Scientists at Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Researchare cautioning that the planet is closer to potentially catastrophic warming than is widely believed.
The year 2015 was the hottest on record, with the average annual temperature a full 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than in pre-Industrial times.
That is halfway to the cap of 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) that global leaders set in Paris in December to prevent potentially catastrophic warming.
Given the physics of Earth’s climate system, warming continues well after greenhouse gases are put into the atmosphere. That is because the oceans keep warming for decades in response to greenhouse gases that already have entered the atmosphere. That makes for a lag in the climate system.
Therefore, Meehl asserts that research shows the Earth is already assured about 0.5 degrees C of additional warming, even if levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could be immediately stabilized.
That extra warming means that the planet is effectively three quarters of the way to the 2 degree C cap set at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 21, in Paris in December.
“We’re not there yet — we’re at about 1 C, but if we stabilized concentrations right now, we’re committed to about another 0.5 C warming,” Meehl said in an email.
Hitting the critical 2 degree C increase, and incurring the dire results to life on Earth that scientists forecast in association with that benchmark, is not a foregone conclusion, Meehl said.
“It’s still avoidable, but we have a very narrow window of opportunity (a couple of decades) and it’s closing fast,” Meehl said. “The longer we wait, the harder it will be to achieve that target.”
A reality that can’t be sidestepped
Meehl has been persistent in advancing this perspective on global warming. He was the lead author of a study in 2005, which quantified the relative rates of sea level rise and global temperature increase to which the planet was already committed to in the 21st century.
That study said that if atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases leveled off, globally averaged surface air temperatures would still rise about a half-degree Celsius (1 degree Fahrenheit) and that global sea levels would rise another 4 inches, from thermal expansion, alone by 2100.
He said his perspective of the dynamics at play has not changed since that study was published.
“Committed warming is a physical property of the system and something you can’t get around,” he said. “You have to take it into account in mitigation scenarios and if you are trying for the 2 C target, emissions have to be cut so that concentrations of GHGs (greenhouse gases) start coming down to offset the committed warming.
“So just stabilizing concentrations isn’t enough, the concentrations have to drop at some point to get to that warming target, and that’s as true now as it was in 2005.”
Meehl and other scientists have warned that the emissions cuts proposed during the Paris talks, while critical for lessening future climate change, may not be sufficient. They are studying a hypothetical scenario in which society later this century actually achieves “negative emissions” by pulling more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than is put into it. That would have the effect of cutting greenhouse gas concentrations and negating the committed warming.
To do so would entail massively scaling up existing technologies. Biological organisms, for example, could be deployed to soak up carbon dioxide. Or carbon dioxide from power plant emissions could be captured and stored underground.
‘We will blow right through a 1.5 C warming’
Meehl gets support in his remarks from colleague Kevin Trenberth, distinguished senior scientist at NCAR — but Trenberth said “it’s actually worse” than Meehl has said.
“The problem is that firstly there is a lot of inertia in the infrastructure and in the climate system, so that even if we, in the U.S., and globally, decided to act now to prevent 2 degree warming there is almost nothing we can do to stop it,” said Trenberth, adding that its onset can, however, be slowed.
“Coal-fired power stations have a planning lif time of over 40 years, so even with the EPA and administration’s Clean Power Plan, it takes 20 years to make a noticeable difference. And it takes 40 years for the climate system to respond, as the oceans are still responding to what has happened thus far,” Trenberth said.
The scientists’ remarks come the same week that the U.S. Supreme Court at least temporarily blocked the Obama administration’s implementation of new Environmental Protection Agency regulations calling for cutting emissions from electric power plants, with a stay ordered in response to a lawsuit from 29 states and a coalition of industry groups and corporations.
“Carbon dioxide levels will continue to climb for the foreseeable future,” Trenberth said, “and we will blow right through a 1.5 C warming by about 2030, and 2 degrees C warming by 2060 or so. We might be able to delay that till 2080. with big efforts.
“Mind you, these efforts make a huge difference further into the century.”
Director & Professor, Fisheries Economics Research Unit at University of British Columbia
Disclosure statement
Rashid Sumaila receives funding from the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada -OceanCanada Partnership; the Natural Sciences Research Council of Canada, the Belmont Fund, GenomeCanada.
The Conversation is funded by Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Alfred P Sloan Foundation and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Our global publishing platform is funded by Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
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As climate change melts the ice in the Arctic, areas that had previously been closed in the Arctic Ocean are becoming available to fishing. Five countries bordering the Arctic – Canada, Russia, the United States, Norway and Denmark – recently agreed to a temporary fishing ban in the region.
The decision shows how a warming Arctic raises a number of unanswered economic and scientific issues as fishing expands, questions I’ve studied as a researcher in fisheries economics.
Many scientists applaud the temporary ban decision because it signals the willingness of political leaders to be proactive rather than reactive in ensuring that we have the science in place to support sustainable use of the resources.
