Warming-driven peatland fires are an amplifying climate feedback. Credit: NASA

News story via NASA

Forests and bog land in far eastern Russia have been burning since the beginning of June 2012. Contributing to the record fires have been the record temperatures of this past summer. This summer in Siberia has been one of hottest on record. The average temperature ranged around 93 degrees Fahrenheit and there doesn’t seem to be any break in the weather coming anytime soon.

The fires in eastern Russia have affected the districts of Krasnoyarsk, Tuva, Irkutsk, Kurgan, and the Republic of Khakassia. Especially hard hit is the city of Tomsk. According to official figures, over 24,000 acres of land had been burnt in Tomsk by early August. The city has been covered by heavy smog for weeks and the airport has been out of operation since the beginning of July.

On August 23rd, the Russian Information and News Agency (RIA Novosti) reported that “firefighters extinguished all six forest fires over the past 24 hours that remained raging in Russia’s Siberia this summer, the regional forestry department said in a statement on Thursday. There are no more registered fires in the region, but the emergencies situation still remain in force in three areas of the Tomsk region due to the high risk of new wildfires outbreak,” the statement added. However, it also reported that “more than 200,000 hectares [494.210 acres] of forest already burned down in Siberia and the Russian Far East, where fires are still raging, since the start of the summer.” On August 28, RIA Novosti reported that: “The majority of wildfires triggered by the summer heat wave in Russia have been put out, but 11 wildfires with a total area of 838 hectares [over 2000 acres] are still raging in Khabarovsk Territory.” These are the fires that still burn in the image taken today by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite.

Of course wildfires are devastating to any area, but ecologically this is catastrophic for this region with many rare animals living in Siberia’s unique ecosystem.

So too the fires burning in Russia will have worldwide effects as the torched peat bogs whose layers consist of dead plant materials will end up releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide into the air accelerating the greenhouse effect and making the air nearly unbreathable. Record numbers of fires in the summer of 2010 drew attention to this damaging situation (see NY Times article cited below).

In the early 1900′s Soviet engineers drained swamps to supply peat for electrical power stations. It was eventually stopped in the 1950′s but the bogs were never reflooded. Unfortunately, that approach is currently causing some of the wildfire problems and air quality issues that Russia is dealing with today.

Officials and residents are hoping that the upcoming expected harvest rains will help extinguish the wildfires and bring a much needed natural remedy to the affected regions.

NASA/Goddard, Lynn Jenner with information from The New York Times and RIA Novosti (en.rian.ru)

Related Post:

• Stunning Peatlands Amplifying Feedback: Drying Wetlands and Intensifying Wildfires Boost Carbon Release Ninefold

A national political convention is the first real chance for a political party to introduce its ideas and leaders to the country. Even though this election has been gearing up for 18 months, it’s only around now that Americans start paying attention.

The Republican National Convention is now over. The speeches have been made, the platform introduced, the balloons have been dropped. And if it hasn’t been obvious over the months, Americans now have a clear window into the GOP’s scary policies on energy and climate.

Let’s start with what some of the leading international energy experts and climate scientists are saying about the impending global warming tipping point we’re facing:

NASA climatologist James Hansen:

“Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels. If this sounds apocalyptic, it is.”

Fatih Birol, chief economist with the International Energy Agency:

“The door is closing. I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever.”

Will Steffen, executive director of the Australian National University’s climate change institute:

“This is the critical decade. If we don’t get the curves turned around this decade we will cross those lines.”

In the lead up to the Republican National Convention, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the U.S. had just experienced the hottest 12-month period on record and the hottest July ever recorded. So far this year, more than 27,000 high-temperature records have been broken or tied, beating cold record temperatures by 10 to 1 — five times the ratio of the last decade (if there were no warming, we’d see the same number of hot records and cold records). And throughout the summer, America faced record drought, record wildfires, and freak storms — all things that climate scientists warn will happen with increasing frequency and intensity.

Topping it all off, the National Snow and Ice Data Center reported this week that Arctic sea ice had reached record lows — with temperatures in the region rising at twice the rate of the rest of the globe.

