Climate Change Archives

December 18, 2014December 23, 2015 by Matt Williams

Compromises Lead to Climate Change Deal

Secretary-General Addresses Lima Climate Action High-level Meeting. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

Earlier this month, delegates from the various states that make up the UN met in Lima, Peru, to agree on a framework for the Climate Change Conference that is scheduled to take place in Paris next year. For over two weeks, representatives debated and discussed the issue, which at times became hotly contested and divisive.

In the end, a compromise was reached between rich and developing nations, which found themselves on opposite sides for much of the proceedings.

And while few member states walked away feeling they had received all they wanted, many expressed that the meeting was an important step on the road to the 2015 Climate Change Conference. It is hoped that this conference will, after 20 years of negotiations, create the first binding and universal agreement on climate change.

The 2015 Paris Conference will be the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties who signed the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 11th session of the Meeting of the Parties who drafted the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

The objective of the conference is to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on Climate Change specifically aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions to limit global temperature increases to an average of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

This map represents global temperature anomalies averaged from 2008 through 2012. Credit: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies/NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio. — *This map represents global temperature anomalies averaged from 2008 through 2012. Credit: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies/NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio.*

This temperature increase is being driven by increased carbon emissions that have been building steadily since the late 18th century and rapidly in the 20th. According to NASA, CO² concentrations have not exceeded 300 ppm in the upper atmosphere for over 400,000 years, which accounts for the whole of human history.

However, in May of last year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that these concentrations had reached 400 ppm, based on ongoing observations from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii.

Meanwhile, research conducted by the U.S. Global Change Research Program indicates that by the year 2100, carbon dioxide emissions could either level off at about 550 ppm or rise to as high as 800. This could mean the difference between a temperature increase of 2.5 °C, which is sustainable, and an increase of 4.5 °C (4.5 – 8 °F), which would make life untenable for many regions of the planet.

Hence the importance of reaching, for the first time in over 20 years of UN negotiations, a binding and universal agreement on the climate that will involve all the nations of the world. And with the conclusion of the Lima Conference, the delegates have what they believe will be a sufficient framework for achieving that next year.

While many environmental groups see the framework as an ineffectual compromise, it was hailed by members of the EU as a step towards the long-awaited global climate deal that began in 1992.

“The decisions adopted in Lima pave the way for the adoption of a universal and meaningful agreement in 2015,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a statement issued at the conclusion of the two-week meeting. In addition, Peru’s environment minister – Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, who chaired the summit – was quoted by the BBC as saying: “As a text it’s not perfect, but it includes the positions of the parties.”

Al Gore and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner at the China Pavilion. Credit: UNEP — *Al Gore and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner at the China Pavilion at the Lima Conference. Credit: UNEP*

Amongst the criticisms leveled by environmental groups is the fact that many important decisions were postponed, and that the draft agreement contained watered-down language.

For instance, on national pledges, it says that countries “may” include quantifiable information showing how they intend to meet their emissions targets, rather than “shall”. By making this optional, environmentalists believe that signatories will be entering into an agreement that is not binding and therefore has no teeth.

However, on the plus side, the agreement kept the 194 members together and on track for next year. Concerns over responsibilities between developed and developing nations were alleviated by changing the language in the agreement, stating that countries have “common but differentiated responsibilities”.

Other meaningful agreements were reached as well, which included boosted commitments to a Green Climate Fund (GCF), financial aid for “vulnerable nations”, new targets to be set for carbon emission reductions, a new process of Multilateral Assessment to achieve new levels of transparency for carbon-cutting initiatives, and new calls to raise awareness by putting climate change into school curricula.

In addition, the Lima Conference also led to the creation of The 1 Gigaton Coalition, a UN-coordinated group dedicated to promoting renewable energy. As stated by the UNEP, this group was created “to boost efforts to save billions of dollars and billions of tonnes of CO² emissions each year by measuring and reporting reductions of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from projects and programs that promote renewable energy and energy efficiency in developing countries.”

*A massive, over 7-metre-high balloon, representing one tonne of carbon dioxide (CO2). Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten*

Coordinated by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) with the support of the Government of Norway, they will be responsible for measuring CO² reductions through the application of renewable energy projects. The coalition was formed in light of the fact that while many nations have such initiatives in place, they are not measuring or reporting the drop in greenhouse gases that result.

They believe that, if accurately measured, these drops in emissions would equal 1 Gigaton by the year 2020. This would not only be beneficial to the environment, but would result in a reduced financial burden for governments all across the world.

As UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner stated in a press release: “Our global economy could be $18 trillion better off by 2035 if we adopted energy efficiency as a first choice, while various estimates put the potential from energy efficient improvements anywhere between 2.5 and 6.8 gigatons of carbon per year by 2030.”

Ultimately, the 1 Gigaton Coalition hopes to provide the information that demonstrates unequivocally that energy efficiency and renewables are helping to close the gap between current emissions levels and what they will need to come down to if we hope to meet a temperature increase of just 2 °C. This, as already stated, could mean the difference between life and death for many people, and ultimately for the environment as a whole.

The location of UNFCCC talks are rotated by regions throughout United Nations countries. The 2015 conference will be held at Le Bourget from 30 November to 11 December 2015.

Further Reading: UN, UNEP, UNFCCC

December 18, 2014March 1, 2017 by Fraser Cain

Why Is Venus So Horrible?

Venus really sucks. It’s as hot as an oven with a dense, poisonous atmosphere. But how did it get that way?

Venus sucks. Seriously, it’s the worst. The global temperature is as hot as an oven, the atmospheric pressure is 90 times Earth, and it rains sulfuric acid. Every part of the surface of Venus would kill you dead in moments.

Let’s push Venus into the Sun and be done with that terrible place. Its proximity is lowering our real estate values and who knows what sort of interstellar monstrosities are going to set up shop there, and be constantly knocking on our door to borrow the mower, or a cup or sugar, or sneak into our yard at night and eat all our dolphins.

You might argue that Venus is worth saving because it’s located within the Solar System’s habitable zone, that special place where water could exist in a liquid state on the surface. But we’re pretty sure it doesn’t have any liquid water. Venus may have been better in the past, clearly it started hanging out with wrong crowd, taking a bad turn down a dark road leading it to its current state of disrepair.

Could Venus have been better in the past? And how did it go so wrong? In many ways, Venus is a twin of the Earth. It’s almost the same size and mass as the Earth, and it’s made up of roughly the same elements. And if you stood on the surface of Venus, in the brief moments before you evacuated your bowels and died horribly, you’d notice the gravity feels pretty similar.

In the ancient past, the Sun was dimmer and cooler than it is now. Cool enough that Venus was much more similar to Earth with rivers, lakes and oceans. NASA’s Pioneer spacecraft probed beneath the planet’s thick clouds and revealed that there was once liquid water on the surface of Venus. And with liquid water, there could have been life on the surface and in those oceans.

Here’s where Venus went wrong. It’s about a third closer to the Sun than Earth, and gets roughly double the solar radiation. The Sun has been slowly heating up over the millions and billions of years. At some point, the planet reached a tipping point, where the water on the surface of Venus completely evaporated into the atmosphere.

False color radar topographical map of Venus provided by Magellan. Credit: Magellan Team/JPL/NASA

Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas, and this only increased the global temperature, creating a runaway greenhouse effect on Venus. The ultraviolet light from the Sun split apart the water vapor into oxygen and hydrogen. The hydrogen was light enough to escape the atmosphere of Venus into space, while the oxygen recombined with carbon to form the thick carbon dioxide atmosphere we see today. Without that hydrogen, Venus’ water is never coming back.

Are you worried about our changing climate doing that here? Don’t panic. The amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere of Venus is incomprehensible. According to the IPCC, the folks studying global warming, human activities have no chance of unleashing runaway global warming. We’ll just have the regular old, really awful global warming. So, it’s okay to panic a bit, but do it in the productive way that results in your driving your car less.

The Sun is still slowly heating up. And in a billion years or so, temperatures here will get hot enough to boil the oceans away. And then, Earth and Venus will be twins again and then we can push them both into the Sun.

I know, I said the words “climate change”. Feel free to have an argument in the comments below, but play nice and bring science.

November 21, 2014December 23, 2015 by Elizabeth Howell

Global Warming Watch: How Carbon Dioxide Bleeds Across The Earth

High concentrations of carbon dioxide (in red) tend to congregate in the northern hemisphere during colder months, when plants can't absorb as much from the atmosphere. This picture is based on a NASA Goddard computer model from ground-based observations and depicts concentrations on March 30, 2006. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/B. Putman/YouTube (screenshot)

Red alert — the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing year-by-year due to human activity. It’s leading to a warming Earth, but just how quickly — and how badly it will change the environment around us — is hard to say.

NASA released a new video showing how carbon dioxide — a product mainly of fossil fuels — shifts during a typical year. Billed as the most accurate model to date, the emissions shown in 2006 (tracked by ground-based sources) show how wind currents across the globe spread the gas across the globe. The red you see up there indicates high concentrations. The full video is below the jump.

