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Himalayan Climate, Geneva (2024)

13/04/2022

Climate change intensified deadly storms in Africa in early 2022

Heavy rains led to hundreds of deaths and widespread damage

Climate change amped up the rains that pounded southeastern Africa and killed hundreds of people during two powerful storms in early 2022.

But a dearth of regional data made it difficult to pinpoint just how large of a role climate change played, scientists said April 11 at a news conference.

The findings were described in a study, published online April 11, by a consortium of climate scientists and disaster experts called the World Weather Attribution network.

A series of tropical storms and heavy rain events battered southeast Africa in quick succession from January through March. For this study, the researchers focused on two events: Tropical Storm Ana, which led to flooding in northern Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique in January and killed at least 70 people; and Cyclone Batsirai, which inundated southern Madagascar in February and caused hundreds more deaths.

To search for the fingerprints of climate change, the team first selected a three-day period of heavy rain for each storm. Then the researchers tried to amass observational data from the region to reconstruct historical daily rainfall records from 1981 to 2022.

Only four weather stations, all in Mozambique, had consistent, high-quality data spanning those decades. But, using the data on hand, the team was able to construct simulations for the region that represented climate with and without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

The aggregate of those simulations revealed that climate change did play a role in intensifying the rains, Izidine Pinto, a climatologist at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, said at the news event. But with insufficient historical rainfall data, the team “could not quantify the precise contribution” of climate change, Pinto said.

Tropical storms battered southeast Africa in quick succession from January through March, leading to hundreds of deaths and widespread damage.

13/04/2022

Cutting down on one 'super fat' could help plants survive climate change

Climate change doesn't just mean warmer weather. Cold spells can hit unusual lows, too, and the fluctuations between warm and chilly are becoming more extreme.

Even drops of a few degrees can be tough on growing plants. If temperature swings become too large for crops to endure, that means less food for the planet. That's why researchers around the globe are working to build up plant resiliency.

Michigan State University's David Kramer is interested in resilience as it relates to photosynthesis because the process by which plants are powered by the sun is particularly sensitive to temperature swings.

"One of the biggest questions right now is what the best ways are to make plants more tolerant. It's something we need to solve because change is happening so fast," said Kramer, a Hannah Distinguished Professor in the College of Natural Science at MSU. "We think nature has found a lot of solutions; we just need to figure out how they work."

Kramer and his colleagues have now discovered one potential solution in a single fatty acid that has a profound impact on how different cowpea plants tolerate chilling. The researchers published their work online March 16 in the journal Plant, Cell & Environment.

This knowledge could one day help certain crops grow in more places, allowing them to tolerate a wider range of conditions. It also has the potential to help growers wanting to plant crops earlier so they can harvest before the most severe stresses from heat and pests in the summer.

That these possibilities stem from a single fatty acid came as a surprise.

"We never expected that one fatty acid could be a major factor," said the study's first author, Donghee Hoh, a research associate in Kramer's lab.

That's because plants use a myriad of fatty acids to help regulate mission critical processes, notably photosynthesis.

Climate change doesn't just mean warmer weather. Cold spells can hit unusual lows, too, and the fluctuations between warm and chilly are becoming more extreme.

13/04/2022

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt on the world’s biggest problem: ‘If we don’t address climate change, we really will be toast’

Since leaving Google, Eric Schmidt has focused his energy on tackling big global problems — and none, he says, are as pressing as climate change.

“If we don’t address climate change, we really will be toast,” Schmidt, Google’s former CEO and chairman, tells CNBC Make It. “If you look at the rate of melting in the Antarctic ice sheet as well as in Greenland, it’s quite concerning.”

In 2017, Schmidt left Google’s executive chairman post and launched a philanthropic initiative, Schmidt Futures, to support big-idea research in fields like artificial intelligence, biology and energy. Over the past five years, he says, he’s learned that climate change isn’t just a long-term problem.

