Tiempo Climate Newswatch

It is with a great sense of personal and professional sadness that we report the death of Richard Sandbrook. Richard died of cancer on Sunday December 11th 2005.
We first discussed with Richard the vision that became the Tiempo Programme in 1989 and continued our collaboration with him as co-editors of the bulletin through the 1990s. His vision of a global climate information project that would serve the diverse interests of the developing world and promote global dialogue and understanding has guided the Tiempo Programme's development over the past 15 years.
We will miss Richard's inspiration, his wisdom, his integrity and his mischievous and irreverent sense of humour. Most of all, we will miss a valued friend.

Mick Kelly and Sarah Granich

2005 will be the second warmest year since 1860 according to the provisional global surface air temperature estimate for the year released by the UK Met Office and the University of East Anglia (UEA) in the United Kingdom. 1998 remains the warmest year on record. Eight of the ten warmest years have occurred within the past ten years. Over the Northern Hemisphere, the year has been the warmest since 1860. "The data also show that the sea surface temperature in the Northern Hemisphere Atlantic is the highest since 1880," said David Viner of the UEA Climatic Research Unit.

Adam Scaife at the Met Office Hadley Centre reckons that "these figures show that global warming is continuing and are consistent with what we expect to occur from our research into greenhouse gas emissions." Fred Singer from the Science & Environmental Policy Project, Washington DC, United States, disagrees. "If indeed 2005 is the warmest Northern Hemisphere year since 1860, all this proves is that 2005 is the warmest Northern Hemisphere year since 1860. It doesn't prove anything else, and certainly cannot be used by itself to prove that the cause of warming is the emission of greenhouse gases. It requires a more subtle examination to know how much of warming is due to man-made causes - there must be some - and how much is down to natural causes."

More information

• BBC
• Washington Post
• TerraDaily

• Press release, WMO/CRU/Met Office
• Latest monthly global surface air temperature

The United Nations has established a US$500 million emergency relief fund aimed at providing rapid assistance following natural disasters. The Central Emergency Response Fund is ten times larger than the existing facility. "The difference is that we will have a larger fund, but also that it will be more flexible," according to United Nations General Assembly President Jan Eliasson. In the past, he continued, "we had to wait for commitments before we could really start massive operations. Now we will be able to do that from the beginning, and not have to wait for individual commitments."

Meanwhile, Dieter Schiessl, World Weather Watch director, has warned that an early warning system for the Indian Ocean nations aimed purely at forecasting tsunamis, rather than a broader range of hazards, would not be financially sustainable in the long run. Speaking at a United Nations conference on a tsunami warming and mitigation system in Hyderabad, India, he said that "if we have to establish a warning infrastructure that will only be tested in very rare occurrences such as tsunamis it is simply inviting operational problems. We need to have a system that is more frequently used and that means the system should address several natural hazards and the most frequent ones such as tropical storms and flooding."

More information

• UN News Centre
• Reuters
• ReliefWeb

• TerraDaily

Land-cover change in the Amazon caused by human activity could generate about the same amount of warming in the region as greenhouse gas increases, according to a recent model simulation. In middle latitudes, the effect of local land-use changes might be to significantly reduce greenhouse warming. The study was the first projection of 21st century climate change to couple interactive ocean and atmosphere models with a land surface model in order to incorporate changes in land cover caused by agriculture, deforestation and other human activities.

"The choices humans make about future land use could have a significant impact on regional and seasonal climates," said project leader Johannes Feddema of the University of Kansas. Deforestation warms the tropics by replacing forests with less productive pasture, whereas midlatitude cropland acts as a cooling influence as the crops reflect more sunlight and release more moisture into the air. "Compared to global warming, land use is a relatively small influence. However, there are regions where it's really important," Feddema concludes.

More information

• Science Daily
• The Why Files
• Guardian

• Link to Science article, SciDev.Net

Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin challenged the United States to participate fully in the climate treaty process as he opened the ministerial segment of the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP11) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Montreal, Canada. "Climate change is a global challenge that demands a global response. Yet there are nations that resist, voices that attempt to diminish the urgency or dismiss the science, or declare, either in word or indifference, that this is not our problem to solve. Well, let me tell you, it is our problem to solve," he said. He singled out the United States by name at a later press conference.

After a considerable amount of grandstanding, the ministerial meeting reached agreement on the way forward, although it did take an extra day of negotiations. "This has been one of the most productive UN climate change conferences ever. Our success in implementing the Kyoto Protocol, improving the Convention and Kyoto, and innovating for tomorrow led to an agreement on a variety of issues. This plan sets the course for future action on climate change," concluded Richard Kinley, acting head of the climate treaty secretariat. The major agreement reached in Montreal concerned the signatories to the Kyoto Protocol alone. This gives the Kyoto members seven years to negotiate and ratify accords on the post-2012 phase, extending the current emissions control commitments.

Following a parallel track, a broader group of nations, including the United States, has agreed to non-binding talks on future cooperation. This will be a global "dialogue", not restricted to the industrialized nations. Negotiations leading to new emissions control commitments are explicitly ruled out. According to the COP-11 Decision, the dialogue should, amongst other things, "identify approaches which would support, and provide the enabling conditions for, actions put forward voluntarily by developing countries that promote local sustainable development and mitigate climate change in a manner appropriate to national circumstances, including concrete actions to enable countries, in particular developing countries, to manage and adapt to climate change."

More information

• BBC
• CBS
• Reuters
• Reuters

• Press release, UNFCCC
• Earth Negotiations Bulletin, daily reports
• On the Web: The climate negotiations

According to George Mkondiwa, of the Ministry of Lands, Housing, Physical Planning and Surveys of Malawi, the time when Malawians were able to feed themselves, after independence in 1964, is long gone. "As I speak, some five million Malawians, nearly half of the entire population, face starvation and require food aid," said Mkondiwa. "The more vulnerable sections of the population are subsisting on unpalatable wild foods." Mkondiwa was addressing a Development and Adaptation Days event, held alongside the climate convention sessions in Montreal, Canada.

Last year, Mkondiwa said, farmers in Malawi who planted during the first rains watched their plants scorch as the rains were interrupted for long periods. "Everyone is asking such questions as, 'Is this due to climate change or not… and what proof do you have?', he continued. "I can assure you that everyone that is experiencing these adverse effects first hand, that indeed the patterns and trends in climate have changed in the last decades. While local scientists have not yet published their findings in the journal Science, we don’t think there is any doubt that this is due to climate change. Malawi does not have the luxury to wait, for instance, for scientific research to prove some indelible link between climate change and recent droughts, because people are dying now."

More information

• ENS

• Development and Adaptation Days Bulletin

One hundred villagers from Lateu, in northern Vanuatu, have been forced to move to higher ground by recurrent flooding, with the coastline eroding two to three metres a year. According to Taito Nakalevu of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, "We are seeing king tides across the region flooding islands. These are normal events, but it is the frequency that is abnormal and a threat to livelihoods. People are being forced to build sea walls and other defenses not just to defend their homes, but to defend agricultural land." The United Nations Environment Programme considers that the village "has become one of, if not the first, to be formally moved out of harm's way as a result of climate change."

The news of the relocation was announced at a meeting aimed at building bridges between two vulnerable groups - Arctic peoples and those living in small island developing states - held alongside the climate treaty sessions in Montreal, Canada. "What is at stake here is not just the extinction of animals," said Sheila Watt Cloutier, of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, "but the extinction of Inuit as a hunting culture. Climate change in the Arctic is a human issue, a family issue, a community issue, and an issue of cultural survival. The joining of circumpolar peoples with Pacific Island and Caribbean States is surely part of the answer in addressing these issues. Many small voices can make a loud noise."

More information

Background

• ENS
• ABC News Online
• Reuters

• Reuters
• Scotsman
• Press release, UNEP/GRID-Arendal

The rules for limiting greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol have been adopted. The agreement took place at the First Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which began on November 28th 2005, alongside the 11th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The meetings are being held in Montreal, Canada. The Kyoto rules cover greenhouse gas accounting, investment in developing countries, emissions trading and other operational details.

Saudi Arabia attempted to block agreement on the provision on compliance with the Protocol commitments, arguing that implementing the compliance provision through an amendment to the Protocol itself would strengthen the compliance mechanism. Others considered the move an attempt to delay agreement on the deal and postpone the discussions on what do after the end of the Kyoto period in 2012. "They're trying to stop any discussion of what to do after 2012," accused Jennifer Morgan of WWF International. There was confidence, though, that agreement would be reached by the end of the meeting. The compliance system stipulates that any country that misses its target will have to make up the shortfall, and an additional 30 per cent penalty, during the next period. Emissions trading rights may be affected.

More information

• ENS
• Reuters
• Stuff
• New Zealand Herald
• Planet Ark

• Webcast
• Earth Negotiations Bulletin, daily reports
• On the Web: The climate negotiations

The Atlantic hurricane season of 2005 drew to an official close on Wednesday November 30th, though activity continued with the formation of Tropical Storm Epsilon following Tropical Storm Delta's eastward progress towards Morocco. The season as a whole broke a number of records. Twenty-six tropical storms formed, compared to the previous high of 21 back in 1933. Thirteen developed into hurricanes, beating the old record of 12 in 1969. Four major hurricanes made landfall in the United States, a new record. A record five storms formed in July. Hurricane Dennis was the most powerful July storm recorded. Three hurricanes reached Category Five status, another record. Hurricane Vince became the first known tropical storm to hit Spain and Portugal. Hurricane Wilma was the most powerful hurricane known to have formed in the Atlantic Basin.

Hurricane Katrina proved the most costly natural disaster to hit the United States, with damage estimated at US$80 billion and an estimated 1300 fatalities. "Within all the record-breaking statistics of the season, there are epic human impacts... suffering on a very large scale," commented Max Mayfield, director of the United States National Hurricane Center (NHC). Forecasters had warned that activity would be high during 2005 because of high ocean temperatures in the tropical Atlantic. High-level wind conditions also played a part. Many storms formed closer to land and developed more rapidly than usual due to the extra energy picked up from the warm water. According to NHC forecaster Stacy Stewart, "Wilma went from a tropical storm to Category Five in 24 hours. That's unprecedented!"

More information

• New Zealand Herald
• CNN
• National Geographic

• NOAA
• Podcast, NOAA

A new study predicts that the Sahel region of north Africa will become drier as global warming develops. "Our model predicts an extremely dry Sahel in the future," reports Isaac Held of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "If we compare it against the drought in the 1970s and 80s, the late 21st century looks even drier - a 30 per cent reduction in rainfall from the average for the last century."

The result contradicts the findings of a recent assessment of Sahel predictions. Held reckons that this may be because of differences in the simulation of clouds and recommends the use of multiple models to reduce the effects of uncertainties on the predictions. The modelling attributes the 20th century drought in the Sahel to a combination of anthropogenic factors, aerosol pollution and rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and natural climate variability.

More information

Background

• SciDev.Net
• BBC
• Research paper, NOAA

• EHP

The First Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol is taking place from November 28th to 9th December 2005 in Montreal, Canada, alongside the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP-11) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. COP-11 will see the launch of a five-year work programme on adaptation. "A certain degree of climate change is no longer avoidable", said Halldor Thorgeirsson, coordinator of the Climate Change Secretariat’s Methods, Inventories and Science Programme. "All countries need to adapt to the inevitable impacts. Developing countries will be hardest hit by those impacts and need the necessary assistance."

Other issues for discussion at the meetings include technology (particularly carbon capture and storage), and strengthening the Clean Development Mechanism. The post-Kyoto regime will also be on the agenda. "It will be very complex," said Elliot Diringer of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "Any agreement has to be more flexible than Kyoto but at the same time has to deliver real cuts in emissions and the Bush administration is adamantly opposed to any process aimed at widening Kyoto." Jennifer Morgan of WWF International proposes that "developed countries should continue after 2012 with Kyoto-type commitments with ever deeper cuts, but developing countries should start with less strict goals." "The United States wants to block this process from starting," according to David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Look for the United States to use a variety of strategies to try to veto consensus," he said, such as lining up Middle Eastern OPEC countries and India in favour of voluntary approaches.

More information

• CNN
• Reuters
• Press release, UNEP

• Earth Negotiations Bulletin, daily reports
• On the Web: The climate negotiations

Levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere are higher than at any time in the past 650,000 years, according to a study of Antarctic ice cores published in the journal Science. "We find that carbon dioxide is about 30 per cent higher than at any time, and methane 130 per cent higher than at any time; and the rates of increase are absolutely exceptional: for carbon dioxide, two hundred times faster than at any time in the last 650,000 years," reported project leader Thomas Stocker from the University of Bern, Switzerland.

In the same journal, an analysis of ocean sediment cores has revealed that global warming has already doubled the historic rate of sea-level rise. Over the past 5,000 years, evidence from the sediment cores shows that sea levels have risen on average at about 1mm each year, but since the mid 19th century the rate has been 2mm a year. "The main thing that has happened since the 19th century and the beginning of the modern observation has been the widespread increase in fossil fuel use and more greenhouse gases," said lead author of the study Kenneth Miller of Rutgers University in the United States.

More information

• BBC
• ABC Science Online

• Guardian
• Science Daily

Jan Egeland, emergency relief coordinator for the United Nations, has called for more effective disaster prevention and preparedness systems. "If we had had good early warning systems, much fewer would have died in the Indian Ocean tsunami. If we had had earthquake-safe schools, hospitals and housing in Northern Pakistan, tens of thousands would not have lost their lives. If we had had better levees in New Orleans, those who lived in the lower lying parts of the city would not have had to see their lives devastated," he told a news conference during a meeting of the International Task Force for Disaster Prevention in Geneva, Switzerland.

Egeland noted that 95 per cent of all deaths associated with natural disasters occur in the developing world, though disasters were evenly distributed around the world. "This is one of the biggest challenges of our time and age, the need to make vulnerable people living in developing nations more resilient to natural hazards," he said. The United Nations wants a central fund for emergency relief, rather than having to request funds after disaster strikes.

More information

• Scoop
• BBC

• Be prepared, Jan Egeland

In the run-up to the First Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, India has announced that it is unlikely to accept any restriction on emissions. "There is no way that anybody can expect countries like India to cap their emissions for the next 20-25 years," said S K Joshi from India's environment ministry. "We welcome the talks among the parties for the second commitment period strictly in accordance with the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. The issue of entitlements has to be addressed and the countries that have agreed to take on commitments under the Protocol have to show demonstrable progress."

Greenhouse gas emissions from the richer nations have fallen overall since 1990, largely as a result of the collapse of Soviet-era industries. By 2003, total emissions from forty developed nations had dropped by 5.9 per cent below the 1990 level, surpassing the Kyoto Protocol target of a 5.2 per cent reduction by 2008-2012. "Further efforts are required to sustain these reductions and to cut the emissions further," warned the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. "Greenhouse gas projections indicate the possibility of emission growth by 2010. It means that ensuring sustained and deeper emission reductions remains a challenge for developed countries," said Richard Kinley, acting head of the Secretariat.

More information

• Reuters
• Reuters

• On the Web: The climate negotiations

People living in sub-Saharan Africa and along the coasts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans are likely to be amongst the most seriously affected by the health impacts of climate change. The finding results from a new study led by Jonathan Patz of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the United States. "Many of the most important diseases in poor countries, such as diarrhoea and malnutrition, are highly sensitive to climate," said co-author Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum of the World Health Organization. "The health sector is already struggling to control these diseases and climate change threatens to undermine these efforts."

Patz and colleagues argue that climate change poses a "global ethical challenge", with those most at risk being least responsible for the problem. "The United States is the number one emitter of greenhouse gases, and as a developed nation must take a leadership role," to deal with these health problems, concludes Patz. "Our energy-consumptive lifestyles are having lethal impacts on other people around the world, especially the poor." But, he continues, China, the second largest emitter, must adopt strategies to reduce its emissions too, despite their per capita emissions being a fraction of the United States.

More information

• Washington Post
• Independent
• Guardian
• Reuters

• Link to full article in Nature, SciDev.Net

In its Global Forest Resources Assessment, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that around 13 million hectares of forests, an area the size of Greece, are destroyed each year. The net rate of loss is, however, decreasing - down from 8.9 million hectares a year during the 1990s to 7.3 million hectares a year since the turn of the century. This improvement is largely the result of new plantations. "There are reasons to be very optimistic about what is happening," said Hosny El-Lakany, FAO assistant director general for forestry.

Environmental groups responded with a warning against complacency. "FAO continues to emphasize the net forest loss number. This is misleading because most of the world's most valuable forests, especially in the tropics, are vanishing as fast as ever," said Simon Counsell of the Rainforest Foundation. Counsell also challenged the FAO methodology, arguing that the definition of forest - ten per cent ground cover by tree canopy - was not stringent enough. "These figures are the main basis for global decision making on the world's most important ecosystems. We fear that bad decisions are going to made on the basis of bad data."