In spring and summer, plants absorb carbon dioxide and the amount in the atmosphere above that hemisphere decreases. In fall and winter, carbon dioxide is not absorbed as well since the plants are dead or dormant. Also seen in the video is carbon monoxide that spreads out from forest fires, particularly in the southern hemisphere.

“Despite carbon dioxide’s significance, much remains unknown about the pathways it takes from emission source to the atmosphere or carbon reservoirs such as oceans and forests,” NASA stated.

“Combined with satellite observations such as those from NASA’s recently launched OCO-2 [Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2], computer models will help scientists better understand the processes that drive carbon dioxide concentrations.”

The model is called GEOS-5 and was made by scientists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s global modeling and assimilation office.

Source: NASA

October 2, 2014December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

ISRO and NASA Ink Deal to Collaborate on Red Planet and Home Planet Science Missions

The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, targeted to launch in 2020, will make global measurements of the causes and consequences of a variety of land surface changes on Earth. Image Credit: NASA

ISRO and NASA have inked a deal to collaborate on future missions to jointly explore the Red Planet and our Home Planet hot on the heels of ISRO’s wildly successful Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM), India’s first ever interplanetary voyager to explore Mars.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and K. Radhakrishnan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), signed an agreement to collaborate on future science missions to explore Mars as well as to build and launch a joint NASA-ISRO mission to observe Earth.

The leaders of NASA and ISRO met in Toronto, Canada on Tuesday, Sept. 30 and “signed two documents to launch a NASA-ISRO satellite mission to observe Earth and establish a pathway for future joint missions to explore Mars,” according to a NASA statement.

Bolden and Rao met at the International Astronautical Congress underway in Toronto.

ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission captures the limb of Mars with the Mars Color Camera from an altitude of 8449 km soon after achieving orbit on Sept. 23/24, 2014. . Credit: ISRO — ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission captures the limb of Mars with the Mars Color Camera from an altitude of 8449 km soon after achieving orbit on Sept. 23/24, 2014. . Credit: ISRO

They signed one agreement defining each agency’s responsibilities for the joint NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission, targeted to launch in 2020. NISAR will make global measurements of the causes and consequences of land surface changes.

The second agreement “establishes a NASA-ISRO Mars Working Group to investigate enhanced cooperation between the two countries in Mars exploration.”

“The signing of these two documents reflects the strong commitment NASA and ISRO have to advancing science and improving life on Earth,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, in a NASA statement.

“This partnership will yield tangible benefits to both our countries and the world.”

NISAR will be the first Earth observing mission to be equipped two different synthetic aperture radar (SAR) frequencies (L-band and S-band) – one each from NASA and ISRO.

NASA will also provide “the high-rate communication subsystem for science data, GPS receivers, a solid state recorder, and a payload data subsystem.”

ISRO will provide the spacecraft bus and launch vehicle.

The radars will be able to measure subtle changes in Earth’s surface of less than a centimeter across stemming from the flow of glaciers and ice sheets as well as earthquakes and volcanoes.

Regarding Mars, the first subject the joint working group will tackle will be to coordinate observations from each nation’s recently arrived Mars orbiters – ISRO’s MOM and NASA’s MAVEN. They will also examine areas of future collaboration on surface rovers and orbiters.

“NASA and Indian scientists have a long history of collaboration in space science,” said John Grunsfeld, NASA Associate Administrator for Science.

“These new agreements between NASA and ISRO in Earth science and Mars exploration will significantly strengthen our ties and the science that we will be able to produce as a result.”

Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing Earth and planetary science and human spaceflight news.

Ken Kremer

MAVEN is NASA’s next Mars orbiter and launched on Nov. 18, 2014 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It will study the evolution of the Red Planet’s atmosphere and climate. Universe Today visited MAVEN inside the clean room at the Kennedy Space Center. With solar panels unfurled, this is exactly how MAVEN looks when flying through space and circling Mars and observing Comet Siding Spring. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com — MAVEN is NASA’s next Mars orbiter and launched on Nov. 18, 2014, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. It will study the evolution of the Red Planet’s atmosphere and climate. Universe Today visited MAVEN inside the clean room at the Kennedy Space Center. With solar panels unfurled, this is exactly how MAVEN looks when flying through space and circling Mars and observing Comet Siding Spring. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

August 26, 2014December 23, 2015 by Shannon Hall

Extreme Weather is Linked to Global Warming, a New Study Suggests

In 2013, a blocking pattern over Alaska caused a record-breaking heat wave. Credit: Photo by Jesse Allen and Jeff Schmatltz, using data from theLand Processes Distributed Active Archive Center(LPDAAC) and theLANCE/EOSDIS Rapid Response

Extreme weather is becoming much more common. Heat waves and heavy rains are escalating, food crops are being damaged, human beings are being displaced due to flooding and animals are migrating toward the poles or going extinct.

