Unseasonably Warm Weather A Clear Sign Of Climate Change, Say Scientists

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

El Niño driving current spike in warm weather and May almost certain to be warmer than average from 1961 to 1990

The sun rises over Port Philip Bay in Melbourne. Blair Trewin from the Bureau of Meteorology said the unseasonal weather was happening against a background of global warming. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/AAP

Unseasonably warm weather across Australia, which is set to continue through the coming month, might be putting a spring in people's step but is a clear sign of dangerous climate change, according climate scientists and meteorologists. Australia and the rest of the world have been reeling from a string of temperature records being smashed. February caused alarm when it was the most unusually warm month on record by a huge margin. But that record was broken immediately by March.
In Australia March 2016 was the warmest March on record. And this week the Bureau Of Meteorology released its seasonal outlook, showing above average temperatures are set to continue across the country at least throughout May.
According to David Karoly, a climate scientist from the University of Melbourne, climate change increased the chance of March breaking the temperature record in Australia by at least seven times.
xx"The previous record had about a one in 43-year chance due to natural climate variations alone but now occurs about one year in six in the present climate, that is already affected by human-caused climate change," he told Guardian Australia.
"It's evidence that climate change is already happening – and increasing the risks of hot extremes."
Blair Trewin from the Bureau of Meteorology said: "April won't be a record but it will be well above normal."
Throughout May temperatures across most of the country have an 80% chance of being warmer than the average from 1961 to 1990. By June and July most coastal regions will continue to have unusually warm weather, however temperatures will return to normal around central and southern Australia.
The current spike in warm weather is happening partly because of the monster El Niño that spread a pulse of warm water across the Pacific Ocean in 2015. That El Niño is dissipating, spreading the warmer water around Australia, raising temperatures.
But all that was happening on top of the background of global warming, Trewin said. He said that these days, in an El Niño year, the world tended to experience extreme temperatures and merely "above average" temperatures in other years. Only when a La Niña cooled the globe were there normal or slightly cool temperatures.

Links

• Great Barrier Reef: Greens call for new tax on mining to pay for damage
• Great Barrier Reef bleaching made 175 times likelier by human-caused climate change, say scientists
• CSIRO job cuts fewer than feared but climate scientists say reduction a 'con'
• Climate change: website reveals which homes will be swamped by rising sea levels
• Climate change makes past five-year period the warmest on record: WMO
• Climate change report: 'The worst is yet to come' – as it happened
• Climate forecast for Australia: hot days, higher fire risk, more severe droughts
• Climate change: Weather of Olympian extremes
• Know any climate change sceptics? Turn off their air conditioning

Emerging Threat From Climate Change: Ocean Oxygen Levels Are Starting To Drop

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Just when you thought you had most of the threats from climate change covered.
We are looking on now as warming oceans stress the world's coral reefs, prompting them to turn white, including our Great Barrier Reef.

The world's oceans are warming up along with the rest of the planet. Photo: Leigh Henneingham

We also know that our oceans have become about 30 per cent more acidic since pre-industrial times as they absorb the billions of tonnes a year of carbon dioxide released from our burning of fossil fuels and forests, making it harder for shellfish and crabs to form shells.
But now, some of the first evidence is emerging of what scientists have been expecting for decades: oxygen levels in some oceans are beginning to fall and widespread evidence of the trend should be evident from 2030 onwards.
Warming seas absorb less oxygen at the surface. Another effect of a changing climate is that oceans turn over less, so that oxygen at the surface has less chance of moving deeper.

Marine life will be hit hard if oxygen levels sink. Photo: NOAA

Matthew Long, lead author of a study published in the American Geophysical Union's journal, Global Biogeochemical Cycles, said deoxygenation poses a major threat to marine life and is one of the most serious side-effects from a warming atmosphere.
"Oxygen is a necessary ingredient for marine life, for all sorts of marine organisms," Dr Long, a scientist with the US's National Centre for Atmospheric Research and based in Colorado.
"The extent we care about marine ecosystems for their intrinsic value, we should care," Dr Long told Fairfax Media. "We're also reliant on these systems for food - fisheries will be vulnerable."
According to the models, the process is likely to be underway in the southern Indian Ocean and parts of the eastern tropical Pacific and Atlantic.
The study found that eastern Australia, eastern Africa and south-east Asia may be relatively spared, with impacts likely to be delayed until the next century.
The effects of lower oxygen levels will compound other harmful trends for wildlife such as oceans becoming more acidic.
"We're driving pretty massive changes in the environment - and we're not just changing one variable," Dr Long said. "We're changing a suite of variables to which marine organisms are sensitive, and basically putting significant demands on their adaptive capacities."

