Looking into the future the Pelican feeding its young from a self-induced wound in its own breast (as depicted, mysteriously, on the state flag of Louisiana) is accepted as an appropriate symbol of both self-sacrifice and rebirth. Through his selfless efforts, man is raised from the slavery of ignorance to the condition of freedom conferred by wisdom. Given the current state of affairs in Louisiana, one hopes that the understanding of the Pelican as a symbol shall point the way towards a new consciousness of ourselves as a whole, and lead us to face our futures with strength, grace, wisdom and faith, to learn from our mistakes and carry our successes and zest for living to future generations.

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Global Warming News Update - June 15th 2006

1. Category 6 Hurricanes? They've Happened
2. Two Studies Link Global Warming to Greater Power of Hurricanes
3. Major U.S. Property Casualty Insurer Adopts Climate Change Policy
4. Arctic Sea Ice Cover Hits Record Winter Low
5. Seattle, Alaska Natives and Climate Scientists File Brief in EPA CO2 Case
6. Vatican Calls for UN Action on Climate, Sustainable Development
7. Christian Aid: Climate Change a “Clear and Present Danger”
8. African Tropical Ice Field Likely Gone in 20 Years
9. UK and Canada Pledge $60 Million to Research African Climate Change
10. Transboundary Pollution Heats Arctic in Winter
11. GHGs, Pollution and Climate Variability Affecting South Asia Monsoon Patterns
12. Global Warming Risk 'much higher'

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Category 6 Hurricanes? They've Happened

Global Warming Winds Up Hurricane Scientists as NOAA Issues Its Atlantic Hurricane Predictions for Summer 2006

ABC News
Source
By Bill Blakemore

May 21, 2006 — There is no official Category 6 for hurricanes, but scientists say they're pondering whether there should be as evidence mounts that hurricanes around the world have sharply worsened over the past 30 years — and all but a handful of hurricane experts now agree this worsening bears the fingerprints of man-made global warming.

In fact, say scientists, there have already been hurricanes strong enough to qualify as Category 6s. They'd define those as having sustained winds over 175 or 180 mph. A couple told me they'd measured close to 200 mph on a few occasions.

The Saffir-Simpson hurricane category scale is based on wind speed: A Category 1 hurricane has sustained winds from 74 to 95 mph, Category 2 has sustained winds from 96 to 110 mph, Category 3 has sustained winds from 111 to 130 mph, Category 4 has sustained winds from 131 to 155, and a Category 5 storm has sustained winds greater than 155 mph.

The categories run in roughly 20 mph increments, so a Cat 6 would be greater than 175 or 180 mph.

To put this all in perspective, Katrina was a Category 5 hurricane out over some hot spots in the Gulf. But when it hit New Orleans, scientists now know, Katrina had winds at a low Category 3, and much of them Category 2, including the "left side winds" that then came down from the north and pushed the surge-swollen waters of Lake Pontchartrain over and through NOLA's levees. (Hurricanes spin counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere, so when Katrina came ashore just east of New Orleans, its winds hit the city from the north.)

Only three Category 5s have come ashore in the United States in the past century — the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, Camille in 1969 and Andrew in 1992.

But because of man-made global warming, most hurricane scientists say now we will probably be getting Category 4 and 5 hurricanes more frequently in the coming decades.

That's on top of the natural multi-year cycles of hurricane intensity the scientists already know about.

In fact, says atmosphere scientific Greg Holland, the world already has seen far more frequent Cat 4s and 5s. He points to several studies published over the past 12 months which "indicated the frequency of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes had almost doubled around the world in the period since 1970."

The fact that these patterns (on top of the natural cycles) have been seen in not just one ocean but all tropical and subtropical waters around the world is what worries many hurricane experts — and, they say, it is why they now calculate that they are due to man-made global warming, not regional natural weather patterns.

"We're actually looking at an entire world that is heating up," says Holland, "not just the Atlantic Ocean — which is why we are absolutely convinced that there is a very large greenhouse warming signal in what we're seeing."

