NASA: Sea Levels Rise By 3 Inches (8cm) Since 1992

NASA

Global sea level has risen about 3 millimeters (0.1 inch) a year since Topex/Poseidon began its precise measurement of sea surface height in 1993 and was followed by Jason-1 in 2001. Credit: University of Colorado

Seas around the world have risen an average of nearly 3 inches (8 centimeters) since 1992, with some locations rising more than 9 inches (25 centimeters) due to natural variation, according to the latest satellite measurements from NASA and its partners. An intensive research effort now underway, aided by NASA observations and analysis, points to an unavoidable rise of several feet in the future.
The question scientists are grappling with is how quickly will seas rise?
"Given what we know now about how the ocean expands as it warms and how ice sheets and glaciers are adding water to the seas, it's pretty certain we are locked into at least 3 feet [0.9 meter] of sea level rise, and probably more," said Steve Nerem of the University of Colorado, Boulder, and lead of the Sea Level Change Team. "But we don't know whether it will happen within a century or somewhat longer."



Team scientists will discuss a new visualization based on 23 years of sea level data — the entire record of available satellite data — which reveals changes are anything but uniform around the globe. The record is based on data from three consecutive satellite missions; the first a collaboration between NASA and the French space agency, Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES), launched in 1992. The fourth in the series will be Jason-3, led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with participation by NASA, CNES and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT).
In 2013, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued an assessment based on a consensus of international researchers that stated global sea levels would likely rise from 1 to 3 feet (0.3 to 0.9 meter) by the end of the century. According to Nerem, new research available since this report suggests the higher end of that range is more likely, and the question remains how that range might shift upward.



The data reveal the height of the sea surface is not rising uniformly everywhere. Regional differences in sea level rise are dominated by the effects of ocean currents and natural cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. But, as these natural cycles wax and wane, they can have major impacts on local coastlines.
"Sea level along the west coast of the United States has actually fallen over the past 20 years because long-term natural cycles there are hiding the impact of global warming," said Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "However, there are signs this pattern is changing. We can expect accelerated rates of sea level rise along this coast over the next decade as the region recovers from its temporary sea level 'deficit.'"
Scientists estimate that about one-third of sea level rise is caused by expansion of warmer ocean water, one-third is due to ice loss from the massive Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and the remaining third results from melting mountain glaciers. But the fate of the polar ice sheets could change that ratio and produce more rapid increases in the coming decades.



The Greenland ice sheet, covering 660,000 square miles (1.7 million square kilometers) — nearly the area of Alaska — shed an average of 303 gigatons of ice a year over the past decade, according to satellite measurements. The Antarctic ice sheet, covering 5.4 million square miles (14 million square kilometers) — larger than the United States and India combined — has lost an average of 118 gigatons a year.
"We've seen from the paleoclimate record that sea level rise of as much as 10 feet [3 meters] in a century or two is possible, if the ice sheets fall apart rapidly," said Tom Wagner, the cryosphere program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We're seeing evidence that the ice sheets are waking up, but we need to understand them better before we can say we're in a new era of rapid ice loss."
Although Antarctica's contribution to sea level rise currently is much smaller than that of Greenland, recent research indicates this could change in the upcoming century. In 2014, two West Antarctica studies focused on the acceleration of the glaciers in the Amundsen Sea sector showed its collapse is underway.
East Antarctica's massive ice sheet remains the primary unknown in sea level rise projections. Though it appears to be stable, a recent study found under a major glacier two deep troughs that could draw warm ocean water to the base of the glacier, causing it to melt.
"The prevailing view among specialists has been that East Antarctica is stable, but we don't really know," said glaciologist Eric Rignot of the University of California Irvine and JPL. "Some of the signs we see in the satellite data right now are red flags that these glaciers might not be as stable as we once thought. There's always a lot of attention on the changes we see now, but as scientists our priority needs to be on what the changes could be tomorrow."
One of the keys to understanding future rates of ice loss is determining the role ocean currents and ocean temperatures play in melting the ice sheets from below their edges. A new, six-year NASA field campaign took to the waters around Greenland this summer to probe how warming ocean waters are triggering Greenland glacier degradation. The Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) project is taking coastal ocean temperature measurements, observing glacial thinning at the ice's edge, and producing the first high-resolution maps of the seafloor, fjords and canyons in the continental shelf surrounding Greenland.

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AMA: Climate Change Already Affecting Health

ABC

DAVID MARK: The Australian Medical Association (AMA) says human health in Australia is already being affected by climate change. It says it's taking into account the most recent scientific evidence. The AMA's president, Professor Brian Owler, is urging the Government to show leadership on the issue at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Paris in December. Lucy Carter reports.

LUCY CARTER: The Australian Medical Association has revised its official position on climate change for the first time since 2008. AMA president Brian Owler says the potential impacts on the health of Australians are dire.

BRIAN OWLER: There will be consequences from changing climate particularly in relation to the distribution patterns of diseases, particularly those tropical diseases which are likely to start to appear more and more in the southern areas of Australia as the climate warms. And, this not only has effects on humans, particularly with respect to borne diseases, that is diseases carried by mosquitoes but other diseases that affect food including animals.

