Climate Chaos, Across the Map

New York Times - Justin Gillis

Clockwise from top left: Flooding in Straiton, Scotland, on Wednesday; haze in Kalimantan Province, Indonesia, in October; flooding in Horry County, S.C., in October; drought in South Australia in November. Credit Danny Lawson/Press Association, via AP; Haris Sadikin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Janet Blackmon Morgan/The Sun News, via AP; David Gray/Reuter

What is going on with the weather?
With tornado outbreaks in the South, Christmas temperatures that sent trees into bloom in Central Park, drought in parts of Africa and historic floods drowning the old industrial cities of England, 2015 is closing with a string of weather anomalies all over the world.
The year, expected to be the hottest on record, may be over at midnight Thursday, but the trouble will not be. Rain in the central United States has been so heavy that major floods are beginning along the Mississippi River and are likely to intensify in coming weeks. California may lurch from drought to flood by late winter. Most serious, millions of people could be threatened by a developing food shortage in southern Africa.
Scientists say the most obvious suspect in the turmoil is the climate pattern called El Niño, in which the Pacific Ocean for the last few months has been dumping immense amounts of heat into the atmosphere. Because atmospheric waves can travel thousands of miles, the added heat and accompanying moisture have been playing havoc with the weather in many parts of the world.


The weather phenomenon known as El Niño can cause dramatic effects around the world. Henry Fountain explains where it comes from. By Henry Fountain, Aaron Byrd and Ben Laffin on Publish Date September 9, 2014.              

But that natural pattern of variability is not the whole story. This El Niño, one of the strongest on record, comes atop a long-term heating of the planet caused by mankind's emissions of greenhouse gases. A large body of scientific evidence says those emissions are making certain kinds of extremes, such as heavy rainstorms and intense heat waves, more frequent.
Coincidence or not, every kind of trouble that the experts have been warning about for years seems to be occurring at once.

Waiting out the flood Wednesday in Dumfries, Scotland, after heavy rain. Credit Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

"As scientists, it's a little humbling that we've kind of been saying this for 20 years now, and it's not until people notice daffodils coming out in December that they start to say, 'Maybe they're right,' " said Myles R. Allen, a climate scientist at Oxford University in Britain.
Dr. Allen's group, in collaboration with American and Dutch researchers, recently completed a report calculating that extreme rainstorms in the British Isles in December had become about 40 percent more likely as a consequence of human emissions. That document — inspired by a storm in early December that dumped stupendous rains, including 13 inches on one town in 24 hours — was barely finished when the skies opened up again.
Emergency crews have since been scrambling to rescue people from flooded homes in Leeds, York and other cities. A dispute has erupted in Parliament about whether Britain is doing enough to prepare for a changing climate.
Dr. Allen does not believe that El Niño had much to do with the British flooding, based on historical evidence that the influence of the Pacific Ocean anomaly is fairly weak in that part of the world. In the Western Hemisphere, the strong El Niño is likely a bigger part of the explanation for the strange winter weather.

Cutting grass in South Africa, which is experiencing its worst drought since 1994. Credit Joao Silva/The New York Times

The northern tier of the United States is often warm during El Niño years, and indeed, weather forecasters months ago predicted such a pattern for this winter. But they did not go so far as to forecast that the temperature in Central Park on the day before Christmas would hit 72 degrees.
Likewise, past evidence suggests that an El Niño can cause the fall tornado season in the Gulf Coast states to extend into December, as happened this year, with deadly consequences in states like Texas and Mississippi.


Many parts of England and Scotland are experiencing damage from severe flooding brought on by Storm Frank. REUTERS on Publish Date December 31, 2015.

