otto, who leads the pioneering World Weather Attribution service on whether droughts, big storms or heatwaves were made more likely by the climate emergency, said there was “very little evidence that winds in these winter storms have gotten stronger with climate change”.

She said: “Nevertheless the damages of winter storms have gotten worse because of human-caused climate change for two reasons: one, the rainfall associated with these winter storms has become more intense, and many studies link this clearly to climate change; and two, because of sea-level rise, storm surges are higher and thus more damaging than they would otherwise be.”

Richard Allan, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading, said: “Once-in-a-decade storms like Eunice are certain to batter the British Isles in the future but there is no compelling evidence that they will become more frequent or potent in terms of wind speeds.

“Yet with more intense rainfall and higher sea levels as human-caused climate change continues to heat the planet, flooding from coastal storm surges and prolonged deluges will worsen still further when these rare, explosive storms hit us in a warmer world.”

Links

• Storm Eunice: at least four die as winds of up to 122mph batter UK and Ireland – latest updates
• Storm Eunice: at least four dead as worst storm in decades roars in
• Storm Eunice batters Britain – in pictures
• Big Jet TV: livestreaming of planes landing during Storm Eunice goes viral
• Storm Eunice: at least four die as winds of up to 122mph batter UK and Ireland – latest updates
• Storm Eunice: at least four dead as worst storm in decades roars in
• Storm Eunice batters Britain – in pictures
• Big Jet TV: livestreaming of planes landing during Storm Eunice goes viral
• Storm Eunice wreaks UK travel chaos as roads closed and trains curtailed
• What is a ‘sting jet’? Scientists warn of repeat of 1987 phenomenon
• Storm Eunice: Cobra meeting called as UK braces for ‘worst storm in decades’

An ‘Emerging Crisis’: The Climate Is Changing Too Fast For Plants And Animals To Adapt

Grist - Diana Kruzman

New UN report highlights how warming temperatures are upending nature's life cycles — with devastating impacts on agriculture and biodiversity.

Ashley Cooper via Getty

White storks migrating to Northern Europe nest up to a week earlier in warm weather, exposing them to extreme storms and threatening the survival of their chicks.

Staple crops like barley, maize, rice, rye, sorghum, soybean, and wheat, along with fruits like apples, cherries, pears, and mangoes, are all experiencing disruptions in their growth and development.

Ten years ago, a marine heat wave in the Gulf of Maine sped up the life cycle of lobsters, overwhelming local fisheries that had to harvest them earlier than expected.

Scientists have warned for years that climate change is upending the natural life cycles of plants and animals — to potentially devastating effect. Now, a new report released Thursday by the United Nations identifies these changes as one of the world’s most pressing emerging environmental crises, in need of immediate action.

The report, Frontiers 2022, comes ahead of the UN Environment Assembly meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, at the end of February. It also highlights as emerging crises the growing destruction from wildfires and the hidden cost of noise pollution, which leads to 12,000 premature deaths each year in the European Union alone.

But perhaps most strikingly, it warns that life-cycle changes driven by warming temperatures and extreme weather patterns are affecting the natural rhythms of species around the world, often too quickly for them to adapt.

And while these changes may seem subtle season to season, the report argues, they have the potential to devastate commercial agriculture and fisheries, while also threatening vulnerable species, from butterflies to whales.

“Our Frontiers Report series aims to put the spotlight on key and emerging environmental issues — those that potentially have huge effects on our society, economy, and ecosystems,” said Andrea Hinwood, chief scientist for the UN Environment Programme, during a press event.

“We need to be aware of the issues, their causes, so we can look at how we manage them, prevent harm, and implement appropriate preventative actions and solutions.”

The science of how living things time their birth, growth, reproduction and other life-cycle stages is known as phenology, and changes in these patterns — driven by environmental forces like temperature, the arrival of rains and other cues — are called “phenological shifts.”

Particularly in temperate regions of the world, where changing seasons let animals know to hibernate, flowers to bloom, birds to lay their eggs, and fish to spawn, warming temperatures and extreme weather driven by climate change can alter these natural cycles.

The world has already warmed 2.14 degrees Fahrenheit (or 1.19 degrees Celsius) from the pre-industrial era.

Studies in the early 2000s found that “the life stages of 203 plant and animal species had advanced by an average of about 2.8 days earlier per decade,” according to the report.

