Fewer Days Of Extreme Cold And More Days Of Extreme Heat In Europe

ScienceDaily (Jan. 31, 2009) — Scientists from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) have selected 262 European observatories which analysed the series of minimum and maximum daily temperatures from 1955 to 1998 to estimate trend variations in extreme temperature events. According to the study, in Europe days of extreme cold are decreasing and days of extreme heat increasing. From 0.5ºC to 1ºC in the average minimum temperature, and from 0.5ºC to 2ºC in the average maximum temperature.

Continuous rises in annual temperatures in certain areas lead to “changes in the environment and significant increases in the frequency of values considered extreme temperatures,” SINC was told by Emiliano Hernández, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the UCM and one of the study's authors. To reach this conclusion, the scientists worked with 135 stations with a daily series of minimum temperatures and 127 stations with a daily series of maximum temperatures, located in 34 European countries.

The study, recently published in the journal Atmosfera, looked at temperatures from January 1, 1955 to December 31, 1998, and analysed the pattern of extreme temperature days in Europe. “All the series of temperatures have been homogenised to eliminate possible discontinuity points, and highlight any factor that is not meteorological or climatic,” the physicists pointed out.

Higher frequency of days of extreme heat

During the 44 years of analysis, the researchers recorded extreme cold events (between the months of November and March) and extreme heat events (from June to September) noting a slight decrease in days of extreme cold and increase in days of extreme heat,” commented Hernández.

65.2% of the stations that measured minimum temperatures showed that these temperatures have been increasing, while 40% of the stations that measured maximum temperatures showed that these temperatures have risen too. Observatories that detected these trends are located in Western Europe, including the British Isles and Iceland for both extreme cold days and extreme heat days.

“The reduction in days of extreme cold is due to an increase in the average minimum temperature from 0.5ºC to 1ºC during the analysis period, while for days of extreme heat, the increases in the average maximum temperature were from 0.5ºC to 2ºC,” the scientists explained.

The decrease in days of extreme cold and increase in days of extreme heat are due to both local and global factors, according to the scientists. Some of them include the heat island produced in cities or the change in the general circulation of the atmosphere which directly determines extreme temperature events.

The danger of heatwaves

Apart from their direct relationship with climate change, extreme temperatures (minimum and maximum) particularly affect human health. The scientific community has explained on numerous occasions that the impact of heatwaves is far greater than that of minimum temperatures.

Since 1860, the planet's average temperature has increased by 0.60ºC. “In particular, in the 2003 heatwave, which affected most of Europe, the average temperature was 3°C more than the normal value for the summers from 1961 to 1990 with the most significant increases being in central France, Switzerland, northern Italy and southern Germany,” stressed Marco Cony, co-author of the study and physicist at the UCM.

An example of the effects of days of extreme heat, which will increase in frequency, is the heatwave that hit Europe in 2003. That summer record maximum temperatures were recorded in monthly, weekly and daily scales. For example, in Switzerland a temperature of 41.50ºC was recorded while in Portugal, 47.30ºC.

Experts warn that excessive heat can cause stress, worsening of diseases and even death, such as in the summer of 2003, when over 30,000 people died throughout Europe from the high temperatures.

Journal reference:

1. Cony, M.; Hernández, E.; Del Teso, T. Influence of synoptic scale in the generation of extremely cold days in Europe. Atmosfera, 21(4): 389-401, October, 2008

Rising Acidity Threatens Oceans

The oceans have long buffered the effects of climate change by absorbing a substantial portion of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. But this benefit has a catch: as the gas dissolves, it makes seawater more acidic. Now an international panel of marine scientists says this acidity is accelerating so fast it threatens the survival of coral reefs, shellfish and the marine food web generally.

The panel, comprising 155 scientists from 26 countries and organized by the United Nations and other international groups, is not the first to point to growing ocean acidity as an environmental threat, but its blunt language and international credentials give its assessment unusual force. It called for “urgent action” to sharply reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.

“Severe damages are imminent,” the group said Friday in a statement summing up its deliberations at a symposium in Monaco last October.

The statement, called the Monaco Declaration, said increasing acidity is interfering with the growth and health of shellfish and eating away at coral reefs, processes that would eventually affect marine food webs generally.

Already, the group said, there have been detectable decreases in shellfish, shell weights and interference with the growth of coral skeletons.

