Climate Change News & Discussions

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Climate change is erasing 'flammability barrier' that protects high-elevation forests

May 27, 2021

Wildfires in the western United States are increasingly happening at high elevations, in mountainous areas that were previously too wet to burn, according to a new study.

Scientists say climate change and ongoing drought conditions in the West are drying out high-elevation forests, making them particularly susceptible to blazes. With several Western states plunging deeper into a megadrought, and experts predicting a hot and dry summer, the findings add to a distressing outlook for this year's wildfire season.

For their study, which was published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers examined records from 1984 to 2017 of all fires in the western U.S. that were larger than 1,000 acres. They found that the amount of scorched land increased across all elevations during that period, but observed that the biggest increase was at elevations above 8,200 feet.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environ ... o-rcna1046

[weatheriscool]

Court orders Shell to slash CO2 emissions in landmark climate ruling
Source: CNN

London -- A Dutch court has ruled that Royal Dutch Shell must dramatically reduce its carbon emissions in a landmark climate decision that could have far reaching consequences for oil companies.

The company must slash its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 from 2019 levels, according to a judgment from a district court in The Hague on Wednesday. That includes emissions from its own operations and from the energy products it sells.

This is the first time that a court has ruled a company needs to reduce its emissions in line with global climate goals, according to Friends of the Earth Netherlands, an environmental campaigning group that brought the case against Shell (RDSA).

The verdict could pave the way for similar cases to be brought in other countries, holding oil companies liable for greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/26/business ... index.html

[weatheriscool]

Victoria to enter a COVID-19 lockdown as cases from Melbourne outbreak grow
Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Victorian government has announced a seven-day lockdown today in a bid to curb the state's growing coronavirus outbreak.

Acting Premier James Merlino said contact tracers had identified 10,000 primary and secondary contacts linked to the outbreak.

Mr Merlino said there would be only five reasons people would be allowed to leave their homes:

Food and supplies
Authorised work
Care and caregiving
Exercise for up to two hours with one other person
Getting vaccinated

Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-27/ ... /100169172

[weatheriscool]

World may breach 1.5C warming within 5 years: WMO
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-world-bre ... s-wmo.html
by Patrick Galey

There is a 90 percent chance of at least one year between 2021-2025 being the hottest on record, according to the Met Office's updated predictions.

The world may temporarily breach the 1.5-Celsius warming mark within the next five years, according to an updated assessment of global climate trends released Thursday.

The World Meterological Organization and Britain's Met Office said there was a 40 percent chance of the annual average global temperature surpassing 1.5C above pre-industrial temperatures—the aspirational warming limit of the Paris climate accord.

According to the Met Office's updated global 10-year climate prediction, there is a 90 percent chance of at least one year between 2021-2025 being the hottest on record.

The annual average global temperature over the next five years is likely to be at least 1C warmer than pre-industrial levels, within a range of 0.9C-1.8C warmer, it said.

"These are more than just statistics," said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

[wjfox]

[Time_Traveller]

Four-day working week would slash UK carbon footprint, report says

Thu 27 May 2021

The introduction of a four-day working week with no loss of pay would dramatically reduce the UK’s carbon footprint and help the country meet its binding climate targets, according to a report
The study found that moving to a four-day week by 2025 would shrink the UK’s emissions by 127m tonnes, a reduction of more than 20% and equivalent to taking the country’s entire private car fleet off the road.

The shorter working week has gained traction among economists, businesses and some politicians in the past few years. The consumer goods company Unilever announced a year-long trial in New Zealand starting last December and the government’s of Spain and Scotland launched national level pilot schemes.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... int-report

[Time_Traveller]

Rapid heating of Indian Ocean worsening cyclones, say scientists

Thu 27 May 2021

India’s cyclone season is being made more intense by the rapidly heating Indian Ocean, scientists have warned.

Last week India was battered by Cyclone Tauktae, an unusually strong cyclone in the Arabian Sea, resulting in widespread disruption. This week, another severe storm, Cyclone Yaas, formed in the Bay of Bengal, leading to more than a million people being evacuated into safe shelters.

The Indian subcontinent has been facing the brunt of costly and deadly tropical cyclones for decades. But scientists say global heating is accelerating the rate of ocean warming, leading to an increased number of cyclones and rapid intensification of weak storms, with severe repercussions for the country.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... scientists

[weatheriscool]

Global warming already responsible for one in three heat-related deaths
https://phys.org/news/2021-05-global-re ... eaths.html
by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Between 1991 and 2018, more than a third of all deaths in which heat played a role were attributable to human-induced global warming, according to a new article in Nature Climate Change.

The study, the largest of its kind, was led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and the University of Bern within the Multi-Country Multi-City (MCC) Collaborative Research Network. Using data from 732 locations in 43 countries around the world it shows for the first time the actual contribution of man-made climate change in increasing mortality risks due to heat.

Overall, the estimates show that 37% of all heat-related deaths in the recent summer periods were attributable to the warming of the planet due to anthropogenic activities. This percentage of heat-related deaths attributed to human-induced climate change was highest in Central and South America (up to 76% in Ecuador or Colombia, for example) and South-East Asia (between 48% to 61%).

[Time_Traveller]

Satellites may have been underestimating the planet's warming for decades

about 8 hours ago



The global warming that has already taken place may be even worse than we thought. That's the takeaway from a new study that finds satellite measurements have likely been underestimating the warming of the lower levels of the atmosphere over the last 40 years.

Basic physics equations govern the relationship between temperature and moisture in the air, but many measurements of temperature and moisture used in climate models diverge from this relationship, the new study finds.

That means either satellite measurements of the troposphere have underestimated its temperature or overestimated its moisture, study leader Ben Santer, a climate scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California, said in a statement.

"It is currently difficult to determine which interpretation is more credible," Santer said. "But our analysis reveals that several observational datasets — particularly those with the smallest values of ocean surface warming and tropospheric warming — appear to be at odds with other, independently measured complementary variables." Complementary variables are those with a physical relationship to each other.

In other words, the measurements that show the least warming might also be the least reliable.

https://www.space.com/satellites-undere ... al-warming