Mini blog

UN Climate action tweet this morning showing

the slow down of emissions due to INDCs. 

Apparently it is not yet enough..

As COP21 is such a hot topic at the moment I am going to try and do a series of mini blogs between my main posts that cover some of the latest news articles as well as a few interactive bits and bobs that I cannot fit into the main series.

News:

Just after I finished my post on whether we really need a new international agreement on climate change I came across an article on the WHO. They argue that COP21 is more important for everyone's health than might be at first appreciated with interventions to tackle climate change likely to have knock on benefits for our health. 7 million people die a year as a result of air pollution and this is only exacerbated by climate change. Alarmingly experts also warned in June that the threat to human health from climate change is so great that it could undo the last 50 years of gains in the development of global health. These articles are in my opinion further compelling evidence for the importance of an international agreement on climate starting in 31 days in Paris.

News emerging this morning (BBC/Guardian) is that the climate pledges put forward by 146 countries in the lead up to COP21 are not sufficient enough according to the UN to limit warming to the target 2 degrees (see next blog) with a capability of reducing warming to only  2.7C by 2100. The pledges known as the INDC's or Intended Nationally Determined Contributions are part of a spur of action in the run up to climate talks in Paris and have been received as a positive shift in policy by asking nations what they are willing and able to do to curb emissions. The recent news announced by Christina Figueres, the UN climate chief potentially comes as a damaging blow. Nevertheless the INDCs still mark a significant improvement from no action at all. A future blog over the coming weeks will analyse the INDCs in greater detail looking at the pledges of individual countries as well as other initiatives in the lead up to COP21.

Climate Neutral Now:

One further UN initiative that everyone can try themselves is Climate Neutral Now which allows you to measure your carbon footprint, reduce and offset though UN certified emission reductions projects which are being added to all the time. It is quite alarming to see how large our carbon footprints really are. As more and more projects are added it seems like it could be an effective way to act and offset.

Do we really need a new international agreement on climate?

President Obama in the State of the Union Address, Jan 2015.

Photo Credit: National Memo.

  “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change,” argued Barack Obama in January 2015.

This recognition of climate change by the world’s second largest polluter , a nation who previously remained firmly outside the Kyoto Protocol and scuppered the UN’s Copenhagen climate-change conference in 2009 should give a slight glimmer of hope for the upcoming COP21. But why is climate change such a great challenge? What are the facts behind it?  Does it really merit a new international agreement on climate in Paris?

The global concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, measured in parts per million (ppm), is the primary indicator of recent climate change. The highly cited Hansen et al. (2008) paper investigated the target level of atmospheric CO₂ that humanity should aim for in order to preserve a planet similar to that on which life and civilization have developed and adapted. When the paper was written, these 'safe levels' required CO₂ to be reduced from 385ppm (parts per million) to at most 350ppm. However, the latest observations of atmospheric CO₂ for September 2015 show these levels to have risen to 396.86 (fig. 1). Even more alarmingly atmospheric CO₂ levels broke the 400ppm milestone in March this year sending a stark warning before COP21.

Figure 1: Monthly mean atmospheric carbon dioxide at
Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii.

The IPCC, the leading international body for the assessment of climate change reported in its Fifth Assessment (2013) that the Warming of the climate system is 'unequivocal', with many of the observed changes since the 1950's being unprecedented over decades to millennia highlighting how human influence on the climate system is clear. The full report is 1535 pages long and so some of the key findings from the summary are presented below.

• Anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions since the pre-industrial era have driven large increases in the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) (fig. 2).

Figure 2: Credit: IPCC (2014).

• About half of anthropogenic CO₂ emissions between 1750 and 2011 have occurred in the last 40 years (fig. 3)

  

  Figure 3: Credit: IPCC (2014).

• Globally averaged combined land and ocean surface temperature data show a warming of 0.85°C over the period 1880 to 2012 (fig. 4)

Figure 4: Credit: IPCC (2014).

• Ocean warming dominates the increase in energy stored in the climate system, accounting for more than 90% of the energy accumulated between 1971 and 2010. The upper 75m warmed by 0.11°C per decade between 1971-2010
• The ocean has absorbed about 30% of the emitted anthropogenic CO₂, causing ocean acidification; the pH of ocean surface water has decreased by 0.1, corresponding to a 26% increase in acidity.
• The average rate of ice loss from glaciers around the world, excluding glaciers on the periphery of the ice sheets, was very likely 226 [91 to 361] Gt yr−1 (gigatonnes) over the period 1971 to 2009, and very likely 275 [140 to 410] Gt yr−1 over the period 1993 to 2009.
• Over the period 1901 to 2010, global mean sea level rose by 0.19m [0.17 to 0.21] (fig. 5). The rate of sea level rise since the mid-19th century has been larger than the mean rate during the previous two millennia.

  

  Figure 4: Credit: IPCC (2014).

In addition a highly topical piece of research was published this year on the Planetary Boundaries Framework. Although arguably subjective and somewhat controversial the paper provides a useful framework for assessing and defining a safe operating space for humanity based on the biophysical processes that regulate the Earth system. The research suggests that four of the ES processes/features (climate change, bio-sphere integrity, biogeochemical flows, and land-system change) exceed the proposed planetary boundaries.

