powazny, via Flickr
A round-up of the top climate and energy news.
The size of rainstorms hitting Los Angeles has been getting bigger over the past 60 years, according to a new report released today by the Environment California Research and Policy Center. The environmental advocacy group measured rainfall in the Los Angeles metro area since 1948 and found that a storm large enough to occur only once a year decades ago is now happening every 8.8 months. [Contra Costa Times]
Similar trends were seen throughout much of California and nationwide. Overall, California experienced a 13 percent increase in extreme rainstorms and snowstorms between 1948 and 2011, one of 43 states to see statistically significant increases.
The report “When It Rains, It Pours” attributed the nationwide rise in extreme storms to global warming, although some experts are still hesitant to link climate change to relatively short-term weather patterns. It’s also unclear what an increase in extreme storms means for Los Angeles’ water supply.
Travis Madsen, one of the report’s lead authors and a policy analyst at the Frontier Group, an environmental think tank, called extreme rainfall frequency “one of the clearest ways in which we can see the impact of the change in climate.”
The Obama administration was urged on Monday to stop diverting grain to gas amid warnings of an “imminent food crisis” caused by America’s drought.US government forecasts of a 4% rise in food prices for US consumers because of the drought have sharpened criticism of supports for producing fuel from corn-based ethanol. [Gaurdian]
The latest oil spill from Enbridge Inc.’s Mainline pipeline system is bad timing for Canadian pipeline companies, which are trying to gain public support for new oil projects in Canada and the U.S.The spill of some 1,200 barrels of oil in Wisconsin Friday occurred almost two years to the day after Enbridge spilled 20,000 barrels of oil into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River in the most costly onshore spill in U.S. history. [Wall Street Journal]
President Barack Obama on Monday signed a bill designed to expedite home building and energy development on tribal lands.The law, sponsored by Rep. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., enables tribes to approve trust land leases directly, rather than waiting for approval from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Navajo Nation already has that authority. [Washington Post]
As polar bears become rarer, they may be forced to mate with brown bears, which this new study suggests has happened before in the distant past. Modern polar and brown bears can and do produce fertile offspring, but biologists classify them separate species because geographical distance usually prevents the two from ever meeting. Climate change is erasing the distance between the two species. Brown bears are moving north into polar bear territory, and polar bears are being forced off melting ice to spend more time on land, where they’re more likely to encounter brown bears. A Canadian hunter in 2006 shot a white bear with patches of brown fur and the humped claws of a grizzly—DNA tests confirmed this first modern report of a hybrid. [Mother Jones]
As the temperature keeps rising, so does the price of natural gas. Natural gas futures in New York have surged 69 percent since hitting a 10-year low this spring. Power plants are burning more natural gas for electricity as homes and businesses crank up the air conditioning. And natural gas companies are finally cutting back after a production boom that pushed supplies this winter to the highest level on record. [Washington Post]
Massachusetts lawmakers have approved a bill that would require utilities to purchase more of their electricity from renewable sources. The measure approved in the Senate and House on Monday would also require competitive bidding for long-term renewable energy contracts and reduce from 4 percent to 2.75 percent the guaranteed annual return that utilities would receive from those investments. [Boston]
General Electric scientists have developed a prototype electric motor designed to improve the performance and efficiency of hybrid and electric vehicles.The Interior Permanent Magnet traction motor improves on existing designs in several key areas, and would result in hybrids and electric vehicles with greater range, better performance and better cooling characteristics. [Boston]
Climate Change Minister Greg Barker will today cut the ribbon on Scotland’s first designated zone for the development of marine energy, delivering a major boost to the fledgling sector. [Gaurdian]
-Max Frankel
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
“Scientists at Harvard University have discovered yet another unexpected — not to mention unintended — consequence of climate change. Thunderstorms on steroids — supercharged by the increased heat energy trapped in the atmosphere — are, as it were, punching massive holes in the ozone layer.”
http://www.dailyimpact.net/2012/07/27/thunderstorms-on-steroids-punching-holes-in-ozone/
Would be much appreciated if someone in the know could comment on this study
Those whose comments we value most need the original citation of the article available by subscription or with a fee at sciencemag.org
Published Online July 26 2012
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1222978
Report
UV Dosage Levels in Summer: Increased Risk of Ozone Loss from Convectively Injected Water Vapor
James G. Anderson,
David M. Wilmouth,
Jessica B. Smith,
David S. Sayres
“The team’s calculations suggest that the havoc wreaked by water vapor could continue for days after a storm, as humidity levels slowly fall. As much as 25 to 35 percent of ozone, over a horizontal distance of 100 kilometers, could be annihilated in a week.