LUCY CARTER: Are we seeing health impacts on Australians from climate change now?

BRIAN OWLER: Well, we know that climate change is associated with extreme weather events as well, and we've had very severe heat waves over recent summers and those are often associated with significant numbers of deaths and, in fact, a few years ago in Victoria we saw quite a number of people lose their lives associated with heat waves. And so these climate, although they're extremes, the frequency and pattern of those events is likely to increase and the suspicion is that is what we were already starting to see.

LUCY CARTER: How does this new position statement differ from the statement put out by the AMA in 2008?

BRIAN OWLER: Well, I think this position statement basically reaffirms the AMA's commitment, particularly around the health effects of climate change, and I think it's important ahead of the Paris summit later this year, does call on the Government to show leadership, particularly in relation to policies and programs that not only mitigate against climate change, but makes sure that the Australian population are going to well prepared if these sorts of changes, well, when they actually are occurring. We also talk about the importance of looking at renewable energies and I think also acknowledge the effects that decarbonisation of an economy can have particularly on people's employment and that can have significant health consequences as well.

LUCY CARTER: In a statement, a spokesman for the Environment Minister Greg Hunt, says that "only the Coalition is committed to taking serious action to tackle climate change without hurting Australian families and businesses in the process with a painful carbon tax". He says that "as part of our commitment to tackling climate change, the Government will be pursuing a 26 to 28 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030 from 2005 levels. "This is the target that the Government will be taking to Paris later this year." Professor Brian Owler says he won't comment on the Government's exact emissions reduction percentage targets, but says it's a good change to hear the Government acknowledge that climate change is real.

BRIAN OWLER: We've seen a number of comments around climate change and whether or not people are actually accepting that there is climate change and whether or not that humans have had a factor in that and certainly there's been some scepticism from the Government in relation to that, so we're pleased at least to see the statements of the Minister that they are now taking this seriously and that they are committed to doing something about it. But of course, we'll all wait to see exactly how that commitment translates into the actions and what the outcomes of those policies are going to be in terms of reducing emissions and hopefully mitigating against climate change.

LUCY CARTER: Professor Owler says it was powerful to see the US president Barack Obama this week declare that any world leader unwilling to take the problem seriously is "not fit to lead".

BRIAN OWLER: There is overwhelming scientific evidence and agreement, consensus amongst scientists, that climate change is real and that there is a human element to it and that there is a need to have the right policies in place. So I think some of the scepticism that has been there in relation to climate change has not been, I think, what many people would like to see from the Government in terms of showing leadership on the issue. And I think you can contrasting compare that with some of the statements that have been made here in Australia compared to the statements of the US president.

DAVID MARK: The AMA's president, Professor Brian Owler, ending that report from Lucy Carter.

International Efforts to Cut Carbon Pollution Won't Be Enough

BloombergBusiness

Pledges from dozens of nations to rein in carbon emissions aren’t enough so far to avoid catastrophic climate change, according to four European research centers.
Plans submitted by China, the U.S., the European Union and other top polluters won’t limit global warming to the 2-degree Celsius (3.6-degree Fahrenheit) threshold that scientists have recommended, the Climate Action Tracker coalition said in a report Wednesday.
Diplomats are meeting in Bonn this week to continue working on the landmark climate-change deal that more than 190 nations expect to complete in Paris this December. At the heart of the pact are plans from individual nations to control their own greenhouse-gas pollution. Those efforts won’t be nearly enough, the researchers said, in one of the first major analyses of the pledges submitted to date. Hitting a lower, 1.5-degree Celsius target, as some scientists have urged, looks even less likely.
“It is clear that if the Paris meeting locks in present climate commitments for 2030, holding warming below 2 degrees Celsius could essentially become infeasible, and 1.5 degrees Celsius beyond reach,” Bill Hare, chief executive officer of Potsdam, Germany-based Climate Analytics, one of the four research centers, said in a statement. The national pledges “need to be considerably strengthened.”

Deeper Cuts
Nations must either ramp up their emissions promises before Paris or reach an agreement that ensures countries will be required to come back with deeper cuts in the future, the researchers said. Participants in the UN talks have acknowledged the Paris pledges won’t be enough on their own. A major goal of the talks, they say, is to come up with a system that requires countries to make deeper contributions over time.
So far, countries accounting for about two-thirds of greenhouse pollution have filed plans with the United Nations. China, the world’s biggest greenhouse-gas source, has pledged to peak its emissions by about 2030, while the U.S. is aiming for a 28 percent reduction by 2025. The 28-member EU is planning to curb emissions by at least 40 percent by 2030.
The shortfall is partly due to “inadequate” plans from Russia and Canada, two of the top 10 emitters, according to Louise Jeffery of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Ten other nations accounting for almost a fifth of global emissions, led by India, Brazil, Iran and Indonesia, have yet to submit their proposals.
“In most cases” the countries that have submitted proposals, officially known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, don’t have policies in place to reach their goals, the researchers said. The exceptions are the EU and China.
“Most governments that have already submitted an INDC need to review their targets in light of the global goal and, in most cases, will need to strengthen them,” said Niklas Hoehne of the NewClimate Institute. “Those still working on their targets need to ensure they aim as high as possible.”