In the past, say these scientists, when one region of the globe concentrated more heated water or air (both of which can intensify hurricanes), other regions would cool in compensation because the total heat available on the planet at any one time is limited; now, with the average global temperatures going up, such related cooling is happening less and less.

Greg Holland's research base — the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. — receives overwhelming evidence for the human contribution to global warming constantly now, challenging NCAR's ranks of world class climatologists (and their sleek black humming supercomputers in the basement) to produce ever more refined predictions of the planet's rising fever over the next few decades.

How well did the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration do a year ago in predicting the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season? Not so well, and the relatively new and unfamiliar factors of manmade global warming, say some scientists, may be part of what threw last year's predictions off.

In May 2005, NOAA predicted the summer Atlantic would see 12 to 15 named tropical storms. There were 28. It predicted seven to nine storms would become hurricanes, with winds of at least 74 mph. Fifteen did. It predicted three to five of the hurricanes would be "major," with winds of at least 111 mph. Seven were, and four of them came ashore in the United States.

A "Category 6?"

Making that official, say several hurricane scientists, would require sober deliberation by their guild, assessing whether there would be any real advantage to it — even though it seems reasonable to expect that the frequency of storms we have already seen with sustained winds over 175 or 180 mph may indeed creep up as the globe keeps warming.

Category 5, they point out, is already bad enough, way beyond almost everyone's ability to imagine, given that Katrina came ashore as a 3.

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Two Studies Link Global Warming to Greater Power of Hurricanes

May 31, 2006
New York Times
By John Schwartz

Climate researchers at Purdue University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology separately reported new evidence yesterday supporting the idea that global warming is causing stronger hurricanes.

As Hurricane Season Looms, States Aim to Scare (May 31, 2006)That claim is the subject of a long-running scientific dispute. And while the new research supports one side, neither the authors nor other climate experts say it is conclusive.

In one new paper, to appear in a coming issue of Geophysical Research Letters, Matthew Huber of the Purdue department of earth and atmospheric sciences and Ryan L. Sriver, a graduate student there, calculate the total damage that could be caused by storms worldwide, using data normally applied to reconciling weather forecast models with observed weather events. The Purdue scientists found that their results matched earlier work by Kerry A. Emanuel, a hurricane expert at M.I.T. Dr. Emanuel has argued that global warming, specifically the warming of the tropical oceans, is already increasing the power expended by hurricanes.

The approach used by the Purdue researchers, concentrating on what is called reanalysis data, has never been tried for this purpose before, Dr. Huber said in an interview, adding, "We were surprised that it did as well as it did."

In a statement accompanying the release of the study, Dr. Huber said the results were important because the overall measure of cyclone activity, whether through more intense storms or more frequent storms, had doubled with a one-quarter-degree increase in average global temperature. In the other new study, Dr. Emanuel and Michael E. Mann, a meteorologist at Pennsylvania State University, compared records of global sea surface temperatures with those of the tropical Atlantic and said the recent strengthening of hurricanes was attributable largely to the rise in ocean surface temperature.

Some researchers say long-term cycles unrelated to global warming are the major cause of hurricane strengthening in recent decades. But Dr. Emanuel and Dr. Mann, whose work is to be published in Eos, a publication of the American Geophysical Union, maintained that the cycles, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, had little if any effect.

In fact, they reported that the most recent cooling cycle could just as well be attributed to the presence of particle pollutants in the atmosphere that block sunlight and, they said, could have temporarily counteracted some of the influence of warming from accumulating greenhouse gases. Dr. Mann said the new findings also suggested that as efforts to cut pollution by particles and aerosols continued to intensify, their cooling effects would diminish while the heating effects of greenhouse gases would remain unconstrained.

As a result, he said, "we could be in for much larger increases in Atlantic sea surface temperatures, and tropical cyclone activities, in the decades ahead." He joked that some might urge an increase in pollution, but called it "a Faustian bargain."