“I was surprised that so much ozone could be removed in such a short time,” says Dale Hurst, an atmospheric chemist at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences.
For now, the danger exists only on paper. Actual measurements tracking chlorine compounds in the stratosphere would help to confirm whether the damage is taking place and, if so, how widespread the problem may be. And while many climate simulations do call for more strong storms as temperatures continue to rise, the future is still somewhat fuzzy. A warmer atmosphere would hold more moisture but would also weaken the wind shear that whips up extreme weather. ”
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/342528/title/Stronger_storms_may_destroy_ozone
Anderson is saying his group has observed that more water vapour than previously thought possible is in parts of the stratosphere over the US.
“This problem now is of deep concern to me” he is quoted in the NYTimes as saying. Also: “I never would have suspected this”.
The concern is that if climate change is driving more water into the stratosphere it will cause more ozone depletion.
Anderson knows what he is talking about. It was his experiment that NASA flew right into the ozone hole over Antarctica in 1987 that resulted in the proof that forced industry to admit they could produce substitute chemicals. Anderson’s result was called the “smoking gun”. It was what negotiators required before they could beef up the Montreal Protocol over the years until it could be said that CFCs are practically banned.
If significant ozone loss occurs over the regions of the planet where most people live, the skin cancer rate will increase. Crop losses will increase. Almost all life on the planet depends on the life that must directly face the sun.
Although CFC concentration peaked and is gently declining as a result of the Montreal Protocol the concentration is still near its peak. CFCs act to transport chlorine to the stratosphere. Because the CFC chlorine transport mechanism did not exist prior to industrial civilization and their concentration is still near the peak, the net effect is there is about 3x as much chlorine in the stratosphere as before humans evolved. This is expected to decline back to normal over many decades but it is there now and climate change is happening now.
There always was a worry about what would happen as GHGs accumulated. Ozone depletion alters where the stratosphere is and what temperature it is and the stratosphere is a fundamental part of the atmosphere. Therefore it was felt ozone depletion must have an effect on climate. “Way back when” it just used to be mentioned, then discussion would move to other topics as the issue was too poorly understood for anyone to have a good idea. Reports now that ozone and climate have been completely separate issues until Anderson’s announcement are mistaken: Joellen Russell at U of Arizona says the colder stratosphere over Antarctica due to ozone depletion there means an increased temperature gradient between the tropics and the South Pole which is adding to the forces driving the southern hemisphere westerlies further south which she says is having profound effects on the climate system.
It was always feared that climate change would cause more ozone depletion, contrary to the reports I’m reading now. Climate change was going to cause the troposphere to warm and the stratosphere to cool it was thought way back when. The reason the ozone hole appeared over Antarctica and ozone loss was at its worst in that particular spot was because the stratosphere is colder there than anywhere else on Earth. If the stratosphere was cooled globally, more ozone loss must occur, it was thought.
Anderson’s saying there is evidence Earth, and hence life, has experienced high water vapour levels in the stratosphere in the paleo record, I’m not sure how he confirms this. It has not simultaneously experienced higher water vapour in the stratosphere along with the artificially higher concentrations of chlorine in the stratosphere the CFCs have produced.
They’ve observed that the water is there in some places over the US now. They don’t actually know if this is something that they just missed all these years, or what. “we don’t have measurements of this deep convective injection of water into the stratosphere that go back in time”. They don’t buy that they missed this in the past. It also looks like they’ve observed that in the presence of this water that catalytic reactions involving the artificially high levels of chlorine can increase the rate of ozone loss by 100x, i.e. in the places in the stratosphere where this water is, ozone loss increases by 100x. “we understand this chemistry”.
Ralph Cicerone, who was recognized on Rowland, Molina, and Crutzen’s Nobel citation for his contribution to understanding ozone depletion, is now President of the NAS. He is calling for action: “the thing to do is do field work now – measure moisture amounts and whether there is any impact around it”. They’ve only got a limited number of observations.
Its another head of the hydra: Anderson: “the best guide for the evolution of this is to look at the research that connects climate change with severe storm intensity and frequency… it’s clear that there is a developing scientific case that the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is increasing climate change, and in turn driving severe storm intensity and frequency”.
Chomsky: The Most Powerful Country in History Is Destroying the Earth and Human Rights as We Know Them.