Jeremy B. C. Jackson, a coral expert at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said “there is just no doubt” that the acidification of the oceans is a major problem. “Nobody really focused on it because we were all so worried about warming,” he said, “but it is very clear that acid is a major threat.”

Carbon dioxide, principally from the burning of fossil fuels, is the major component of greenhouse gas emissions, which have risen steadily since the beginning of the industrial revolution in the 18th century.

Oceans absorb about a quarter of carbon dioxide emissions, the group said, but as the gas dissolves in the oceans it produces carbonic acid.

The group said acidity of ocean surface waters has increased by 30 percent since the 17th century.

“The chemistry is so fundamental and changes so rapid and severe that impacts on organisms appear unavoidable,” according to James Orr, who headed the symposium’s scientific committee. Dr. Orr is a chemical oceanographer at the Marine Environmental Laboratory in Monaco, an affiliate of the International Atomic Energy Agency, a United Nations body.

According to the declaration, “ocean acidification may render most regions chemically inhospitable to coral reefs by 2050.” The group said that acidification can be controlled only by limiting future atmospheric levels of the gas. Other strategies, including “fertilizing” the oceans to encourage the growth of tiny marine plants that take up carbon dioxide might actually make the problem worse in some regions, it said.

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/31/science/earth/31ocean.html

Glacier Mass Balance Losses 1980-2007

Link to data tables and website: http://www.geo.unizh.ch/wgms/mbb/mbb10/sum07.html

Figure 1: Mean annual specific mass balance of reference glaciers. Click on image to enlarge the details.

Global warming from CO2 will increase 5-fold over the next millennium, University of Liverpool scientists predict

ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2009) — Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that heating from carbon dioxide will increase five-fold over the next millennium.

Scientists studied the impact that current carbon emissions have on the delicate balance between air and sea carbon exchange. They found that the ocean’s ability to store excessive amounts of carbon dioxide over thousands of years will affect the long-term heating of the planet.

The ocean acts as an enormous carbon sink which naturally absorbs any extra carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere. Its ability to store more carbon dioxide than both the atmosphere and land provides long-term storage for the carbon dioxide emitted by human activities.

Scientists at Liverpool, however, have found that if all conventional coal, oil and gas carbon reserves are exhausted, the excessive amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will begin to alter the ocean’s natural chemistry and hinder its ability to absorb and exchange the gas.

Professor Ric Williams, from the University’s School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, explains: “It is accepted that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations lead to an increase in heating around the globe. It was, however, unclear as to how the ocean’s ability to store carbon could affect the future overall heating of the earth.

“The excessive amount of carbon in the atmosphere will make the oceans more acidic and hamper the ability of the oceans to absorb further carbon from the atmosphere. The extra carbon dioxide remaining in the atmosphere will lead to an increase in the overall heating of our planet, making sea levels rise and exacerbating the melting of the Arctic ice caps.

“To prevent a situation like this from happening scientists are working to develop carbon-capture techniques, which aim to remove excess carbon from identifiable sites, such as the atmosphere around fossil fuel plants, and permanently store them away.”

The research, in collaboration with the University of East Anglia, The University of Bristol and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council.

SAN FRANCISCO—The quickest way to curb Arctic melting now underway may be to turn off the tap of short-lived pollutants swirling north from cities and industry far to the south, say scientists at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Preliminary data suggest that these pollutants can increase Arctic surface temperatures as much as 3 °C—an effect equal to what scientists expect from carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases. But unlike carbon dioxide, these pollutants accumulate seasonally and dissipate far more quickly than CO₂, suggesting that reducing these emissions represents one of the best hopes for staving off further unprecedented retreats of Arctic sea ice.

"At least it gives us something that we have a chance to mitigate, as opposed to something like [CO₂], which has a much longer time scale given the rapid changes in the Arctic," said Patricia Quinn, an atmospheric chemist at NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.

These pollutants include hydrocarbons like solvents and benzene, nitrogen oxides from motor vehicles and power plants, sulfates from coal-fired power plants and soot from industry and agriculture. They are the scourge of urban areas, contributing to asthma and other health problems. But in the Arctic, their effects are profoundly magnified—particularly for soot, or black carbon, Quinn said.