Although it has been postulated that these extreme weather events may be due to climate change, a new study has found much better evidence.

The research shows blocking patterns — high-pressure systems that become immobile for days or even weeks, causing extreme heat waves and torrential rain — may have doubled in summers over the last decade.

“Since 2000, we have seen a cluster of these events,” lead author Dim Doumou told The Gaurdian earlier this month. “When these high-altitude waves become quasi-stationary, then we see more extreme weather at the surface. It is especially noticeable for heat extremes.”

It was a blocking pattern that led to the heat wave in Alaska in 2013, and to the devastating floods in Colorado last summer.

These blocking patterns are associated with the jet stream, the fast flowing winds high in Earth’s atmosphere at latitudes between 30 and 60 degrees. Sometimes the flow weakens, and the winds can dip down into more southern latitudes. These excursions lead to blocking patterns.

And the jet stream is becoming “wavier,” with steeper troughs and higher ridges.

The climatologists analyzed 35 years of wind data amassed from satellites, ships, weather stations, and meteorological balloons. They found that a warming Arctic creates and amplifies the conditions that lead to jet stream excursions, therefore raising the chances for long-duration extreme events, like droughts, floods, and heat waves.

That said the climatologists were unable to see a direct causal link between climate change and extreme weather. Ordinarily we think about “cause” in a simple sense in which one thing fully brings about another. But the Colorado floods, for example, were partially caused by moisture from the tropics, a blocking pattern, and past wildfires that increased the risk of runoff.

So there is a difference between “direct causation” and “systematic causation.” The latter is not direct, but it is no less real. In this study, the team noticed that the rise in blocking patterns correlates closely with the extra heating being delivered to the Arctic by climate change. Statistically speaking, the two seem to go hand in hand.

But the team does hypothesize a direct causal link. The jet streams are driven by the difference in temperature between the poles and the equator. So because the Arctic is warming more quickly than lower latitudes, the temperature difference is declining, providing less energy for the jet stream and causing it to meander.

Although the study shows a correlation — not causation — between more frequent blocking patterns (and therefore extreme weather) and Arctic warming, it is a solid step forward in understanding how the two are related.

The article has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS).

To see why Universe Today writes about climate change, please read a past article on the subject.

July 2, 2014December 23, 2015 by Ken Kremer

NASA’s Carbon Observatory Blasts off on Workhorse Delta II to Measure Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Gas and Watch Earth Breathe

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, NASA’s first mission dedicated to studying carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere, lifts off from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, at 2:56 a.m. Pacific Time, July 2, 2014 on a Delta II rocket. The two-year mission will help scientists unravel key mysteries about carbon dioxide. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
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Following a nearly three-year long hiatus, the workhorse Delta II rocket successfully launched NASA’s first spacecraft dedicated to watching Earth breathe by studying Earth’s atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) – the leading human-produced greenhouse gas and the principal human-produced driver of climate change.

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) raced to orbit earlier this morning, during a spectacular nighttime blastoff at 2:56 a.m. PDT (5:56 a.m. EDT), Tuesday, July 2, 2014, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, atop a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket.

The flawless launch marked the ‘return to flight’ of the venerable Delta II and was broadcast live on NASA TV.

Blastoff of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 dedicated to studying carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, at 2:56 a.m. Pacific Time, July 2, 2014. Credit: Robert Fisher/America/Space — Blastoff of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 dedicated to studying carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere, from Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, at 2:56 a.m. Pacific Time, July 2, 2014. Credit: Robert Fisher/America/Space

A camera mounted on the Delta II’s second stage captured a breathtaking live view of the OCO-2 spacecraft during separation from the upper stage, which propelled it into an initial 429-mile (690-kilometer) orbit.

The life giving solar arrays were unfurled soon thereafter and NASA reports that the observatory is in excellent health.

“Climate change is the challenge of our generation,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement.

“With OCO-2 and our existing fleet of satellites, NASA is uniquely qualified to take on the challenge of documenting and understanding these changes, predicting the ramifications, and sharing information about these changes for the benefit of society.”

NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, or OCO-2, inside the payload fairing in the mobile service tower at Space Launch Complex 2 on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The fairing will protect OCO-2 during launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket, scheduled for 5:56 a.m. EDT on July 1. OCO-2 is NASA’s first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth’s climate. Credit: NASA/30th Space Wing USAF — NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2, or OCO-2, inside the payload fairing in the mobile service tower at Space Launch Complex 2 on Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The fairing will protect OCO-2 during launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket, which occurred at 5:56 a.m. EDT on July 2. OCO-2 is NASA’s first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide, the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth’s climate. Credit: NASA/30th Space Wing USAF

Over the next three weeks the OCO-2 probe will undergo a thorough checkout and calibration process. It will also be maneuvered into a 438-mile (705-kilometer) altitude, near-polar orbit where it will become the lead science probe at the head of the international Afternoon Constellation, or “A-Train,” of Earth-observing satellites.

“The A-Train, the first multi-satellite, formation flying “super observatory” to record the health of Earth’s atmosphere and surface environment, collects an unprecedented quantity of nearly simultaneous climate and weather measurements,” says NASA.

Science operations begin in about 45 days.

The 999 pound (454 kilogram) observatory is the size of a phone booth.

OCO-2 is equipped with a single science instrument consisting of three high-resolution, near-infrared spec¬trometers fed by a common telescope. It will collect global measurements of atmospheric CO2 to provide scientists with a better idea of how CO2 impacts climate change and is responsible for Earth’s warming.

During a minimum two-year mission the $467.7 million OCO-2 will take near global measurements to locate the sources and storage places, or ‘sinks’, for atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is a critical component of the planet’s carbon cycle.

OCO-2 was built by Orbital Sciences as a replacement for the original OCO which was destroyed during the failed launch of a Taurus XL rocket from Vandenberg back in February 2009 when the payload fairing failed to open properly and the spacecraft plunged into the ocean.

The OCO-2 mission will provide a global picture of the human and natural sources of carbon dioxide, as well as their “sinks,” the natural ocean and land processes by which carbon dioxide is pulled out of Earth’s atmosphere and stored, according to NASA.

“This challenging mission is both timely and important,” said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

“OCO-2 will produce exquisitely precise measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations near Earth’s surface, laying the foundation for informed policy decisions on how to adapt to and reduce future climate change.”

It will record around 100,000 precise individual CO2 measurements around the worlds entire sunlit hemisphere every day and help determine its source and fate in an effort to understand how human activities impact climate change and how we can mitigate its effects.

At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, there were about 280 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. As of today the CO2 level has risen to about 400 parts per million.

“Scientists currently don’t know exactly where and how Earth’s oceans and plants have absorbed more than half the carbon dioxide that human activities have emitted into our atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial era,” said David Crisp, OCO-2 science team leader at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in a statement.

“Because of this, we cannot predict precisely how these processes will operate in the future as climate changes. For society to better manage carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere, we need to be able to measure the natural source and sink processes.”

OCO-2 is the second of NASA’s five new Earth science missions planned to launch in 2014 and is designed to operate for at least two years during its primary mission. It follows the successful blastoff of the joint NASA/JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory satellite on Feb 27.

Prelaunch view of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 and United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket unveiled at Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Credit: Robert Fisher/America/Space

The two stage Delta II 7320-10 launch vehicle is 8 ft in diameter and approximately 128 ft tall and was equipped with a trio of first stage strap on solid rocket motors. This marked the 152nd Delta II launch overall and the 51st for NASA since 1989.

The last time a Delta II rocket flew was nearly three years ago in October 2011 from Vandenberg for the Suomi National Polar-Orbiting Partnership (NPP) weather satellite.

The final Delta II launch from Cape Canaveral on Sept. 10, 2011 boosted NASA’s twin GRAIL gravity mapping probes to the Moon.

The next Delta II launch later this year from Vandenberg involves NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission and counts as another of NASA’s five Earth science missions launching in 2014.

Stay tuned here for Ken’s continuing OCO-2, GPM, Curiosity, Opportunity, Orion, SpaceX, Boeing, Orbital Sciences, MAVEN, MOM, Mars and more Earth & Planetary science and human spaceflight news.

Ken Kremer

June 2, 2014December 23, 2015 by Shannon Hall

President Obama Unveils a New Carbon Plan

A coal-fired plant in Glenrock, Wyoming. Image Credit: Greg Goebel

At the end of his first year in office, President Obama made a bold promise: the United States would cut its greenhouse gas emissions substantially by 2020.