Fact Check: Abbott's Emissions Targets

ABC

Tony Abbott says Australia's carbon emissions targets per capita are the best in the developed world and absolute emissions are neither "leading" nor "lagging" the field. (AAP: Greenpeace, Dan Peled)

The Government has announced that Australia will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 per cent by 2030, ahead of the Paris climate change conference in December.

• Claim one: Tony Abbott says Australia's per capita emissions targets for 2030 are "the best in the developed world".
• Verdict one: Australia's per capita emissions targets are behind the developed nations of Switzerland, Norway and Iceland. Mr Abbott is incorrect.
• Claim two: Mr Abbott says that Australia's absolute emissions targets for 2030 are neither "leading" nor "lagging" the field.
• Verdict two: Australia is behind a number of western nations, but sits in front of both Japan and South Korea, and is comparable to New Zealand and Canada. Mr Abbott's claim is justified.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott told ABC Radio's AM program that Australia's goal was environmentally and economically responsible and said he was confident Australia could achieve it "without clobbering jobs and growth".
"Look, what we are doing on a per capita basis, on a per person basis, is the best in the developed world. And what we are doing on an absolute basis, we're not leading the field but we're certainly not lagging the field either," he said.
But some, including the Opposition spokesman for the Environment Mark Butler and chair of the Climate Change Authority Bernie Fraser have disputed the claim that Australia is pulling its weight compared with other developed countries.
How do Mr Abbott's claims about Australia's post-2020 emissions targets stack up? ABC Fact Check investigates.

Setting the targets
The United Nations convention on climate change will meet in Paris in December to achieve international agreement on how to keep global warming below two degrees celsius.
Each country party to the convention has agreed to publish its national contribution to reducing global warming before the meeting.
The new agreement follows the two rounds of international emissions targets made under the Kyoto protocol and will come into force in 2020.
Australia has pledged, under a Paris Agreement, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.
The submission to the UN climate change convention notes that Australia's target doubles its rate of emissions reductions compared with the previous 2020 commitment.
"Across a range of metrics, Australia's target is comparable to the targets of other advanced economies," it says.

Defining the developed world
Mr Abbott compared Australia's new emissions targets with the "developed world".
He compared Australia with the US, Canada, EU, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and China.
There's no international consensus on what constitutes the developed world, but frequently cited measures include the International Monetary Fund's advanced economies (which are classified on per capita income and export diversification), members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and countries that the UN considers have a very high human development index (HDI), based on life expectancy, standard of living and education.
The UN also defines two groups of countries based on their emissions commitments — the industrialised countries and the developing countries. The industrialised list is based on countries that were members of the OECD in 1992, plus countries with economies in transition, including Russia and Eastern European countries and former countries of the Soviet Union.
The UN says its classification takes into account that "developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity".
Twenty-eight countries and the EU have so far submitted their emissions target commitments for the Paris conference to the UN.
Fact Check considers 11 of these countries or regions to be the developed world (see table below). The list excludes the principalities of Liechtenstein and Monaco on the basis of size.
All except Singapore and South Korea are regarded by the UN convention on climate change, the IMF, the OECD and the UN human development index as developed countries.
Singapore is regarded as an advanced country by the IMF and the UN HDI, and South Korea is regarded as an advanced country on all measures except the UN convention on climate change index.

Target contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions
Country	Per cent reduction	Baseline year	Target year
Australia	26 to 28	2005	2030
Canada	30	2005	2030
EU (28 countries)	At least 40	1990	2030
Iceland	40	1990	2030
Japan	26	2013	2030
New Zealand	30	2005	2030
Norway	At least 40	1990	2030
South Korea	37 per cent from business as usual levels by 2030	-	2030
Switzerland	50	1990	2030
US	26 to 28	2005	2025
Singapore	Stabilise emissions peaking around 2030	-	2030
Source: UN INDCs as communicated by parties

Choosing the baseline year
The UN does not specify which baseline year each country should use to calculate its emissions reduction targets.
CSIRO ecologist Dr Pep Canadell told Fact Check all countries choose a baseline year that is as high as possible to make their emissions reductions appear favourable.
"The reason people chose 2005 was because it was prior to the global financial crisis when growth and emissions, went down in many countries," Dr Canadell, who is executive director of the Global Carbon Project, a global partnership of climate scientists, said.
Data from the Department of the Environment shows that Australia's emissions reached a 25-year peak in 2005-06.

Comparing absolute emissions reductions
Mr Abbott claimed that Australia's absolute emissions reductions are "not leading" and "certainly not lagging" the developed world.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister told Fact Check this claim was based on data from the Department of the Environment comparing Australia with China, South Korea, Japan, EU, US, Canada and New Zealand using 2005 as a baseline and comparing targets for 2030.
The presentation notes that the US targets are for 2025.
Fact Check calculated the absolute emissions reductions of all developed countries, as defined above, that have declared their targets to the UN, using a baseline of 2005 and a target of 2030 to compare with Australia.

Climate advisory panel

• A panel of experts has agreed to advise ABC Fact Check for its work on climate issues.
• For this fact check, all members of the panel were consulted.
• Meet the full panel.