"There's a huge temperature inversion in the Arctic during the winter," Quinn said. "You don't get much vertical mixing, and you don't get much precipitation, so stuff that gets in there just sits. It can be in there for weeks."

The Arctic winter extends pollution's lifetime. In sunnier, more temperate regions, nitrogen oxides and hydrocarbons readily combine to form ground-level ozone, or smog—a greenhouse gas. But sunlight both builds and destroys, and in those regions the compounds are short-lived, lasting for days or even hours. In contrast, the dark of the Arctic winter acts like an ice chest, storing and preserving pollutants as they gradually accumulate over the season.

When the sun returns in the spring, several things happen at once, all to the detriment of the Arctic in particular and the global climate in general, researchers say.

* The sun bakes the accumulated ozone precursors into climate-warming smog. "You have all the precursors sitting there, and then when the sun comes up, you have all these ingredients for ozone," Quinn said. "And because it's dark, you can get ozone transported up there without it being destroyed."

* Particulate pollutants—also called aerosols—accumulate in and form clouds and haze, enhancing the clouds' ability to insulate and increasing surface warming.

* The atmosphere starts to mix again and precipitation returns, washing black carbon, or soot, from the air. It lands on the icepack just as the ice is starting to melt and creates a devastating feedback loop, Quinn said. "If you're now taking the ice and covering it with something black, it accelerates (the melting) even further."

Other than smelters in northern Russia and an increasing shipping presence, the Arctic has very few sources of localized industrial pollution. Most pollution gets carried north by air currents from sources in urban centers across North America, Asia and Europe. The net result, said John Burkhart, a scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, is that "the Arctic is poised to be as polluted as other places."

The effect, researchers say, is comparable to that of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases combined. Preliminary data presented at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting last month indicates short-lived pollutants have increased Arctic surface temperatures up to 3 °C in winter.

So while reducing CO₂ remains a vital part of any global warming mitigation strategy, inertia and political hurdles associated with CO₂ have experts suggesting that the fastest way to put the brakes on Arctic warming is to curb emissions of short-lived pollutants far to the south.

Furthermore, researchers say, CO₂'s long lifespan and inertia means even an immediate and substantial reduction in CO₂ emissions will take years to alter Arctic warming trends. Yet the same reduction in short-lived pollutants, they note, could substantially reduce Arctic warming now -- and bring numerous health benefits to people throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

"We have very little leverage to affect the effects of CO₂," said Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "This is not so for short-lived pollutants."

Elizabeth Grossman is a Portland-based writer and author, most recently, of "High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health."

This article originally ran at The Daily Climate, the climate change news source published by Environmental Health Sciences, a nonprofit media company.

Link to article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=prescription-for-arctic-melting-clear-the-air

Statement to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

As Prepared
Hon. Al Gore

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

We are here today to talk about how we as Americans and how the United States of America as part of the global community should address the dangerous and growing threat of the climate crisis. We have arrived at a moment of decision. Our home – Earth – is in grave danger. What is at risk of being destroyed is not the planet itself, of course, but the conditions that have made it hospitable for human beings.

Moreover, we must face up to this urgent and unprecedented threat to the existence of our civilization at a time when our country must simultaneously solve two other worsening crises. Our economy is in its deepest recession since the 1930s. And our national security is endangered by a vicious terrorist network and the complex challenge of ending the war in Iraq honorably while winning the military and political struggle in Afghanistan. As we search for solutions to all three of these challenges, it is becoming clearer that they are linked by a common thread – our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels.

As long as we continue to send hundreds of billions of dollars for foreign oil – year after year – to the most dangerous and unstable regions of the world, our national security will continue to be at risk.

As long as we continue to allow our economy to remain shackled to the OPEC rollercoaster of rising and falling oil prices, our jobs and our way of life will remain at risk. Moreover, as the demand for oil worldwide grows rapidly over the longer term, even as the rate of new discoveries is falling, it is increasingly obvious that the roller coaster is headed for a crash. And we’re in the front car.

Most importantly, as long as we continue to depend on dirty fossil fuels like coal and oil to meet our energy needs, and dump 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, we move closer and closer to several dangerous tipping points which scientists have repeatedly warned – again just yesterday – will threaten to make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable destruction of the conditions that make human civilization possible on this planet. We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that’s got to change.

