Most of world’s land to lose water as climate heats

Water is the most precious thing on earth, the life-sustaining fluid that most of us take for granted.

But as the earth warms and climates shifts, modst of planet will be suffering frrom reduced water supplies, one of the most worrying impacts of climate change.

Yadu Pokhrel, Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Michigan State University and Farshid Felfelani, an MSU Postdoctoral Research Associate, examine the data and its implications for a report in The Conversation, an academic journal written in conversational English:

Two-thirds of Earth’s land is on pace to lose water as the climate warms – that’s a problem for people, crops and forests

The world watched with a sense of dread in 2018 as Cape Town, South Africa, counted down the days until the city would run out of water. The region’s surface reservoirs were going dry amid its worst drought on record, and the public countdown was a plea for help.

By drastically cutting their water use, Cape Town residents and farmers were able to push back “Day Zero” until the rain came, but the close call showed just how precarious water security can be. California also faced severe water restrictions during its recent multiyear drought. And Mexico City is now facing water restrictions after a year with little rain.

There are growing concerns that many regions of the world will face water crises like these in the coming decades as rising temperatures exacerbate drought conditions.

Understanding the risks ahead requires looking at the entire landscape of terrestrial water storage – not just the rivers, but also the water stored in soils, groundwater, snowpack, forest canopies, wetlands, lakes and reservoirs.

We study changes in the terrestrial water cycle as engineers and hydrologists. In a new study published Jan. 11, we and a team of colleagues from universities and institutes around the world showed for the first time how climate change will likely affect water availability on land from all water storage sources over the course of this century.

We found that the sum of this terrestrial water storage is on pace to decline across two-thirds of the land on the planet. The worst impacts will be in areas of the Southern Hemisphere where water scarcity is already threatening food security and leading to human migration and conflict. Globally, one in 12 people could face extreme drought related to water storage every year by the end of this century, compared to an average of about one in 33 at the end of the 20th century.

These findings have implications for water availability, not only for human needs, but also for trees, plants and the sustainability of agriculture.

Where the risks are highest

The water that keeps land healthy, crops growing and human needs met comes from a variety of sources. Mountain snow and rainfall feed streams that affect community water supplies. Soil water content directly affects plant growth. Groundwater resources are crucial for both drinking water supplies and crop productivity in irrigated regions.

While studies often focus just on river flow as an indicator of water availability and drought, our study instead provides a holistic picture of the changes in total water available on land. That allows us to capture nuances, such as the ability of forests to draw water from deep groundwater sources during years when the upper soil levels are drier.

The declines we found in land water storage are especially alarming in the Amazon River basin, Australia, southern Africa, the Mediterranean region and parts of the United States. In these regions, precipitation is expected to decline sharply with climate change, and rising temperatures will increase evaporation. At the same time, some other regions will become wetter, a process already seen today.

The map shows the projected change in terrestrial water storage by the end of the 21st century, compared to the 1975-2005 average, under a mid-range scenario for global warming. A continuum of yellow to orange to dark red reflects increasing severity of loss of stored water; teal to blue to dark blue reflects increasing gains in stored water. Yadu Pokhrel, et al, Nature Climate Change, 2021, CC BY-ND

Our findings for the Amazon basin add to the longstanding debate over the fate of the rainforest in a warmer world. Many studies using climate model projections have warned of widespread forest die-off in the future as less rainfall and warmer temperatures lead to higher heat and moisture stress combined with forest fires.

In an earlier study, we found that the deep-rooted rainforests may be more resilient to short-term drought than they appear because they can tap water stored in soils deeper in the ground that aren’t considered in typical climate model projections. However, our new findings, using multiple models, indicate that the declines in total water storage, including deep groundwater stores, may lead to more water shortages during dry seasons when trees need stored water the most and exacerbate future droughts. All weaken the resilience of the rainforests.

A new way of looking at drought

Our study also provides a new perspective on future droughts.

There are different kinds of droughts. Meteorological droughts are caused by lack of precipitation. Agricultural droughts are caused by lack of water in soils. Hydrological droughts involve lack of water in rivers and groundwater. We provided a new perspective on droughts by looking at the total water storage.

We found that moderate to severe droughts involving water storage would increase until the middle of the 21st century and then remain stable under future scenarios in which countries cut their emissions, but extreme to exceptional water storage droughts could continue to increase until the end of the century.

That would further threaten water availability in regions where water storage is projected to decline.

Changes driven by global warming

These declines in water storage and increases in future droughts are primarily driven by climate change, not land-water management activities such as irrigation and groundwater pumping. This became clear when we examined simulations of what the future would look like if climate conditions were unchanged from preindustrial times. Without the increase in greenhouse gas emissions, terrestrial water storage would remain generally stable in most regions.

If future increases in groundwater use for irrigation and other needs are also considered, the projected reduction in water storage and increase in drought could be even more severe.

Map of the day: 2020 billion-dollar climate disasters

From the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, a map of the billion-dollar plus climate disasters to strike the U.S. in 2020:

More from the report:

There were 22 separate billion-dollar weather and climate disasters across the United States, shattering the previous annual record of 16 events, which occurred in 2017 and 2011. The billion-dollar events of 2020 included a record 7 disasters linked to tropical cyclones, 13 to severe storms, 1 to drought, and 1 to wildfires. The 22 events cost the nation a combined $95 billion in damages. 

Adding the 2020 events to the record that began in 1980, the U.S. has sustained 285 weather and climate disasters where the overall damage costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. (All cost estimates are adjusted based on the Consumer Price Index as of December 2020). The cumulative cost for these 285 events exceeds $1.875 trillion.

More generally, the U.S. experienced a record-breaking number of named tropical cyclones (30), eclipsing the record of 28 set in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina. Of these 30 storms, a record 12 made landfall in the United States. And 7 of the 12 became billion-dollar disasters—also a new record.

Not to be left out, many central states were impacted by a historically powerful derecho on August 10, which caused impacts comparable to an inland hurricane. 2020 also brought a record-breaking U.S. wildfire season, which burned more than 10.2 million acres. California more than doubled its previous annual record for area burned (last set in 2018) with over 4.1 million acres. In total, it is clear that 2020 (red line below) stands head and shoulders above all other years in regard to the number of billion-dollar disasters.

In broader context, the total cost of U.S. billion-dollar disasters over the last 5 years (2016-2020) exceeds $600 billion, with a 5-year annual cost average of $121.3 billion, both of which are new records. The U.S. billion-dollar disaster damage costs over the last 10-years (2011-2020) were also historically large:  at least $890 billion from 135 separate billion-dollar events. Moreover, the losses over the most recent 15 years (2006-2020) are $1.036 trillion in damages from 173 separate billion-dollar disaster events.

Among the other items in their report, is this dramatic graph, revealing the ever-growing inflation-adjusted costs incurred from climate disasters over recent years, compared to historic averages:

Month-by-month accumulation of billion-dollar disasters for each year on record. The colored lines represent the top 5 years for most billion-dollar disasters prior to 2020. All other years are colored black. Before the end of August, 2020 (red line) had broken the previous annual record for billion-dollar disasters—16—set in 2011 (royal blue) and tied in 2017 (purple).  NOAA image by NCEI.