More information

Background

• CNN
• BBC
• Pravda

• Global Forest Resources Assessment, FAO
• On the Web: Forests and climate

National positions on any post-Kyoto climate agreement are emerging as the First Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol approaches. Australia has ruled out post-Kyoto limits, with environment minister Ian Campbell describing any attempt to negotiate new emissions levels as a "terrible waste of time." Japan, while struggling to meet its own emissions reduction targets, has stressed the importance of including all nations in a post-2012 agreement. "Climate change is not something that can be tackled only by Japan or only by Europe," said environment minister Yuriko Koike. "It's essential for the whole world to cut emissions." Japan is particularly concerned that its neighbour China act to limit growth in all forms of atmospheric pollution. Both Japan and China are members of the new Asia Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, intended to complement the Kyoto Protocol.

In Europe, the business think-tank, the International Council for Capital Formation (ICCF), has warned that compliance with the Kyoto Protocol could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs by the year 2010. The ICCF estimates that compliance could result in average increases of 26 per cent in electricity prices and 41 per cent in gas prices by that year. "The findings of our research suggest that an alternative approach [to climate change] is urgently needed for both the developing and developed world," reported Margo Thorning, ICCF managing director. British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared to downplay chances of a targets-based, agreement post 2012, when speaking at a G8 meeting of energy and environment ministers recently.

More information

• Reuters
• Reuters
• Reuters
• Reuters

• Reuters
• ICCF reports

Two hundred million people in Africa are now considered under-nourished, according to research conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The figure has risen by 20 per cent over the past 10 years. The IFPRI authors state that "up to 40 million Africans annually face acute hunger that requires concerted international efforts to prevent widespread starvation. Another 160 million also suffer from hunger and malnutrition, but in a less dramatic manner. For many of them such under-nourishment is a permanent characteristic of their lives."

Currently, more than a third of African children suffer stunted growth, with the highest prevalence occurring in countries in East and Central Africa, affected by civil conflict, flood, drought and economic downturns. Lack of vitamin A, iron, zinc and iodine are the main micronutrient deficiencies. Between 15,000 and 20,000 African woman die each year as a result of severe iron-deficiency anaemia. IFPRI considers that the percentage of malnourished children under five years old in East Africa could be cut by half by 2015.

More information

• All Africa
• Food Security Outlook in Africa to 2025, IFPRI
• Africa's Food and Nutrition Security Situation: Where Are We and How Did We Get Here?, IFPRI

• Current situation, Relief Web
• Latest climate news, All Africa

Liquid carbon dioxide would have to be injected at least 800m deep in the ocean, and possibly as much as 3000m deep, to prevent it escaping. The conclusion results from an ocean model experiment undertaken by Youxue Zhang at the University of Michigan. There is concern that the carbon dioxide droplets, if injected closer to the surface, may vent to the atmosphere having risen to the level (the liquid-gas transition depth, about 300m deep) where it becomes a gas. If this occurs suddenly, the gas can erupt, with potentially catastrophic consequences.

"Droplets injected to a depth of 800 metres will rise, but if they are small enough they should dissolve completely before reaching the liquid-gas transition depth - assuming everything works perfectly," said Zhang. "An even safer injection scheme would be to inject into a depth of more than 3000 metres, where carbon dioxide liquid is denser than seawater and would sink and dissolve." Zhang notes that there are also potential environmental consequences to be considered before deciding whether or not ocean injection is a viable means of disposing of carbon from power plants.

More information

Background

• Science Daily

• Chapter 6: Ocean storage, IPCC Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage
• On the Web: Carbon dioxide capture and storage

British Prime Minister Tony Blair appeared to downplay chances of targets-based, Kyoto-style agreement post 2012, speaking at a G8 meeting of energy and environment ministers in London, United Kingdom, on climate change last week. "The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge," he warned. "But all economies know that the only sensible, long-term way to develop is to do it on a sustainable basis." "People fear some external force is going to impose some internal target on you which is going to restrict your economic growth," he continued. "I think in the world after 2012 we need to find a better, more sensitive set of mechanisms to deal with this problem."

Opposition politicians and environmentalists expressed serious concern at what appeared to be a marked shift in policy. Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth called for clarification: "We need to understand what this means. It's seismic in climate change politics and threatens 15 years' worth of negotiations." Liberal Democrat environment spokesman Norman Baker said: "It is all very well for the government to trumpet the merits of technology in reducing carbon emissions, but it simply isn't enough; we need robust, measurable targets, not just vague aspirations." Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett warned that Blair's comments had been "grossly over-interpreted."

More information

• BBC
• Guardian Unlimited

• Terra Daily
• Guardian Unlimited

African ministers, banking officials and development partners met in Nairobi, Kenya, October 26th to discuss how funds resulting from debt cancellation could be used to protect the environment. The poorer countries could save US$1.5 billion in debt repayments each year. "Targeted investments in 'natural capital' such as forests, water and land can be cost effective in helping countries meet internationally agreed goals," such as Millennium Development Goals, argued Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

The G8 decision made in Gleneagles, Scotland, earlier this year would cancel US$40 billion of debt owed by poor countries to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the African Development Bank. UNEP has proposed a number of ways in which environmental protection could support socio-economic development, for example, with clean water supplies increasing school attendance, malaria rates reduced by declining deforestation and improvements in agriculture as a result of slowing land degradation.

More information

• UN News Centre

• The Guardian

Urgent action is needed to protect the world's coral reefs, warns the World Conservation Union (IUCN) in a new report. "Twenty per cent of the Earth’s coral reefs, arguably the richest of all marine ecosystems, have been effectively destroyed today," reports Carl Gustaf Lundin of IUCN's Global Marine Programme. "Another 30 per cent will become seriously depleted if no action is taken within the next 20-40 years, with climate change being a major factor for their loss." Higher sea temperatures stress the reef system and cause coral bleaching, as the tiny plants that colour the white coral skeleton are ejected, and, if persistent, this process can result in the death of the coral.

The report, Coral Reef Resilience and Resistance to Bleaching, concludes that marine protected areas are key to ensuring the survival of these "underwater rainforests". "For a global marine protected areas network, we need to take climate change into consideration. Some marine ecosystems become more valuable, others less so, which influences our decisions on which site should be included in the global network," argues Lundin.

More information

Background

• ENS
• Coral Reef Resilience and Resistance to Bleaching, (1.9Mb download), IUCN

• On the Web: Coral reefs

The United Nations has launched a multi-billion dollar partnership, TerrAfrica, to combat desertification in Africa. The aim of the new initiative, which involves, governmental, intergovermental and non-governmental organizations, is to increase the scale, efficiency and effectiveness of investments towards sustainable land management. "It promises to be a real shot in the arm to restoring the health of the continent's fragile lands and overcoming the seemingly relentless slide," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme. He referred to estimates that every dollar invested in anti-land degradation measures can garner a $US3 return.

Sixty-six per cent of the African continent is classed as desert or drylands and 46 per cent is at risk from desertification. Community involvement in fighting desertification will be a priority. "The challenge is to not only mobilize the communities on this issue, but to include them so they become part of the elements of change," according to Kenya's deputy environment minister Wangari Maathai. TerrAfrica was launched during the annual meeting of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Nairobi, Kenya.

More information

Background

• ABC News Online
• allAfrica
• UNEP

• Fact sheets on desertification, UNCCD
• On the Web: Drylands and desertification

Rising ocean temperatures around Antarctica are threatening populations of penguins, whales and seals, according to new data from British scientists. Commenting on the findings, Lloyd Peck of the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said that "the sea temperature is going up in a way that wasn't predicted and this makes me more worried for the marine animals. The evidence we've got and the models we've been looking at said sea temperature was not likely to change much in the Antarctic. A one degree increase puts us into the region where the animals are pushed to one end of their biological, physiological and ecological capabilities."

BAS scientists Michael Meredith and John King found that sea temperatures west of the Antarctic Peninsula have risen 1.2 degrees Celsius during the summer months since 1955. Salinity in the surface layers of the ocean has also increased, affecting the formation of sea ice. "Both the temperature and salinity trends are in a direction that will act to reduce future sea ice production. Since a reduction in ice cover was important in the instigation of these trends, they constitute positive feedbacks," they report in Geophysical Research Letters.

More information

• Guardian

• BBC

The government of Indonesia has launched a National Commission for the Clean Development Mechanism to promote emissions reduction projects. The Environment Ministry has estimated that the country could reduce carbon dioxide emissions from 300 million to 125 million tons by 2012. "Imagine how much a company could earn if one ton of emission reduction is worth US$5. It's good for the businesses, our environment and the stability of the world's climate," said State Minister for the Environment Rachmat Witoelar.

A partnership between the South African government and Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) that will address the threat of climate change has been announced. The partnership between business and government will draft national guidelines for the collection and management of national greenhouse gas emissions data. BUSA President Patrice Motsepe said that his organization "understands the importance of economic growth that does not mortgage our future for the sake of short-term profit, and we will work with Government to ensure that we address the challenges of climate change together."

More information

• Jakarta Post
• AllAfrica

• On the Web: Clean Development Mechanism
• On the Web: Emissions trading

Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka of South Africa has called for "desperate measures to be put in place as these are desperate times" at a national consultative conference on climate change. Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza said that climate change is a "serious" risk to poverty reduction, threatening decades of development. "South Africa's climate is highly variable and vulnerable to climate change as farming depends entirely on the quality of the rainy season," she continued. Given the link between food insecurity and the prevailing climate, "any long or short term changes thereof are paramount to our ability to feed the nation with high quality affordable staple foods."

The conference launched plans for a national research and development strategy, as part of the National Climate Change Response Strategy. South Africa is the African continent's largest greenhouse gas emitter. Marthinus van Schalkwyk, Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister, argued that it was "much too early" for countries such as South Africa to limit greenhouse gas emissions, "but while we put pressure on the developed world, we must put our own house in order." "We stand ready to do more to decarbonize our development," he said. There was some criticism that the conference organizers had neglected South Africa expertise. In a letter to the Cape Times, Philip Lloyd of the University of Cape Town claimed that the meeting "did not represent the climate change debate in South Africa."

More information

• AllAfrica
• AllAfrica
• AllAfrica
• AllAfrica

• All Africa
• ABC
• SciDev.Net
• Conference background, Government of South Africa

Hurricane Wilma approached Belize and Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula Friday October 21st, forcing residents and tourists to flee or take shelter. Weakening to Category 3 as it hit land, the slow-moving storm generated a 3m storm surge causing flooding in the resort of Cancún. Heavy rains and high winds also affected Playa del Carmen and the resort island of Cozumel. Ten people died in mudslides on Haiti earlier in the week.

Cuba evacuated over 600,000 people in preparation for the storm, with six-metre waves pounding parts of the southern coast of the Isle of Youth. The storm made landfall in southern Florida Monday October 24th. At least six people lost their lives and three million homes and businesses were left without power.

More information

• BBC
• ABC
• Star Tribune
• CNN
• Science Daily

• Alertnet
• CNN
• Latest advisory, Florida Division of Emergency Management
• On the Web

"The severity of the impacts of extreme events will increase in concert with global warming," according to a report delivered to the annual assembly of the International Council for Science (ICSU). The report marks the announcement of a new ICSU research programme to reduce the threats posed by natural and human-induced disasters. "It's time to change the mindset of governments, who tend to plan too little for natural disasters," concludes the study's leader, Gordon McBean of the Institute of Catastrophic Loss Reduction at the University of Western Ontario. According to the report, there are now 2,800 natural disasters per decade and, last year, natural disasters were estimated to have cost $US140 billion.

"Around the globe, population growth in hazardous areas means more and more people are at risk," the report observes, and human activity is increasing that risk. "Destruction of mangroves increases the susceptibility of coastal areas to storm damage, and emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases can increase the frequency of extreme weather events." Calling for politicians to be better informed and for more interaction between policy makers and scientists, the study's authors report that "we have found ample evidence to suggest that policy makers may at times act in ignorance or disregard of the relevant scientific information and thereby significantly exacerbate damage resulting from natural hazards."

More information

• AlertNet
• ABC Online

• SciDev.Net
• Press release, ICSU

Several cities in the Brazilian state of Amazonas have been declared disaster areas as the worst drought in 40 years continues to affect the region. Thousands of people are reported to be without food, water or medicine. About one-fifth of the 1.3 million cattle in the state have died. At the port of Santarém, in the state of Pará, the Amazon River is about 2m lower than the average depth of 20m during the dry season.

There is speculation that the unusually warm waters of the North Atlantic Ocean may be responsible for the drought. As well as diverting storms towards the Caribbean, resulting in the devastating impact of recent hurricanes, warm Atlantic waters can create high pressure to the south over Amazonia, suppressing rainfall. "There is no rain here because the air is descending, which prevents the formation of clouds," said Ricardo Dellarosa of the Amazon Protection Organization.

More information

• Nature
• IOL

• Guardian

The Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) in Bonn, Germany, has called on the international community to urgently define, recognize and extend support for environmental refugees in a statement marking the International Day for Disaster Reduction on October 12th 2005. "There are well-founded fears that the number of people fleeing untenable environmental conditions may grow exponentially as the world experiences the effects of climate change and other phenomena," said Janos Bogardi, UNU-EHS director. "This new category of refugee needs to find a place in international agreements. We need to better anticipate support requirements, similar to those of people fleeing other unviable situations."

Tony Oliver-Smith, UNU-EHS Munich Re Foundation chair holder designate, warns of a "disaster-in-waiting in coastal areas, where "vulnerability is on the increase due to the rapid development of megacities." "Many cities are overwhelmed," he continues, incapable of handling with any degree of effectiveness the demands of a burgeoning number of people, many of whom take up shelter in flimsy shanties." Some progress has been made. New Zealand has agreed to take the 11,600 citizens of low-lying Pacific state of Tuvalu should rising sea levels inundate the nation.

More information

• ENS

• Voice of America

The leaders of over twenty world cities met in London, United Kingdom, in the first week of October at the World Cities Leadership Climate Change Summit to exchange ideas on dealing with the challenge of climate change. "Climate change is the biggest problem facing us, and cities have special issues such as the heat island effect and flash floods," reported Nicky Gavron, London's deputy mayor. "Everyone has a handful of good examples of dealing with impact and reducing greenhouse gas emissions." The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, reckons that it is "at the city level that innovation and progress on climate change action are most likely to be achieved."

A Climate Group report, issued just before the Summit, describes 15 case studies of cities that have responded to the climate threat. Three-quarters of new buildings in Berlin have to include solar panels in their design. In Mexico City, 80,000 taxis are to be replaced with low-emissions vehicles by 2008. Chicago is encouraging the use of roof-top gardens to cool down buildings. The congestion charge scheme in London has reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 19 per cent.

More information

• BBC
• Local London

• World Cities Leadership Climate Change Summit
• World Carbon Leader: Cities (0.8Mb download), Climate Group

A new report from the World Health Organization (WHO), Preventing Chronic Diseases, calls for a two per cent annual reduction in deaths due to chronic diseases such as heart disease, stroke and cancer. "We can stop this global epidemic of chronic diseases if we take preventative action now," according to Robert Beaglehole, Chronic Diseases and Health Promotion director. "We estimate that 388 million people in the world are expected to die from chronic diseases... in the next 10 years, and everywhere the poor are the hardest hit."

The annual review, Environment Matters, from the World Bank was also released this past week. This year, it features health and the environment. Kerstin Leitner of the WHO writes that "climate change has begun to affect people’s health through changes in environmental factors: weather-related disasters, temperature extremes, changing habitats for disease vectors, and so on." The WHO has reported that the effects of climate change since the mid-1970s may have caused over 150,000 deaths in the year 2000. In his overview to the World Bank report, James Warren Evans, director of the World Bank Environment Department, identifies three challenges for the coming period: integrating environmental management in poverty reduction; bridging the global-national-local divides; and building on the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

More information

• Sydney Morning Herald
• Guardian Unlimited

• Preventing Chronic Diseases, WHO
• Environment Matters 2005, World Bank
• Comment, Glen Barry

Hurricane Stan battered Central America and southern Mexico during the first week in October, bringing over five days of heavy rains to some areas. Guatemala was worst hit, with the official death toll topping 600 and many hundreds reported missing. There are fears that 1,400 people may have been lost in mudslides affecting two Guatemalan villages. Lives have also been lost or infrastructure damaged in southern Mexico, El Salvador, Belize, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua.

Hurricane Stan reached Category One strength before making landfall on the Mexican coast, with winds at 130km/hour, but it is the flooding and landslides accompanying the storm that have had the major impact. "The emergency is bigger than the rescue capacity, we have floods everywhere, bridges about to collapse, landslides and dozens of roads blocked by mudslides," said a spokesman for the Salvadoran Red Cross.

