Climate 411

Part 5 of 5: The Melting of the North Pole

By Bill Chameides / Published: May 10, 2007

The second installment of the IPCC’s 4th Assessment on Climate Change, titled “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”, was released on April 6, 2007. In recognition of this report, I’m doing a weekly series called “Climate Dangers You May Not Know About“.

1. More Acidic Oceans
2. Drinking Water and Disease
3. Shifts in Lifecycle Timing
4. Drought and Violence
5. The Melting of the North Pole

The North Pole is surrounded by the huge Arctic Ocean. For millennia, that ocean has been covered by ice, but today that sea ice is rapidly melting. We’ve lost about 20 percent of summer sea ice since 1980 – an area equal to Texas, California and Montana combined – and it’s happening faster than we had predicted. The North Pole could be ice-free during summer months well before 2050.

Illustration by Steve Deyo, ©UCAR, based on research by NSIDC and NCAR.

A lot of press attention has been focused on how the loss of sea ice is threatening the polar bear. Much less attention has been paid to global impacts of this melting sea ice.

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Posted in Arctic & Antarctic / Read 6 Responses

USCAP Doubles in Size and Adds GM

By David Yarnold / Published: May 8, 2007

David Yarnold, today’s guest blogger, is Executive Vice President of Environmental Defense, and co-chair of the USCAP Communications committee.

Today the United States Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) announced it has doubled its membership. This was no small feat for a coalition comprised of busy corporate CEOs.

USCAP is a coalition of businesses and environmental organizations advocating national legislation for mandatory reduction of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. New members such as General Motors (the coalition’s first automaker) and The Nature Conversancy speak to how mainstream the issue of global warming has become.

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Posted in News / Read 3 Responses

We Can Do It, and at Moderate Cost

By Lisa Moore / Published: May 7, 2007

Lisa Moore, today’s guest blogger, is a scientist in the Climate and Air Program.

On Friday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a summary of its third report [PDF] (see our explanation of the IPCC). The first two reports focused on the science [PDF] and the impacts [PDF] of climate change. Now the IPCC has tackled the all-important question: What can we do about it?

The great news is that there is "high agreement" and "much evidence" that there are many ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions (see our post on how to get us there), and every economic sector can make a difference. For a cautious, consensus-driven group like the IPCC, that’s strong language.

Just as encouraging is the conclusion that fighting global warming isn’t going to destroy economies.

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Posted in Economics / Read 4 Responses

Quote of the Week

By Bill Chameides / Published: May 4, 2007

“Governments have a crucial supportive role in providing appropriate enabling environment, such as, institutional, policy, legal and regulatory frameworks, to sustain investment flows and for effective technology transfer – without which it may be difficult to achieve emission reductions at a significant scale.”

From IPCC Working Group 3, Summary for Policymakers [PDF]

Posted in What Others are Saying / Comments are closed

Extraterrestrial Global Warming?

By Bill Chameides / Published: May 3, 2007

Warming in the solar system has become a hot topic these days, and I’ve been getting lots of questions that go something like this: I’ve read that other planets have global warming. There are no SUVs on other planets, so the warming must be due to increased energy from the sun. Doesn’t that mean that Earth’s warming is also due to increased solar energy?

The short answer is, whatever warming there may be on other planets is not due to changes in the Sun. Scientists have thoroughly investigated this possibility, and in nearly 30 years of satellite observations, we’ve seen no increase in overall solar output. (For more on this, see our article on global warming and solar activity [PDF].)

Solar Energy Output

Solar variation cannot explain global warming on any planet, including Earth. So what’s up with our neighbors?

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Posted in News / Read 5 Responses

Part 4 of 5: Drought and Violence

By Bill Chameides / Published: May 3, 2007

The second installment of the IPCC’s 4th Assessment on Climate Change, titled “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”, was released on April 6, 2007. In recognition of this report, I’m doing a weekly series called “Climate Dangers You May Not Know About“.

1. More Acidic Oceans
2. Drinking Water and Disease
3. Shifts in Lifecycle Timing
4. Drought and Violence
5. Melting of the North Pole

What happens when there isn’t enough food and water for the people who need it? Fighting can ensue. And when drought and famine extend over a wide area, the fighting can escalate to civil war. This is what’s happening today in Darfur, a country in the sub-Saharan (or "Sahel") region of Africa.

We can’t say for sure that the Darfur droughts were caused by global warming, but there’s evidence it was a significant factor (for example, see this recent study of the Sahel drought [PDF] by NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory). But whether those past droughts were caused by global warming is not the main issue. We know that global warming will cause more and more severe droughts in the future, especially in the Sahel region of Africa.

The story of Darfur cautions that events triggered by global warming can lead to a human tragedy of global proportions.

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Posted in News / Read 2 Responses