Europe hit hottest-ever year, planet record tied

Copernicus Climate Change Service, an intergovernmental service in the European union keep close track on leading indicators of the earth’s changing climate, and this year report offers a stark warning about the the years ahead.

The planet marked a near record overall, with Europe its hottest year ever.

From the Copernicus Climate Change Service:

Air temperature at a height of two metres for 2020, shown relative to its 1981–2010 average. Source: ERA5. Credit: Copernicus Climate Change Service/ECMWF

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) today reveals that globally 2020 was tied with the previous warmest year 2016, making it the sixth in a series of exceptionally warm years starting in 2015, and 2011-2020 the warmest decade recorded. Meanwhile, Europe saw its warmest year on record, 0.4°C warmer than 2019 which was previously the warmest year. Together with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), C3S also reports that CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere have continued to rise at a rate of approximately 2.3 ppm/year in 2020 reaching a maximum of 413 ppm during May 2020. Both C3S and CAMS are implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Commission with funding by the European Union.

Decadal averages of global air temperature at a height of two metres estimated change since the pre-industrial period according to different datasets: ERA5 (ECMWF Copernicus Climate Change Service, C3S); GISTEMPv4 (NASA); HadCRUT5 (Met Office Hadley Centre); NOAAGlobalTempv5 (NOAA), JRA-55 (JMA); and Berkeley Earth. Credit: Copernicus Climate Change Service/ECMWF

C3S’s dataset for surface air temperatures shows that:

• Globally, 2020 was on a par with the 2016 record
• 2020 was 0.6°C warmer than the standard 1981-2010 reference period and around 1.25°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial period
• This makes the last six years the warmest six on record
• Europe saw its warmest year on record at 1.6°C above the 1981-2010 reference period, and 0.4°C above 2019, the previous warmest year
• The largest annual temperature deviation from the 1981-2010 average was concentrated over the Arctic and northern Siberia, reaching to over 6°C above average

Furthermore, satellite measurements of global atmospheric CO₂ concentrations show that:

• CO₂ global column-averaged maximum reached 413 ppm
• CO₂ continued to rise in 2020, increasing by 2.3 ± 0.4 ppm,slightly less than the growth rate of the previous year

Parts of the Arctic and northern Siberia saw some of the largest annual temperature deviations from average in 2020, with a large region seeing deviations of as much as 3°C and in some locations even over 6°C for the year as a whole. On a monthly basis, the largest positive temperature anomalies for the region repeatedly reached more than 8°C. Western Siberia experienced an exceptionally warm winter and spring, a pattern also seen over summer and autumn in the Siberian Arctic and over much of the Arctic Ocean.

Furthermore, the wildfire season was unusually active in this region, with fires first detected in May, continuing throughout summer and well into autumn. As a result, poleward of the Arctic Circle, fires released a record amount of 244 megatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2020, over a third more than the 2019 record. During the second half of the year, Arctic sea ice was significantly lower than average for the time of the year with July and October seeing the lowest sea ice extent on record for the respective month.

In general, the Northern Hemisphere experienced above average temperatures for the year, apart from a region over the central North Atlantic. In contrast, parts of the Southern Hemisphere saw below average temperatures, most notably over the eastern equatorial Pacific, associated with the cooler La Niña conditions developing during the second half of the year. It is notable that 2020 matches the 2016 record despite a cooling La Niña, whereas 2016 was a record year that began with a strong warming El Niño event.

Annual averages of global air temperature at a height of two metres estimated change since the pre-industrial period (left-hand axis) and relative to 1981-2010 (right-hand axis) according to different datasets: Red bars: ERA5 (ECMWF Copernicus Climate Change Service, C3S); Dots: GISTEMPv4 (NASA); HadCRUT5 (Met Office Hadley Centre); NOAAGlobalTempv5 (NOAA), JRA-55 (JMA); and Berkeley Earth. Credit: Copernicus Climate Change Service/ECMWF.

Europe 2020: warmest year on record

2020 was Europe’s warmest year recorded, and seasonally winter 2019/20 and autumn 2020 were also the warmest recorded. Winter 2020, meaning December 2019 to February 2020, exceeded the previous warmest of 2016 by almost 1.4°C, while autumn (September to November 2020) passed the old record set in 2006 by 0.4°C. In addition, western Europe experienced a significant heatwave in late July and early August. The next four warmest years for Europe also happened during the last decade.

A full and detailed analysis of Europe’s climate will be released in April when Copernicus presents its annual European State of the Climate 2020.

Carlo Buontempo, Director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), comments: “2020 stands out for its exceptional warmth in the Arctic and a record number of tropical storms in the North Atlantic. It is no surprise that the last decade was the warmest on record, and is yet another reminder of the urgency of ambitious emissions reductions to prevent adverse climate impacts in the future.”

CO2 concentrations continue to rise in 2020

Monthly global CO2 concentrations from satellites (top panel) and derived annual mean growth rates (bottom panel) for 2003-2020. Top: column-averaged CO2 (XCO2) based on the C3S/Obs4MIPs (v4.2) consolidated (2003-2019) and CAMS preliminary near-real time data (2020) records. The listed numerical values in red indicate annual XCO2 averages. Bottom: Annual mean XCO2 growth rates derived from data shown in the top panel. The listed numerical values correspond to the growth rate in ppm/year including an uncertainty estimate in brackets. Source: University of Bremen for Copernicus Climate Change Service and Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service/ECMWF

Analysis of satellite data reveals that carbon dioxide concentrations have continued to rise in 2020 reaching an unprecedented global column-averaged maximum of approximately 413.1 ppm. The estimated annual mean XCO₂ growth rate for 2020 was 2.3 ± 0.4 ppm/year. This is less than the growth rate in 2019, which was 2.5 ± 0.2 ppm/year and also less than the 2.9 ppm/year increase in 2015 and 2016. However, 2015 and 2016 experienced a strong El Niño climate event, which resulted in a larger atmospheric growth rate due to a weaker than normal uptake of atmospheric CO₂ by land vegetation and large CO₂ wildfire emissions, particularly in Indonesia in those years. The wildfires in the Arctic and Australia in 2020, although of unprecedented magnitude in their regions, represent only a small fraction of global fire emissions.

Vincent-Henri Peuch, Director of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), comments: “While carbon dioxide concentrations have risen slightly less in 2020 than in 2019, this is no cause for complacency. Until the net global emissions reduce to zero, CO₂ will continue to accumulate in the atmosphere and drive further climate change.”

In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been estimated by the Global Carbon Project that there was a reduction of around 7% of fossil CO₂ emissions.

“To what extent this was a factor in the lower total increase is debatable though, as the variations in global growth rate are dominated by natural processes. We must continue efforts to decrease CO₂ net emissions to reduce the risk of climate-related change”, Vincent-Henri Peuch adds.

“The extraordinary climate events of 2020 and the data from the Copernicus Climate Change Service show us that we have no time to lose. We must come together as a global community, to ensure a just transition to a net zero future. It will be difficult, but the cost of inaction is too great, which is why the commitments made under our European Green Deal are so very necessary”, highlights Matthias Petschke, Director for Space, European Commission’s Directorate-General for Defence industry and Space.