CSIRO cuts
Dr Long said it was important for governments to invest in long-term, consistent research to help predict and manage the impacts. This role was particularly vital given observation records for much of the world's oceans are limited.
He also questioned the decision by Australia's CSIRO to cut climate monitoring and modelling programs.
The agency has trimmed the number of scientists to go from two key research programs from almost 100 to about 45, a move that has drawn wide criticism from researchers at home and abroad.
"I don't understand it, and it does seem short-sighted in my view," Dr Long said.
In the longer term, the world had to curb carbon impacts and limit global warming.
"If the carbon dioxide-driven warming continues, the trend in ocean deoxygenation is basically an inexorable component associated with that warming," he said.

Work 'in jeopardy'
Richard Matear, a senior research scientist at CSIRO, said a 2001 paper that he and a team of researchers had worked on had detected some changes to oxygen levels south of Tasmania. The new paper, though, suggests, natural fluctuations may be the key there.
"We're just slowly getting a handle on how much natural variability there is in the system," Dr Matear said.
The Southern Ocean to Australia's south has relatively high oxygen levels compared with other oceans, and a strengthening of the circumpolar winds with climate change may foster more mixing of oxygen-rich waters, he said.
Still, changing circulation would alter which seas become more oxygenated - and at what depths. Those shifts could impact more mobile species such as tuna and squid, whose larger ranges require more oxygen to match their higher metabolism.
The current cuts to CSIRO climate science will remove about 13 researchers from Dr Matear's program. His unit has yet to determine which projects will be scaled back or dropped, to cope with reduced funding.
Some of his colleagues have just left on a research voyage to conduct "repeat lines" of an area studied in the Pacific, to detect changes.
"We have no funding going forward to do that cruise again in the next five to 10 years," Dr Matear said, hindering the ability to track changes to oxygen and other elements.
Of the other key areas being monitored, cruises to the region south of Tasmania may continue with funds cobbled together from other sources. The region south of Perth is another area where monitoring may be disrupted, he said.
"In the current situation, there's really no funding to support them," Dr Matear said of the cruises.
"We're an important player in the southern hemisphere and the Southern Ocean, and that work is in jeopardy," he said.
The evidence suggests that the combination of rising CO2 and falling oxygen levels "will be worse than each one acting independently", Dr Matear said.
CSIRO is a principal sponsor of a conference in Hobart next week on "The oceans in a high CO2 world".

Links

• CSIRO creates climate centre after cuts
• Just 7% of Great Barrier Reef unaffected from bleaching
• The Great Barrier Reef: 93% hit by coral bleaching, surveys reveal
• Confusion over future of CSIRO Melbourne lab as climate science moves to Hobart
• Labor would introduce carbon market, pledge deeper carbon cuts if elected
• CSIRO's new climate centre won't resolve future of research in Australia
• Election 2016: Greens would tax coal, ban new mines in bid to save Great Barrier Reef
• Sir David Attenborough makes heartfelt plea for the Reef
• Can we reverse coral bleaching?

Great Barrier Reef Bleaching Would Be Almost Impossible Without Climate Change

The Conversation - Andrew King | David Karoly | Mitchell Black | Ove Hoegh-Guldberg | Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick

Coral Bleaching at Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef. © XL Catlin Seaview Survey

The worst bleaching event on record has affected corals across the Great Barrier Reef in the last few months. As of the end of March, a whopping 93% of the reef has experienced bleaching. This event has led scientists and high-profile figures such as Sir David Attenborough to call for urgent action to protect the reef from annihilation.
There is indisputable evidence that climate change is harming the reef. Yet, so far, no one has assessed how much climate change might be contributing to bleaching events such as the one we have just witnessed.
Unusually warm sea surface temperatures are strongly associated with bleaching. Because climate models can simulate these warm sea surface temperatures, we can investigate how climate change is altering extreme warm conditions across the region.

Daily sea surface temperature anomalies in March 2016 show unusual warmth around much of Australia. Author provided using OSSTIA data from UK Met Office Hadley Centre.

We examined the Coral Sea region (shown above) to look at how climate change is altering sea surface temperatures in an area that is experiencing recurring coral bleaching. This area has recorded a big increase in temperatures over the past century, with March 2016 being the warmest on record.

