NASA Begins Study Of Australia's Great Barrier Reef

NASA

The Gulfstream III carrying NASA's PRISM instrument being readied for science flights from Cairns, Australia. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/BIOS.

A NASA airborne mission designed to transform our understanding of Earth's valuable and ecologically sensitive coral reefs has set up shop in Australia for a two-month investigation of the Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest reef ecosystem.
At a media briefing today at Cairns Airport in North Queensland, Australia, scientists from NASA's COral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) mission and their Australian collaborators discussed the mission's objectives and the new insights they expect to glean into the present condition of the Great Barrier Reef and the function of reef systems worldwide.
"CORAL offers the clearest, most extensive picture to date of the condition of a large portion of the world's coral reefs," said CORAL Principal Investigator Eric Hochberg of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS), Ferry Reach, St. George's, Bermuda, prior to the briefing. "This new understanding of reef condition and function will allow scientists to better predict the future of this global ecosystem and provide policymakers with better information for decisions regarding resource management."

Bleached and stressed coral on the Great Barrier Reef. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/BIOS.

CORAL's three-year mission combines aerial surveys using state-of-the-art airborne imaging spectrometer technology developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, with in-water validation activities. The mission will provide critical data and new models for analyzing reef ecosystems from a new perspective. CORAL will generate a uniform data set for a large sample of reefs across the Pacific Ocean. Scientists can use these data to search for trends between coral reef condition and the natural and human-produced biological and environmental factors that affect reefs.
Over the next year, CORAL will survey portions of the Great Barrier Reef, along with reef systems in the main Hawaiian Islands, the Mariana Islands and Palau.
In Australia, CORAL will survey six discrete sections across the length of the Great Barrier Reef, from the Capricorn-Bunker Group in the south to Torres Strait in the north. Two locations on the reef — one north (Lizard Island Research Station) and one south (Heron Island Research Station) — will serve as bases for in-water validation activities. Scientists from Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the University of Queensland in Brisbane are collaborating with NASA and BIOS to conduct additional complementary in-water validation activities.

The Great Barrier Reef: Australia's national treasure
Located in the Coral Sea off Queensland, the Great Barrier Reef encompasses more than 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands. It is more than 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers) long and covers an area of about 133,000 square miles (344,400 square kilometers). The largest single structure made by living organisms on Earth, the reef teems with biodiversity, including about 400 species of coral. It attracts about 2 million visitors a year; in turn, tourism and fishing generate billions annually and employ tens of thousands of people. However, the reef faces environmental pressures from various human and climate change impacts.
"The Great Barrier Reef is Australia's national treasure, so having a broader understanding of its condition and what's threatening it will help us better understand how we can protect it," said Tim Malthus, research leader of CSIRO's Coastal Monitoring, Modeling and Informatics Group in Canberra, Australia. "Along with surveying several large sections of the reef, CORAL will also survey the health of corals in the Torres Strait, a complex high-tide area that has been historically less studied. It is also opportunistic for us to see if the reef is recovering after the recent bleaching event."
Stuart Phinn, professor of geography at the University of Queensland (UQ), said CORAL will provide Australian coral reef science and management with unique new maps and mapping approaches. These will expand ongoing efforts to map and understand Great Barrier Reef dynamics. "Being able to support and collaborate on NASA's CORAL project will enable groups like ours to advance our capabilities and transfer them to Australian science and management agencies," Phinn said. "Part of this includes building a process for mapping the entire reef. UQ and CORAL will exchange field data, knowledge and experience to cross-validate mapping and monitoring approaches."

An urgent need for better data
Around the world, concerns among scientists, resource managers and the public that coral reef ecosystems are degrading at alarming rates due to human-induced factors and global change have motivated increased assessment and monitoring efforts. The urgency of the problem has forced estimates of global reef status to be synthesized from a variety of local surveys with disparate aims, methods and quality.
The problem with current assessments of reef degradation, said Hochberg, is that the data supporting these predictions are not uniform and surprisingly sparse. "Virtually all reef assessments to date rely on in-water survey techniques that are laborious, expensive and limited in spatial scope," he said. "Very little of Earth's reef area has been directly surveyed. More importantly, there are no existing models that quantitatively relate reef conditions to the full range of biological and environmental factors that affect them -- models that can help scientists better understand how coral reefs will respond to expected environmental changes. CORAL addresses an urgent need in the face of ongoing worldwide reef degradation, and also serves as a pathfinder for a future satellite mission to globally survey the world's reefs."
Natural, balanced coral reefs comprise mosaics of coral, algae and sand on the seafloor that, together, drive the structure and function of reef ecosystems. When corals die, algae rapidly take over their skeletons. A non-stressed, healthy reef will usually increase coral coverage as it recovers from disturbance. But when a stressed reef is disturbed, the carbonate structure of its coral erodes, and the reef ultimately becomes a flat-bottom community dominated by algae, shifting rubble and sand, with little to no coral recovery. Such ecosystem phase shifts, as they are called, represent a radical change in a reef's character, marked by a decline in the diversity of reef flora and fauna.
CORAL will generate scientific data products describing coral reef condition, measuring three key components of reef health for which we currently have limited data: composition, primary productivity and calcification. Primary productivity is a measure of how much energy is available to drive biological activity in a reef system. Calcification measures the net gain in carbonates, which determine a reef's long-term growth.