Once those ice sheets melt, it will take “a million years for them to get recovered,” Schmidt, 66, says. “So we really are putting the jeopardy of our grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren at risk.”

According to research published in January 2021, the world is now losing 1.2 trillion tons of ice each year — a 60% increase from the 1990s — and it’s projected to only get worse, experts warn. Calculations from Harvard researchers predict global sea levels could rise about three feet within the next 1,000 years if the Antarctic ice sheet collapses.

Schmidt, who was hired by Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 2001 to provide some “adult supervision” to their growing web-search engine, knows all about the engineering work needed to revolutionize industries: He served as Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011, helping transform the young Silicon Valley startup into a global tech behemoth.

In the case of climate change, the energy industry needs some major changes, Schmidt says. The problem, he adds, is that [climate change is] a great challenge, and something that’s well worth our time,” he says.

Former Google CEO and chairman Eric Schmidt says climate change is the world's most pressing issue today. Here's why.

13/04/2022

Watch a Decade of Documentaries on Climate Change & Other Environmental Threats

In The Power of Big Oil, a three-part documentary series that begins April 19 on PBS, FRONTLINE examines the fossil fuel industry’s history of casting doubt and delaying action on climate change, tracing decades of missed opportunities and ongoing attempts to hold Big Oil to account.

The documentary series comes on the heels of a new report by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) saying that rapid action is needed in order to reduce planet-warming emissions of greenhouse gases and limit climate disaster, and outlining possible ways in which the world can take action to cut such emissions in half by 2030.

“We are at a crossroads,” IPCC chair Hoesung Lee said in an announcement about the report. “The decisions we make now can secure a livable future. We have the tools and know-how required to limit warming.”

FRONTLINE has been covering climate change and other environmental threats for years and across platforms. Ahead of the premiere of The Power of Big Oil, revisit more than a decade’s worth of reporting.

With a new IPCC report out and a new FRONTLINE series premiering, revisit 10 years of documentaries and reporting on climate change and environmental threats.

13/04/2022

This startup fights climate change by growing algae in the desert

Per unit area, the company claims to capture as much carbon as a rainforest can.

In the Sahara Desert along the coastline in Morocco, more than 300 miles from the nearest city, a green pond now sits in the middle of the sand. It’s a test site for Brilliant Planet, a startup that plans to fight climate change by growing vast quantities of carbon-capturing algae in the world’s deserts.

“Per unit area, we can fix as much carbon—or more carbon, depending on where we are in the seasonality—as a rainforest,” says Raffael Jovine, cofounder and chief scientist at Brilliant Planet. “The difference is, when a rainforest tree falls down, it returns 97% of the carbon back to the atmosphere, whereas we can sequester all of it.” The production at the test site varies, as the company runs different trials. But when it builds the first commercial-scale plant, covering 1,000 acres, it expects to remove 40,000 tons of CO2 per year, roughly the equivalent emissions of using 92,000 barrels of oil. Scaled up to cover available desert land on coasts, the system could hypothetically remove 2 gigatons of CO2 a year.

The company pumps seawater from the nearby coast into its facility, taking advantage of the fact that the water is filled both with nutrients that algae needs to grow and with CO2; the ocean has absorbed tens of billions of tons of CO2 emissions over the last few decades. As the water flows through a series of containers and ponds, algae grows in the startup’s proprietary system and captures carbon. When the algae is ready to be harvested—a process that takes between 18 and 30 days—it’s filtered out of the water, which is returned to the ocean. (The process also makes the water less acidic, helping solve another problem caused by climate change.) Then the algae is dried and buried under the sand, where the carbon it captures can be permanently stored.

Per unit area, the company claims to capture as much carbon as a rainforest can.

13/04/2022

Blistering June heat, unprecedented April snow: Climate change makes extreme weather more likely in Oregon

Portland shattered its highest-ever temperature in June, cresting at 116 degrees. On Monday, the record for latest snowfall also fell after a rare shot of winter weather left the city blanketed in heavy, wet snow.

