Sell the beach house: Antarctica is melting

January 22, 2009 - 7:42AM

MORE of Antarctica is heating up than scientists had thought.

A large part of West Antarctica, not just the peninsula area, has warmed during the past 50 years, a study shows.

The issue of climate change on the frozen continent has been controversial because East Antarctica has been cooling and temperature records are sparse.

Eric Steig, of the University of Washington, said his research showed that, overall, warming had outweighed cooling.

"The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling. But it's more complex than that," Professor Steig said. "Antarctica isn't warming at the same rate everywhere and, while some areas have been cooling for a long time, the evidence shows the continent as a whole is getting warmer."

Warming in West Antarctica exceeded 0.1 degrees a decade during the past 50 years, similar to the rest of the world, the study, published in the journal Nature, said.

"Significant warming extends well beyond the Antarctic Peninsula to cover most of West Antarctica, an area of warming much larger than previously reported," Professor Steig said.

The research was based on 50 years of temperature measurements from weather stations, 25 years of satellite observations and a statistical analysis of the link between the two sets of data.

Professor Barry Brook, of the University of Adelaide, said the finding was alarming because it suggested the ice sheet in West Antarctica was at greater risk of melting.

Along with the Greenland ice sheet, a complete melt of both sheets would raise sea levels by 14 metres.

"Even losing a fraction of both would cause a few metres this century, with disastrous consequences," Professor Brook said. "I worry, with the observed polar warming over the last few decades and more in the pipeline due to lags in the climate system, that their large-scale melt is now a fait accompli."

Professor Steig said that the hole in the ozone had contributed to the cooling of East Antarctica but that it could close up by the middle of the century.

"If that happens, all of Antarctica could begin warming on a par with the rest of the world."

Another study, also published in Nature, has found that the seasons are starting about a 1.7 days earlier on average around the globe than during the first half of the century.

AAP reports: "[It's] bad news if you live near the Australian coast," Professor Brook said.

"In some areas where you've currently got housing, you'd probably have to abandon those areas."

He said the sea would penetrate up to one kilometre inland in flat areas such as South Australia's lower lakes.

Large areas which don't see flooding now would get flooded by king tides.

House prices for coastal areas would probably drop, Professor Brook said.

Climate Change, The Environment, Resources And Conflict

RISING sea levels could lead to failed states across the Pacific and require extra naval deployments to deal with increases in illegal migration and fishing, a Defence Force analysis says.

"Environmental stress" has increased the risk of conflicts over resources and food and may demand greater involvement by the military in stabilisation, reconstruction and disaster relief, the analysis, prepared by Defence's strategic policy division, says.

It warns there is a risk of a serious global conflict over the Arctic as melting icecaps allow easier access to undersea oil and gas deposits.

In Australia's northern waters, "climate change is expected to change the location of South-East Asian fishing grounds, causing an increase in illegal fishing," says a summary of the analysis. "This may raise demand for ADF patrols in these regions."

The warnings emerged as a leading NASA scientist, James Hanson, used an open letter to the US president-elect, Barack Obama, to single out Australia's coal exports as a significant cause of climate change.

"Australia exports coal and sets atmospheric carbon dioxide goals so large as to guarantee destruction of much of the life on the planet," Dr Hanson said.

The Defence analysis, titled Climate Change, The Environment, Resources And Conflict, was completed in November 2007 for the head of strategy, Michael Pezzullo, a deputy secretary who has since been appointed to oversee the preparation of the Defence White Paper.

"Environmental changes will reinforce existing concerns regarding land availability, economic development and control over resources," it says.

"Rising sea levels will affect states and islands with low-lying coastlines around the world … Food sources are also vulnerable to environmental changes."

A summary, obtained by the Herald under freedom of information laws, says: "Environmental stress, caused by both climate change and a range of other factors, will act as a threat multiplier in fragile states around the world, increasing the chances of state failure. This is likely to increase demands for the ADF to be deployed on additional stabilisation, post-conflict reconstruction and disaster relief operations in the future."

Defence refused to release the full 12-page analysis, saying its publication could damage Australia's defence capability and international relations.

The paper says climate change may lead to increases in refugees from Pacific islands, but says few are likely to be able to reach Australia.

"From a defence planning perspective, we don't know how quickly these changes will occur, exactly what their impact will be, or how states and societies will react," it says. "Nevertheless, climate change may affect security by increasing stress on fragile states, state and societal competition for resources, environmental threats to ADF infrastructure and increasing the frequency and severity of extreme weather events.

"Climate change is unlikely to increase the risk of major conflict, although there is one exception. The Arctic is melting, potentially making the extraction of undersea energy deposits commercially viable. … Conflict is a remote possibility if these disputes are not resolved peacefully."

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, described climate change as a "fundamental" challenge last month when he released his national security statement.

Dr Hanson, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said Australia was making "honest efforts" to tackle climate change but failing.