Unfortunately it was a risky pledge that hinged on Congress. After President Obama was unable to get his major climate change proposal through Congress in his first term, it seemed as though his pledge to the rest of the World and planet Earth might disintegrate into thin air.

But today, President Obama announced plans to bypass Congress entirely. By using his executive authority under the Clean Air Act, he proposed an Environmental Protection Agency regulation to cut carbon pollution from the nation’s power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. It’s one of the strongest actions ever taken by the United States government to fight climate change.

“The shift to a cleaner-energy economy won’t happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way,” President Obama said Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address, previewing Monday’s announcement. “But a low-carbon, clean-energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come. America will build that engine. America will build the future, a future that’s cleaner, more prosperous and full of good jobs.”

The regulation targets the largest source of carbon pollution in the United States: coal-fired power plants. So naturally it has already met huge opposition.

“The administration has set out to kill coal and its 800,000 jobs,” said Senator Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, the nation’s top coal-producing state, in response to President Obama’s Saturday address. “If it succeeds in death by regulation, we’ll all be paying a lot more money for electricity — if we can get it. Our pocketbook will be lighter, but our country will be darker.”

But rather than forcing coal plants to immediately shutdown, the E.P.A. will allow States several years to retire existing plants. They estimate that by 2030, 30 percent of U.S. electricity will still come from coal, down from about 40 percent today.

The regulation also gives a wide range of options to achieve the pollution cuts. States are encouraged to reduce emissions by making changes across the electricity systems. They’re encouraged to install new wind and solar generation technology. This will create a huge demand for designing and building energy-efficient technology.

The plan is flexible. “That’s what makes it ambitious, but achievable,” said Gina McCarthy, the E.P.A. administrator, in a speech this morning. “That’s how we can keep our energy affordable and reliable. The glue that holds this plan together — and the key to making it work — is that each state’s goal is tailored to its own circumstances, and states have the flexibility to reach their goal in whatever way works best for them.”

The proposal will also help the economy, not hurt it. The E.P.A. estimates that the regulation will cost $7.3 billion to $8.8 billion annually, but will lead to economic benefits of $55 billion to $93 billion throughout the regulation’s lifetime.

The proposal unveiled today is only a draft, open to public comment. Already it has received criticism and praise from industry groups and environmentalists alike. President Obama plans to finalize the regulation by June 2015 so that it will be in place before he leaves office.

To see why Universe Today writes on climate change, and even climate policy, please read a past article on the subject.

May 19, 2014December 23, 2015 by Jason Major

Scientists Now Suspect More Sea Level Rise from Greenland’s Glaciers

Floating ice at the calving front of Greenland's Kangerdlugssuaq glacier, photographed in 2011 during Operation IceBridge (Credit: NASA/Michael Studinger)

Greenland’s glaciers may contribute more to future sea level rise than once thought, despite earlier reports that their steady seaward advance is a bit slower than expected. This is just more sobering news on the current state of Earth’s ice from the same researchers that recently announced the “unstoppable” retreat of West Antarctic glaciers.

Using data collected by several international radar-mapping satellites and NASA’s airborne Operation IceBridge surveys, scientists at NASA and the University of California, Irvine have discovered deep canyons below the ice sheet along Greenland’s western coast. These canyons cut far inland, and are likely to drive ocean-feeding glaciers into the sea faster and for longer periods of time as Earth’s climate continues to warm.

Some previous models of Greenland’s glaciers expected their retreat to slow once they receded to higher altitudes, making their overall contribution to sea level increase uncertain. But with this new map of the terrain far below the ice, modeled with radar soundings and high-resolution ice motion data, it doesn’t seem that the ice sheets’ recession will halt any time soon.

According to the team’s paper, the findings “imply that the outlet glaciers of Greenland, and the ice sheet as a whole, are probably more vulnerable to ocean thermal forcing and peripheral thinning than inferred previously from existing numerical ice-sheet models.”

Watch a video of the new topography map below:

“The glaciers of Greenland are likely to retreat faster and farther inland than anticipated, and for much longer, according to this very different topography we have discovered. This has major implications, because the glacier melt will contribute much more to rising seas around the globe.”

– Mathieu Morlighem, project scientist, University of California, Irving

Many of the newly-discovered canyons descend below sea level and extend over 65 miles (100 kilometers) inland, making them vulnerable — like the glaciers in West Antarctica — to undercutting by warmer ocean currents.

