Author: Emma Critchley

A slow start to a global climate treaty

By Gabriele Messori, Stockholm University (former Imperial PhD student)

The United Nations’ climate negotiations usually gain the press spotlight once a year, when the big Conference of the Parties (COP) meeting takes place. The most recent COP, which took place in Warsaw last November, was discussed on this blog here. However, the efforts to design a global climate treaty under the umbrella of the United Nations are ongoing, and additional negotiations take place throughout the year. These are particularly important in preparing the ground for the COPs, and provide the occasion to iron out the contrasts which might hamper later work.

The most recent of these meetings took place last week in Bonn, Germany. Formally, this was the fourth part of the second session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, or ADP 2-4.The focus was on two distinct topics. Firstly, on the ongoing effort to design a global climate treaty, which should be agreed upon by 2015 and implemented by 2020. Secondly, on the promotion of ambitious mitigation plans for the period before 2020. However, several points of contention emerged in the talks.

Far from reaching a quick consensus on the key topics, the participating countries raised several procedural issues which bogged down the discussions. These ranged from trivial aspects, such as the size of the meeting rooms assigned to the different groups, to more important considerations on the modality of the negotiations.

The crucial point was whether to proceed with informal consultations or establish contact groups. In the jargon of the United Nations, a contact group is an open-ended meeting which provides a more formal setting for the negotiations. A contact group needs to be officially established and its sessions are generally open to observers. The last two years have seen the negotiations carried out as informal consultations. Some countries, among which the EU, opposed the creation of a contact group. Many others, including the least developed countries, argued that a new, formal setting was needed.

The latter proposal was finally adopted, thus establishing a contact group. However, the debate that preceded the decision was lengthy and time consuming. While having an appropriate setting for the negotiations is important, the focus should always remain on climate change, which is the reason for which these meetings exist in the first place!

A second crucial discussion concerned the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). These are national plans for action on climate change, made by all countries participating in the talks, and should form an important part of the 2015 climate treaty. At present, there is still no clarity on fundamental points such as the form the NDCs should take, the topics they should address and the mechanisms for evaluating their progress. There is also a strong disagreement on how the burden of action should be shared between developed, developing and least developed countries. This is just a small selection of the unanswered questions concerning the national contributions; the complete list is much longer. Positions on these key aspects vary greatly. As an example, Brazil explicitly asked for the contributions to encompass the full range of actions needed to tackle climate change, including both mitigation and adaptation. Tuvalu, on the other hand, clearly stated that the NDCs should focus primarily on mitigation. Agreeing on the nature of the NDCs is one of the most challenging aspects of the negotiations.

On a more positive note, the work on pre-2020 action included for the first time technical expert meetings. These are meetings where experts can share best practices on renewable energy and energy efficiency with the country delegates. The meetings were praised by the vast majority of countries, and there were requests by a number of delegates, including those of the EU and the USA, to arrange similar meetings in future negotiations.

The week-long talks in Bonn also addressed many other topics, including transparency and equity in the 2015 climate agreement and climate finance.

Leaving aside the contrasts over specific items of the agenda, and considering the larger picture, the impression in Bonn was of a framework that is still missing some of its essential elements. While the technical expert meetings had a promising start, a lot still needs to be done both in terms of pre-2020 action and the 2015 climate treaty. In Warsaw last year, countries agreed to present their Nationally Determined Contributions “well in advance” of the 2015 COP, which will take place in Paris. In order for this to happen, there needs to be a rapid acceleration of the negotiations, and issues such as procedural aspects need to be dealt with swiftly, so that the discussion may focus on more concrete aspects of action on climate change.

2014 – A pivotal year for CCS?

By Dr Niall Mac Dowell, Centre for Environmental Policy

For centuries, all of the world’s economies have been underpinned by fossil fuels.  Historically, this has primarily been oil and coal, but since the mid-1980s natural gas has become increasingly important. Over the course of the last decades, there has been an increasing focus on electricity generation from renewable sources, and since about 1990 carbon capture and storage (CCS) has become an important part of the conversation around the mitigation of our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The role of CCS in addressing our GHG mitigation targets is clear and unambiguous – see for example the IEA CCS technology roadmaps which show that by 2050, almost 8 GtCO2/yr needs to be sequestered via CCS; a cumulative of 120 GtCO2 in the period from 2015 to 2050. Tellingly, this means that we need to see real action on the commercial scale deployment of CCS globally by 2015 such that we have at least 30 installations around the world actively capturing and sequestering CO2 from a range of industrial and power-generation plants. Currently, there are 8 CCS projects around the world which are actively capturing and sequestering CO2 – primarily in North America (Shute Creek, Val Verde, Enid Fertilizer and Century Plant in the US and the Weyburn-Midale project in Canada) and Europe (Sleipner and Snøhvit in Norway), although Algeria have also been operating the In Salah project since 2004.

However, it is notable that none of these plants are capturing CO2 emitted from power stations; rather they are capturing from industrial sources from which CO2 arises in a stream suitable for transport and storage. This is particularly important as CO2 emissions from power generation represent the single largest source of global emissions.

For this reason, it is particularly encouraging to note the UK’s leadership position in this area. Following from our signing into law the mandate to mitigate by 80% our GHG emissions by 2050, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) have recently signed agreements for Front End Engineering Design (FEED) studies for two commercial scale CCS projects; the Peterhead project and the White Rose project.

These are two really exciting projects, both of which represent real world firsts. The Peterhead project is a collaboration between Shell and SSE and is a retrofit of post-combustion capture plant to an existing power plant. This project is intended to operate in a base-load fashion and follows on from the Boundary Dam CCS project in Canada which also uses Shell technology. However, a key distinction between the Boundary Dam and Peterhead projects is the CO2 source; Boundary Dam is a coal-fired power plant whereas Peterhead is a gas-fired power plants. From an engineering perspective, these plants present significantly distinct CCS challenges, and therefore the Peterhead project represents a real step forward.

