Earth’s Northern Hemisphere over the past 30 years has seen more “hot” (orange), “very hot” (red) and “extremely hot” (brown) summers, compared to a base period defined in this study from 1951 to 1980. This visualization shows how the area experiencing “extremely hot” summers grows from nearly nonexistent during the base period to cover 12 percent of land in the Northern Hemisphere by 2011. Watch for the 2011 heat waves in Texas, Oklahoma and Mexico, or the 2010 heat waves the Middle East, Western Asia and Eastern Europe. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

By James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy, via NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies

The greatest barrier to public recognition of human-made climate change is probably the natural variability of local climate. How can a person discern long-term climate change, given the notorious variability of local weather and climate from day to day and year to year?

The question is important because actions to stem emissions of gases that cause global warming are unlikely until the public appreciates the significance of global warming and perceives that it will have unacceptable consequences. Thus when nature seemingly provides evidence of climate change it needs to be examined objectively by the public, as well as by scientists.

Therefore it was disappointing that most early media reports on the heat wave, widespread drought, and intense forest fires in the United States in 2012 did not mention or examine the potential connection between these climate events and global warming. Is this reticence justified?

In a new paper (Hansen et al., 2012a), we conclude that such reticence is not justified. The paper attempts to illustrate the data in ways that properly account for climate variability yet are understandable to the public.

We show how the probability of unusually warm seasons is changing, emphasizing summer when the changes have large practical effects. We calculate seasonal-mean temperature anomalies relative to average temperature in the base period 1951-1980. This is an appropriate base period because global temperature was relatively stable and still within the Holocene range to which humanity and other planetary life are adapted (note 1).

We illustrate variability of seasonal temperature in units of standard deviation (σ), including comparison with the normal distribution (“bell curve”) that the lay public may appreciate. The probability distribution (frequency of occurrence) of local summer-mean temperature anomalies was close to the normal distribution in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s in both hemispheres (Fig. 2). However, in each subsequent decade the distribution shifted toward more positive anomalies, with the positive tail (hot outliers) of the distribution shifting the most.

Figure 2. Temperature anomaly distribution: The frequency of occurrence (vertical axis) of local temperature anomalies (relative to 1951-1980 mean) in units of local standard deviation (horizontal axis). Area under each curve is unity. Image credit: NASA/GISS.

An important change is the emergence of a subset of the hot category, extremely hot outliers, defined as anomalies exceeding +3σ. The frequency of these extreme anomalies is about 0.13% in the normal distribution, and thus in a typical summer in the base period only 0.1-0.2% of the globe is covered by such hot extremes. However, we show that during the past several years the global land area covered by summer temperature anomalies exceeding +3σ has averaged about 10%, an increase by more than an order of magnitude compared to the base period. Recent examples of summer temperature anomalies exceeding +3σ include the heat wave and drought in Oklahoma, Texas and Mexico in 2011 and a larger region encompassing much of the Middle East, Western Asia and Eastern Europe, including Moscow, in 2010.

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Climate Envoy Todd Stern says the U.S. hasn't abandoned the 2C target. Photo: Naturvernforbundet via Flickr

by Andrew Light and Adam James

This past Tuesday, Todd Stern, America’s top climate diplomat at the Department of State, was compelled to clarify comments he made last week at Dartmouth College on the global goal of limiting temperature increase caused by climate change to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6°F).  Several commentators, including our former CAP colleague Brad Johnson on this blog, raised concerns that it signaled a reversal of a commitment the U.S. has had since 2009 to the 2C goal.  Stern denied this assertion in no uncertain terms:  “Of course, the U.S. continues to support this goal; we have not changed our policy.”

While it’s heartening to have the 2C goal reaffirmed by our chief climate envoy, it’s unfortunate that he had to do so.  Only a very selective and skewed reading of this speech should set off any alarms.  What Stern actually said at Dartmouth doesn’t even register as a gaffe.