The planetary boundaries framework Steffan et al. (2015)

The recognition that human activities have had major environmental impacts on the climate system has led to considerable debate within the scientific community with a push for the Anthropocene (the period of time when humans have had major, global impacts on the earths systems) to be designated as a formal geological epoch, leaving the era of the Holocene (Mackay, 2015).  Much of the debate surrounds the Anthropocene's start date. Crutzen and Stoermer (2000) who originally proposed the epoch suggest its beginning at 1850 in line with the start of the industrial revolution. More recently Steffan et al. (2015) propose the beginning of the great acceleration (post 1950) as a start date arguing that only after this point is there is 'clear evidence for fundamental shifts in the state and functioning of the Earth System that are beyond the range of variability of the Holocene and driven by human activities', based upon socio-economic and earth system trends. However, Ruddiman (2013) suggests that pre-industrial temperature changes caused by humans could be more than double the anthropogenic warming caused by the industrial era, more than doubling the cumulative effects of humans on global temperature to date.

It has been widely reported that that a 'hiatus' in the upward trend of global surface temperatures occurred between 1998 and 2012. However, a recent paper in Science suggests that this hiatus never occurred. Global trends are higher than those reported by the IPCC, especially in recent decades, and that the central estimate for the rate of warming during the first 15 years of the 21st century is at least as great as the last half of the 20th century. It should come as no surprise then that 2014 was the hottest year on record  with Noaa reporting that global average temperatures over land and sea surface for the year were 0.69°C above the 20th-century average.  Again, July 2015 was the hottest month on the earth since records began.

So what do these changes mean for the global economy? A new study published in Nature argues that we have dramatically underestimated the damage that anthropogenic climate change will do the global economy. The paper investigated data from 160 countries between 1960-2010 and found that productivity peaks at an average local temperature of 13°C. If regional temperatures are cooler, then warming benefits the local economy, but past that peak temperature, warming reduces economic productivity. There was only weak evidence that global warming would not impact economic growth in wealthy countries, even though it has previously been assumed wealthier countries would have the resources to adapt to a changing climate. If future adaptation follows previous progress, unmitigated warming is expected to reshape the global economy by reducing average global incomes roughly 23% by 2100. Moreover poor counties will be preferentially harder hit reinforcing the reality that poorer countries which arguably contribute least to the problem are the most vulnerable to the consequences.

Another somewhat alarming discovery published in Nature climate change estimates the economic impact of carbon dioxide and methane being released from permafrost as it thaws resulting from rapid arctic warming. It found that by 2200, when these emissions are expected to peak, the costs could be 0.7% of global GDP. These findings are echoed by Mark Carney, the governor of the bank of England who last month warned that measures to avoid catastrophic climate change are essential to avoid financial crisis and falling living standards calling climate change the 'tragedy of the horizon' - imposing a cost on future generations that the current generation has no direct incentive to fix.

This blog has only begun to scratch the surface into the very real, alarming and critical threat of anthropogenic climate change that faces humanity. I believe the evidence is too great for international inaction to continue. I have broadly outlined the extent and scope of the problem and why the Paris talks in December really are Crunch time for a new legally binding agreement that will enable us to combat climate change effectively and boost the transition towards resilient, low-carbon societies and economies. Next time I will discuss what climate changes are projected for the future. A particular focus will be on the 2°C target and why it has been set as the goal for global climate policy (and the aim for COP21) following the Copenhagen talks in 2009.  

Paris 2015 climate confrence - setting the scene

Paris 2015: 30th of November until the 11th of December
Source: COP21

Hello!

Over the next three months I will be writing a blog as part of my 3rd year undergraduate course at UCL titled 'Global Environmental Change'. As long as it is related to the course we can blog about anything we like. I have chosen to blog about COP21 otherwise know as the 2015 United Nations Conference on Climate Change and more colloquially just "Paris 2015". 

I chose to blog about COP21 since it not just a crucial conference for the trajectory of future global environmental change but also because the conference is scheduled from the 30th of November until the 11th of December fitting in perfectly within the time frame of this blog. It will allow me to discuss the main issues leading up to COP21, comment on the conference itself and analyse the resulting outcomes. Was the conference successful and what do agreed international agreements (if any) really mean for climate?

The stakes are high: its crunch time. Current commitments on greenhouse gas emissions run out in 2020. The conference aims to reach, for the first time, a universal, legally binding agreement that will enable us to combat climate change effectively and boost the transition towards resilient, low-carbon societies and economies (Paris, 2015).

So what does COP21 really set out to achieve? According to the COP21 webpage it 'needs to achieve a new international agreement on the climate, applicable to all countries, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2°C'. Even this mission statement highlights three interesting topic areas that will be discussed in further blogs. First, the need for a new international agreement. Why is it important that there is an international agreement on climate, what agreements have been before? Second, applicability to all countries. How have previous agreements been agreed, who has participated, how are the agreements fair for all countries with differing levels of development and a variety of climates? Third, what is the science and significance behind 2°C.

I will primarily focus on academic elements surrounding COP21. However, where relevant I will also blog about the way people are interacting and responding with the conference. It is already interesting to read about how activists are promising the largest climate civil disobedience ever at the Paris summit. People have become frustrated by the failure of previous climate conferences such as at in Copenhagen in 2009. According to the Economist one NGO described the city as “a climate crime scene...with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport in shame.” This blog will question whether five years later anything has changed?

Next week I will be going to back to basics and explaining why a new international agreement on climate is important.

But in the mean time why don't you follow COP21 on twitter or take the interactive COP21 quiz. It's a must!