March sea surface temperatures were the highest on record this year in the Coral Sea, beating the previous 2015 record. Source: Bureau of Meteorology. 

Examining the human influence
To find out how climate change is changing the likelihood of coral bleaching, we can look at how warming has affected the likelihood of extremely hot March sea temperature records. To do so, we use climate model simulations with and without human influences included.
If we see more very hot March months in simulations with a human influence, then we can say that climate change is having an effect, and we can attribute that change to the human impact on the climate.
This method is similar to analyses we have done for land regions, such as our investigations of recent Australian weather extremes.
We found that climate change has dramatically increased the likelihood of very hot March months like that of 2016 in the Coral Sea. We estimate that there is at least a 175 times increase in likelihood of hot March months because of the human influence on the climate.
The decaying El Niño event may also have affected the likelihood of bleaching events. However, we found no substantial influence for the Coral Sea region as a whole. Sea surface temperatures in the Coral Sea can be warmer than normal for different reasons, including changes in ocean currents (often related to La Niña events) and increased sunshine duration (generally associated with El Niño conditions).
Overall, this means that the influence of El Niño on the Coral Sea as a whole is weak. There have been severe bleaching events in past El Niño, neutral and La Niña years.
We estimate that climate change has increased temperatures in the hottest March months by just over 1℃. As the effects of climate change worsen we would expect this warming effect to increase, as has been pointed out elsewhere.
March 2016 was clearly extreme in the observed weather record, but using climate models we estimate that by 2034 temperature anomalies like March 2016 will be normal. Thereafter events like March 2016 will be cooler than average.
Overall, we're observing rapid warming in the Coral Sea region that can only be understood if we include human influences. The human effect on the region through climate change is clear and it is strengthening. Surface temperatures like those in March 2016 would be extremely unlikely to occur in a world without humans.
As the seas warm because of our effect on the climate, bleaching events in the Great Barrier Reef and other areas within the Coral Sea are likely to become more frequent and more devastating.
Action on climate change may reduce the likelihood of future bleaching events, although not for a few decades as we have already built in warming through our recent greenhouse gas emissions.

A note on peer review
We have analysed this coral bleaching event in near-real time, which means the results we present here have not been through peer review.
Recently, we have started undertaking these event attribution analyses immediately after the extreme event has occurred or even before it has finished. As we are using a method that has been previously peer-reviewed, we can have confidence in our results.
It is important, however, that these studies go through a peer-review process and these results will be submitted soon. In the meantime we have published a short methods document which provides more detail.
Our results are also consistent with previous studies (see also here and here).

Links

• The oceans are becoming too hot for coral, and sooner than we expected
• Coral bleaching comes to the Great Barrier Reef as record-breaking global temperatures continue
• Great Barrier Reef disaster is the latest harbinger of a global mass extinction
• David Attenborough says the Great Barrier Reef is in 'grave danger' – it's time to step up

Why Australia Must Stop Exporting Coal

The Conversation - Peter Christoff

A coal ship caught on Nobby's Beach in Newcastle. The city is the biggest in the world for coal exports. asnewlibrarian/Flick

Why get worked up about our climate responsibilities when Australia's contribution to global emissions – around 1.5% of the total - is small?
Here is the usual reply. Australia's domestic greenhouse gas emissions means it ranks 12th among the planet's 195-plus nations. We are 16th in the world for domestic CO₂ emissions alone. And our per capita emissions are among the highest in the world. So our contribution to global warming is much greater than we often recognise.
But by another view Australia's role is vastly more significant, and our climate and energy export policies are positively schizophrenic in response. Specifically, Labor's national energy export policy undermines and overwhelms any benefits from its domestic climate policy efforts.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change requires nations to account for emissions produced within their borders. However this approach displaces and unjustly lessens the burden of responsibility of states, companies and consumers that sit "before" or "after" the point where those emissions are released.
As a result, consumers of imported manufactured goods and exporters of fossil fuels remain unaccountable for their roles in the co-production of emissions released at a "distance".

