Climate Change HEALTH

Researchers Philipp Schneider and Simon Hook of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., used satellite data to measure the surface temperatures of 167 large lakes worldwide.

Many lakes worldwide are warming faster than the atmosphere according to new NASA study.

“Our analysis provides a new, independent data source for assessing the impact of climate change over land around the world,” said Schneider, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “The results have implications for lake ecosystems, which can be adversely affected by even small water temperature changes.”

Small changes in water temperature can result in algal blooms that can make a lake toxic to fish or result in the introduction of non-native species that change the lake’s natural ecosystem.

They reported an average warming rate of 0.45 degrees Celsius (0.81 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade, with some lakes warming as much as 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) per decade. The warming trend was global, and the greatest increases were in the mid- to high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere.

Scientists have long used air temperature measurements taken near Earth’s surface to compute warming trends. More recently, scientists have supplemented these measurements with thermal infrared satellite data that can be used to provide a comprehensive, accurate view of how surface temperatures are changing worldwide.

The NASA researchers used thermal infrared imagery from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and European Space Agency satellites. They focused on summer temperatures (July to September in the Northern Hemisphere and January to March in the Southern Hemisphere) because of the difficulty in collecting data in seasons when lakes are ice-covered and/or often hidden by clouds. Only nighttime data were used in the study.

The bodies studied were selected from a global database of lakes and wetlands based on size (typically at least 500 square kilometers – 193 square miles – or larger) or other unique characteristics of scientific merit. The selected lakes also had to have large surface areas located away from shorelines, so land influences did not interfere with the measurements. Satellite lake data were collected from the point farthest from any shoreline.

The largest and most consistent area of warming was northern Europe. The warming trend was slightly weaker in southeastern Europe, around the Black and Caspian seas and Kazakhstan. The trends increased slightly farther east in Siberia, Mongolia and northern China.

In North America, trends were slightly higher in the southwest United States than in the Great Lakes region. Warming was weaker in the tropics and in the mid-latitudes of the Southern Hemisphere. The results were consistent with the expected changes associated with global warming.

The satellite temperature trends largely agreed with trends measured by nine buoys in the Great Lakes, Earth’s largest group of freshwater lakes in terms of total surface area and volume.

Lake Tahoe, seen here from Emerald Bay, was one of the primary validation sites for the global lake study. The lake, which straddles the borders of California and Nevada, is the largest alpine lake in North America.

The lake temperature trends were also in agreement with independent surface air temperature data from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. In certain regions, such as the Great Lakes and northern Europe, water bodies appear to be warming more quickly than surrounding air temperature.

Source and image credits: NASA.

In the lead-up to Cancun it is becoming clear that many local government authorities are increasingly frustrated at global delays on climate change mitigation, instead preferring to lead the charge on GHG reduction in their own jurisdictions.

And this is especially true of many megacity administrations. Such places (like Mexico City, Los Angeles and Seoul) have larger populations, own more utility services and produce more GHGs than many small countries, yet have little representation or influence on UN or national climate negotiations.

Megacities like Mexico City are leading the way on global warming mitigation.

In preparation for the Cancun climate meeting the World Mayors Summit on Climate (organized by Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard) has become a forum not only for the initiatives cities have taken to reduce emissions but also for the frustrations the urban leaders feel at being locked out of planning and financing for broader, deeper programs.

This is despite the fact that cities play an absolutely strategic role in the fight against climate change – Despite controlling policies on transportation, water, waste management, street lighting and other essential but energy-intensive civil services, mayors were left on the sidelines of the Copenhagen summit last November. “Copenhagen was a fiasco. There was no real outcome,” according to Kadir Topbas, mayor of Istanbul. “The planet is giving us very bad signals”.

Unfortunately few expect the Cancun meeting to make progress toward an agreement on emissions reductions, but as nations delay, hundreds of cities are pledging to rein in emissions, slash energy usage, and turn to renewable energy sources.

