by Neven Acropolis

Whoever said watching the Arctic during the melting season is boring, needs to put his glasses on. After a record low reflectivity of the Greenland ice sheet (with accompanying floodings on the west coast of Greenland), the calving of another enormous iceberg from Petermann Glacier, and the general rapid decline of Arctic sea ice despite adverse weather patterns, we can now add to the 2012 melting season bonanza the appearance of a cyclone the likes of which are rarely seen in winter, let alone in summer.

The storm came in from Siberia, intensified and then positioned itself over the central Arctic, reaching sea level pressures of below 965 mb in the storm’s centre, engendering 20 knot winds and 50 mph wind gusts:

Data source: Danish Meteorological Institute

The storm is now losing its strength and dissipating, but its effect on the sea ice has been enormous so far. In this phase of the melting season when decline starts to slow down, large swathes of sea ice just disappear from one day the next, and the next, and the next (which is why I refer to it as flash melting). It can clearly be seen on this animation of sea ice concentration maps that are updated daily on the Cryosphere Today website, showing the sea ice decline of the past couple of days:

Although technically not all of the ice that disappears on these maps is completely melted (some of it doesn’t get picked up by satellite sensors due to clouds and waves submerging ice floes), the gale-force winds displace and break up ice floes, and churn the waters below causing warmer, saltier layers under the thin film of fresh water to mix upwards and melt the ice some more from the bottom. This storm is the worst thing that could have happened to an already weakened and dispersed ice pack.

One development on these sea ice concentration maps that stand out particularly, is the detachment of a large swathe of ice floes from the main ice pack. I’ve never seen such a thing before, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it is unprecedented in the satellite era. But I guess that is what highly unusual Arctic summer storms can lead to.

The effects on the ice pack are also staring to get picked up on sea ice area and extent graphs. The most remarkable decline can be seen on this sea ice extent graph from the Danish Meteorological Institute:

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By Jessica Goad

Speaking yesterday at the National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar highlighted the importance of using public lands in our nation’s transition to a green economy.

“We can’t afford to turn the clock of progress back to the past,” he said.

Salazar discussed a number of accomplishments that the administration has achieved in promoting renewable energy on public lands, including expediting seven projects worth 5,000 megawatts and unveiling of the first wind energy project on public lands in Nevada.  Altogether, he said, the Obama Administration has permitted 31 solar, wind, and geothermal projects on public lands.

Also on Monday, the Departments of Defense and Interior signed a memorandum of understanding outlining a new partnership to encourage the development of renewable energy for military installations on lands managed by the Interior Department that had been previously used for defense purposes.

In a report released earlier this week, the Center for American Progress found that there is vast potential for renewable energy development on federal lands in the West.  In total, about 34 gigawatts of renewable energy — enough to power 7 million homes — could be sited on public lands in six western states over the next two decades.

Salazar also used his keynote speech as an opportunity to urge Congress to extend the wind energy production tax credit, which he said “ought not be a Republican or Democratic issue, but an American issue.”  Last week, a spokesperson for presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney noted that the candidate would allow the tax credit to expire, putting 37,000 American jobs at risk.

Jessica is the Manager of Research and Outreach for the Public Lands Project at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

by Justin Guay, via The Sierra Club

Of all the headlines around India’s historic blackout none summed up the truth more than the Onion:  ”300 million without electricity after restoration of the power grid.”

In fact, when asking Indian colleagues about the blackout most acknowledged it as simply par for the course. That’s because India’s over reliance on a centralized grid powered largely by coal has always been a failure — a fact that most Indians face through prolonged power cuts. That’s not to mention the 300 million people who don’t even have access to the grid.

The only thing unique about this blackout was the duration and size, which exposed just how epic this failure has become. As the analysis rolls in, the fundamental lesson is clear: coal, and the centralized grid it powers, is the problem, not the solution to India’s energy woes.

