climate change tagged posts

The UN secretary-general has warned negotiators at a major meeting that failing to increase efforts on climate change would be “not only immoral but suicidal” for the planet. Antonio Guterres has flown back to Poland to try and push COP24 to a successful conclusion. 

At the UN talks, a group of countries have said they will enhance their climate plans before 2020. The EU and others say they are responding to the urgency of science.

Some observers believe that the return of Mr Guterres to these talks is a sign that significant progress is not being made. 

In his remarks to the conference, he underlined that fact, imploring the delegates to speed up the pace of negotiations and to be open to compromise.

He said that key political issues here in Poland remain unresolved. 

“To ...

The World Meteorological Organization says there’s a 75-80% chance of a weak El Niño forming within three months. The naturally occurring event causes changes in the temperature of the Pacific Ocean and has a major influence on weather patterns around the world. It is linked to floods in South America and droughts in Africa and Asia.

El Niño events often lead to record temperatures as heat rises from the Pacific.

According to the WMO update, sea surface temperatures in the east-central tropical Pacific have been at weak El Niño levels since October. However the atmosphere has not yet responded to the extra warmth that’s produced by the upwelling seas.

Scientists have been predicting the likelihood of a new event since May this year, with confidence increasing.

The Australian Bureau of...

A new United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a dire picture, writes Coral Davenport in the New York Times. The report, issued on Monday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), minces few words, describing “a world of worsening food shortages and wildfires” resulting from continued climate change. The report also indicates that, given current trends, a mass “die-off” of coral reefs by 2040 is highly likely.

The challenge facing the world is daunting. As Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis write in the Washington Post, to avoid these kinds of outcomes “would mean that, in a world projected to have more than two billion additional people by 2050, large swaths of land currently used to produce food would instead have to be converted to growing trees tha...

It is likely to be the most critical and controversial report on climate change in recent years. Leading scientists are meeting in South Korea this week to see if global temperatures can be kept from rising by more than 1.5C this century. The world has already passed one degree of warming as carbon emissions have ballooned since the 1850s.

Many low-lying countries say they may disappear under the sea if the 1.5C limit is breached.

After a week of deliberations in the city of Incheon, the researchers’ new report is likely to say that keeping below this limit will require urgent and dramatic action from governments and individuals alike.

One scientist told BBC News that our lives would never be the same if the world changed course to stay under 1.5C.

The new study is being produced by the ...

Ocean temperatures off the Southern California coast have been profoundly warm in August, with a number of all-time high temperatures recorded in San Diego’s almost bath-like waters. These extreme marine temperatures — created by weather patterns and boosted by climate change — have a sphere of influence beyond the oceans, as this heat has contributed to unusual heat and mugginess on the heavily-populated coast.

This is not the norm for seaside San Diego, which is famous for its sunny, though moderate, climate.

“We’re in a record-setting streak right now,” Mark Moede, a National Weather Service meteorologist in San Diego, said in an interview. “It’s unprecedented — typically it’s pretty temperate.”

Since July 1, San Diego hasn’t had a single day where the high temperature fell bel...

It’s no secret that global warming is bringing dramatic changes to coral reef ecosystems. Scientists have widely believed that habitat loss caused by coral death has the biggest effect on reef fish and invertebrates. Changes caused by warm water are actually faster and more widespread than the effects of habitat loss.Now new research has found that reef fish populations shift in direct response to the temperature itself and that changes caused by warm water are actually faster and more widespread than the effects of habitat loss.

The findings are significant for coral reef protection because a loss of biodiversity, especially of fish that eat harmful algae, could make it harder for reefs to recover from heat waves.

“I was surprised by how dramatic the response was over such a short time...

Sizzling temperatures in northern Europe will likely see more people flock to enjoy a dip in the warmer-than-normal water in the coming days.

But, while on the face of it this sounds like a positive development, do higher sea temperatures come at a cost?

Yes, according to Hans-Martin Füssel, a climate change expert from the European Environment Agency (EEA).

He told Euronews that warmer waters in Europe had been linked to more water-borne disease and a worsening of so-called sea dead zones, where increased temperatures mean there is less oxygen for marine life to survive on.

“But the most worrying effects of sea temperature rises are in the tropical and subtropical zones,” said Dr Füssel. “In particular coral reefs, the long-term perspective for them is extremely bad.

“During the 2...

Acidification will threaten sediments that are building blocks for reefs. Corals already face risks from ocean temperatures, pollution and overfishing.

“Coral reefs will transition to net dissolving before end of century,” the Australian-led team of scientists wrote in the U.S. journal Science. “Net dissolving” means reefs would lose more material than they gain from the growth of corals.

Carbon dioxide, the main man-made greenhouse gas, forms a weak acid in water and threatens to dissolve the reef sediments, made from broken down bits of corals and other carbonate organisms that accumulate over thousands of years, it said.

The sediments are 10 times more vulnerable to acidification than the tiny coral animals that also extract chemicals directly from the sea water to build stony s...

Last year wasn’t just one of the hottest years on Earth’s surface, as it was the hottest year on record for the global ocean, according to a new study from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP)/Chinese Academy of Science.

Researchers Lijing Cheng and Jiang Zhu found that the top 2,000 meters of ocean waters are hotter than ever recorded, at 19.19 × 10^22 J. Heat energy is measured in Joules (J).

That’s quite the jump from 2015, the previous record-breaking year for ocean heat, which was recorded at 17.68 × 10^22 J.

“For comparison,” the study states, “total electricity generation in China in 2016 was 0.00216 × 10^22 J, which is 699 times smaller than the increase in ocean heat in 2017.”

Ocean heat in 2016 was cooler than both 2015 and 2017 due to a large El Ninõ...

The Australian government has approved an ambitious plan to put giant underwater fans on the Great Barrier Reef. It’s part of a multi-million dollar government trial that scientists hope will help reduce the damage caused by coral bleaching. The Reef and Rainforest Research Centre will receive AU$2.2 million (NZ$ 2.42 million) for its Reef Haven project at Moore Reef, about 40km east of Cairns.

The plan involves mooring submerged propellers at reef tourism sites, where they will circulate water to cool down coral.

Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg says the test could help save the reefs from beach damage.

“Limited modelling indicates the proposed intervention could reduce average surface water temperatures by 0.7degC during potential bleaching conditions,” he said.

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