The potential for cities to reduce GHG emissions is massive, and they have already started to do just that, rather than wait for national governments to take the lead. Los Angeles, for example is replacing 144,000 streetlights with efficient LED lamps, ditching diesel trucks, recycling 65 percent of its garbage and moving to become the electric vehicle capital of the United States by the end of 2011 according to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

Such megacities consume as much as 60 percent of global energy production and emit 70 percent of greenhouse gases, as well as housing half of the world’s population, according to David Cadman (head of Local Governments for Sustainability – a group with 1,200 cities, towns, counties and associations among its members).

So it appears that there is an emerging grassroots movement to act on climate change and the release of GHGs – if national governments aren’t going to deliver then local (and some state) governments might.

And as they push ahead with reforms, there should be a percolation of ideas and actions upwards through the layers of government until the cream, or perhaps the methane, rises to the top. And as it is local residents (at least in the developed world) that can meet their representatives face-to-face, there is reason for real optimism that one person can make a difference.

Image Credit: Jose Ramon Vega

Story Credit: Tim Johnson

Doctors should take the lead in practical steps to reduce the carbon footprints associated with obesity, chronic disease and population growth, according to an article published in the Medical Journal of Australia and reported on the AMA website in May.

Doctors and other healthcare professionals must take the lead in raising climate change awareness.

Prof Robyn McDermott, Professor of Public Health at the University of South Australia, writes that ageing, obesity and associated conditions account for the greatest proportion of disability and accelerating health care use, and that the health sector itself has a significant and expanding carbon footprint.

“When we add the increasing costs of health care and the health industry’s carbon footprint to the entirely preventable loss of years of life and wellness caused by physical inactivity, we have a compelling case for specific action led by doctors in four health-related domains,” Prof McDermott said.

These four areas include reducing the adverse environmental impact of the health care industry; developing a comprehensive food and nutrition policy that addresses food quality, safety and security; upgrading urban planning rules to make climate change mitigation measures enforceable; and supporting more robust policies to protect the sexual health and reproductive rights of women globally to improve overall quality of life and indirectly slow population growth.

Climate change policies should be assessed for their impact on global health and equity.

In an accompanying editorial, Associate Prof Colin Butler, from the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, acknowledges that doctors are powerful role models, but says that the virtual absence of health as an agenda item for the recent climate change talks in Copenhagen underlines how far there is to go.

“It is … easy to call for “whole-of-government” approaches, whether to slow climate change, fix the obesogenic environment or to enhance equity. Easy to say, hard to achieve,” Prof Butler said.

“The law of increasing returns [how groups with influence are able to rig public opinion and legislate to benefit powerful minorities rather than the public good] is a powerful impediment, not only to whole-of-government reforms, but to the transition to sustainability more broadly.”

The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.

Source: AMA

Image credit: flickr / wenzday01

*See related video at the bottom of page*

This year’s Arctic Report Card from NOAA is in, and the grades aren’t good. The theme for this year is that it is clear that the Arctic is experiencing the impacts of a prolonged and amplified warming trend, highlighted with many record-setting events. The report also reminds us that deviations from the average air temperature are amplified by a factor of two or more in the Arctic relative to lower latitudes.

Walrus and other iconic species are at high risk due to prolonged Arctic warming.

To this I would add that it is now apparent (due to the inertia inherent in the global climate system) that the  warming effects currently being observed are due to the greenhouse gasses released 30-40 years ago -back when climate change was barely known to the general public. The amount of warming built into the system (based on real-world observations like the ones in this report) that is still to come is quite terrifying – suggesting to me that the most recent IPCC predictions for warming and sea-level rise are remarkably optimistic (let alone the claims of the climate denialists!).

It is also worth noting that while a reduction in the ice-albedo effect leading to enhanced warming is described, accelerated GHG release from thawing permafrost, along with methane hydrates, are not mentioned in this report card (despite the evidence that permafrost is warming up around the Arctic rim). Either could act as additional positive feedback mechanisms – causing accelerated warming – if and when large amounts of gas are released (UPDATE – New article about accelerated methane release from permafrost).

Now to the findings of the report card. The “highlights” include:

*A new record minimum in springtime snow cover duration.