As my colleague Gordon Scott pointed out in a post last week, India is currently learning the most important lesson about its over-dependence on outdated, centralized coal-fired power. It is simply not flexible enough to accommodate India’s real problem: peak demand (the kind that happens when 20 million Delhi inhabitants turn on their AC or fans all at once). Instead coal chugs along at a steady rate unable to keep up with the flexible demands of daily life, which regularly leads to blackouts.

Worse, even if India decided it was worth it to massively overbuild coal plants to avoid this problem, the coal sector is such an absolute train wreck it would be impossible. That’s because costs are skyrocketing and the transportation infrastructure is so out of date that the country can’t get the coal where they it to be – the plants themselves. This combination of factors, not ‘environmental regulations,’ has forced the existing coal fleet and many proposed plants to sit idle, half-completed, or even abandoned.

In essence, it’s a complete failure of what ‘very serious commentators’ call the ‘modern grid.’ These commentators suffer from an extreme failure of imagination — one that is tethered to the past and continuously looks in the rear view mirror. The truth is that countries like India need to, and are, building an entirely different form of grid from the bottom up. One that more accurately reflects their own realities and actually delivers energy to the poor – something the ‘modern grid’ has miserably failed to do.

Of course, they still have to face the problems they have inherited from trying to copy/paste a centralized grid from the West. So what can they do to solve peak problems with the grid they already have in place? Deploy lots and lots of distributed solar and efficiency.

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Graphic Courtesy of Climate Central

The U.S. has already seen more daily heat records broken or tied than 2011 — and it’s only August.

In 2011, 26,674 daily heat records were broken or tied. As of August 5th, there have already been 27,042 heat records set or matched. Many of those records were set during heat waves in March and July. In March, almost 8,000 heat records were either set or tied, and another 4,420 were either set or tied last month.

According to Climate Central:

That this year has already eclipsed the number of records set during 2011 is especially remarkable because 2011 was a very warm year, during which Oklahoma set the record for the all-time warmest average summer temperature of any state in the country, with Texas coming in a close second thanks to the drought conditions and heat waves there. Both states have been baking under searing heat once again this summer. Oklahoma City reached 112°F on July 1 and 2, and 113°F on the 3rd, which tied the all-time high temperature record for that location. Every day from July 17 through August 4 reached or exceeded 100°F in Oklahoma City, and the heat and drought have led to an outbreak of wildfiresacross the state.

While the final four months of the year may not seem like they would add much to the record totals, during 2010, there were 8,636 record daily highs set or tied from September through the end of December, and in 2011 the total was 5,800.

Last year, the ratio of record highs to records lows was about 3-to-1. This year, it is closer to 10-to-1. According to a 2009 study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a ratio above 1-to-1 indicates that the climate is warming. The study also found that the current warming could not be explained by natural climatic variation. Projections show that the ratio of record highs to record lows will only get more extreme, possibly reaching 50-to-1 by 2100.

The record heat has already taken a toll on the country. So far, 2011 is already the hottest year on record for the U.S. The heat, and associated drought,  have impacted the nation’s corn crop and threatened shipping on the Mississippi River by dramatically lowering water levels. The heat has also had an impact on the nation’s dairy production and continues to imperil a significant subset of the population.

According to some climate scientists, short-term relief from the heat should be on the horizon, but we could be in for an even hotter year in 2013.

– Max Frankel

Limbic, via Flickr

by Ryan Schuchard

Business at large has only recently awakened to climate change—really just within the last 10 years. It started slowly, following the 1997 adoption of the Kyoto Protocol, and then it picked up speed after the development of industry-accepted greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring and reporting standards such as 2001’s GHG Protocol and 2003’s Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).

During the first decade of the new century, companies began to measure, reduce, and report emissions from operations. They pioneered carbon finance, showing that carbon markets play a vital role in resolving climate change. They came to grips, for the first time, with the financial value at stake from climate change. They came to define leadership as a focus on policy engagement. During this time, discussing adaptation (seen as admitting defeat) was considered taboo.

Times have changed.

