Global Warming...New Report...and it ain't happy news

Finnish environmental and human rights organisations and Finnish Sámi Youth are taking Finland to court for its lack of adequate climate action. The organisations argue that the government’s inaction violates Finland’s national Climate Act, internationally acknowledged for its relatively strong targets, and fails to meet the state’s legal obligations to protect human rights. The case builds on a previous court ruling in Finland, as well as on the recent groundbreaking ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in the case of KlimaSeniorinnen v Switzerland.

Abstract

The 2023 Canadian forest fires have been extreme in scale and intensity with more than seven times the average annual area burned compared to the previous four decades1. Here, we quantify the carbon emissions from these fires from May to September 2023 on the basis of inverse modelling of satellite carbon monoxide observations. We find that the magnitude of the carbon emissions is 647 TgC (570–727 TgC), comparable to the annual fossil fuel emissions of large nations, with only India, China and the USA releasing more carbon per year2. We find that widespread hot–dry weather was a principal driver of fire spread, with 2023 being the warmest and driest year since at least 19803. Although temperatures were extreme relative to the historical record, climate projections indicate that these temperatures are likely to be typical during the 2050s, even under a moderate climate mitigation scenario (shared socioeconomic pathway, SSP 2–4.5)4. Such conditions are likely to drive increased fire activity and suppress carbon uptake by Canadian forests, adding to concerns about the long-term durability of these forests as a carbon sink5,6,7,8.

Abstract

Climate change is affecting grape yield, composition and wine quality. As a result, the geography of wine production is changing. In this Review, we discuss the consequences of changing temperature, precipitation, humidity, radiation and CO2 on global wine production and explore adaptation strategies. Current winegrowing regions are primarily located at mid-latitudes (California, USA; southern France; northern Spain and Italy; Barossa, Australia; Stellenbosch, South Africa; and Mendoza, Argentina, among others), where the climate is warm enough to allow grape ripening, but without excessive heat, and relatively dry to avoid strong disease pressure. About 90% of traditional wine regions in coastal and lowland regions of Spain, Italy, Greece and southern California could be at risk of disappearing by the end of the century because of excessive drought and more frequent heatwaves with climate change. Warmer temperatures might increase suitability for other regions (Washington State, Oregon, Tasmania, northern France) and are driving the emergence of new wine regions, like the southern United Kingdom. The degree of these changes in suitability strongly depends on the level of temperature rise. Existing producers can adapt to a certain level of warming by changing plant material (varieties and rootstocks), training systems and vineyard management. However, these adaptations might not be enough to maintain economically viable wine production in all areas. Future research should aim to assess the economic impact of climate change adaptation strategies applied at large scale.


Key points

● Climate change modifies wine production conditions and requires adaptation from growers.

● The suitability of current winegrowing areas is changing, and there will be winners and losers. New winegrowing regions will appear in previously unsuitable areas, including expanding into upslope regions and natural areas, raising issues for environmental preservation.

● Higher temperatures advance phenology (major stages in the growing cycle), shifting grape ripening to a warmer part of the summer. In most winegrowing regions around the globe, grape harvests have advanced by 2–3 weeks over the past 40 years. The resulting modifications in grape composition at harvest change wine quality and style.

● Changing plant material and cultivation techniques that retard maturity are effective adaptation strategies to higher temperatures until a certain level of warming.

● Increased drought reduces yield and can result in sustainability losses. The use of drought-resistant plant material and the adoption of different training systems are effective adaptation strategies to deal with declining water availability. Supplementary irrigation is also an option when sustainable freshwater resources are available.

● The emergence of new pests and diseases and the increasing occurrence of extreme weather events, such as heatwaves, heavy rainfall and possibly hail, also challenge wine production in some regions. In contrast, other areas might benefit from reduced pest and disease pressure.

Over 100 cities have committed to ambitious climate targets by 2030. From free public transport for youth in Porto to green construction in Warsaw and closing Helsinki's coal plants, here's how they plan to do it.

Cities are climate change's engine rooms — consuming 65% of the planet's energy and producing 70% of the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for heating up the planet.