"Embodied carbon" and trade in unburned fossil fuels
Some aspects of the relationship between trade and emissions are coming under increasing scrutiny. For instance, it is now widely acknowledged that approximately 25% to 33% of China's total national emissions now result from production for export markets. These are "embodied" emissions that have largely been "displaced" to China from countries that formerly manufactured but now import these goods.
China now has a carbon tax on certain exported goods and France has proposed border adjustment taxes on imports from countries without a carbon price – both moves intended to level the playing field in traded embodied carbon.
By contrast, little attention has paid to trade in unprocessed (or unburned) fossil fuels, which shifts responsibility for emissions from fossil fuel exporting nations and companies to the middle-consumers (the states and companies involved in producing emissions using these fuels for power or manufacturing). How convenient for the beneficiaries - countries such as Australia, Canada, the Russian Federation, and Saudi Arabia.

Powering the "world's factory" has put China at the top of global carbon emitters. The E/Flickr

Australia - world's largest coal exporter
While Australia's domestic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions represent some 1.5% of the global total, its global carbon footprint – the total amount of carbon it pushes out into the global economy - is much bigger.
Australia is the world's largest coal exporter. By adding emissions from exported coal to our domestic emissions, Australia's carbon footprint trebles. Its coal exports alone currently contribute at least another 3.3% of global emissions.
In aggregate, therefore, Australia is at present the source of at least 4.8% of total global emissions. That's without considering natural gas exports.
This alternative viewpoint underscores the importance of Greenpeace's recent claim that proposed "mega coal mines" in Queensland's Galilee Basin, producing for export, would be responsible for 705 million tonnes of CO₂ per year and would turn that region alone into the world's seventh largest contributor of emissions.

Good reasons for this larger perspective
Why take this alternative view? First, such a re-framing makes visible a range of hidden but significant national responsibilities for climate change. It is a more honest calibration of the mitigation/adaptation responsibilities and burdens of specific states. Countries like Australia benefit economically from this trade – and from fuelling climate change - without acknowledging that benefit or the costs.
Second, it undermines already spurious claims that Australia's contribution to the problem of climate change is trivial.
When its current domestic carbon dioxide emissions and its exported CO₂ emissions are combined, Australia ranks as the planet's 6th largest emitter of CO₂ - after China, the USA, the Russian Federation, India and Indonesia. It is responsible directly and indirectly for over 1.5 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year – more than Germany's emissions (population 82 million) and the UK's emissions (population 62 million) combined.
If planned and projected increases in Australian coal and gas exports are realised, our carbon footprint will more than double again over the coming decades. By 2030, Australia would be directly and indirectly responsible for over 2 billion tonnes of exported GHG emissions per year.

Harm avoidance
Still, should we reduce our coal exports in a global system geared to direct-emitters' responsibility?
Consider the principle of harm avoidance. This is a widely recognised principle, including under international law. It has been enshrined in the Stockholm Convention 1972 and the Rio Declaration of 1992.
These international declarations – to which Australia is a signatory - state that parties "have the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States". Trade in injurious substances flies in the face of the harm avoidance principle.

It's not okay for cigarette companies to ignore the harm done by their products, so why is it for miners? lanier67/Flickr

By analogy, think of how most legal systems view sellers of asbestos or heroin, or of the growing reaction to the sale of tobacco.
Leaving the responsibility for mitigation to others involves an abrogation of ethical responsibility to the market and to the atomised consumer. If you are not convinced by this view – think of the heroin dealer's defence: "I do no harm, yer Honour. I only sell the stuff. They're the ones that inject it."
The second argument is purely pragmatic. The greater our dependency on a coal/gas export economy, the greater the economic distortions and social perils for Australia in the longer term. Australia's export energy boom is generating an economy unsustainably dependent on the returns of that sector.
If the end to the fossil energy boom is abrupt, the trauma to Australia's economy will be significant. How will we provide regional structural adjustment assistance in the Hunter Valley and Bowen Basin, especially if this adjustment trauma is accompanied by increasing demands for climate adaptation and disaster relief funding (think Flood Levy)?