It is, of course, important to emphasise the importance of the Boundary Dam project. Returning to the IEA’s CCS technology roadmaps, we can see that CCS on coal-fired power plants is of vital global importance; potentially contributing to about 40% of emission mitigation in both OECD and non-OECD countries.

The White Rose project on the other hand is an example of oxy-combustion technology applied to a coal-fired power plant. This project is a collaboration between Alstom, Drax Power and BOC. Here, instead of performing a retrofit, the White Rose project is building a brand new, state-of-the-art 450MWe super-critical power plant which has the capacity to co-fire biomass and coal which, when combined with CCS can lead to the plant producing carbon negative electricity. Importantly, the White Rose plant will have an emphasis on the generation of flexible power; something which is key as we have more and more intermittent renewable energy in our energy system.

Thus, 2014 is the year where CCS on power generation becomes a reality. Given the fact that fossil fuels will remain a vital part of the world’s energy landscape for some time to come, with some sources indicating that they will account for over 66% of the world’s energy by 2100, it is almost impossible to over emphasise the importance of our ability to utilise them in an environmentally benign and sustainable way. For this reason, I believe 2014 represents a pivotal year; one which, in time, we will look back on as being the dawn of the age of sustainable fossil fuels.

Moving from tactics to strategy: extreme weather, climate risks and the policy response

 By Dr Flora MacTavish and Dr Simon Buckle

In the press coverage of the recent floods, there has been a lot of discussion about whether the authorities could have been better prepared or responded more effectively. The National Farmers Union has called for the reintroduction of river dredging, although experts argue that dredging may be limited in its effectiveness. Local authorities have been criticised by experts for distributing sand bags rather than encouraging the use of more effective alternatives such as wooden or metal boards.

These are essentially tactical issues, however. It is the government and local authorities that have the vital strategic responsibility for fully embedding weather and climate risks into decisions on the level and focus of investment into flood defences and planning regulations about what can be built and where.

The persistence of the weather pattern that has caused this winter’s exceptional rainfall and floods has been very unusual.  However, as the Adaptation Sub-Committee of the UK Climate Change Committee noted in their 2011 report, heat waves, droughts and floods are all expected to get worse as a result of climate change. The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment of the science (AR5) concluded that average precipitation was very likely to increase in the high and some of the mid latitudes, with a likely increase in the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation events over land (see our note on The Changing Water Cycle).  If we are to improve our resilience, we need to get the strategic policy framework and incentives right.

Unfortunately, for flood risk, this doesn’t seem to be happening yet, despite the Pitt Review after the 2007 floods. In 2011, the Climate Change Committee noted a decline in urban green space in each of six of local authority areas studied, and an increase in hard surfacing in five of the six. The Committee’s 2012 report showed that the UK has become more exposed to future flood risk. It judged that four times as many households and businesses in England could be at risk of flooding in the next twenty years if further steps are not taken to prepare for climate change.

In particular it noted that:

  • Development within the floodplain in England has grown at a faster rate (12%) than development outside it (7%) over the past ten years;
  • One in five properties built in the floodplain have been in areas of significant flood risk:
  • Levels of investment in flood defences and uptake rates of protection measures for individual properties will not keep pace with the increasing risks of flooding due to climate change.

The Committee has acknowledged that the economic and social benefits of new developments may not always be outweighed by the risks of building on flood plains.  Decision makers should weigh up the trade-offs between long term risks such as climate change and other shorter term priorities, but the Committee judged that this was not happening “widely or consistently” at the time they wrote their 2011 report.

The government is in the process of trying to implement the Flood Re scheme to address concerns over the affordability and availability of flood insurance, but as our colleagues at the Grantham Research Institute at LSE have noted in their response to the government consultation,

“The design of the Flood Re scheme, which is expected to last until at least 2035, has not taken into account adequately, if at all, how flood risk is being affected by climate change. For this reason, it is likely to be put under increasing pressure and may prove to be unsustainable because the number of properties in future that will be at moderate and high probability of flooding has been significantly underestimated. “

Whether or not these particular floods are due to climate change, this is the sort of thing we expect to see more of in the future. When the immediate crisis is over, the government needs to think hard about its strategic response, which must include mitigation action as well as measures to develop greater resilience to weather and climate related risks.

Workshop on climate science needed to support robust adaptation decisions

By Dr Simon Buckle

I just wanted to highlight the great event we held last week with Judy Curry at Georgia Tech on how we can use climate science to help us make better decisions – in business, government, health and development.  Do have a look at the presentations from the really diverse group we managed to assemble in Atlanta, from international organisations, business, development agencies, NGOs and research.

A few  points strike me as worth (re)emphasising:

  • Climate models are extremely valuable tools for assessing climate change over the rest of this century, but even the most advanced climate models are not yet able to provide detailed information with sufficient confidence on the variability and change of regional climate in the next few decades. This will take time and money (higher resolution, more computational power).
  • So trying to forecast the climate in 5, 10 or 20 years time is right at the research frontier, but many decision makers aren’t as hung up over the uncertainties in climate projections as the scientists.  They’re used to dealing with uncertainty and some of the factors they need to take into account are way more uncertain than how the climate will change;
  • It’s the holistic view of risk that matters. In other words, how climate variability and change interacts with other factors such as population, urbanisation, economic growth, degradation of ecosystems, land use change etc;
  • Scientists working on decision relevant issues need to think really hard about the decision making context.  Who is making decisions? What is the motivation? What is being decided and what are the relevant timescales? And are the research methods and outputs relevant and informative? Are there alternative approaches that might increase the robustness of decision making in the face of uncertainty? Are the limitations of the research transparent to the decision makers who might use it?
  • Many different approaches are emerging from collaboration among decision makers and scientists that can supplement the valuable insights gleaned from climate models and help inform robust decision making in the face of climate variability and change.
  • Even if some prominent UK politicians still have their heads in the sand over climate risks, major businesses, governments and development organisations are already factoring climate into their decision making.