And they are often one of its biggest casualties: residents swelter in dense, concrete environments due to the "heat island effect".

By 2050, urban populations are expected to double, meaning the climate footprint of cities could balloon unless the way we plan, power and move around them is reconfigured.

Can European cities lead on climate action?

As part of an EU initiative, 112 cities are hoping to rise to the challenge.

100 from across the European Union and 12 from associated countries such as the United Kingdom and Turkey were selected to receive support in their efforts to rapidly

Reduce fossil fuel use and ensure any unavoidable emissions can be absorbed by nature or removed via carbon capture technologies. In other words, to reach net zero by 2030.

By comparison most countries around the world are falling short of the 45% reduction in emissions that scientists say are needed by the end of the decade if the world is to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Mission cities receive technical help and support in attracting investment. They are also encouraged to develop detailed roadmaps, which the EU estimates will require an estimated €650 billion (over $700 billion) in investments, mostly from the private sector, to achieve.

Thomas Osdoba, program director of NetZeroCities, an EU-funded project supporting the cities mission, says many of those selected share similar challenges. These include old buildings that are difficult to retrofit, car-centric urban planning, limited renewable infrastructure as well as the constraints of national policies and slow investment cycles.

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"Vb weather conditions" are seldom reported in English-language media, were first described in 1891 by German meteorologist Wilhelm Jacob van Bebber, who cataloged typical paths of low-pressure systems and labeled them with Roman numerals.
In Europe, weather is often determined by low pressure systems that move across the continent from west to east. In a Vb weather situation, however, the path of the low pressure system changes: The low pressure system moves towards the Mediterranean Sea due to colder air masses over western Europe.

Depending on the position of the core, such low pressure areas in the Mediterranean are also known as Genoa, Adriatic or Balearic lows.
[...]
Forecasts suggest climate change could cause Vb weather conditions to become more extreme.

Although there will be fewer summertime Mediterranean lows in the coming decades, meteorologists predict that climate change will cause the atmosphere to warm, allowing for increased absorption of water vapor and subsequent rainfall.

Climate change may also affect the jet stream. At high altitudes, this broad band of very strong westerly winds over the Arctic determines wind conditions and therefore the weather. Recently, the jet stream has shifted significantly to the south.

This could also bring about serious weather changes, such as very long periods of precipitation or phases of extreme heat in the fall.

Summary

• Depressions similar to storm Boris producing floods in Central Europe show increased precipitation (4-8 mm/day, namely up to 20% more precipitation) over Eastern Europe in the present compared to the past.

• This was a very uncommon event in terms of pressure pattern and an exceptional event in terms of precipitation.

• We mostly ascribe the strengthened precipitation producing the Central Europe Floods to human driven climate change and natural climate variability likely played a modest role.

The United States’ booming fossil-fuel industry continues to emit more and more planet-warming methane into the atmosphere, new research showed, despite a U.S.-led effort to encourage other countries to cut emissions globally.

Methane is among the most potent greenhouse gases, and “one of the worst performers in our study is the U.S., even though it was an instigator of the Global Methane Pledge,” said Antoine Halff, the co-founder of Kayrros, the environmental data company issuing the report. “Those are red flags.”

Much of the world’s efforts to combat climate change focus on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, which result largely from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, and whose heat-trapping particles can linger in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. But methane’s effects on the climate — which have earned it the moniker “super pollutant” — have become better appreciated recently, with the advent of more advanced leak-detection technology, including satellites.

Unlike carbon dioxide, methane emissions don’t derive from consumption, but rather from production and transportation of the gas, which is the main component of what is commonly known as natural gas. Methane can leak from storage facilities, pipelines and tankers, and is also often deliberately released. Methane is also released from livestock and landfills, and occurs naturally in wetlands.

Kayrros focused on fossil fuel facilities, where the practices of “venting,” or the intentional release of large quantities of methane, and “flaring,” which is when it is intentionally burned off, are both common. Kayrros used satellite data combined with artificial intelligence analysis of the data to draw its conclusions.

The concentration of methane in the atmosphere is now more than two-and-a-half times as much as preindustrial levels, and more than half of the world’s methane emissions are man-made.