What is more, the agreement is a beautiful application of the precautionary approach whereby prudent action is being taken early enough in the face of uncertainty and potentially serious risk.
Ultimately, what’s needed is a fisheries management regime that includes closing of a substantial part of the Arctic ocean to commercial fishing. In the meantime, this temporal decision will buy time to allow scientific information to be gathered before the inevitable expansion of commercial scale fishing to the area becomes a reality.
So what are the risks of commercial fishing in the Arctic and what kind of information will scientists be gathering?
Impact on the locals
First off, this agreement will help avoid the usual “gold rush” that follows “newly” found natural resources and the mess it usually leaves behind.
In the 1990s, a number of deep-sea fish species, such as orange roughy, were discovered in different parts of the global ocean, from Namibia to South Africa and Australia. A big rush of commercial fishing followed before we understood that these fishes grow very slowly and live several decades, which resulted in their depletion in many parts of the world.
In the Arctic Ocean, there are already a number of species caught, including the Arctic char, sardine cisco, capelin, Atlantic herring, northern prawn and Greenland halibut. Most of the current catch is landed by small-scale fisheries and is used mainly for local consumption.
The indigenous peoples of the Arctic region depend heavily on traditional foods harvested from the local environment, making them vulnerable to the effects of climate change and other environmental stressors acting in the Arctic environment.
Coastal indigenous peoples who harvest large quantities of marine species consume some of the harvest and trade some with inland groups in exchange for other indigenous foods such as plants, berries and terrestrial mammals.
Fish are generally consumed in the summer and marine mammals are consumed in the winter, whereas seabirds are often consumed in the spring. As a result, socially and culturally, these fisheries are of immense importance even if the actual quantity of fish caught is not large in a commercial sense.
Chemical changes to the ocean
Climate science and marine ecosystem research inform us that marine fish species are already being impacted by climate change.
They will continue to come under increasing pressure over the course of the 21st century as global climate change, ocean acidification and deoxygenation (the loss of oxygen in oceans from climate change) combine with other stresses on the ocean to change the primary productivity, growth and distribution of fish populations.
Climate change can affect wildlife directly through ocean acidification or indirectly by affecting prey.ashokbo/flickr, CC BY-NC
Shellfish species, marine mammals and seabirds commonly harvested in the Arctic region for consumption are likely to be affected by climate change and ocean acidification, either by harming the life functions of the organisms or indirectly through their effects on major prey in the ecosystem.
Deoxygenation is already resulting in a change of where some fish species spend their lives: along the Japanese continental slope, decreases in mid-depth oxygen content over the last 60 years have resulted in Pacific cod shifting their distributions to shallower depths.
Going forward, some key scientific questions that are yet to be comprehensively addressed include:
As CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions increase, how could the marine ecosystems and the living marine resources of the Arctic be affected?
How resilient will the ecosystems and the living resources in them be as the Arctic Ocean becomes warmer? If sea ice melts faster and ocean acidification accelerates, will the the ocean become deoxygenated and sea levels rise?
How could these biophysical and ecological impacts of climate change affect peoples of the Arctic through economic social and cultural channels?
How could the population of marine mammals be affected, and how might this affect the thriving whale-watching industry in the region?
Fisheries and protected areas
Changing marine ecosystem conditions are already redistributing fish species and accelerating the invasion in the Arctic Ocean of species from lower latitudes. This means further scientific exploration of the consequences of changing currents and future management arrangements is needed – including the economic and social effects on the peoples and economies of the Arctic countries.
These key scientific questions relate to how climate change is likely to affect the governance of what would be international fisheries – that is, fisheries targeting fish stocks that migrate between the exclusive economic zones, or EEZs, of two or more countries.
For example, Pacific salmon spend their lives in US and Canadian waters, and highly migratory stocks such as tuna straddle the waters of countries and the high seas. Some stocks spend all their lives in the high seas.
These fish stocks are usually managed jointly by the countries sharing the fish – for example, the US and Canada jointly manage Pacific salmon and halibut. But the increased likelihood of abrupt and unpredictable changes in the productive potential and migratory behavior of exploited fish stocks under climate change may threaten current joint management arrangements.
Another open question is what happens when the temporary ban ends. A permanent ban on commercial fishing and the creation of marine protected areas (MPAs) would buffer the Arctic ecosystem from some of the uncertainty in the future.
Like a diversified portfolio of stocks, MPAs help to protect us from errors and mistakes in the science, policy design and implementation of fisheries regulation. In the event of such mistakes, the fish protected in the MPA could help replenish the fished area in the same way that conservative investments in a portfolio can help a portfolio recover faster after a stock market meltdown.
We need to understand what the impact of the Arctic’s melting are for both research and policy development. We already know the Arctic is changing rapidly; better knowledge of those changes will help inform effective multinational fisheries governance.