For years our efforts to address the growing climate crisis have been undermined by the idea that we must choose between our planet and our way of life; between our moral duty and our economic well being. These are false choices. In fact, the solutions to the climate crisis are the very same solutions that will address our economic and national security crises as well.

In order to repower our economy, restore American economic and moral leadership in the world and regain control of our destiny, we must take bold action now.

The first step is already before us. I urge this Congress to quickly pass the entirety of President Obama’s Recovery package. The plan’s unprecedented and critical investments in four key areas – energy efficiency, renewables, a unified national energy grid and the move to clean cars – represent an important down payment and are long overdue. These crucial investments will create millions of new jobs and hasten our economic recovery – while strengthening our national security and beginning to solve the climate crisis.

Quickly building our capacity to generate clean electricity will lay the groundwork for the next major step needed: placing a price on carbon. If Congress acts right away to pass President Obama’s Recovery package and then takes decisive action this year to institute a cap-and-trade system for CO2 emissions – as many of our states and many other countries have already done – the United States will regain its credibility and enter the Copenhagen treaty talks with a renewed authority to lead the world in shaping a fair and effective treaty. And this treaty must be negotiated this year. Not next year. This year.

A fair, effective and balanced treaty will put in place the global architecture that will place the world – at long last and in the nick of time – on a path toward solving the climate crisis and securing the future of human civilization.
I am hopeful that this can be achieved. Let me outline for you the basis for the hope and optimism that I feel.

The Obama Administration has already signaled a strong willingness to regain U.S. leadership on the global stage in the treaty talks, reversing years of inaction. This is critical to success in Copenhagen and is clearly a top priority of the administration.

Developing countries that were once reluctant to join in the first phases of a global response to the climate crisis have themselves now become leaders in demanding action and in taking bold steps on their own initiatives. Brazil has proposed an impressive new plan to halt the destructive deforestation in that nation. Indonesia has emerged as a new constructive force in the talks. And China’s leaders have gained a strong understanding of the need for action and have already begun important new initiatives. Heads of state from around the world have begun to personally engage on this issue and forward-thinking corporate leaders have made this a top priority.

More and more Americans are paying attention to the new evidence and fresh warnings from scientists. There is a much broader consensus on the need for action than there was when President George H.W. Bush negotiated – and the Senate ratified – the Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992 and much stronger support for action than when we completed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

The elements that I believe are key to a successful agreement in Copenhagen include:
• Strong targets and timetables from industrialized countries and differentiated but binding commitments from developing countries that put the entire world under a system with one commitment: to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants that cause the climate crisis;
• The inclusion of deforestation, which alone accounts for twenty percent of the emissions that cause global warming;
• The addition of sinks including those from soils, principally from farmlands and grazing lands with appropriate methodologies and accounting. Farmers and ranchers in the U.S. and around the world need to know that they can be part of
the solution;
• The assurance that developing countries will have access to mechanisms and resources that will help them adapt to the worst impacts of the climate crisis and technologies to solve the problem; and,
• A strong compliance and verification regime.

The road to Copenhagen is not easy, but we have traversed this ground before. We have negotiated the Montreal Protocol, a treaty to protect the ozone layer, and strengthened it to the point where we have banned most of the major substances that create the ozone hole over Antarctica. And we did it with bipartisan support. President Ronald Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill joined hands to lead the way.

Let me now briefly discuss in more detail why we must do all of this within the next year, and with your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like to show a few new pictures that illustrate the unprecedented need for bold and speedy action this year.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, January 28, 2009; doi: 10.1073/pnas.0812721106

Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions

"I have read the Solomon paper.

It’s an excellent demonstration of the bathtub principle — the concept of stocks and flows, which prior research shows many people, even many highly educated people, don’t understand. Our mental models suggest that if we stop the growth of emissions, we will stop global warming, and if we cut emissions, we’ll quickly return to a cooler climate. We tend to think that the output of a process should be correlated with — look like — its input. If greenhouse gas emissions are growing, we think, the climate will warm, and if we cut emissions, we imagine that the climate will cool. In systems with significant accumulations, however, such correlational reasoning does not hold. Rather, it’s more like filling a bathtub. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is like the level of water in a bathtub. The level grows as long as you pour more water in through the faucet than drains out. Right now, we pour about twice as much CO2 into the atmospheric tub than is removed on net by natural processes.