Its presence in the atmosphere dissipates in roughly 12 years, a relatively short span of time, but numerous studies point to its heat-trapping effects as being as much as 80 or more times stronger than carbon dioxide’s. That means it can have more immediate consequences for the climate.

In 2021, the United States was among the first signers and promoters of the Global Methane Pledge, which set a target of reducing global, man-made methane emissions by 30 percent from 2020 levels within a decade. The pledge has been signed by 158 countries.

“2030 is rapidly approaching, though, and emissions are still being released in huge amounts,” said Mr. Halff. “This seems in large part because oil and gas production is surging both in the U.S. and elsewhere.”

President Biden’s signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, includes billions of dollars in funding for methane emission-reduction strategies.

According to to the Environmental Protection Agency, the rule could result in the elimination of “more than the annual emissions from 28 million gasoline cars” and “a nearly 80 percent reduction below the future methane emissions expected without the rule.”

The American fossil fuel sector today emits less methane per unit of energy than in years past. However, production has ramped up so significantly that methane emissions overall have increased. The United States is now, by far, the world’s leading gas producer and exporter.

China is the world’s largest emitter of both carbon dioxide and methane, and has not signed the pledge. John Podesta, the U.S. climate envoy, recently traveled to Beijing to meet with China’s top climate negotiators and the two countries agreed to co-host a summit on methane coinciding with this year’s main climate summit in Azerbaijan in November, raising hopes that China might sign this year.

The Kayrros report includes findings from 13 fossil fuel basins across the world, including in three countries that haven’t signed the pledge: Algeria, Iran and South Africa. In those three countries, methane emissions rose even more steeply than in signatory countries.

“It shows the pledge has influence,” said Jutta Paulus, a member of the European Union’s parliament from German’s Green Party who was recently the bloc’s rapporteur on greenhouse gas emissions. She also noted that “many of the fixes are within reach. Leak detection and repair, management of abandoned facilities, they aren’t impossible. In fact, many of them can be done at almost no cost.”

The European Union introduced a regulation this summer that drafts all its member states into a process of studying their own methane emissions and setting targets for reducing them. Perhaps more significantly, starting in 2029, it will apply the same stringent caps on emissions to its imports, including of gas from countries that haven’t signed the pledge, like Algeria. In 2030, the E.U. would begin imposing fines on imports above a certain emissions threshold.

Australia and Turkmenistan were the only two countries in the study that saw major reductions in methane emissions. Australia’s success was likely related to policies aimed at limiting the intentional release of gas during coal production, Mr. Halff said. Turkmenistan, which in many cases operates leaky, decades-old Soviet gas infrastructure, has begun a process of updating its facilities.

Europe faced catastrophic floodwaters that affected two million people earlier this month and transformed neighborhoods and urban centers into muddy rivers. At least 24 people died, and some were reported missing.

That lethal deluge, known as Storm Boris, was made twice as likely by human-induced climate change, according to a new analysis by World Weather Attribution, an international group of scientists and meteorologists who study the role of climate change in extreme weather events.

The storm dropped 7 to 20 percent more rain than a similar one would have in a preindustrial world, before humans started burning fossil fuels and releasing greenhouse gases that have increased global temperatures.

The world is heating up quickly: 2023 was the warmest year on record, and 2024 could still surpass it, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In the simplest terms, warmer air holds more moisture that contributes to more intense and frequent rainfall.

More than a half-dozen countries in Europe — including Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Romania, Hungary, Germany and Slovakia — saw record-breaking amounts of rain between Sept. 12 and Sept 15. The slow-moving, low-pressure system dumped up to five times September’s average rainfall over those four days. The floodwaters led to power cuts and the closure of schools, factories and hospitals.

But it was only one of many flooding events that have wreaked havoc across the world in recent months.

Extreme rainfall that led to flooding and landslides has killed thousands across four continents: a downpour that caused a landslide in India that killed more than 230 people was 10 percent heavier because of climate change; flooding in West and Central Africa caused the deaths of more than 1,000 people and destroyed hundreds of thousands of homes.