Now, companies realize that climate change is no longer a potential future problem; it has arrived. The record U.S. drought in 2011 led to US$7.62 billion losses in Texas alone, and already in 2012, more than 1,000 counties in 29 U.S. states have been designated primary natural disaster countries from another record drought that is suppressing farm profits and driving up the price of soybeans and corn. While it remains difficult to attribute specific events to climate change, these are exactly the kind of effects that scientists expect more of in a warming world. As the real problems of more hostile weather sink in, the concept of becoming climate-resilient is now seen as critical to the future of industries, and investors want to know what companies are doing about it.

At the same time, there is far less confidence that a treaty-style international framework will emerge or that top-down national policies in the United States and China will happen quickly and comprehensively enough to dampen growing emissions. As a result, low-carbon development can no longer wait for a  price on carbon. Instead, it is about opportunities on the ground for business innovations and partnerships.

This is evident in calls for business to be more engaged than ever before, from stepped-up campaigns by traditional activists like Greenpeace, to new initiatives targeting key sectors, to activism by companies such as Walmart, which is encouraging its suppliers to do more. What was once considered the leading edge—advancing initiatives around procurement, policy engagement, and creative partnerships—is now commonplace.

These developments place business at the heart of today’s most creative, collaborative climate solutions.

Yet companies are also facing new challenges. The economic recession has tightened budgets. The adage that addressing energy waste is akin to “picking money off the floor,” is insufficient because the development of effective corporate energy-efficiency programs requires money, people, and resources. Today, the public discourse about energy has also advanced. It’s no longer about climate change versus cheap energy. The debate now encompasses oil independence, technology, and the widening pursuit of unconventional fossil fuels (those resources that are more difficult to extract and that come with greater environmental consequences)—developments that make energy decisions more complex.

Ahead of all of these changes, the un-ignorable fact is that time is running out: By one estimate, the economy is already counting on burning more than five times the level of carbon-containing energy resources than we can afford if we intend to say within the acceptable 2°C of warming.

In our current era of climate action—call it Climate 2.0—the stakes are higher, and the answers are less clear. To shed light on what companies need to be doing, I caught up with leading thinkers (see full list at the end of this article) on business climate action to ask two questions:

1. Recognizing that many companies are seriously committed to making changes and looking for breakthroughs, what should leaders aspire to?
2. Considering that many companies—especially newer companies and those in emerging markets—have yet to address climate change in earnest, what are the minimum standards for basic credibility in climate action?

Their responses covered a range of themes, including governance, strategy, communications, results, and integration

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This summer, everyone’s attention has turned to the severe drought, which now covers 63 percent of the U.S. But last year, the story was all about freak rainstorms that dumped water up to 600 percent over normal levels in some areas, swelling the Missouri River and wiping out farmland.

So today, some farmers in the Missouri River Valley aren’t just dealing with drought. They’re now dealing with piles of sand — in some cases 3-4 feet deep — covering their fields after the flood waters receded. These farmers are looking at tens of millions of dollars in damages.

It’s another example of the one-two punch that extreme weather brings. As the atmosphere warms due to accumulating greenhouse gases, it holds more water vapor. Therefore, when storms come, the rain is stronger. But in drought conditions, the impacts can be exacerbated by higher evaporation rates.

So we set the stage for more problems like this:

by Noreen Nielsen

Mitt Romney takes his campaign to Iowa today, where he will stop at Acme Industries’ Pratt Boulevard shop to speak about small business and the economy. This event comes just a week after Romney officially endorsed letting the wind energy production tax credit (PTC) expire, a move that could kill over 37,000 jobs and disproportionately impact major wind energy states like Iowa.

It is a surprise that Romney would choose the Hawkeye state to highlight the issues of job creation and the middle class when his plans would roll back key investments in both. Iowa is the second largest producer of wind energy in the U.S., and first in overall wind energy jobs, which keep thousands of Iowans employed. Recent polling found that “more than half of voters (57%), including 41% of Republicans and 59% of Independents, would be less likely to vote for a candidate for President if that candidate did not support expanding American wind power generation.”