Matthew Rosencrans, head of forecast operations for the federal government's Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Md., said that the El Niño was not the only natural factor at work. This winter, a climate pattern called the Arctic Oscillation is also keeping cold air bottled up in the high north, allowing heat and moisture to accumulate in the middle latitudes. That may be a factor in the recent heavy rains in states like Georgia and South Carolina, as well as in some of the other weather extremes, he said.
Scientists do not quite understand the connections, if any, between El Niño and variations in the Arctic Oscillation. They also do not fully understand how the combined effects of El Niño and human-induced warming are likely to play out over the coming decades.
Although El Niños occur every three to seven years, most of them are of moderate intensity. They form when the westward trade winds in the Pacific weaken, or even reverse direction. That shift leads to a dramatic warming of the surface waters in the eastern Pacific.
"Clouds and storms follow the warm water, pumping heat and moisture high into the overlying atmosphere," as NASA recently explained. "These changes alter jet stream paths and affect storm tracks all over the world."
The current El Niño is only the third powerful El Niño to have occurred in the era of satellites and other sophisticated weather observations. It is a small data set from which to try to draw broad conclusions, and experts said they would likely be working for months or years to understand what role El Niño and other factors played in the weather extremes of 2015.
It is already clear, though, that the year will be the hottest ever recorded at the surface of the planet, surpassing 2014 by a considerable margin. That is a function both of the short-term heat from the El Niño and the long-term warming from human emissions. In both the Atlantic and Pacific, the unusually warm ocean surface is throwing extra moisture into the air, said Kevin Trenberth, a climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.
Storms over land can draw moisture from as far as 2,000 miles away, he said, so the warm ocean is likely influencing such events as the heavy rain in the Southeast, as well as the record number of strong hurricanes and typhoons that occurred this year in the Pacific basin, with devastating consequences for island nations like Vanuatu.
"The warmth means there is more fuel for these weather systems to feed upon," Dr. Trenberth said. "This is the sort of thing we will see more as we go decades into the future."

Links

• Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change
• The Parched West: Farmers Try Political Force to Twist Open California's Taps Dec. 30, 2015
• Investigators Blame Violent Weather for Yangtze Cruise Ship Disaster Dec. 30, 2015
• Record Floods Affect Millions in the Midwest Dec. 30, 2015
• Drought Deepens South Africa's Malaise Dec. 26, 2015
• David Cameron Defends Flood Record as Northern England Is Drenched Dec. 28, 2015
• Rain in Indonesia Dampens Forest Fires That Spread Toxic Haze Oct. 28, 2015
• Record Heat Puts Australia at Risk of Intense Fire Season Nov. 20, 2015
• The Pacific Ocean Becomes a Caldron Nov. 03, 2015
• Greenland Is Melting Away Oct. 27, 2015
• Limited Progress Seen Even as More Nations Step Up on Climate Sep. 28, 2015
• Naomi Oreskes, a Lightning Rod in a Changing Climate June 16, 2015
• The New Optimism of Al Gore March 17, 2015
• Sun and Wind Alter Global Landscape, Leaving Utilities Behind Sep. 14, 2014

Extreme Times: World's Weather Is On A Weird Track That Will Continue Into 2016

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

What's El Nino got in store for 2016? The giant 2015 El Nino in the Pacific is at or nearing its peak, but it will be months before the world's weather engine takes the heat off Australia.

If Santa really did reside at the North Pole, he could probably have doffed his thick coat for a few hours this week to dig his sled out of the slush.
Despite being shrouded in darkness since early October, the top of this world recorded temperatures that appear to have been above freezing point for about six hours on Wednesday, thanks to a huge storm that steered tropical warmth into the high latitudes.
The Arctic has long been observed as warming at about twice the rate as elsewhere on Earth, but the 30-plus degrees Celsius jump above the average for this time of year was a stunning reading polar temperatures briefly above cities like Chicago in the US and Vienna in Austria far to the south.

Arctic heat caps off a record hot year for planet Earth. Photo: Leigh Henningham

Such events made descriptors such as "unprecedented" or "record" almost the bywords for 2015 when it came to weather.
The combination of an epic El Niño in the Pacific overlaying the background warming unleased mostly by humans' combustion of fossil fuels jolted the concept of what "normal" conditions mean. It also sets up 2016 for more wild weather.
Even before December brought record heatwaves to regions as diverse as Victoria, the High Arctic and almost all of the eastern US, major meteorological agencies had heralded 2015 as the hottest year for the planet since reliable data gathering began 136 years ago.
The call was an easy one to make. By November, year-to-date temperatures were more than 0.1 degree higher than the previous hottest year – set just one year earlier in 2014 – with the gap widening, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA]:

Of 1630 months tallied by NOAA since 1880, seven of the 10 most usually hot months occurred in 2015 alone.