Singapore was omitted from the analysis because its emissions will increase over the time frame, peaking in 2030.
The data is derived from the UN greenhouse gas inventory for each country.
Emissions reductions for the US in 2030 were calculated by extrapolating a straight line from its 2020 and 2025 targets.
For countries with a 1990 baseline, their 2005 actual emissions were used as a comparison with 2030.
South Korea has defined a "business as usual" target, which predicts its emissions cuts up to a target date but does not define a baseline.
Its emissions reductions for 2030 were taken from the Department of the Environment data.
The department predicts that South Korea will cut its emissions by 4 per cent by 2030 compared with a baseline year of 2005.
However, Malte Meinshausen, a senior research fellow at the University of Melbourne's school of earth sciences and a member of Fact Check's climate advisory panel, told Fact Check that South Korea would reduce its emissions by 2 per cent in 2030, based on his own calculations.

Developed world 2030 emissions reductions on 2005 baseline year (%)

UN greenhouse gas data, total emissions for all countries includes land use and forestry activities, except Norway. Australian emissions for 2005 taken from Department of Environment data; Korea 2030 target taken from Environment Department data

The results match the Government's data comparing Australia's absolute reductions with Canada, Japan, EU, South Korea and New Zealand and the results for Australia, the US and Canada were independently verified by David Karoly, a professor of atmospheric science at Melbourne University's school of earth sciences.

Middle of the pack?
The data shows that Australia comes in at ninth out of 11 countries, ahead of Japan and South Korea.
Australia's lower target of 26 per cent is only just ahead of Japan and substantially better than South Korea's projected four per cent.
Canada and New Zealand, with targets of 30 per cent, are close to Australia's upper target of 28 per cent.
However, the EU (34 per cent) and the US (35 to 39 per cent) are substantially ahead of Australia and the targets for Iceland, Norway and Switzerland are a long way ahead.
Professor Meinshausen told Fact Check the US targets were 33 to 35 per cent when taking into account its net-net land use accounting.
Net-net accounting means that the land use emissions for each year are subtracted from the baseline year of 1990 rather than just accounting for the gross net emissions each year, which can result in significant emissions credits due to the legacy effects of pre-1990 land use activities.
Professor Karoly's analysis also included the UK and Germany which, although they are not compelled to announce separate targets to the EU, will aim to reduce their emissions by 60 per cent and 45 per cent, respectively.
Dr Canadell told Fact Check the Prime Minister's claim was largely correct with regard to Australia's absolute emissions reductions, if the field was considered to be the developed world.
"[But] if the pack is the EU, we're behind the big pack, but extend it to the rest of the developed world and we are somewhere in the middle," he said.
The Climate Change Authority said the Government's emissions targets put Australia "at or near the bottom of the group of countries we generally compare ourselves with".
These countries were the UK, Switzerland, Germany, Norway, US, EU, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, China and South Korea.
Dr Canadell said being ahead of Japan in absolute emissions reductions was not a great comparison.
"Japan has an incredible energy crisis," he said. "They shut down 30 per cent of their nuclear energy production [as a result of the Fukushima nuclear disaster] and are now reopening them but have huge uncertainty for their future energy."

Comparing per capita emissions
Hugh Bromley, an associate analyst with Bloomberg New Energy Finance, an independent research firm of 200 energy and carbon market specialists providing research to banks, governments and energy companies, told Fact Check that every government emphasised different emissions metrics over others.
"Different governments will take a view, rightly or wrongly, that a population basis, or intensity basis, or absolute reductions level target is more comparable or relevant to their economy," he said.
The Government's information notes that Australia's population and economy is growing faster than most other developed countries.
As a result, Australia's population growth of 1.5 per cent a year to 2030 will push up its emissions.
Mr Abbott claimed that what Australia is doing on a per capita basis is the best in the developed world.
"So look, the other point to make is that when you look at emissions per person, we've got a 50 per cent reduction, which is the best outcome of any of the developed countries which have so far pledged a target for Paris," he said.
Fact Check calculated Australia's emissions reductions per capita and compared them with the other developed countries who have declared their post-2020 targets.
The Department of the Environment data is in agreement with Fact Check's calculations for Australia, the US, New Zealand, the EU, Canada, Japan and South Korea but the department did not include Switzerland, Iceland or Norway.
The data was checked by each of the experts Fact Check spoke to.

Emissions per capita change 2005-2030 (per cent)

Source: UN greenhouse gas data, total emissions for all countries (exc. Norway and Australia - includes land use) and forestry activities ); Australian emissions for 2005 taken from Department of the Environment data; Korea 2030 target taken from Environment Department data. Population data from UN 2015 revision of World Population Prospects, except Australia (from 2015-16 budget projections and ABS historical data)