Killing the goose?
It must seem crazy-brave to propose a tax on coal exports given falling coal prices and political anxiety about the power of the mining industry.
It must seem crazier still to propose an immediate moratorium on further expansion and to plan for the sector to be wound back. But in each case, that is what Labor should do.
Labor first should immediately freeze Australia's expanding global carbon footprint by capping export volumes.
Second, it should simultaneously establish a carbon fund to provide for longer term structural adjustment costs domestically and for investment in energy alternatives in developing nations currently importing our fuels. Even a modest levy of $2 per tonne of exported coal would now net almost $800 million per year.
More than this, though, Australia needs a national energy strategy based on this shift in perspective. It involves reconfiguring our understanding of Australia's very substantial international role in the climate game and winding back our fossil fuel export sector within a decade.
Ultimately change will be forced upon us, whether or not we like it, or are prepared. Even the most conservative IPCC and IEA estimates suggest that global fossil fuel use will need to contract substantially by 2050 if we are to limit global warming to 2 degrees celsius. Australia itself has adopted an emissions mitigation policy of -80% by 2050. This is less than 38 years away.
Major importers are already moving to cap and reduce their coal consumption. Our export carbon sector is clearly unsustainable if the rest of the world intends to cut fossil fuel use dramatically.
A coherent energy-climate policy would guide a rapid, planned scale-down in coal production. The chaotic alternative - the one we have now - will continue to build our coal export sector and then allow market and climate forces to combine in a perfect economic storm.

Links

• Labor's climate policy: back in the game but missing detail
• Great Barrier Reef bleaching stats are bad enough without media misreporting
• Rising carbon dioxide is greening the Earth - but it's not all good news
• Has climate change really improved U.S. weather?

Labor’s Climate Policy: Back In The Game But Missing Detail

The Conversation - Lynette Molyneaux | John Foster | Karen Hussey

Labor has promised 50% of electricity will come from renewable sources by 2050, but has left the detail for after the election. Wind turbine image from www.shutterstock.com

Labor has announced the climate policy it will take to the federal election, including a return to carbon pricing under an emissions trading scheme.
The detailed policy includes multiple market-based mechanisms. Among these are an emissions trading scheme, a domestic electricity cap-and-trade scheme, and a mechanism to close brown coal power stations. The package would also increase investment in renewable energy, instigate a major review of the electricity sector, tighten vehicle emissions standards and create a “trigger” to account for climate change in land-clearing.
Climate policy is the football of Australian politics. So as the election campaign ramps up, grab your popcorn and settle in for the showdown.

World agrees on need for action
Politicians of almost all persuasions, as well as the majority of scientists, now agree that action needs to be taken on a global scale if the world is to continue to enjoy the benefits of a stable climate.
The Paris climate agreement sets out the long-term goal of limiting warming to well below 2℃ and if possible below 1.5℃. It needs to be ratified by at least 55 countries and represent 55% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
To do this, these emissions must eventually reach zero (or be completely offset) by mid-century. This is currently not matched by short- and medium-term pledges by countries to reduce emissions.
So while the Paris agreement was uplifting in terms of its aspirations, it was less inspiring in terms of its practical execution.

What does good climate policy look like?
All countries need to develop strong climate policy to be able to ratify the Paris agreement. This should be about pragmatic action, not ideology. The huge challenge facing the world means that the action taken needs to be strong and urgent.
In Australia, emissions from energy make up 75% and agriculture 15% of total greenhouse gas emissions, so climate policy should be primarily about reducing the combustion of fossil fuels.
As energy and agriculture are key to our economy, economists generally agree the most efficient way to reduce carbon emissions is through an emissions trading scheme (ETS) or a carbon tax.
Alongside strong financial incentives and disincentives for reducing emissions, institutional support is needed to shepherd and adapt policy to ensure it can be applied. This is not just a matter for government; the private sector must be included and committed to both the policy and their part in the pursuit of abatement.
Last but not least, the public needs to understand the problem and be confident of the ability of policymakers to craft policy that will help to resolve it.
In recent years, the game of political football over climate policy has intensified. Labor’s carbon-pricing package lasted just two years before being axed and replaced under the Coalition government. The Renewable Energy Target was introduced with bipartisan support, expanded under Labor, then reduced under the Coalition. Supporting institutions have similarly been created, restructured, defunded and dissolved.
Public support for climate policy, too, has waxed and waned from a high level around 2007 – at the height of the droughts in Queensland and New South Wales – to cynicism about the carbon tax and the perception of its impact on electricity and industrial competitiveness to, more recently, a return to support for renewable energy and climate action.