Carbon trading schemes such as that proposed by the Federal Government would slow the rate of greenhouse emissions too slowly, Dr Hanson said.

"This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat," he said. "It could waste another decade, locking in disastrous consequences for our planet and humanity."

Australia is the world's largest exporter of black coal, shipping about 230 million tonnes a year to supply just over a quarter of world export demand, according to the Australian Coal Association.

It is the nation's biggest export earner, but when burned overseas Australian coal generates more than half a billion tonnes of greenhouse emissions each year, or more than all emissions generated within Australia.

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54,000 evacuated in Brazil flooding

At least 84 people have been killed and more than 54,000 forced to flee by flooding from heavy rain that has pounded southern Brazil for nearly two months, regional Civil Defence officials said Tuesday.

With the latest figures released Tuesday the death toll climbed from 67 to 84, and the number of evacuees from 52,000 to more than 54,000.

The region faces "the worst weather tragedy in history," Santa Catarina Governor Luiz Henrique da Silveira told reporters on Monday.

Making matters worse, torrential rain hitting the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina actually has intensified in recent days, officials said.

Civil Defence workers, firefighters, soldiers and police across the area have been busy for weeks rescuing people trapped by the flooding.

Civil Defence officials also said the death toll could rise considerably as casualty reports come in from rural areas.

More than 1.5 million people have been affected by the heavy rains, and eight cities remained cut off by waters and blocked roads. The region has been under a state of emergency since Saturday.

The most heavily affected towns are Ilhota (population 22,000, 18 dead) and the tourist town of Blumenau (population 297,000, 20 dead) where many German immigrants settled.

The head of Santa Catarina Civil Defence operations, Marcio Alves, said that most people were killed by landslides. "Most deaths happen when the rain stops and people go out believing that all is well," he said.

Another Civil Defence official, Robert Guimaraes, said "nearly 80 percent of the region is under water," though levels were dropping.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has ordered six military helicopters and 350 soldiers to the area to help in relief operations.

The latest flooding resulted from freak rains on Sunday that delivered a month's amount of precipitation in just five hours.

Boats were the only means of transport in many areas, and witnesses spoke of the bodies of dozens of drowned cows littering the road near Blumenau.

"We heard people crying for help. We also heard explosions. With the ground saturated, several gas pipelines exploded," one Santa Catarina resident forced to leave her home, Beatriz Heusi, 30, told AFP by telephone.

More than 160,000 people were without electricity and fresh water supplies were cut to several towns.

Other southern Brazilian states, principally Rio Grande do Sul and Espirito Santo were affected to a lesser extent by flooding and mudslides.

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Today's doom for you...floaties r us!

Sea levels to rise by one metre: experts
October 27, 2008, 3:23 pm

Sea levels will rise by one metre this century, according to German scientists who warn that global warming is happening faster than previously predicted.

Citing UN date on climate change, two senior German scientists say that previous predictions were far too cautious and optimistic.

Earlier estimates predicted a rise of 18cm to 59cm in sea levels this century.

That estimate is woefully understated, according to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who heads the Potsdam Institute for Research on Global Warming Effects, and Jochem Marotzke, a leading meteorologist.

"We now have to expect that the sea level will rise by a metre this century," said Schellnhuber in Berlin.

He said it is "just barely possible" that world governments will be able to limit the rise in average global temperatures to just two degrees Celsius by the end of the century, if they all strictly adhered to severe limits in carbon dioxide emissions.

Those restrictions call for halving greenhouse emissions by 2050 and eliminating CO2 emissions entirely by the end of the century.

But the German researchers said the resulting limited increase in temperature is predicated on strict adherence to those restrictions without exception, and even then there are many variables which could thwart the goals.

Schellnhuber, who is official adviser to German Chancellor Angela Merkel on climate-change issues, said the new findings employed data unavailable to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for its most recent global warming report.

The two experts said the IPCC report had been based on data up to 2005 only but since then ice loss in the Arctic had doubled or tripled.

Schellnhuber charged that 20 per cent of the loss of the ice sheet on Greenland could be directly linked to the added carbon dioxide emissions from new Chinese coal-fired power stations.

The new sea level predictions, according to Schellnhuber, are based on studies of melting Himalaya glaciers and the shrinking Greenland ice cap.

He blamed the rapidly diminishing size of the Greenland ice cap on soot particles from Chinese coal-fired power plants.

"That is truly a global effect," he said.

Soot settles on the ice, preventing the ice from reflecting as much sunlight back into space.

The result is that the ice absorbs sunlight rays, raising the temperature of the ice and causing it to melt.

"Air pollution plays a massive role in the accelerating pace of climate change, he said.

Doom...coutesy of Lateline ABC lah!

Action on climate change more urgent than ever
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Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 23/10/2008

Reporter: Margot O'Neil

Scientists are concerned that the will to tackle climate change has waned in the midst of the financial crisis, with the latest data showing climate change is moving more rapidly than they ever expected.