You can read a more detailed summary of the workshop on the Grantham Institute website.

Climate change and health risks – new commission launched

By Siân Williams, Research postgraduate, Department of Physics and Grantham Institute for Climate Change

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Georgina Mace and other panelists at the UCL Institute of Global Health event on 16 January. Photo: S. Williams

In 2009 a joint report between University College London and The Lancet stated, “Climate change is the biggest risk to global health of the 21st century”. The work highlighted extreme weather events, changing patterns of disease and food and water insecurity.

Now a second UCL-Lancet commission is underway. Last month, UCL’s Institute of Global Health hosted a launch event for the report entitled ‘Climate crisis: emergency actions to protect human health’.

The event was chaired by UCL’s Anthony Costello, head of the first Lancet commission. Panellists involved in the new commission include scientists and economists from UCL, Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

The new commission is structured with five working groups. Its aims range from drawing out the key implications of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report on health through to assessing the financial and policy mechanisms available to governments to protect their citizens against the worst impacts of climate change.

The format of the event allowed a wide range of issues to be discussed. These included the impacts of climate on mental health and the disillusion felt by many towards the COP international climate negotiation process.

Isobel Braithwaite, from the student-led Healthy Planet organisation, commented that “The first UCL-Lancet commission really served to shift the discussion away from climate change being just about ice caps and polar bears to an issue that’s ultimately about people’s health, so it’s exciting to hear that a second commission’s now underway. It sounds like this second one will go into much more depth on the actions we need to take to avert the major health crisis posed by unmitigated climate change”.

At the most recent COP negotiations in Warsaw, Healthy Planet formed part of the protest movement against Poland’s plans for future coal plants. The topic of climate and health will continue to be in the spotlight during Health Planet’s national conference, which will take place over the first weekend of March. Tickets for the event are available here.

The TROPICS research cruise from Tenerife to Trinidad: Tracing oceanic processes using corals and sediments

 By Torben Struve, Research Postgraduate, Department of Earth Science & Engineering  and Grantham Institute for Climate Change

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How to start a retrospective on two amazing months at sea? Probably at the beginning! In the beginning there was…an idea! The idea was to reconstruct abrupt changes in chemistry and ocean circulation in the Equatorial Atlantic Ocean to learn about global climate and deep-water habitats. The plan was to do so by collecting sediments, seawater and deep sea corals and analysing all of these for their geochemical composition.

Developing this idea into our actual scientific cruise, JC094, took several years of planning and preparation, led by principal investigator and chief scientist Dr. Laura Robinson (University of Bristol) and funded by the European Research Council. The closer the day of embarkation, the busier the participants: on the one hand everyone has to pass medical examinations and safety training courses and on the other hand getting all scientific equipment sorted before leaving port is very important as it is too late to receive mail deliveries once at sea!

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Left: The RRS James Cook at the dock in Tenerife (Photo by: Torben Struve). Right: Science party of expedition JC094. Standing row (left to right): Martin Bridger, James Cooper, Paul Morris, Lucy Woodall, Mélanie Douarin, Stephanie Bates, Michelle Taylor, Allison Jacobel, Veerle Huvenne, Leigh Marsh, Vanessa Fairbank, Kais Mohamed Falcon, Shannon Hoy, Maricel Williams, Peter Spooner, Laura Robinson, Marcus Badger. Sitting row: Jesse van der Grient, Kate Hendry, Torben Struve, Hong Chin Ng. (Photo by: Sam Crimmin)

We were lucky that our vessel, the 89.5 m long RRS James Cook, was docked in Southampton before our cruise, giving us the opportunity to spend a few days at the National Oceanographic Center (NOC) in Southampton to prepare the science facilities on board so that the labs and our equipment are ready-to-go once we were at sea. Our swimming laboratory, the RRS James Cook sailed ahead of us and we met her again for embarkation in Tenerife on the 13th October. On the afternoon of the 13th October we left the port of Tenerife. Although this was our last land experience for seven weeks every participant of this multi-national expedition (British, US, French, Dutch, Belgian, Malaysian, Spanish and German) was excited about finally launching JC094.

Our aim was to collect of a wide range of sample material in order to unravel modern and past secrets of the deep equatorial Atlantic Ocean.

The Atlantic Ocean is separated into two basins by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR which is part of a global sub-marine mountain range) allowing only restricted deep-water exchange between these basins via the Vema Fracture Zone. The measurement of modern seawater properties is crucial for achieving our scientific goals. The distribution patterns of deep-sea species in the modern ocean are poorly understood and are, besides seafloor topography most likely linked to seawater chemistry. Reconstructions of past ocean properties (paleoceanography) are based on proxies extracted from marine archives, i.e. past seawater properties are reconstructed with chemical tracers extracted for instance from marine carbonates like foraminifera (single-celled organisms) shells or deep-sea corals. Such proxy work relies on modern calibrations of the chemical tracer extracted from live specimen against seawater.

For this purpose we aimed to collect seawater, sediment and a wide range of biological samples including the most-desired deep-sea corals. Our five sampling locations spanned across the equatorial Atlantic from east to west: Carter and Knipovich seamounts in the eastern basin, the Vema fracture zone at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Vayda and Gramberg seamounts in the western basin.

During the expedition the science party was divided into two 12 hour shifts from 4am(pm) to 4pm(am) covering a day’s 24 hour cycle. Each scientist was trained in various methods and techniques in order to help dealing with all the different types of sampling techniques applied during JC094: seawater sampling with a CTD rosette, hydroacoustic surveying, long and short coring as well as collecting and processing coral samples collected with the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) ISIS.