“It should be unnecessary to dwell on the extreme dangers posed by one central element of the predatory obsessions that are producing calamities all over the world: the reliance on fossil fuels, which courts global disaster, perhaps in the not-too-distant future. Details may be debated, but there is little serious doubt that the problems are serious, if not awesome, and that the longer we delay in addressing them, the more awful will be the legacy left to generations to come. There are some efforts to face reality, but they are far too minimal. The recent Rio+20 Conference opened with meager aspirations and derisory outcomes.
Meanwhile, power concentrations are charging in the opposite direction, led by the richest and most powerful country in world history. Congressional Republicans are dismantling the limited environmental protections initiated by Richard Nixon, who would be something of a dangerous radical in today’s political scene. The major business lobbies openly announce their propaganda campaigns to convince the public that there is no need for undue concern — with some effect, as polls show.
The media cooperate by not even reporting the increasingly dire forecasts of international agencies and even the U.S. Department of Energy. The standard presentation is a debate between alarmists and skeptics: on one side virtually all qualified scientists, on the other a few holdouts. Not part of the debate are a very large number of experts, including the climate change program at MIT among others, who criticize the scientific consensus because it is too conservative and cautious, arguing that the truth when it comes to climate change is far more dire. Not surprisingly, the public is confused.
In his State of the Union speech in January, President Obama hailed the bright prospects of a century of energy self-sufficiency, thanks to new technologies that permit extraction of hydrocarbons from Canadian tar sands, shale, and other previously inaccessible sources. Others agree. The Financial Timesforecasts a century of energy independence for the U.S. The report does mention the destructive local impact of the new methods. Unasked in these optimistic forecasts is the question what kind of a world will survive the rapacious onslaught.”
http://www.alternet.org/world/chomsky-most-powerful-country-history-destroying-earth-and-human-rights-we-know-them?paging=off
I saw Chomsky once, when he visited Sydney, and he spoke out for the still imprisoned East Timorese, for which he was viciously abused by the denizens of the local Murdoch abomination. Later, when the Timorese were liberated, he was forgotten, as the Rightwing MSM had the gall to congratulate themselves and the Howard regime for the miracle. He’s dead right here, of course. Nixon would be harried daily on FoxNews, and any of scores of notable Republicans from that era purged by the Mad Hatters. Come to think of it, perhaps that explains their love of coal. Maybe they’ve ingested so much mercury that they have not just gone troppo, but they’ve also become addicted to the wretched stuff.
Storm size also tied to soil erosion, weathering rates,
Soil erosion and climate change
The warmer atmospheric temperatures observed over the past decades are expected to lead to a more vigorous hydrological cycle, including more extreme rainfall events.In 1998 Karl and Knight reported that from 1910 to 1996 total precipitation over the contiguous U.S. increased, and that 53% of the increase came from the upper 10% of precipitation events (the most intense precipitation). The percent of precipitation coming from days of precipitation in excess of 50 mm has also increased significantly.
Studies on soil erosion suggest that increased rainfall amounts and intensities will lead to greater rates of erosion. Thus, if rainfall amounts and intensities increase in many parts of the world as expected, erosion will also increase, unless amelioration measures are taken. http://climateforce.net/2011/07/09/pedology-erosion-weathering-during-the-petm/
That is a nice little report but it is a totally inadequate picture of what is going on in Los Angeles:
“Downtown Los Angeles (USC) will end the 2011-2012 water year (July 1 to June 30) having recorded 8.69 inches of rain. This is about 58% of the 1981-2010 normal of 14.93 inches.”
The Southwest is in a drought. The drought is not letting up. It may change with the coming El Nino later this year and if it develops Los Angeles could see some intense rainstorms.
New Zealand: The big wet continues for South Canterbury
Rain and floods cause mayhem
Torrential rain caused flooding across South Canterbury yesterday and by 10pm last night the Te Ngawai had reached a 50-year flood level, flowing at 1000 cumecs.
Wet conditions are forecast for the rest of the week.
Much of the region experienced more than 90 millimetres of rain – significantly more than the 75mm average total rainfall for the month. Rainfall of 180mm was recorded in some areas. Most rivers experienced flows of 10- to 20-year return periods. http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/7388312/The-big-wet-continues-for-South-Canterbury
Jackson and The Hobbit crew escape floods
The filmmaker has posted footage of the storms in his latest behind-the-scenes video blog from the set of the top secret movie, which has been shot across his native New Zealand for the past eight months.
Jackson explains he was shooting scenes of dwarves floating down the Pelorus River for the second sequel when blue skies clouded over and the weather took a change for the worse.
In the taped video footage, he says, “”Our location shooting came to a pretty dramatic end because the police arrived and said they were about to issue a severe weather warning. I’ve never seen a crew pack up their gear so quickly.