In the energy world, carbon capture technology is often seen as the Holy Grail: Imagine if we could just suck all pesky climate-changing CO2 out of the atmosphere. Scientists at the DOE are hot on the problem. They’ve just identified a new material that not only captures CO2, it helps convert the greenhouse gas into fuel.
It’s called a copper tetramer, and it consists of small clusters of four copper atoms each, supported by a thin film of aluminum oxide. Copper tetramers bind tightly to CO2 and help catalyze its conversion into methanol, which can be stored or burned again for fuel.
It’s a great example of how new materials might help close the loop on carbon emissions. But the catalyst has a long way to go before it’s ready for prime time. So far, scientists have only manufactured small amounts of the stuff, and the material’s long-term durability is unknown. Concepts like this are exciting, but if we want to avoid the worst effects of climate change, there’s no getting around the fact that we need to wean ourselves off carbon-based fuels in the first place.
The Climate Reality Project (Al Gore’s climate change organization) has set up has set up a website for people to sign a petition to world leasers who are meeting in Paris in December 2015. Go to liveearth.org and sign the petition, asking world leaders to act quickly and decisively on climate change and work together toward zero carbon pollution and zero extreme poverty. Thanks!
Read below for news and updates about the UN climate negotiations happening in Paris at the end of this year.
Brazil
During Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s visit to Washington, she and US President Barack Obama signed an agreement committing both nations to sourcing 20 percent of their electricity from non-hydro renewable sources by 2030. Brazil has also committed to reforesting an area the size of England, and to making non-hydro renewables 28-33 percent of its total energy use by 2030, which includes transportation and other direct power.
Brazilian NGOs have pegged their country’s commitment as unambitious, arguing that the country was on the path towards 20 percent renewables anyway, and that existing legislation covers deforestation. The fact remains though: with forest protection and other actions that amount to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by around 40 percent below 2005 levels, Brazil cut more GHG emissions than any other nation between 2005 and 2011.
China
China has submitted its intended commitment for the UN climate negotiations, known as an Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (or INDC). The basics of the commitment are:
to achieve peak CO2 emissions around 2030 and make best efforts to peak early;
to lower CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 60-65 percent from the 2005 level;
to increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20 percent; and
to increase the forest stock volume by around 4.5 billion cubic meters above the 2005 level.
China plans to achieve this all by 2030 through a long list of transformative policies, and all commitments are thought to be achievable, perhaps even sooner than 2030.
United States
The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was founded in 2010 and aims to leverage $100 billion per year in public and private money (starting in 2020) to help developing countries mitigate, adapt to, and prepare for climate change. Late last year, the GCF raised $10 billion to capitalize the fund and begin pilot projects, with the US pledging $3 billion over four years. President Obama has requested $500 million for the fund for fiscal year 2016.
In a big win for the GCF, an amendment was recently passed in the Senate Appropriations Committee stating that it would not be necessary to pass a separate bill to authorize funds for the GCF – a requirement that would have allowed opponents to block funding.
The renewable-energy boom is here. Trillions of dollars will be invested over the next 25 years, driving some of the most profound changes yet in how humans get their electricity. That’s according to a new forecast by Bloomberg New Energy Finance that plots out global power markets to 2040.
Here are six massive shifts coming soon to power markets near you:
1. Solar Prices Keep Crashing
The price of solar power will continue to fall, until it becomes the cheapest form of power in a rapidly expanding number of national markets. By 2026, utility-scale solar will be competitive for the majority of the world, according to BNEF. The lifetime cost of a photovoltaic solar-power plant will drop by almost half over the next 25 years, even as the prices of fossil fuels creep higher.
Solar power will eventually get so cheap that it will outcompete new fossil-fuel plants and even start to supplant some existing coal and gas plants, potentially stranding billions in fossil-fuel infrastructure. The industrial age was built on coal. The next 25 years will be the end of its dominance.
2. Solar Billions Become Solar Trillions
With solar power so cheap, investments will surge. Expect $3.7 trillion in solar investments between now and 2040, according to BNEF. Solar alone will account for more than a third of new power capacity worldwide. Here’s how that looks on a chart, with solar appropriately dressed in yellow and fossil fuels in pernicious gray:
Electricity capacity additions, in gigawatts
Source: BNEF
3. The Revolution Will Be Decentralized
The biggest solar revolution will take place on rooftops. High electricity prices and cheap residential battery storage will make small-scale rooftop solar ever more attractive, driving a 17-fold increase in installations. By 2040, rooftop solar will be cheaper than electricity from the grid in every major economy, and almost 13 percent of electricity worldwide will be generated from small-scale solar systems.
$2.2 Trillion Goes to Rooftops by 2040
Rooftop (small-scale) solar in yellow. Renewables account for about two-thirds of investment over the next 25 years.
4. Global Demand Slows
Yes, the world is inundated with mobile phones, flat screen TVs, and air conditioners. But growth in demand for electricity is slowing. The reason: efficiency. To cram huge amounts of processing power into pocket-sized gadgets, engineers have had to focus on how to keep those gadgets from overheating. That’s meant huge advances in energy efficiency. Switching to an LED light bulb, for example, can reduce electricity consumption by more than 80 percent.