How will Labor play the game?
Labor’s plan to resurrect an ETS is an attempt to return to a policy supported by economists, but with a tentative introduction.
Labor has announced that multiple market mechanisms will be introduced. Phase one, to run from 2018-2020, includes a scheme for the electricity sector that will simply cap the emissions of high carbon emitters according to an industry benchmark and encourage generators to trade with each other to meet their cap. This will aim to stop emissions increasing to 2020, and make cuts after that.
This differs from the previous carbon tax in that initially there will be little cost for electricity generators and therefore electricity consumers. There will be greater pressure on emissions reductions after 2020. But if it is opened up to international schemes the cost of emissions reductions will be in line with prices overseas, reducing impacts on competitiveness.
Other large emitters will be part of a separate ETS, also with caps on emissions but the ability to offset or trade internationally.
Phase two of the ETS will link the ETS with other international emissions trading schemes. The detail on phase two for the electricity sector is less clear. There is also a plan for a market mechanism to close brown-coal-fired power stations.
While the Coalition’s Emissions Reduction Fund seeks to buy emission reductions from agriculture and vegetation management out of tax income, it ignores emissions reduction from electricity generation. This is an important point of difference between the two policy approaches.

Beyond emissions trading
Labor also intends to prevent further land clearing in Queensland and New South Wales. This may may well put Labor offside with the NSW Coalition government, which is considering land-clearing laws. Land clearing can add significantly to Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, so it is an important element of national climate policy.
As with all policy, though, the detail will define the ability of the Labor policy to deliver the emissions cuts required.
For now, we know only that Labor seeks to decrease emissions by 45% and increase renewable energy to 50% of electricity generation by 2030.
Labor’s policy depends on how the party sells it to a public weary and wary of climate policies after relentless campaigning against the carbon tax by the Coalition during the last election. Labor is at pains to point out that it would like to initiate dialogue with the Coalition to gain consensus on climate policy.
Promisingly, it includes the necessary support and funding of transition for trade-exposed industries (which are disproportionately affected by carbon pricing), community power workers who may be displaced from coal-fired power stations, and solar thermal generation.
Solar thermal generation is important for a large roll-out of renewable energy because of its ability to stabilise the network. While solar panels and wind power are affordable sources of energy, our demand for electricity does not often match availability from solar panels and wind power. For this reason we need electricity to be able to be stored for use on dark, windless nights or oppressive, rainy days.
Hydroelectricity can do this job but Australia has a dry climate and limited hydro resources. The hype around batteries is a little premature in terms of both the cost of battery storage and its ability to integrate with the electricity grid. So solar thermal is an important element of a fleet with large levels of renewable energy.
The use of emissions trading with incentives for increasing renewable energy is crucial for reducing emissions and shifting to cleaner forms of energy. Without an ETS, investment in renewable energy is likely to produce a disappointing reduction in emissions. So it is important that both be rolled out together.
What about electricity prices? Phase one is unlikely to have a large impact on electricity prices and the detail on phase two is too sketchy to predict the impact on prices. It will however depend on how effective the solar thermal funding is at securing baseload power, and the extent to which Labor will be able to garner industry support for closing brown coal power stations.
Ultimately, the success or failure of this policy gambit will depend on whether Labor can calm the public’s nerves over their future power bills.

Links

• Comparing the parties' climate change and renewables policies
• FactCheck: did carbon emissions fall faster before the carbon price?
• A coal tax to help the climate and the resource owners
• Labor unveils phased emissions trading scheme

Big Data From Satellites To Fight Climate Change

Deutsche Welle - Dave Keating

Researchers have been slow to harness the power of big data from satellites in the fight against climate change. But a new partnership around the Copernicus program may change that. 

Only tears of sand remain

Earth observation satellites such as the European Space Agency's Proba-V collect daily images that allow for the tracking of environmental changes over time. The images above - taken in April 2014, July 2015 and January 2016 (left to right) - offer crystal-clear insight into the gradual evaporation of Lake Poopo, once Bolivia's second largest lake - due at least in part to climate change.

Over the past decade, people have gotten used to using Google Earth's satellite map to satisfy their curiosity - whether that involves examining tree cover or peering into their neighbor's backyard.
Now, a new European Union initiative is attempting to harness that satellite data to fight climate change - and to document its effects.
On Tuesday (26.04.2016), the European Institute for Innovation and Technology (EIT) announced a new partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) to mine the "big data" satellites gather, to help local and national governments mitigate and adapt to climate change.
The program, unveiled at the EIT's annual conference in Budapest, is the first time satellite data has been mobilized at this scale.

Untapped potential
The ESA has been monitoring the Earth since 2008, when it set up the Copernicus program in partnership with the European Commission. Through a family of missions involving Sentinel satellites, Copernicus feeds vast amounts of data into a unified system.