Stabilizing atmospheric concentrations requires emissions to fall to the net removal rate. Further, because of the processes highlighted in the Solomon paper and other analyses, including the IPCC AR4, the net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere is likely to fall as the stocks that absorb all that carbon, particularly the oceans, fill up. There are other key “bathtubs” — accumulations — that contribute to the irreversibility of climate change Solomon highlights. First, global mean surface temperature depends on the quantity of heat stored at the surface of the earth (earth, lower atmosphere, and the mixed layer of the oceans). That stock of heat is increased by net radiative forcing, the difference between the flow of energy coming in (primarily from the sun) less the flow of energy radiated back to space and the flow of heat transfered to the deep ocean. Today that inflow exceeds the outflow, so the average temperature is rising. Stabilizing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may stop the growth in net radiative forcing, but will not reduce the net inflow of energy (net radiative forcing) to zero. So temperatures will continue to rise until the planet warms enough to restore radiative balance. Solomon’s paper points out that the heat currently absorbed by the oceans does not disappear, but eventually returns to warm the surface. Thus temperatures won’t fall quickly even if atmospheric GHGs peak and eventually drop. And so on. Land-based ice in glaciers and ice-sheets will keep contributing to sea level rise as long as melting exceeds snowfall accumulation; stopping the growth of temperature would not stop the net melting.

What all this means is that the rate at which the climate returns to “normal” — say, early 20th century conditions — is so slow that, for key factors like sea level, precipitation patterns, ice sheets, and so on, the flow out of the bathtub is very very slow. So climate is a bit like the national debt. The US federal deficit has exploded in recent years, and the national debt has exploded as well. But suppose we could instantly cut the deficit to zero — drop it from about a trillion dollars per year to zero. What would happen to the debt? Of course it would not fall, but would instead stop growing at its all time peak value. Because the drains out of the various bathtubs involved in the climate — atmospheric concentrations, the heat balance of the surface and oceans, ice sheet accumulations, and thermal expansion of the oceans — are small and slow, the emissions we generate in the next few decades will lead to changes that, on any time scale we can contemplate, are irreversible.

One more critical point: it’s important that people not react to Solomon’s work with despair. Yes, a certain amount of climate change, due to past emissions, is inevitable, and will not be reversible. But it would be tragic if people concluded that therefore there is nothing we can do, that it is futile to reduce emissions, and that therefore all efforts should shift to adaptation. To the contrary: if nothing is done to cut emissions, and soon, the climate our children and grandchildren will face will almost certainly be far less hospitable, and there will be no turning back. By the time we know for certain how bad it will be it will be too late to take any corrective action. The Solomon paper should finally bury the idea that we can wait and see. It further strengthens the case for immediate, strong mitigation. The good news is that it’s getting cheaper every day to cut carbon emissions. Through learning, scale economies, R&D, and other forms of innovation, new technologies for carbon-neutral renewable energy are becoming more available and less expensive. Each megawatt of solar or wind capacity we build lowers the cost of the next and the next — a positive feedback we need to strengthen if we are to avoid irreversible harm to the ability of the planet to sustain us.

Best

John Sterman

Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management
Director, MIT System Dynamics Group
MIT Sloan School of Management"

Link to Andrew Revkin's Dot Earth blog post: http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-bathtub-effect/

Demographic models and IPCC climate projections predict the decline of an emperor penguin population

President Barack Obama has called for the US to become energy independent, saying its reliance on foreign oil and global warming posed threats.

Outlining his energy priorities, he said the country would not be held "hostage to dwindling resources, hostile regimes, and a warming planet."

He called for greater fuel efficiency and an "energy economy" aimed at creating millions of jobs.

He also ordered a review of whether states can set car emission standards.

This challenges a Bush administration decision which favoured a national standard for vehicle pollution.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton picked Todd Stern -- who took part in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations on climate change from 1997 to 1999 -- as her envoy for climate change, the state department said.

Mr Stern, who served under former President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001, will be the Obama administration's principal adviser on international climate policy and strategy as well as its chief climate negotiator.

"Containing climate change will require nothing less than transforming the global economy from a high-carbon to a low-carbon energy base," said Mr Stern after Mrs Clinton announced his appointment.

"But done right, this can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and become a driver for economic growth in the 21st Century."