The results show that Australia will aim to cut its emissions per person by around 50 per cent by 2030, exceeded only by Switzerland, Norway and Iceland, though the latter's per capita reductions are almost identical to Australia.
The Department of the Environment used projected population data from the 2015-16 budget to calculate the per capita emissions for 2030.
When the UN population data is used, Australia's per capita emissions are 47 to 49 per cent by 2030.
The chart above uses the Government's more favourable per capita emissions numbers.
The per capita emissions reductions for the US upper limit, of 49 per cent, are also very similar to Australia.
In addition, Professor Karoly's analysis shows that the UK's emissions per person will be reduced by 67 per cent from 2005 to 2030.
But Australia has the highest population growth of any of these developed countries, growing 50 per cent by 2030.
While that makes the task of reducing emissions per person easier, it makes the task of reducing overall emissions more difficult.
However, Dr Canadell said the results show that Australia was the highest per capita emitter of the group and would remain so in 2030 with emissions per capita around 14 to 15 tonnes of CO2 per person, closely followed by Canada on 13.7 tonnes of CO2 per person.
"It means that we are so carbon intensive per capita that coming down should be much easier than [countries like] Japan," he said. "They are already much cleaner to begin with which means that additional cleaning is becoming harder and harder for them."
Japan is the only one of the developed countries with a shrinking population and yet is still aiming to cut its per capita emissions by 21 per cent.
Dr Canadell said only the oil rich countries in the Middle East were higher per capita emitters than Australia.

A fair comparison?
All the experts Fact Check spoke to highlighted the difficulties of comparing Australia's emissions targets with other countries.
Dr Canadell said comparing Australia to Switzerland was problematic because Switzerland, like many European countries, "outsourced" its carbon emissions to other countries because they have almost no production of goods.
"If a country was to decide we're going to shut down our heavy industry so we don't pollute and we'll buy everything from China or Vietnam, that will appear good in your carbon accounting but it does nothing to the global pursuit for carbon neutralisation," he said.
Australia often compares itself to Canada on emissions measures because Canada is a resource rich, large land mass country with a small population.
The data shows Canada will have similarly high emissions per person in 2030 and cuts almost as large, as Australia.
Mr Bromley told Fact Check the difference between Australia and most of the countries it compares itself with is that Australia has a high-polluting energy sector.
"We have such a low population density that there's a lot of emissions already in the system that can be abated," he said.
"Whereas if you have hydro power or geothermal energy as Canada and New Zealand do, there's very little you can do in the power system to make it more efficient or reduce emissions."
He said that comparing emissions targets among countries is "the great challenge".
"This is why climate negotiations have taken the better part of two decades to get to where they are now and that's not far."

Verdict: Per capita emissions
Mr Abbott claims that what Australia is doing on a per capita basis on proposed emissions targets is the best in the developed world.

Tony Abbott claims that what Australia is doing on a per capita basis with regards to emissions targets is the best in the developed world. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

Fact Check's analysis shows that Australia will cut its emissions per person by 50 per cent by 2030 but Switzerland, Norway and Iceland will cut their emissions per capita by up to 10 percentage points more.
Even using the Government's more generous interpretation, based on its population estimates, Australia's per person emissions reductions are still not close to those countries.
In addition, Australia's rate of per capita emissions, one of the highest in the world, will still be the highest among developed countries in 2030.
Mr Abbott's claim on per capita emissions is incorrect.

Verdict: Absolute emissions

Tony Abbott claims that Australia's recently announced carbon emission targets are neither "leading" nor "lagging" the developed world in terms of absolute emissions. (AAP: Lukas Coch)

The Prime Minister also claims that Australia's recently announced carbon emission targets are "not leading" and "certainly not lagging" the developed world in terms of absolute emissions.

The data on countries that have submitted their targets to the UN shows that Australia's targets are ninth of 11 developed countries and only just ahead of Japan, whose emissions targets have been negatively affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Nonetheless, Australia's emissions reduction targets of 26 or 28 per cent are close to those of New Zealand and Canada on 30 per cent.
Mr Abbott's claim on absolute emissions is justified.

Sources

• Tony Abbott, ABC radio AM, August 12, 2015
• Mark Butler, ABC radio breakfast, August 11, 2015
• Bernie Fraser, Statement - some observations on Australia's post-2020 emissions reduction target, Climate Change Authority, August 14, 2015
• Paris 2015 UN climate change conference, What is COP21/CMP11?
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Intended Nationally Determined Contributions
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Kyoto protocol
• Australian Government, Australia's intended nationally determined contribution to a new climate change agreement, August 2015
• International Monetary Fund, World economic outlook, April 2015
• United Nations development programme, Human Development Reports
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, parties and observers
• United Nations, Intended nationally determined contributions, as communicated by parties
• Department of the environment, Australia's emissions projections 2014-15, March 2015
• Australian Government, Australia's post-2020 emissions reduction target, press conference August 11, 2015
• United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Greenhouse gas inventory data - detailed by party
• Iversen, Lee and Rocha, Understanding land use in the UNFCCC, May 2014
• Australian Government, Australia's 2030 climate change target, 2015
• United Nations, World population prospects, the 2015 revision
• Australian Government, 2015-16 budget paper number 3, appendix A
• Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian historical population statistics, 2014