Although it is the world's broadest Earth observation program, so far it has not gone into deep analysis of the effects of climate change. But it has been collecting the data.

Sentinel satellites can track changes on Earth's surface in high resolution

 "If you knew just how much data was out there - sitting on 'shelves' in the digital world, with no one really accessing it - you would be amazed," said Mike Cherrett, director of operations for the climate change division of EIT. "It's a scandal it's not being used - and we need to turn that around."
Cherrett says the problem is that although Copernicus has collected much data, this isn't reaching end users, such as local governments or companies, who would be interested in and able to do something with it.
Such data can be used to analyze the effects of climate change, for example by tracking the erosion of coastlines or abnormalities in vegetation as a result of temperature changes.
It can also be used to track activities that contribute to climate change, such as deforestation or poor city planning. A city government could for example use the information to see how urban planning is affecting emissions.

'Living data'
Ian Short, CEO of the EIT's climate division, says that that while there is useful information to be gleaned from satellite data about where emissions are taking place, the most useful part could be looking at how climate change is already affecting the world.
With climate change, much focus has been placed on mitigation - that is, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, Short pointed out. "But we're well past that point now," Short told DW.
"We're starting to see the impact of climate change - increasingly, we have to understand what that impact is," Short said. "We need to be able to predict where it's going to happen."

An image of the French riviera taken from a Sentinel satellite

 Initial results of the collaboration will be presented at this year's United Nations climate summit this November in Morocco. The data collected will be open-source, which also means it can be accessed by any member of the public.
Cherrett called it "living data."
"You can look at historical records to compare and contrast," Cherrett said. "It has huge potential to revolutionalize the way we plan city and rural areas. It has huge potential to inform citizens and generate business ideas."
"This will be one of those things we look back on in five, 10 years and say, 'why didn’t we use more of this big data earlier?'"

Sentinel satellites eye view

The beast has awoken
No matter how long volcanoes sleep, they're always in a bad mood when they wake up. The International Space Station was passing overhead when the Sarychev volcano, located in the Kuril Islands of Russia, erupted in 2009. Astronauts were able to snap a picture through a hole in the clouds. From dense ash to clouds of condensed water, virtually all natural phenomena can be examined from outer space.

Don't play with fire
Every year, wildfires devastate the landscape - and ecology - in numerous countries around the world. Too often, these are caused by humans. This was also the case in Indonesia, where farmers burned peat rainforest areas for agriculture. On the island of Borneo and Sumatra, satellites detected fire hot spots in September 2015, and the plume of grey smoke that triggered air quality alerts.

German kids misbehaved
In Germany, parents warn their children that if they don't finish their meals, it's going to rain. And indeed, in 2013 it rained, so much that some of central Europe's major rivers overflowed their banks. As shown in this image from 2013, the Elbe burst its banks following unprecedented rainfall. In the photo, muddy water covers the area around Wittenberg, in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

At the eye of the hurricane
A strong storm can cause irreparable damage through intense winds and storm surges from the sea. Space-based information is crucial in following development of such storms: intensity, the direction it's moving, wind speed … in the eastern Pacific Ocean near Mexico, this satellite image helped determine how tropical storm Sandra reached winds of 160 kilometers per hour by November 25, 2015.

Melting away from under us
Satellites also play a key role in monitoring climate change and, inevitably, the process of melting ice. From space, scientists were able to document how several glaciers around the globe have receded - as well as the subsequent rise in sea level. This photograph, taken from the International Space Station, shows the retreat of the Upsala glacier in Argentine Patagonia from 2002 to 2013.

Hold your breath!
Dust often covers remote deserts - however in September 2015, satellites offered this impressive view of Middle East areas enveloped by a dust storm, or haboob, affecting large populated regions. What satellites can observe from space supports air quality sensors on the ground to understand patterns on how the storms start and develop. These findings can improve forecasting methods.

'Naked mountain'
These are the words NASA used to describe the lack of snow on California's Mount Shasta, a crucial source of water for the region. Images documenting drought over the past years have consistently been showing brown mountains that should be white, and bare earth where people seek water. As ice melts, drought grows.

Author: Irene Banos Ruiz 

Carbon Copy: Are We In For Another Scare Campaign Over Climate Change?

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

To Bill Shorten and Labor's credit, the party is not shirking from an election fight over climate change.