Since then, more recent research has continued to study how ecosystems, biomes, and taxonomic groups are being affected as the rise in temperatures speeds up.

Plants and animals are timing their life cycle changes to catch up to a warming climate. Each circle in this graph represents one species that has been tracked. United Nations Environment Programme

LARGE IMAGE

Monarch butterflies have delayed their annual migration by 6 days per decade due to warmer-than-normal temperatures, potentially impacting their access to food sources along the way.

In the Arctic, spring vegetation is sprouting up to 2 weeks earlier than normal, meaning caribou calves are born too late to eat it, decimating populations of the endangered species.

Certain fish species have shifted their egg laying forward by as many as 10 days per decade, and some plankton species are reaching peak abundance as many as 50 days earlier per decade.

 Animals often can adapt, the report explains, with chicks hatching earlier to catch up with their main food source: caterpillars, themselves emerging earlier to keep up with the plants they feed on — a phenomenon known as “phenological plasticity.”

But with climate change occurring so rapidly, “individual or population plasticity may not be able to keep up with the rapid environmental changes we are experiencing,” the report says.

These changes aren’t just about the natural world. As the report warns, phenological mismatches could wreak havoc on human societies if left unchecked.

Along with a loss in overall biodiversity — which has consequences for human health and the spread of infectious diseases — warming trends have already affected crop yields, threatening food security around the world.

When plants flower early because warming temperatures signal to them that spring has arrived, pollinators might not be active in time to reach them, or late-season frosts could destroy the early crop. Warmer temperatures could also encourage the development of pests, threatening yields.

“Rehabilitating habitats, building wildlife corridors to enhance habitat connectivity, shifting boundaries of protected areas, and conserving biodiversity in productive landscapes can help as immediate interventions,” the report concludes.

“However, without strong efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, these conservation measures will only delay the collapse of essential ecosystem services.”

Links

• Frontiers 2022: Noise, Blazes and Mismatches
• Climate Change: Global Temperature
• Climate change reduces reproductive success of an Arctic herbivore through trophic mismatch
• 2018 Arctic Report Card: Reindeer and caribou populations continue to decline
• Biodiversity and Health
• Pest management under climate change: The importance of understanding tritrophic relations
• Fifth session of the United Nations Environment Assembly

(AU ABC) These Women Are Tackling Australia's Climate Change Crisis Through Photographs

ABC Radio Canberra - Adrienne Francis | Tahlia Roy

Tracey Nearmy took this stunning photo, "Nancy in North Nowra", and submitted it as part of a visual petition tacking climate change. (Supplied)

From fire to flood to drought, how you feel about climate change-related disasters can be tricky to express in words.

It can also leave you feeling helpless, as Queanbeyan-based professional photographer Hilary Wardhaugh knows all to well.

During 2020's horrific bushfire season, she came across countless dead ladybirds lying among ash at Potato Point, on the NSW South Coast.

"[I saw] lots of ash everywhere along the beach, and within the ash were millions of ladybirds. You could still see them, so they hadn't been burnt, but they were all dead," Ms Wardhaugh said.

The picture she took of that scene became the catalyst for a project now known as the Everyday Climate Crisis Visual Petition — a call to action from women and non-binary people.

This ladybird photo, taken by Hilary Wardhaugh, inspired the Everyday Climate Crisis visual petition. (Supplied)

"It was heartbreaking, and that's why I wanted to start this project," Ms Wardhaugh said.

 "I wanted to crowdsource images that illustrate climate change in Australia, and sourcing images from women and non-binary people only.

"I think it's important that women have a voice, and a voice through photography and creativity."

Ms Wardhaugh's goal is to collect 1,000 photographs; once that number is reached, the petition will be submitted to federal parliament as "a visual response to the Australian government's climate change policies".

"What I hope to do is have the prime minister at the time hold our petition up in parliament, rather than a lump of coal," Ms Wardhaugh said.

Hilary Wardhaugh, founder of the #EverydayClimateCrisis project. (ABC News: Mark Moore)

 
'1,000 pictures are screaming from the rooftops'

Despite only formally launching at the Women See Change event last week, the petition already has 500 climate change-themed images from both amateur and professional photographers in its collection.