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Cruise track of JC094 from Tenerife to Trinidad. EBA: Carter seamount; EBB: Knipovich seamount; VEM: Vema Fracture Zone; VAY: Vayda seamount; GRM: Gramberg seamount. (Map created by: Shannon Hoy)

Seawater sampling with a CTD rosette:

Seawater is usually sampled with a CTD rosette (conductivity-temperature-depth) measuring various seawater properties online and collecting seawater samples at particular depths with the 24 Niskin bottles attached to the frame. At every sample location we started our scientific program with a CTD profile. A CTD profile across the entire water column (~4500 m water depth) took about 4 hours making sample collection a time-consuming business. Once back on deck, the actual work started with sampling the Niskin bottles for dissolved oxygen, carbonate chemistry, radiocarbon, nutrients and trace elements following a strict scheme. This could usually be done within one 12 hour shift and the day shift (4 am to 4 pm) had the privilege of processing all CTD rosettes during JC094.

Meanwhile, the ship moved on for hydroacoustic surveying of the sampling location. Such hydroacoustic surveys are crucial to determine good locations for sediment coring and ROV dives since most deep-sea floor in the area has never been mapped.

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Photo 3 (seawater): Procedure of seawater sampling with a CTD rosette. (1) Sensors reporting back to main lab computer, (2) recovery of the CTD rosette, (3,4) seawater sampling from Niskin bottles and (5) sealed and labeled seawater samples for oxygen isotope analyses (Photos by: (1,2) Torben Struve, (3) Mélanie Douarin, (4,5) Vanessa Fairbank)

Deep-sea sediment sampling:

The sediment coring efforts focused on recovery of surface material, and combined with long cores reaching back to at least the Last Glacial Maximum, i.e. 20,000 years ago. The rate of sediment deposition in the deep sea is on the order of 1-3 cm per 1,000 years and may be dominated by foraminiferal shells. During JC094 we used two different coring techniques: long coring and short coring.

Long coring allows deep penetration of a metal barrel (we used 12 m long barrels) into the sediment providing long sediment records. Once on deck, long cores are cut into 1.5 m segments, split into two halves and sub-sampled for chemical and physical analyses. As a result of the long coring technique the top part of the sediment column (sediment-seawater interface) is disturbed/lost.

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Photo 5 (Long coring): Long coring work flow. (1) Coring device is back at the surface, (2) metal barrel needs to be aligned along starboard before it can be craned back on deck, (3) pulling the core liner (yellow tube) holding the sediments out of the metal barrel and cutting the liner into sections, (4) splitting the core liner sections into two halves: work and archive, (5) archive half of ~ five meter long sediment core and (6) D-tube which is used for long-term storage of sediment core sections. (Photos by: (1,2,4) Torben Struve, (3,5) Mélanie Douarin, (6) Stephanie Bates)

Megacoring allows collection of undisturbed short cores so that both coring techniques complement one another. Most of the short cores are sliced, bagged and stored right away whereas some have been investigated with respect to anthropogenic impact, i.e. microplastics.

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Photo 4 (megacoring): Processing samples from a megacorer. (1) Recovering the megacorer, (2) a single megacore tube on the sediment extraction table, (3) slicing sediments of a megacore tube and (4) sliced and bagged sediment samples. (Photos by: (1) Hong Chin Ng, (2, 4) Mélanie Douarin, (3) Jesse van der Grient)

ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) dives:

The main focus of this expedition was diving with the ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) ISIS which is basically a robot of the size of a small car connected to the ship with a cable. An onboard CTD reported seawater properties, various cameras allowed online seafloor observation, two robotic arms used various tools for selective sample collection and a hydroacoustic system allowed ultra-high resolution seafloor mapping. At any time during a dive, at least three scientists and two pilots (rotating with replacement teams) were in the control unit making sure that we got the most out of every single dive. Such dives could be quite long and during JC094 we also established a new record of longest ISIS diving time, i.e. 43 hours and 43 minutes!

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Photo 6: Operating the ROV ISIS from RRS James Cook. (1) Deploying the ROV, (2) insight into the control unit on deck housing screens for the various cameras and instruments onboard ISIS, (3) sample collection at the seafloor with one of the two mechanical arms, (4) recovery of ISIS with the port side A-frame crane and (5) ISIS is back on deck with some unexpected bycatch: fishing lines. (Photos by: (1) Mélanie Douarin, (2) Torben Struve, (3) ISIS, (4,5) Vanessa Fairbank)

Our ROV dive efforts focused on the collection of live and fossil (i.e. dead) sample material, and in particular on deep sea corals. With regard to investigations of past ocean properties, deep sea corals have the advantage of growing in places where sediment deposition is either lacking or discontinuous, i.e. for instance on steep slopes of seamounts and in high current environments. Our cruise track across the Atlantic was designed to target seamounts peaking up to more than 4000 m from the seafloor allowing us to collect samples over a wide depth range. Live coral specimen are used for calibration and method development purposes so that such methods may eventually be applied to fossil deep sea corals revealing secrets about past ocean properties.

Besides deep-sea corals, live specimens of various types of deep-sea species have been collected for DNA analyses which allow drawing conclusions about deep-sea species’ distribution patterns.

Furthermore, we also ran ultra-high resolution seafloor and habitat mapping campaigns with the ROV, trying to investigate potential links between bathymetry and deep-sea species’ habitats. Such data may be combined with the seawater data and thus, unraveling major biogeographical relationships between deep-sea biology, hydrography and bathymetry.

