Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The Climate Alliance of European Cities with Indigenous Rainforest Peoples has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by ten per cent every five years. The long-term strategy will result in a halving of emissions below the 1990 baseline by 2030. Climate Alliance cities and municipalities will cut emissions through energy conservation and efficiency measures and the use of renewable energy sources. They are also committed to avoiding procuring tropical timber derived from destructive logging and helping indigenous partners to conserve the rainforests.

"The new target... extends far beyond the year 2010, but also permits short-term monitoring of performance," reported Joachim Lorenz, a Munich city councillor. "It allows local authorities who are only just starting their climate protection activities to pursue concrete quantitative goals," he continued. The goal was announced at the 14th International Climate Alliance Annual Conference, held 4-6th May in Vienna, Austria. At the meeting, participants from across Europe exchanged experience and discussed strategies, measures and barriers affecting climate protection at the local level.

More information

• ENS

• Press release, Climate Alliance

China is to build an eco-city, Dongtan, near Shanghai. With energy from wind turbines, biofuels and recycled organic waste, managed by a system designed by Arup Urban Design and the University of East Anglia, the aim is to generate zero carbon emissions and reduce average energy demands by two-thirds through the city layout, energy infrastructure and building design. "We don't want to replicate a European city in China, or create an alienating futuristic environment," says Braulio Morera of Arup. "We want to reinterpret a Chinese city - and Chinese urban lifestyle - for the 21st century. Bicycles will be a major feature, as will boats, but the bikes will be powered by renewables, and the boats by hydrogen."

China increased its carbon emissions by a third between 1992 and 2002, according to the annual Little Green Data Book, published by the World Bank. The World Bank's Steen Jorgensen blames inefficient investment in power generation and warns that it will be difficult for a country such as China to switch to clean technology. "They can't afford to take [the old, heavily polluting power plants] out of commission to repair them because basically, if you don't have power for even three months, that has huge economic costs," he said.

More information

• New Zealand Herald
• BBC
• Press release, Arup

• Reuters
• Cybercast News Service
• Hindustan Times
• Little Green Data Book, World Bank

A new study suggests that conflicting influences on regional climate are generating substantial impacts in South Asia. "It appears that the whole tropical region in this area is being pulled in different directions," reports Veerabhadran (Ram) Ramanathan, director of the Center for Clouds, Chemistry and Climate at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. "The observed trend of reduced sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface, with compensating solar heating aloft from the pollution, also called the ‘brown haze,’ appears to be masking the greenhouse warming in the northern Indian Ocean, while the greenhouse warming continues unabated in the southern Indian Ocean," he continued. "We are starting to see that the air pollution affects sunlight and is potentially having a major disruption of the rain patterns, with some regions getting more and some less."

Research by Tim Garrett and Chuanfeng Zhao of the University of Utah, has shown that the Arctic haze is heightening the effect of greenhouse warming. "Particulate pollution from factories and cars can be transported long distances to the Arctic, where it changes clouds so that they become more effective blankets, trapping more heat and further aggravating climate warming," said Garrett. The effect is most pronounced in the winter when there is no sunlight.

More information

• Newswise

• Science Daily
• Background on Arctic haze