Stern’s comments in the Dartmouth speech on the 2C target are relatively minor.  They comprise a very small portion of a much more broad-ranging speech which includes, among other topics: current evidence of the disastrous impacts of rising temperatures around the world, the ideological divide over concern about climate change in the U.S., the Obama administration’s efforts to lower domestic emissions without comprehensive energy legislation, the nuances and challenges of climate diplomacy in a forum where consensus must be reached by 194 countries, and options for reducing emissions among smaller coalitions of the willing.

On the 2C target, Stern only challenges the likelihood that building a top-down international treaty, which divided up the allocation of emissions reductions country by country to stabilize temperature at 2C, would actually work. For various reasons, mostly concerning national self-interest, he favors a “more flexible approach” which would start with bottom-up nationally derived policies and then instead take the challenge to be to “increase the overall ambition” to stabilize at 2C with a hoped-for boost by future innovations in clean energy technology.

If this part of Stern’s speech is minor, the U.S. commitment to the 2C target is quite important even if progress toward that goal is lagging.  The endorsement of this target was the first major shift in international climate policy that the Obama administration embraced, signaling a complete break with the approach taken by the Bush administration which had isolated us in the international climate negotiations.

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by Sentrawoods via Flickr

Typically, at moderate sizes, power generated by dams and reservoirs is considered “green.” However, a new study from Washington State University has found that during times of drawdown — a period in which the water level behind a dam is rapidly lowered — temperate reservoirs can produce up 20 times more methane than normal.

Methane is a greenhouse gas 25 times more effective than CO2 at trapping heat in the atmosphere over 100-year period, and is a hundred times more potent over 20 years. It is produced naturally in reservoirs thanks to biological activity.

During drawdowns, though, when layers of decaying plants, among other things, are exposed, the amount of methane in the water column skyrockets. According to the study:

“Bridget Deemer, a doctoral student at Washington State University-Vancouver, measured dissolved gases in the water column of Lacamas Lake in Clark County and found methane emissions jumped 20-fold when the water level was drawn down. A fellow WSU-Vancouver student, Maria Glavin, sampled bubbles rising from the lake mud and measured a 36-fold increase in methane during a drawdown.”

Though researchers have long known that methane levels spike in reservoirs during drawdown, this study was the first to show the relationship and put a number on the actual methane emissions.

A 2011 study published in the science journal Science found that the “ability of terrestrial ecosystems to act as carbon sinks,” which contain greenhouse gasses and keep them out of the atmosphere, could be up to one quarter less than previously thought when the greenhouse gas release from reservoirs is taken into consideration.

Clearly, the problem is not negligible — particularly when we consider the number of mega-dams being constructed around the world. International Rivers explains:

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Mayor Reed. Photo Courtesy of AP

by Kasim Reed, Mayor of Atlanta, Georgia

At the Clinton Global Initiative America meeting in Chicago earlier this summer, I joined President Clinton and other mayors from across the country and across party lines to explore how to accelerate investment in job-creating domestic infrastructure.

Each mayor faced unique challenges, but there was an immediate recognition of the enormous potential to improve our cities and our economies through public-private partnerships. We looked closely at the example of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s newly created Infrastructure Trust – a nonprofit entity designed to attract private capital for infrastructure investment, which will promote job creation and economic growth in Chicago.

We all left that initial meeting with a clear desire to sustain collaboration among mayors to explore better tools for public and private financing. Mayor Nutter, president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, recently expressed interest in similar strategies to overcome the fiscal challenges local governments can face. Working together, I believe we can identify successful financing solutions and models that would work in any city in America to increase the value, efficiency, and sustainability of our cities. Simply, a successful private-partnership could improve not only our roads and bridges and electrical grids but also our citizens’ quality of life.

So, this week in Tarrytown, New York, President Clinton is hosting a two-day meeting organized by the Clinton Global Initiative that I’ll attend with Asheville Mayor Terry M. Bellamy, Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch, Charlotte Mayor Anthony Foxx, Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown, Joplin Mayor Melodee Colbert-Kean, and Portland Mayor Sam Adams, as well as top city officials from Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, Louisville, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, and San Francisco. Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, former director of the Office of Management and Budget and current Vice Chairman at Citigroup Peter Orszag, as well as infrastructure experts and capital providers will also attend in the hopes of advancing that conversation that began in Chicago this June. While each of us represent different cities and constituencies, I hope we will work towards a common goal—finding a workable model to increase private investment in public infrastructure.