Transcript
TONY JONES, PRESENTER: Well as governments remain transfixed by the financial crisis, some of Australia's top scientists are concerned that the will to tackle the potentially more dramatic global nightmare of climate change may be waning.

Well tonight they tell Lateline how the latest data shows climate change is moving more rapidly than even their worst expectations.

In a moment we'll be joined Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the world's preeminent scientific body on climate change.

But first Margot O'Neill reports on the rapidly rising levels of anxiety among some of Dr Pahcauri's colleagues in Australia.

MARGOT O'NEILL, REPORTER: Meet three of Australia's, and the world's, top climate change scientists. Each of them shared in last year's Nobel Prize for their work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And each is usually most comfortable with cautious, measured public discussion. Well, not any more.

PROF. ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS, MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY: A lot of people like myself, and I believe many, many scientists now, who are frantically, hysterically worried.

PROF, DAVE GRIGGS, MONASH UNIVERSITY: Another one of these facts comes in that catches even you unawares and you think, "Oh shit! Not another one! I wasn't expecting that."

PROF. DAVID KAROLY, MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY: The only way that I could see the climate system in 50 years time or 100 years time being cooler than at present is if the earth got hit by an asteroid and basically human civilisation was destroyed.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Australia's climate change scientists are stirring, goaded by inaction in the face of a potential cataclysm, they're picking up megaphones because they need everyone to know it's speeding up.

From the loss of Arctic sea ice to early signs of melting permafrost, to sea level rises, to carbon dioxide emissions. Many of the projections contained in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just a year ago are being overtaken.

DAVE GRIGGS: When we made predictions a couple of years ago that the Arctic sea ice might disappear by the end of the century people were sceptical. Now people think, "Well, it actually might be gone by mid-century."

And if you talk to the scientific community people are just, "Oh, yeah, yeah, we know that now. That's gone." And only a few years ago that was a really dramatic and controversial finding because it was something that was so far beyond our concept.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Dave Griggs now leads Monash University's new Sustainability Institute after heading up the British Government's Hadley Institute and the IPCC's Science Working Group.

What most of us don't understand, he says, is that no matter what we do, the planet is now locked into dramatic temperature and sea level rises by 2050 because of the greenhouse gasses already trapped in the atmosphere. A two-degree temperature rise was once projected towards the end of the century and regarded as a tipping point for dangerous climate change. It's now likely to occur in our lifetime.

DAVE GRIGGS: Maybe two, two to three degrees by mid-century.

MARGOT O'NEILL: I mean, that almost is the end for the Great Barrier Reef.

DAVE GRIGGS: Inherently scientists are very conservative, and they won't come out and make a statement in public unless they are very confident about it. But the kind of sort of thing that are going around in private, you know, oh, the Barrier Reef's gone, the Murray Darling's gone.

ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS: We should be exercising triage. We should be looking at the parts of the world that are already dead, they're just still walking around. And we just need to leave them alone, and maybe the Murray Darling Basin is one of those.

MARGOT O'NEILL: Ann Henderson-Sellers returned to Australia last year after heading the UN's World Climate Research Program in Geneva. She believes it's time for climate scientists to break ranks with the consensus science of the IPCC.

ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS: It is not true that all scientists agree with everything that is in the IPCC fourth assessment report. Some of us, including me, think that it is worse, it is more frightening, more dangerous, happening faster. And I now think that we perhaps have not done the right thing in seeming as if we're of a single mind, a single view. We did it for all the right reasons, for wanting not to open up a "Well, this scientist says one thing and this scientist says something different." But now I don't think that that's right any longer.

MARGOT O'NEILL: She also wonders how the next IPCC report can be any more persuasive.

ANN HENDERSON-SELLERS: We've now said for four reports the world is getting warmer, this is a serious concern. The world really is getting warmer. This is a quite serious concern, and the time for action has already passed. What will we say in the fifth IPCC report? I simply don't know, I have no idea how we can couch the terms anymore. What degree of anxiousness can you add to that?

DAVID KAROLY: We can't say whether this is due to climate change but it is exactly what you'd expect for some of the moral predictions for like 50 or 100 years time, but we're seeing it now.

DAVID KAROLY: David Karoly returned to Australia last year from the University of Oklahoma after working as a lead author on the 2007 IPCC Report. He says it can be difficult and exhausting continually battling governments, big business and climate sceptics, but his lowest point came during negotiations in 2007 when news reports revealed that China, Russia and Saudi Arabia tried to derail even the conservative scientific consensus of the IPCC. David Karoly says he almost walked out.

DAVID KAROLY: There were clear, vested interests from some countries that were lying, raising scientific misinformation. And I was prepared, as were a lot of other scientists at that meeting, prepared to give up. The system was so close to being broken. The system fortunately didn't break.

MARGOT O'NEILL: The current financial turmoil has proven the world can act quickly when faced with a crisis, the scientists say. The same drastic intervention is the only solution for global warming.

Margot O'Neill. Lateline.

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