As heat-trapping gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere — coming from tailpipes, power plants and industrial facilities — these types of extreme weather events are likely to become more common, said Erica Fleishman, a professor at Oregon State University and director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute.

“As the climate changes, all types of weather extremes will be more likely,” she said. “Heat waves become more likely, and yes, even though global temperatures are rising, cold spells become more likely, too.”

Fleishman points out that, of course, there have been weather extremes for as long as there has been weather, and records have been broken as long as they’ve been kept.

Records are being broken in different ways of late, however. An analysis by The Associated Press found that between 1999 and 2019 the number of record-high temperatures broken in the U.S. was about twice that of record-low temperatures.

In a stable climate, the numbers would be close to equal.

That trend in Oregon is evident in events like the heat dome event of late June, which likely would never have occurred at that intensity without the warming effects of climate change, according to scientists who specialize in identifying links between extreme weather events and climate change.

While the heat dome, which killed nearly 100 people in Oregon, was a 1-in-1,000 year event, it could be more like a 1-in-10 year event by the end of the century if more isn’t done to curb greenhouse gas emissions, Fleishman said.

“As the climate changes, all types of weather extremes will be more likely."

13/04/2022

There’s still a way to reach global goal on climate change

(AP) - If nations do all that they’ve promised to fight climate change, the world can still meet one of two internationally agreed upon goals for limiting warming. But the planet is blowing past the other threshold that scientists say will protect Earth more, a new study finds.

The world is potentially on track to keep global warming at, or a shade below, 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than pre-industrial times, a goal that once seemed out of reach, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

That will only happen if countries not only fulfill their specific pledged national targets for curbing carbon emissions by 2030, but also come through on more distant promises of reaching net zero carbon emissions by mid-century, the study says.

This 2-degree warmer world still represents what scientists characterize as a profoundly disrupted climate with fiercer storms, higher seas, animal and plant extinctions, disappearing coral, melting ice and more people dying from heat, smog and infectious disease. It’s not the goal that world leaders say they really want: 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. The world will blast past that more prominent and promoted goal unless dramatic new emission cuts are promised and achieved this decade and probably within the next three years, study authors said.

Both goals of 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees are part of the 2015 Paris climate pact and the 2021 Glasgow follow-up agreement. The 2-degree goal goes back years earlier.

“For the first time we can possibly keep warming below the symbolic 2-degree mark with the promises on the table. That assumes, of course, that the countries follow through on the promises,” said study lead author Malte Meinshausen, a University of Melbourne climate scientist.

The world is potentially on track to keep global warming at, or a shade below, 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) hotter than pre-industrial times, a goal that once seemed out of reach, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

13/04/2022

Climate Change Worsened Record–Breaking 2020 Hurricane Season

The storms produced significantly more rainfall than they would have without global warming

Climate change helped fuel stronger, wetter storms during an unusually active Atlantic hurricane season in 2020, a new study finds. The cyclones produced significantly more rainfall than they would have in a world without global warming.

The most extreme three-hour rainfall rates that season were about 10 percent higher because of the influence of climate change, the study found. And the most extreme three-day rainfall rates were about 5 percent higher.

That’s looking at all the cyclones that formed across the Atlantic basin, including both tropical storms and hurricanes. When the scientists focused only on hurricane-strength storms, they found that the influence of climate change was even stronger. Climate change increased three-hour rainfall rates by about 11 percent and three-day rainfall by about 8 percent.

It’s a snapshot of what’s likely a long-term trend.

“As the global surface temperature continues to rise, we would expect to see continued increases in rainfall in tropical cyclones due to climate change,” said Kevin Reed, an expert on extreme weather events at Stony Brook University and lead author of the study.

That means a greater risk of damaging floods when storms make landfall. It’s a warning sign to coastal communities that they should plan accordingly, Reed noted.