Cutting emissions is already an election issue before the formal hostilities have begun. Photo: Bloomberg

While groups such as The Climate Institute and the Greens will question whether targets for emissions cuts – close to double the Coalition's by 2030 – go far enough, Shorten is sending a clear signal he's willing to make climate a centrepiece of the 2016 election campaign.
Labor's strategy, including an emissions trading scheme, has its risks.
The success of Tony Abbott's scare campaign against the carbon tax prompted then environment spokesman Greg Hunt to predict the 2013 election would be the last in a generation to feature climate change prominently.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt, left, confers with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

That assessment has been an early casualty in this campaign.
Elements of the media have resurrected their "zombies from the grave" cartoons to freak out voters about "a carbon tax designed to hit both industry and households".
Liberal YouTube ads have been launched from Wednesday, seeking to resurrect the ghost of Julia Gillard.

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten with environment spokesman Mark Butler and MP Gai Brodtmann at a solar farm near Canberra last year. Photo: Andrew Meares

Malcolm Turnbull, who lost his job as opposition leader in 2009 for his strident support of an emissions trading scheme, knows well such a market does not equate to tax. Labor expects no revenue.
That, of course, didn't stop the Prime Minister railing against Labor's proposal on Wednesday, even if he didn't sound entirely convincing: "What Labor is proposing to do is another – a, effectively another tax."
Finding his footing, Turnbull declared Labor's 2030 target would "very significantly increase the cost of energy, the cost of electricity and all other power".
"So that is going to be another brake on the economy."
On cue, Hunt revived the largest number he could find: Wholesale power prices would leap 78 per cent by 2030, according to Treasury modelling "when Labor was in government".
Hunt, though, is stretching things. The Climate Change Authority, which sought the modelling in 2013 said it "did not project the costs to Australia of pursuing a 40 to 60 per cent emission reduction target by 2030 (or any other 2030 target for that matter)".
Labor, though, believes it can weather whatever storm the Coalition or right-wing sections of the Australian media whip up.
Polls suggest concern about climate change is bouncing back. That suggests if people haven't made up their mind about climate change, they are more likely to favour taking action when they do.
Disengaged voters may not be aware of the torrent of global heat records in recent months but few would have been able to ignore another season of severe bushfires in regions from Tasmania to Western Australia, the horrifying video clips of the bleaching Great Barrier Reef, or unusual late-season warmth that has a way to run yet for many parts of the nation.
Labor also senses Turnbull's vulnerability.
Abbott would never have said, as Turnbull did on Wednesday: "I take climate change very seriously. I take global warming very seriously. I take the challenge that the world faces to reduce emissions very seriously."
As Labor's environment spokesman, Mark Butler, told Fairfax Media on Tuesday: "We want climate change and renewable energy to be part of the election debate. Malcolm Turnbull knows in his heart of hearts that Direct Action [policy to pay polluters to cut back] isn't working, and was one of the earliest people to call it out as an environmental fig leaf."
He knows you can't have a position where you don't have a renewable energy policy beyond 2020. You can't have a return to this return to broadscale land clearing that we're seeing in Queensland but he's not willing to do anything about."
The early polarisation of positions, while predictable, doesn't send a very reassuring message about the prospects of climate politics becoming less partisan soon.
Should Turnbull lose, does anybody expect his successor to take climate policy as seriously?
Should Shorten lose, will his replacement likely move closer to the Coalition's policy and risk ceding more ground to the Greens? (The Greens, for instance, want 90 per cent renewable power by 2030 versus Labor's 50 per cent.)
Frank Jotzo, one of Australia's most innovative thinkers on climate policy based at the Australian National University, finds much to like in Labor's policy platform.
Adopting the ALP's goal of cutting 2005 level carbon emissions 45 per cent by 2030 is "in line" with the so-called "high ambition coalition" nations at the Paris climate summit. Turnbull is stuck with Abbott's 26 per cent to 28 per cent target.
Jotzo also notes that while much detail remains to be added to Labor's policy, the government has committed to its own climate change policy review next year.
"My hope is that climate change policy will not once again become a political football between the two major parties, but that there will be a serious contest of ideas and proposals," he said.
Even the Business Council of Australia saw merit in Labor's policy, which "could provide a platform for bipartisanship to deliver the energy and climate change policy durability needed to support this critical transformation", BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott said.
On what we've seen so far, both Jotzo and Westacott's bipartisan hopes aren't looking good: the political football is already in play.

Links

• Labor's climate policy promises deeper carbon cuts
• Labor announces climate policy