Biodiversity collapses in the Eastern Mediterranean

For anyone doubting the reality of global warming, consider this: The populations of native lifeforms of the once Temperate Eastern Mediterranean Sea have collapsed, replaced by species previously native only to tropical waters.

The implications are profound.

From the University of Vienna:

Native biodiversity collapse in the Eastern Mediterranean

An international team led by Paolo G. Albano from the Department of Palaeontology at the University of Vienna quantified a dramatic biodiversity collapse of up to 95 per cent of native species in the Eastern Mediterranean. The study is published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

The coastline of Israel is one of the warmest areas in the Mediterranean Sea. Here, most marine species have been at the limits of their tolerance to high temperatures for a long time – and now they are already beyond those limits. Global warming has led to an increase in sea temperatures beyond those temperatures that Mediterranean species can sustain. Consequently, many of them are going locally extinct.

Paolo Albano’s team quantified this local extinction for marine molluscs, an invertebrate group encompassing snails, clams and mussels. They thoroughly surveyed the Israeli coastline and reconstructed the historical species diversity using the accumulations of empty shells on the sea bottom.

Biodiversity loss in the last few decades

The shallow habitats at scuba diving depths are affected most. Here, the researchers were not able to find living individuals of up to 95 per cent of the species whose shells were found in the sediments. The study suggests that most of this loss has occurred recently, presumably in just the last few decades.

Additionally, most of the species still found alive cannot grow enough to reproduce, “a clear sign that the biodiversity collapse will further continue,” says Albano. In contrast, the tropical species that enter from the Suez Canal thrive. The warm waters in the Eastern Mediterranean are very suitable habitats for them. Indeed, they occur in large populations and their individuals are fully fit to reproduce.

“For anyone accustomed to snorkel or dive in the Mediterranean,” explains the researcher, “the underwater scenario in Israel is unrecognisable: The most common species are missing, while in contrast tropical species are everywhere”.

The future perspectives for the Mediterranean are not good. The sea will continue to warm even if we would stop carbon dioxide emissions today. This is due to the inertia of the system, the long braking distance, so to speak. 

It is thus likely that the biodiversity collapse will continue to spread. It may already be occurring in other eastern Mediterranean areas not surveyed yet, and it will expand to the West and intensify. Only intertidal organisms, which are to some extent pre-adapted to temperature extremes, and habitats in deeper water, where the temperature is markedly lower, will continue to persist – at least for some time.

“But the future is dim unless we immediately act to reduce our carbon emissions and to protect marine habitats from other pressures which contribute to biodiversity loss,” says Paolo Albano, “The changes that already occurred in the warmest areas of the Mediterranean may not be reversible, but we would be able to save large parts of the rest of the basin.”

Methodologically, the study was also interesting due to its interdisciplinary character: “These results came from the cooperation of scientists with very different backgrounds,” says Martin Zuschin, Head of the Department of Palaeontology and co-author of the study – “In particular, the cooperation between ecologists and palaeontologists is providing unique new views on how humankind is impacting biodiversity”.

Carmakers to their grandkids: Suck it up

Carmakers have revealed they have no conscience, ramping up production of vehicles, knowing that Donald Trump would do nothing to stop them as their products spew elevated emissions into the atmosphere, increasing the pace of global warming in a world their own grandchildren will inherit.

From the Associated Press:

A new government report says gas mileage for new vehicles dropped and pollution increased in model year 2019 for the first time in five years.

The mileage increase comes as Americans continue to buy SUVs and trucks, and shift away from more efficient vehicles.

The Environmental Protection Agency says the changes show that few automakers could meet strict emissions and mileage standards set by the Obama administration.

But environmental groups contend that automakers used loopholes and stopped marketing fuel-efficient vehicles knowing that the Trump administration would roll back mileage and pollution standards.

The EPA report released Wednesday says gas mileage fell 0.2 miles per gallon, while greenhouse gas emissions rose by 3 grams per mile traveled, compared with 2018 figures. Mileage fell and pollution increased for the first time since 2014.

Bolivians face dry future as glacier vanishes

Climate change is already hammaering one South American nation, as a vanishing glacier threatens future thirst in a city of 1.8 million residents.

From MercoPress:

Bolivia’s Tuni glacier is disappearing faster than initially anticipated, according to scientists in the Andean nation, a predicament that will likely make worse water shortages already plaguing the capital La Paz, just 60 km away.

Scientists from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA), who monitor the Tuni and other regional glaciers, said the once sprawling glacier had been reduced to just one square kilometer.

Where once they had predicted it would last through 2025, now they say its disappearance is imminent.

“This entire sector was once covered with ice,” said Dr. Edson Ramírez, a university glaciologist. Across much of the glacier´s former path, now only discolored rock remains, exposed for the first time in centuries.

Tweet of the day: Happy 18th to a world hero

From here Tweetstream, with a hefty dash of humor:

London’s Sunday Times has fielded a compelling interview with the Swedish activist today,

Some excerpts:

She started thinking seriously about climate change after a lesson in which a teacher showed a documentary about the island of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean. Thunberg started to cry. Others in the class were distressed too but they moved on when the school bell rang. Thunberg could not. It has been pointed out that people with autism are overrepresented within the climate movement and I’m interested to know why she thinks this is. “Humans are social animals. We copy each other’s behaviour, so if no one else is acting as though there’s no crisis then it can’t be that bad. But we who have autism, for instance, we don’t follow social codes, we don’t copy each other’s behaviour, we have our own behaviour,” she says. “It’s like the tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes; the child who doesn’t care about his reputation or becoming unpopular or being ridiculed is the only one who dares to question this lie that everyone else just silently accepts.”

It is a different folk tale that springs to my mind as I talk to her; the Dutch boy with his finger in the dyke. She is not at all emotional when she discusses the environment; she reads, speaks to scientists regularly and is motivated by cold, hard facts. Fame was just a consequence of her conviction and is not something she enjoys. She gets stopped in the street everywhere she goes except at home in Sweden. It is a cultural phenomenon called Jantelagen, or Jante’s law, she has said: a term used by Scandinavians to describe their cultural inclination towards disapproval of individual achievement. “I know that people see me, I can see in their eyes that they recognise me, and sometimes they point, but they don’t stop and talk,” she says. “It’s nice because I’m being left alone, but it gets very socially awkward because I know they know and it becomes like a game they all pretend.”

She copes with it by spending most of her time at home with her family. Her younger sister, Beata, was diagnosed with ADHD, and the family is a tight-knit unit. Over the years there has been a lot of speculation about the influence her parents have over her profile and her campaigning, but it is very clear when you talk to her that Thunberg thinks for herself. Does it make her feel lonely? She shakes her head. “Of course it is hard to find someone who understands what my life is like, but that doesn’t mean I’m lonely because I have so many people supporting me,” she says. One of them is Malala Yousafzai, the Nobel prize-winning Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban and became a global champion of education for girls. They met when they were filming a series for the BBC and have stayed close. Yousafzai, 23, has advised her to “take care of yourself, to remember that you are probably in it for the long run, so you shouldn’t take on too much”, Thunberg says.