So even as people rise from poverty to middle class faster than ever, BNEF predicts that global electricity consumption will remain relatively flat. In the next 25 years, global demand will grow about 1.8 percent a year, compared with 3 percent a year from 1990 to 2012. In wealthy OECD countries, power demand will actually decline.
This watercolor chart compares economic growth to energy efficiency. Each color represents a country or region. As economies get richer, growth requires less power.
The Beauty of Efficiency
Source: BNEF
5. Natural Gas Burns Briefly
Natural gas won’t become the oft-idealized “bridge fuel” that transitions the world from coal to renewable energy, according to BNEF. The U.S. fracking boom will help bring global prices down some, but few countries outside the U.S. will replace coal plants with natural gas. Instead, developing countries will often opt for some combination of coal, gas, and renewables.
Even in the fracking-rich U.S., wind power will be cheaper than building new gas plants by 2023, and utility-scale solar will be cheaper than gas by 2036.
Fossil fuels aren’t going to suddenly disappear. They’ll retain a 44 percent share of total electricity generation in 2040 (down from two thirds today), much of which will come from legacy plants that are cheaper to run than shut down. Developing countries will be responsible for 99 percent of new coal plants and 86 percent of new gas-fired plants between now and 2040, according to BNEF. Coal is clearly on its way out, but in developing countries that need to add capacity quickly, coal-power additions will be roughly equivalent to utility-scale solar.
Source: BNEF
6. The Climate Is Still Screwed
The shift to renewables is happening shockingly fast, but not fast enough to prevent perilous levels of global warming.
About $8 trillion, or two thirds of the world’s spending on new power capacity over the next 25 years, will go toward renewables. Still, without additional policy action by governments, global carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector will continue to rise until 2029 and will remain 13 percent higher than today’s pollution levels in 2040.
That’s not enough to prevent the surface of the Earth from heating more than 2 degrees Celsius, according to BNEF. That’s considered the point-of-no-return for some worst consequences of climate change.
CO2 emissions from the power sector don’t peak until 2029
Republicans’ Attacks on Endangered Species Up 600 Percent
It isn’t just your imagination: Republicans in Congress are dramatically ramping up their attacks on the Endangered Species Act and the animals and plants it protects. A new Center for Biological Diversity analysis called Politics of Extinction finds that, over the past five years, Republicans in Congress have launched 164 attacks on the Act — a 600 percent increase in the rate of annual attacks over the previous 15 years.
Although wolves have been repeatedly targeted, this attack campaign has put sage grouse, delta smelt, American burying beetles and lesser prairie chickens in its sights as well. It’s also aimed at crippling the Act itself, which protects more than 1,500 species around the country. Not surprisingly this unprecedented onslaught on the Endangered Species Act corresponds with a massive increase in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, big agriculture and other interests that oppose endangered species protection when it interferes with profits.
“We’re witnessing a war on the Endangered Species Act unlike anything we’ve seen before,” said the Center’s Jamie Pang. “If it’s allowed to succeed, this Republican assault will dismantle the world’s most effective law for protecting endangered wildlife and put scores of species on the fast-track to extinction.”
The renewable-energy boom is here. Trillions of dollars will be invested over the next 25 years, driving some of the most profound changes yet in how humans get their electricity. That’s according to a new forecast by Bloomberg New Energy Finance that plots out global power markets to 2040.
Here are six massive shifts coming soon to power markets near you:
1. Solar Prices Keep Crashing
The price of solar power will continue to fall, until it becomes the cheapest form of power in a rapidly expanding number of national markets. By 2026, utility-scale solar will be competitive for the majority of the world, according to BNEF. The lifetime cost of a photovoltaic solar-power plant will drop by almost half over the next 25 years, even as the prices of fossil fuels creep higher.
Solar power will eventually get so cheap that it will outcompete new fossil-fuel plants and even start to supplant some existing coal and gas plants, potentially stranding billions in fossil-fuel infrastructure. The industrial age was built on coal. The next 25 years will be the end of its dominance.
2. Solar Billions Become Solar Trillions
With solar power so cheap, investments will surge. Expect $3.7 trillion in solar investments between now and 2040, according to BNEF. Solar alone will account for more than a third of new power capacity worldwide. Here’s how that looks on a chart, with solar appropriately dressed in yellow and fossil fuels in pernicious gray:
Electricity capacity additions, in gigawatts
Source: BNEF
3. The Revolution Will Be Decentralized
The biggest solar revolution will take place on rooftops. High electricity prices and cheap residential battery storage will make small-scale rooftop solar ever more attractive, driving a 17-fold increase in installations. By 2040, rooftop solar will be cheaper than electricity from the grid in every major economy, and almost 13 percent of electricity worldwide will be generated from small-scale solar systems.