When the latest data is assessed, it may reveal December to be the first month with a temperature reading a full one degree above the 20th-century average. Last October fell just shy with a 0.99-degree anomaly, NOAA says.
Climatologists have scant doubt which way the climate is changing. In Australia since 2000, for instance, record hot days have been 12 times more common than record cold ones, research published in September showed. 2015 will probably be among the five warmest years for Australia since records began in 1910.
Those trends – and evidence of increasing extreme weather, such as worsening fire risks in southern Australia – were the reason why almost 200 nations agreed last month at the Paris climate summit to try to keep temperature increases "well below two degrees" compared with pre-industrial levels. We are roughly half way there.
Governments, including Australia's, also backed carbon neutrality – balancing emissions of greenhouse gases to the amounts being sequestered – by the latter half of this century, a pact that will need much more ambitious climate action to limit coal and other fossil fuel use than now being offered.
The global temperature gauge certainly got a kick-along this past year from the monster El Niño in the Pacific, which rivals the 1997-98 event as the most intense on record, and has a big influence on worldwide weather.
Even so, temperatures have been creeping higher for decades, whether it is an El Niño year (red) or its reverse, La Niña (blue), as shown in this NOAA chart:

During El Niños, the typical westward-blowing equatorial winds stall or reverse. Along with a build-up of heat in the central and eastern Pacific, rainfall patterns also shift eastwards away from Asia.
The current El Niño is marked by unusually warm waters covering about 16 million square kilometres, an area bigger than twice the size of Australia and larger than the 1997-98 record event.

Nearing peak?

The 2015-16 version is also showing "no signs of waning", NASA said this week. Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, though, estimates the event is near its peak but says models indicate the unusual heat won't break up until May or later.

Wenju Cai, a CSIRO research scientist who studies how climate change will affect El Niños in the future, says a lengthy breakdown of the event means 2016 could set annual global heat records for a third year in a row.
"It's the release of heat from the ocean that is going to make us hotter," Cai tells Fairfax Media.
Parts of the Northern Hemisphere might welcome a little extra warmth – although less so if it's accompanied by more storms and floods as lately seen in the UK. But in Australia, the extra heat "is coinciding with our peak" in summer, Cai says.
Forests and grasslands have already turned crisp across much of Victoria and elsewhere in southern Australia, prompting fears of a "Black January" if significant rainfall doesn't arrive to add moisture and disperse the heat.
In 2015, south-west Western Australia and parts of inland Queensland, South Australia and much of Victoria and Tasmania had very much below-average rainfall, the bureau said.

La Niña next?

The El Niño's demise, though, is unlikely to usher in a new period of climate calm.

As Agus Santoso, a senior researcher at the University of NSW-based Climate Change Research Centre, notes, "extreme La Niñas tend to follow extreme El Niños".
As the climate warms further, "this kind of sequence will happen more", Santoso says. "It's very bad news."
During La Niña years, the world's weather engine flips back to the western Pacific, with rainfall patterns shifting with it. Indonesia, South Pacific and parts of Australia that were relatively dry in 2015 may get excessive amounts of rain in the next year or so.
A comparatively quiet tropical cyclone season for this summer for Australia may revert to a relatively active one in 2016-17.
Research published by Santoso and Cai in 2015 indicates that while the number of El Niños and La Niñas may not alter with climate change, the frequency of the extreme version of such events affecting Australia is likely to quadruple this century if greenhouse gas emissions remain on a rising trajectory.
While "the power of nature is huge" and human activity may not trigger El Niños or La Niñas themselves, the rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, methane and other heat-trapping gases will make a difference, Cai says.
"In a warming world, the atmosphere can store more water," Cai says. "When conditions for rain are there, it will come down much more vigorously because you have more water."
The climate will become less recognisable to today's population as shifts in the world's weather engine in the Pacific "move further or faster, and stay longer", he says.

Links

• What's El Nino got in store for 2016?
• What was the weather like in 2015?
• 'The Blob' disrupts El Nino

El Niño: Why Predictable Climate Event Still Has The Scientists Guessing

The Guardian - Tim Radford

Blister of sea surface heat in Pacific Ocean can set off devastating drought, storms and rainfall around the globe – or just fade away

False-colour images provided by Nasa compare Pacific Ocean water temperatures from the El Niño in 1997 (right) and the current El Niño. Photograph: AP