More information

• BBC
• BBC
• CBC News
• Yahoo

• Relief Web
• On the Web

According to the Red Cross, tens of thousands who died in the Asian tsunami of December 2004 could have been saved had there been quicker warnings. A quarter of a million people died during natural disasters during 2004, of which 225,000 perished in the tsunami. The Red Cross also concludes that a lack of coordination during the early stages of the relief effort delayed aid and assistance.

In the World Disasters Report for 2004, the Red Cross also criticizes the international community for ignoring warnings that Niger faced food shortages during 2005. "There were enough early warning signs to say that the situation could be quite severe in 2005," said Hisham Kigali, head of disaster response. "What, as a humanitarian community, we didn't do well enough is give out enough repeated messages saying that, particularly to donors."

More information

• BBC
• Dispatch Online

• World Disasters Report 2004, Chapter Summaries, Red Cross

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change launched a landmark report on the capture and storage of carbon dioxide this past week. "This essentially will be a textbook on carbon dioxide capture and storage, the first to bring it all together," commented John Bradshaw of Geoscience Australia, one of the report's lead authors. "It is vital that we exploit every available option for reducing their impact on the global climate. Carbon dioxide capture and storage can clearly play a supporting role, said Secretary-General Michel Jarraud of the World Meteorological Organization.

It has been calculated that carbon dioxide capture and storage could reduce the costs of emissions reduction by 30 per cent or more over the next 100 years. Carbon dioxide capture in the power generation sector has the greatest potential. Storage could be underground or at depth in the oceans. At present, storage in geological formations represents the most economical option, resting on considerable experience within the oil and gas industry. As far as injecting captured carbon dioxide into the oceans is concerned, "there are concerns regarding the impact such technologies could have on ocean life and it is known that marine organisms could be harmed" warns the IPCC.

More information

• ENS
• International Herald Tribune
• ABC Science Online

• Summary for Policymakers (0.5Mb), IPCC
• On the Web

Arctic sea ice extent reached a record low in September 2005, with summer ice melt above average for the past four years. "Having four years in a row with such low ice extents has never been seen before in the satellite record. It clearly indicates a downward trend, not just a short-term anomaly," said Walt Meier of the United States National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Colorado.

The spring melting of the Arctic ice began 17 days early this year. The Northwest Passage, through the Canadian Arctic from Europe to Asia, has been completely open this summer, apart from a 60 mile stretch with scattered ice floes. Ted Scambos at NSIDC warns that "feedbacks in the system are starting to take hold. We could see changes in Arctic ice happening much sooner than we thought and that is important because without the ice cover over the Arctic Ocean we have to expect big changes in Earth's weather."

More information

• Guardian Unlimited
• The Australian
• New Zealand Herald

• Sea ice index, NSIDC

Sixty-one per cent of American adults, responding to a recent Harris Interactive Poll, believe that they will feel the effects of global warming within their lifetime. Of those, close to three-quarters reckon they are seeing effects already, amounting to about 44 per cent of the adult population of the United States.

Opinions are mixed regarding the quality of information on climate change. About a third said that they considered the quality to be excellent or good, a third reported the quality as fair, and 28 per cent considered the quality to be poor or terrible. The poll was commissioned by the Oak Ridge Center for Advanced Studies.

More information

Background

• ENS

• Americans and the World

As Hurricane Rita weakened before making landfall on the Gulf Coast of the United States, heavy rain and high seas breached the newly-repaired levees of New Orleans, flooding parts of the city once more. Only 500 people remained in the city as Rita approached.

Mass evacuation along threatened sections of the Gulf Coast occurred well in advance of Rita's landfall, causing lengthy traffic jams. "I don't think they would have made this big deal about it before but Katrina has made everybody want to get out," resident Karen Mclinjoy told Reuters. In the event, Rita's impact failed to match the fears of another Katrina-scale catastrophe. Widespread structural damage, flooding and power failures occurred, but no fatalities were reported in the immediate aftermath. Hurricane Katrina is now believed to have caused over 1,000 deaths.

More information

• Latest, CBS
• Latest, CNN
• Latest, ABC

• In depth, BBC
• Hurricane Rita
• On the Web

Up to 10,000 people a year in the Asia-Pacific region could be dying as a result of impacts related to global warming, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) expert, and the number could increase over the next 50 to 100 years. Hisashi Ogawa, regional environmental adviser to the WHO, warned that "we need to adapt ourselves or our way of living... to the changing climate."

"The number of deaths due to various natural disasters - droughts, floods, storms - has increased [by] about 30 to 40 per cent" between the early 1980s and late 1990s, said Ogawa. Though it was not possible to identify the precise cause of this trend, the region's increasingly aged population was more vulnerable to stress. Rising temperature could also be affecting water quality and the spread of disease. Ogawa was speaking during a WHO regional meeting in Noumea, New Caledonia.

More information

Background

• Hindustan Times
• Press release, WHO

• IPCC

Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary-General, described the outcome of the 2005 World Summit as a "remarkable expression of world unity on a wide range of issues." He made particular note of the agreement on the precise steps to be taken in reaching the Millennium Development Goals. The lack of agreement on nuclear proliferation, "the most alarming threat we face in the immediate future," was the biggest gap in the outcome document.

The outcome document received mixed reviews. Catherine Pearce of Friends of the Earth International criticized the Summit outcome for not acknowledging fully the potential for renewable energy to reduce poverty and improve sustainable development in developing countries. "World leaders have clearly failed to face up to the urgent need to take action on climate change. This Summit was a golden opportunity for the United Nations to commit resources to and support some of the world's poorest countries that will face the harshest impacts of the world's changing climate," she said. Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, of the United Nations Population Fund, praised parts of the agreement. "Five years after the Millennium Declaration, the world has reaffirmed the need to keep gender equality, HIV/AIDS and reproductive health at the top of its agenda," she said. "This outcome is a success for millions of women, men and young people all over the world, whose appeals have been heard."

More information

• peopleandplanet.net
• noticias.info
• Press release, UN News Centre

• World Summit outcome document
• Comment, Kofi Annan
• World Summit background

United States President George Bush has accepted responsibility for failures in the response to Hurricane Katrina. "This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina," he said. Head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Michael Brown resigned earlier in the week "to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA."

Some 40 per cent of the city of New Orleans is still flooded. Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco, reporting that bodies had been decomposing in the city for two weeks, said that the dead "deserve more respect than they have received." The official death toll stands at 795 as of 16th September. It is believed that earlier reports of fatalities reaching ten thousand will prove unfounded.

More information

• Latest, ABC
• Latest, CBS
• Latest, CNN

• In depth, BBC
• Hurricane Rita
• On the Web

The United Nations has launched an urgent appeal for US$88 million to assist over 4 million people threatened by food shortages in Malawi. Maize production this year stands at little more than half that needed, with the central and southern regions most at risk. The World Food Programme (WFP) has warned that funding shortfalls mean that only a fraction of those needing aid in countries such as Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe will receive it.

"The warning signs are already clear," said Mike Sackett, WFP Southern Africa director. "Massive international assistance is needed," he continued, "but we simply cannot respond in time unless we get immediate donations. By raising the alarm now, we are hoping that the international community will help us to reach millions of the hungry - before they become the continent's next group of starving."

More information

• Mail and Guardian Online
• Belfast Telegraph
• UN News Centre

• Southern Africa Crisis, World Food Programme
• World Food Programme Interactive Hunger Map

A new study shows a worldwide trend towards a greater number of the most powerful hurricanes and typhoons and claims that this might be the result of global warming. "What I think we can say is that the increase in intensity is probably accounted for by the increase in sea surface temperature and I think probably the sea surface temperature increase is a manifestation of global warming," reported project leader Peter Webster of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in the United States.

There has been no rise in the total number of storms, but the proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 or 5 (wind speeds above 56 metres per second) increased from 20 per cent in the 1970s to 35 per cent over the past decade. "This trend has lasted for more than 30 years now. So the chances of it being natural are fairly remote," concludes Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado.

More information

Background

• BBC
• Terra Daily
• New Scientist
• Science Daily

• RealClimate

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, tales of heroism, stoicism and generosity were mixed with outrage at the failure of the state and federal authorities to respond effectively to the plight of those left homeless and destitute. According to Senator Jesse Jackson Jr, "...Hurricane Katrina exposed the neglected realities of poverty and race in this nation." "This disaster," he continued, "has trapped the poor as a class and African Americans as a caste... The poverty and lingering racism that we see are not natural disasters but man-made disasters, the result of the failure of the federal government to take the necessary and appropriate action to end poverty and discrimination in the richest nation on earth."

Head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, was relieved of responsibility for the Katrina recovery as a consequence of the widespread criticism. More than 90 countries have pledged aid to support the recovery effort. Bangladesh promised US$1 million. Thailand offered doctors and nurses, as well as rice, as a "gesture from the heart." Cuba also offered medical expertise. High-speed pumps from Germany and assistance with levee reconstruction from the Netherlands were promptly accepted.

More information

• Latest, ABC
• Latest, CBS

• Latest, CNN
• In depth, BBC
• On the Web

The European Union (EU) and China have set up a 'climate change partnership'. Under the agreement, the EU will give China the technology to build coal-fired power stations that produce 'near-zero' greenhouse gas emissions. The partnership has two major goals: first, to develop advanced power stations whose emissions can be captured and stored; and, second, to reduce the cost of "key energy technologies" and promote their deployment. There will be cooperation on renewable energy, hydrogen fuel cells and recovery and use of methane.

"With EU help, China is in a prime position to develop a low-carbon economy and set a model for future development for the rest of the world," commented Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth. Meanwhile, four new renewable energy projects have been agreed between China and Australia under the Bilateral Climate Change Partnerships Programme. The new projects total AUD1 million and the announcement coincided with the 21st Century Forum for China, held in Beijing early September.

More information

• SciDev.Net
• Reuters AlertNet
• Press release, EU

• ENS

Methane trapped in Antarctic ice cores shows that human activity has altered atmospheric methane levels for at least 2,000 years. Separating out the contribution of biomass burning for the first time, Dominic Ferretti, of the University of Colorado at Boulder in the United States and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, and his collaborators revealed wild gyrations in methane levels before the industrial revolution, during a period when it was thought levels would have been increasing slowly.

Methane emissions dropped by around 40 per cent from 1000 to 1700 AD. This may be related to reduced landscape burning as indigenous peoples in the Americas were devastated by diseases brought by European explorers. "The results frankly were a shock," said James White at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research in Boulder. "We can see human fingerprints all over atmospheric methane emissions for at least the last 2,000 years. Humans have been an integral part of Earth's carbon cycle for much longer than we thought."

More information

• Science Daily

• ABC News Online

Hurricane Katrina left 80 per cent of New Orleans under water and the neighbouring Gulf Coast of the United States reeling this past week. One million people have been rendered homeless. Three breaches opened up in the levee system protecting New Orleans, much of which lies below sea level, as the hurricane, with winds at 145 miles an hour, created a 20 foot storm surge. It may take 80 days to pump the floodwater out of the city. Many thousands are feared dead, though no official death toll has been released. President George Bush has described Katrina's impact as "one of the worst national disasters in our nation's history."

Mayor Ray Nagin issued a "desperate SOS" to help the thousands of people left stranded in New Orleans without food and water. While most of the city's population left before the storm struck, as many as 200,000 people remained. New Orleans was described as descending into anarchy, with bodies left lying in the streets, as fires, fighting and looting diverted the attention of the emergency services away from the relief effort. The city is being totally evacuated.

More information

• Latest, ABC
• Latest, CBS

• Latest, CNN
• In depth, BBC
• On the Web

Eighteen leading scientists from Princeton and Harvard universities have written to Congressman Joe Barton, chair of the United States House of Representatives energy and commerce committee, expressing "deep concern" at his demand for information on the research activities of three climate scientists. Barton has asked for details of all sources of funding and ressearch methods and everything ever published from Michael Mann at Pennsylvania State University, Ray Bradley at the University of Massachusetts and Malcolm Hughes at the University of Arizona. The three climatologists published an assessment of temperature trends prior to the industrial period, the so-called hockey stick graph, showing that the 20th century warming was without recent precedent.

Alan Leshner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science described the inquiry as "a search for basis to discredit the particular scientists rather than a search for understanding." Democrat Henry Waxman complained that it was a "dubious" inquiry, which many viewed as a "transparent effort to bully and harass climate change experts who have reached a conclusion with which you disagree." Republican Sherwood Boehlert, chair of the House science committee, has written to express his "strenuous objections" to what he sees as a "misguided and illegitimate investigation."

More information

Comment

• Guardian
• Interview with Michael Mann, Scientific American

• Sacramento Bee
• E-Team
• RealClimate

The soil-dwelling microbes that make Asian rice farming a major greenhouse gas contributor have been identified. Yahai Lu of the China Agricultural University and Ralf Conrad of the Max-Planck-Institut for Terrestrial Microbiology in Germany used radioactively-labelled carbon dioxide to determine the "central importance" of the Rice Cluster I group of microbes in producing methane.

"Once scientists know which organisms are involved in a particular process, they can focus right down on them and design experiments to work out how important they are," commented Andrew Whiteley of the Centre of Ecology and Hydrology in the United Kingdom. Rice fields release 50 to 100 million tonnes of methane a year.

More information

Background

• SciDevNet

• GHG Online

The Arctic Ocean may become seasonally ice-free within the next 100 years, according to a recent assessment. The finding results from a week-long meeting of a team of interdisciplinary experts, organized by the National Science Foundation Arctic System Science Committee. "What really makes the Arctic different from the rest of the non-polar world is the permanent ice in the ground, in the ocean and on land," said lead author Jonathan Overpeck from the University of Arizona. "We see all of that ice melting already, and we envision that it will melt back much more dramatically in the future as we move towards this more permanent ice-free state."

The team saw little hope that natural processes will counteract the effects of global warming. "I think probably the biggest surprise of the meeting was that no one could envision any interaction between the components that would act naturally to stop the trajectory to the new system," reported Overpeck. The sensitivity of the Arctic is the result of feedback systems that accelerate changes in the system. As shiny snow and ice melts, for example, more and more solar radiation is taken up by the darker land and ocean that is revealed.

More information

Background

• ENS
• Discovery

• Arctic impacts report, ACIA

A lead author has resigned from a Climate Change Science Program panel reporting to the Bush administration after the chapter he was responsible for was re-drafted by other members of the panel. Roger Pielke Sr, of Colorado State University, claims that panel members involved in recent research on temperature trends in the tropical atmosphere have attempted to exert undue influence on the deliberations of the panel. "When you appoint people to a committee who are experts in an area but evaluating their own work," he told the New York Times, "it's very difficult for them to think outside the box of their research."

Pielke is concerned that "by seeking to limit the scope of my chapter and the report, more generally, important scientific issues were overlooked or downplayed - for example, describing and explaining recent regional trends in surface and tropospheric temperatures." While he respects the sincerity of the panel's scientists, "the broader perspective captured by the actual charge to the committee would better serve both science and policy."

More information

Comment

• New York Times
• New York Times

• Weblog, Roger Pielke and Andy Revkin
• National Center for Policy Analysis

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has reported that the winter-time ozone hole over Antarctica has grown from last year, but has not reached the peak extent seen in 2003. The hole expanded to 29 million sq km in September 2003, extending to the southern tip of South America.

According to Geir Braathen, from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, concentrations of ozone-depleting substances have "leveled off" and are set to decline, but "we still expect the ozone hole to appear annually and it actually might be a little bit worse in the next five to 10 years, then the situation will start to improve." He expects that the ozone hole is not likely to close till the mid-21st century.

More information

Background

• Reuters
• Voice of America

• The Ozone Hole Tour, Cambridge University

A new study has found that the number of malnourished people in Africa has more than doubled since 1970, to 38 per cent of the population, as a result of poor agricultural policies and trade barriers. The Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger by 2015 is considered inconceivable without a turnround in domestic and international policy. The report, from the International Food Policy Research Institute, concludes that "policy choices and investments made now could substantially improve, or further worsen, the prospects for food security in Africa over the next two decades."

The report identifies priority areas for action. These include reform of agricultural policy, trade and tariffs, increased investment in rural infrastructure, education and social capital, improved management of crops, land, water and inputs, increased agricultural research and greater investment in women. The study presents three scenarios for Africa's future. The most optimistic, the Vision scenario, comes close to meeting the Millennium Development Goal, but not until the year 2025. This scenario assumes, amongst other things, a 78 per cent increase in investments for Africa above a 'business as usual' projection, with an even greater increase of 94 per cent for sub-Saharan Africa.