But as the evidence mounts and experts issue increasingly dire warnings about the need for immediate and swift reductions in carbon pollution, the Republican party dug its heels in on promotion of carbon-based fuels. Almost every speech on energy was devoted exclusively to increasing production of coal, oil, and gas — with the only mentions of renewable energy used to politicize the failed solar company Solyndra.

The only mention of climate in the party’s platform was to mock President Obama for including climate risk in national security planning:

“The strategy subordinates our national security interests to environmental, energy and international health issues, and elevates ‘climate change’ to the level of a ‘severe threat’ equivalent to foreign aggression. The word ‘climate,’ in fact, appears in the current President’s strategy more often than Al Qaeda, nuclear proliferation, radial Islam, or weapons of mass destruction. The phrase ‘global war on terror’ does not appear at all and has been purposely avoided and changed by his Administration to “overseas contingency operations.’”

In fact, a military advisory board under the Bush W. Administration concluded in 2007 that climate change “acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world” and “will add to tensions even in stable regions of the world.” The Pentagon agreed with that assessment, concluding that climate change will “place a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world.”

There was one other mention of climate change during the convention. Mitt Romney finished his acceptance speech by mocking Obama’s earlier promises to deal with the problem:

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Almost seven years ago to the day since Hurricane Katrina made landfall, a new hurricane came ashore on the Gulf Coast near New Orleans. While Hurricane Isaac has been much less intense than Katrina, it has caused serious damage, with heavy rains, storm surge, and winds of up to 100 miles per hour.

Hurricane Isaac comes at the end of a U.S. summer season filled with extreme weather events. From heat waves to droughts to wildfires, the United States has seen little in the way of relief from severe events over the last several months. In fact, the majority of the lower 48 states are still facing drought. While Isaac may relieve drought conditions in some areas of the country, recent forecasts from the Climate Prediction Center project drought conditions to continue through large parts of the country at least through November.

America’s Vulnerability to Hurricanes and Tropical Storms

Hurricanes that make landfall disrupt commerce while damaging critical transportation and energy infrastructure, with economic ripple effects throughout the country. Although damage from high winds can be significant, storm surge is often the leading threat to lives and property along the coasts. For example, storm surge was responsible for many of the 1,500 lives lost as a result of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The combination of Hurricane Ike’s storm surge, winds, and flooding caused property damages in 2008 estimated at nearly $25 billion. Additionally, large amounts of rainfall typically accompany hurricanes, contributing to coastal inundation and oftentimes flooding communities further inland – as we are seeing in the Gulf Coast as a result of Hurricane Isaac.

Each year, the western U.S. Gulf Coast (including Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama) faces an average of $14 billion in damages, driven by high winds and storm surge from hurricanes. The same region has accumulated more than $2.7 trillion in hurricane-related damages over the last century. The Insurance Information Institute estimated at almost $4 trillion the 2004 aggregate value of insured property vulnerable to hurricanes between the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

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by Daniel Bailey, via Skeptical Science

It’s happened to all of us. Whether as a child on the school playground missing the call to come back in from recess or later, as teenagers, forgetting to return a library book until it was overdue or as adults realizing with a start that it’s the day after taxes were due and we haven’t done a thing, we’ve all wakened from a walking sleep to realize something we’ve just been missing all along.

For the mainstream media and the average person in general, that thing is the ongoing demise of the Arctic sea ice cover.  And nothing puts facts, especially record-breaking facts, into perspective like a visual aid.  Consider this visual aid provided from RealClimate of the NSIDC Arctic Sea Ice Extent:

Virtually every sea ice metric there is shows a record-breaking loss of the Arctic sea ice “cap” in 2012. With Arctic sea ice dropping off the bottom of existing sea ice graphs, the noted sage Chief Brody from the movie “Jaws” might put it this way:

“We’re gonna need a bigger graph.”

This piece was originally published at Skeptical Science and was reprinted with permission.

by Mindy Lubber, via Ceres

Severe weather has been clobbering insurance companies, and the headlines just keep coming. “Drought to cost insurers billions in losses,” said the Financial Times a few days ago. “Many U.S. hurricanes would cause $10b or more in losses in 2012 dollars,” the Boston Globe said about the latest hurricane forecasts. “June’s severe weather losses near $2 billion in U.S.,” said the Insurance Journal earlier this year.