 El Niño is one of the most predictable climate events on the planet, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, but it also has a way of keeping climate scientists guessing.
In March the oceanographers predicted the current event could be the weakest on record, but in August the same agency warned it could be the strongest.
Right now it still looks strong, says Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. Using satellite data, meteorologists keep a steady watch on El Niño because it can play out demurely, or it can bring catastrophe. It has been linked to drought and harvest failures on the African continent, devastating fires in the normally moist rainforests of the Indonesian archipelago, both drought and flood in Australia, damaging floods in the Americas, and unusually mild winters in Europe.
This month, tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes in the border areas of Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil and Argentina due to severe flooding in the wake of heavy summer rains brought on by El Niño. Paraguay's national emergencies office has said the flooding is "directly influenced by the El Niño phenomenon, which has intensified the frequency and intensity of rains".
El Niño is a blister of sea surface heat that every few years floats eastwards across the tropical Pacific Ocean. It was given its name by the fishermen of Peru, who called it "the Child" because they became aware of it around the Christmas season, as the fish catches failed. The shift of warm seas leaves the western Pacific cooler, and both temperature shifts seem to play out in disruption of global weather patterns.
The last great El Niño, in 1997-98, helped make 1998 the then warmest year on record – that too was accompanied by a series of devastating events around the world, among them ice storms in North America, floods on the west coasts of the Americas and forest fires in Borneo. It also delayed the monsoon rains in India, warmed tropical waters so severely that coral reefs started to "bleach" and die, and signalled a record-breaking season of typhoons and tropical cyclones in the eastern Pacific.
Although researchers are fairly sure that climate change as a consequence of the combustion of fossil fuels, and the release of greenhouse gases, could make El Niño more frequent, or more devastating, or both, it remains a natural, cyclic event. Climate historians have linked it, with sometimes faltering levels of confidence, to historic events, among them the epidemic of Spanish influenza that claimed millions of lives in 1918 and even the Biblical plagues of Egypt linked to the story of Moses.
Sometimes oceanographers watch an El Niño develop, and then fade gently. And sometimes it develops powerfully, with consequences for the rest of the globe. Oxfam has already warned that this time millions could face famine as a consequence.
However, as the rains fail in Africa, Californians – still in the grip of a prolonged and damaging drought – may see a silver lining. In 1997 and1998 storms slammed into the US west coast, crossed the mountains, drenched Texas and even hit Florida. This time, El Niño may be seen as bringing relief.
"The water story for much of the American west over most of the past decade has been dominated by punishing drought," said JPL climatologist Bill Patzert. "Reservoir levels have fallen to record or near-record lows, while groundwater tables have dropped dangerously in many areas. Now we're preparing to see the flip side of nature's water cycle – the arrival of steady, heavy rains and snowfall."
What a heat bubble on the eastern Pacific – where the much warmer water means that a great stretch of ocean is actually up to 25cm higher than the cooler waters north and south of it – means for the UK is much less certain. "There are a number of factors that affect winter conditions in Britain," the Met Office said earlier this year. "The increase in risk of a colder winter this year from the developing El Niño is currently considered small."

Links

• Power cuts, travel chaos and more flood warnings issued as Storm Frank hits UK
• Minister visits Tadcaster as Yorkshire town braces for more flooding

The Biggest Climate Stories of 2015

The Guardian - Alison Moodie

From the 195-nation agreement in Paris to curb global warming, to a journey down the Mekong River, evidence that climate change is impacting livelihoods and political decisions is stronger than ever

Demonstrators in Rome, Italy, participating in the Global Climate March on November 29, 2015. Photograph: Giuseppe Ciccia/Pacific Press/BI

2015 has been a big year for climate change. The year has witnessed dizzying highs and stunning lows, from the hottest January on record, to March, when global carbon dioxide levels hit a million-year high, to December, when nearly 200 nations signed an agreement to minimize global warming. Here are seven stories that give a good snapshot of the political, economic and scientific milestones that changed the way we view – and the way we deal with – global warming.

Paris climate deal: the beginning of the end for the fossil fuel era

French president Francois Hollande, president of the COP21 Laurent Fabius, United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hold their hands up in celebration after the final conference at the COP21, the United Nations conference on climate change. Photograph: Francois Mori/AP

The United Nations Environment Programme has said that carbon emissions must be zero by 2070 to avert climate disasters. In December, after two decades of fraught climate talks, representatives from nearly 200 nations reached a historic milestone on the way to that goal.
The Paris agreement, which signals a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, will hold governments accountable for hitting their greenhouse gas emissions targets. It has been lauded for its long term goal to achieve net-zero emissions in the second half of the century, and political leaders hailed the deal as a "major leap for mankind".