Adaptation measures may have helped lower death tolls in Europe, according to World Weather Attribution, especially when compared with intense regional floods in 1997 and 2002 when hundreds died. The continent has invested in forecasting and early warning systems as well as more flood defenses, like levees and bank reinforcements and put in place measures like early water reservoir releases to try to minimize damages.

After pressure from the United Nations, 101 countries now have early-warning protocols, at least on paper, which is double the number that reported having them in 2015.

Those early warnings led to mass evacuations like the one this month in Nysa, Poland, when 44,000 residents fled their town after officials warned an embankment with high water might breach.

But flooding in a warming world will only get worse, according to experts, requiring even more adaptation and mitigation. The mechanisms created so far are not enough, said Maja Vahlberg, a climate risk consultant at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center in the Netherlands.

“We must make flood preparedness and spatial planning a top priority,” Ms. Vahlberg said. “It is critical that we rethink how and where we build to reduce the high exposure to flood risk. Future-proofing our cities demands continuous adaptation.”

The destruction caused by Storm Boris led the European Union to pledge 10 billion euros ($11 billion) in emergency repairs after the extreme rainfall overwhelmed previous efforts to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.

“As climate change accelerates, we must continue to invest in making our community defense and response systems more resilient,” Ms. Vahlberg said.

Rightwing US thinktank claimed in report that non-profit holding trainings is ‘corruptly influencing the courts’

A rightwing organization is attacking efforts to educate judges about the climate crisis. The group appears to be connected to Leonard Leo, the architect of the rightwing takeover of the American judiciary who helped select Trump’s supreme court nominees, the Guardian has learned.

The Washington DC-based non-profit Environmental Law Institute (Eli)’s Climate Judiciary Project holds seminars for lawyers and judges about the climate crisis. It aims to “provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation”, according to Eli’s website.

The American Energy Institute (AEI), a rightwing, pro-fossil fuel thinktank, has been attacking Eli and their climate trainings in recent months. In August, the organization published a report saying Eli was “corruptly influencing the courts and destroying the rule of law to promote questionable climate science”.

Eli’s Climate Judiciary Project is “falsely portraying itself as a neutral entity teaching judges about questionable climate science”, the report says. In reality, AEI claims, the project is a partner to the more than two dozen US cities and states who are suing big oil for allegedly sowing doubt about the climate crisis despite longstanding knowledge of the climate dangers of coal, oil and gas usage.

In a PowerPoint presentation about the report found on AEI’s website, the group says the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) is a “wholly aligned with the climate change plaintiffs and helps them corruptly influence judges behind closed doors”.

“Their true purpose is to preview the plaintiffs’ arguments in the climate cases in an ex parte setting,” the presentation says.

Both the report and the PowerPoint presentation link AEI to CRC Advisors, a public relations firm chaired by rightwing dark money impresario Leo. Given his outsize role in shaping the US judiciary – Leo helped select multiple judicial nominees for former president Donald Trump, including personally lobbying for Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment – his firm’s role in opposing climate litigation is notable.

“He was greatly responsible for moving our federal court systems to the right,” said David Armiak, the research director for Center for Media and Democracy, a watchdog group tracking money in politics, of Leo. CRC Advisors’ work with AEI, Armiak said, seemed “to delegitimize a group that’s seeking to inform judges or the judicial system of climate science, something that [Leo] also opposed with some of his other efforts”.

The AEI report’s document properties show that its author was Maggie Howell, director of branding and design at CRC Advisors. And the PowerPoint’s document properties lists CRC Advisors’s vice-president, Kevin Daley, as the author.

Neither CRC Advisors nor Leo responded to requests for comment.

In an email, the American Energy Institute CEO, Jason Isaac, said: “American Energy Institute employed CRC Advisors to edit and promote our groundbreaking report on the corrupt relationship between our federal court system and leftwing dark money groups.”

But Kert Davies, the director of special investigations at the non-profit Center for Climate Integrity, who shared the report and PowerPoint with the Guardian, said Eli is “far from leftwing”.