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Photo 7: Impressions of deep-sea ROV dives during JC094. (Photos by: (1) Jesse van der Grient, others by ISIS)

The sample recovery from the ROV on deck had to be done quickly: all biological samples including live and fossil deep-sea corals were transferred into the cold room lab for identification, separation and documentation. Sediment and seawater samples collected with the ROV were processed separately from the biological samples. The fossil corals were separated from live samples and transferred into the deck lab for drying, sorting and identification – one of the most puzzling tasks on board!

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Photo 8: Processing samples collected with the ROV. (1) Sample recovery from the various trays and boxes on ISIS, (2) samples placed in buckets, sorted by water depth and location, (3) sorting, documenting and archiving of biological samples in the cold room, (4) fossil deep-sea coral samples are transferred from the cold room into the deck lab for drying and identification, (5) dried and sorted fossil coral samples waiting for (6) photographing and bagging. (Photos by: (1) Vanessa Fairbank, (2,6) Mélanie Douarin, (3,4) Torben Struve, (5) Hong Chin Ng)

So we moved across the Atlantic Ocean collecting thousands of samples during the seven weeks and everybody was involved in processing all types of samples, preventing the work to become monotonous. Eventually, it came the time to say goodbye and after seven amazing weeks on board RRS James Cook expedition JC094 ended in Port of Spain, Trinidad. Everybody carried home memories of a great experience and scientific success at sea. Now, we’re looking forward to receiving the samples for detailed chemical analyses.

Find out more on the Tropics project website.

Beyond adaptation: loss and damage negotiation at the United Nations

By Gabriele Messori, Research postgraduate in the Department of Physics

The 19th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) took place last month in Warsaw, Poland. These conferences are at the core of the international negotiations on climate change, and set the scene for future climate policies around the world. By most accounts, the Warsaw meeting had mixed results – it marked progress in some areas and stagnation in others. One of the most contentious negotiation streams, and one where some measure of progress was made, was loss and damage.

The current approach to climate change is based on two pillars: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation is concerned with minimizing climate change. Adaptation is the result of the failure of mitigation to prevent climate change, and is aimed at adapting to a climate different to the one we have been familiar with in the past. However, even adaptation has it limits. For example, in the future it might become unfeasible for low-lying island states to adapt to rising sea levels. Loss and damage is meant to tackle cases where both mitigation and adaptation have failed. The concept stems from the realization that a changing climate will imply rising human and economic losses for our planet.

From a scientific standpoint, the problem of loss and damage is very complex. Any agreement on damage associated with climate change will need to have clear guidelines defining what can be ascribed to climate change and what cannot. The issue becomes particularly contentious for extreme events. In fact it is very hard, if not impossible, to associate a single weather event to changes in the state of the climate.

From a political point of view, the contentiousness of loss and damage mainly arises from two distinct considerations. The first is that the main beneficiaries of a loss and damage agreement would be low-income, low-resilience countries. A number of developed nations therefore view an agreement as a very costly form of climate finance. The second important aspect is that loss and damage is intimately tied to the idea of historic responsibility. The developed countries have been emitting greenhouse gases for much longer than the least developed and developing ones, and are therefore responsible for a large part of the cumulative emissions budget. Because of this, the agreement on loss and damage is very complicated under the legal aspect, with developed countries fearing that it might lead to the question of climate change liability.

In Warsaw, the negotiations on loss and damage were aimed at establishing a global framework to tackle the issue. Some of the developed countries, notably Australia, initially refused to commit any finance specifically to loss and damage. At the other end of the scale, a large coalition of small island states, least developed and developing countries demanded a comprehensive agreement, explicitly addressing “permanent losses and irreversible damage, including non-economic losses”. As expected, the final result was a compromise between these two extremes.

The “Warsaw international mechanism for loss and damage associated with climate change impacts” requires (developed) countries to provide financial, technological and capacity-building support to address the adverse effects of climate change. Next year the executive committee of the mechanism will develop a work plan, and a review will take place in 2016. After 2016, an “appropriate decision on the outcome of this review” will be made. Crucially, the agreement explicitly mentions that “loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change includes, and in some cases involves more than, that which can be reduced by adaptation”. At the same time, however, the mechanism is placed under the adaptation pillar of the negotiations. This was bitterly opposed by many countries, which asked for loss and damage to be entirely distinct from adaptation.

The agreement was a hard-fought compromise between very distant negotiating positions, and will hopefully provide the foundations for an effective loss and damage global framework. The 2016 review, and the subsequent “appropriate decision”, remain important open questions regarding the future of the mechanism. A lot will depend on how the different parties will approach the review process. In addition to this, the scientific question of how to ascribe specific damage to climate change has largely been overlooked. Ultimately, only time will tell how effective the recent compromise reached in Warsaw will be.

Seasonal chill

By Professor Sir Brian Hoskins

The US has been suffering from icy weather and snow storms in recent days.  This image from NOAA shows the surface air temperature anomaly for the week 2-8 December – that is the difference from the mean temperature for this time of the year.

It was very cold over North America (where we get lots of news from!) but very warm in Eurasia and parts of the Arctic (where we don’t!). This is the sort of thing the atmosphere can do on short timescales through having a particular pattern of weather.

 

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China’s carbon intensity reductions continue

By Ajay Gambhir

A fortnight ago a journalist at New Scientist asked me if I’d seen the latest report by the Netherlands Environment Assessment Agency (PBL) and Joint Research Centre (JRC) on last year’s global CO2 emissions figures. He wanted some quick reactions on analysis that showed China’s emissions per unit of economic output (its “emissions intensity”) had declined by over 4% in 2012, compared to 2011 levels. The following analysis is based on my response.

In absolute terms, China’s emissions actually increased by about 3% in 2012, according to the PBL/JRC analysis. But its GDP increased by almost 8% over the course of 2012, so a 3% increase in emissions means between a 4 and 5% decrease in CO2 emissions intensity.