Pope Francis calls for urgent action on climate change

Pope Francis has called climate change "a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation". Photograph: Angelo Carconi/EPA

Pope Francis delivered a bracing speech on climate change during a White House speech in September, calling it "a problem which can no longer be left to a future generation".
The speech followed Praise Be to You, a 184-page encyclical that the Pope released in June, in which he urged rich nations to take the lead in fighting climate change. It describes climate change as a "global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods".
The Pope's words appear to have already swayed some of the millions of Americans who are still skeptical about the impact of climate change. A recent study found that, in the past six months, a growing number of Americans – especially American Catholics – have come to believe that climate change is happening and are worried about its effects.

Obama rejects Keystone XL pipeline and hails US as leader on climate change

Activists celebrating Obama's blocking of the Keystone XL oil pipeline in front of the White House in November. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Barack Obama rejected the Keystone XL oil pipeline after a seven-year review, saying its construction would have undermined America's position as a global leader in fighting against climate change. The 1,1179–mile pipeline would have carried crude oil from tar sands in Canada to the Gulf Coast. Obama is the first world leader to reject an infrastructure project because of climate change.
"America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change," Obama said. "And, frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership."

US science agency says 2015 is 97% likely to be the hottest year on record

People walk through a park along the East River during an unseasonably warm Christmas Day this year, when temperatures reached near 20C. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA

Each month of 2015 has so far been the hottest on record, putting this year on track to be the warmest since records first started being gathered, 130 years ago. Scientists have pointed out that the three warmest years – 2015, 2014 and 2010 – in recorded history have all occurred in this century. This, they say, demonstrates that global warming is getting worse and that actions need to be taken.

Dutch government ordered to cut carbon emissions in landmark ruling

The E.ON coal-fired power station in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, is one of the most powerful coal-fired power stations in Europe. Coal power plants are under pressure all over Europe due to targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP

In the first ruling of its kind, the Hague has ordered the Dutch government to cut its carbon emissions by 25% within the next five years. The landmark decision came after 886 Dutch citizens sued the government for not taking enough action to reduce emissions.
Lawyers say that the ruling could have ripple effects around the world. Citizens in Belgium are already preparing a similar case, and another suit may follow in Norway. James Thornton, chief executive of environmental law organization ClientEarth, told the Guardian that: "A major sophisticated European court has broken through a political and psychological threshold. For the first time a court has ordered the government to protect its citizens from climate change."

Global carbon dioxide levels break 400ppm milestone

Smoke billows from stacks as a Chinese woman wears as mask while walking in a neighborhood next to a coal fired power plant in Shanxi, China. A history of heavy dependence on burning coal for energy has made China the source of nearly a third of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions. China's government has publicly set 2030 as a deadline to reach the country's emissions peak. Photograph: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

Concentrations of carbon dioxide hit a new global average record in March, reaching levels unseen for over 1m years. UN experts said the Earth's climate would enter a "new permanent reality" next year as a result, and that its denizens will likely experience hotter temperatures, extreme weather events like droughts and floods, and rising sea levels and acidity in the oceans. The finding underscored the urgent need for leaders at the Paris climate talks to reach a global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Mekong River: where energy needs and ecological damage collide

Sunset over the Mekong River. Photograph: Leisa Tyler/LightRocket via Getty Images

In this Guardian interactive feature, reporter John Vidal traveled down Southeast Asia's Mekong river, meeting the people who depend on the 2,500-mile river for their livelihoods and struggle to deal with the effects of climate change. The piece puts a face to alarming statistics and demonstrates that climate change isn't something that will emerge in the future – it's already happening.

Links

• Top 5 sustainable technology trends of 2015
• Did our 2015 sustainable business predictions make the grade?
• Eco-condoms to Ikea's veggie balls: the top 5 ethical living stories of 2015
• VW and Exxon: indicative of a polluted corporate culture that must change

China to Halt New Coal Mine Approvals Amid Pollution Fight

Bloomberg

• Country plans to close 1,000 mines to trim excess capacity
• Aims to reduce coal's share of energy mix in 2016 to 62.6%

Workers sort coal on a conveyer belt, near a coal mine at Datong, in China's northern Shanxi province. China will suspend the approval of new mines starting in 2016 and will cut coal’s share of its energy consumption to 62.6 percent next year. Photographer: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images

China will stop approving new coal mines for the next three years and continue to trim production capacity as the world’s biggest energy consumer tries to shift away from the fuel as it grapples with pollution.
China will suspend the approval of new mines starting in 2016 and will cut coal’s share of its energy consumption to 62.6 percent next year, from 64.4 percent now, Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday, citing National Energy Administration head Nur Bekri. It’s the first time the government has suspended the approval of new coal mines, according to Deng Shun, an analyst with ICIS China.