More information

• Mail and Guardian Online
• Islam Online

• Download report, IFPRI

A New Zealand study suggests that the atmosphere is retaining one aspect of its ability to cleanse itself of pollution, despite fears to the contrary. With more pollution in the atmosphere, there has been concern that levels of the hydroxyl radical, which reacts with carbon monoxide and methane removing them from the atmosphere, would become depleted. Any such trend would intensify the increase in concentrations of greenhouse gas methane. Dave Lowe and a team from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research have shown that there has, in fact, been no long-term trend in Southern Hemisphere concentrations of the hydroxyl radical.

The hydroxyl radical "makes up less than a trillionth of the atmosphere, but without it the planet would be rapidly choked by smog," says Lowe. He concludes that "the fact that hydroxyl is not decreasing may be one small piece of good news in a pretty bleak scientific consensus on climate change, because it means that hydroxyl is continuing to remove some methane from the atmosphere at the same rate as previously." He warns, though, that the data show high variability in levels of the hydroxyl radical so "we can’t say whether it will stay that way."

More information

Background

• SCOOP

• IPCC

Environment ministers and officials, meeting in Ilulissat, Greenland, have agreed that action is needed on climate change. Participants met after inspecting the state of Greenland's retreating glaciers. "We have to act, we cannot afford inaction," concluded Denmark's environment minister, Connie Hedegaard. The meeting brought together supporters of the Kyoto Protocol and the United States and its allies who reject the agreement.

Four United States Senators, fresh from a visit to Alaska and and Canada's Yukon Territory, have warned that signs of rising temperatures are obvious and called for Congressional action. "If you can go to the Native people and listen to their stories and walk away with any doubt that something's going on, I just think you're not listening," said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. "I don't think there's any doubt left for anybody who actually looks at the science," concluded New York Senator Hilary Clinton. "There are still some holdouts, but they're fighting a losing battle. The science is overwhelming."

More information

• Washington Post
• IOL
• Reuters

• ENN
• Science Daily
• Alaskan residents speak of climate change, BBC

Malaysia announced a state of emergency in two towns last week as air pollution reached its worst levels since 1997/98. Air quality throughout the Klang Valley deteriorated to levels considered hazardous. Schools have been closed and people are being advised to stay indoors or to wear masks if they go out.

The pollution, a mix of dust, ash, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide, results from forest fires on Sumatra. Malaysian and Indonesian officials have been meeting to discuss the recurrent problem. A three-point plan has been agreed to put out the fires. Malaysia will provide assistance. Meteorologists have warned that there may be no respite till October when the seasonal rains would wash out the haze.

More information

• BBC
• BBC
• CNN
• ENN

• Photos, BBC
• Latest news, Haze Online

A new study of temperature data from satellites and weather balloons confirms that the tropical atmosphere has warmed since 1979. The warming has been greater at height in the moist tropical atmosphere than at the Earth's surface as heat is released as air rises and water condenses. The study addresses the apparent contradiction between tropical temperature trends derived from previous analyses of satellite data, surface observations and model predictions of the effects of global warming.

The outcome "strongly suggests that there is no longer any fundamental discrepancy between modeled and observed temperature trends in the tropical atmosphere," said Benjamin Santer, a scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States. "The new observational data helps to remove a major stumbling block in our understanding of the nature and causes of climate change."

More information

Background

• USA Today
• EurekAlert

• IPCC

An area of permafrost covering a million square kilometres has begun to melt for the first time since its formation 11,000 years ago. Sergei Kirpotin of Tomsk State University in western Siberia and Judith Marquand of Oxford University in the United Kingdom report that the whole western Siberian sub-Arctic region has started to thaw. According to Kirpotin, the situation is an "ecological landslide that is probably irreversible and is undoubtedly connected to global warming."

As permafrost melts, methane is released into the atmosphere. Larry Smith of the University of California, Los Angeles reckons that the west Siberian peat bog could hold around 70 billion tonnes of methane, about a quarter of that stored in the ground worldwide. Stephen Sitch at the United Kingdom's Met Office estimates that seepage of methane from the permafrost might add as much methane to the atmosphere as released from wetlands and agriculture.

More information

Background

• Guardian
• MosNews

• Alaskan residents speak of climate change, BBC

There are at least 800,000 malnourished children in Niger and 2.5 million people living on less than one meal a day, according to relief workers. The crisis is a result of drought last year, late rains this year and swarms of locusts that have destroyed crops and grazing land. Oxfam estimates that more than four million people face starvation across the Sahel region of West Africa.

United Nations researchers predicted the food crisis in autumn 2004, but aid has proved slow to arrive. "It was very clear from October last year. We monitor this region very closely due to its vulnerability. The warnings were given very early,” says Jean Senahoun of the Global Information and Early Warning System in Rome. "Over the last few days, the world has finally woken up, but it took graphic images of dying children for this to happen," commented United Nations Under-Secretary-General Jan Egeland. "More money had been received over the last ten days than over the last ten months."

More information

• ENS
• New Scientist
• allAfrica
• Guardian

• IRIN
• Background, FEWS
• Latest news, allAfrica

Scientists studying the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf have derived evidence from sediment cores showing that the ice mass had previously been stable for close to 10,000 years. According to the research team's leader, Robert Gilbert of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, "the disintegration of Larsen B is almost certainly a response to human-induced global warming."

"The breaking up of Larsen B alone will not change sea level, but other glaciers previously restricted by the ice shelf have surged forward, lowering their surfaces," notes Gilbert. With lower elevations, however, come warmer temperatures, increasing melt and greater loss of ice to the sea. "So that is having and will have an effect on global sea levels. As more ice is lost there may be a greater impact on sea level than previously predicted," he concludes.

More information

• Scientific American
• Earth Times

• New Zealand Herald
• The Australian

A new climate model suggests that the planet may be limited in its ability to absorb increasing emissions of carbon dioxide. "If we maintain our current course of fossil fuel emissions or accelerate our emissions, the land and oceans will not be able to slow the rise of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the way they're doing now," warns Inez Y. Fung at the University of California, Berkeley, in the United States.

Carbon dioxide is being cycled far faster than expected in the Amazonian Basin, according to a recent study. Most of the carbon released as carbon dioxide from rivers and wetlands has spent as little as five years, rather than decades or centuries, locked in the trees, plants and soils of the area. " River breath is clearly happening much faster than anyone realized," says Jeff Richey of the University of Washington in the United States.

More information

• Science Daily
• PhysOrg
• Research paper (0.7Mb download), PNAS

• Science Daily
• Link to research paper, SciDevNet

Australia, China, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United States have agreed a partnership intended to tackle climate change, energy security and sir pollution. The Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate will "explore ways to reduce the greenhouse intensity of our economies; build human and institutional capacity to strengthen cooperative efforts; and seek ways to engage the private sector." The announcement took place at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' annual ministerial meetings in Vientiane, Lao PDR.

The partnership is "a complement not an alternative" to the Kyoto Protocol, according to United States Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick. Regardless, the initiative has angered many commentators. "Skulking around making secretive, selective deals" was Greenpeace campaigner Catherine Fitzpatrick's description of the Australian government's role.

More information

• ENS
• BBC

• AP Online
• The Australian

More than 800 people have died during torrential monsoon rains in the city of Mumbai, India, and the surrounding region. The "highest-ever recorded" rainfall in a single day in India's history, 65cm, fell on the city on Tuesday, according to R V Sharma, director of the meteorological service in Mumbai. 150,000 people have been stranded as the transportation infrastructure collapsed.

The death toll was aggravated by rumours of dam bursts and tsunami-like sea flooding, which led to stampedes. "People died due to false rumours," reported R R Patil, deputy chief minister of Maharashtra state. Police vans with loudspeakers are now countering false information. The seriousness of the flooding was due to a combination of the heavy rainfall and tidal high water.

More information

• BBC
• BBC

• CNN

The United States House of Representatives and Senate have agreed a comprehensive energy bill. Amongst other measures, the bill creates tax breaks and subsidies, amounting to US$14.5 billion over the next 10 years, for solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear power. It requires improvements in energy efficiency in commercial appliances and will nearly double ethanol production.

John Engler of the National Association of Manufacturers welcomed the bill, calling it a "key victory for manufacturers and the US economy." Philip Clapp of the National Environment Trust disagrees. "Both Republicans and Democrats are completely paralyzed in addressing the nation's three big energy challenges - reducing our dependence on Middle East oil, reducing gasoline prices for consumers, and beginning to shift our economy to renewable energy technologies. On all three issues, the bill is a big fat zero."

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• Christian Science Monitor
• Houston Chronicle
• Reuters
• Bloomberg

• Text of Energy Policy Act (2.6Mb download

The impact of greenhouse gas methane on the Earth's energy balance and climate system may be twice as great as previously estimated, according to NASA scientist Drew Shindell. Methane may account for as much as a third of the global warming experienced since the 1750s. Shindell argues that we need to consider methane at the point of emission rather than once it has been mixed with other gases in the atmosphere.

Shindell points out that, once in the air, "the gas molecules undergo chemical changes and once they do, looking at them after they've mixed and changed in the atmosphere doesn't give an accurate picture of their effect." The findings suggest that more weight should be attached to methane control. "Control of methane emissions turns out to be a more powerful lever to control global warming than would be anticipated," he concludes.

More information

• ENS

• Press release, NASA

The new head of the United States National Academy of Sciences, Ralph Cicerone, has testified that "nearly all climate scientists today believe that much of Earth's current warming has been caused by increases in the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mostly from the burning of fuels." He was giving evidence before a Senate Commerce subcommittee on climate change.

Cicerone also testified before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Reflecting an increasing tendency for Republican politicans to engage with global warming, Senator Pete Domenici in the chair, said: "I don't think the issue is whether we have a major international problem; the question is: How do we solve it? I'm looking for a solution, but I'm not going to join the crowd that thinks it's simple."

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• ENN
• Washington Post

• Washington Post

Portugal is facing its worst drought in 60 years, with 64 per cent of the country in extreme drought and a third experiencing severe drought conditions at the end of June 2005. The autumn/winter wheat harvest forecast has been cut by 70 per cent and the frequency of forest fires is running at 55 per cent above the past five-year average.

The drought has been developing over the past 12 months. In January 2005, Fatima Espirito Santo, from the national meteorological service, warned that "we need January to be extremely rainy, something like 20 per cent of all years, in order to bring water levels to normal." With high temperatures and low rainfall, much of southern Europe is threatened by drought or already experiencing serious water shortages.

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• Planet Ark
• BBC
• Terra Daily

• Terra Daily
• In pictures, BBC
• Latest rainfall, IRI

President Festus Mogae has declared Botswana "drought stricken." Low rainfall has caused widespread crop failure. Only a quarter of the cultivable area has been planted, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. "This year's cereal production is now estimated at... about 10 per cent of the national requirement and less than half [that] produced during 2003/04", reported Mogae. "While livestock conditions are generally fair in most - though certainly not all - parts of our country, deterioration can be expected in the coming months", he continued.

The government will provide income support to families in need over the next 12 months through a labour-intensive public works programme. The programme will involve the construction of classrooms, administrative offices and homes for nurses and teachers, alongside other activities such as desilting dams. Children under five attending welfare clinics will receive supplementary feeding. There will also be free distribution of seeds.

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• All Africa
• All Africa
• Mmegi

• Government of Botswana

"The warming of the environment of the Himalayas has increased noticeably over the last 50 years. This has caused several and severe floods from glacial lakes and much disruption to the environment and local people," according to Edmund Hillary. Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, were, in 1953, the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Hillary is calling for the mountain to be placed on the United Nations' list of endangered heritage sites because of the threat of climate change.

Hillary was speaking before a meeting of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Heritage Committee. While the Committee did not place Mount Everest on the endangered list, it did set up a task force to investigate the impact of climate change on mountainous regions. Peter Roderick, Director of Climate Justice, responded that: "The jury's still out, and I'm not sure the urgency has been fully grasped; but at least it keeps alive the hopes that Everest, the Peruvian Andes, and the Belize Barrier Reef can be enjoyed by future generations."

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• ENN
• BBC
• ENN

• Media advisory, Climate Justice

Research by Gisela Lannig and Inna Sokolova of the University of North Carolina suggests that global warming will increase the sensitivity of oysters, which are cold-blooded organisms, to pollution by metals such as cadmium. The rate of oxygen use, an indicator of basic metabolic rate and physical stress, in eastern oysters was three times higher when kept at a temperature of 28°C as at 20°C. Cadmium pollution was shown to increase oxygen use further at temperatures of 20 and 24°C but not at 28°C, at which temperature mortality rates were considerably higher. The oysters were clearly less able to cope with the contamination at the highest temperature.

"One possible mechanism for this observation is increased damage of mitochondria in cadmium-exposed oysters with increasing temperature", Lannig argues. "These organelles become significantly more sensitive to cadmium as temperature rises, so that cadmium levels which were not damaging to mitochondria at lower temperature become strongly toxic with increasing temperature." She concludes that, "with global warming, some areas that are polluted might become a kind of graveyard for these animals."

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• Science Daily
• Food and Drink Europe

• 24hourscholar

The leaders of the Group of Eight nations have agreed that "climate change is happening now, that human activity is contributing to it, and that it could affect every part of the globe." The final communiqué from the G8 summit, which took place July 6-8th 2005 in Gleneagles, Scotland, contains a commitment "to take urgent action to meet the challenges we face." "The Gleneagles Plan of Action which we have agreed demonstrates our commitment. We will take measures to develop markets for clean energy technologies, to increase their availability in developing countries, and to help vulnerable communities adapt to the impact of climate change," claim the G8 leaders. They concluded that dialogue, technological development and marketing, rather than emissions targets, were the means to address the climate problem.

The lack of any concrete programme for emissions reductions disappointed many observers. Tony Juniper, from Friends of the Earth International, commented that "despite the growing evidence of human induced climate change and the dangers of its impacts becoming more widely known and understood, the outcomes of this summit leave us very little further ahead. While the leaders carry on talking, the world continues warming." Lord May of Oxford, President of the Royal Society, believes that "at the heart of the communiqué is a disappointing failure by the leaders of the G8 unequivocally to recognize the urgency with which we must be addressing the global threat of climate change."

More information

• ENS
• BBC
• ABC
• ENN

• Summary of summit outcome
• Gleneagles Plan of Action (0.4Mb download)

Speaking at the close of the G8 summit in July 2005 British Prime Minister Tony Blair welcomed the commitment in the Gleneagles Plan of Action to "a new Dialogue between the G8 and the emerging economies of the world to slow down and then, in time, to reverse the rise in harmful greenhouse gas emissions." The Dialogue will begin on 1st November 2005 with a meeting in the United Kingdom. The G8 leaders have requested that the World Bank creates a new framework for mobilizing investment in clean energy and development.

The G8 leaders committed to boost global development aid by US$50 billion annually by 2010, with US$25 billion extra a year for Africa. Rock musicians Bob Geldof and Bono, who have been backing a public campaign to press for action on Africa, broadly welcomed the deal. "Six hundred thousand people will be alive to remember this G8 in Gleneagles who would have lost their lives to a mosquito bite," said Bono. Geldof referred to the outcome as a "qualified triumph". He gave the leaders marks of 10/10 for their pledges on aid and 8/10 on debt relief. "A great justice has been done," he said. We are beginning to see the lives of the poor of Africa determined not by charity but by justice."

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• ENS
• SciDevNet
• China Daily
• Singapore News
• BBC

• Statement by Paul Wolfowitz, President of the World Bank
• Summary of summit outcome
• Gleneagles Plan of Action (0.4Mb download)

The "direct and indirect other environmental impacts of growing, harvesting, and converting biomass to ethanol far exceed any value in developing this energy source on a large scale," according to researchers from Washington State University, Richland. Marcelo E Dias de Oliveira and his colleagues used the ecological footprint approach to assess the implications of ethanol production from sugarcane in Brazil and corn in the United States. "Ethanol cannot alleviate the United States' dependence on petroleum," they conclude.

In the United States, ethanol production from corn resulted in 10 per cent more energy than was used in the production process. In Brazil, ethanol production from sugarcane resulted in only 3.7 per cent more energy. The researchers took account of effects on carbon dioxide emissions, soil erosion, biodiversity loss and pollution. In Brazil, greater use of fuel ethanol would not be as effective in reducing carbon in the atmosphere as slowing deforestation. In the United States, fueling the automobile fleet would require an impractically large area of corn production with environmental impacts outweighing any benefits. Multiple alternatives to fossil fuels are needed, the study concludes, though ethanol may have a role to play where there are critical pollution problems, making use of agricultural wastes.

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Background

• Nature
• Science Daily

• Earth Policy Institute

British Prime Minister Tony Blair hosted last minute talks to seek agreement on key issues such as Africa and climate change at the G8 summit this week. The United States, with others, is opposing plans to raise an additional US$50 billion in aid and Tony Blair himself has admitted that reaching agreement on climate change would be "very difficult". But, he continued, "I think it is incredibly important that we do get some clear agreement that we need to move to a low-carbon economy, we need to curb greenhouse gas emissions and we need to do so urgently."