Stanley B. Goldenberg, a meteorologist with the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who has expressed skepticism about any connection between global warming and hurricane intensity, said he had not seen the new papers but had read nothing in other recent research to change his view. "There's going to be an endless series of articles from this circle that is embracing this new theology built on very flimsy interpretation" of hurricane data, Mr. Goldenberg said. "If global warming is having an effect on hurricanes, I certainly wouldn't base it on the articles I've seen."

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Major U.S. Property Casualty Insurer Adopts Climate Change Policy

Source: Environmental and Energy Study Institute

On May 15, American International Group, one of the world's largest property casualty insurers, became the first major U.S. insurer to adopt a policy on climate change. The four-page policy statement says, “AIG is actively seeking to incorporate environmental and climate change considerations across its businesses, focusing on the development of products and services to help AIG and its clients respond to the worldwide drive to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Climate change is increasingly recognized as an ongoing, significant global environmental problem with potential risks to the global economy and ecology, and to human health and well being.... market-based environmental policies and potential new investments provide business opportunities for AIG to address the problem.”

Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a national coalition of investors and environmental groups, said "I commend AIG for being the first U.S. insurance company to address climate risk.... This is an important step that signals to the market and policy makers that climate change is a critical insurance issue." According to Reuters, AIG had $2.1 billion in insured losses from hurricanes in 2005.

Click on the following links for the full news stories: Reuters, Insurance Journal, Ceres and AIG (pdf format)

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Arctic Sea Ice Cover Hits Record Winter Low

Source: Environmental and Energy Study Institute

Satellite measurements show the area covered by Arctic winter sea ice reached an all-time low in March, down some 300,000 square kilometers compared to 2005. If the cycle continues, the Arctic Ocean could lose all of its ice much earlier than expected, possibly by 2030.

Dr. Walt Meier, a researcher at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Colorado, which collected the figures, said "It's a pretty stark drop. In the winter the ice tends to be pretty stable, so the last three years, with this steady decline, really stick out." Dr. Meier said there was "a good chance" the Arctic tipping point has been reached. "People have tried to think of ways we could get back to where we were. We keep going further and further into the hole, and it's getting harder and harder to get out of it."

According to the Guardian, experts at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in California think the situation could be even worse. They will soon publish the results of computer simulations that show the current rate of melting, combined with increased access for warmer Pacific water, could make the summertime Arctic ice-free within a decade. Dr. Meier said, "For 800,000 to a million years, at least some of the Arctic has been covered by ice throughout the year. That's an indication that, if we are heading for an ice-free Arctic, it's a really dramatic change and something that is unprecedented almost within the entire record of human species."

Click on the following links for the full news stories: The Guardian and NASA

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Seattle, Alaska Natives and Climate Scientists File Brief in EPA CO2 Case

Source: Environmental and Energy Study Institute

On May 15, the city of Seattle, a group of Alaska Natives and 15 of the nation's top climate scientists filed a brief of amici curiae (“friend of the court” brief) with the U.S. Supreme Court asking it to review the decision of the U.S. Federal Court of Appeals in Washington, DC to uphold the EPA’s decision not to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from cars and trucks under the Clean Air Act (see Climate Change News 7.15.05). The EPA argues the law does not authorize them to regulate emissions to reduce global warming, and maintains there is not enough scientific data to support such a move.

In the brief, James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and John Wallace, a University of Washington professor of atmospheric science, argue that the lower court had “significantly misrepresented” their scientific findings on climate change when citing a 2001 National Research Council report. The brief of amici curiae states, “...the Earth's climate is changing in ways that are significantly increasing the risk of adverse impacts on public welfare. Time is of the essence because delay in greenhouse gas regulation will only accelerate global climate change. EPA must begin regulating greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles now to slow climate change in time to reduce the risk of adverse impacts.”

According to the Seattle Times, on the other side of the debate are the Justice Department and an industry group, both of which are urging the Supreme Court to leave the case alone. Allison Wood, who represents the Utility Air Regulatory Group, an association of electric generating companies, said “While climate change is an interesting issue, it's not a legal issue.” Scott Saleska, a climate scientist at the University of Arizona, said “We should slow climate change now, while we still have a chance to see if we're driving blindly toward the edge of a cliff.”