PRISM: Shining new light on coral reef condition
To accomplish its science objectives, CORAL will use JPL's Portable Remote Imaging Spectrometer (PRISM). PRISM will literally peer through the ocean's surface to generate high-resolution images of reflected light in the specific regions of the electromagnetic spectrum important to coral reef scientists. Mounted in the belly of a modified Tempus Solutions Gulfstream IV aircraft, PRISM will survey reefs from an altitude of 28,000 feet (8,500 meters) to generate calibrated scientific data products.
"PRISM builds on an extensive legacy of JPL spectrometers that have successfully operated for NASA and non-NASA missions," said Michelle Gierach, NASA CORAL project scientist at JPL. "It provides the coral reef science community with high-quality oceanographic imagery at the accuracy, range, resolution, signal-to-noise ratio, sensitivity and uniformity needed to answer key questions about coral reef condition. PRISM data will be analyzed against data for 10 key biological and environmental factors affecting coral reef ecosystems, acquired from pre-existing data sources."
NASA collects data from space, air, land and sea to increase our understanding of our home planet, improve lives and safeguard our future. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records. The agency freely shares this unique knowledge and works with institutions around the world to gain new insights into how our planet is changing.

Links

• NASA science flights study effect of summer melt on Greenland Ice Sheet
• NASA analysis finds August 2016 another record month
• Big coastal cities sink faster than seas rise
• 10 interesting things about ecosystems

U.S. Defence Experts And Military Officers Sound Alarm About Climate Change

Ottawa Citizen - David Pugliese

U.S. teachers are not teaching their students enough about climate change, new study shows. Jonathan Hayward / AP

Climate change is increasing the risk of international conflict and putting U.S. national security at risk, warns a coalition of 25 retired officers and Democrat and Republican security experts.
“There are few easy answers, but one thing is clear: the current trajectory of climatic change presents a strategically-significant risk to U.S. national security, and inaction is not a viable option,” said a statement signed by the security advisors and published by the Center for Climate and Security in Washington.
The advisors include retired General Anthony Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, retired Admiral Samuel Locklear, head of the U.S. Pacific Command until last year, Geoffrey Kemp, President Ronald Reagan’s national security advisor, Dov Zakheim, George W. Bush’s Under-Secretary of Defense and Army Chief of Staff General Gordon Sullivan who served under U.S. President Bill Clinton.
The advisors are calling on the next U.S. president to create a cabinet-level position to deal with climate change-related security issues.
Another report, from another panel of retired officers, warned that extreme weather is threatening U.S. coastlines and military installations.
“The complex relationship between sea level rise, storm surge and global readiness and responsiveness must be explored down to the operational level, across the Services and Joint forces, and up to a strategic level as well,” the report noted.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that Arctic sea ice this summer shrank to its second lowest level since scientists started to monitor it by satellite. Scientists say this is another ominous signal of global warming.
Here is the rest of the Associated Press article:

The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Colorado said the sea ice reached its summer low point on Saturday, extending 1.6 million square miles (4.14 million square kilometers). That’s behind only the mark set in 2012, 1.31 million square miles (3.39 million square kilometers).
Center director Mark Serreze said this year’s level technically was 3,800 square miles (10,000 square kilometers) less than 2007, but that’s so close the two years are essentially tied.
Even though this year didn’t set a record, “we have reinforced the overall downward trend. There is no evidence of recovery here,” Serreze said.
“We’ve always known that the Arctic is going to be the early warning system for climate change. What we’ve seen this year is reinforcing that.”
This year’s minimum level is nearly 1 million square miles (2.56 million square kilometers) smaller than the 1979 to 2000 average. That’s the size of Alaska and Texas combined.
“It’s a tremendous loss that we’re looking at here,” Serreze said.
It was an unusual year for sea ice in the Arctic, Serreze said.
In the winter, levels were among their lowest ever for the cold season, but then there were more storms than usual over the Arctic during the summer. Those storms normally keep the Arctic cloudy and cooler, but that didn’t keep the sea ice from melting this year, he said.
“Summer weather patterns don’t matter as much as they used to, so we’re kind of entering a new regime,” Serreze said.
Serreze said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Arctic was essentially ice free in the summer by 2030, something that will affect international security.
“The trend is clear and ominous,” National Center for Atmospheric Research senior scientist Kevin Trenberth said in an email. “This is indeed why the polar bear is a poster child for human-induced climate change, but the effects are not just in the Arctic.”
One recent theory divides climate scientists: Melting sea ice in the Arctic may change the jet stream and weather further south, especially in winter.
“What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic,” Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann said.
“It looks increasingly likely that the dramatic decrease in Arctic sea ice is impacting weather in mid-latitudes and may be at least partly responsible for the more dramatic, persistent and damaging weather anomalies we’ve seen so many of in recent years.”

Links

• Bipartisan Groups of Military and Security Leaders Urge New Course on Climate
• Climate Security Consensus Project Statement
• Climate and Security Advisory Group: Briefing Book for a New Administration
• Military Expert Panel Report: Sea Level Rise and the U.S. Military’s Mission

Summer 2016 Has Seen Some Of The Scariest Observable Effects Of Climate Change Yet

NewsMic - Max Plenke

Image Credit: AP

In 1848, two ships — the HMS Terror and the HMS Erebus — sank while trying to navigate through the Northwest Passage. It was brutal: a 900-mile-long sea route punctuated with heavy sea ice that connects the northern Atlantic and Pacific oceans through an arctic maze. Neither ship made it. All 129 men on the expedition died. Last month, the Crystal Serenity, a 14-deck, 820-foot cruise ship, sailed from Anchorage, Alaska to New York City using that same pass, but without the icy obstacles. What was formerly the perilous end of a crew of British Royal Navy sailors is now, for the first time ever, a luxury cruise route.  And it couldn't have happened if a rapidly warming planet hadn't melted away the danger. That's good news for the people who own cruise ships, or have the $30,000 to $156,000 necessary to book passage on such cruise ships — but it's terrible news for the rest of us. In the last few months, we've witnessed record-breaking temperatures, extreme flooding and an unprecedented mammalian extinction. And unfortunately, that doesn't indicate an anomalous summer. It means we're witnessing the tangible and quantifiable results of global warming. We reached out to an earth scientist, a biologist and a geologist who agreed that over the past three months the effects of climate change have accelerated, and they've left their mark in three notable ways.

Climate change claimed its first mammalian species

A now-extinct Bramble Cay melomys Source: Wikimedia

A June report from researchers at an Australian government environmental group deduced that the Bramble Cay melomys, a tiny rodent found exclusively on an island in the Great Barrier Reef, hadn't been detected since 2009. After an exhaustive search of an island that, during high tide, was only 6.2 acres — down from 9.8 acres in 1998 — the researchers officially declared the species extinct. They pegged "dramatic habitat loss" due to "human-induced climate change" as the cause, marking the first time a mammal died off due to climate change.
Mark Urban, an associate professor from the University of Connecticut's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, said he was shaken when he heard about the report. "The first thing that came to my head was, 'It's happening. This is what we predicted and now we're seeing it occur,'" he said in a phone interview Tuesday. "It's not great news, but maybe this is exactly ... what we need to understand the immediacy of the risk."

"The first thing that came to my head was 'It's happening. This is what we predicted and now we're seeing it occur."

Last year, Urban published a study titled "Accelerating extinction risk from climate change," which looked at over 130 separate studies to figure out what kind of threat the warming planet poses to different species. His findings were what one might expect: Small species living on small islands, like the melomys, or on "sky islands," like the tops of mountains, were at greatest risk of extinction since they probably couldn't survive relocation. It spells disaster for a slew of other small mammals like the American pika, a mountain rock bunny that lives in the Sierra mountains. 

The American Pika Source: Shana S. Weber/AP

If changes aren't made to slow the progress of climate change, said Urban, one in six species will be at risk of going extinct. "The surprise here is the accelerated risk ... if we just keep doing what we're doing," he said. "It's critical we don't get there."

