Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Yvo de Boer, head of the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, has accused the European Union (EU) of demanding too much of developing nations in return for financial support. "When European finance ministers talk about developing countries, as a prerequisite for financial support, having to put comprehensive national strategies in place, that goes beyond what was agreed in that fragile process in Bali," he said.

The EU has proposed including developing nations in an expanded emissions trading scheme. This, according to de Boer, would result in "financial resources after the fact, after they have realized the reduction," whereas "what developing countries are looking for is investment capital up front." Barbara Helfferich, EU spokeswoman for the environment, responded that "of course we want developing countries to develop low carbon strategies and plans before we would commit money, but it's not a case of, 'You do this first and then you get the money.' It's in no way tit for tat."

The Chinese province of Xinjiang intends to construct 59 reservoirs to collect glacier water. The twin aims of the ten-year project are to adjust seasonal water levels and to compensate for the longer-term loss of water as the glaciers shrink. There is particular concern about urban water supplies. "At the moment there is plenty of water in the big cities. But it is hard to say how long it will last," said He Yuanqing of the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute in Lanzhou. "On one hand, global warming is accelerating the melt. But on the other, it is increasing rainfall, so we need a way to store the extra water."

The border between Italy and Switzerland is to be redrawn because glacial melt has shifted key reference points. "In places the conventional border fixed in 1861 followed water courses, and where glaciers have melted these may have changed significantly," said Luca Mercalli, president of the Italian Meteorological Society. The melting of the glaciers has been accelerating since the very hot summer of 2003," he reported. "That heatwave caused a lot of changes in the landscape, and many landslides resulted from the melting of the permafrost. For the first time ever the zero-degree altitude went higher than 4,000 metres, and the morphology of many parts of the mountains began to change."

A controversial experiment mounted by Italian and German scientists has "dampened hopes" that fertilizing the Southern Ocean with dissolved iron might limit global warming by taking carbon out of the atmosphere. While growth of tiny phytoplankton was stimulated, these phytoplankton were eaten by crustacean zooplankton and this limited the amount of carbon sequestered.

The phytoplankton biomass doubled in size during the first two weeks of the experiment, taking carbon dioxide out of the ocean water. "However, the increasing grazing pressure of small crustacean zooplankton prevented further growth of the phytoplankton bloom," explained Wajih Naqvi from the National Institute of Oceanography in Dona Paula, Goa, India. Only a modest amount of carbon sank out of the surface layer by the end of the experiment and, hence, the transfer of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to the ocean in compensation was minor. The experiment was undertaken by the National Institute of Oceanography and the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.