The institute’s staff include a wide variety of legal and climate experts. Its board includes executives from Shell Group and BP, oil companies who have been named as defendants in climate litigation, and a partner at a law firm which represents Chevron. Two partners with the law firm Baker Botts LLP, which represents Sunoco LP and its subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum Ltd, in a climate lawsuit filed by Honolulu, also sit on Eli’s leadership council, E&E News previously reported.

“Elis seminars are giving judges the ABCs of climate change, which is a complicated subject that they ought to know about,” said Davies. “The idea that they’re corruptly influencing the court from the left … is complete disinformation.”

Asked for comment about Eli’s connection to oil companies, the AEI CEO, Isaac, said that “all of those companies have embraced and/or are pushing political agendas” that are “contrary to the best interest of Americans, American energy producers, and human flourishing”, including environmental social and governance (ESG) investing and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

“They are the appeasers, the ones feeding the crocodiles,” he said. He did not respond to questions about the extent of the relationship between AEI and CRC Advisors.

In a statement, Nick Collins, a spokesperson for Eli, called the AEI report “full of misinformation and created by an organization whose leadership regularly spreads false claims about climate science”, and described the CJP curriculum as “fact-based and science-first, developed with a robust peer review process that meets the highest scholarly standards”.

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Highlights:

• In 2023, 22% percent of the global ocean surface experienced at least one severe to extreme marine heatwave event.

• Since 2005, the pace of ocean warming has almost doubled. Global ocean warming started to rise from around 1960 onwards, yet the rate jumped from 0.58 watts per square metre (W/m2) to 1.05 W/m2 over the past couple of decades.

• A new method to measure Earth’s energy budget shows a significant positive trend of 0.75 W m2 between 1993-2022, indicating increased warming of the ocean.

• 2023 saw the lowest sea ice on record in the world’s polar regions. The Arctic region has lost 4% of sea ice per decade during the period 1979-2023, following an increase in surface water temperature in the region. • Meanwhile, the Antarctic region has reached the lowest ever sea ice value since satellite records began, with a loss of 1.9 million km2 compared to the 1993-2010 average — an area three times the size of France.

• In August 2022, record-breaking temperatures of 29.2ºC hit the coastal waters in the Balearic Islands — the warmest regional sea surface temperature in forty years. In the same year, a marine heatwave in the Mediterranean Sea stretched to roughly 1,500m below the surface, showing how heat can spread throughout the water column.

• Nearly two-thirds of the Baltic Sea suffered marine heatwaves in 2022, and they are increasing in frequency. Temperatures rose as high as 9.6°C above normal in the Gulf of Bothnia.

• In 2022, an unusual cold spell southeast of Crete caused an extreme phytoplankton bloom lasting between 3-4 weeks. The bloom, probably caused through increased mixing of deep and shallow waters, was 50% more intense and started a month later than would be expected in this region.

• The tallest 5% of global ocean waves have grown much higher in recent years. Record-breaking waves struck the port of Melilla, in Spain during a violent storm in 2022, with strong winds and high sea level pressure gradient driving waves up to 7.3 metres and lasting more than nine seconds.

• New tools and technologies are helping to monitor the ocean and support our society. A case study in the Baltic Sea reveals how heat from seawater could be extracted to power renewable energy installations, while state-of-the-art analysis of extreme wave events could improve future coastal infrastructure.

As people move away from flooding and heat, new research suggests that those who remain will be older, poorer and more vulnerable.

Thousands gathered for New York City’s annual Climate Week last week to promote climate solutions, from the phaseout of fossil-fuel subsidies to nuclear energy to corporate-led schemes like carbon credits. Others touted a more offbeat potential salve to the crisis: psychedelics.

Under the banner of Psychedelic Climate Week, a group of academics, marketers and advocates gathered for a film on pairing magic mushrooms with music, a discussion on funding ketamine-assisted therapy and a panel on “Balancing Investing & Impact with Climate & Psychedelic Capital”.

Many attendees shared the belief that psychedelic experiences may spark “consciousness shifts”, which can inspire climate-friendly behaviors, said Marissa Feinberg, the founder of Psychedelics for Climate Action, which convened the event series.

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