<snip>

She is decidedly laid-back about other people’s choices too. I ask what she makes of celebrities who talk about the environment while flying around the world. “I don’t care,” she says. “I’m not telling anyone else what to do, but there is a risk when you are vocal about these things and don’t practise as you preach, then you will become criticised for that and what you are saying won’t be taken seriously.” Nor does she agree that having children is bad for the planet. The whole issue is a distraction, she says, and one that scares people away. “I don’t think it’s selfish to have children. It is not the people who are the problem, it is our behaviour.”

Her own choices demonstrate what she believes is the right way to live. She stopped flying years ago — she famously sailed to America to speak at the 2019 UN climate summit, a voyage that took 15 days (footage shows her ashen-faced, disappearing out of shot with a bucket). She is a vegan and has stopped “consuming things”. What does that mean, I ask. Clothes? She nods. What if she needs something? “The worst-case scenario I guess I’ll buy second-hand, but I don’t need new clothes. I know people who have clothes, so I would ask them if I could borrow them or if they have something they don’t need any more,” she says. “I don’t need to fly to Thailand to be happy. I don’t need to buy clothes I don’t need, so I don’t see it as a sacrifice.”

Greenland: Scenes of an icy climatic breakup

From NASA’s Earth Observatory, a dramatic image captures the dramatic breakup of Greenland’s ice cap as the two-mile-thick frozen mantle melts and ice begins flowing into the sea. The added red regions note areas of movement, with the intensity of the reds reflecting the relative pace of glacial movement:

More from NASA:

A recent study of Greenland’s ice sheet found that glaciers are retreating in nearly every sector of the island, while also undergoing other physical changes. Some of those changes are causing the rerouting of freshwater rivers beneath the ice.

In a study led by Twila Moon of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, researchers took a detailed look at physical changes to 225 of Greenland’s ocean-terminating glaciers—narrow fingers of ice that flow from the ice sheet interior to the ocean. They found that none of those glaciers has substantially advanced since the year 2000, and 200 of them have retreated.

The map at the top of this page shows measurements of ice velocity across Greenland as measured by satellites. The data were compiled through the Inter-mission Time Series of Land Ice Velocity and Elevation project (ITS_LIVE), which brings together observations of glaciers collected by multiple Landsat satellites between 1985 and 2015 into a single dataset open to scientists and the public.

About 80 percent of Greenland is blanketed by an ice sheet, also known as a continental glacier, that reaches a thickness of up to 3 kilometers (2 miles). As glaciers flow toward the sea, they are usually replenished by new snowfall on the interior of the ice sheet that gets compacted into ice. Multiple studies have shown that the balance between glacier melting and replenishment is changing, as is the rate of iceberg calving. Due to rising air and ocean temperatures, the ice sheet is losing mass at an accelerating rate and additional meltwater is flowing into the sea.

“The coastal environment in Greenland is undergoing a major transformation,” said Alex Gardner, a snow and ice scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and co-author of the study. “We are already seeing new sections of the ocean and fjords opening up as the ice sheet retreats, and now we have evidence of changes to these freshwater flows. So losing ice is not just about changing sea level, it’s also about reshaping Greenland’s coastline and altering the coastal ecology.”

Though the findings by Moon, Gardner, and colleagues are in line with other Greenland observations, the new survey captures a trend that has not been apparent in previous work. As individual glaciers retreat, they are also changing in ways that are likely rerouting freshwater flows under the ice. For example, glaciers change in thickness not only as warmer air melts ice off of their surfaces, but also as their flow speed changes. Both scenarios can lead to changes in the distribution of pressure beneath the ice. This, in turn, can change the path of subglacial rivers, since water will always take the path of least resistance (lowest pressure).

Citing previous studies on the ecology of Greenland, the authors note that freshwater rivers under the ice sheet deliver nutrients to bays, deltas, and fjords around Greenland. In addition, the under-ice rivers enter the ocean where the ice and bedrock meet, which is often well below the ocean’s surface. The relatively buoyant freshwater rises, carrying nutrient-rich deep ocean water to the surface, where the nutrients can be consumed by phytoplankton. Research has shown that glacial meltwater rivers directly affect the productivity of phytoplankton, which serve as a foundation of the marine food chain. Combined with the opening of new fjords and sections of ocean as glaciers and ice shelves retreat, these changes amount to a transformation of the local environment.

“The speed of ice loss in Greenland is stunning,” said Moon. “As the ice sheet edge responds to rapid ice loss, the character and behavior of the system as a whole are changing, with the potential to influence ecosystems and people who depend on them.”

Quote of the day: Climate and COVID are linked

From Ilana Cohen, associate managing editor of the Harvard Political Review, writing at Inside Climate News:

In many ways, the United States’ struggle to control Covid-19 has painted a picture, part hopeful and part harrowing, of how the climate crisis might play out in the decades to come. 

Many climate activists and progressives hoped—at least at initially—that the death and illness associated with a worldwide pandemic would make it easier for people to take distant climate threats more seriously.

It didn’t take all that much imagination. The parallels were everywhere.

As Bullard noted, the same communities were being disproportionately affected in each crisis. 

And the same fine particle air pollution, known as PM 2.5, caused primarily by burning fossil fuels, was shown in an early Harvard study to be linked to higher Covid-19 deaths rates among people living in polluted areas. 

Climate change is also responsible for the proliferation of zoonotic diseases, like Covid-19, as drought, flooding and extreme weather force food production to encroach on habitats populated by bats, monkeys and other virus-carrying wild animals.

But while Covid-19 has raised some people’s consciousness about the urgent need to act on climate change, it has had the opposite effect on others. At least in the United States, the president and much of his base have embraced the same science denialism that has for years greeted climate change, even as deaths from the coronavirus soared.

Whether or not the Covid-19 pandemic ultimately bolsters or hampers the prospects for U.S. and global climate action, the two crises remain inextricably linked. At least for the foreseeable future, any effort to meaningfully address the root causes of one will involve confronting the other. 

Read the rest. . .

Australia opts for ‘climate exceptionalism’

Born Down Under in Melbourne, Stephen Pascoe is a history and urbanist and a Mellon Humanities Faculty Fellow at the University of California, Irvine.

As an Australian native, he has a particular interest in the steadfast refusal of Australia’s government to make any significant moves towards climate mitigation.

So what’s the problem?

He walks us through it in an essay for Aljazeera, of which the following is a key excerpt:

Australia’s seemingly suicidal posture towards climate change often puzzles foreign observers. Indeed, the Australian state’s persistent reluctance to take meaningful action as the country wilts from the worst effects of climate change defies rational explanation. Noting that “Australia is already having to deal with some of the most extreme manifestations of climate change”, renowned British conservationist David Attenborough once described the Australian government’s disinterest in responding to the climate emergency as “extraordinary”.

Australia’s apparent indifference towards this global emergency is not so much a case of climate change denialism as it is exceptionalism. There are some climate change deniers on the far right who exercise an inordinate amount of political power relative to the size of their support base. However, more fundamentally, what guides the Australian state’s problematic stance on climate change is a form of exceptionalism.

Australia’s climate change exceptionalism rests on several pillars.

First, the conviction on the part of successive Australian governments that our national consumption patterns have no material effect on climate change and the resulting belief that we can extract ourselves from the global effort to combat it without this causing much harm.