Crossroads of history

At his first White House news conference since becoming president, Mr Obama said he would reverse America's dependence on foreign oil while creating jobs, but warned there was no "quick fix."

OBAMA ENERGY PLAN Reverse US dependence on foreign energy. Review of decision to block states from setting own emission targets. Orders the transportation department to come up with new short-term rules on how carmakers can improve fuel efficiency. Federal buildings to become more efficient. Double 'green' energy from wind, sun and biofuels over next three years Obama diary: First 100 days

"We will commit ourselves to steady, focused, pragmatic pursuit of an America that is freed from our energy dependence, and empowered by a new energy economy that puts millions of our citizens to work."

He added: "Now is the time to meet the challenge of this crossroads of history, by choosing a future safer for our country, prosperous for our planet, and sustainable."

Mr Obama ordered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to review its refusal of a waiver which had previously allowed California to set its own -- stricter -- vehicle emission and fuel efficiency standards.

He said California had taken bold moves in implementing the standards.

Mr Obama said: "The days of Washington dragging its heels are over.

"My administration will not deny facts. We will be guided by them."

His statement that the US would lead on climate change was a clear swipe at his predecessor's sceptical view of global warming, says the BBC's James Coomarasamy in Washington.

Energy efficiency drive

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had asked Mr Obama to reverse the Bush administration's insistence on a single, national standard.

California wants a 30% reduction in motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions by 2016, achieved by improving fuel efficiency standards.

President Obama also ordered the transportation department to come up with new short-term rules on how carmakers can improve fuel efficiency.

A 2007 law required that new cars and trucks produced by 2020 obtain 35 miles per gallon of fuel (about 15km/litre).

However, then-President George W Bush did not put in place the regulations to enable the law to be carried out.

Car exhaust is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions

The new rules Mr Obama wants to put in place would mean the new standard is reached by 2011, the New York Times said.

The president also announced plans to make all federal government buildings more energy efficient, and pledged to cut families's energy bills by "weatherising" 2.5 million homes.

He also said the US would double its capacity for "green" energy generation, from sources such as wind, sun, and biofuels, over the next three years.

More than 3,000 miles of transmission lines would be established to transmit the energy.

In the European Union, a recently agreed climate package set out average emission targets for the whole car industry of 120g of CO2 per kilometre by 2012 for new cars, compared with current levels of 160g/km.

The EU target for 2020 is 95g/km. But CO2 emissions vary from car to car, and manufacturers have been given until 2015 to meet their specific targets for each model.

Link to article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7851038.stm

Less ice could spell bad news for a great many species

Emperor penguins, whose long treks across Antarctic ice to mate have been immortalised by Hollywood, are heading towards extinction, scientists say.

Based on predictions of sea ice extent from climate change models, the penguins are likely to see their numbers plummet by 95% by 2100.

That corresponds to a decline to just 600 breeding pairs in the world.

The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Emperor penguins, the largest species, are unique in that they are the only penguins that breed during the harsh Antarctic winters.

Colonies gather far inland after long treks across sea ice, where the females lay just one egg that is tended by the male. That means that the ice plays a major role in their overall breeding success.

What is more, the extent of sea ice cover influences the abundance of krill and the fish species that eat them -- both food sources for the penguins.

Hal Caswell of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and his colleagues used projections of sea ice coverage from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) last report.

In addition, they used a "population dynamics" model describing the mating patterns and breeding success of emperor penguins.

The model has been honed using 43 years' worth of observations of an emperor colony in Antarctica's Terre Adelie.

Slow learners

While there are a number of models and scenarios in the IPCC report, the team used only 10 of them -- those that fit with existing satellite data on sea ice.

They then ran 1,000 simulations of penguin population growth or decline under each of those 10 climate scenarios.

They are to Antarctica what the polar bear is to the Arctic Joel Cohen, Rockefeller University

The results suggest that by the year 2100, emperor penguins in the region are likely to experience a reduction in their numbers by 95% or more.

The likelihood of this occurring, according to the researchers, is at least a one-in-three chance and possibly more than eight out of 10.

Though the penguins could avert disaster by shifting their breeding patterns with the climate, the study's lead author Stephanie Jenouvrier said that was unlikely.

"Unlike some other Antarctic bird species that have altered their life cycles, penguins don't catch on so quickly," she said.