Obama’s Climate Change Legacy

TIME

President Barack Obama brought his crusade against climate change to Alaska this week with a three-day trip designed to highlight the devastating effects of global warming and promote initiatives to address the issue.
“Human activity is disrupting the climate, in many ways faster than we previously thought,” Obama told a meeting of international delegates in Anchorage Monday. “Climate change is no longer some far-off problem. It is happening here. It is happening now.”
The visit to Alaska, a state that is both rich in fossil fuels and particularly vulnerable to climate change, places Obama at the heart of the struggle to adapt. Rising sea levels, devastating wildfires and coastal erosion all threaten communities across the state, thanks largely climate change. But, at the same time, Alaska benefits from the very fossil fuels that help cause man-made global warming. Oil resources support thousands of jobs in the state and allow the state to avoid levying income or sales tax. Every year the state government issues a royalty check to state residents (nearly $1,900 in 2014) funded by the oil industry.
While Obama has billed his trip as an opportunity to highlight the threat of climate change—and the steps his Administration is taking to fight it—his policies embody the tension between the vital fossil fuels play in the U.S. economy and the need to reduce carbon emissions. Obama has proposed aggressive U.S. action on climate change, including a 26% to 28% reduction in carbon emissions by 2025 from 2005 levels. But he has also supported measures to open oil drilling in the Arctic, a move condemned by environmentalists angered over the danger of an disastrous oil spill and the threat of more carbon emissions.
“Obama’s visit to Alaska is really significant, not just because he’s the first sitting president to visit this state, but because Alaska is really at the front lines of climate change in the U.S. right now,” said Marissa Knodel, a climate change campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “But, while he’s claiming he wants to be a climate leader, he’s doing the exact opposite by opening offshore oil and gas to companies like Shell for drilling.”
Obama, whose arrival in Anchorage on Monday was met with protest from opponents of drilling, has said that allowing limited drilling will allow the U.S. to remain energy independent while it pursues alternatives to fossil fuels. “Now even as we accelerate [the clean energy] transition, our economy still has to rely on oil and gas,” Obama said in his weekly radio address days before traveling to Alaska. “As long as that’s the case, I believe we should rely more on domestic production than on foreign imports.”
Citing academic research, climate change advocates argue that burning all the fossil fuels buried in the Arctic would contribute to global warming to an unsafe degree. The region contains nearly a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas resources, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. And a 2014 study published in the journal Nature concluded that “development of resources in the Arctic and any increase in unconventional oil production are incommensurate with efforts to limit average global warming” to a level deemed acceptable by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Not that you’d know the President supported Arctic drilling from his Alaska visit. In appearance after appearance, the President highlighted the ways in which climate change has threatened the region. There may not have been a better place for such a pitch. The state has warmed by 3.4°F (1.9°C) over the past 50 years, twice as fast as the country at large over, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This past winter was especially warm in Alaska, with temperatures 4 to 10°F (2 to 5.6°C) warmer than normal, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Experts expect temperatures to rise as much as 7.0°F (3.9°C) by 2100.
Temperature increases have contributed to melting ice and glaciers in the region. In total, 75 billion tons of ice from glaciers melts in the state each year, according to a recent study in Geophysical Research Letters. The melting of glaciers contributes to global sea level rise, in addition to destroying a local treasure and tourist draw. In the Alaskan Arctic, melting ice has threatened the habitats of many native animals, including the polar bear. Just last week thousands of Arctic walruses flocked to an Alaskan shore, likely because they couldn’t find ice haul out. Ice loss, sea level rise and warmer waters have also contributed to the erosion of the state’s coast at an average rate of 4.6 feet (1.4 meters) each year. Entire communities may need to be relocated just to survive.
At the same time the gradual loss of Arctic sea ice has opened new shipping possibilities in the far North—which in turn has contributed to a battle of influence in the Arctic between the U.S. and Russia, one Washington is seen at risk of losing. During his trip, Obama announced a number of measures aimed at quelling those concerns, including an expanded U.S. naval presence in the region.
Beyond melting ice, Obama highlighted a laundry list of climate facing the region: melting permafrost, dramatic storm surges and changing migratory routes for animals hunted by native Alaskans.
The trip to Alaska is the latest in a series of effort by the President to draw attention to global climate change and position the U.S. as a leader on the issue. The White House recently finalized the Clean Power Plan, which mandates emission reductions from power plants, and announced initiatives to expand solar power and billions of dollars in private sector commitments to finance renewable energy production. Climate change was also in the background of Obama’s visit to New Orleans last week for the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
The White House hopes that recent climate actions will give the U.S. a leadership position at a United Nations conference on climate change in Paris later this year. Climate advocates and global leaders alike hope that summit will yield the world’s first binding and global agreement to address global warming that will require concrete cuts to curb carbon emissions.
“This year, in Paris, has to be the year that the world finally reaches an agreement to protect the one planet that we’ve got while we still can,” said Obama in a speech on Monday. “We can have a legitimate debate about how we are going to address this problem; we cannot deny the science.”