“”The very next day, everywhere where we were standing… was under floodwater. That was incredibly dramatic. The rise of the river level was, like, 20 or 30 feet.”" http://wsau.com/news/articles/2012/jul/08/jackson-and-the-hobbit-crew-escape-floods/
http://www.thehobbitblog.com/?cat=8
This article kind of buried the lead.
The report actually includes data nationwide, and the really startling factoid coming out of this is what’s going on in New England where the incidence of extreme storms has shot up 85%.
THE IRRESISTIBLE STORY OF RICHARD MULLER
Professor Muller’s greatest contribution is not his actual findings, but the role model he provides for other climate change sceptics to change camp. As usual it is the storyline that is more important than the libretto.
http://climatedenial.org/2012/07/31/the-irresistible-story-of-richard-muller/
Wind Turbine Capacity: 50% is the New Normal
Anyone who hangs around in the comments section of sites covering wind energy knows one thing — clean energy haters love to talk about wind turbine capacity factor. In particular, they love to chant the now quite
http://climatecrocks.com/2012/07/30/wind-turbine-capacity-50-is-the-new-normal/
When this summer’s drought turned her prized lawn brown, Terri LoPrimo fought back, but not with sprinklers: She had it painted green, making her suddenly lush-appearing yard the envy of her neighborhood.
The Staten Island, N.Y., resident and her husband, Ronnie, hired a local entrepreneur to spruce up their yard by spraying it with a deep-green organic dye. By Monday, the couple’s property was aglow with newly green blades of grass and no watering needed to sustain it.
“It looks just like a spring lawn, the way it looks after a rain. It’s really gorgeous,” said LoPrimo, a 62-year-old retiree. http://climatecrocks.com/2012/07/30/going-green-in-the-big-dry/
We have the technology… :)
Humans and early “first-step” technological evolution..
You can hold [one of the] ancient artefacts in your left hand and a modern artefact in your right and they’re exactly the same” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19069560
12 Diseases Climate Change May Worsen
The Wildlife Conservation Society has identified some of the illnesses that global warming may exacerbate
Bird flu, cholera, Ebola, plague and tuberculosis are just a few of the diseases likely to spread and get worse as a result of climate change http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=twelve-diseases-climate-change-may-make-worse
Western Wildfire Recovery Likely to Take Years
A once-thriving Colorado neighborhood of homes and healthy trees has been reduced to a barren expanse of ash and debris. Across the state, a river prized for its trout, rapids and pristine water instead flows as an oily, black brew every time rain falls on nearby slopes charred by wildfire.
In New Mexico, the Santa Clara Pueblo is seeking volunteers to fill sandbags for fear the American Indian village of 3,100 will be washed away by runoff from mountainsides left denuded by a blaze last year.
Wildfires across the West are burning homes, businesses, bridges and other infrastructure necessary for everyday life — and the disaster isn’t over when the wildfire is snuffed out and the firefighters go home.
Erosion from seared hillsides buries roads in mud and pollutes rivers that supply tap water. The point was driven home earlier this week when a mudslide following heavy rain in Colorado’s Waldo Canyon burn area temporarily closed U.S. 24 near Manitou Springs.
Electricity, water and gas lines have to be repaired and recharged. Debris from burned-out homes has to be hauled away and new houses must be built. Even if the work starts while the fire is still burning, experts say recovery can take years and untold millions of dollars simply to make conditions livable again. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/western-wildfire-recovery-years-16897231#.UBg5Wo5M718
All the synergies, one, two or more nasties acting together in exacerbating disasters in surprising ways. Stability may be boring, but instability is far worse. Perhaps the elite are simply making us enjoy the thrills of ‘risk’ in every facet of existence.
It rained twice this month in Los Angeles, mid-July, from monsoon rains. Monsoon is not unknown in LA but they normally appear in late August/early September.
As strange as the weather was the air smelled great and the skies were clear for a couple of days. However, there isn’t anything that could keep me in LA.
The title of this piece states, “July 31 News: Thanks To Climate Change, The Size Of Storms Has Dramatically Increased.” Looking at the link in the lead story, I find:
The climatologist who is the actual expert in this area that was interviewed in that link seems to think that if you include all of the data for California , going back to 1878, not 1948, the trend in storms is actually flat. But looking only as far back as 1948 you get what looks like a trend towards more powerful storms because that was the beginning of a dry period and currently we are in a wet period.
Not sure that the headline you used is justified by the story on the other end of the link.
PS I love the daily news summaries with links. Its what I start my day with, downloading the stories that you link to and reading them on the bus on the way to work each day.