Second, a purposeful downplaying of the contributions of Australian extractive industries to carbon supply chains, which paints the country as an incidental intermediary in the production of global emissions, encourages Australians to view climate change as somebody else’s problem. This, despite Australia now being the third-largest exporter of carbon dioxide in fossil fuels, behind Russia and Saudi Arabia.

These convenient fictions allow Australian governments to ignore the scientific consensus on climate change when politically and economically convenient and opt in an out of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures as they see fit.

Scientists stymied Trump climate report rewrite

The Washington Post today has an excellent report on how U.S. government scientists thwarted the President’s efforts to rewrite a critical report on climate change.

Here’s the intro:

The National Climate Assessment, America’s premier contribution to climate knowledge, stands out for many reasons: Hundreds of scientists across the federal government and academia join forces to compile the best insights available on climate change. The results, released just twice a decade or so, shape years of government decisions.

Now, as the clock runs down on President Trump’s time in office, the climate assessment has gained a new distinction: It is one of the few major U.S. climate initiatives that his administration tried, yet largely failed, to undermine.

<snip>

In November, the administration removed the person responsible for the next edition of the report and replaced him with someone who has downplayed climate science, though at this point it seems to be too little, too late. But the efforts started back in 2018, when officials pushed out a top official and leaned on scientists to soften their conclusions — the scientists refused — and then later tried to bury the report, which didn’t work either.

“Thank God they didn’t know how to run a government,” said Thomas Armstrong, who during the Obama administration led the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which produces the assessment. “It could have been a lot worse.”

Donald Trump has consistently denied climate change, as Inside Climate News noted a year ago:

In almost every agency overseeing energy, the environment and health, Trump selected top officials who dispute the mainstream consensus on the urgency of climate action. People with little scientific background, or strong ties to industries they would be regulating, were appointed to scientific leadership positions. One of the administration’s first actions was to order scientists and other employees at EPA and other agencies to halt public communications. Several federal scientists working on climate change have said they were silenced, sidelined or demoted. At least three—a senior employee at the Department of Interior, one at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and another at the National Park Service—invoked whistleblower protections. Independent science advisors, such as members of the EPA’s Board of Scientific Counselors, have also been sidelined. Scientific content on government websites has been altered and the public’s access to data reduced. Climate data from the government’s open portal website was removed. So was the EPA’s climate change website. The words “climate change” have been purged from government reports, and other reports have been buried, including by officials at the Department of Agriculture. The administration even edited a major Defense Department report to downplay its climate findings. Through speeches and tweets, the president has repeatedly spread misinformation to the public through his climate denial and denigration of renewable energy.

EPA, meanwhile, is working to finalize its proposal to suppress the types of scientific evidence the agency can use in writing its rules. This includes prohibiting the use of well-established, long-term scientific studies underpinning the nation’s air pollution rules, a change the fossil fuel industry had sought for years. Known as the “secret science” rule, it has been lambasted by scientists and health experts worldwide. Related, the White House issued a memo offering new ways for fossil fuel and other industries to challenge science-based policies.

Trump’s focus, instead, was on corporate profits, and his ceaseless gutting of environmental rules came with a promise that his efforts would launch an economic book.

That didn’t go so well, as the New York Times reported 3 December:

Economists see little evidence that Mr. Trump’s rollback of climate change rules bolstered the economy. Jobs in the auto sector have been declining since the beginning of 2019, and the trend continued despite the rollback of rules aimed at vehicle pollution from greenhouse gases. Domestic coal production last year dropped to its lowest level since 1978. In September, the French government actually blocked a $7 billion contract to purchase American natural gas, arguing that gas produced without controls on methane leaks was too harmful to the climate.

Meantime, in May, carbon dioxide levels reached 417 parts per million, the highest level recorded in human history.

“Because global emissions in 2020 are so much higher than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, that means that a year wasted in the Trump administration on not acting on climate has much bigger consequences than a year wasted in Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush or Bill Clinton’s administration,” said Michael Wara, a climate and energy expert at Stanford University.

Analysts say that the past four years represented a closing window in which the world’s largest polluting economies, working together, could have charted a path toward slowing the rate of planet-warming emissions. To do that, a scientific report in 2018 found that the world’s economies would need to reduce emissions 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030 — and the policies to do so should be implemented rapidly.

Instead, in the largest economy in the world, they began to fray.

We leave the last word, or rather burn to out favorite Swede [and note the face of the guard, too]:

The Amazon rainforest is dying; we’ll all be harmed

The Rainforest Alliance sounded an alarm last month, one we ignore at our peril:

Scanning the news in September was terrifying. It seemed like the entire world was ablaze: Brazil, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, California—all burning. California alone lost more than four million acres in what has turned out to be the state’s worst fire season on record. These fires upended thousands of lives—tragically taking some of them—and destroyed land, homes, and livelihoods.

Climate change certainly plays a role in California’s disaster, but to an extent fire has always been part of the ecosystem here: The western US has a largely arid, Mediterranean climate.

But one place where fires shouldn’t be raging? The Amazon rainforest. It receives well north of 100 inches of rainfall a year. Yet between January and September of 2020, 6,231,100 hectares of Brazilian Amazon burned—more than during the same period of 2019, which was widely regarded as catastrophic. Some of the world’s most biologically rich forests—literally teeming with unique plants and animals—went up in smoke.

Fires of this scale in the world’s largest tropical rainforest should signal to all of us that something is very wrong—that in fact, a lot of things are terribly wrong.

Brazil’s national government encourages deforestation and defunds the agencies that protect forests and the Indigenous people who steward them. Fire often follows deforestation. Irresponsible big companies tacitly enable fires by purchasing soy, beef, and other staples that were produced on land where rainforest was cleared. Frontline communities, desperate to beat back fire, struggle to access the resources, equipment, and know-how they need to protect their forests.

What’s the Amazon end game if we don’t change? Scientists say we are approaching an ecosystem tipping point, after which the Amazon forests will gradually convert to grasslands. Take away the Amazon rainforest and what do you get? A hotter world. More fires in Brazil. More fires in California, Colorado, and Australia. More fires everywhere.

Professor of Geography and Latin American studies at the University of Florida’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and their Center for Latin American Studies, cited his own concerns early last year:

A disturbance on one part of the global surface can impact a place far, far away. Some computer models show that a desiccated Amazon could actually reduce rainfalls and affect agriculture in the Mississippi Valley. On the less tangible side, the Amazon is the richest store of biodiversity on the planet. You need to have that in order to keep the planet capable of evolutionary adaptation. The Amazon is essential in that respect. And anyone concerned about cultural variety and the integrity of native peoples has to place very high value on the Amazon, because it’s the only place where you really have that amount of cultural richness.

A graphic look at what’s been lost

From Nature, 25 February 2020.

An offer made. . .and spurned

Meanwhile, under South America’s version of Donald Trump, Brazil continues to levels the forests to pave the way for vast fields of soybeans and grazing lands for cattle.

From a 30 November report in the Guardian:

A vast expanse of Amazon rainforest seven times larger than Greater London was destroyed over the last year as deforestation surged to a 12-year high under Brazil’s far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.