Click on the following link for the full news story: Seattle Times

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Vatican Calls for UN Action on Climate, Sustainable Development

Source: Environmental and Energy Study Institute

On May 11, the Vatican's representative to the United Nations, Archbishop Celestino Migliore, told the U.N. Economic and Social Council’s Commission on Sustainable Development that progress toward global sustainable development “are modest successes when placed beside a sobering global picture” of the world’s environment. “Only the integration of environmental and developmental concerns into policymaking and a committed political follow-through will lead to the essential improvement in living standards for all, while assuring our world’s environmental future.”

Addressing climate change, Archbishop Migliore said, “The Earth’s climate system has demonstrably changed on both global and regional scales since the pre-industrial era.... Even if greenhouse gas emissions were to be stabilized at present levels—an unlikely eventuality as things stand—the global warming trend and sea-level rise would continue for hundreds of years... In such circumstances, moves to turn the United Nations Environment Program into a more robust United Nations Environment Organization appear both prudent and welcome.” On the need for low-carbon energy Archbishop Migliore said, “the development of renewables continues to be a human, ecological, economic and strategic necessity and should have a priority in public research projects.”

Click on the following links for the full news stories: Catholic Online and Archbishop Celestino Migliore

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Christian Aid: Climate Change a “Clear and Present Danger”

Source: Environmental and Energy Study Institute

A report released by Christian Aid, a UK-based charity, says climate change is threatening development goals for billions of the world’s poorest people and that recent gains in reducing poverty may be reversed due to its impacts. The 46 page report, released at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Dialogue on Long-Term Cooperative Action on climate change in Bonn on May 15-16 states that poverty and climate change are inextricably linked. As widely reported in the media, the report warns that over 180 million people in Africa could die from diseases spread as a result of the changing climate before the end of the century.

According to the report, "...it is the poor of the world who are already suffering disproportionately from the effects of global warming.... No other single issue presents such a clear and present danger to the future welfare of the world’s poor.... The unfolding disaster in east Africa, where 11 million people have been put at risk of hunger by years of unprecedented drought, is a foretaste of what is to come.... In this sense, the environment is too important to be left to the environmentalists."

According to BBC, John McGhie, the report's lead author, said that for $50 billion the whole of sub-Saharan Africa could be turned into a solar-generated economy. McGhie said, "And $50 billion is exactly the same amount as actually the continent would have to pay on extra fuel bills from oil."

Click on the following links for the full news stories: BBC, Christian Aid, and Agence Française de Presse

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African Tropical Ice Field Likely Gone in 20 Years

Source: Environmental and Energy Study Institute

A British-Ugandan glacial study published in the May 17 issue of Geophysical Research Letters indicates that a tropical ice field in the Rwenzori Mountains, East Africa, often referred to as the "Mountains of the Moon," are likely to vanish within 20 years due to climate change. According to BBC, they are one of four remaining tropical ice fields outside the Andes and are renowned for their spectacular and rare plant and animal life. In an interview with BBC, Dr. Richard Taylor of University College London said, “The observed increases of about 0.5°C per decade are much greater than you would expect... You would expect, consistent with warming trends for the East African region, about 0.1-0.2°C per decade.... Tropical glaciers are very sensitive indicators of tropical climate. They indicate quite clearly that the climate is changing.” According to BBC, the disappearance of the glaciers would have a negligible effect on Nile waters, to which the major contribution comes from rainfall at lower altitudes.

Click on the following links for the full news stories: BBC and Geophysical Research Letters

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UK and Canada Pledge $60 Million to Research African Climate Change

Source: Environmental and Energy Study Institute

On May 17, Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) announced a joint program to support African countries in their efforts to adapt to the impacts of climate change. The two governments are investing over $60 million in the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa Research and Capacity Development Program (CCAA) to strengthen research around how African countries and communities can best deal with the expected effects of climate change. The CCAA press release states, “many in Africa already face the effects of climate extremes, and are vulnerable to flooding, soil erosion, drought, and crop failure. If these extreme conditions continue to occur more frequently as predicted, the burden will fall heavily on those least able to cope.”