*Increased permafrost temperatures around the Arctic rim.

*Increased river discharge to the Arctic Ocean (could this affect the thermohaline circulation?)

*Increased greenness of Arctic vegetation.

Sea Ice

The Arctic summer sea ice extent and mass is rapidly decreasing.

*September Arctic sea ice extent was the third smallest of the past 30 years (the four smallest recorded September ice extents have occurred in the past four years, and eight of the ten lowest summer minimums have occurred in the last decade).

*Third smallest ever extent of older, thicker multiyear ice.

*Both the Northern Sea Route and the Northwest Passage were ice-free in September.

Greenland

*Record warm air temperatures were observed over Greenland in 2010. This included the warmest year on record for Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, in at least 138 years.

*Melt period on Greenland’s inland ice sheet 1 month longer than the 30 year average.

*Glacier loss along the Greenland margins was also exceptional in 2010, with the largest single glacier area loss (110 square miles, at Petermann glacier) equivalent to an area four times that of Manhattan Island.

“There is now no doubt that Greenland ice losses have not just increased above past decades, but have accelerated – the implication is that sea level rise projections will again need to be revised upward.”

Outcomes

“It is increasingly unlikely (at least for the foreseeable future) that the Arctic will return to conditions that were considered normal in the later part of the 20th century…and very likely that Arctic climate warming will continue and we will continue to see records set in years to come.”

*Progressive reduction in the ice albedo effect, exposing darker ocean and increasing heat absorption – this in turn leads to accelerated melting and a progressive acceleration of this cycle (in a classical example of positive feedback).

*With the expectation of continued warming air temperatures, Arctic species that have adapted to the Arctic environments are expected to be displaced by the encroachment of more southerly (sub-Arctic) species and ecosystems.

“While we see somewhat direct relationships between warming and ice cover melt, it is more difficult, due to the complex nature of ecosystems, to predict and understand how these biological systems are and will respond to this amplified warming trend.”

Published on the AMA website 29 July 2010:

AMA President, Dr Andrew Pesce, said that Australia needs a National Strategy for Climate Change and Health to respond effectively to the health impacts of climate change.

Climate change will increase hurricane severity, causing mass casualties and other adverse health outcomes.

The 2009 State of the Climate report, released by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, confirmed that the past decade was the warmest on record and that the Earth has been growing warmer in the past 50 years.

Dr Pesce said that climate change caused by global warming and greenhouse gas emissions poses significant challenges to the health and wellbeing of Australians.

“This report is further evidence that climate change is happening, that human activity is contributing to it, and that a coordinated health response is needed,” Dr Pesce said.

“Failure on the part of governments internationally to achieve significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions is likely to result in significant public health problems.

“Extreme weather events caused by global warming, such as storms, floods, heatwaves and fires, will all have serious long-term health implications for Australians, including increased vector-borne diseases, possible chemical exposures, and fatalities and injuries from extreme weather events.

“These health impacts will place increasing demand on the health system over time.

“Australians of all ages need to be confident that they can continue to receive good quality timely access to their doctor, and other health and medical professionals,” Dr Pesce said.

A National Strategy for Climate Change and Health would assist Governments and the broader community to plan for increased demands on health service infrastructure from extreme events and emerging health conditions due to climate change, and must incorporate:

• Strong communication links between hospitals, major medical centres, and emergency response agencies to maximise the efficient use of health resources in extreme weather events;

• Localised disaster management plans for specific geographical locations that model potential adverse health outcomes in those areas;

• Nationally coordinated surveillance measures to prevent exotic disease vectors from becoming established in Australia; and

• Development of effective interventions to address mental health issues arising from extreme events, including those involving mass casualties, and from longer-term changes, including drought.

Source: AMA

Originally published at The Daily Climate

Upping the European Union’s emissions reduction target from 20 percent to 30 percent would reap €30.5 billion a year in health savings by 2020, according to a recent  analysis by two European health groups.

