March 15 News: Reduction In Arctic Sea Ice Fueling Europe’s Colder Weather, Says UK Met Office

Drought may be new norm for UK, thanks to Climate Change

Other stories below: U.S. economists back EU emissions plan; Could cherry blossoms bloom in the winter one day?

Met Office: Arctic sea-ice loss linked to colder, drier UK winters

The reduction in Arctic sea ice caused by climate change is playing a role in the UK’s recent colder and drier winter weather, according to the Met Office.

Speaking to MPs on the influential environmental audit committee about the state of the warming Arctic, Julia Slingo, the chief scientist at the Met Office, said that decreasing amounts of ice in the far north was contributing to colder winters in the UK and northern Europe as well as to drought. But she stressed that while it was one factor and not the “dominant driver” in the UK.

The south-east and other parts of England are experiencing especially dry conditions after months of below-average rainfall, with some water companies pledging on Monday to introduce hosepipe bans to conserve water….

Slingo told the MPs that there is “increasing evidence in the last few months of that depletion of ice, in particular in the Bering and Kara seas, can plausibly impact on our winter weather and lead to colder winters over northern Europe”.

She added that more cold winters mean less water, and could exacerbate future droughts. “The replenishment of aquifers generally happens in winter and spring … a wet summer does not replenish aquifers. So we are concerned if we have a sequence of cold winters that could be much more damaging,” she told the committee.

Last month the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, warned farmers that drought might become “the new normal” for the UK, because of climate change.

Climate: A Valuable New Tool Lets You See Where the Sea Will Rise

When Hurricane Irene neared New York at the end of August, the city took the unprecedented step of shutting down the entire transit system—buses, subways and commuter trains in the largest city in America. The danger was that heavy rains from Irene could cause flooding that would swamp tunnels and tracks, causing lasting damage to the most important public transit system in the country. Fortunately, that didn’t happen—Irene weakened as it reached the city, and the catastrophe officials feared never materialized. But it was close. The Metropolitan Transit Authority lost the Port Jervis line for months at the cost of nearly $40 million. And had the storm surge from Irene been just a foot higher, it would have flooded the subways, causing billions of dollars in damages and making transportation around New York impossible.

Irene could just be a preview of what the entire country will be facing in a warmer world. According to new research by the nonprofit group Climate Central—which employs TIME contributor Michael Lemonick—about 3.7 million people live within a few feet of high tide and are in danger of being hit by more frequent coastal flooding in the future because of sea level rise caused by climate change. And if sea level rise accelerates because of rapid warming—as seems likely to happen barring major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions—major coastal floods that are now rare could become a much more frequent occurrence. “The sea level rise from global warming has already doubled the risk of extreme coastal floods,” says Benjamin Strauss, one of the co-authors of the two papers that outline the new research. “We hope this research can help everyone prepare for this.”

Washington’s cherry blossoms are busting out early this year, with buds popping so fast that a government work crew this week watched them unfurl on one tree in a single day.The U.S. National Park Service had predicted an early bloom for the centennial year of the hallowed trees. But it has moved up the forecast twice, with temperatures in the 80s and more of the same expected.

Now comes a team of scientists theorizing that with drastic warming of the globe, future decades could see blossom times not just a few days early but advanced by almost a month.

That could mean a bloom process that begins in January, rather than February, a blooming period in February instead of March, and a peak bloom in early March, instead of early April, the research suggests.

The ideas are contained in a scholarly paper published by experts at the University of Washington who studied data on the Tidal Basin’s blossoms, as “ideal indicators of the impacts of climate change.”

For once, the Senate tries to make highway spending less irrational

One of the odd features of U.S. transportation policy is that, by and large, there isn’t an overarching national policy. States generally get money according to a set formula. Congress tends not to prioritize those projects that advance key economic or environmental goals.

But on Wednesday, the Senate passed a two-year, $109 billion transportation bill that tries to change all that — at least in a few modest ways. The bill itself is critical because funding for roads, bridges and transit is set to run out on March 31. But there are a few notable reforms tucked away in the legislation itself. For one, the Senate bill actually articulates major national goals for U.S. transportation policy — things like managing congestion, improving road conditions, reducing environmental impacts, improving the reliability of freight, and increasing access to transit. These goals don’t really affect the way funding is handed out, but at least they finally exist.

Solar debate heats up as CA farmland is targeted

In the debate pitting photovoltaic power stations against agriculture, all eyes have been on Fresno County, where the abundance of sunshine that make it the No. 1 agriculture-producing county in the nation also make it ideal for solar arrays.

This week Fresno County, with 29 projects on 11,000 acres in the pipeline, approved its plan to balance food security with green energy with a decision that falls short of what both sides wanted.

Under the new regulations, authorities will consider the prior agricultural productivity of farmland in deciding whether to issue conditional use permits for projects on that land, but they will not automatically direct development to marginal and retired land lacking adequate water supplies, as farm organizations had wanted.

“Let’s not just give away the store,” said Chris Scheuring, attorney with the California Farm Bureau Federation, who compares it to the historic loss of fisheries. “We did that with salmon 50 years ago when we built those dams. Farmland today is salmon to me.”

China irrigation system responsible for rising emissions, research shows

The irrigation of Chinese farm fields with more water pumped from ever deeper underground is responsible for 33m tonnes of carbon dioxide per year – equivalent to the entire emissions of New Zealand – a new study revealed on Wednesday.

The research, carried out by a team of UK and Chinese scientists, highlights the rising but often overlooked energy and climate costs of irrigating crops in drought-plagued northern China, where farmers have to mine aquifers because surface rivers and lakes are increasingly polluted and over-exploited by factories and cities.

The authors found that groundwater used for crop irrigation in China has grown from 10bn cubic metres in 1950 to more than 100bn today. The country is now second only to India in tapping largely unreplenishable aquifers.

U.S. Economists Back EU Emissions Plan

A group of U.S. economists has written a letter to President Barack Obama backing the European Union’s emissions-trading system for the global airline industry.

The economists call on the U.S. to support the EU’s “innovative efforts” to price carbon and limit aviation emissions, according to a copy reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“Your administration should endorse the EU’s efforts, not oppose them,” the 26 economists wrote in the letter, which was dated Tuesday.

The signatories include five Nobel laureates, among them Thomas Sargent, winner of last year’s prize in economics and a professor at New York University.

The decision by a parliamentary committee to review British government policies on the Arctic on Wednesday comes amid a surge of global economic and political interest in the far north.

British-based oil companies, Shell and Cairn Energy, are at the centre of a new commercial drive into the region where melting ice caps are endangering the polar bear but making drilling more easy.

The environmental audit committee makes clear the UK has a “strong environmental, political, economic and scientific interests in the region” while individual committee members, such as the Green MP Caroline Lucas, point out it is a critical area surrounding all aspects of climate change.