Arctic sea ice levels are now the lowest they've ever been

Melting Arctic sea ice Source: DOMINIQUE FAGET/Getty Images

In August, scientists from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center released evidence that sea ice levels in the Arctic are extremely low compared to what they were 10 years ago. "Now, we're kind of used to these low levels of sea ice," NASA sea ice scientist Walt Meier said in a press release released by the agency. "It's the new normal." While species extinction and rampant flooding are the things we can witness with our own eyes, the scariest things are happening somewhere few of us will ever go — but are having an impact all of us can feel all the same. Melting sea ice is the effect that, as the planet warms up, the ice at the top of the planet melts. This isn't news; we've been hearing about the melting polar ice caps for years. But it's gotten so bad that scientists are saying it's entirely changed the ecosystem up north. "We're seeing the greening of the arctic," Charles Miller, principal investigator for the Carbon in Arctic Reservoirs Vulnerability Experiment at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a phone interview Tuesday. "Because of climate change effects at these latitudes, we're seeing increase in plant growth." Through the course of his team's research in Alaska, Miller has seen temperatures reach absurdly high levels. Last July, the town of Deadhorse, Alaska, set the all-time record high temperature for a town on the Arctic Ocean: 85 degrees Fahrenheit. "That part of the world should be frozen most of the year," Miller said.

A pipeline forced to shutdown in Deadhorse, Alaska Source: Al Grillo/AP

When the northernmost parts of the planet start to emulate beach weather, bigger problems arise, like the melting of permafrost, a usually reliable layer of always-frozen ground. "Permafrost can be harder than concrete — you need special machinery to get through it," Miller said. When the permafrost melts, that infrastructure, which has been solidly frozen for tens of thousands of years, collapses. Land elevation drops. And construction, whether that's pipelines, buildings or entire communities, is compromised. Because of that phenomenon, the village of Kivalina, Alaska, is practically being devoured by northern waters as its permafrost base thaws beneath it, the sea level inching closer to residents' doorsteps. "They regularly do aerial fly-overs because of the permafrost failure," Miller said. "They're worried the village will literally erode into the water."

The village of Kivalina, Alaska Source: Andrew Harnik/AP

The failure of permafrost isn't the only problem with a warming arctic. According to Miller, there are 1,500 billion metric tons of organic carbon frozen in the arctic soil — enough that, as it thaws out, the arctic region could turn into the carbon-emission equivalent of a continent-sized exhaust pipe. "It's possible the carbon could become mobilized," Miller said. "With the same amount of greenhouse gases we've seen with fossil fuels like coal and oil, there might be natural feedback from permafrost that contributes tens of billions of tons of carbon over the coming centuries." If tens of billions of tons of organic carbon are released from the frost, it could all end up in the atmosphere — becoming a gigantic and unstoppable source of greenhouse gases.

Climate change has turned extreme flooding into a regular occurrence

Flooding in Louisiana left thousands of people displaced Source: Max Becherer/AP

In mid-July, 13 people died when roughly two feet of water pummeled southern Louisiana. A storm like that should, statistically, only have an annual exceedance probability of less than 0.2% — meaning it should only happen once every 500 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The storm was, instead, the eighth of its kind in about 12 months, the latest in a string of storms in Texas, Oklahoma, South Carolina, West Virginia and Maryland.
Storms in general are getting stronger and more frequent, according to Beth Christensen, Director of Adelphi University's Environmental Studies Program. Higher storm frequency doesn't necessarily mean your town's going to flood — unless the air is full of moisture. Unfortunately, in New Orleans, it was.

A 2015 flood took over roads and parks in Houston, Texas Source: Eric Kayne/Getty Images

"We are in record territory," the National Weather Service said in a statement, after an agency-launched weather balloon recorded astronomical levels of atmospheric moisture. According to Christensen, there's a strong correlation between higher global temperatures and more intense rain. When you have high heat, you get more evaporation from bodies of water. When you have more evaporation, you have more moisture in the atmosphere, meaning more humidity — or air full of water vapor. So when the storm falls, according to NOAA, that water vapor turns the rain fat and heavy. "Add this tendency to flood to the higher sea levels resulting from, one, increased melting of ice in the high latitudes, and two, volumetric increases associated with the warmer water, and we can expect more of these events, not fewer, in the future," Christensen said. Heavy flooding doesn't only knock out power and beat up homes. It hit India's tea crops hard, decreasing production by 7.22% in July, according to the Economic Times. Recently, floods in Jamaica ruined up to $8 million in coffee beans set for export. And in August, flash floods in China destroyed several vineyards, resulting in an "overnight loss" of about 4 million yuan, or around $600,000.  "We can document that these events are anthropogenic," she said, meaning derived from manmade environmental pollution. "This is our new reality."