Meanwhile, a working group on climate change and development, an alliance of non-governmental organizations and agencies, released its latest report Africa - Up in Smoke?, which argues that concern about development in Africa must be linked to action on climate change. It points out that the majority of Africa's population is dependent on small-scale agriculture and is in the front-line as climate change accelerates. Anticipating a debate at the G8 summit, a report, Mirage and Oasis, prepared by the New Economics Foundation concludes that nuclear power would be a very expensive and inefficient way to deal with climate change, increasing the risks associated with terrorism.

More information

• Financial Express
• Guardian Unlimited
• Sydney Morning Herald
• ePolitix
• Transcript of webchat with Tony Blair on Africa and climate change

• Africa, EDIE
• Download report (1.4Mb), Africa: Up in Smoke
• Nuclear power, Terra Daily
• Download report (1.3Mb), Mirage and Oasis

One in six countries faces food shortages this year because of droughts that could become permanent as a result of global warming, warn United Nations scientists. Wulf Killmann is chair of the Food and Agriculture Organization's climate change group. He says that "Africa is our greatest worry. Many countries are already in difficulties... and we see a pattern emerging. Southern Africa is definitely becoming drier."

Thirty-four countries, including Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Eritrea and Zambia, are now experiencing droughts and food shortages. In Malawi, one in three people are expected to need help by year-end. In 2002-03, in that country, the "hidden famine" killed thousands of people in remote regions. In Zimbabwe, four million people may need help this year.

More information

Current situation

• Guardian Unlimited
• Niger, Mali, OneWorld
• Southern Africa, Relief Web
• Zimbabwe, BBC

• Famine Early Warnings System Network
• Drought Monitoring Centre for the Greater Horn of Africa
• Drought Monitoring Centre for the South African Development Community

Modelling the link between climate and deserts suggests that global warming might transform southern Africa into a mobile desert as the sand dunes of the Kalahari become de-stabilized. "By 2099, all dunefields are highly dynamic, from northern South Africa to Angola and Zambia," reports David Thomas of the Centre for the Environment at Oxford University. In the south, the dunes start to move "significantly" as early as 2039.

Human activity will play a critical part in determining whether or not the predictions come about, both in determining the scale of the climate change and the resilience of local systems. Thomas warns politicians against development policies that that might make the situation worse. "We've seen in Botswana, for example, with European Union support, an enormous growth in livestock production using groundwater. That in itself has put great pressure on the Botswana landscape... [In turn, the shifting sands] will make those Western-sponsored programmes very unsuccessful into the future."

More information

• BBC
• Discovery

• SciDevNet
• Yahoo

Following the shortest winter in a decade, Bangladesh experienced the longest wait for the summer monsoon in 33 years. The monsoon arrived on June 20th, two weeks late. "Our records show the last time the monsoon came so late was in 1972 when it arrived on June 14th, reported Akram Hussain, Bangladesh Meteorological Department director.

Hussain blamed the disruption of the seasons on climate change. "We believe these adverse impacts are mostly due to global warming," he said, "as our studies also have shown that the temperature is gradually rising in the country." Winter rainfall was 60 per cent below normal and, so far, the summer monsoon has not produced much rainfall.

More information

• Terra Daily

• Monsoon Progress 2005, Monsoon On Line

The United States Senate has rejected a proposal for an ambitious bipartisan trading programme to slow greenhouse gas emissions in favour of a weaker, voluntary plan. The voluntary plan offers tax credits and loan concessions to utilities, refiners and manufacturing facilities that deploy technology to limit emissions. It also commits to more federal research on climate change. The Senate later rejected a plan to cap emissions in the year 2010 at 2000 levels proposed by Republican John McCain and Democrat Joseph Lieberman.

Earlier, the Senate had approved a five-fold increase in renewable energy production as part of the emerging comprehensive energy plan. Ten per cent of electricity would be generated from renewable sources by 2020 if the commitment stands against what may prove to be tough opposition. "It imposes a one-size fits all mandate on the whole country without regard for whether the requirement is technologically or economically feasible," argued Republican Saxby Chambliss.

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• ENN
• Marketwatch
• ENS

• Lieberman Floor Statement
• Summary of McCain-Lieberman proposal

The report The Global Climate and Economic Development highlights the threat that the chasm between rich and poor will widen as a result of climate change. Poverty and environmental degradation must be considered a single issue, it concludes. In a foreword to the report, Rajendra K Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, predicts that "the impacts of climate change will fall disproportionately upon developing countries and the poor persons within all countries. It will therefore exacerbate inequalities in health status and access to adequate food, clean water and other resources."

A combination of technology and grass roots action is recommended to combat climate change while promoting social and economic development. Development programmes tend to be more successful and sustainable when they tackle climate change and programmes to mitigate and adapt to climate change work better when geared to fit a country's development framework, the report's authors argue. The report was prepared by the Hubert H Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota

More information

• EDIE

• Download report (30Mb), HHI

The climate plan being drafted by the G8 has been watered down, according to Friends of the Earth (FoE). The plan would be one of the major products of the G8 summit to be held in Gleneagles, Scotland, in July. Catherine Pearce, FoE International climate campaigner, said that "every reference to the urgency of action or the need for real cuts in emissions has been deleted or challenged. Nothing in this text recognizes the scale or urgency of the crisis of climate change."

Pearce reckons that "the G8 meeting provides an unprecedented opportunity for the richest nations to address the biggest threat facing our planet, but this opportunity will be missed due to the disgraceful, outdated and downright dangerous behaviour of the United States." All reference to funding for climate research has been removed from the latest draft of the communique on climate change.

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• ENS
• BBC

• Courier-Mail

The Desertification Synthesis concludes that desertification threatens to increase by millions the number of poor forced to migrate. Based on information generated for the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, the analysis ranks desertification as amongst the world's greatest environmental challenges. The report's authors consider that "given the size of population in drylands, the number of people affected... is likely larger than any other contemporary environmental problem."

Over-grazing, over-farming, misuse of irrigation and the unsustainable demands of a growing population are cited as some of the causes of dryland degradation, which will be exacerbated by global warming. Up to 20 per cent of the world's drylands has already experienced loss of plant life or economic use. "The cross boundary nature of the problem makes desertification a global concern - one that receives too little attention," said Zafar Adeel of the United Nations University International Network on Water, Environment and Health.

More information

• Terra Daily
• CNN
• MA
• Download report (3.1Mb), MA
• International Year of Deserts and Desertification, UN

Modelling the response of African plant species to climate change has led scientists from the University of York to warn of disruption on the scale of the past Ice Age. According to Jon Lovett, "the results were extraordinary - plants migrate out of the Congo rainforests and there is a massive intensification of drought in the Sahel. Other areas particularly hard hit are eastern Africa and the south-west coast."

The research was based on computer modelling and a new database of Africa-wide plant distribution maps, compiled with the Nees Institute of Biodiversity of Plants in Bonn, Germany, and the South African National Biodiversity Institute. Although "the social effects of climate change are tightly linked to politics and so difficult to predict", Lovett concludes that "the way things are going it looks like Africa is going to be in for a rough ride over the next few decades."

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• Science Daily

• Yorkshire Post

The national science academies of the G8 nations and others, including China, India and Brazil, have issued a strong statement calling on their governments to take immediate action to limit global warming. The statement has been sent to world leaders in the run-up to the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, in July. It is clearly intended to put additional pressure on the United States to take part in a post-2012 global emissions control regime.

"The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify prompt action," according to the statement. "It is vital that all nations identify cost-effective steps that they can take now, to contribute to substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions."

More information

• China Daily
• BBC
• ENS

• Statement by the national academies

Former United States Vice President Al Gore has called on city leaders to fight climate change. Speaking at an international assembly of mayors, held in San Francisco, California, to mark World Environment Day, Gore warned that "we are witnessing a collision between our civilization and the earth, a transformation of the relationship between our species and the planet. Is it only terrorists that we're worried about? Is that the only threat to the future that is worth organizing to respond to?"

California announced greenhouse gas emissions targets during the World Environment Day proceedings. The targets commit the state to reducing emissions to 2000 levels by 2010 (an eleven per cent cut), to 1990 levels by 2020 (25 per cent) and by 80 per cent by 2050. According to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, "California will continue to be a leader in the fight against global warming and protecting our environment." "Today I am establishing clear and ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our state to protect our many natural resources, public health, agriculture and diverse landscape, he continued."

More information

• San Francisco Chronicle
• ENN

• Los Angeles Times
• ENS
• World Environment Day speech, Arnold Schwarzenegger

One of the world's first " capture-ready" coal-fired power stations is to be built in Saskatchewan in central Canada. "We're building a plant that will last for a number of decades, so it seems prudent to recognize that at some point during that time, carbon will have to be managed," says Rick Patrick of SaskPower. "We think a capture-ready design will give us maximum flexibility for whatever comes at us."

There are mixed opinions on the value of capture-ready technology. Cost is an issue and alternative technologies for new plants, such as integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), are at a more advanced stage of development. "Building new coal-fired plants and betting on vague claims and future promises of technology at least a decade behind IGCC is a bad bet," says David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Nevertheless, even Hawkins reckons that capture-ready technology is "a reasonable backup."

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• Christian Science Monitor

The Twenty-Second Session of the Subsidiary Bodies to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change met in Bonn, Germany, 15-27th May. Planning for a five-year work programme on adaptation began, but the programme was not finalized. There was disagreement as to whether the programme should be structured by priority sectors (the United States proposal) or take an integrated approach (suggested by the G-77/China).

It also proved impossible to reach any firm conclusions during discussion of the Special Climate Change Fund, particularly with regard to priority or focal areas. Delegates were urged to come to the next session with "more flexible mandates". On the positive side, agreement was reached on the timing of non-Annex 1 national communications and on the Least Developed Countries Fund.

More information

• New Scientist
• ENN
• Green Building Press

• Speech, Jurgen Trittin
• Summary, ENB
• Press release, UNFCCC

Global warming is likely to seriously reduce food production, according to a report from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). "Sixty-five developing countries, representing more than half of the developing world's total population in 1995, will lose about 280 million tons of potential cereal production as a result of climate change," the report warns. The worst impact would be in sub-Saharan Africa.

It is concluded that agricultural losses may drastically increase the number of undernourished people. Some 40 poor, developing countries with a combined population of two billion, including 450 million people who are already undernourished, are most at risk. Climate impacts would severely hinder progress in combating poverty and food insecurity. "Climate change not only has an impact on food security, but is also likely to influence the development and intensification of animal diseases and plant pests," said Wulf Killmann, who chairs FAO's Interdepartmental Working Group on Climate Change.

More information

• ENN
• Discovery Channel

• Press release, FAO
• Report, FAO

"There is some tough sledding ahead to make the rest of the cuts in greenhouse gases that will be needed", warns Gary Harrison, a chief for Chickaloon Village in Alaska. Harrison, chair of the Arctic Athabaskan Council, was part of a delegation of Arctic leaders visiting Europe in late May to pressure government leaders to combat climate change. We came "to let people know that climate change is already having an effect in the Arctic, and it will soon be affecting them here," he said.

The group also lobbied for equitable development of the polar lands. Larisa Abrutina, representing the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, said her people should benefit from the extraction of natural resources. Olav Mathis Eura, who represents Saami people in Norway, Sweden and Finland, argued that development of the north should be sustainable. "We need protection of our traditional lands," he said. A recent study undertaken by the Arctic Council warned of the severe effects of global warming on the polar region.

More information

• Washington Post
• Terra Daily
• EDIE

• Background, Newswatch
• Download Arctic Council report

The Twenty-Second Session of the Subsidiary Bodies to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change continued this past week in Bonn, Germany, ending 27th May. Following lengthy negotiations, agreement on financial support for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) was reached and will be recommended to the Conference of the Parties later this year.

Bangladesh, speaking for the LDCs, described the final text as a compromise and called on the Global Environment Facility to operationalize the guidance in a way that truly responds to the need to implement the National Adaptation Programmes of Action. There had been considerable disagreement over whether or not responses to short-term climate variability should be supported as well as adaptation to long-term, anthropogenic climate change. The final wording side-steps the issue.

More information

• New Scientist
• ENN
• BBC
• Green Building Press

• Speech, Jurgen Trittin
• Live webcast, UNFCCC
• Daily coverage, ENB
• Press release, UNFCCC

A new climate model assessment predicts wetter conditions for the Sahel region of northern Africa but drier conditions across the south of the continent. The models predict that, under global warming conditions, temperature rises over the Atlantic Ocean will bring more rain to the Sahel. Whereas "in our models, the Indian Ocean shows very clear and dramatic warming into the future, which means more and more drought for southern Africa," reported Jim Hurrell of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the United States.

The results are based on 60 climate simulations by five computer models. The Sahelian drought of the late 20th century is linked by the models to the cooling of the North Atlantic Ocean that occurred at the same time. "This was the situation during much of the latter half of the 20th century," according to Hurrell. "We believe the North Atlantic Ocean cooling was natural and masked an expected greenhouse-gas warming effect."

More information

• Eurekalert
• Forest Conservation portal

• Download draft research paper (1.1 Mb)
• Background on Sahel drought

The Brazilian rainforest may be absorbing less carbon as trees grow, and die, faster than before. Larger, quicker growing species are thriving at the expense of smaller trees below the forest canopy. The results have emerged from a 20-year study of the effects of human clearance. "It is clear that this is not random variation. Rainforest dynamics are changing," concludes project leader William Laurance of the Smithsonian Tropical Institute.

The trend showed up in areas where human activities, such as logging or burning, had not affected the forest directly. One possible explanation, though, is the complex response of the ecosystem as enhanced carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affects the rate of photosynthetic carbon uptake. "Increases in forest carbon storage may be slowed by the tendency of canopy and emergent trees to produce wood of reduced density as their size and growth rate increases, and by the decline of densely wooded sub-canopy trees," warns Laurance.

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• BBC

• Irish Examiner

The Twenty-Second Session of the Subsidiary Bodies to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is taking place in Bonn, Germany, 15-27th May 2005. The event began with a two-day experts' meeting. Opening the meeting, Jurgen Trittin, German environment minister, said that the Kyoto measures had "proved successful" and called for industrialized nations to meet tougher targets, a 15 to 30 per cent reduction, by 2020. The United States is proposing carbon intensity targets, with reductions scaled by Gross Domestic Product. Others argue for weighting by population.

Papua New Guinea has proposed that forest protection should be permitted under the financial mechanisms aimed at reducing carbon emissions. "Kyoto does not allow developing nations that reduce deforestation emissions to get credit. Kyoto unfairly discriminates against rainforested developing nations who seek to participate within the world carbon market," argued ambassador Robert Aisi. "Tropical rainforest nations deserve to be treated equally. If we reduce our deforestation, we should be compensated for these reductions, as are industrial countries. The compensation we seek is access to the world's carbon markets, but on a fair and equitable basis."

More information

• New Scientist
• ENN
• BBC
• Green Building Press

• Speech, Jurgen Trittin
• Live webcast, UNFCCC
• Daily coverage, ENB
• Press release, UNFCCC

A new global atlas of wind power potential suggests that wind could be harnessed to meet the world's total energy demand. Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson of Stanford University in the United States mapped more than 8,000 wind speed records at the Earth's surface and at height in the atmosphere. "The main implication of this study is that wind, for low-cost wind energy, is more widely available than was previously recognized," Archer reported.

The researchers note, though, that there are barriers to achieving the full potential of the wind resource. A dense array of turbines would be needed, for example, and this may have unacceptable ecological and social consequences. Other power sources may be needed to compensate for periods of low wind speed. Archer hopes that "this study will foster... economic analyses of the barriers to the implementation of a wind-based global energy scenario."

More information

• Science Daily

• Download research paper (3.5 Mb)

The United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting an above-average season for Atlantic hurricanes, with a risk of another bad season on the Atlantic Seaboard and Gulf Coast. "NOAA's prediction for the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season is for 12 to 15 tropical storms, with seven to nine becoming hurricanes, of which three to five could become major hurricanes," announced Conrad C. Lautenbacher, NOAA administrator.

NOAA is warning the public to be prepared. " Last year's hurricane season provided a reminder that planning and preparation for a hurricane do make a difference. Residents in hurricane vulnerable areas who had a plan, and took individual responsibility for acting on those plans, faired far better than those who did not," said Max Mayfield of NOAA's National Hurricane Center. May 15th-23rd was National Hurricane Preparedness Week.

