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When Climate Science Clashes With Real-World Policy
Posted by Climate Central: John Upton on April 12th, 2015
Climate Central: When a San Francisco panel began mulling rules about building public projects near changing shorelines, its self-described science translator, David Behar, figured he would just turn to the U.N.'s most recent climate assessment for guidance on future sea levels.
He couldn't.
Nor could Behar, leader of the city utility department's climate program, get what he needed from a 2012 National Research Council report dealing with West Coast sea level rise projections. A National Climate Assessment...
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Deforestation Slowing, But Forests Are Breaking Down
Posted by Climate Central: John Upton on March 20th, 2015
Climate Central: The amount of climate pollution being produced every year by the felling of forests is falling worldwide, but benefits of the heartening decline are being eroded by the worsening conditions of the forests still left standing.
The losses of entire stretches of forests, combined with losses of individual trees from forests that remain, pumped an average of 3.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year from 2011 to 2015, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization announced...
Include Climate Change in Disaster Planning, FEMA Says
Posted by Climate Central: John Upton on March 17th, 2015
Climate Central: Federal funds that help communities brace for emergencies will stop being provided to states if they ignore threats posed by climate change in their disaster planning.
States publish reports every five years or so detailing their vulnerability to natural disasters, such as floods, storms and wildfires, and how they plan to protect themselves and recover after them. Such plans are needed in order to qualify for a share of nearly $1 billion in Hazard Mitigation Assistance grants provided every year...
California, Quebec Teaming Up On Climate Change
Posted by Climate Central: John Upton on March 17th, 2015
Climate Central: California raised $630 million by selling pollution allowances one Wednesday last month, each of them entitling the buyer to harm the climate with a ton of carbon dioxide. Most of the money that was raised during the quarterly allowance auction will be used to reduce customers' electricity bills; the rest will go to environmental projects. That same Wednesday, the Canadian province of Quebec raised $150 million doing the exact same thing.
The timing was no coincidence. The auction was held jointly....
Southern Calif fog falls victim to concrete
Posted by Climate Central: John Upton on March 13th, 2015
Climate Central: Summertime fog that helps keep coastal southern California cool and damp appears to be melting away, and scientists who have documented nearly 70 years of its decline think they can explain why: concrete.
The urban heat island effect, the phenomenon of cities warming faster than surrounding countryside, is a main culprit for a two-thirds reduction in the number of foggy mornings in Los Angeles since 1948 -- a trend that's expected to intensify as greenhouse gas pollution pushes temperatures upward....
Moisture shortfall, heat threaten southwestern forests
Posted by Climate Central: John Upton on January 14th, 2015
Climate Central: Pinecone-littered forests draped over tens of millions of acres of mountaintops through the American Southwest are in danger of being scorched out of existence by global warming.
It's not just rising heat that threatens to put a meteorological flamethrower to lush montane swaths of Arizona and New Mexico better known for low-altitude cacti and desert plains. A fire-wielding threat also comes from a rise in vapor pressure deficit, or VPD -- a parching force linked to climate change that rises as...
UN Climate Report Rings Alarm, Offers Guidance
Posted by Climate Central: John Upton on November 2nd, 2014
Climate Central: The most sophisticated, comprehensive and succinct scientific account of the accelerating impacts of human activity on the world around us, from warming and rising oceans to the growing toll of heat stroke, was published Sunday by a United Nations panel. The picture that emerged from the 116-page synthesis of three blockbuster climate change reports was alarming. "The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen,' it reminds us, warning that...
Australia Blasted by Record Heat — Again
Posted by Climate Central: John Upton on October 27th, 2014
Climate Central: Strange early-season temperatures again dogged sweaty Australians over the weekend, with Saturday's continent-wide average maximum topping 97°F -- a record for October.
Spring heat waves that have been baking the continent in recent weeks are "consistent' with the modeled effects of global warming in Australia, said Tom Knutson, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate modeler.
But global warming alone couldn't explain the unseasonably hot weather. It's likely that climate...
The $90 Trillion Climate-Stabilizing Cookbook
Posted by Climate Central: John Upton on September 16th, 2014
Climate Central: We're baking the world; on track to raise global temperatures by more than 7°F by burning fuels, raising livestock, bulldozing forests, and allowing cities to sprawl as they grow. Pulling the planet out of the costly slow-cooker of old-fashioned traditions in time to avoid the worst of global warming might not be easy. But doing so would make the world a richer place.
That was the message in The New Climate Economy Report, a 72-page paper produced by an international panel of leading economists,...