The team’s findings were published on May 18 in a report titled Deeply Incised Submarine Glacial Valleys Beneath the Greenland Ice Sheet in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Source: NASA/JPL press release & University of California,Irvine News

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What would happen if all the ice on land melted into the ocean? Find out what the world would look like here.

May 12, 2014December 23, 2015 by David Dickinson

NASA West Antarctic Ice Sheet Findings: Glacier Loss Appears Unstoppable

It’s a key piece of the climate change puzzle. For years, researchers have been eyeing the stability of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet as global temperatures rise. Melting of the ice sheet could have dire consequences for sea level rise.

And though not unexpected, news from today’s NASA press conference delivered by Tom Wagner, a cryosphere program scientist with the Earth Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington D.C., Sridhar Anandakrishnan, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania University, and Eric Rignot, JPL glaciologist and professor of Earth system science at the University of California Irvine was certainly troubling.

The Western Antarctic Ice Sheet is a marine-based ice sheet below sea level that is bounded by the Ronne and Ross Ice Shelf and contains glaciers that drain into the Amundsen Sea. The study announced today incorporates 40 years of data citing multiple lines of observational evidence measuring movement and thickness of Antarctic ice sheets. A key factor to this loss is a thinning along the grounding line of the glaciers from underneath. The grounding line for an ice sheet is the crucial boundary where ice becomes detached from ground underneath and stretches out to become free floating. A slow degradation of the Western Antarctic Ice Sheet has been observed, one that can be attributed to increased stratospheric circulation along with the advection of ocean heat coupled with anthropogenic global warming.

A closeup of the region: red indicates regions where flow speeds have accelerated in the past 40 years. Credit: Eric Rignot

“This sector will be a major contributor to sea level rise in the decades and centuries to come,” Rignot said in today’s press release. “A conservative estimate is it would take several centuries for all of the ice to flow into the sea.”

Thickness contributes to the driving stress of a glacier. Accelerating flow speeds stretch these glaciers out, reducing their weight and lifting them off of the bedrock below in a continuous feedback process.

A key concern for years has been the possible collapse of western Antarctica’s glaciers, leading to a drastic acceleration in sea-level rise worldwide. Such a catastrophic glacial retreat would dump millions of tons of ice into the sea over a relatively short span of time. And while it’s true that ice calves off of the Western Antarctic ice sheet every summer, the annual overall rate is increasing.

The study is backed up by satellite, airborne and ground observations looking at thickness of ice layers over decades.

Researchers stated that the Amundsen Sea Embayment sector alone contains enough ice to increase global sea level by 1.2 metres. A strengthening of wind circulation around the South Pole region since the 1980s has accelerated this process, along with the loss of ozone. This circulation also makes the process more complex than similar types of ice loss seen in Greenland in the Arctic.

The research paper, titled Widespread, rapid grounding line retreat of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith and Kohler glaciers, West Antarctica from 1992 to 2011 has been accepted for publication in the American Geophysical Union’s journal Geophysical Research Letters. The American Association for the Advancement of Science will also be releasing a related study on the instability of the West Antarctic ice sheet today in the journal Science.

The most spectacular retreat referenced in the study was seen occurring at the Smith/Kohler glaciers, which migrated about 35 kilometres and became ungrounded over a 500 kilometre square region during the span of 1992 to 2011.

Another telling factor cited in the study was the large scale synchronous ungrounding of several glaciers, suggesting a common trigger mechanism — such as ocean heat flux — is at play.

On the ice shelf proper, the key points that anchor or pin the glaciers to the bedrock below are swiftly vanishing, further destabilizing the ice in the region.

Assets that were used in the study included interferometry data from the Earth Remote Sensing (ERS-1/2) satellites’ InSAR (Interferormetry Synthetic Aperture Radar) instruments, ground team observations and data collected from NASA’s Operation IceBridge overflights of the Antarctic. IceBridge uses a converted U.S. Navy P-3 Orion submarine hunting aircraft equipped with radar experiment packages used to take measurements of the thickness of the ice sheet.

Possible follow up studies targeting the region are upcoming, including five Earth science and observation missions scheduled to be launched this year, which include the Soil Moisture and Passive (SMAP) mission, The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO-2) and the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, launched this past February.

Along with these future NASA missions, there are also two missions — RapidScat and the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System or CATS — slated to study climate headed for the International Space Station this year.

This comes as recent United Nations and United States reports have also announced the reality of climate change and anthropogenic global warming.

“The collapse of this sector of West Antarctica appears to be unstoppable,” Rignot said. “The fact that the retreat is happening simultaneously over a large sector suggests it was triggered by a common cause, such as an increase in the amount of ocean heat beneath the floating sections of the glaciers.”