"They are long-lived organisms, so they adapt slowly. This is a problem because the climate is changing very fast."

'Conservative approach'

Several prior studies have shown that climate change can affect the reproduction and geographic distribution of species, but this is the first that makes predictions about the ultimate fate of a species as a whole.

"I don't see any reason not to take these predictions very seriously," said Dan Reuman, a population biologist at Imperial College London.

Particularly warm seasons cause Antarctic ice to break up early

"The study is based on a wide range of climate forecasts, it takes a conservative approach, it's based on a large amount of data on penguin demography, and the model accurately forecasts the data that already exist."

Dr Reuman suggests that more of this kind of work should be done to understand the species-by-species effects of climate change, and thereby the influence on whole communities.

It is an idea echoed by Joel Cohen, head of the Laboratory of Populations at Rockefeller University.

"The emperor penguin is an important species in its own right, but the whole communities in which it's embedded are also of importance," he told BBC News.

The penguins also serve as a species that particularly draws attention to the crisis in their region, he added.

"They are to Antarctica what the polar bear is to the Arctic.

Emissions Cut Won’t Bring Quick Relief, Scientists Say

Many people who worry about global warming hope that once emissions of heat-trapping gases decline, the problems they cause will quickly begin to abate.

Now researchers are saying that such hope is ill-founded, at least with regard to carbon dioxide.

Because of the way carbon dioxide persists in the atmosphere and in the oceans, and the way the atmosphere and the oceans interact, patterns that are established at peak levels will produce problems like “inexorable sea level rise” and Dust-Bowl-like droughts for at least a thousand years, the researchers are reporting in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“That peak would be the minimum you would be locking yourself into,” said Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who led the work.

The researchers describe what will happen if the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide — the principal heat-trapping gas emission — reaches 450 to 600 parts per million, up from about 385 p.p.m. today. Most climate researchers consider 450 p.p.m. virtually inevitable and 600 p.p.m. difficult to avoid by midcentury if the use of fossil fuels continues at anything like its present rate.

At 450 p.p.m., the researchers say, rising seas will threaten many coastal areas, and Southern Europe, North Africa, the Southwestern United States and Western Australia could expect 10 percent less rainfall.

“Ten percent may not seem like a high number,” Dr. Solomon said Monday in a telephone news conference, “but it is the kind of number that has been seen in major droughts in the past, like the Dust Bowl.”

At 600 p.p.m., there might be perhaps 15% less rain, she said.

In 1850, atmospheric carbon dioxide was roughly 280 p.p.m., a level scientists say had not been exceeded in at least the previous 800,000 years.

In their paper, Dr. Solomon and her colleagues say they confined their estimates to known data and effects. For example, they based their sea level estimates largely on the expansion of seawater as it warms, a relatively straightforward calculation, rather than including the contributions of glacial runoff or melting inland ice sheets — more difficult to predict but potentially far greater contributors to sea level rise.

The new work dealt only with the effects of carbon dioxide, which is responsible for about half of greenhouse warming. Gases like chlorofluorocarbons and methane, along with soot and other pollutants, contribute to the rest. These substances are far less persistent in the atmosphere; if these emissions drop, their effects will decline relatively fast.

Michael Oppenheimer, a geoscientist at Princeton, praised the report in an e-mail message as a “remarkably clear and direct” discussion of whether it would be possible to temporarily exceed a level like 450 p.p.m. and then reduce emissions in time to avoid catastrophic events like the collapse of a major inland ice sheet.

Dr. Oppenheimer said the new analysis showed that “some dangerous consequences could be triggered and persist for a long, long time, even if emissions were cut radically.”

“Policy makers need to understand,” he continued, “that in some ways once we are over the cliff, there’s nothing to stop the fall.”

Dr. Solomon said it would be wrong to view the report as evidence that it was already too late to do much good by reducing carbon emissions. “You have to think of this stuff as being more like nuclear waste than acid rain,” she said.

Acid rain began to abate when pollution contributing to it was limited. But just as nuclear waste remains radioactive for a long time, the effects of carbon dioxide persist.

“So if we slow it down,” she said, “we have more time to find solutions.”

For example, engineers may one day discover ways to remove the gas from the atmosphere. But “those solutions are not now in hand,” Dr. Solomon said. “They are quite speculative.”

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/science/earth/27carbon.html