“We’ve built a society and built infrastructure that has focused on the weather that we experienced in the 20th century — and our weather has changed,” he said. “So it’s important to think about ways we can adapt our society to handle those changes in weather.”

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season broke records left and right. It produced 30 named storms, the highest number in recorded history. Twelve of them made landfall in the continental United States, also a record-breaker.

The storms produced significantly more rainfall than they would have without global warming

13/04/2022

Climate change: COP26 promises will hold warming under 2C

The carbon-cutting promises made at COP26 would see the world warm by just under 2C this century, according to a new analysis.

The study finds that if all the pledges made by countries are implemented "in full and on time", temperatures would rise by 1.9-2C.

However, there is far grimmer news on the idea of keeping warming under 1.5C.

The paper finds there is just a 6-10% chance of staying under this key threshold.

When political leaders met in Glasgow last November, many of them brought new and improved plans to reduce their carbon emissions.

Others, such as India, announced new, long-term targets to bring their CO2 output to net zero.

The focus of the meeting was to try to improve the pledges so that global temperatures this century don't rise by more than 1.5C above the levels recorded in the middle of the 19th Century.

Scientists have concluded that going beyond this level is very dangerous for the world, particularly for people living in small island nations and developing states.

During the gathering in Glasgow, researchers carried out rapid analyses of the new pledges and promises.

They all indicated these new plans would reduce the rise in global temperatures that the world is experiencing.
The key question, though, is by how much.

This new, peer reviewed study builds on those early findings.
The authors first look at the plans that countries have made for the short term up to 2030.

On their own, these would see temperatures rise by 2.6C this century, with devastating consequences for tens of millions of people.

But if countries fulfil their longer-term goals of reducing warming gases to as close to zero as possible, then the impact on temperatures is far greater.

"This is the first paper that says there's actually a better than 50% chance of keeping temperatures below 2C if these targets are implemented," said lead author Prof Malte Meinshausen, from the University of Melbourne.

Scientists say their analysis is "encouraging" but keeping under 1.5C this century looks unlikely.

04/04/2022

Accelerated rise of South China Sea level blamed on global warming

Experts warn of millions of climate refugees and the disruption of economic growth in the region.

The water level in the South China Sea has risen by 152mm since 1900, Chinese researchers have found, and the rate has accelerated in accordance with global warming.

A study published in the April issue of the Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology magazine said that the sea level in the South China Sea fell slightly from 1850-1900 period, but has continuously risen by 1.31mm per year on average for a total increase of 152mm (± 7 mm) from 1900-2015.

Researchers from the South China Sea Institute of Oceanology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) reconstructed the history of the South China Sea's sea-level shift using Porites coral, a widespread coral with a high growth rate, clear annual growth layer and sensitive response to the change of seawater environment.

The coral’s oxygen stable isotopes are an ideal proxy to indicate sea-level, they said.

The researchers analyzed the correlation between the oxygen stable isotopes of Porites coral, sea-surface salinity, and temperature, as well as the rainfall in the South China Sea; and then quantitatively reconstructed the annual sea-level record.

The study found that the sea-level rise in the South China Sea may be the result of a combination of solar activity and greenhouse gases; and human-caused global warming may have been the dominant factor behind the current rapid rise of sea level.

“Clearly the findings of this study show the global community will have to do more to slow climate change, but we already knew climate change would cause the sea level to rise, threatening the coastlines of a number of countries – including minimally Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam,” said Murray Hiebert, a senior associate of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.

Experts warn of millions of climate refugees and the disruption of economic growth in the region.

04/04/2022

‘Code red’ for region’s climate should increase focus on adaptation

As we inch closer to the 1.5°C target and beyond in this century, the sixth generation of CIMP6 climate models (known as Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 6) and the Shared Socio-economic Pathways Scenarios (SSPs) released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report in August 2021 shows that the global impacts of reaching 1.5 °C and beyond are far reaching. Combined with events like the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing uncertainties are being felt around the world. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the Assessment Report a ‘code red’ for humanity.