This compares with the 3.5% annual CO2 intensity reduction target in the 12th Five Year Plan, which covers the period 2011-2015 inclusive. 3.5% is the average annual rate of CO2 intensity reductions required over the period 2005-2020, in order that China meets its Copenhagen Accord target (40-45% reduction on 2005 levels by 2020).

What’s particularly interesting is that these reductions have come largely from an increase in renewable energy displacing coal (as opposed, for example, to the offshoring of carbon-intensive industrial output) – lots of hydro, wind and increasingly solar is being deployed in the Chinese power sector. Whilst no form of electricity generation source avoids at least one of the potential problems of local environmental impacts, high costs or variability of output, the increasing share of near-zero-carbon sources in the generation mix gives grounds for optimism in an economy where coal is still dominant (and about 1 coal-fired power station is still being built per week).

However, the challenge to reduce China’s emissions intensity in line with international action that would limit global warming to about 2OC above pre-industrial levels remains a major one. The analysis that I and colleagues at Imperial College and IIASA undertook in 2011 indicated that, if China grew as then projected, with a 6-fold increase in GDP between 2010 and 2050, and its emissions declined to a level of around 3 GtCO2 (equivalent to 1.7 tonnes of CO­2 per person) by 2050, compared to about 8 GtCO­2 in 2010, it would have to reduce its emissions intensity by 6-7% per year on average over that period. This gives an indication of the size of the transformation required.

Also worthy of note is the uncertainty around emissions levels in China. The PBL/JRC analysis has CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement rising from about 9.6 GtCO2 in 2011 to 9.9 GtCO2 in 2012, a 3% rise. By contrast the Global Carbon Project’s estimates, released on 18th November, show Chinese emissions rising from 9.1 GtCO2 in 2011 to 9.6 GtCO2 in 2012 – an almost 6% rise. The emissions in these two estimates are not directly comparable, largely because the former includes emissions from international aviation and shipping attributed to China, whereas the latter doesn’t. But estimating emissions is not an exact science (with PBL/JRC noting that there is a 10% range of uncertainty in the Chinese emissions figures), and these two different perspectives tell two different stories.

Nevertheless, during this period of still-strong economic growth it is interesting to see that China’s economy continues to get less carbon intensive. In fact, according to analysis by the UK’s Committee on Climate Change (CCC) earlier this month, China’s CO2 intensity goals for the period 2005 to 2020 mean it is being more ambitious than a range of other countries including the USA and EU27. The challenge now is to meet the 2020 target and then increase the rate of carbon intensity reductions thereafter.

The full New Scientist article is available here.

A different viewpoint on sustainability and development

By Professor Sir Brian Hoskins

Last week the sustainability group of my village and a neighbouring one organised a workshop for local schools. A few of us gave talks, but much of the morning was given to the young people themselves. Each school shared with the group what it is doing on sustainability. The other major activity for them was a debate on whether sustainability and development are compatible. Each school was given two countries that they had to represent in this debate.

Through a contact in Ethiopia and the amazing commitment of a university teacher there, we also had a video to show the young people of a debate on this subject in a class in the University of Mekelle. This video made a deep impression on me. In the western world the focus is often on whether concerns and action on sustainability should be allowed to hold back development. The Ethiopian students turned the topic completely around. They took it as read that they must have sustainability. The debate for them was whether it was possible to also have development!

Perhaps we should be a bit more humble in our discussions of this and similar issues, particularly in a week when we are seeing rich countries blocking effective action to reduce climate risks that will disproportionately affect the less developed.

International Energy Agency announces closer cooperation with developing nations

By Neil Hirst

On Wednesday six major developing nations plus Russia  agreed to pursue closer cooperation, or “Association” with the International Energy Agency. The announcement is superficially modest, but it’s of major strategic importance. It’s the first crack in the “Berlin wall” that has separated energy policy making in the rich OECD countries from that in the developing world. The announcement itself concentrates on making energy markets more efficient but “energy technologies, energy efficiency, and renewable energy” are also on the agenda. These are early days, and there is long way to go to make this initiative effective. But this statement of intention, at Ministerial level, is a new and crucial step.

The IEA, of course, is not a climate change negotiating body. But we will never get international  agreement on climate mitigation until there is a shared understanding of the practical energy policies that can mitigate climate change at the same time as meeting other vital energy policy objectives for security, economic growth, and development. The IEA is where these issues are thrashed out amongst the OECD nations. Now  the major developing countries are , in many ways, some of the most important players. Getting them around the table with the IEA, on an equal basis,  is an important step in coming to grips with  the world’s energy challenges. Developments in Paris yesterday may turn out to be of greater significance than anything that happened at the COP in Poland.

The countries who have joined with the IEA in making this announcement are Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, and South Africa. There is no certainty where this, initially limited, agreement will lead. But we may be witnessing a first step towards a structure of global energy cooperation that is genuinely fit for purpose.

Question Time and what the IPCC really said about tropical storms

By Dr Simon Buckle

BBC’s Question Time on 14 November saw Lord Lawson citing the IPCC findings to support one of his arguments.  Did I dream that? Then I realised that, of course, the reference to the IPCC was incomplete and misleading so I knew I was awake and back in the strange media-distorted world of the UK debate on climate change.

According to the Daily Express, Lord Lawson said that “If you look at the inter-governmental panel on climate change they say there is absolutely no connection between climate change and tropical storms.” Wrong, but convenient for someone who argues we probably don’t need to do anything much about climate change.

What the IPCC actually said in the admirably cautious Technical Summary of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) was that:

“Globally, there is low confidence in attribution of changes in tropical cyclone activity to human influence. This is due to insufficient observational evidence, lack of physical understanding of the links between anthropogenic drivers of climate and tropical cyclone activity, and the low level of agreement between studies as to the relative importance of internal variability, and anthropogenic and natural forcings.”