Figures released by the Brazilian space institute, Inpe, on Monday showed at least 11,088 sq km of rainforest was razed between August 2019 and July this year – the highest figure since 2008.

Carlos Rittl, a Brazilian environmentalist who works at Germany’s Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, said the numbers were “humiliating, shameful and outrageous” – and a clear sign of the damage being done to the environment since Bolsonaro took office in January 2019.

“This is an area a third the size of Belgium – gigantic areas of forest that are being lost simply because under Bolsonaro those who are doing the destroying feel no fear of being punished,” Rittl said.

During the 29 September Presidential debate between Trump and Joe Biden, the Democratic contender said that, if elected, he would offer Brazil $20 billion to preserve the vital rainforest.

CNN reported on what happened next:

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has slammed US presidential candidate Joe Biden for his remarks about the Amazon rainforest during Tuesday’s presidential debate, saying it was “difficult to understand such a disastrous and unnecessary declaration.”

Bolsonaro, an ally of President Donald Trump, tweeted on Wednesday saying Biden “stated yesterday that he could pay us as much as US$20 billion to stop the ‘destruction’ of the Amazon Rainforest adding that, if we did not accept this offer, he would then impose serious economic sanctions on our country.”

Bolsonaro wrote that he “unlike the left-wing presidents of the past, does not accept bribes, criminal land demarcations or coward threats toward our territorial and economic integrity,” adding that Brazil’s sovereignty was non-negotiable.

Bolsonaro searches for scapegoats

After first denying the existence of the epochal fires that have burned through much of Amazonia, he’s found a convenient scapegoat for the vast fires that have cause so much of the damage, Reuters reported in September after international pressure forced him to end his policy of malign neglect and order state resources to battle flames that have consumed ever-larger portions of the Amazonian forest.

From Reuters:

Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro told the United Nations that Indigenous people in the Amazon were to blame for fires in the rainforest this year and attacked the media for spreading panic about the coronavirus pandemic.

In a pre-recorded speech to a remote session opening the U.N. General Assembly, the far-right leader rebutted international criticism of his environmental policies and his handling of the world’s second-most deadly coronavirus outbreak after the United States.

He said the rainforest’s humidity prevents fire spreading, countering experts who say ranchers use fire to clear newly deforested land for pasture, which in dry years can burn into woodland.

“The fires practically occur in the same places, on the east side of the forest, where peasants and Indians burn their fields in already deforested areas,” Bolsonaro said.

That wasn’t the only theory his administration has used, as a 25 September 2019 article in the New Yorker noted:

His foreign minister, Ernesto Araújo, who accompanied him to the U.N., claimed earlier this month that the fuss over the fires had been blown out of proportion by a campaign that had been “orchestrated by Brazilian groups that are systematically against the government” and “want to use any tools at their disposal to attack the government, even if this harms the country.” The remark was an allusion to environmentalists and indigenous-rights activists, whom Araújo has said are part of a Marxist plot. Such views are also held by a tranche of Brazil’s conservative armed forces, which has an influential role in the government. Bolsonaro, himself a former Army captain, has expressed nostalgia for the country’s right-wing military dictatorship, which ruled from 1964 to 1985, and has filled his administration with military men, naming eight former senior officers to cabinet posts. His Vice-President, Hamilton Mourão, is a retired Army general, and although Mourão is more moderate than Bolsonaro on many issues he adheres to the idea that Brazil’s sovereignty in the Amazon must be aggressively defended.

To seek the real culprits, we turn to a brief documentary from Deutsche Welle:

Who is responsible for the Amazon deforestation fires in Brazil?

Program notes:

Deforestation fires are surging in the Amazon, eliminating more square kilometers of rainforest this year than they have since 2009. In the Brazilian Amazon, fires are a common means of clearing the land — land that is worth five times more without the forest than with the forest — for cattle and soy fields. Brazil is the world’s leading exporter of beef and soy, but there’s also a high demand for these goods domestically.

There are preservation laws still on the books in Brazil, but Bolsonaro’s cut funding for their enforcement. Spending on forest inspection in 2020 is less than a third of what it was in 2019. Part of the Amazon can be reforested but time is critical: scientists estimate that once more than 20% of the rainforest is gone, recovery won’t be possible and the Amazon will go into a process of savanization.

Breakthrough study predicts hemispheric changes

A new study from Robert Walker, the University of Florida geographer and Latin American studies prof cited in our second quotation, confirms potentially catastrophic charges across the Americas.

From United Press International:

The world’s largest rainforest ecosystem, the Amazon, will collapse and largely become a dry, scrubby plain by 2064 because of climate change and deforestation, a University of Florida professor predicts.

That forecast, published online in the journal Environment, gives the most specific date yet for the general demise of the Brazilian ecosystem, according to scientists familiar with Amazonian research.

The article, Collision Course: Development Pushes Amazonia Toward Its Tipping Point, was written by Robert Walker, a professor on the faculty of the university’s Center for Latin American Studies, who describes himself as a land change scientist.

“The best way to think of the forest ecosystem is that it’s a pump,” Walker told UPI. “The forest recycles moisture, which supports regional rainfall. If you continue to destroy the forest, the rainfall amount drops … and eventually, you wreck the pump.”

Here are two key excerpts from his study:

It is doubtful that the Amazonian forest will remain resilient to changes in the regional hydroclimate given the nature of the contemporary threat matrix. The biggest concern involves intensification of drought-based tree mortality stemming from the synergies of fire, deforestation, and logging. Paleoindians set fires in Amazonia during the Holocene but never burned thousands of square kilometers of primary forest in a single season. Nor did wildfires sparked by agriculture race down logging roads into degraded forests flush with organic fuels from repeated ignition, ready to burn. The return period of serious drought once gave canopies sufficient time to recover from fire. The lengthening dry season has begun to squeeze away this respite.

A tipping point transgression in Amazonia involves much more than the ecological consequences of forest destruction. To begin with, water security will falter for the 35 million who call the Basin home. This is hardly the full story, because moisture originating here provides much of the continent’s rainfall and river flow, which means that tens of millions of people in other parts of South America will grow thirsty and hungry if the Amazonian nations fail to stop a tipping point transgression, thereby allowing the south-bound atmospheric rivers to run dry. The crowning irony is that the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America regards the triborder region shared by Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru as critical to the continental plan. Unfortunately, forests in this southwestern corner of Amazonia are also critical to maintaining atmospheric moisture flow to the continent’s populous south. Thus, the development of Amazonia now lies on a collision course not only with the interests of conservation but also with the welfare of the very people it is meant to benefit.

And there’s an American, Trump-supporting hidden hand

We conclude with a video documenting the role played by an American financial titan in the ongoing rape of the Amazon.

From NowThis News:

How One Rich American Is Helping to Burn the Amazon for Profit

Program note:

One rich American, CEO Stephen Schwarzman, is responsible for much of the ongoing destruction of the Amazon — and he happens to be a top donor to President Trump and Mitch McConnell.

Map of the day: Endless fires in Wine Country

From the San Francisco Chronicle, a graphic depiction of the vast destruction done by six years of raging wildfires in the heart of one of the world’s richest rich production centers:

More from the Chronicle:

California’s famed Wine Country has been buffeted by flames for more than five years now. Since 2015, fires have blackened more than 60% of Lake County, wiped out whole neighborhoods in Sonoma County and ruined wineries and resorts in the Napa Valley, repeatedly turning one of the country’s prized destinations into a siren-filled disaster scene.