The Asia-Pacific region is already encountering these impacts - where every fraction of a degree in warming translates into increased risks. Last year, India faced five cyclonic storms -- Cyclone Tauktae, Yaas, Gulaab, Shaheen and Jawad in the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian sea. Thailand, Myanmar and the Phillipines saw large scale flooding and typhoons. China’s Henan Province and the Russian Federation’s Volhzhsky district and Samara Oblast were all affected by severe flooding. Japan’s north-eastern region was hit by massive landslides triggered by rain in Atmai city. Combined with the worldwide pandemic, these disasters are illustrative of the new normal of cascading risks: a set of disasters intersecting and overlapping, thus creating cascading risks scenarios that exacerbate multiple critical vulnerabilities. These are set to increase under the new SSP scenarios and CIMP6 models.

How do these global climate parameters break down in the Asia-Pacific region? Using the CIMP6 models, ESCAP has downscaled the global warming trends to the Asia-Pacific region and its subregions under 1.5- and 2°C change for two time periods (2021-2040 and 2041-2060).

English News and Press Release on World about Climate Change and Environment, Disaster Management, Drought, Flood and more; published on 04 Apr 2022 by ESCAP

04/04/2022

Investor Group With $4.7 Trillion Says Asian Banks Are Failing on Climate Change

Banks in Asia are failing to take sufficient action to tackle climate change and are mispricing their own exposure to carbon-intensive assets, according to a report by an investment group that manages a combined $4.7 trillion.

“Without urgent course correction, widespread misallocation of capital will continue, leaving the region vulnerable to correction,” the Asia Transition Platform said in its 75-page report released on Wednesday.

The investment group assessed 32 banks in nine Asian markets in terms of governance, risk management and other climate-related policies. Most of the firms received poor grades from the group.

“None of the banks are taking sufficient action to meet Paris Agreement objectives,” the study found. “Most banks are misaligned with their own national policies for recarbonization.”

DBS Group Holdings Ltd., Singapore’s biggest bank, had the top grade at CC, the third-highest of seven grades in the report’s methodology. Chinese lenders received among the lowest marks, with China Merchants Bank Co. awarded a D, the second-lowest level. CMB didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a statement, DBS noted it has committed to becoming net zero by 2050.

“We signed up only after we had some milestones, as well as line of sight towards a viable course of action that is constructive and impactful,” the bank said.

The banking industry is coming under increasing pressure to take more steps to fight climate change. A report earlier this week found that fewer than half of 150 major financial institutions have restricted their business with the oil-and-gas sector, even though many of them have made high-profile pledges to reduce their contribution to climate change.

The Asia Transition Platform was launched in September and has the backing of seven money managers, including Aviva Investors, BMO Global Asset Management and Fidelity International.

Banks in Asia are failing to take sufficient action to tackle climate change and are mispricing their own exposure to carbon-intensive assets, according to a report by an investment group that manages a combined $4.7 trillion.

04/04/2022

South Africa: Climate Change Poses Risk to Gender Equality

The Deputy Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Makhotso Sotyu, says the loss of biodiversity and its knock-on effect on livelihoods poses a risk to African women, leaving them even more vulnerable to the negative effects of gender inequality.

Addressing a side event on 'African Women Resilience in the Context of Climate Change' during the Commission for the Status of Women (CSW66) in New York on Tuesday, Sotyu said climate change is causing massive livelihood losses and damages for African women, including through the loss of biodiversity, among others.

"South Africa agrees with many other African countries that advocate for a need to integrate gender perspectives into our design, funding, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes on climate change. We further agree on gender mainstreaming across sectors at all levels of government," the Deputy Minister said.

On the one hand, she noted the recent devastating extreme weather events associated with flooding on the African continent, while on the other hand, drought is increasing food insecurity, and wildfires are destroying vast tracks of land.