More information

• Terra Daily
• ABC News

• Press release, National Hurricane Center
• Tropical storm advisories

Institutional investors have called for action on climate change, prompted by growing evidence of negative economic impacts. Meeting at the 2005 Investor Summit on Climate Risk, held in New York, a grouping of pension funds, foundations, investors and United States state treasurers demanded that market regulators insist on rigorous corporate disclosure of climate risks. The group is also seeking one billion US dollars in clean technology investment over the next year.

The conference issued a "Call for Action," signed by 40 major investors. "Investors backing these practical and pragmatic steps send a strong signal to the markets that climate risk is real and needs to be managed aggressively," responded Klaus Toepfer, head of the United Nations Environment Programme, a co-host of the meeting. There will be three post-summit initiatives: a new climate disclosure risk initiative; the development of principles for responsible investment; and a new forum to promote collaboration among investors.

More information

• ENS
• ENN
• Press release, UNEP

• Call for Action
• Investor Network on Climate Risk

One hundred leading scientists and environmentalists met at the World Environmental Forum, held at Stony Brook University in the United States over the first weekend in May, to consider the ecological impact of climate change. "We have to get a grip on ourselves, on this planet, and let's start managing it in a sensible way," said Thomas Lovejoy of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment in Washington DC. "We're going to have glacier national parks but no glaciers."

Richard Leakey, conference organizer and visting professor at Stony Brook University, called for a new global fund to protect wildlife. "Protected areas are now islands," he said. "The wildlife and fauna and flora are pretty well tied in by boundaries which aren't oceans, in the sense of islands, but development. And if there's significant climate change, as is predicted, what's going to happen to these areas? Palaeontologically, island faunas become extinct."

More information

• Newsday
• BBC

• ENS
• Stony Brook Statesman

Cutting smog pollution is accelerating global warming, according to Martin Wild of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science, Zurich, Switzerland. "There's no longer a dimming to counteract the greenhouse effect," he reported to New Scientist. Since 1990, skies have become clearer, ending the period of 'global dimming' associated with increasing pollution.

Surface measurements of radiation received from the sun, supported by satellite data, show a four per cent brightening over the past decade. "The atmosphere is heated from the bottom up, and more solar energy at the surface means we might finally see the increases in temperature that we expected to see with global greenhouse warming," said Chuck Long, contributor to the project from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of the United States Department of Energy.

More information

• Terra Daily
• New Scientist

• Christian Science Monitor

Thailand hosted a three-day conference to discuss the lessons learned from the Indian Ocean tsunami last week. The meeting was organized by the World Health Organization (WHO). Opening the conference, WHO director-general Lee Jong-wook reported that the tsunami had affected over ten countries in Asia and Africa and killed 270,000 people. "This heavy loss has made the world realize that something must be done to prepare ourselves for future disasters," he said.

The conference ended with the WHO and other groups calling for a fundamental change in crisis response. "What we're proposing is radical. If we don't change things then more lives will be unnecessarily lost," said Mukesh Kapila, a senior WHO adviser. One of the main problems discussed at the meeting was how to manage more effectively the many offers of assistance in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami. Barbara Butcher, director of investigation for New York City, stressed the need for improved aid for the survivors. "Death is not the end of suffering. People left behind still suffer a great deal from the loss," she said.

More information

• Boston Globe
• Bernama
• BBC

• Conference purpose, WHO

Antarctic fish may be more adaptable than previously thought, according to a study led by Bill Davison of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. In a series of aquarium experiments, bald rock cod swam through a tunnel as the temperature was varied. If allowed to acclimatize, the fish swam effectively in waters up to 8°C. Fresh from the ocean, effectiveness dropped as the temperature rose over 2°C.

The bald rock cod has been grouped with the stenotherms, characterized as being limited to a particular environmental temperature. The research shows that the fish change their cardiovascular physiology and the enzymes that power swimming as the environment alters. "This research is extremely exciting as it shows that Antarctic fish are much more flexible than was previously thought," said Davison.

More information

• Scoop

• Discovery

European carmakers are not reporting how they intend to meet a 2008 deadline for carbon emissions reductions, according to a report from the World Resources Institute and the Sustainable Asset Management Group. The deadline is enshrined in the voluntary agreement between the European Union and the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA) "It is unacceptable that, with only three years left to comply with the ACEA agreement, auto companies have done little to disclose in their annual reports to investors how they plan to meet this voluntary target," commented Amanda Sauer, an author of the report.

"The lack of disclosure around the ACEA agreement means investors cannot make informed decisions because they do not know the relative cost exposure of the automakers," commented co-author Fred Wellington. "Without information on these costs - as well as their potential effect on profit margins - market valuations could be distorted." The ACEA target is to reduce emissions to an overall fleet average of 140 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre.

More information

Background

• World Resources Institute

• Report, WRI/SAM
• Monitoring of ACEA commitment (0.6 Mb download), ACEA

A group of American scientists claims to have found the "smoking gun" that proves that human activity is responsible for global warming. The study estimates the imbalance between the amount of energy received from the sun at height in the atmosphere and the amount lost to space from the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere. The results show that the planet is absorbing more energy than it is emitting to space, consistent with an enhanced greenhouse effect. "There can no longer be genuine doubt that human-made gases are the dominant cause of observed warming," concluded Jim Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.

The analysis was based on data from the oceans and computer modelling. "Measuring the imbalance directly is extremely difficult," reported GISS scientist Gavin Schmidt. "But we know how much energy is going into the oceans - that has been measured and over the last ten years confirmed by satellites and in-situ measurements - and, from our understanding of atmospheric physics, that has to be equal to the imbalance at the top of the atmosphere." Others disagree with this approach. "I do not believe this research team has made a compelling case to suggest that their computer models are sufficiently realistic to justify the implications of anthropogenic (human-induced) global warming that they make," commented Bill Kininmonth, former head of Australia's National Climate Centre.

More information

• BBC
• Newsday
• Science Daily

• Press release, GISS
• Abstract and paper download (1 Mb), GISS
• Data, GISS

The Starbucks Coffee Company has committed to purchasing renewable energy to match five per cent of the power needed to operate its North American retail stores. This will place it amongst the top 25 purchasers of renewable energy in the United States. "Because the energy used at our retail stores makes up nearly 50 per cent of our total greenhouse gas emissions, this is a natural starting point for us," said Sandra Taylor, senior vice president of corporate social responsibility. Starbucks will set an emissions reduction target this year.

Interviewed by the British newspaper, the Guardian, Jerry Greenfield, founder of the Ben and Jerry ice cream company, spoke recently about the new Climate Change College that the company has founded. The College, dedicated to raising awareness of the climate issue, is part of the Lick Global Warming Campaign. It offers young people in the United Kingdom and The Netherlands the opportunity to learn about climate change through workshops, internships and visits to the polar region. "Remember these words from two old ice cream guys," he joked, "if it's melted, it's ruined."

More information

• Starbucks, Greenbiz

• Interview with Jerry Greenfield, Guardian Unlimited
• Climate Change College, Scotsman

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has criticized the Bush administration for not providing adequate and timely information on climate change to the United States Congress. The Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) failed to meet a 2004 deadline for updating a review of federal research completed in the year 2000. Instead, the Program will release a series of shorter reports, claiming that the deadline was over-ambitious given the complexity of the issue. "By the time the last of these reports is published, about seven years will have elapsed since the publication of the 2000 report - nearly twice the interval specified," said John Stephenson, GAO director of natural resources and the environment.

The Climate Change Science Program was also criticized for its handling of climate impacts, which "contrasts with its more structured approach for addressing scientific uncertainties and trends." According to Philip Clapp, of the National Environmental Trust, "this White House bases its policies on selective science, not the 'sound science' President Bush so often postures about. The Bush administration's climate science program is so distorted that it belongs in the same file drawer as the tobacco industry's studies denying the link between smoking and cancer."

More information

• Science Daily

• Abstract and report download (0.3 Mb), GAO

A new study has mapped solar and wind energy sites in developing nations. The Solar and Wind Energy Resource Assessment (SWERA) was organized by the United Nations Environment Programme. "In developing countries all over the world we have removed some of the uncertainty about the size and intensity of the solar and wind resource," said Klaus Toepfer, UNEP executive director. "These countries need greatly expanded energy services to help in the fight against poverty and to power sustainable development."

In Nicaragua, the wind resource assessment demonstrated a far greater potential than previous estimates had suggested. As a result, the Nicaraguan National Assembly passed the Decree on Promotion of Wind Energy 2004 that gives wind-generated electricity priority over other options when fed into electricity grids. The United States Trade and Development Agency and the Inter-American Development Bank have since launched wind energy feasibility studies in Nicaragua.

More information

• ClimateBiz
• ENN

• Country information, SWERA

Sea levels have changed faster than previously believed, according to a new study. Using a new method of dating dead corals, researchers have revealed repeated rises and falls in sea level of 6 to 30 metres over little more than a millennium. "There's never been a record of sea level to show in detail [these] changes," said William Thompson of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the study's lead author.

"Sea level is more variable than previously thought over a period between 70,000 and 250,000 years ago," he continued. "Substantial shifts occur over a few thousand years, during both glacial and interglacial periods, with rates of change that exceed estimates of modern sea level rise. Although sea level over the past few thousand years appears to have been relatively stable, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule."

More information

Background

• Dive News
• Discovery Channel
• Sci-Tech Today

• Changes in Sea Level, IPCC

Researchers in Japan are studying the feasibility of creating a seaweed plantation in the Pacific Ocean to absorb carbon dioxide and produce biofuel. According to Masahiro Notoya of the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, "petroleum was originally fossilized seaweed and other creatures. "Therefore, it makes sense to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the air with the help of seaweed and use the seaweed to produce fuel."

The plantation would consist of 100 floating fishing nets in which the seaweed would grow. Each net would be 10 by 10 kilometres in size. and could produce 270,000 tons of seaweed a year. When exposed to heated water vapour, seaweed releases hydrogen and carbon monoxide gases from which methanol and other biofuels can be synthesized.

More information

Background

• Daily Yomiuri Online

• The Seaweed Site

Government and business leaders from Australia and New Zealand have met with climate experts from the United States to discuss a plan for combating global warming outside the Kyoto Protocol framework. The plan has been developed by the Pew Centre and involves, amongst other things, voluntary, rather than binding, emissions targets. Alcoa Australia executive Meg McDonald commented that "one of the things that will be important is flexibility to develop a framework that incorporates actions to engage more countries and more players and therefore achieve more reductions than a simple target-based approach... Countries like India and China will need that flexibility."

Speaking before the meeting, Ian Campbell, Australia's environment minister, said that "this dialogue is one of the most optimistic forums we have got on the planet." He told the meeting that he hoped Australia could broker a pact that would include both the United States and China. "There is a view abroad, which I subscribe to, that the Kyoto Protocol by itself won't be enough, because there are too few countries involved with targets, and it won't be enough because the targets are too light," commented Pete Hodgson, New Zealand minister. "[But] it is an astonishingly important first step," he continued, "because we are discovering the price of carbon and we are therefore able to turn an environmental issue progressively more and more into an economic one."

More information

• Terra Daily
• Stuff

• Australian state action, Newswatch
• Australian federal government strategy, Newswatch
• Pew Centre initiative, Newswatch

There would be severe effects on the oceanic food chain if the Atlantic Conveyer current shuts down, according to Andreas Schmittner of the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. In the worst case projection, global productivity of phytoplankton drops 20 per cent and, in the North Atlantic, the loss reaches 50 per cent. "Phytoplankton are the basis of the entire marine food web," Schmittner said. "They ultimately affect everything from zooplankton to the larger fish that people consume."

According to Schmittner, "when the Atlantic Conveyer current works, the dead plankton sink to the bottom and are replaced at the surface with nutrient-rich water that encourages further production. When the current is disrupted, and the mixing slows, that production also is disrupted." There is concern that global warming, by increasing temperatures and precipitation and decreasing salinity, might weaken the Atlantic Conveyer.

More information

Background

• Science Daily

• Great Ocean Conveyer Belt, Environmental Literacy Council

A new report details ways in which the global warming contribution of ozone-depleters, the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and their replacements could be cut by half by the year 2015. The report has been produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Technology and Economic Assessment Panel, set up under the 1987 Montreal Protocol.

"Although climate change and ozone destruction are essentially different issues, our use of certain chemicals links them together", said Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization. Not only the CFCs, but also certain replacement chemicals, such as the hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), are powerful greenhouse gases. "We must continuously monitor, undertake research and improve how we manage this group of extremely useful substances, which is implicated in not one, but two of the major environmental problems we have ever known," concludes Jarraud.

More information

• ENN
• YubaNet

• Summary for policymakers, IPCC

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), released March 30th 2005, reports that "any progress achieved in addressing the goals of poverty and hunger eradication, improved health, and environmental protection is unlikely to be sustained if most of the ecosystem services on which humanity relies continue to be degraded." The likelihood of abrupt changes, such as the emergence of new diseases and dead zones along coasts and the collapse of fisheries, is increasing. "Only by understanding the environment and how it works, can we make the necessary decisions to protect it," said Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General, launching the report. "The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment is an unprecedented contribution to our global mission for development, sustainability and peace."

The MEA's four main findings are that:

• humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively in the last 50 years than in any other period;
• ecosystem changes that have contributed substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development have been achieved at growing costs in the form of degradation of other services;
• the degradation of ecosystem services could grow significantly worse during the first half of this century and is a barrier to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals; and,
• the challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while meeting increasing demands can be met under some scenarios involving significant policy and institutional changes - however, these changes will be large and are not currently under way.

More information

• Seattle Times
• OneWorld United States
• EDIE News Center
• EMEA News

• Press release, MEA
• Synthesis report, MEA

Use of wood as a household fuel could lead to ten million premature deaths in sub-Saharan Africa by the year 2030 and contribute significantly to climate change. This conclusion results from a study led by Daniel Kammen of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California Berkeley, in the United States. Children are most at risk, with eight million predicted to die of pulmonary disease by 2030.

Kammen calls for the adoption of safer and less polluting fuel supplies across the African continent. He advocates a combination of sustainable forest management with more efficient means of making charcoal and stoves. Increased use of charcoal would reduce the number of deaths, but would boost greenhouse gas emissions. In contrast to lower carbon emitters such as kerosene, charcoal would, however, be within the economic reach of the bulk of the population.

More information

• allAfrica
• Charcoal production and use, RAEL

Australian states and territories are taking action on climate change and developing a national programme. The scheme will cap greenhouse gas emissions and allow permit trading. "In the absence of Commonwealth action, New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria have spearheaded the development of a state- and territory-based emission trading scheme," said Bob Carr, NSW Premier.

Ian Campbell, Federal environment minister, attacked the scheme, saying it would be "incredibly inefficient and ineffective and see very important investment diverted away from where the best technologies are for reducing greenhouse gases." According to opposition spokesman, Anthony Albanese, state governments had to act because "the Howard Government is sleeping through the unfolding crisis" of climate change.

More information

• News.com.au
• Sydney Morning Herald

• Federal government strategy, Newswatch

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2004, though the rise that year was less than in the previous two years. Scientists at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii have reported a concentration of 378 parts per million by the end of the year. "The most striking thing about the data is that we've seen an increase in carbon dioxide levels every single year since 1958," said Pieter Tans of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Monitoring Diagnostics Laboratory (CMDL).

Variations in the carbon dioxide growth rate from year to year are largely due to natural processes, such as changes in the oceans or biosphere. Human activity, though, is considered to be responsible for the persistent upward trend in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. According to David Hofmann, CMDL director, "even though man's contribution is not increasing dramatically - in fact it's steady - it is adding up; there's a cumulative increase."

More information

Background

• BBC
• Terra Daily

• Data visualization, CMDL

Australia is to name and shame major polluters in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Poor performers in the business sector will have their names and pollution records published on the internet, though no other penalty will be applied. "There's no point in us having a group of nations armed with Kyoto self-flagellating, bringing in new costs and penalties into their economies, while developing nations go on expanding rapidly," said environment minister Ian Campbell, repeating Australia's justification for not ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.

Under the new programme, the government will also certify products and services as not contributing to global warming. According to Campbell, "what we're doing is adding transparency to the system. We'll be able to advise consumers of products in Australia just which companies are the most greenhouse-friendly so that consumers can make informed decisions about supporting sustainable companies". With this programme, Australia would meet its Kyoto target without inflicting economic damage on the nation, reported industry minister Ian Macfarlane.

More information

• ENN

• Greenhouse Challenge Plus

The mild El Niño conditions that have affected the Pacific Ocean in recent months are fading, according to the latest assessment from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A continuing trend to neutral conditions is forecast over the next few months.

Lingering climate effects were still being felt during February 2005. Drier than normal weather affected Indonesia and northern Australia, while increased rainfall occurred over the central equatorial Pacific.