The 2020 fire season has been particularly severe, as the impact of climate change grows ever clearer. In the past two months alone, major wildfires in Napa, Sonoma, Lake and other nearby counties have killed six people, destroyed more than 3,000 buildings and torched an area 14 times larger than San Francisco.

Trump deals a devastating environmental blow

Donald Trump is the most.

The most mendacious, the most mercenary, the most. . .well, add your own.

And he’s also the most anti-environmental, says an official of the Center for Biological Diversity.

From Alaska Native News:

The Trump administration finalized a rule that wildlife advocates say will weaken the Endangered Species Act and severely limit the federal government’s ability to protect habitat critical to the survival and recovery of imperiled species including grizzly bears and whooping cranes.

Under the new rule adopted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the definition of “critical habitat” for an endangered species will be limited to places that could currently support such animals, not areas where they once lived and could be restored with the proper care and protections.

The rule change also fails to take into account areas that could accommodate species that will relocate due to the climate crisis.

As the Center for Biological Diversity explained when the change was announced in August:

The definition stems from a 2018 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that said the service needed to define the term habitat in relation to the highly endangered dusky gopher frog. The frog survives in one ephemeral pond in Mississippi. Recognizing that to secure the frog would require recovering it in additional areas, the service designated an area in Louisiana that had the ephemeral ponds the frog requires. However, this area would need forest restoration to provide high-quality habitat.

Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, the landowner, and Pacific Legal Foundation, a private property advocacy group, challenged the designation, resulting in today’s definition and the frog losing habitat protection in Louisiana.

“President [Donald] Trump has cemented his legacy as the most anti-wildlife president in history,” Stephanie Kurose, a senior policy specialist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement on Tuesday. “Today’s rule will have devastating consequences for some of America’s most iconic species, including the grizzly bear, whooping cranes, and Pacific salmon.”

Just how bad is California’s current drought?

This bad.

From the U.S. Drought Monitor:

Gavin Newsom: Do as he says, not what he does

Once again California’s chief of state does something that directly contradicts his lofty declarations, and this time it involves tan existential crisis affecting every living thing on earth.

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

In the same year Gov. Gavin Newsom declared that the state faced a “climate damn emergency” with wildfires, his administration approved far more permits to let companies drill new oil and gas wells.

California approved 1,646 drill permits in the first nine months of 2020 — a 137% increase over the 694 permits it approved during the same period last year, according to data from the state Geologic Energy Management Division, the agency that regulates oil and gas extraction.

Environmentalists say the increase is emblematic of a disconnect between Newsom’s rhetoric and a lack of strong policies to confront climate change, which many experts believe contributed to a record-setting wildfire year in California in which 1.44 million acres burned and more than 30 people died.

“We’re two years (into Newsom’s term), and we’ve heard lots of good rhetoric and a fear of action,” said Kathryn Phillips, director of the Sierra Club California. “Everything points to the fact that we have to get off of fossil fuels. The problem is, we haven’t found the political leadership that has the courage to make that happen.”

Newsom’s administration defended the permit approvals by noting that oil production in California is down overall and that few of the approved wells have actually been drilled.

Spain reaps a COVID benefit: Cleaner air

And the reason seems to be the collapse of the foreign tourist trade, a devastating blow to the economy of the second most popular tourism destination in the world, accounting for 11.8 percent of its GDP and 13.5 percent of its jobs.

From El País:

The fall in traffic over the past eight months, due to both coronavirus lockdowns and the rise of remote working, has reduced air pollution in Spain’s cities to levels far below anything seen in the last decade. That’s according to a new report by conservation group Ecologists in Action.

According to the report, official air quality measurements from 26 cities show that nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels dropped 38% between March and October, compared to the 10-year average for this period. But the positive trend was curbed over autumn, and Ecologists in Action warn that if Spain does not change its mobility habits and reduce car use, air pollution will soon rise back to pre-pandemic levels. Indeed, in November, air pollution in Barcelona had already exceeded these levels, although this was not included in the report, which only covers data from March to October.

<snip>

In Cádiz and Málaga, where national tourism is strong, pollution levels were only a respective 1% and 13% below average. But in A Coruña, Vigo and Palma de Mallorca, cities that depend more on foreign tourism, which was brought to a standstill by the pandemic, pollution fell by more than 40% with respect to the average of previous years. This was also seen after summer: Málaga recorded close to average levels, with only 4% less NO2 registered in September and October, suggesting that air pollution in the city will return to pre-pandemic levels, while in Oviedo, measurements show a decrease of 47% this autumn compared to the same period during the previous decade.

Air pollution kills 1.67 million Indians a year

While the world reels under the impact one deadly, invisible, airborne pandemic, another invisible, airborne plague is killing its own millions, a plague spawned by the same forces that are making our word ever hotter and on track to making large parts of our planet uninhabitable.

That plague is air pollution spawned by the burning of fuel.

And now we have a body count for one country, the world’s second most-populous, as well as figures for economic damage.

Bother numbers are staggering.

From Boston College, via Newswise:

New report reveals human, economic toll of air pollution in India

Air pollution in India resulted 1.67 million deaths in 2019 – the largest pollution-related death toll in any country in the world – and also accounted for $36.8 billion (US) in economic losses, according to a new study led by researchers from the Global Observatory on Pollution and Health at Boston College, the Indian Council of Medical Research, and the Public Health Foundation of India.

The 2019 death toll attributed to air pollution in India accounted for 17.8 percent of all deaths in the country in 2019, according to the study’s findings, published today in the journal Lancet Planetary Health.

The $36.8 billion in economic loss was 1.36 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, according to the report, titled “The health and economic impact of air pollution in the states of India.”

Pollution-related losses “could impede India’s aspiration to be a $5-trillion economy by 2024,” the researchers concluded. “Successful reduction of air pollution in India would lead to substantial benefits for both the health of the population and the economy.”

“Pollution takes an enormous human toll in India,” said lead researcher Boston College Professor of Biology Philip J. Landrigan, MD, director of the Global Observatory on Pollution and Health. “It is causing 1.67 million premature deaths per year – many more than from COVID-19.”

The consequences will be long-lasting without efforts to reduce air pollution in the nation of 1.35 billion people, according to Landrigan, whose research was funded in part by UN Environment Programme.

“It is also having a profound effect on the next generation of Indians,” said Landrigan. “It increases future risk for heart disease, diabetes, and respiratory disease for today’s children when they become adults. It is reducing children’s IQ. It will be very difficult for India to move forward socially or economically if they don’t do something about the problem.”

From the study, a series of four maps reveals [clockwise from top left], [A] pollution exposures to airborne particulates, [B] Percentages of households relying on burning solid fuels for heat and cooking, [C] Population-weighted exposures to ozone, and [D] Air pollution economic losses as a percentage of GDP for each state.

Researchers also found rapidly changing patterns of air pollution and pollution-related disease in India, according to the report. The death rate from indoor air pollution, which is caused mainly by poorly ventilated home cook stoves, has decreased by 64.2 percent since 1990.