The world’s biggest producer of carbon emissions is seeking to boost the use of renewable fuels as smog has blanketed cities from Shanghai to Beijing, forcing factories and schools to close and intensifying pressure on public officials to cut pollution. This month China suspended price adjustments for fuel as a way to curb automobile exhaust and it has pledged to peak carbon emissions around 2030, by which time it aims to derive 20 percent of the energy it uses from clean sources.

“This new policy, along with efforts to eliminate inefficient mines, may help to ease the severe domestic oversupply” of coal, Deng said by phone from Guangzhou. “It will take several years to take effect.”

Renewable Boost
The country will also close more than 1,000 coal mines next year, taking out 60 million metric tons of unneeded capacity, according to the Xinhua report. China shuttered a similar number of mines this year, wiping out 70 million tons of production, according to a separate statement from the NEA dated Dec. 29. The country is on track to produce 3.58 billion tons of coal this year, down 0.5 percent from 2014, according to the NEA.
China plans to increase wind and solar power capacity by more than 21 percent and have at least 20 gigawatts of new wind power installations and 15 gigawatts of additional photovoltaic capacity next year, according to the NEA statement.
Beijing officials on Friday raised the city’s air pollution alert to orange, the second-highest on the four-grade scale, warning children and the elderly to avoid outdoor activities as limited visibility from the thick smog forced the airport to cancel 227 departures. The chronic air pollution has renewed calls for the government to make better forecasts and act faster to help clear the skies over the city of 21.5 million.

Coal demand in China has slid as its economy slows amid a shift toward consumption-led growth and while it intensifies efforts to rein in pollution. China plans to ask companies to replace electricity generated from their own coal-fired plants with renewable energy, the National Development and Reform Commission said last month.

Thermal coal at the port of Newcastle in Australia, a global benchmark, dropped to $50.63 a ton in the week ended Dec. 25, the lowest since December 2006, according to data from Globalcoal. Prices have declined 18 percent this year.
China’s total coal production capacity including under mines construction is estimated at more than 5 billion tons while its coal output for next year will probably reach 3.7 billion tons, leaving more than 20 percent of its capacity idle, according to David Fang, a director with China Coal Transport and Distribution Association in Beijing.
“We expect to see less downside pressure on coal prices in view of ongoing production cuts in 2016 and demand recovery, albeit at a slow pace,” said Helen Lau, an analyst with Argonaut Securities (Asia) Ltd. “China is still oversupplied.”
The NEA estimates China next year will consume 3.96 billion tons of coal, 550 million tons of oil and 205 billion cubic meters of natural gas, according to the Xinhua report.

The Storm That Will Unfreeze The North Pole

The Atlantic Monthly - Robinson Meyer

It caps off a month — and year — of weird weather.

Arctic sea ice in the spring Wasif Malik / Flickr

The sun has not risen above the North Pole since mid-September. The sea ice—flat, landlike, windswept, and stretching as far as the eye can see—has been bathed in darkness for months.
But later this week, something extraordinary will happen: Air temperatures at the Earth's most northernly region, in the middle of winter, will rise above freezing for only the second time on record.
On Wednesday, the same storm system that last week spun up deadly tornadoes in the American southeast will burst into the far north, centering over Iceland. It will bring strong winds and pressure as low as is typically seen during hurricanes.
That low pressure will suck air out of the planet's middle latitudes and send it rushing to the Arctic. And so on Wednesday, the North Pole will likely see temperatures of about 35 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius. That's 50 degrees hotter than average: It's usually 20 degrees Fahrenheit below zero there at this time of year.Winter temperatures have only snuck above freezing at the North Pole once before. Eric Holthaus, Slate's meterologist, could not find an Arctic expert who had witnessed above-freezing temperatures at the pole between December and early April.
2015 is the warmest year ever recorded. Thirteen of the top 14 warmest years on the books have happened this century. And here in the United States, it has been a hot, strange month. Many cities across the northeast smashed their Christmas and Christmas Eve temperature records not at midday, but at the stroke of midnight. For the hundred-plus years that New York temperatures have been recorded, the city has never been warmer than 63 degrees Fahrenheit on a December 24. Yet at 1 a.m. on Christmas Eve of this year, the thermometer measured 67 degrees.
Some of this North American heat is a regular feature of every El Niño. (Indeed, I wrote about this El Niño-associated heat a few weeks ago.) But in the Arctic, this level of warmth is unprecedented. In order for this huge, hot storm to reach Iceland on Wednesday, it's punching  right through the Jet Stream, the atmospheric "river" that brings temperate weather to Europe. Yet El Niño should typically reinforce this current, explains the climate writer Robert Scribbler—for the Jet Stream to weaken is a sign that something else is going on.
While institutional science will take years, if not decades, to confirm a correlation between human-forced climate change and strong North Atlantic storms, Scribbler believes that Wednesday's insane warmth at the pole resembles the southern incursions of the "polar vortex" that have been seen in recent winters. These changes are related to human-forced climate change, he writes: a sign that something in the atmosphere has gone "dreadfully wrong."