More information

• Delta Farm Press
• CBS News

• ENSO Diagnostic Discussion, NOAA
• ENSO Quick Look, IRI

Wolves in Yellowstone National Park in the United States are reducing the effects of climate change. Warmer winters mean fewer fatalities amongst the elk population, leaving less food for scavengers. Countering this, gray wolves, once threatened by extinction, are now killing more elk, leaving carrion for the scavengers.

"Wolves provide a steady supply of carrion for the scavengers throughout the winter, whether it is mild or severe," reports Chris Wilmers, who conducted the research at the College of Natural Resources at the University of California, Berkeley. Some scavengers have adapted to the wolves' presence. "Ravens have adopted a foraging strategy by following the wolves when they are on a hunt," says Wilmers. "When wolves chase down their prey through wide open spaces over long distances, it's as good as a dinner bell. Ravens and other scavengers know that a meal is coming."

More information

• Science Daily
• EurekAlert
• PLoS Biology

• Research article, PloS Biology

The Canadian government has reached an agreement with car manufacturers to cut greenhouse emissions from vehicles by 25 per cent from 1995 levels over the next five years. The voluntary deal means that mandatory emissions limits, threatened by Environment Minister Stéphane Dion, will not now be imposed. Opposition parties are, however, still pushing for firmer constraints. "We believe that mandatory emissions reduction standards such as they have in California is what Canada should have done," said New Democrat leader Jack Layton. "There's been lots of voluntary commitments around without any teeth and our pollution has gone up considerably instead of down."

The agreement has been welcomed by environmental groups. "This agreement is a breakthrough because it will both cut global warming emissions in Canada, and set the stage for similar reductions in the United States," said Dan Becker of the Sierra Club. "Right now, California and seven eastern states either have, or are in the process of adopting clean car laws. With the addition of Canada, one-third of the North American auto market will have to meet California's tougher emissions rules." Manufacturers would find it economically difficult to make one set of clean cars for eight states and Canada and "a dirty set for the rest," he concluded.

More information

Background

• ENN
• MSNBC News

• Sierra Club

The United States Government is to keep track of voluntary reductions in greenhouse gases by farmers and foresters. According to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, farm and forest landowners now have "a unique opportunity to be part of the solution to greenhouse gas emissions." The Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service is making available an online method of assessing soil carbon sequestration. A broader registry of voluntary efforts by businesses, groups and individuals to reduce greenhouse gases has been kept since 1992.

While the Bush administration claims the registry shows how seriously the greenhouse gas issue is viewed, others disagree. David Hawkins of the Natural Resources Defense Council called the reporting registry a "charade that is intended to allow the government and the participants to portray that they are doing something about global warming, when they are not." He cites the example of companies running nuclear reactors that could claim emissions reductions by saying they would have otherwise operated coal-fired power plants.

More information

• ENN

• Voluntary reporting, US Department of Agriculture
• Voluntary reporting, US Department of Energy

Government ministers and senior officials from 20 countries met in the United Kingdom to discuss climate change March 15-16th, prior to the next G8 summit in Scotland in July 2005. "We must make climate stability, energy investment and energy security central to economic policies," stated British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. Graphic images of melting glaciers and makeshift sea defenses on display at the meeting underlined the point. "International cooperation is again the only way forward," he concluded.

The United States took the position that energy efficiency, not a radical shift to a low carbon economy, was the priority. "We are now trying to find a portfolio in which three words are important, technology, technology, technology," reported James L. Connaughton, President Bush's chief environment adviser, during the run-up to the meeting. Liu Jiang, leader of the Chinese delegation, said that China was embarking on a major investment programme in nuclear reactors to reduce its dependence on coal.

More information

• Reuters
• ENN
• CBS
• BBC

• Text of Gordon Brown's speech, Guardian

European Union (EU) environment ministers have proposed new emissions targets for the period after the Kyoto Protocol emissions reduction schedule ends in 2012. The proposal is that the industrialized nations cut emissions by 15 to 30 per cent by 2020 and by 60 to 80 per cent by 2050 from the 1990 benchmark levels.

The EU had been reluctant to discuss specific targets for the post-2012 period in order not to discourage the United States from participating. Serge Lepeltier, French Environment Minister, said, however, that "it would have sent a bad signal to the whole world" if EU states did not set targets. "Europe has the will to remain the engine behind the struggle against climate change." The proposal will be considered by EU heads of state at a meeting this week.

More information

• Terra Daily

• EurActiv

New studies by scientists based in the United States have underlined the inevitability of climate change and sea-level rise even if greenhouse gas emissions are reduced severely. "The feeling is that if things are getting bad, you hit the stop button. But even if you do, the climate continues to change," said Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado.

The analysts modelled the effects on climate of a range of emissions scenarios. Even the most 'optimistic' projection, which caps greenhouse gases at year 2000 levels as a result of drastic cuts in emissions, predicts that global temperature will continue to rise by up to 0.6 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years. The delayed response to emissions reductions occurs because of the high thermal inertia of the oceans. The oceans take time to warm, slowing the climate system's response to the change in the Earth's energy balance. As long as the ocean water continues to warm, it expands and sea level rises. An independent study by Tom Wigley, also based at NCAR, tells the same story.

More information

• New Scientist

• Press release, NCAR

According to Zhu Jianguo of the Institute of Soil Sciences in Nanjing, PR China, with higher levels of carbon dioxide in the air, rice and wheat may grow faster but will become less nutritious. The conclusion is based on free-air carbon dioxide enrichment experiments, in which crops are grown in open fields in an artificial local atmosphere. The Nanjing experiments are the first undertaken in a developing country.

Plants combine carbon dioxide with water to form carbohydrates, so higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air mean that they grow more rapidly, but this can be at the expense of the nutritional content. With a 50 per cent increase in carbon dioxide levels, yields increased by 15 per cent for rice and 14 per cent for wheat. Growth rates were enhanced by 10-14 per cent in the case of rice and 12-20 per cent for wheat. Protein levels in both crops, however, decreased by around ten per cent.

More information

• SciDev.Net

Klaus Keller and William E. Easterling of the Penn State Institutes of the Environment argue that typical economic analyses of the global warming problem may be biased because they neglect climate thresholds. "Economic models of climate change typically assume that changes occur gradually and reversibly," said Keller. "However, some environmental effects are not smooth and show a threshold response. For a long time nothing or very little happens and then suddenly a large change occurs." Neglecting the possibility of these effects in economic analysis favours scenarios based on limited action to control emissions.

The analysts considered two cases - widespread bleaching of corals and the collapse of oceanic circulation systems - that are difficult to forecast but might occur very rapidly. Keller concludes that "observation systems that would yield actionable early warning signals about climate thresholds have the potential to improve climate policies considerably. Implementing such observation systems could very well be a highly profitable investment for future generations."

More information

• ClimateBiz
• Free download of technical paper if browsing from a developing country or transitional economy domain, IDEAS

According to research led by the University of Colorado at Boulder, 2004 saw the largest ever decline in upper stratospheric ozone observed over the higher Northern Hemisphere. "This decline was completely unexpected," says Cora Randall of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Ozone reductions of up to 60 per cent occurred some 40 km above high northern latitudes. The decline is attributed by the researchers to natural processes.

A record speeding up of the atmospheric circulation early in the year allowed nitrogen gases, resulting from chemical reactions triggered by energetic solar particles high in the atmosphere, to descend down into the stratosphere more easily. The increased concentration of nitrogen gases in the stratosphere then caused the ozone destruction. The Halloween solar storms of 2003 may also have played a part in increasing prevailing concentrations of nitrogen gases. Randall concluded that "scientists searching for signs of ozone recovery need to factor in the atmospheric effects of energetic particles, something they do not now do."

More information

• Terra Daily

• Discovery Channel

The Canadian government has announced a 'climate-friendly' budget, including substantive measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Amongst other commitments, a Clean Fund will encourage the most cost-effective projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The number of homes retrofitted under the EnerGuide for Houses Retrofit Incentive programme will be quadrupled. There will be additional investment in local green projects and renewable energy. "There has been a lot of talk up until now about meeting our Kyoto obligations but this budget contains a serious commitment in terms of dollars and that is very positive," said Alex Zimmerman of the Canada Green Building Council. "This is a win for the economy and for the environment."

In the United States, a leading Republican critic of the Kyoto Protocol, Senator Chuck Hagel, has introduced three climate bills. The bills are intended to promote the development of clean-energy technologies, through international technology exchange, corporate loans and tax credits. Hagel remains opposed to regulatory restraints, but reckons the marketplace will evolve toward energy efficiency with support from industry incentives and voluntary public-private partnerships.

More information

• ClimateBiz
• Renewable Energy Access
• Address by the Minister of the Environment, Environment Canada

• Interview with Senator Chuck Hagel, Grist
• Washington Times

Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, and their collaborators claim clear evidence of warming in the world’s oceans resulting from human activity. The evidence comes from a combination of observed data and model estimates. The analysis shows the penetration of greenhouse-induced warming into the depths of the oceans.

"This is perhaps the most compelling evidence yet that global warming is happening right now and it shows that we can successfully simulate its past and likely future evolution," commented Tim Barnett, of the Climate Research Division at Scripps. "The statistical significance of these results is far too strong to be merely dismissed and should wipe out much of the uncertainty about the reality of global warming." Barnett concludes that "the debate over whether or not there is a global warming signal is now over, at least for rational people."

More information

• Science Daily
• ABC Online

• Press release, Scripps

Polar experts have warned that the West Antarctic ice sheet is starting to collapse. Chris Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey, views the massive ice sheet as an "awakened giant". New data shows that three glaciers that form part of the ice sheet are losing more ice, mainly through iceberg calving, than is being replaced by snow.

It is estimated that the melting of these glaciers is contributing 0.24mm a year to global sea level rise. The cause of the glacial retreat remains to be established, though global warming is a likely explanation. "The fact that three of them are simultaneously accelerating suggests that is the case," says Rapley. In another British study, which the British Antarctic Survey also contributed to, the importance of shifting ocean currents in eroding ice shelves around Antarctica has been underlined by analysis of the retreat of the George VI Ice Shelf around 9500 years ago.

More information

• New Scientist
• Download presentation (2Mb), BAS

• EurekAlert

Colossal areas of meltwater, held behind glaciers, threaten mountain communities as global warming breaches the glacial dams, according to European scientists. "In the Himalayas, some glaciers are up to 70 kilometres long," warned Martin Beniston of Fribourg University in Switzerland. "In Bhutan alone, there are at least 50 lakes in this category, and a similar number in Nepal as well. Towns and villages in their path could be hit by a torrent of water like a tsunami."

Last year, to avoid such flooding, engineers drained a lake that had built up behind the European Rochemelon glacier due to the summer heat. Glaciers are retreating in the Andes, Alps, Europe and the Himalayas owing to the combination of higher temperatures and lack of snowfall.

More information

• Terra Daily

The Chinese authorities have announced that a US$1.53 million forestry project to offset greenhouse gas emissions, combat desertification and protect biodiversity will go ahead in cooperation with the Italian government. Three thousand hectares of trees will be planted in Aohan Banner, in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of North China. Young people will carry out the work over the next five years and the project will be extended for a further five years.

"Projects like this can not only help China, a developing country, maintain a sustainable development of economy, but also satisfy the credits Italy has promised because of its commitments to the mitigation of carbon emissions as an industrialized country," said an official from the State Forestry Administration. "It will be the first project of its type in China... to take advantage of opportunities in the Clean Development Mechanism," he continued.

More information

Background

• China Daily

• Tiempo Climate Newswatch

A team of Swedish and Russian scientists has developed a new record of Northern Hemisphere climate for the past 2000 years that suggests that natural climate variability may have been greater then previously thought. Over much of the 20th century, temperatures were similar to those prevailing during the 11th and 12th centuries. The most recent 15 years, though, have shown warmth unprecedented during earlier periods.

The research was based in the Department of Meteorology at Stockholm University and led by Anders Moberg. Use was made of indirect climate data, such as evidence from tree rings, ice sheets and lake and ocean sediments. The study used a different selection of climate records than previous work and a new method to reconstruct temperatures.

More information

• ENN

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change came into force on February 16th 2005. The United States and Australia remain outside the agreement. "We will continue to pressure hard for all of our international partners to come on board," said Stavros Dimas, European Union environment commissioner. "The countries (outside the treaty) say they will take measures on their own but I wonder if they can work," commented Japan's Foreign Minister, Nobutaka Machimura.

With the Protocol's entry into force:

1. industrialized nations must meet quantitative targets for limiting their greenhouse gas emissions, reducing their combined emissions of six major gases to 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by the period 2008-2012;
2. the framework for an international carbon trading market will come into being;
3. the Clean Development Mechanism will move to full operation, encouraging investments in developing-country projects that limit emissions and are consistent with sustainable development goals; and,
4. the Adaptation Fund will start preparations to assist developing countries cope with the impacts of climate change.

More information

• BBC
• VoA
• Yahoo! News
• The Mercury

• ENN
• Guardian Unlimited
• Background, Guardian Unlimited
• Background, UNFCCC

2005 could be the warmest year on record, according to scientists at the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). A weak El Niño may nudge the global temperature well above the recent warming trend, "a trend that has been shown to be due primarily to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," said Jim Hansen, of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

The warming of the Pacific during El Niño events was partially responsible for the notable warmth of 1998 (the warmest year on record) and 2002-3. 2004 was the fourth warmest year on record. According to the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration the current El Niño will weaken over the next three months.

More information

• CNN
• Science Daily

• Report on 2004 temperatures, NASA
• Latest El Niño forecast, NOAA

Global warming will make food supplies scarce over the present century, warns Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute. "The combination of rising temperatures and falling water tables is likely to lead to a tightening of world grain supplies," he said. "This is already evident with world rice prices, which have risen over 30 per cent in the last year." Half the world's population live in countries where wells are drying up and water tables are falling, he continued.

The grain harvest during 2004 reached a record high as a result of favourable weather, but during the four previous years supply could not meet demand as crops were adversely affected by heat in the United States, Europe and India. "If stocks go down, we could see a scramble, and I think we're likely to see a politics of food scarcity beginning to emerge," Brown predicted.

More information

• ENN

"Climate change is a major threat to India and may lead to potentially dangerous problems," claimed David King, Chief Scientific Advisor to the British government, as the 2005 Delhi Sustainable Development Summit opened. "The rise in sea levels due to global warming may endanger the coastline and dramatically alter the monsoon, which is crucial for the country's economy," he continued. The concluding session of the summit considered a new paradigm that needs to emerge whereby quality of life and people's aspirations, not just economic growth and material wealth, will be the prime concerns for all.

At the same time as the conference, the United Kingdom and India announced plans for collaboration on a series of sustainable development projects, including climate research. The United Kingdom will invite India, China and other rapidly industrializing countries to the G8 summit later this year, where climate change will be high on the agenda. The Delhi Sustainable Development Summit was organized by The Energy Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi, India, and took place 3rd-5th February.

More information

From the conference

• Hindustan Times
• SciDev.Net

• Video, text reports and other material

The European Union (EU) has announced that it will concentrate on bringing other major greenhouse gas emitters into a post-2012 agreement, rather than setting itself targets for that period now. In fact, "the reduction commitments that the EU would be willing to take under such a regime should depend on the level and type of participation of other major emitters," according to a Commission paper. Major emitters includes not only the United States but also leading industrializing nations such as India and China. "What the European Commission is saying is they will wait and see what other nations are doing. That is the biggest threat to the EU position so far," responded Mahi Sideridou of Greenpeace.

General details of the EU's developing climate strategy were also announced, including promoting energy efficiency and reducing aviation and maritime pollution. New incentives, such as tax breaks for the development and implementation of new technology, are being considered. The EU estimates that the costs associated with emissions reductions are manageable, providing all nations act together, with a 1.5 per cent a year emissions reduction post-2012 taking 0.5 to 1.5 per cent off economic growth by 2025.

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• Reuters
• ENN

• EUROPA, EU climate strategy

Global warming may be good news for companies investing in new trade routes around the Arctic. "There is great potential for increasing trade between North America and the Russian sphere," said Mike Ogborn, President of the Churchill Gateway Development Corporation. Ogborn is managing plans to expand the Canadian port of Churchill, Manitoba, on the Hudson Bay and develop an "arctic bridge" between North America and Russia.

Predictions suggest that by 2050, climate change may result in the year-long opening of waterways currently blocked by ice. This could reduce the passage from Churchill to northern Europe and Russia by more then 2,000km. Omnitrax, a transportation services company based in Denver, Colorado, in the United States, has dredged the harbour at Churchill and improved the local rail track, anticipating heavier traffic.

