Tiempo Climate Newswatch

The falling price of carbon should not lead to concerns about the viability of the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), according to analysts. "Looking at one year is not a fair indication of what is going on. Real expectations should be based on 2012 and beyond," comments Christian Egenhofer at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels. The price of an ETS permit dropped from close to 31 euros last July to just over 8 euros in February in response to the current economic crisis. "The credibility of the scheme would suffer if the price was below 8 euros for any length of time. That would call into question the viability of new Clean Development Mechanism projects and have a major political impact globally," said Deutsche Bank.

Lord Turner, chair of the United Kingdom's Committee on Climate Change, has called for consideration of a minimum price for carbon permits so that low prices do not scare off investors. "We have concerns [that] if the carbon price continued at its present level it would not send the signals which are required," Turner said recently. "I'd think, given the fall in the carbon price this year, that's something that should be considered. It would, of course, need to be considered at European level." The European Commission appears unwilling to support the price of carbon. "If you look at the legislation, there is no way the Commission can intervene in the market to support prices or set any kind of floor price," Artur Runge-Metzger, the Commission's chief climate change negotiator, said recently. "That is something we leave to market forces, otherwise we will not have a market."

An increasing number of species are extending their range polewards as the Arctic waters warm, according to researchers from the Arctic Ocean Diversity (ARCOD) project. The snow crab, for example, has crossed the Bering Strait to the Chukchi Sea for the first time. "This is an example of a general trend we are observing where water is warming further north and making this region more suitable for southerly species," said Rolf Gradinger from the University of Alaska in Fairbanks.

The researchers have also found that smaller species are replacing larger ones in parts of the Arctic. "We are finding two smaller species of plankton. This difference in size is big enough to cause a problem for the breeding populations of birds and whales as they will be forced to eat smaller species that has less energy content," Gradinger warned. The ARCOD project is part of the Census of Marine Life, a ten-year project aiming to chart the diversity, distribution and abundance of ocean life.

Tropical trees have grown larger over the past 40 years and currently take up 20 per cent of fossil-fuel carbon emissions from the atmosphere, an international team of researchers reports. "To get an idea of the value of the sink, the removal of nearly five billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by intact tropical forests, based on realistic prices for a ton of carbon, should be valued at around 13 billion pounds per year," observed co-leader of the study Lee White, who is based in Gabon with the Wildlife Conservation Society.

"We are receiving a free subsidy from nature," says Simon Lewis at the University of Leeds, lead author of the paper. "Tropical forest trees are... substantially buffering the rate of climate change." One possible reason for the trend in tree growth is that the higher level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may be acting like a fertilizer. Lewis warns, though, that "whatever the cause, we cannot rely on this sink forever. Even if we preserve all remaining tropical forest, these trees will not continue getting bigger indefinitely."