In Atlanta, I’ve seen the potential for success in exactly this kind of partnership in our own Atlanta BeltLine, which I believe is one of the most transformative urban development projects in the nation. The Atlanta BeltLine will be a system of rails, trails, and greenspace that will seamlessly connect 45 of our neighborhoods, while providing first- and last-mile transit connectivity for the entire metro Atlanta region. This is the most comprehensive revitalization effort ever undertaken in our city and a true model of sustainability, smart land use, and mobility.

The success of this project hinges on private-public partnerships.

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The bridge is yours.

-Burkhard Bilger should totally take Bryan Cranston noodling for flatheads.

-Glad to see Gabrielle Union’s going to be on my television.

-The best Martians in pop culture history.

-Retail sales of video games are falling.

-Big Boi and Little Dragon:

NASA’s James Hansen has been accurately warning about the dangers of global warming for more than three decades. In fact, 31 years ago this month, Hansen and six other NASA atmospheric physicists, published a seminal article in Science, “Climate Impact of Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide.”

The paper has a number of caveats, as befits a major projection before modern climate models and modern supercomputers were available, before we had decades of verifying observations, and before we knew just how fast greenhouse gas emissions would rise.

Yet the analysis bears up unbelievably well — any one of us would be delighted if we published something three decades ago that was this prescient:

The global temperature rose 0.2°C between the middle 1960s and 1980, yielding a warming of 0.4°C in the past century. This temperature increase is consistent with the calculated effect due to measured increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Variations of volcanic aerosols and possibly solar luminosity appear to be primary causes of observed fluctuations about the mean trend of increasing temperature. It is shown that the anthropogenic carbon dioxide warming should emerge from the noise level of natural climate variability by the end of the century, and there is a high probability of warming in the 1980s. Potential effects on climate in the 21st century include the creation of drought-prone regions in North America and central Asia as part of a shifting of climatic zones, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage.

The 1980s warmed, manmade warming has emerged from the noise, the Northwest passage opened, the drought prone-regions have emerged, and sea level rise is a top worry, in part because of erosion of WAIS (see Nature 2012: Antarctica Is Melting From Below, Which ‘May Already Have Triggered A Period of Unstable Glacier Retreat’). That’s five for five.

In 1990, Hansen coauthored a more detailed warning on the future of warming-driven drought  in the Journal of Geophysical Research. It projected that drought would become increasingly common in the ensuing decades — another accurate prediction. The study warned that severe to extreme drought in the United States, then occurring every 20 years or so, could become an every-other-year phenomenon by mid-century. Many recent studies support that conclusion (see “James Hansen Is Correct About Catastrophic Projections For U.S. Drought If We Don’t Act Now“).

Now Hansen has published an analysis of how warming is driving the extreme weather we have been slammed by in recent years, including the off-the-charts heat waves and droughts (see Hansen: ‘Climate Change Is Here — And Worse Than We Thought’). The AP quoted a number of credible independent experts supporting Hansen’s analysis:

The science in Hansen’s study is excellent “and reframes the question,” said Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia….

Another upcoming study by Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, links the 2010 Russian heat wave to global warming by looking at the underlying weather that caused the heat wave. He called Hansen’s paper an important one that helps communicate the problem….

White House science adviser John Holdren praised the paper’s findings in a statement: … “This work, which finds that extremely hot summers are over 10 times more common than they used to be, reinforces many other lines of evidence showing that climate change is occurring and that it is harmful.”

… Granger Morgan, head of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University, called Hansen’s study “an important next step in what I expect will be a growing set of statistically-based arguments.”