A solar power project in the United Arab Emirates Source: Kamran Jebreili/AP

So is the planet past salvation?
Even though there's an "every little bit helps" mentality when it comes to fighting against increased carbon emissions, we're in larger initiative territory if we're going to save the planet: taking cues from countries like Costa Rica, which didn't burn a single fossil fuel to power its electrical grid for two months; converting the U.S.' own power grid to a more efficient, computer-controlled, "smart" technology; and following through on the Paris Agreement, the legally-binding agreement signed by more than 170 countries in April, pledging actions to restrict the planet's temperature rise to under 3.6-degrees Farenheit, widely considered the danger zone. It wouldn't be easy, fast or cheap. But if the last year is any indication, we can no longer afford to be armchair observers in a rapidly changing global event.
"We need to search for alternatives to carbon-based energy systems like fossil fuels," Miller said. "It's having a noticeable impact on the Earth as an entire system." "It's not enough to think these things are localized," he concluded. "Every action we take has a global impact."

Links

• As Republicans Deny Climate Change, the UN Says it Could Cost the World $2 Trillion 
• It's Hard to Argue With Climate Change When You See Over 100 Years of Data at Once
• The Earth's Axis Is Tilting Thanks to Climate Change, NASA Scientists Say
• Doctors Warn Climate Change Will Have "Devastating Effect" on Human Health

Climate Change Health Risks Will Hit The Poor Hardest – So What Can Be Done?

The Conversation - Bob Mash

The livelihood of this fishing community in Nigeria is being threatened as a result of climate change. Reuters/Akintunde Akinleye 

Discussions about climate change and the effects it will have on public health and the global burden of disease have been long in the making. These consequences are now starting to come to fore.
Several examples have recently played out. For example, in Russia, an anthrax outbreak in the remote region of Siberia meant that nomadic communities and thousands of reindeer were affected. The outbreak was due to the bodies of infected people buried in 1941 defrosting and releasing anthrax spores into the water system as the permafrost defrosts with global warming.
Closer to home, prisoners are starving in Malawian jails and suffering from acute severe malnutrition as a result of food shortages due to erratic climate conditions from both droughts and floods. Malawi has since declared a state of national disaster.
These unanticipated public health consequences of unsustainable development reminds the world that the issues are not in the distant future, but instead face us now.
Climate change exerts its influence on public health through three main mechanisms.
First, the effects of extreme weather events such as heat, storms, floods or fire that directly cause loss of life or illness.
Second, there are indirect effects of climate change on natural systems. This leads to, for example, changes in disease vectors such as mosquitoes that spread malaria, availability of fresh water, crop survival, or the concentration of pollen in the air.
Third, the effects on economic and social systems as people migrate or conflict over scarce resources.
These effects can be moderated by the presence of early warning systems and effective disaster and emergency medical services.
More affluent communities with more resources will be better able to adapt and withstand these effects. Having strong primary healthcare systems will also increase the resilience of communities.

But in sub-Saharan Africa many communities do not have these protective mechanisms in place, and will be particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change.

Electricity pylons in front of cooling towers at the Lethabo Thermal Power Station, an Eskom coal-burning power station near Sasolburg in the northern Free State province. Reuters/Siphiwe Sibeko

Disease and environmental health
The World Health Organisation has recently published a new report on the burden of disease due to modifiable environmental risks. The report estimates that 23% of all deaths globally can be attributed to environmental risks. This percentage rises to 26% in children.
These environmental risks include:

• air, water and soil pollution;
• ultraviolet radiation;
• the built environment;
• the occupational environment;
• agricultural methods; and
• climate and ecosystem changes.

Children, the elderly, and those living in low- and middle-income countries are most at risk.
The diseases that make the greatest environmentally attributable contribution to the global burden of disease are stroke, ischaemic heart disease, diarrhoea, lower respiratory tract infection, cancers and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. And over the last ten years the contribution of non-communicable diseases has significantly increased.
An example in South Africa is from Mpumalanga’s Highveld, which has 12 coal fired power stations. The collective air pollution from these power stations has been reported as being responsible for just over half of the deaths from respiratory disease and cardiovascular disease in the area.