Republican Gov. Terry Branstad agrees. Last Thursday, he came out against Romney’s position on wind, criticizing the obvious “confusion” of the Romney team, and saying that he and his staff, “need to get out here in the real world to find out what’s really going on.” Branstad wasn’t alone in his criticism. Several other prominent Republicans, including Sen. Chuck Grassley and Rep. Tom Latham, voiced their concern for Romney’s lack of understanding on the issue. “It’s the wrong decision,” Latham said. And Iowa’s largest paper, the Des Moines Register penned a recent editorial criticizing Congress’ lack of action on extending the wind tax credit.

What could Romney have to say about the future of economic innovation in a state where he already plans to curb investment in a vital and developing industry? His typical vague rhetoric won’t cut it on an issue so valuable to Iowans, and further hedging would only again demonstrate his lack of understanding for the concerns of American workers.

Iowa’s Clean Energy Economy by the Numbers:

• Read more

The twelve states that make up the Northeastern U.S. are experiencing their hottest year on record, according to data from the Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University.

From January to July, average temperatures in the Northeast were 49.9 degrees Fahrenheit — the warmest such seven month period since record keeping started in 1895.

The Center also released data on the 12-month period from August of 2011 to July of this year, showing that it was the warmest 12-month period on record for the Northeast.

Here are some data points released by the Northeast Regional Climate Center:

• It was the seventh warmest July since 1895 in the Northeast. The average temperature was 72.8 degrees, which was 2.9 degrees above normal.
• Each of the 12 states in the region averaged warmer than normal, with departures that ranged from +1.5 degrees in Rhode Island to +4 degrees in Delaware.
• It was the second warmest July since 1895 in Delaware and the third warmest in Maryland.
• All 12 states in the region ranked within the top 24 warmest since record keeping began in 1895.
• With a regional precipitation total of 3.7 inches, the Northeast averaged 87 percent of normal in July. The year-to-date totals averaged 88 percent of normal in the Northeast.
• Three states, Pennsylvania, (107 percent), Rhode Island (116 percent) and West Virginia (125 percent) had totals that were wetter than normal.
• It was the driest January through June since 1895 in Delaware and the fifth driest in Maryland.

This isn’t just unique to the Northeastern region. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the rest of the U.S. also saw its warmest period on record from June of 2011 to June of 2012 — with each of the consecutive months ranking among the warmest third of their historical distribution for the first time since record keeping began.

Throughout the U.S. in 2012, more than 27,042 high temperature records were broken or tied as of August 5th.

Meanwhile, 64 percent of the U.S. is facing drought conditions.

A round-up of the top climate and energy news.

Researchers at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies say some diseased trees release methane at a level that may be a globally significant source of the potent heat-trapping gas, according to the study published in Geophysical Research Letters. [Summit County Citizens Voice]

Sixty trees sampled at Yale Myers Forest in northeastern Connecticut contained concentrations of methane that were as high as 80,000 times ambient levels. Normal air concentrations are less than 2 parts per million, but the Yale researchers found average levels of 15,000 parts per million inside trees.

“These are flammable concentrations,” said Kristofer Covey, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. candidate at Yale. “Because the conditions thought to be driving this process are common throughout the world’s forests, we believe we have found a globally significant new source of this potent greenhouse gas.”

The worst drought in half a century is slashing U.S. crop and livestock production, President Obama said on Tuesday as he called on Congress to pass a farm bill that will send disaster aid to more farmers and ranchers. [Reuters]

And in many areas of the world, solving problems associated with climate change was never part of many industries’ budget considerations. One of these is the wine industry, where some curious things are happening. [Press Democrat]

The White House announced Tuesday it is inviting contract proposals from green energy firms to boost the Army’s use of renewable energy. [The Hill]

When a campaign spokesman said last week that Congress should let a tax break for wind energy producers expire at the end of the year, some Republicans were concerned the candidate had gone too far. [Washington Post]

The European Commission urged the world on Tuesday to stick with a goal of limiting climate change to a maximum temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) after Washington said the target could not be guaranteed. [Reuters]

MANILA — At least a third of this overpopulated capital and its suburbs were submerged on Tuesday as torrential rains battered the city and floodwaters poured in from almost all sides. [New York Times]