The NY Times article on Hansen’s study also quoted Weaver in support of the analysis, but managed to find some credentialed critics:

Martin P. Hoerling, a researcher with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who studies the causes of weather extremes, said he shared Dr. Hansen’s general concern about global warming. But he has in the past criticized Dr. Hansen for, in his view, exaggerating the connection between global warming and specific weather extremes. In an interview, he said he felt that Dr. Hansen had done so again.

Dr. Hoerling has published research suggesting that the 2010 Russian heat wave was largely a consequence of natural climate variability, and a forthcoming study he carried out on the Texas drought of 2011 also says natural factors were the main cause.

Dr. Hoerling contended that Dr. Hansen’s new paper confuses drought, caused primarily by a lack of rainfall, with heat waves.

“This isn’t a serious science paper,” Dr. Hoerling said. “It’s mainly about perception, as indicated by the paper’s title. Perception is not a science.”

Nonsense, literally.

Having reviewed the drought literature (and talked to leading drought experts) for my Nature piece, “The Next Dust Bowl,” I was able to show in May that Hoerling’s attacks on Hansen do not reflect the scientific literature and are incorrect.

Indeed, given that Hansen’s 1990 study was titled, “Potential evapotranspiration and the likelihood of future drought,” we know that he and the community of drought experts have long understood that drought conditions are driven by more than precipitation changes. The whole point of that paper was to examine the impact of warming-driven evaporation on soil moisture and drought. You can actually worsen droughts in semi-arid regions that don’t see a net precipitation change just from the heat drying out the soils.

Let me also add, separate from any argument that Hansen has made, that there is increasing evidence we are in the midst of a step function or quantum change in the climate because of Arctic warming (see Arctic Warming Favors Extreme, Prolonged Weather Events ‘Such As Drought, Flooding, Cold Spells And Heat Waves’). If this research holds up, then all analyses of current droughts based on precipitation trends that predate the massive loss of Arctic ice in the past few years may well ultimately be overturned.

In any case, Hansen has scientific “street cred” because he has been right for so long. I’ve written that we ignore him at our grave peril because Hansen’s mastery of climate science is quite literally what gives him climate prescience.

One of the country’s top climatologists, Michael Mann, makes the same point in a recent Daily Climate piece that I repost below in its entirety:

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We are currently using 3.5 times the water resources supplied by aquifers, according to new research on our global “groundwater footprint” just published in the Journal Nature.

According to the researchers, nearly 1.7 billion people live in areas where groundwater is under threat. Interestingly, it’s only a handful of aquifers contributing to the problem.

“80 per cent of aquifers have a groundwater footprint that is less than their area, meaning that the net global value is driven by a few heavily overexploited aquifers,” write the researchers.

The scary map below illustrates just how depleted those few overexploited groundwater resources are:

There’s a new reason to get upset at bad drivers.

In the video below, Kelly Olsen, an electric vehicle driver in Santa Monica, shows that drivers of conventional vehicles are parking in EV charging spots around the city. There are a limited number of these chargers available, so this makes it nearly impossible for EV drivers to charge their cars in a spot close to where they need to be.

It might not be dangerous, and it’s not quite as bad as parking in a handicap spot, but this behavior is up there with the worst of driving etiquette.

Olsen coined the term “ICEing” — short for Internal Combustion Engine — as way to describe the problem.

I personally like the term “watt blocking,” which references a more personal form of obstruction. Whatever we call it, my guess is that this problem will only get worse before it gets better.

By Dan Bakal

For the electric power industry, the signs of change are in the air. Power plants are emitting less pollution than in prior years, and renewable power is a bigger part of the energy mix than ever before. That adds up to cleaner air and a more diverse, resilient and lower-carbon electricity system.

The industry is in the midst of a real transition, and a new Ceres report shows that it’s happening even faster than experts predicted.

On a biannual basis, Ceres assesses the environmental performance and progress of the electric power sector by analyzing the air emissions of the nation’s top 100 power producers in collaboration with M.J. Bradley & Associates, the National Resources Defense Council, Entergy, Exelon, Tenaska and Bank of America.