Why NASA’s so worried that Greenland’s melting could speed up

The Washington Post

NASA has briefed the press on its “intensive research effort” into the rate and causes of sea level rise, releasing a suite of new graphics and visualizations showing how precisely the agency is measuring the upward creep of the oceans, currently at a rate of 3.21 millimeters per year.
It would be easy to lose yourself in all of the new material, but if there’s one slide above all that really matters, it’s this one:

NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) twin satellites have measured the loss of ice mass from Earth’s polar ice sheets since 2002. (Credit: Steve Nerem/CU-Boulder)

Antarctica contains vastly more ice than Greenland. However, Greenland is subjected to the rapidly warming temperatures of the Arctic. The result is that for now at least — and as you can see above — it is losing ice mass considerably faster than Antarctica is, to the tune of several hundred gigatons a year.
That’s an almost unfathomable amount — a gigaton is a billion metric tons — but spread around the world, it’s only equivalent to .74 millimeters of average sea-level rise per year (that’s the figure in the center of the graph). Thus, adding together Greenland and Antarctica’s contributions right now gives you a millimeter of annual sea level rise, roughly — and the remaining 2 millimeters  comes from the expansion of ocean water as it warms, and from the melting of mountain and tidewater glaciers around the world (Alaska’s, for instance, are losing  75 gigatons a year).
The expansion of sea water will continue as the world warms further — but glaciers around the world will contribute less and less to sea level rise in the future, as they have less ice to lose. But the planet will still be able to look forward to the long melting of Greenland and Antarctica, which have 20 feet and 200 feet of potential sea level rise, respectively, contained in their ice sheets.
The critical question thus becomes: Is Greenland likely to lose even more ice than it’s currently losing per year — and could Antarctica do the same?
What’s pretty clear from NASA’s recent briefings and communications on this subject is that its scientists very much worry that they might.
NASA is flexing its muscles to study Greenland in particular, and that entails two major types of research: studying the melting that is occurring on top of the ice sheet, and studying the melting of its outlying, oceanfront glaciers, which often calve off gigaton-sized icebergs into the sea, with enough force to generate powerful earthquakes.
1. Water flow on the ice sheet’s surface. On top of the ice sheet, summer meltwater forms lakes and fast-running rivers, which sometimes plunge deep below the ice sheet when they hit sudden “moulins,” or crevices. Lakes also sometimes vanish suddenly, draining water down into the ice sheet below. Both of these mechanisms not only give the surface water access to the ocean, they also move the ice sheet itself, by lubricating its base. It’s a potential feedback and accelerator of Greenland’s melting, which is why the process is so important to further investigate.

Frightening, yet beautiful: Greenland’s melting glaciers

Thus, one of the key NASA research projects is to actually measure the water flow that is occurring atop the Greenland ice sheet. As Laurence Smith, a University of California Los Angeles researcher conducting the work explained on a Friday NASA TV program detailing the Greenland work, “the overall trend has been an increasing extent, intensity, and duration of the melt season on the surface of the ice.”

Smith and his team camped atop the ice sheet and sought to measure the flow rate. The ice sheet surface contains thousands of moulins, notes Vena Chu, a University of California-Berkeley researcher who collaborated with Smith and also appeared on NASA TV Friday. When water falls down the moulins, “it takes water into the bottom of the ice sheet, and that’s where it can really affect how fast the ice is flowing.”
This surface melt process is one way that the melting of the Greenland ice sheet could speed up. But it’s not the only one:
2. Ocean water melting glaciers. Along the outside of the ice sheet, multiple glaciers stretch finger-like towards the sea, often flowing out into deep fjords — submerged canyons scraped by glaciers of long-ago eras — with their bases anchored well below the level of the water. The rapidly retreating Jakobshavn glacier is one of these — it’s the fastest-moving glacier in Greenland, and single-handedly contributed about a millimeter to sea level rise from 2000 to 2011. 
Currently, the glacier’s submerged bed is some 1,300 meters below sea level, and this great depth seems to be enabling its rapid retreat, because there is so much contact with the warmer ocean. “The potential for large losses from Greenland is likely to be determined by the depth and inland extent of the troughs through which its outlet glaciers drain,” noted a recent study of the Jakobshavn glacier.
“Observations suggest we should be very cautious to conclude too soon that conservative scenarios are reasonable. They may not be,” said Eric Rignot, a University of California Irvine and NASA glaciologist, at a NASA press call Wednesday in which he discussed changes to both Antarctica and Greenland. “And this is at the heart of what we at NASA, and other national and international agencies are working on right now.”
That’s what NASA’s aptly–named OMG (Oceans Melting Greenland) mission aims to study. Over the next five years, ships, aircraft overflights, and deployed sensors will attempt to map the depths and shapes of the ocean floor and undersea canyons all around Greenland’s glaciers, as well as the temperature and salinity characteristics of the water. The goal is to see just how much warm water is reaching them, which in turn will influence their capacity to melt.
The key thing to understand about this region is that in the oceans around Greenland, water has some strange characteristics. “What’s really interesting is that the water around Greenland is sort of upside down. You have warm water underneath a layer of cold water,” explained Josh Willis, NASA’s lead researcher on OMG, on the NASA briefing Friday.
“The warm water is at depth because it’s extra salty,” Willis continued. “The cold water comes from the Arctic and it’s very fresh.”
The question then becomes how much of the warm water manages to sneak up to to the glaciers. And that depends on a complicated system deep below the water surface where bedrock, glacier, and ocean meet. The nature of that system can be different at every glacier.
And there’s yet another complexity — water that originated on the ice sheet’s surface, but then escaped down to its base, can flow out at the location of the glaciers. Sometimes, this water “comes out right at the bottom of the ice, and it’s light and fresh, it surfaces,” Willis said on Friday. “That can pull warm water in towards the glacier.”
That’s where OMG comes in — trying to map and record all of this, and get a handle on the complexities of glacier position, seafloor features, and ocean water characteristics.
So in sum, as NASA deploys new resources to Greenland, we may soon know whether on the figure above, Greenland’s line will continue its current downward slope, or plunge more steeply.