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• Terra Daily
• Economist

• Download Arctic impacts report

The conference Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, took place in Exeter in the United Kingdom February 1st-3rd 2005. The aim of the meeting was to examine the climate treaty's goal of avoiding "dangerous interference" with the climate system. The meeting did not define a precise threshold beyond which dangerous interference was likely to occur. The contributed papers, though, did build up a series of assessments of the potential impact of different levels and rates of climate change. British Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett observed that: "Science on its own cannot give us the answer to the question of how much climate change is too much. What it can do, however, is set out the consequences of allowing different degrees of climate change to continue in order to guide the choices that we must take."

The final communiqué from the conference notes that "a number of new impacts were identified that are potentially disturbing." On the basis of the latest evidence, Bill Hare, visiting scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany warned that the European Union target of restricting global warming to two degrees Celsius "may even be too high in the long-term." "I think we have to keep temperatures below that level," he said, "otherwise we risk really major changes."

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• BBC
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In the run-up to the conference Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, the Scientific Alliance and the George C. Marshall Institute sponsored a meeting for greenhouse sceptics at the Royal Institution in London, United Kingdom, on January 27th. It was "a valuable opportunity for debate on a topic frequently obscured by angst and alarmism," according to the organizers. Speakers included David Bellamy, Richard Lindzen, Fred Singer and Benny Peiser.

Commenting on the meeting, John Maddox, a former Nature editor, said that, while he did not dispute the link between carbon dioxide and global warming, "the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is monolithic and complacent, and it is conceivable that they are exaggerating the speed of change."

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• Guardian Unlimited

The report "Meeting the Climate Challenge" from the International Climate Change Task Force calls on governments to take immediate action to avoid breaching the threshold of a two degree Celsius warming. According to the authors, the change in atmospheric composition over the next ten years could commit the world to a two-degree warming if action is not taken to limit emissions. The report was sponsored by the Institute for Public Policy Research, the Center for American Progress and The Australia Institute.

The two-degree threshold has been adopted by the European Union as a limit beyond which "dangerous interference" with the climate system is inevitable. The release of the report coincided with the news that the world's "largest" climate model experiment, climateprediction.net, was predicting even higher temperature rises than previously thought likely.

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• Terra Daily
• Science Daily

• Download "Meeting the Climate Challenge", Center for American Progress

Antarctica's largest iceberg, B-15A, has run aground. It had been expected to hit the Drygalski Ice Tongue. "This berg has wedged itself between two shallow areas," said Dean Peterson of Antarctica New Zealand. "It's kind of shimmying back and forth now … so I don't know whether it's ever going to get to the Drygalski or not." B-15A is part of a larger iceberg that broke off the Ross Ice Shelf in March 2000. It then drifted to its present location.

The 160 km-long iceberg has caused a build-up of sea ice in McMurdo Sound. The ice is threatening penguin breeding colonies, as the birds have to walk over 160 km further for food, and is restricting access to Antarctic bases. It was hoped the impact with the Drygalski Ice Tongue, referred to as "the collision of the century", would fragment the iceberg.

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• New Scientist
• Science Daily

• Animation (3Mb), ESA
• Animation, NASA
• Interview, npr

Chris Landsea, a meteorologist with the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has resigned from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in protest against statements allegedly made by an IPCC lead author. Landsea claims that Kevin Trenberth, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research gave a personal opinion at a Harvard press conference linking present-day changes in hurricane activity to global warming, rather than reflecting the IPCC consensus as Landsea considers a lead author should.

Trenberth denies he linked global warming to last year's hurricane strikes on Florida nor did he claim any link with hurricane frequency. "What we are suggesting is that when a disturbance does form a hurricane it's apt to be more intense and there's heavier rainfalls." In withdrawing, Landsea said that he had "come to view the part of the IPCC to which my expertise is relevant as having become politicized."

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• ENN

A new report claims that the price of removing carbon from the atmosphere using forests, sequestration, could be close to the cost of improving energy efficiency or fuel switching. The study, from the Pew Centre, calculates that sequestration on forest land could take 300 million tons of carbon out of the air at a cost of between US$25 and US$75 a ton. This is similar to the cost of other measures intended to reduce emissions from buildings, automobiles and appliances.

"When and if a mandatory domestic greenhouse gas reduction programme is established in the United States, a carefully designed carbon sequestration programme really ought to be included in a cost-effective portfolio," said report co-author Robert Stavins, a Harvard University economist. It would take, though, reforestation or afforestation over an area the size of Texas to remove one-fifth of annual US emissions. There are also unanswered economic, social and political issues.

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• ENN
• Press release, Pew Center
• Download report, Pew Center

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

Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations, has called for "decisive measures" on climate change and a global tsunami early warning system. "It is no longer so hard to imagine what might happen from the rising sea levels that the world's top scientists are telling us will accompany global warming," he said. "Who can claim that we are doing enough?" Kofi Annan was speaking at the International Meeting to review the Barbados Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States held in Port Louis, Mauritius, 10-14th January 2005.

The International Meeting resulted in recognition of small island concerns regarding climate change. The international community was urged to cut greenhouse gas emissions and prioritize renewable energy. No progress was made, however, on trade preferences. The elimination of trade quotas has had a severe effect on island economies, which lack the means of diversification and are isolated from world markets. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the World Meteorological Organization announced, during the conference, the establishment of a global hazards warning system.

To mark the Mauritius meeting, Tiempo Climate Newswatch interviewed Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury and has made available a series of related articles and documentaries.

• Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury discusses the current status of Small Island Developing States and his hopes for the meeting
• Kanayathu Koshy discusses Pacific preparations for the review of the Barbados Programme of Action
• Tom Roper describes the innovative Global Sustainable Energy Islands Initiative, intended to assist Small Island States develop renewable energy and energy efficiency projects
• The documentary Regional CHARM Guidelines for Pacific Island Countries, presented as streaming video, describes the Comprehensive Hazard And Risk Management process for the Pacific islands.
• The documentary Islands and Climate Change, presented as streaming video, describes the threat posed to the Pacific island nations by climate change and unsustainable development
• Ashmita Gosai, Penehuro Lefale and Jim Salinger describe the content and application of the Island Climate Update, a highly successful seasonal climate bulletin
• Finally, Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury presents a personal perspective on the role of his office

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• Xinhua
• Reuters
• Terra Daily
• Sydney Morning Herald

• Press releases, UN-OHRLLS
• Backgrounder, UN-OHRLLS
• Webcast, UN
• Daily reports and summary, ENB

The tsunami disaster has highlighted the protection afforded by coral reefs and the mangrove ecosystem, according to coastal zone experts. "Places that had healthy coral reefs and intact mangroves were far less badly hit than places where the reefs had been damaged and the mangroves ripped out and replaced by beachfront hotels and prawn farms," said Simon Cripps of WWF International. "Coral reefs act as a natural breakwater and mangroves are a natural shock absorber, and this applies to floods and cyclones as well as tsunamis."

According to Alfredo Quarto of the Mangrove Action Project, "it is the destruction of mangroves for coastal resort and urban development which leads to an increase in susceptibility to wave action - whether the waves are caused by hurricanes or tsunamis." He urges that a protective mangrove buffer zone be re-established along coastlines at risk where mangroves have been mistakenly destroyed or degraded. Human settlements and enterprises such as tourism or aquaculture developments should not be located, or re-located, within the inter-tidal zone where the mangrove ecosystem is found, but inland, well behind mangrove or other coastal wetlands.

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• Terra Daily
• YubaNet
• Yahoo

Changes in the Earth's shape have been linked to climate variability by Minkang Cheng and Byron D. Tapley, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin. The shape alters as the mass of water stored in the oceans, landmasses and atmosphere shifts. The Earth bulges at the equator during strong El Niño-Southern Oscillation events as the Pacific ocean currents change in strength and weather patterns respond.

The research was based on satellite-based laser ranging observations of the distance of the Earth's surface that are accurate to a millimetre. The scientists also detected a long-term change in the Earth's shape over the period 1978-2001, but the cause of this trend is not clear. "The main idea, however, is that the Earth’s large scale transport of mass is related to the long-term global climate changes," concludes Cheng.

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• Science Daily

Progress in implementing the Barbados Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States is reviewed this week at an International Meeting in Port Louis, Mauritius. "Small Island Developing States are extremely vulnerable to all kinds of natural disasters and in view of the enormous damage caused by the tsunami disaster, naturally the Mauritius conference will have that kind of special focus," said Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, the conference's Executive Secretary.

Prior to the International Meeting, the United Nations Environment Programme released a series of reports on the environmental issues facing small island states. The studies highlighted the need to protect coral reefs and limit over-fishing, improve water supplies, reduce waste and pollution, and deal with the threat of climate change. Population growth has led to fears that the number of people has "exceeded the carrying capacity of some islands."

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From the conference

• Press release and regional reports, UNEP
• Altantic and Indian Ocean, UNEP
• Pacific, UNEP
• Caribbean, UNEP

• Press releases, UN-OHRLLS
• Backgrounder, UN-OHRLLS
• Webcast, UN
• Daily reports, ENB

Klaus Toepfer, director of the United Nations Environment Programme, insists that the world must guard against both natural catastrophes and long-term climate change. "We have not and will not play one threat against another," he said, arguing that it would be a huge mistake to focus attention on the threat of tsunamis whilst neglecting the long-term problem of climate change.

Toepfer noted that poor people were suffering twice-over as a result of the tsunami as many were not insured. "We can only praise the solidarity of people worldwide and join in their sorrow those who have lost loved ones. We want to do our utmost," he continued. We have to be aware of the actions of nature which we can't predict. Taking precautions against them is now on the highest agenda." A commitment has now been made to develop a tsunami warning system for the Indian Ocean, such as already exists for the Pacific Ocean.

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• BBC

• BBC

A new railroad being constructed across the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau is using a novel method of strengthening frozen soils affected by global warming. To keep the track straight and the foundation stable, engineers are using crushed rock to both insulate and cool the permafrost. "The permafrost presents a challenge, because the climate of the area is predicted to become warmer during the next 50 to 100 years, and construction and train activity on the surface can also create heat and cause melting," said Tingjun Zhang of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado.

Engineers have determined that a 2- to 3-foot layer of loose, medium-sized rocks minimizes heat intake to the soil during warmer months and promotes heat loss in winter. "The rock layer is so effective that it actually helps create a net cooling effect over time," according to Zhang. This is the first time that a large-scale project has used the technique as a primary solution. Shading, insulation and passive heat pumps are also being used to protect the soil. Zhang is working with scientists at the Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute in Lanzhou, China.

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• Science Daily
• Press release

Progress in implementing the Barbados Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States will be reviewed at an International Meeting taking place in Port Louis, Mauritius, January 10-14th 2005. A Civil Society meeting will precede the International Meeting and will submit its recommendations at the opening session of the International Meeting.

According to Ambassador Anwarul Chowdhury, Secretary-General of the Mauritius conference, "after decade-long serious efforts, this well-crafted and elaborate document has remained largely unimplemented. The well-intentioned commitments in fourteen priority areas have failed to get the required political will to turn them into real actions." Agreement has yet to be reached on critical issues such as climate change, trade relations, market access, renewable energy sources and finance.

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• Press releases, UN-OHRLLS
• Backgrounder, UN-OHRLLS

• Webcast, UN
• Daily reports, ENB

The European Union (EU) launched its emissions trading market on January 1st 2005. "The emissions trading scheme is one of the key policies... to ensure that the EU and its member states limit or reduce emissions of climate-changing greenhouse gases," according to the European Commission. Under the new scheme, businesses that exceed their emissions targets can sell unused quotas to companies that cannot (or choose not to) meet their own targets and thereby face financial penalties. On the unofficial carbon market, one tonne of carbon dioxide has been trading recently for an average price of 8.5 euros. "But the price is fluctuating quite widely," reports James Emanuel of Evolution Markets. "The lowest is 5.0 euros and it's been as high as 13.4" since February 2004.

The European Environment Agency (EEA) has predicted that the 15 pre-2004 members of the EU (the EU-15) can meet their emissions target under the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto target for the EU-15 is eight per cent below 1990 levels by 2010. The 15 nations should cut their total emissions by 8.8 per cent by 2010. So-called flexible mechanisms, whereby nations claim credit for paying for emissions reductions in a country outside the EU, would account for 1.1 per cent of this total. Some nations will exceed their own Kyoto target but it is anticipated that others will make larger cuts than required.

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• Terra Daily
• BBC Q&A

• BBC
• Press release, EEA
• Technical report, EEA

The pika, a small hamster-like animal, is in decline and climate change may be responsible, according to a recent study. The pika lives at high elevations in the western United States and southwest Canada and cannot tolerate warm temperatures. "Population by population, we're witnessing some of the first contemporary examples of global warming apparently contributing to the local extinction of an American mammal at sites across an entire eco-region," said Erik Beever, an ecologist with the United States Geological Survey.

"There are several contributing factors, but climate seems to be a very strong factor," Beever concludes. "At the places where they have been lost, the sites were hotter and drier than sites where they have remained." Previous research indicates that factors such as increased road building and smaller habitat areas have increased vulnerability to climate change. "Extinction of a species, even on a local scale, is a red flag that cannot be ignored," commented Brooks Yeager of the World Wildlife Fund. "We must limit heat-trapping emissions from the burning of dirty fossil fuels for energy now."

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• Newsday
• Guardian Unlimited
• Press release

• Pika photos, John William Uhler, Total Yellowstone
• Pika sound, Michael Morris, Parks Canada

The World Meteorological Organization has reported that 2004 was the fourth warmest year on record. The warmth was particularly marked over central Asia, China, Alaska, parts of the western United States and the North Atlantic Ocean. The year saw the warmest October on record over the world's landmasses. The ten warmest years world-wide have occurred since 1990. The rate of global warming since 1976, the start of the latest warming phase, has been three times that over the past 100 years as a whole.

2004 was also notable for hurricanes and typhoons. The first recorded hurricane in the South Atlantic Ocean occurred in March 2004. A record number of storms, eight, formed in the North Atlantic during August 2004. The seasonal total for the region was 15. The long-term average is ten. Tropical Storm Jeanne killed over 2,000 people in Haiti. Nine major storms struck the United States, resulting in damage estimated at over US$43 billion. Japan experienced a record number of ten tropical storm strikes, resulting in 209 fatalities. Towards the end of the year, a series of storms in close succession devastated parts of the Philippines leaving over 1,600 people dead or missing. Over the eastern Pacific as a whole, storm activity was below normal.

Much of Africa was affected by below normal rainfall amounts during 2004. Parts of southern Africa experienced dry conditions early in the year. Multi-season drought continued across parts of the Greater Horn of Africa. Kenya experienced an early end to the long rains. Food security was threatened by drought in Somalia and drinking-water shortages were made worse by poor rains in Eritrea. Parts of India experienced moderate drought conditions with the summer monsoon rains 13 per cent below normal. Drought also affected Pakistan, Afghanistan and southern China. Southern and eastern Australia has been affected by hydrological drought since the major drought of 2002/2003 and drought continued to affect parts of the western United States. Heat and dry conditions resulted in a record area being burnt by wildfires in Alaska.

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• ENN

• WMO press release

For the second year running, the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) failed to gain a commitment to full-cost funding for adaptation measures through the LDC Fund managed by the Global Environment Facility. The debate took place at the Tenth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in December 2004.

The problem is that most, if not all, adaptation measures have benefits beyond coping with the impact of climate change and the LDC Fund will not cover the proportion of the costs corresponding to these non-climate benefits. Indeed, even quantifying the proportion that could be considered related to the future impact of anthropogenic climate change poses a major scientific challenge. Moreover, with benefits in many areas, decision-making on funding becomes complex, requiring agreement across a number of sectors. The challenge for the climate negotiators is to create sufficient institutional flexibility to ensure that adaptation issues can be dealt with effectively under the UNFCCC.

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• Summary, ENB
• IIED

Speaking at a recent American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, Mike Schlesinger of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign warned that catastrophic climate change could result if global warming shuts down the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean. "If the thermohaline shutdown is irreversible, we would have to work much harder to get it to restart," he said. "Not only would we have the very difficult task of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, we also would have the virtually impossible task of removing fresh water from the North Atlantic Ocean."

The thermohaline circulation transfers warm surface water from the southern hemisphere toward the North Pole. It is forced by variations in the density of seawater, related to temperature and salinity patterns. In the northern North Atlantic, the temperature of the water drops causing the water to sink and creating a return flow at depth to the south. "This movement carries a tremendous amount of heat northward, and plays a vital role in maintaining the current climate," according to Schlesinger. Increased precipitation and ice melt as global warming develops would add fresh water to the North Atlantic Ocean, making the surface waters less dense and halting the thermohaline circulation. The latest computer model results, reported at the San Francisco meeting, suggest that the shutdown of the thermohaline circulation may be reversible. Nevertheless, argues Schlesinger, "because the possibility of an irreversible shutdown cannot be excluded, suitable policy options should continue to be explored. Doing nothing to abate global warming would be foolhardy."

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