Link

• Is Hope Possible After the Paris Agreement?

To Help Stop Global Warming, Curb Short-Lived Pollutants

Los Angeles Times - Veerabhadran Ramanathan and Daniel Press*

People walk through Beijing wearing masks on Dec. 22, a heavy pollution evening. (Lintao Zhang / Getty Images)

Among climate scientists, the consensus is that we must become carbon-neutral by 2050 to avoid catastrophic environmental disruptions. Negotiators at the recent summit in Paris accordingly focused on curbing carbon dioxide emissions.
There's a major problem, however, with a CO2-centric strategy. Because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for a century or more, and because we won't abandon fossil fuels overnight, neutrality by 2050 simply isn't good enough to keep the Earth from warming 2 degrees Celsius — the generally agreed-upon limit — much less the ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees C that many nations support.

As we move toward carbon neutrality, we must also restrict methane, carbon soot, ozone and hydrofluorocarbon coolants.

If we're serious about preventing or at least slowing climate change, we have to broaden our hit list; even as we move toward carbon neutrality, we must also restrict methane, carbon soot, ozone and hydrofluorocarbon coolants. These pollutants are about 25 to 4,000 times more potent warmers than carbon dioxide, but they remain in the atmosphere from mere days in the case of carbon soot to 15 years in the case of HFCs.
Curbing the emissions of these short-lived climate pollutants, or SLCPs, unlike curbing carbon emissions, will have an immediate effect and can dramatically slow global warming within a few decades.
To put real numbers on it: If we reduce our emissions of methane 50%, black carbon 90% and fully replace HFCs by 2030, then we'll cut in half projected global warming over the next 35 years. These steps will delay environmental disaster and give us time we desperately need to radically change our energy diet.
Existing technologies, clean alternatives and regulatory mechanisms such as the 1987 Montreal Protocol that have proved effective for other climate pollutants can be quickly repurposed to deal with SLCPs.

Climate change is indeed a cause of social conflict

In November, the 197 parties to the Montreal Protocol agreed to work toward an HFC amendment in 2016. Some parts of the world aren't waiting. India and Pakistan committed to phase down HFCs. Mexico has pledged to cut SLCPs 25% by 2030. California has already cut its carbon soot and ozone-forming gases 90% and is on its way to curbing all four SLCPs.
There's no downside to this approach. By curbing short-lived pollutants, not only will we obtain short-term relief from rapid warming, but we will also slow sea-level rise, increase crop yields and score a major victory for public health. Indoor and outdoor pollution today causes more than 7 million premature deaths annually. Curbing SLCPs can benefit us now, saving potentially 40 million lives over the next 20 years.
What we have in front of us isn't a choice between pulling lever one (carbon dioxide) or lever two (SLCPs); it's crucial that we pull both levers with all of our collective might. We have a moral imperative to act immediately with everything at our disposal, not only because there's no Planet B — as environmental activists put it — but because climate change seriously harms human well-being.
Beijing's air quality index hit 253 this month, registering in the "very unhealthy" zone. The last time Los Angeles County reached that level was in 1991. Many cities around the world have reduced urban air pollution using technologies and rules that have stood the test of time, while constantly evolving. California is already pulling both levers, while its population and its economy are growing and its people are breathing cleaner air.
By acting unilaterally or in small alliances, it's possible to make real progress on climate change now, above and beyond what the Paris agreement calls for. We have the levers; we just need to pull them.

*Veerabhadran Ramanathan is distinguished professor of climate sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and a council member of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Daniel Press is a professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz and author of "American Environmental Policy: The Failures of Compliance, Abatement and Mitigations."