Mr. Hilary Benn, UK Secretary of State for International Development said, “Many of the world's poorest people are the most vulnerable to increasingly frequent hazards such as flooding and droughts brought about by climate change. We need the best possible information about how to adapt to the impacts of climate change if we are to achieve our goals of reducing poverty in Africa.” Maureen O’Neil, President of IDRC, emphasized that the program will be led by Africans for Africans. O’Neil said, “It is critical that Africans shape the research that can best respond to the continent’s real needs in the area of climate change adaptation. IDRC’s regional presence in Africa will help make African leadership of this program a practical reality.”

Click on the following links for the full news stories: Science and Development Network and CAAA

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Transboundary Pollution Heats Arctic in Winter

Source: Environmental and Energy Study Institute

A University of Utah study reports that the Arctic's well-known haze—made of particulate pollution from mid-latitude cities—mixes with thin clouds, making them better able to trap heat. The effect makes the Arctic 2-3°F warmer during polluted, cloudy episodes than it would be if the air were clean. Dr. Tim Garrett, lead author and assistant professor of meteorology, said "The Arctic is warming very quickly, especially compared with the rest of the world, due to the greenhouse effect caused by carbon dioxide from factories and cars. Now we are finding there is another way pollution can warm up the Arctic. Particulate pollution from factories and cars can be transported long distances to the Arctic, where it changes clouds so that they become more effective blankets, trapping more heat and further aggravating climate warming.”

The highest concentrations of the pollution occur in the Winter and Spring because the Arctic gets an atmospheric inversion for months in a row during the long, dark winter. People living in Salt Lake City or other mid-latitude desert climates experience the same effect during winter. “When clouds are present, it doesn't get as cold at night as when they are absent," Dr. Garrett said. The study was published in the April 6 issue of Nature.

Click on the following links for the full news stories: University of Utah

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GHGs, Pollution and Climate Variability Affecting South Asia Monsoon Patterns

Source: Environmental and Energy Study Institute

A study by Dr. Chul Eddy Chung and Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, finds that an ongoing and intricate clash between air pollution, greenhouse gases (GHGs) and naturally produced climate changes is affecting weather over parts of India and Africa, reducing rainfall in India and increasing rainfall over the Sahel area south of the Sahara in Africa. As the tropical Indian Ocean heats up due to GHGs, the northern Indian Ocean is not warming as quickly as the rest of the ocean, weakening the natural climate circulation and monsoon conditions in the region.

Dr. Ramanathan, director of the Center for Clouds, Chemistry and Climate at Scripps, said “It appears that the whole tropical region in this area is being pulled in different directions. The observed trend of reduced sunlight reaching the Earth's surface, with compensating solar heating aloft from the pollution, also called the 'brown haze,' appears to be masking the greenhouse warming in the northern Indian Ocean, while the greenhouse warming continues unabated in the southern Indian Ocean.... The greenhouse gases are pushing in one direction, warming the ocean and trying to make more rain, and the aerosols are pushing in another direction for cooler oceans and less rain. The net effect is to drive the monsoon rain system away from South Asia into the equatorial and southern oceans. Some years the aerosols might win and in some years the greenhouse effect may win. So we are concerned that in coming decades the variability between the two will become large and it will be difficult to cope with rapid changes from year to year.”

Dr. Ramanathan added, “...pollution clouds travel quickly and can cover an entire ocean. Scientists have shown that in a matter of five days pollution traveled from China to the United States, and in a matter of three to four days it can travel from the United States to Europe.” The study was published in the May 15 issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate.

Click on the following link for the full news story: Scripps News

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Global warming risk 'much higher'

Source
By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website

Global temperatures will rise further in the future than previous studies have indicated, according to new research from two scientific teams.

They both used historical records to calculate the likely amplification of warming as higher temperatures induce release of CO2 from ecosystems.

They both conclude that current estimates of warming are too low, by anything up to 75%.

Their conclusion is backed up by a new report from the Australian government.

The Australian Greenhouse Office says current estimates of temperature rise are "being challenged" by new research.