Living differently
Sustainable development has been defined as:

… development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals recognise that improving the wellbeing and health of people requires an approach that protects the planet from degradation. This is required because there are ecological limits to development that is based on ever-increasing consumption.
But the climate crisis is just one of the manifestations of the world’s collective inability to live sustainably.
There is also a loss of ecosystems and the biodiversity. This compromises the natural services they render to humanity: food, fresh water, clean air, building materials and even new medicines.
Economic inequality is increasing. It is reported that 62 people now own as much wealth as 50% of the planet’s population.
At the same time, we have seen unprecedented population growth and increasing urbanisation that is characterised by the growth of slums or informal settlements.

The 21st-century challenge
Humanity’s biggest challenge in the 21st century may be its ability to find a way of living sustainably and to tackle the crises of both planetary and public health. This will require action on a global scale by world leaders and by a change in collective consciousness.
There are some encouraging signs. Brazil has joined China and the US in ratifying the Paris agreement on tackling climate change. China and the US are responsible for 38% of global emissions.
World religious leaders have also joined forces to promote a change of consciousness as part of a “season of creation”.
It can be summed up in the video message from Pope Francis, who says the relationship between poverty and the fragility of the planet requires another way of managing the economy and measuring progress, conceiving a new way of life.

Links

• Hard Evidence: will climate change affect the spread of tropical diseases?
• Why climate change is very bad for your health
• Worldwide, climate change is worse news for women
• Not so cheap: Australia needs to acknowledge the real cost of coal

Was That Climate Change? Scientists Are Getting Faster At Linking Extreme Weather To Warming

The Guardian - Graham Readfearn

Attribution studies are letting researchers respond quickly to questions about human influence – before the news cycle turns elsewhere

Leslie Andermann Gallagher surveys the flood damage to her home in Sorrento, Louisiana, in August. A team of scientists have been able to conclude that human-caused climate change had probably doubled the chance of the state being hit by such a downpour. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Is it still true to say you can’t point to any single extreme weather event and claim you can’t link it to human-caused climate change?
Plenty of people seem to think this is still the case. But a rapidly evolving field of climate science suggests that it’s not.
Take Australia’s prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, for example, who was touring Tasmania after the devastating flooding there in June.
Turnbull pointed out that “larger and more frequent storms” were predicted by climate scientists, but then followed up with that stock standard caveat:

But you cannot attribute any particular storm to global warming, so let’s be quite clear about that. The same scientists would agree with that point.

 But in fact, climate scientists are finding ways to examine the influence of increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere on extreme events.
This is a field of science called attribution research. Dr Andrew King, at the University of Melbourne, has been involved with several attribution studies.
So is it time to throw out that old stock response that you can’t blame climate change for any single event? He says:

I would reframe the question – has climate change altered the likelihood of an event happening, like a flood in Louisiana or a heatwave in Melbourne? We can usually say with those types of events that climate change has increased the likelihood of an event happening.

When extreme weather events do strike, questions about human influences are coming up more and more. Some scientists want to be able to respond quickly with more relevant answers, before the news cycle turns elsewhere.
For example, King joined colleagues to look at the record warm sea temperatures that caused the mass bleaching of corals on the Great Barrier Reef last summer. The results were out in April while the reef’s plight was still making headlines.
“We found that the warm sea temperatures were made at least 175 times more likely because of climate change,” King says.
To carry out the research, King looked at two sets of climate models. One was set up to reproduce the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that we have now and the other had those human influences removed.
In short, the models showed the kind of conditions that eventually killed about a quarter of the corals on the reef are now expected to come around once every four years. But in a world without the extra greenhouse gases, you might expect to see those ocean temperatures once every 1,000 years, if at all.
The reef research is about to be submitted to a journal and so the results could change. But King says the methods being used had been peer-reviewed.
King also looked at the heatwave that had world leaders sweating during the November 2014 G20 summit in Brisbane. Getting a 38C day in November was “at least 44% more likely” thanks to climate change, his study found.
From torrential downpours to record ocean temperatures, heatwaves and the monotonous breaking of monthly and yearly global temperature records, more and more studies are finding a distinct human fingerprint on events.
There have been a bunch of attribution studies looking at heat records in Australia. A study of its consecutive run of record warm springs in 2013 and 2014 found it would have been almost impossible without all that extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Another study found that without the added greenhouse gases, Australia’s record hot 2013 would only have come along once every 12,000 years. But now, thanks chiefly to the burning of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution, we might expect a record breaker every six years.
Dr Sophie Lewis, at Australian National University, was involved in both those studies. She says climate attribution is a “fast-evolving field” thanks to quicker computers, better collaborations and established methods.
But like King she’s not a fan of simply asking if climate change “caused” something, or was “to blame” for particular events. She says:

A better question is to ask if climate change has influenced a particular event. That’s an important distinction.