$2.2 Trillion Goes to Rooftops by 2040
Rooftop (small-scale) solar in yellow. Renewables account for about two-thirds of investment over the next 25 years.
4. Global Demand Slows
Yes, the world is inundated with mobile phones, flat screen TVs, and air conditioners. But growth in demand for electricity is slowing. The reason: efficiency. To cram huge amounts of processing power into pocket-sized gadgets, engineers have had to focus on how to keep those gadgets from overheating. That’s meant huge advances in energy efficiency. Switching to an LED light bulb, for example, can reduce electricity consumption by more than 80 percent.
So even as people rise from poverty to middle class faster than ever, BNEF predicts that global electricity consumption will remain relatively flat. In the next 25 years, global demand will grow about 1.8 percent a year, compared with 3 percent a year from 1990 to 2012. In wealthy OECD countries, power demand will actually decline.
This watercolor chart compares economic growth to energy efficiency. Each color represents a country or region. As economies get richer, growth requires less power.
The Beauty of Efficiency
Source: BNEF
5. Natural Gas Burns Briefly
Natural gas won’t become the oft-idealized “bridge fuel” that transitions the world from coal to renewable energy, according to BNEF. The U.S. fracking boom will help bring global prices down some, but few countries outside the U.S. will replace coal plants with natural gas. Instead, developing countries will often opt for some combination of coal, gas, and renewables.
Even in the fracking-rich U.S., wind power will be cheaper than building new gas plants by 2023, and utility-scale solar will be cheaper than gas by 2036.
Fossil fuels aren’t going to suddenly disappear. They’ll retain a 44 percent share of total electricity generation in 2040 (down from two thirds today), much of which will come from legacy plants that are cheaper to run than shut down. Developing countries will be responsible for 99 percent of new coal plants and 86 percent of new gas-fired plants between now and 2040, according to BNEF. Coal is clearly on its way out, but in developing countries that need to add capacity quickly, coal-power additions will be roughly equivalent to utility-scale solar.
Source: BNEF
6. The Climate Is Still Screwed
The shift to renewables is happening shockingly fast, but not fast enough to prevent perilous levels of global warming.
About $8 trillion, or two thirds of the world’s spending on new power capacity over the next 25 years, will go toward renewables. Still, without additional policy action by governments, global carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector will continue to rise until 2029 and will remain 13 percent higher than today’s pollution levels in 2040.
That’s not enough to prevent the surface of the Earth from heating more than 2 degrees Celsius, according to BNEF. That’s considered the point-of-no-return for some worst consequences of climate change.
CO2 emissions from the power sector don’t peak until 2029
Bumblebee populations in North America and in Europe are in steep decline and shrinking their ranges due to human caused climate change says new research. The study was conducted across two continents based on over 110 years of data and observations.
This has enormous implications for pollination and eco-system health, as well as for human agricultural productivity. Many trees and plants are dependant to varying extents for reproduction and fruit on pollination by insects including bumble bees.
What was thought to be just one of several factors affecting wild and domesticated bee populations, is now seen to be far more important. Factors affecting the decline of bee populations include Colony Collpase disorder, use of pesticides including neonicotinoids, habitat loss, low genetic diversity and high infection rates with the parasite pathogens, and climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge. (See my 2011 article: A dangerous sting for agriculture: climate change implicated in bee decline)
While many species have been noted as moving north or to higher elevations to match their climate envelope as temperatures increase (See Species biodiversity under threat from the velocity of climate change) , bumblebee species are not behaving the same or as expected. On southern boundaries and the hottest parts of their range bumblebee populations are disappearing, which is expected.
But populations are not expanding on the northern boundary of their range where weather conditions are warming due to climate change. In fact, many Bumble bee species have also been suffering a sharp decline in population numbers.
“One of the important things to me was how many species are being impacted by climate change. That was a bit of a surprise,” says York University Professor Laurence Packer, an expert on bees and a co-author on the study. “I’d suspected some may be declining, but not such a large proportion. The fact that at the northern edges of their ranges they are not moving north as the climate changes is actually really quite worrying.”
Much of the research was based upon large collections of bumblebees, hundreds of thousands of records, held by museums with detailed location and time of collection information stretching back over the last 110 years.
“Museums hold the basic biological information that tells us about the history of our impact on the world. They also contain the specimens that everything ultimately has to be compared to in order for identifications to be reliable,” Said Laurence Packer.
The researchers evaluated a number of other factors including land use change and pesticide use and found no significant correlation with these factors. While these factors may be important in explaining decline in some species and in local populations of bees and other pollinators, they do not explain the wholesale losses of bumblebee species being seen on two continents.
“The rates of loss are unprecedented in terms of there geographical extent and the magnitude of those loses.” said lead author Jeremy Kerr from Ottawa University.
About a third of bumblebee species in North America are in decline, says study co-author and York University environmental studies Professor Sheila Colla, and “in some cases this has been quite dramatic, over 90 per cent.”