"The threat of climate change-related events to agricultural production, food security and human settlements is a matter of grave concern for South Africa.

"The African rural farming communities of largely women will thus need to transform unsustainable production, consumption and land use patterns towards climate resilient agricultural practices," the Deputy Minister said.

Reports tabled at the CSW show that human pressures will push one million species towards extinction in the coming years.

"If left unchecked, these interlinkages between climate change, biodiversity loss, desertification, land degradation, pollution and the COVID-19 pandemic could unleash devastating effects on humanity, especially for African women.

The Deputy Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Makhotso Sotyu, says the loss of biodiversity and its knock-on effect on livelihoods poses a risk to African women, leaving them even more vulnerable to the negative effects of gender inequality.

04/04/2022

Egypt’s Ambassador to Brussels addresses climate change, development issues in Africa with EU officials

The meetings dealt with ways to enhance cooperation and coordination with Egypt, both at the level of officials of the European Commission and the European Parliament.

Egypt’s Ambassador to Brussels Badr Abdel Aty met with a group of European Commission officials and members of the European Parliament on Sunday.

The meetings dealt with ways to enhance cooperation and coordination with Egypt, both at the level of officials of the European Commission and the European Parliament.

They also discussed major energy projects in Egypt, particularly clean and green energy and their contribution to Egypt’s self-sufficiency and exports to Europe and other countries of the world in the future.

Preparations for the 27th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on climate change (COP 27) — which will be held in Egypt’s Sharm El-Sheikh this November — were discussed as well.

Furthermore, the two sides discussed arrangements for the upcoming visit of the first Vice-President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans, who will be responsible for the Green Deal, to Cairo in April.

Additionally, the meeting tackled Egypt’s interest in developing the transportation sector, modernising infrastructure, expanding roads, developing the railway system, and maritime and river transportation.

For their part, the European side expressed its keenness to further cooperate with Egypt in the field of transportation, especially as it is a leading country in this field in the Middle East and Africa.

They also stressed the importance of linking Africa and Europe to contribute to further cooperation, including the Lake Victoria-Mediterranean link project and the Cairo-Khartoum-Juba-Kampala road project, emphasising the importance of implementing the positive results of the EU-AU summit that was held in Brussels on 17 and 18 February 2022.

The meetings dealt with ways to enhance cooperation and coordination with Egypt, both at the level of officials of the European Commission and the European Parliament.

04/04/2022

Historic drought looms for 20 million living in Horn of Africa

The climatic phenomenon known as La Niña is preventing nourishing rains for the fourth season in a row, putting East Africa on the “brink of catastrophe.”

As many as 20 million people in four African countries are facing extreme hardship and food shortages as an exceptionally long and severe drought grips the eastern Horn of Africa. Three rainy seasons in a row have failed to materialize. Now scientists and relief agencies fear that the next forecast one—scheduled to bring rain to Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia this month—will follow suit.

If that happens, it will mark the longest drought the region has experienced in four decades, as climate change brings a succession of extreme weather events to a part of the world ill-equipped to withstand them.

“We are most definitely now sitting on the brink of catastrophe,” said Rein Paulsen, director of emergencies and resilience at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), last month. “Time is running out.”

Michael Dunford, Regional Director for the East African bureau of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), added: “Harvests are ruined, livestock are dying, and hunger is growing.”

Hope now rests on seasonal rains over the coming weeks. Unfortunately, the forecast is not promising—and perhaps unsurprisingly, it appears climate change is largely to blame. As part of the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), Chris Funk and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara Climate Hazards Center use climate models to generate maps of rainfall estimates around the world. They have found that the root of the Horn of Africa’s recent droughts can be found far to the east, in the warm (and warming) waters of the western Pacific Ocean, and in the climatic phenomenon known as La Niña.

The climatic phenomenon known as La Niña is preventing nourishing rains for the fourth season in a row, putting East Africa on the “brink of catastrophe.”

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