An example she gave is 2015 – the planet’s warmest year on record that coincided with an El Niño climate system.
El Niños are natural events that tends to deliver hotter temperatures, but they are happening over the top of human-induced warming that pushes temperatures to record-breaking levels. Lewis says:

We know that both natural and human-caused climate change have impacts on events and we don’t want to lose that complexity. People do understand that the environment and the climate system are complicated.

Speed counts
Getting results out faster gives the media, the public and policymakers more informed answers soon after events hit.
In early August, for example, Louisiana was struck by torrential rains that caused severe flooding – killing 13 people and damaging about 60,000 homes. Less than a month later, a team of scientists concluded that human-caused climate change had probably doubled the chances of Louisiana being hit by downpours like that.
The lead author of that study, Dr Karin van der Wiel, of Princeton University and the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told me:

Extreme events have always happened and this could have happened a hundred years ago. But it would have been much more rare.

Van der Wiel says researchers managed to carry out the analysis quickly because the data from the climate models was readily available and they had good had rainfall data for the area.
The Louisiana study has been submitted to a journal where the peer-review process happens out in the open so, again, the conclusions could change.
Now, some scientists are uneasy about research being publicised before it has been through peer review, for obvious reasons. What if, for example, there’s a mistake in the analysis that completely changes the conclusions?
Both Van Der Wiel and King say they can have a degree of confidence in their results because the methods have already been tested. I’ll leave you with King’s thoughts on this.

As far as I see it, one purpose of event attribution is to communicate to the public and policy makers that climate change is altering how extreme events are occurring – both their frequency and how bad they are.
That’s why we’re moving towards doing this work more quickly. If we can better inform the debate, then that provides some useful information that’s grounded in science, when often there has been just speculation.

Links

• Our best shot at cooling the planet might be right under our feet
• Analysis Debunking Malcolm Roberts: the case against a climate science denier
• Great Barrier Reef bleaching made 175 times likelier by human-caused climate change, say scientists
• Fossil fuel emissions behind Australia's record-breaking spring heat, suggests study

Climate Change 'Significant And Direct' Threat To U.S. Military: Reports

Reuters - Idrees Ali

Sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington man the rails as the ship pulls out of Hong Kong. REUTERS/U.S. Navy

The effects of climate change endanger U.S. military operations and could increase the danger of international conflict, according to three new documents endorsed by retired top U.S. military officers and former national security officials.
"There are few easy answers, but one thing is clear: the current trajectory of climatic change presents a strategically-significant risk to U.S. national security, and inaction is not a viable option," said a statement published on Wednesday by the Center for Climate and Security, a Washington-based think tank.
It was signed by more than a dozen former senior military and national security officials, including retired General Anthony Zinni, former commander of the U.S. Central Command, and retired Admiral Samuel Locklear, head of the Pacific Command until last year.
They called on the next U.S. president to create a cabinet level position to deal with climate change and its impact on national security.
A separate report by a panel of retired military officials, also published on Wednesday by the Center for Climate and Security, said more frequent extreme weather is a threat to U.S. coastal military installations.
"The complex relationship between sea level rise, storm surge and global readiness and responsiveness must be explored down to the operational level, across the Services and Joint forces, and up to a strategic level as well," the report said.
Earlier this year, another report said faster sea level rises in the second half of this century could make tidal flooding a daily occurrence for some installations.
Francesco Femia, co-founder and president of the Center for Climate and Security, said the reports show bipartisan national security and military officials think the existing U.S. response to climate change "is not commensurate to the threat".
The fact that a large and bipartisan number of former officials signed the reports could increase pressure on future U.S. administrations to place greater emphasis and dedicate more resources to combat climate change.
Addressing climate change has not been a top priority in a 2016 campaign dominated by the U.S. economy, trade and foreign policy.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has said that global warming is a concept "created by the and for the Chinese" to hurt U.S. business.
Democrat Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has advocated shifting the country to 50 percent clean energy by 2030 and promised heavy regulation of fracking.