“Historically they were quite common, among the most common bees. The Rusty Patched bumblebee in particular was the fourth most common bumblebee in southern Ontario as recently as the 1970’s or early 80s, but I have only seen two individuals in 10 years. That is an indication there is something going on with bumblebees that used to be doing quite well but have recently collapsed.”
The extent of the recent decline and it’s rapidity is one of the things that has shocked the scientists.
“One of the scariest parts of the work that I’ve done is just realizing how quickly the situation is changing. The bumblebees that are in decline were doing fine 50 years ago. We’re talking about large changes in community composition of essential pollinators over just a few decades.” said Colla.
“So the consequences of losses of pollinators over large areas is both economic but also practical in terms of diminished food security and in terms of rising food prices. We need to get a handle on climate change once and for all.” said study lead author James Kerr from the University of Ottawa.
This raises important issues for food security as pollination is an essential service for agricultural productivity. According to Bauer and Wing (2010) in their study – Economic Consequences of Pollinator Declines: A Synthesis – they wrote:
“At the global level, 75 percent of primary crop species and 35 percent of crop production rely on some level of animal pollination (Klein et al. 2007). Gallai et al. (2009b) estimate the value of this pollination service to be €153 billion (~$200 billion). In the United States, more than half of primary crop species and 20 percent of primary crop production rely in part on animal pollination. A recent study estimates the value of honey bee pollination alone in the United States at $14.6 billion, which reflects both direct crop and indirect livestock feed values (Morse and Calderone 2000).”
Indeed. Professor Nigel Raine, Rebanks Family Chair in Pollinator Conservation at the University of Guelph in Canada, commented on the impact on agriculture: “Bumblebees are critical pollinators of many crops and wild flowers, so it is very concerning that they are struggling to adapt to climate change around the world. We urgently need to understand how other pollinators critical for fruit and vegetable production are being affected by climate change.”
The study identified that there had been range losses of up to 300 kilometers in both North America and Europe.
But more research is needed to figure out why bumblebees have not shifted their boundaries further north as the climate has warmed. Assisted migration and translocation of bumbelbee populations northward is seriously being considered to artificially prevent loss of species and extend population range to attempt to mitigate the decline.
The research was conducted by 14 scientists from Canada, USA and Germany and published in the peer reviewed journal Science as Climate change impacts on bumblebees converge across continents. The abstract states:
For many species, geographical ranges are expanding toward the poles in response to climate change, while remaining stable along range edges nearest the equator. Using long-term observations across Europe and North America over 110 years, we tested for climate change–related range shifts in bumblebee species across the full extents of their latitudinal and thermal limits and movements along elevation gradients. We found cross-continentally consistent trends in failures to track warming through time at species’ northern range limits, range losses from southern range limits, and shifts to higher elevations among southern species. These effects are independent of changing land uses or pesticide applications and underscore the need to test for climate impacts at both leading and trailing latitudinal and thermal limits for species.
Jeremy Kerr, in a Youtube video, explained the importance of the results of climate change impacts on bumblebees. Here is a full transcript I made of the video:
We are very exited about the findings we are reporting in this paper in Science, at the end of this week. What we are going to report on is the discovery that bumblebee species across Europe and North America are declining at continental scales as a function of rapidly changing climatic conditions, and that is changing climatic conditions that reflect human activity.
The rates of loss are unprecedented in terms of there geographical extent and the magnitude of those loses.
We have seen decline of bumblebee species as their geographical range collapses inwards because of rapid warming on the scale of hundreds of kilometres.
To do this work we looked at more than a century of observations for 68 species on both continents. These observations give us a pretty comprehensive look at the precise distribution for each one of those species through time and across continents.
We have also been able to measure how environmental conditions change in both Europe and North America with respect to a few different factors that are potentially very important for causing bumblebee ranges to shift around. Among these factors is climate change which we knew could be significant, but which we didn’t think was going to be as significant as it has been.
But also how habitats have changed across continents and how in some areas rapid increases in pesticide and neonicotinoid insecticide use has changed. What we are seeing is that neither habitat loss or pesticide use is able to explain how the geographical ranges of these species are collapsing inward. Instead, the only factor that appears able to explain this trend is rapid warming along boundaries of species geographical ranges.
The consequence here is that we are seeing wholesale losses of bumblebee species from places they used to be common but have become too hot to maintain populations.
We have also observed, and again this is a first, that these species have been unable in general to expand their ranges into northern areas that used to be too cold for them.
Other groups, like butterflies, have proven to be pretty good at expanding towards the poles in terms of their geographical distributions, the net effect being that as climate changes the geographical ranges for many butterfly species actually gets bigger.
For bumblebee species, the exact opposite trend is underway. As rapid warming proceeds, the ranges collapse inward. The consequence is that pollinators are declining over huge areas, and in the particular way we have measured it here, those effects reflect climate change, but they do not reflect habitat losses or pesticide use, although those factors can certainly be important in some areas and for some species.