This is the eighth edition of the Benchmarking Air Emissions report, and this year, the findings were particularly significant:

• From 2008 to 2010, sector-wide sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions both fell by over 30 percent.
• Over the same period, carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions fell four percent and preliminary data show another five percent reduction in 2011.
• Non-hydroelectric renewable energy accounted for nearly five percent of U.S. electricity generation in 2011. Including large hydroelectric projects, renewables now provide over 10 percent of our power.

Those results speak volumes. Cutting SO₂ and NOx emissions by a third in just a couple years is remarkable, and it reflects that a clean energy transition is within reach. The drop in carbon emissions is also encouraging, but it is important to ensure that the trend continues by continuing to emphasize renewable energy and efficiency. What we did with SO₂ and NOx, we can do with CO₂.

What are the drivers of this remarkable change? Primarily, power producers are shifting away from coal-fired generation to natural gas-fired plants and even cleaner, zero-emissions renewable energy resources such as wind, solar and geothermal energy. They have also installed emissions controls for the coal plants they are running, as additional Clean Air Act rules are set to go into effect over the next few years.

Some experts have been anticipating the coal to gas switch for several years now, but these results show that it’s happening faster than expected. In late 2010, Deutsche Bank’s Natural Gas and Renewables: A Secure Low Carbon Future Energy Plan for the United States report predicted that gas-fired generation would overtake coal between 2020 and 2030:

But when you look at the findings of the Benchmarking report and the latest data from the Energy Information Administration, you can see that even Deutsche Bank’s bullish predictions may have been too conservative. The shift has come sooner than projected. In April 2012, coal- and gas-fired generation were equal for the first time ever:

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Stockpiles of the biggest crops will decline for a third year as drought parches fields across three continents, raising food-import costs already forecast by the United Nations to reach a near-record $1.24 trillion. [Businessweek]

Combined inventories of corn, wheat, soybeans and rice will drop 1.8 percent to a four-year low before harvests in 2013, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates. Crops in the U.S., the biggest exporter, are in the worst condition since 1988, heat waves are battering European crops and India’s monsoon rainfall already is 20 percent below normal. The International Grains Council began July by forecasting record harvests. It ended with a prediction for a 2 percent drop in output.

The speed of the destruction drove corn and soybean prices to records last month and wheat to a four-year high. For investors, crops are the best-performing commodities this year, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Macquarie Group Ltd. and Credit Suisse Group AG say the trend will continue. The UN expects food costs to rise, less than two years after record prices pushed 44 million people into extreme poverty and contributed to uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East.

Barack Obama promised to tackle climate change when he first ran for the White House four years ago, but – battling this summer for a second term – he speaks little of the issue even as the United States suffers through a drought of historic proportions, wild storms and punishing heat that topples temperature records almost daily. [Associated Press]

Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski says she is among a group of senators asking the Environmental Protection Agency to relax renewable fuel standards to require less corn. Mikulski says that will help ease corn supply shortages caused by drought conditions this year. [Washington Post]

Andrea Saul is the press secretary and chief spokesperson for Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. But before Romney hired her, Saul worked for a DC-based public affairs and lobbying firm that worked to undermine climate science on behalf of corporations like ExxonMobil, according to a detailed new report from Greenpeace’s Polluter Watch project. [Mother Jones]

Across American agriculture, farmers and crop scientists have concluded that it’s too late to fight climate change. They need to adapt to it with a new generation of hardier animals and plants specially engineered to survive, and even thrive, in intense heat, with little rain. [Washington Post]

Wanxiang Group Corp., one of China’s biggest parts makers, offered a $450 million lifeline to A123 Systems Inc. a maker of advanced batteries for electric vehicles that received U.S.-government backing. [Wall Street Journal]

When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change, it established what seemed a sensible system. But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity. [New York Times]

More than 170 green businesses signed a letter to the prime minister, drafted by the Renewable Energy Association, calling for a public declaration of support for green energy and a resolution of the uncertainty that surrounds government plans for renewable power subsidies. [Guardian]