So far so good for Lord Lawson, but then, the IPCC goes on to say:

“Projections for the 21st century indicate that it is likely that the global frequency of tropical cyclones will either decrease or remain essentially unchanged, concurrent with a likely increase in both global mean tropical cyclone maximum wind speed and rain rates (Figure TS.26). The influence of future climate change on tropical cyclones is likely to vary by region, but there is low confidence in region-specific projections. The frequency of the most intense storms will more likely than not increase substantially in some basins. More extreme precipitation near the centers of tropical cyclones making landfall are likely in North and Central America, East Africa, West, East, South and Southeast Asia as well as in Australia and many Pacific islands.” (my emphasis).

In making this statement, the IPCC reflects the fact that, while the science is by no means settled, there are a number of studies that provide physical mechanisms linked to climate change that suggest the frequency of the most intense storms would increase with warming.  As I understand it, the warmth of the near surface ocean provides the basic fuel for the cyclone: the winds spiralling around the system evaporate water which cools the ocean and puts latent heat into the atmosphere. When the air rises and the water condenses in deep convection in the storm the heating leads to extra ascent, drawing in more air and leading to faster surface winds. The warmer the ocean is, the more fuel there is for a potential tropical cyclone, and the stronger they could be. Many other aspects come into play such as the changing winds with height and the temperature of the atmosphere up to 15 km. However, in a warmer world, the potential for stronger storms is there.

Indeed, based on this sort of evidence, the quote highlighted above is a statement that the IPCC judges there is more than a 50% chance that the frequency of the most intense storms will increase substantially in some ocean basins.  So if Typhoon Haiyan was not affected by climate change and yet was still one of the most powerful storms ever making landfall, it’s clear that the Philippines and other regions exposed to tropical cyclones have a lot to worry about unless we make a “substantial and sustained reductions of greenhouse gas emissions (SPM Section E).” It would be good to see Lord Lawson quoting that particular part of the IPCC AR5 report!

Updates to the IPCC WG1 Summary for Policy Makers

By Dr Flora MacTavish

The IPCC has released corrected figures for past carbon dioxide emissions and future emissions trajectories quoted in the Summary for Policy Makers of the Working Group 1 report, “Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis”.  The original numbers were published in the report released on 27th September, which was subject to copy edit and final layout changes.

In total, six values from the summary have been changed. As noted by Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Director of the Grantham Institute, these corrections are minor adjustments to historical greenhouse gas emissions and to the cumulative emissions consistent with achieving a 2 degree warming target with different levels of probability.  The 2 degree target is significant because it forms the basis of international climate change negotiations. These minor corrections do not affect any of the conclusions drawn in the Summary for Policy Makers.

Since the IPCC did not do so, I have produced the following table to compare the new values to the original values for all the parameters that have changed. For each parameter, the difference between the original best estimate and the new best estimate is given in the right hand column. This is also expressed as a percentage of the original value.  As can easily be seen, the changes in the parameters are all relatively small compared to the values of those parameters. Most are also small compared to the 90% uncertainty interval (range) given.

If you are unable to read the table below you can also view it here.

Section of the SPM affected Parameter changed Value given in the version released on 27th Sep 2013 (gigatonnes of carbon, GtC) New values, released 11th November  2013 (all in gigatonnes of carbon, GtC) Comment
Section B.5, bullet 4 Cumulative CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production over the period 1750 to 2011. 365 [335 to 395] 375 [345 to 405] The best estimate and range revised upwards by 10 GtC, an increase of 2.7% in the best estimate.
Section B.5, bullet 4 Cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the period 1750 to 2011. 545 [460 to 630]  555 [470 to 640] Best estimate and range revised upwards by 10 GtC, an increase of 1.8% in the best estimate.
Section B.5, bullet 5 The accumulation of carbon from anthropogenic CO2 emissions in natural terrestrial ecosystems over the period 1750 to 2011. 150 [60 to 240] 160 [70 to 250] Best estimate and range revised upwards by 10 GtC, an increase of 6.7% in the best estimate.
Section E.8, bullet 2 Total cumulative CO2 emissions from all anthropogenic sources to limit warming to less than 2°C (from CO2 alone) since the period 1861–1880 with a probability of >33%. 0 to 1560 0 to 1570 The maximum value was revised upwards by 10 GtC, a percentage increase of 0.64%.
Section E.8, bullet 2 The maximum cumulative CO2 emissions from all anthropogenic sources for limiting warming to less than 2°C (including non-CO2 forcing as in RCP2.6 – the lowest emissions scenario used by the IPCC) listed for probabilities of >33%, >50%, and >66%. 880, 840 and 800  900, 820 and 790 Numbers changed by +20, -20 and -10 GtC. The percentage changes were +2.3%, -2.4% and -1.3%.
Section E.8, bullet 2 Cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the period 1870 to 2011. 531 [446 to 616] 515 [445 to 585] Best estimate reduced by 16 GtC, a decrease of 3%. Range also reduced from 170 to 140 GtC.

 

 

The future of our planet is far too important to be left just to our politicians

By Dr Simon Buckle

Two years to go and counting down. That’s the real significance of COP19, the Warsaw Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which runs from 11-22 November. A new universal climate agreement effective from 2020 is what is at stake, and Warsaw is a step on the path.

The COP21 meeting in Paris at the end of 2015 will hopefully be the successful culmination of many years’ of hard work by the UNFCCC Secretariat, government climate negotiators and many, many others. It’s time for governments to act on the words they agreed in the IPCC Summary for Policy Makers launched on 27 September – namely that substantial and sustained reductions in emissions are required to limit climate risks.  No doubt this is a point Ban Ki-Moon will make at his planned high-level Climate Summit in September 2014.