We have also been able to track how the geographical ranges of these species have shifted along elevation gradients, and those results mirror the results we have observed across continents quite well, giving us additional confidence that our results probably are sound.
We have done one more thing here that is very unusual in terms of research at this kind of level, and that is we have made all our data and analytical techniques publicly available. So that as the paper is published anyone in the world will also be able to download all of our data and reproduce and evaluate all the results that we have reported on and this paper to Science.
We are very excited by these findings. We think we are now in the position to make specific management recommendations that we hope will enable us to mitigate some of the worst effects of climate change on these bumblebee species.
One of the things we are going to need to contemplate is what is known as assisted migration, where we transplant populations of bumblebee species a little further north and to places where historically they are not present in but where we think they need to go in order to maintain themselves. Our results suggest this may be necessary for large groups of species across continents.
Moreover, the critical message here is that we need to get a handle on climate change. The effects are rapid and well under way and they began at least 20 or 30 years ago. It is only now where we are assembling enough data to detect some of those impacts. It would be impossible to expect anything else at this stage than that these effects will continue and probably become more and more extreme with time.
So the consequences of losses of pollinators over large areas is both economic but also practical in terms of diminished food security and in terms of rising food prices. We need to get a handle on climate change once and for all.
There have been previous indications that several bumble bee species have suffered a severe decline in population and range. I last reported on the decline in bee population and ranges in 2011. That article lead with an in depth national study of wild bees in the United States (Cameron et al 2011) that concluded that the relative abundances of four of the eight species analyzed had declined by as much as 96 percent and that their surveyed geographic ranges have shrunk by 23 to 87 percent. At least some of this decline had occurred in the last two decades.
The study – Patterns of widespread decline in North American bumble bees – suggested that significantly higher infection levels of the microsporidian pathogen Nosema bombi and lower genetic diversity were important determinants in the decline, although other factors were not ruled out. See A dangerous sting for agriculture: climate change implicated in bee decline.
University of Illinois entomology professor Sydney Cameron, who led the study, published in 2011, said at the time that Climate change may play a role, as well as habitat loss, low genetic diversity and high infection rates with the parasite pathogen. “Whether it’s one of these or all of the above, we need to be aware of these declines,” she said in a media release.
The most recent study indicates that climate change factors are of far greater importance, but with still many questions still to be answered by further research on wildlife response to climate change and impacts on ecosystems.
Dr Nathalie Pettorelli, Research Fellow, Zoological Society of London (ZSL), highlighted that the study was very robust and triggers important questions on wildlife response to climate change. “I think it’s important to remember that this type of correlative approach is aimed at unveiling large scale patterns in species’ response to climate change, and that it needs to be followed by new process-based research.” she said.
“Kerr et al show that bumblebees generally fail to track warming in both Europe and North America: the next step is to understand why. Without this knowledge, efficient mitigation strategies are difficult to identify. I would also add that there seem to be some interesting level of variation in bumblebee species’ response to changes in climatic conditions, something that isn’t discussed in the paper. This level of inter-specific variability might be important to consider when thinking about mitigation strategies, as one solution might not fit all.” she commented.
Sources:
Jeremy T. Kerr, Alana Pindar, Paul Galpern, Laurence Packer, Simon G. Potts, Stuart M. Roberts, Pierre Rasmont, Oliver Schweiger, Sheila R. Colla, Leif L. Richardson, David L. Wagner, Lawrence F.Gall, Derek S. Sikes, Alberto Pantoja (2015): Climate change impacts on bumblebees converge across continents. Science. 09 July 2015. (abstract)
Declining winter sea ice near Greenland spells cooler climate for Europe June 29, 2015 11.02am EDT republished from The Conversation
Satellite image showing clouds over the Greenland Sea downstream of the ice edge during conditions where there was a large transfer of heat and moisture from the ocean to the atmosphere. NASA
One of the most dramatic features of recent climate change is the decline of summer Arctic sea ice. The impacts of this summer ice loss on northern society, on Arctic ecosystems, and the climate both locally and further afield, are already being felt.
Less well known are the dramatic changes in winter sea ice in regions such as the Greenland and Iceland Seas, where the reduction over the past 30 years is unparalleled since 1900, when ice records in the region began.
In a study published in Nature Climate Change, we show that the loss of sea ice in this subpolar region is affecting the production of dense water that forms the deepest part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). The AMOC is an ocean circulation that carries warm water from the tropics northward in the upper layers of the Atlantic with a return flow of cold water southwards at depth. As such, the effect of these changes could mean a cooler climate in western Europe.
The loss of winter sea ice
Much of the dense water in the AMOC is produced in the Greenland and Iceland Seas through the transfer of heat and moisture from the ocean to the atmosphere. The heat transfer makes the surface waters in these regions colder, saltier and denser, resulting in a convective overturning of the water column. It also serves to warm the atmosphere in this part of the world, often resulting in distinctive cloud formations seen in satellite images of the region.