Of course, the solar cycle, volcanic activity, global dimming (via changes in reflectivity, known as albedo) and human activity all play a role in the riddle that is climate change. The bad news is, taking only natural factors into account, we should be in a cooling period right now.

And yes, reflective ice cover also plays a role in the albedo of the Earth, but researchers told Universe Today that no significant overall seasonal variations in the extent of surface layer of ice will change, as the key loss comes from the ungrounding of ice from below. Thus, this ice loss does not present a significant contribution to changes in overall global albedo, though of course, much of this additional moisture will eventually be available for circulation in the atmosphere. And the same was noted in the press conference for those pinning their hopes on the 2014 ice extent being greater than previous years, a season that was a mere blip on the overall trend. The change and retreat in the grounding line below seen in the study was irrespective of the ice extent above.

NASA’s Operation IceBridge will continue to monitor the ice flow when the next Antarctic deployment cycle resumes in October of this year.

And in the meantime, the true discussion is turning to the challenges of living with a warmer planet. Insurance companies, the Department of Defense and residents of low-lying coastal regions such as Miami’s South Beach already know that the reality of global warming and sea level rise is here. Perhaps the very fact that naysayers have at least backed up their positions a bit in recent years from “global warming isn’t happening” to “Its happening, but there are natural cycles” can at least give us a starting point for true intelligent science-based dialogue to begin.

– Social media questions from today’s conference can be reviewed at the #AskNASA hastag.

May 6, 2014December 23, 2015 by Shannon Hall

The Rise of Carbon Dioxide in a Single Video

Screenshot from the video showing the variations in the amount of CO2 in Earth atmosphere for the last 800,000 years.

I’m always amazed by the power of data visualization. In this case a video shrinks the rising levels of carbon dioxide over the course of 800,000 years to just under two minutes.

The motivation is simple: April set a carbon dioxide milestone by averaging 400 parts per million for the entire month. That’s uncharted territory over the course of human history.

The levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are monitored from a site atop Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano, where they have been measured continuously since 1958. Previous to this date scientists measure ice cores, which contain air bubbles and therefore snapshots of carbon dioxide levels.

This animation from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences makes clear that while there have been some variations over time, the current rise is unparalleled by geological scales.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution CO2 levels stayed roughly around 280 ppm. But then with the kickstart of carbon emissions, levels were driven exponentially higher. They soared past 350 ppm — the level scientist James Hansen said was the safe upper limit of CO2 — in October 1989.

The first measurement in excess of 400 ppm was made on May 9, 2013. This year, the level rose above that mark two months earlier, and has remained above 400 ppm steadily since the beginning of April. Levels will peak in May and then drop back down throughout the summer months as trees and plants soak up some CO2.

Once the northern hemisphere spins into fall, the instrument on Mauna Loa will again read higher CO2 levels. Next year will probably see an even earlier onset of levels above 400 ppm. It likely won’t be long before levels never drop lower than 400 ppm, even throughout the summer months.

Also, today the U.S. Global Change Research Program released a report that has been five years in the making, providing an overview of observed and projected climate change. It’s a lengthy document, but you can see an overview here. In sum, the report shows how the world is already experiencing the effects of climate change and the impacts are playing out before our eyes.

“We’ve seen a lot in the last five years,” said Andrew Rosenberg of the Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the lead authors on the report’s oceans chapter, in a press release from The Daily Climate. “So what we’ve tried to do is be quite comprehensive on what our observations have been, as opposed to just modeling projections.”

“Five years ago, ocean acidification and species movement was already happening, but the observational record wasn’t as clear,” Rosenberg said. “Now it really is quite clear. It’s not theory-based or model-based.”

Global temperatures measured by decades since the 1880's. The period from 2001-2012 was the warmest on record globally. Every year was warmer than the 1990s average. Credit: U.S. Global Change Research Program. — Global temperatures measured by decades since the 1880’s. The period from 2001-2012 was the warmest on record globally. Every year was warmer than the 1990s average. Credit: U.S. Global Change Research Program.

This report is unique in that it not only includes data from scientists, but also has input from local groups and industries facing climate impacts. Corn producers in Iowa, oyster growers in Washington, and maple syrup producers in Vermont are all experiencing climate-related issues. So, too, are coastal planners in Florida, water managers in the Southwest, and Native Peoples on tribal lands from Louisiana to Alaska.

Human beings are already being impacted by climate change.