Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The United States has tried to remove references to climate change from plans for a disaster early warning system, under discussion at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction held in Kobe, Japan, 18-22 January. Arguing that there are "other venues" in which the climate issue should be discussed, Mark Lagon of the United States State Department, said that the "desire is that this does not distract from" the conference process.

Opening the meeting, Jan Egeland, in charge of United Nations relief efforts, said, "We now face threats of our own collective making: global warming, environmental degradation and uncontrolled urbanization." An early warning system for tsunamis was high on the agenda and UN officials promised to have an Indian Ocean system running within 12 to 18 months.

The result of the conference, the Hyogo Declaration, commits participants to implement the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015, the aim of which is "the substantial reduction of disaster losses, in lives and in the social, economic and environmental assets of communities and countries." Ambitious in its intention, but lacking in concrete details of how its goals might be achieved was the view of some commentators. Egeland, though, believes that halving the number of deaths from natural disasters over the next ten years "is achievable".

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From the conference

• Wired News
• Terra Daily
• Blog, David Cyranoski

• Background, UNISDR
• Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015, UNISDR (0.25Mb download)
• Daily reports and summary, ENB

Drought is affecting more of the world and rising temperatures are partly responsible, according to recent research. Aiguo Dai and colleagues at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, in the United States, have found that the proportion of the global land surface experiencing very dry conditions has risen from 10 to 15 per cent in the early 1970s to around 30 per cent by 2002. About half the rise could be accounted for by temperature trends.

"Global climate models predict increased drying over most land areas during their warm season, as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases increase," according to Dai. "Our analyses suggest that this drying may have already begun." The United States, running against the global trend, has become wetter over the past 50 years. The study was based on the Palmer Drought Severity Index, a measure of dryness or wetness derived from temperature and precipitation data.

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• Science Daily

The Canadian government is considering adopting tough rules to curb greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, following the lead set by the State of California. Seven other states in the United States have said they will copy California's approach.

"If Canada joins the eight US states, it gets us very close to a tipping point where the manufacturers realize they are going to have to make cleaner cars for the North American market," said Bill Magavern, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club. He estimates that Canada, California and the other eight states account for 30 per cent of the North American market.

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• ENN