Links

• Bipartisan Groups of Military and Security Leaders Urge New Course on Climate
• Climate Security Consensus Project Statement
• Climate and Security Advisory Group: Briefing Book for a New Administration
• Military Expert Panel Report: Sea Level Rise and the U.S. Military’s Mission

Turnbull Government's Dysfunctional Politics: Foolish And Deadly For Climate

Independent Australia - Peter Boyer

The latest Climate Change Authority report highlights the pressing challenge of global warming. A strong leader would recognise this and bring all forces to bear on it — Turnbull's inaction, is beyond foolish, writes Peter Boyer.

(Image via worldwarming.info)

 THE FINAL REPORT of the Climate Change Authority's (CCA) two-year review of national climate policy ('Towards a climate policy toolkit: Special review on Australia's climate goals and policies') tries to retrieve something of value out of a political mess.
But the report is compromised from the start by the implacably opposed forces it wants to reconcile: a scientific establishment increasingly anxious about climate change and a political establishment determined to treat it as a second-order issue.
The CCA under former Reserve Bank governor Bernie Fraser did what its legislation demanded: give evidence-based advice independent of government —  but it's had to endure a hostile Coalition Government determined to eradicate all trace of Julia Gillard's carbon price scheme.
After a defiant Senate blocked its bill to abolish the CCA, Tony Abbott's Government sought to marginalise it by keeping it at arm's length and ignoring its advice.
The Coalition got the scalp it wanted last year with the resignation of Fraser, who found he couldn't do the bidding of the government while abiding by the CCA's charter.
The new-look board under ecologist, company director and administrator Wendy Craik has kept a distance between itself and government, noting that Australia's emissions will have to improve markedly in the near future. But it's clearly more politically sensitive than its predecessor.

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 While the "old" CCA found that Australia should set its 2030 reduction target somewhere between 45 and 65 per cent below 2005 levels – way above the Coalition's 26-28 per cent – Craik's board has avoided making any recommendation on targets.
Instead it proposes a "policy toolkit" building on current policies, with new measures aimed, Craik says, at

' ... a long term durable solution to Australia's climate challenge.' (p88)

This toolkit, she said, would 'take account of Australia's climate policy history', be suited to the needs of individual sectors, and be capable of being

' ... scaled up in the future to meet the emission reduction challenges in the Paris Agreement.' (p9)

That sounds a lot like carbon pricing.
Aware of Coalition paranoia about anything that looks like a tax, the CCA report proposes an 'emissions intensity scheme', using a market mechanism to control emissions from electricity generation, along with an 'enhanced safeguard mechanism' (p66) to control industrial and resource emissions.
Wendy Craik and her board are stuck between a rock – a cabal of conservative politicians zealously blocking any effective climate policy – and a hard place, what Australia has to do to meet its international commitments. They deserve some sympathy.
But only some. As two disaffected CCA members pointed out last week, the CCA's charter clearly dictates that it must focus on the implications of those commitments.

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 Atmospheric scientist David Karoly and economist Clive Hamilton argue that the CCA report fails to address Australia's 2013-50 carbon budget — the total amount that the CCA has previously said we can release if we're to contribute our fair share to holding warming below 2C.
Karoly and Hamilton point out that if we stick to the Turnbull Government's current target, by 2030 we'll have used up over 90 per cent of that budget of 10.1 billion tonnes. The trajectory of emissions would then have to drop precipitously to reach net zero within five years — an impossible task.
If 2C is looking impossible for us, where does that leave Paris's more ambitious "aspirational" target? Swedish research published last week calculates that Australia has just six more years at current emission rates before it has entirely used up its budget to hold warming below 1.5C.
When we first learned of global warming a quarter-century ago, crunch time was decades away and postponing strong action could be presented as a plausible option. Now, with time available counted not in decades but a handful of years, it's beyond foolish.
A confident leader with competent deputies in a fully functional political system will acknowledge an unprecedented and pressing challenge and bring all forces to bear on it. Lesser ones will maintain the party divide, divert attention and pretend they have control. Sounds sadly familiar.
People are optimistic by nature – we have to be or we wouldn't get up in the morning – and I'm painfully aware that repeated warnings come at the cost of diminished impact. We all have to get on with our lives. But like Karoly and Hamilton, I don't know what else to do.

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Links

• Climate Change Authority
• Carbon pricing in Australia
• Climate Change Authority chair Bernie Fraser resigns
• The Climate Change Authority report: a dissenting view
• Trading Off Global Fuel Supply, CO2 Emissions and Sustainable Development