This year’s extreme events follow the world’s costliest year ever for natural catastrophe losses, including $32 billion in 2011 insured losses in the United States due to extreme weather events. This is no short-term uptick: insured losses due to extreme weather have been trending upward for 30 years, as the climate has changed and populations in coastal areas and other vulnerable places have grown.

The U.S. insurance industry continues to be “surprised” by extreme weather losses. But the truth is that weather extremes are no longer surprising. Back-to-back summers of devastating droughts, record heat waves and raging wildfires are clear evidence of this. Last year’s crazy weather triggered near record underwriting losses and numerous credit rating downgrades among U.S. property and casualty insurers.

And in the face of a changing climate, such events can be expected to increase in number, and severity.  It’s time for insurance companies to recognize this new normal, and incorporate it into their business planning—for the sake of their shareholders, their industry’s survival, and the stability of the U.S. economy.

Ceres, a business sustainability leadership organization, has been researching the effects of climate change and severe weather on the insurance sector. In a report to be released next month, titled Stormy Future for U.S. Property and Casualty Insurers, we will detail our recommendations for insurance companies, investors and regulators to help strengthen the insurance sector so it can better weather the challenges ahead.

For insurance companies, using catastrophe models that can better anticipate probable effects of climate change on extreme weather events are key. And especially in vulnerable markets, insurers’ guidance on insurability should inform decisions that communities make on land-use planning, infrastructure decisions, and building codes.

Insurers can also encourage the transition to a low-carbon economy—one built to forestall the worst effects of climate change—by offering products and services that encourage clean and efficient energy, encouraging customers to adopt climate-change mitigation plans, and encouraging policymakers to act to reduce carbon pollution.

This would not be the first time insurance companies have helped change American society. By making insurance contingent on smoke detectors, insurers cut down on deaths and losses from building fires. By backing seat belt laws and including seat belt violations in rate calculations, they helped save lives on the road.

By engaging fully on climate change and energy policy—inside and outside of the boardroom – insurance companies can lead the way once again. It would be the right thing to do, both for their business, and for our future.

Mindy Lubber is President of Ceres and Director of the Investor Network on Climate Risk. This piece was originally published at Ceres and was reprinted with permission.

Global food prices jumped 10% in July from the month before, driven up by the severe Midwest drought which has pushed the price of grains to record levels, the World Bank reported Thursday. [Los Angeles Times]

The World Bank issued a global hunger warning last night after severe droughts in the US and eastern Europe sent food prices to a record high. [Guardian]

The League of Conservation voters has started a petition drive calling on PBS’s Jim Lehrer, the moderator of the first presidential debate, to force the candidates to answer questions about climate change. [New York Times]

Over the past four years, the Republican Party has undergone a fairly dramatic shift in its approach to energy and environmental issues. Global warming has disappeared entirely from the party’s list of concerns. Clean energy has become an afterthought. Fossil fuels loom larger than ever. And one way to see this shift clearly is to compare the party’s 2008 and 2012 platforms. [Washington Post]

After ignoring the issue of global warming since he began his 2012 run for the White House, Republican nominee Mitt Romney is now invoking it to illustrate a key difference issue between him and President Obama. [National Journal]

The Republican National Convention seems a strange place for a press-shy billionaire benefactor of iconoclastic libertarian causes that have vexed GOP leaders — including the anti-establishment tea party movement. [Politico]

While climate change hasn’t played a big role in the 2012 White House campaign, a new report claims that this summer’s weather shows an urgent need to address the issue. [The Hill]

Indiana farmer John Kolb normally would welcome storms that could provide his crops with badly needed water in this summer of drought. Instead, he and other Corn Belt farmers are nervously watching the forecast as Hurricane Isaac’s remnants slog their direction, concerned they could end up getting too much of a good thing. [Washington Post]

A Colorado brewery said Thursday that it’s monitoring the water it gets from the city of Fort Collins to make sure residue from a deadly wildfire that blackened a northern Colorado river doesn’t befoul the taste of its beer. [Associated Press]

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday that Royal Dutch Shell would be allowed to start “certain limited preparatory activities” for oil drilling in the environmentally sensitive waters off Alaska’s northwest coast. [Washington Post]