Audio

Everyday Climate Crisis

14min 21sec

"There's been a lot of images where people have done something quite creative in response to how climate change makes them feel," Ms Wardhaugh said.

"We've got people from all over Australia who've submitted. All range in ages, backgrounds and culture, regions."

PhotoAccess's Caitlin Seymour-King helped launch the petition, and said photography is "a hugely helpful tool in the climate change discussion, to represent perspectives that aren't being listened to".

"I think an image tells us something immediately. We have a visceral response, a bodily, corporeal response that communicates things so much faster and so much more felt," she said.

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, then 1,000 pictures are screaming from the rooftops."

These branches were captured by Hilary Wardhaugh at Potato Point as part of her Everyday Climate Crisis visual petition. (Supplied)

One of the most moving petition images Ms Seymour-King has seen so far was submitted by Lib Ferreira.

Ms Ferreira captured a kangaroo mob against a backdrop of smoke during the 2019-20 bushfire season at Queanbeyan Lawn Cemetery in southern NSW.

"The kangaroos represent all of us just trying to stay alive in this huge climate crisis … and they are helpless, in a way," Ms Seymour-King said.

"They are just there to feed on the land of dead bodies with fake flowers popping through. It's a huge symbol.

"But the kangaroos are also kind of offset with comicalness, because it's kind of hilarious to see them unknowingly being part of this message and this campaign and this story." 

This photo of kangaroos on the Queanbeyan Lawn Cemetery was submitted to the visual climate change petition by Lib Ferreira. (Supplied)

Uniting voices from across the country

Artist and poet Dr Judith Nangala Crispin, based in Womboin in NSW, was inspired to join the project after the 2020 bushfires devastated her region.

"We all go through terrible times, and part of the way that we cope with that as humans is we overwrite it with the better time that we're in — but nothing brings back those times more clearly than a photograph," Dr Nangala Crispin said.

"If you lived through those fires, or even through the smoke of those fires and you couldn't breathe properly because of the smoke, if you sit there and you look at a photograph, it's going to remind you of that — and we need to keep that lesson fresh."

Hilary Wardhaugh took this picture of a plastic water bottle covered in sea molluscs as part of her visual petition.(Supplied)

Dr Nangala Crispin believes the petition could feature a "groundswell of voices".

"Women's voices, first nations voices, people who are gender fluid, they've all been overwritten by privileged male voices," she said.

"But with a project like this, every single person who puts in a photograph gives permission for somebody else to do the same."

Dr Nangala Crispin said photo stories are an important art form because every angle captured through the lens is unique, regardless of training.

"You are always the most important person in that moment, no matter what your skill level is, and that's why sometimes we see these incredible photographs taken by people who aren't terribly well known," she said.

"I think the moment you press the shutter, whether it's on a camera or a phone, what you have done is an act of bearing witness — and that is the art there."

Womboin artist Dr Judith Nangala Crispin and PhotoAccess production officer Caitlin Seymour-King believe the photos will be a powerful way to create change. (ABC Canberra: Adrienne Francis)

And, while the images are often confronting, Ms Seymour-King said the project was underpinned by a sense of collective hope.

"The word 'hope' came up as something quite important that we wanted as our anchor, as it's very easy to fall into a hole of despair," she said.

"But potentially we can do something [to affect change] together.

"Anyone can pick up a phone or a disposable camera, take a photo, and mean something with it. And we can validate each other in that process as well."

Links

• (BroadAgenda) How 1000 Moving Images Will Spur Climate Action
• Cop26: Women Must Be Heard On Climate, Say Rights Groups
• Malala Yousafzai Says Educate Girls To Fight Climate Change
• Living With The Legacy Of A Climate Emergency: The Women And Girls Determined To Build A Brighter Future
• (The Guardian) Climate Change One Day At At Time - In Pictures
• Stark Photos Show The State Of The Environment

(The Guardian) World Spends $1.8tn A Year On Subsidies That Harm Environment, Study Finds

The Guardian - Patrick Greenfield

Research prompts warnings humanity is ‘financing its own extinction’ through subsidies damaging to the climate and wildlife

An electoral poster objecting to a proposed ban on subsidies for Swiss farms. A 2021 report found almost 90% of global farming subsidies are harmful. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty

The world is spending at least $1.8tn (£1.3tn) every year on subsidies driving the annihilation of wildlife and a rise in global heating, according to a new study, prompting warnings that humanity is financing its own extinction.

