Tiempo Climate Newswatch

"Ultimately, the cities hardest hit by climate change will be the ones least prepared," warns Neeraj Prasad of the World Bank. Prasad was speaking as a new handbook on improving the resiliency of cities was launched by the World Bank and its collaborators, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery.

Cities play a central role in the economy. The manual estimates that a one-metre rise in sea level will create a loss of two per cent in national Gross Domestic Product as water supplies, agriculture, fisheries, tourism and energy security are affected. The handbook, intended as a tool for city managers, provides sound practices from cities worldwide. It uses a dual track approach to encourage cities to develop their own strategies for adaptation and to mitigate the consequences of future natural disasters, as well as identifying means of limiting greenhouse gas emissions. "Every city is different. You have to respond based on what your city is," Prasad says. "There is no cookie-cutter solution to climate change impacts. It's important that you are able to anticipate the likely impacts on your city and make the decision to deal with that."

The trend towards more frequent tropical downpours seems worse than expected, according to a new study. The researchers compared rainfall fluctuations with trends in temperature and atmospheric moisture. "We saw a distinct signal of the increased frequency of increased rainfall as the tropics warmed up and then a reduction as the tropics cooled down," said Richard Allan of the University of Reading in the United Kingdom. The link is stronger than suggested by climate modelling studies.

The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season will be more active than predicted earlier, the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has reported. The forecast now stands at 14 to 18 named storms, with six to nine developing into hurricanes. "One of the key things that's critical is the fact that a couple of named storms have formed in the deep tropics and usually that's a very strong indicator that the season will be above normal," said Gerry Bell at the Climate Prediction Center. Other forecast groups have also predicted a more severe storm season than expected.

Scientists from the Australian National University claim that untouched eucalypt forests store three times more carbon than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has assumed. "In Australia, and probably globally, the carbon-carrying capacity of natural forests is underestimated and therefore misrepresented in economic valuations and in policy options," the researchers conclude.

The difference arises because older forests store a greater amount of carbon in the soils and trees. The IPCC estimate generalizes across old-growth stands and younger plantations. The oldest areas of forest, with trees up to 80 metres tall, can store 2000 tonnes of carbon per hectare. According to Brendan Mackey, co-author of the study, "protecting the carbon in natural forests is preventing an additional emission of carbon from what we get from burning fossil fuel."