In the same time period, the death rate due to ambient (outdoor) particulate matter pollution increased by 115.3 percent and that due to ambient ozone pollution increased by 139.2 percent. These increases in deaths from ambient air pollution reflect increasing emissions from cars, trucks, and buses, as well as the widespread use of coal to generate electricity in India.

Among the many costs associated with increased mortality and illness caused by air pollutants, the researchers estimate the air pollution-related costs to India’s health care system at nearly $12 billion in 2019.

Climate change exacerbates pollution, the researchers noted, through atmospheric stagnation, temperature-driven increases in particulate matter, and ground-level ozone formation, which are likely to be particularly severe in India.

State-by-state analysis showed a more than three-fold variation in air pollution death rates across the states of India. Southern Indian states have put policies in place to reduce air pollution when compared to states in the north, where pollution and its consequences showed a greater impact in mortality and economic costs, said Landrigan.

Landrigan said there are ample solutions and examples of successful pollution reduction policies that can be developed to meet the specific needs of the country and its states. China, a country with a similar size population and equally ambitious economic goals, adopted pollution control targets in its most recent five-year plan and is making progress on pollution control, he said.

“We point to countries like the United States where we reduced air pollution by 70 percent since passage of the Clean Air Act in the 1970s,” said Landrigan. “At the same time, US GDP grew by 250 percent. There are similar statistics from Europe, Australia, and Japan. Pollution control does not stifle economic growth.”

While researchers report a decline in indoor air pollution produced primarily by cook stoves used in millions of homes throughout the country, further reductions will require additional strategies that address poverty as well as energy needs, said co-author Gautam Yadama, dean of the School of Social Work at Boston College.

“One of our challenges is to provide the poor with greater access to devices and clean fuels that can be sustainably used in a variety of real-world conditions,” said Yadama. “The more these are developed and tested in collaboration with communities — particularly the women, the devices’ end users — the more likely their uptake.”

63 million S. Asians could flee climate in 20 years

That’s the prediction of two international aid agencies, and the real number could be even higher.

From the Thomson Reuters Foundation:

The growing impacts of climate change have already pushed more than 18 million people to migrate within South Asian countries, but that could more than triple in three decades if global warming continues on its current path, researchers warned on Friday.

Nearly 63 million people could be forced from their homes by 2050 in the region as rising seas and rivers swallow villages, and drought-hit land no longer supports crops, said ActionAid International and Climate Action Network South Asia in a report.

The projection does not include those who will be forced to flee sudden disasters such as floods and cyclones and so is likely an under-estimate, noted Harjeet Singh, global climate lead at ActionAid.

He said the situation could become “catastrophic”.

From the report, Costs of Climate Inaction: Displacement and Distress Migration, a look at the numbers under different climate scenarios:

More from the report:

Equitable action towards achieving the 1.5°C warming target is crucial to avoid preventable levels of displacement and migration under extreme hardship.

Undertaking action towards giving us a fighting chance of meeting the Paris Agreement temperature warming target, will limit the number of people displaced or driven to move due to slow-onset events to approximately 22.5 million by 2030 and about 34.4 million by 2050. More ambitious action that increases our likelihood of reaching the 1.5°C target is likely to reduce these numbers even further.

The alternative is a more than three fold increase in movement by 2050.

If global North countries fail to increase their mitigation pledges to reduce GHG emissions and strengthen resilience (adaptation measures), then slow-onset impacts (sea-level rise, water stress, crop yield reductions, ecosystem loss, and drought) will displace or force internal migration of roughly 37.4 million people by 2030 and about 62.9 million by 2050 within the 5 countries studied.

California due for more heat, fires in the future

While COVID continues to ravage California with the heat of its fevers, climate change is bringing fevers of its own, hotter springs and dryer winters, along with less mountain snow melt to fill the rivers and reservoirs needed to quench the thirst of its 39.5 million people and of its $50 billion agricultural industry.

The new findings come from a Department of Energy lab that uses supercomputers to fabricate everything from weapons of mass destruction to highly detailed models of global climate systems and their responses to global warming.

From the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory:

Error Correction Means California’s Future Wetter Winters May Never Come

California and other areas of the U.S. Southwest may see less future winter precipitation than previously projected by climate models. After probing a persistent error in widely used models, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory estimate that California will likely experience drier winters in the future than projected by some climate models, meaning residents may see less spring runoff, higher spring temperatures, and an increased risk of wildfire in coming years.

Earth scientist Lu Dong, who led the study alongside atmospheric scientist Ruby Leung, presented her findings at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 1.

As imperfect simulations of vastly complex systems, today’s climate models have biases and errors. When new model generations are refined and grow increasingly accurate, some biases are reduced while others linger. One such long-lived bias in many models is the misrepresentation of an important circulation feature called the intertropical convergence zone, commonly known as the ITCZ.

The ITCZ marks an area just north of the Earth’s equator where northeast trade winds from the northern hemisphere clash with southeast trade winds from the southern hemisphere. Strong sunlight and warm water heat the air here, energizing it along with the moisture it holds to move upward. 

As the air rises, it expands and cools. Condensing moisture provides more energy to produce thunderstorms with intense rainfall. From space, one can even see a thick band of clouds, unbroken for hundreds of miles as they move about the region. 

“The ITCZ produces the strongest, long line of persistent convection in the world,” said Dong. “It can influence the global water cycle and climate over much of the Earth,” including, she added, California’s climate. 

Doubling down on climate model bias

Many climate models mistakenly depict a double ITCZ: two bands appearing in both hemispheres instead of one, which imbues uncertainty in model projections. Scientists refer to this as the double-ITCZ bias. Variations in the wind and pressure systems that influence the ITCZ add to that uncertainty. 

“There’s a lot of uncertainty in California’s future precipitation,” said Dong, who described climate models that project a range of winter wetness in the state averaged over multiple years, from high increases to small decreases. “We want to know where this uncertainty comes from so we can better project future changes in precipitation.” 

To peer through the effect of the double-ITCZ bias and create more accurate projections, Dong and atmospheric scientist Ruby Leung analyzed data from nearly 40 climate models, uncovering statistical and mechanistic links between the bias and the models’ outputs. The lion’s share of the models they analyzed projected a sharpening of California’s seasonal precipitation cycle, bringing wetter winters and drier fall and spring seasons. 

Less water, more fire

Those uncovered relationships, Dong said, now cast doubt on estimations from CMIP5 models that projected wetter winters in the future. Models saddled with a larger double-ITCZ bias, it turns out, tend to exaggerate the U.S. Southwest’s wetter winters. They also understate the drier winters in the Mediterranean Basin, which also features pronounced wet winters and dry summers similar to California, under warming climate scenarios.

Correcting for the bias reduces winter precipitation projections to a level that’s roughly equal to California’s current winters, amounting to little change and no future wetter winters. In the Mediterranean Basin, said Dong, the correction means winter drying will be intensified by 32 percent.

“An important implication of this work,” said Dong, “is that a reduction in estimated winter precipitation will likely mean a reduction in spring runoff and an increase in spring temperature, and both increase the likelihood of wildfire risk in California.” 

More, after the jump. . .