Australia Lagging Behind In Climate Action

The Canberra Times -  Paul Malone

If you examine a graph of Australian sharemarket prices over the last 50 years you will notice a long upward trend broken by periods such as those from 1970 to 1978 and from 2007 to 2013 when overall prices were flat.
This is typical of any graph of a trend. The real world doesn't run smoothly.
Scientists know that data will not always sit comfortably on the line. If it does, they'd be inclined to suspect something was amiss.
Global warming deniers either do understand this or choose to mislead their followers. Advertisement
For some years now they have claimed that global temperatures have "plateaued". They argue that the data does not support the theory of human-induced climate change.
Now retired Liberal senator Nick Minchin led the Australian deniers, saying back in March 2011: "I think what's occurred is that there was a warming period from about '75 to the year 2000. It was part of a natural cycle of warning that comes in 25, 30-year cycles. The world has basically stabilised in terms of temperature since about 2000. There are many, many scientists who actually think we could be entering a cooling phase and I for one think that is more than likely."
Such views have been promoted in many media outlets and been given undue prominence, particularly by News Ltd papers.
Unfortunately for the deniers, the latest report from US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration does not support their claims. Gathering data from 1500 weather stations and numerous buoys and ships around the world NOAA has found that July was the warmest month in its 136 years of temperature records.
Not only that. The first seven months of 2015 were the warmest such period on record – 0.85 degrees above the 20th century average; and the rate of warming over the first 15 years of this century has been as fast, or faster than that of the last half of the 20th century.
Australian scientists have found much the same as their American counterparts. The Climate Council reported last week that the 1990s were warmer than the 1980s and the 2000s were warmer than the 1990s. All three decades were hotter than any preceding decade since 1850.
The line may not be perfect, the gradient may not be as steep as some had predicted, but the trend is clear.
The evidence for climate change comes from a host of different scientific perspectives – from basic physics and chemistry, to the meteorology and climate change sciences themselves; marine and coral studies; Arctic and Antarctic research; geology and biology.
To accept the deniers' argument requires you to believe in a conspiracy of unbelievable dimensions. The starting point would be to get researchers from 195 countries on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to come to the same conclusion. (Anyone who's ever been on a committee knows how hard it is to get three people to agree on something.)
There's no doubt about the science – the burning of coal, oil and gas is driving dramatic changes in our climate.
The latest report from the Climate Council says climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of many extreme weather events, including heatwaves and extreme bushfire conditions. Hot days have doubled in the last 50 years, while heatwaves have become hotter, last longer and occur more often.
Over the last 30 years extreme fire weather has increased in the populous south-east region of Australia – southern NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and parts of South Australia. Extreme sea-level events have tripled at Sydney and Fremantle since the middle of the 20th century.
Further increases in extreme heat in Australia are likely, with more frequent and more intense hot days and longer and more severe heatwaves. Deaths from heatwaves are projected to double over the next 40 years in Australian cities.
And, the council says, while action is building worldwide, Australia is lagging behind.
The constraints to moving forward are no longer technological or economic. They are political, institutional and ideological.
Australia must cut its greenhouse gas emissions much more deeply and rapidly, the council says. The government's recent pledge to cut emissions by 26 to 28 per cent compared with 2005 levels, by 2030 is not good enough.
Two maps (7a and 7b page C13) in the council's report compare rainfall from 1997 to 2013 with the rainfall over the reference period 1900 to 2013 and deserve careful policy consideration.
They suggest that cool-season rainfall is likely to decline across the southern part of Australia with the winter decreases as much as 50 per cent for south-west Western Australia.
The researchers say that the direction and magnitude of rainfall change in other seasons in southern Australia, and across the rest of the continent in all seasons, are uncertain.
But a layperson might conclude that northern and central Australia is getting a lot more rain. What might governments make of that? Will the flooding of Lake Eyre become a regular event?
There are many other policy matters that must be considered.
The Climate Council points out that the quantity of fossil fuel reserves that can be burned must be reduced if we want a better than even chance of limiting the rise in global temperature to no more than 2 degrees.
"Under any set of assumptions, effectively tackling climate change requires that most of the world's fossil fuels be left in the ground, unburned," the council concludes.
Coal, Australia's second-largest export, is the fossil fuel with the greatest proportion that cannot be used. The council says 88 per cent of global reserves are unburnable.
For Australia under any set of assumptions, including the use of carbon capture and storage technology, more than 90 per cent of coal reserves cannot be burned.
Furthermore, the council says, meeting the 2 degrees policy target implies that it is highly unlikely that any of Australia's potential coal resources beyond the reserves already being exploited can ever be developed.
It's time governments and policymakers accepted and planned for this reality.