 From tax breaks for beef production in the Amazon to financial support for unsustainable groundwater pumping in the Middle East, billions of pounds of government spending and other subsidies are harming the environment, says the first cross-sector assessment for more than a decade.

This government support, equivalent to 2% of global GDP, is directly working against the goals of the Paris agreement and draft targets on reversing biodiversity loss, the research on explicit subsidies found, effectively financing water pollution, land subsidence and deforestation with state money.

The authors, who are leading subsidies experts, say a significant portion of the $1.8tn could be repurposed to support policies that are beneficial for nature and a transition to net zero, amid growing political division about the cost of decarbonising the global economy.

The report calls for governments to agree a target to eradicate environmentally harmful subsidies by the end of the decade at the biodiversity Cop15 gathering in China later this year, where it is hoped a “Paris agreement for nature” will be signed, and for companies to reveal the subsidies they receive as part of environmental disclosure reporting.

Christiana Figueres, who was head of the UN climate change convention when the Paris agreement was signed, welcomed the research. She said the subsidies were creating huge risks for the businesses receiving them.

“Nature is declining at an alarming rate, and we have never lived on a planet with so little biodiversity,” she said. “Harmful subsidies must be redirected towards protecting the climate and nature, rather than financing our own extinction.”

The fossil fuel industry ($620bn), the agricultural sector ($520bn), water ($320bn) and forestry ($155bn) account for the majority of the $1.8tn, according to the report. No estimate for mining, believed to cause billions of dollars of damage to ecosystems every year, could be derived.

Lack of transparency between governments and recipients means the true figure is likely to be much higher, as is the implicit cost of harmful subsidies.

Last year, an International Monetary Fund report found the fossil fuel industry benefited from subsidies worth $5.9tn in 2020, but the vast majority of this figure comes from the hidden costs of failing to make polluters pay for the deaths they cause and global heating.

“Subsidy reform allows us to improve the price signals so that we are not protecting income in more polluting industries,” said Doug Koplow, founder of the organisation Earth Track, which monitors environmentally harmful subsidies, and co-author of the report, along with Ronald Steenblik, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s former special counsellor for fossil fuel subsidy reform.

“It creates space for alternative and cleaner forms of energy to enter the marketplace.”

‘We’ll get it done. Come hell, high water or Covid’: Can 2022 be a super year for nature? Read more

A draft target in the UN biodiversity agreement for this decade calls for $500bn a year in subsidies to be reformed, but The B Team and Business for Nature, which supported the research, have said this must be strengthened.

The world has never met a target on halting biodiversity loss, and the failure to act on subsidies was highlighted as a major issue from last decade’s targets.

Eva Zabey, executive director of Business for Nature, said businesses were often unaware of the extent of explicit and implicit subsidies they benefit from, but could use their influence to call for change.

“Many businesses are benefiting from these environmentally harmful subsidies. This cannot be a taboo topic. We need to speak using facts and understand where the financial flows are going,” she said.

“Typically, the subsidies were established with good intentions in mind. We need to level the playing field because right now, some are benefiting from a head start when it should be the other way round. It’s a wicked problem.”

Last year, a UN report found almost 90% of subsidies given to farmers every year are harmful, damaging people’s health, fuelling the climate crisis, destroying nature and driving inequality by excluding smallholder farmers.

Elizabeth Mrema, the UN’s biodiversity head, said the report was critically important.

“The report highlights how redirecting, repurposing, or eliminating subsidies could make an important contribution to unlocking the $711bn required each year to halt and reverse the loss of nature by 2030 as well as the cost of reaching net zero emissions,” she said.

Links

• Harmful subsidies: why is the world still funding the destruction of nature?
• Reform $1.8 trillion yearly environmentally harmful subsidies to deliver a nature-positive economy
• UN sets out Paris-type plan to cut extinctions by factor of 10
• Fossil fuel industry gets subsidies of $11m a minute, IMF finds
• World Spends More Than $1.8 Trillion Yearly On Harmful Subsidies Finds New Study
• World fails to meet a single target to stop destruction of nature – UN report
• Nearly all global farm subsidies harm people and planet – UN
• Paris Agreement