How much heat transfer, or atmospheric forcing, occurs depends on the magnitude of the air-sea temperature difference and the surface wind speed. As a result, it is typically largest near the sea ice edge where cold and dry polar air first comes into contact with the warm surface waters.
The R/V Knorr in storm conditions near Iceland where there was a large transfer of heat and moisture from the ocean to the atmosphere.Kjetil Våge
Click to enlarge
Sea ice retreat and ocean convection
In our study, we show that the retreat of winter sea ice has led to a large reduction in the intensity of oceanic convection in the Greenland and Iceland Seas. These changes raise the possibility of less heat being transferred from the ocean to the atmosphere in these regions, resulting in a weaker AMOC, which in turn means less subtropical water brought northwards and ultimately a possible cooling of Europe.
In addition to a large atmospheric forcing, oceanic convection typically occurs in regions where there is a weak vertical density contrast, usually within a closed ocean current known as a cyclonic gyre. This makes it easier for convective overturning to extend to greater depths in the ocean. Until recently, the gyres in the Greenland and Iceland Seas that are preconditioned for oceanic convection were situated close to the ice edge and, as a result, the atmospheric forcing was large, resulting in deep convective overturning.
However, the winter retreat of sea ice has now shifted the regions of largest atmospheric forcing away from these gyres. In other words, the regions where the forcing is largest and the regions most susceptible to deep ocean convection have moved apart. Since the 1970s, this has resulted in an approximate 20% reduction in the magnitude of this forcing, or heat transfer from the ocean to atmosphere, over the Iceland and Greenland Sea gyres.
Winter sea ice concentration (% of surface area) in the Nordic Seas during the 1960s and the 2000s. The magenta and black curves denote the regions in the Greenland and Iceland Sea where oceanic convection occurs.Kent Moore
Click to enlarge
Impact on the ocean and Europe
Using a mixed-layer ocean model, we have investigated the impact of this reduced atmospheric forcing. In the Greenland Sea we show that the decrease in forcing will likely result in a fundamental transition in the nature of oceanic convection there. Indeed our model results suggest a change from a state of intermediate depth convection to one in which only shallow convection occurs.
As the Greenland Sea provides much of the mid-depth water that fills the Nordic Seas, this transition has the potential to change the temperature and salinity characteristics of these seas. In the Iceland Sea, we demonstrate that a continued reduction in atmospheric forcing has the potential to weaken the local oceanic circulation that has recently been shown to supply a third of the dense water to the deep part of the AMOC.
Observations, proxies, and model simulations suggest that a weakening of the AMOC has recently occurred, and models predict that this slowdown will continue. Such a weakening of the AMOC would have dramatic impacts on the climate of the North Atlantic and western Europe. In particular, it would reduce the volume of warm water transported at the surface towards western Europe. This would reduce the heat source that keeps the region’s climate benign.
Although there is considerable debate regarding the dynamics of the AMOC, one proposed mechanism for its current and predicted decline is a freshening of the surface waters – for instance due to enhanced meltwater from the Greenland Ice Sheet. A lower salinity reduces the surface water’s density, making it more difficult for oceanic convection to occur.
However, much of this freshwater discharge is apt to be exported towards the equator via the boundary current system surrounding Greenland. This limits the direct spreading into the gyres in the Greenland and Iceland Seas where oceanic convection occurs. Further work is therefore required to determine how and where – and on what timescales – this freshwater pervades the North Atlantic.
However, our results suggest that other possible mechanisms for a slowdown in the AMOC may be at work, such as a reduction in the magnitude of the atmospheric forcing that triggers the convective overturning in the Greenland and Iceland Seas. This process would also result in a slowdown of the AMOC, again reducing the warming that Europe experiences. Our results reinforce the idea that a warm Europe requires a cold North Atlantic, which allows for large transfers of heat and moisture from the ocean to the atmosphere. A warming North Atlantic with the associated retreat of winter sea ice therefore has the potential to result in a cooling of Europe through a slowdown of the AMOC.
Whether these transfers continue to decline into the future is still an open question, as is their impact on the AMOC and European climate.
Kent Moore, Ian Renfrew, Kjetil Våge, and Robert Pickart
Senior Scientist in Physical Oceanography at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Disclosure statement
Kent Moore receives funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada..
Ian Renfrew receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council
Kjetil Våge receives funding from the Research Council of Norway and the European Union 7th Framework Programme.
Robert Pickart receives funding from the National Science Foundation.
The Conversation is funded by Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Alfred P Sloan Foundation and William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Our global publishing platform is funded by Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
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It isn’t just your imagination: Republicans in Congress are dramatically ramping up their attacks on the Endangered Species Act and the animals and plants it protects. A new Center for Biological Diversity analysis called Politics of Extinction finds that, over the past five years, Republicans in Congress have launched 164 attacks on the Act — a 600 percent increase in the rate of annual attacks over the previous 15 years.
Climate Change Alert 