So how important is the Warsaw COP in this packed schedule to Paris? According to Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC Secretariat based in Bonn, the meeting is “a pivotal moment to advance international climate action and showcase a growing momentum to address climate change at all levels of society”.  That’s why there’s a Business Forum and a “Cities Day”.  There is also a Gender Day to showcase women’s role in meeting the climate challenge – a very welcome initiative since the differential impacts on distinct societal groups with contrasting interests and values is at the core of how we decide to respond – or not – to climate change.

Climate change is a critical issue for business, and business has to be part of the solution.  Companies realise that they can both become more profitable and improve business resilience by taking climate change and energy efficiency seriously.  We need to scale up these efforts significantly to limit the risks from climate change. The car industry is a good example of where European emissions regulation has encouraged innovation to reduce emissions.  However, businesses often have shareholders as well as customers and there is only so much they can do without a clear policy framework, a meaningful carbon price to capture the damage emissions do to others and adequate incentives for innovation and investment in clean technologies and new businesses, rather than in the old economy.

There is also a growing recognition that there are clear benefits, even in the short-term, from tackling climate change, including greater energy security.  Cities as key concentrators of human, financial and physical capital and resource use are at the forefront of efforts to make the transition to a lower impact and more resilient way of life. In rural areas, renewable technologies can play a valuable role in extending energy access for poor people in developing countries – a role that will grow as technologies get better and cheaper.

But Warsaw has to be about more than just showcasing what could be if we really tried.  To create the political conditions for an ambitious and effective mitigation agreement in 2015 covering all the major emitters, there’s a huge amount of hard work still to be done.  Warsaw can contribute by helping mobilise governments to deliver an ambitious and effective climate agreement in Paris in 2015.  Well before the end of next year, we need all the major emitting economies to have put on the negotiating table national commitments to significant and verifiable emissions reductions beyond 2020, with the degree of effort tailored to particular national circumstances.  This is not like the Kyoto Protocol. Emissions reductions are needed from developing as well as developed economies; the climate doesn’t care where the emissions come from.

Of course, vulnerable, developing economies will need help to make the transition to low-carbon, resilient economies. So a successful outcome in Paris depends on the quantity and quality of financial, technological and adaptation support that the UNFCCC institutions can mobilise for these countries.  Warsaw will hopefully take decisions to make the Green Climate Fund, the Technology Mechanism and the Adaptation Committee fully operational.  But institutions are not enough in themselves.  The developed economies have to deliver on their promises of additional financing. Clarity on plans to scale up finance to 2020 will be critical to success in Paris in 2015.

The great advantage of the UN process in tackling climate change is that it brings together over 190 countries with very diverse capacities and perspectives in a sustained effort to create an effective global response to climate change.  The voices of the poor and vulnerable can be effective in putting moral pressure on the rich.  The UNFCCC process should help us avoid a situation where the climate risks faced by the majority are determined by the decisions of the few.

This strength is of course also the UNFCCC’s Achilles Heel.  International agreements cannot bind national governments if they don’t want to be bound.  So whatever is agreed at Paris can only be as ambitious as countries judge is in their own interest, taking account of what others are doing in their self interest.  This is why there have been persistent calls for “bottom-up” approaches. While focused groupings, like the Major Economies Forum, can make a valuable contribution to the process, we need the UN process to keep up the pressure and also to provide an independent mechanism for monitoring, reporting and verifying countries’ emissions reductions.

As we’ve seen with the national pledges made after the Copenhagen COP, an agreement in Paris that is based purely on what countries want to do is unlikely to meet the scale of the challenge. Time is short, perhaps 50 years to make the transition to a much lower carbon world.  This is why the UNFCCC is absolutely right to seek to involve a much wider range of non-governmental actors in the discussions at Warsaw and beyond, to try and raise the level of ambition and to redefine what is feasible.

The future of our planet is far too important to be left just to our politicians.

 

Transient Climate Response: an incomplete measure of climate change

By Dr Simon Buckle

It may help to clarify some of the facts related to the lively exchange between Bob Ward and Lord Ridley about the Transient Climate Response (TCR). The TCR is defined by the IPCC as “the change in the global mean surface temperature, averaged over a 20-year period, centred at the time of atmospheric carbon dioxide doubling, in a climate model simulation in which CO2 increases at 1% yr – 1.”

Lord Ridley is right that the IPCC in its recently published AR5 Working Group I report gave an estimated likely (66–100% probability) range for TCR of 1 – 2.5°C.  The IPCC also increased its confidence that the TCR is not greater than 3.0°C though it is not immediately clear what confidence the IPCC places on the 1°C lower limit, rather than the range it provides.

As Bob Ward notes, however, the TCR is unlikely to reflect how global mean surface temperatures might increase during this century, as claimed by Lord Ridley. This is for two reasons. First, our carbon dioxide emissions are rising by around three percent not one percent per year.  Second, the TCR only refers to changes due to carbon dioxide; climate change will be greater than this due to increases in other greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide, though it is also offset to some degree by atmospheric aerosols.

Our current emissions are broadly in line with the most emissions intensive of the IPCC’s scenarios for AR5 – the so-called RCP8.5 scenario.  This is likely to lead to an average increase in global mean surface temperature for the final two decades of this century of 3.2-5.4°C relative to the second half of the nineteenth century.  This is a huge change and will be even larger in high latitudes and over continents.  The scale of change is broadly comparable to that which separates our present climate from that of the Ice Age.

I don’t think we have any clear idea of what the full economic, social and political impact of such huge changes would be.  I am all in favour of policies that lift people out of poverty, insecurity and hunger now.  But that does not mean we should ignore the huge risks we are taking with the climate to which humans have become adapted. Presenting this as a sharp dichotomy is wrong.