Heightened sensitivity

The latest evidence comes in two papers to be published in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.

They challenge the consensus view of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global body charged with collating and analysing climate science.

It predicts that the global average temperature would rise by between 1.5C and 4.5C if human activities were to double the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

That figure, known as the climate sensitivity, results from a combination of two factors:

1. The direct impact of rising CO2 on the greenhouse effect
2. Various "feedback" mechanisms which amplify the rate of warming, such as changes in the Earth's reflection of sunlight as ice melts

The new research adds a third component, by calculating the likely contribution of carbon dioxide released from natural ecosystems such as soil as temperatures rise.

This would add to the CO2 produced through human activities, raising temperatures still further.

Soil cycle

To calculate this extra warming, both research groups have looked back into the Earth's history.

Regularly, spells of relatively high temperatures have produced rises in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, which have fallen again as colder conditions took over.

The theory is that in warm spells, ecosystems such as soils, forests and oceans retain less carbon.

As the Earth's surface is now warming again, the process might be expected to repeat itself, with higher temperatures again causing the biological world to release CO2 into the atmosphere, complementing the gas coming from homes, factories and vehicles.

To calculate the relationship between temperature rise and carbon release, the US study examined a period of about 400,000 years using data from the Vostok ice core of Antarctica.

The European group worked on a much shorter period, looking back to the "Little Ice Age", a period in the middle of the last millennium when the northern hemisphere experienced relatively low temperatures.

"Our group used long time periods, over entire glacial and interglacial cycles, to get this relationship between climate and carbon," explained John Harte from the University of California, Berkeley.

"The European team looked at a much more modern period, and also used a different analytical method," he told the BBC News website.

The European group calculates that temperature rises in the future have been underestimated by between 15% and 78%; the US team expresses its results in a different way, giving a climate sensitivity of between 1.6 and 6.0C.

"We don't get very different answers," observed Professor Harte.

"And using different periods is very helpful, because we know the results are more robust."

Supporting evidence

These are not the only recent studies to suggest that climate sensitivity may have been underestimated.

The Australian Greenhouse Office report cites research showing that some forests which were net absorbers of carbon may be turning into net producers, an effect anticipated as temperatures rise.

Martin Wild from the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science (IACETH) in Zurich, a specialist on climate feedback, believes there are other reasons to revisit the current picture.

"The point is that there are several studies coming from several directions looking at climate sensitivity, and they tend to show higher figures than we have been used to," he told the BBC News website.

"There is some evidence on the uptake of heat in the deep ocean, for example, which could make it higher."

On the current carbon studies, he concluded: "If this additional carbon feedback is proven to be realistic, than that would raise the climate sensitivity up by a certain amount."

Future reflections

Both scientific teams admit their work is not as precise as they would like, and that uncertainties remain.

One particular issue is whether the past accurately reflects the future. Do forests and soils behave now, in an era of vast deforestation and widespread fertiliser use, just as they did 100,000 or even 1,000 years ago?

That remains unproven; and climate "sceptics" will undoubtedly seize on this as evidence that the new research is flawed, though they will have to admit that it is substantially grounded in data and not computer models, often the target of their ire.

The researchers counter that they have not found reasons why carbon feedback mechanisms should be different in the future. And even if differences do arise, they say, future feedback could be stronger as easily as it could be weaker.

"We have, in fact, been conservative on several points," said Marten Scheffer from Wageningen University in the Netherlands, leader of the European group.

"For instance, we do not account for the greenhouse effect of methane, which is also known to increase in warm periods."

Currently the IPCC is reviewing its latest major study, the Fourth Assessment Report, which will be released next year.

The first draft, of which BBC News has seen a leaked copy, suggests it has not radically changed its projections for temperature rise since its last report in 2001.

A climate sensitivity of up to 4.5C translates to a maximum likely temperature rise of about 5.8C by the end of this century; whereas in these two studies, the US team calculates up to 7.7C, with the European group's maximum value even higher.

"In view of our findings," observes Marten Scheffer, "estimates of future warming that ignore these [carbon feedback] effects may have to be raised by about 50%."