Doctors have been too timid about highlighting the risks to human health from rises in greenhouse gases.
- Dr. Michael Wilks, Standing Committee of European Doctors

The savings come as the air pollutants associated with transportation and power generation – soot, smog and sulfur dioxide – decrease amid efforts to improve efficiency and abandon fossil fuels, according to the analysis.

If Europe were to move to a 30 percent target, the €30.5 billion in health costs avoided in 2020 would be in addition to the estimated €52 billion in public health benefits associated with the current 20 percent target, the study found.

Reducing European emissions 30 percent by 2020 - rather than 20 percent - would cost an additional €46 billion a year but would reap €30 billion in health savings, according to two health groups.

“Cleaner energy and cleaner air, associated with an immediate move to 30 percent domestic cuts in greenhouse gases by 2020, would go a long way to paying for itself in better health throughout Europe,” said Génon Jensen, executive director of the Health and Environment Alliance, one of the groups publishing the report. The other group was Health Care Without Harm.

The findings go beyond recent European Commission tallies on health benefits, which looked only at the loss of life associated with poor air quality. Tuesday’s report looks at the avoided costs of ill health – chronic bronchitis, cardiac and respiratory hospital admissions, asthma and other ailments associated with air pollution.

And the savings could be even higher, the authors note, as no study to date has explored the cost savings of avoiding the floods, heat waves and increases in infectious diseases predicted by climate models.

“Doctors have been too timid about highlighting the risks to human health from rises in greenhouse gases,” Dr. Michael Wilks, past president of the Committee of European Doctors, said in a statement.

Ministers from France, the United Kingdom and Germany have called on the European Union to unilaterally move its emissions target from 20 percent below 1990 levels to 30 percent, saying the jump is vital if the continent is to avoid losing the race to develop low-carbon technologies. EU member states are expected to consider the proposal next month.

The European Commission pegged the additional cost of a 30 percent target at €46 billion by 2020, or 0.3 percent of the European Union’s gross domestic product.
In the United States, a proposal to cut emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels has stalled in the Senate, with little prospect of emerging this year.

Gland, Switzerland – New analysis shows populations of tropical species are plummeting and humanity’s demands on natural resources are sky-rocketing to 50 per cent more than the earth can sustain, reveals the 2010 edition of WWF’s Living Planet Report – the leading survey of the planet’s health.

The Russian Leopard is critically endangered

The biennial report, produced in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network, uses the global Living Planet Index as a measure of the health of almost 8,000 populations of more than 2,500 species. The global Index shows a decrease by 30 per cent since 1970, with the tropics hardest hit showing a 60 per cent decline in less than 40 years.

“There is an alarming rate of biodiversity loss in low-income, often tropical countries while the developed world is living in a false paradise, fuelled by excessive consumption and high carbon emissions,” said Jim Leape, Director General of WWF International.

While the report shows some promising recovery by species’ populations in temperate areas, thanks in part to greater conservation efforts and improvements in pollution and waste control, tracked populations of freshwater tropical species have fallen by nearly 70 per cent – greater than any species’ decline measured on land or in our oceans.

Not Another Nature Film from WWF on Vimeo.

“Species are the foundation of ecosystems,” said Jonathan Baillie, Conservation Programme Director with the Zoological Society of London. “Healthy ecosystems form the basis of all we have – lose them and we destroy our life support system.”

The Ecological Footprint, one of the indicators used in the report, shows that our demand on natural resources has doubled since 1966 and we’re using the equivalent of 1.5 planets to support our activities. If we continue living beyond the Earth’s limits, by 2030 we’ll need the equivalent of two planets’ productive capacity to meet our annual demands.

“The report shows that continuing of the current consumption trends would lead us to the point of no return,” added Leape. “4.5 Earths would be required to support a global population living like an average resident of the of the US.”

Carbon is a major culprit in driving the planet to ecological overdraft. An alarming 11-fold increase in our carbon footprint over the last five decades means carbon now accounts for more than half the global Ecological Footprint.

The top 10 countries with the biggest Ecological Footprint per person are the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Denmark, Belgium, United States, Estonia, Canada, Australia, Kuwait and Ireland.

The 31 OECD countries, which include the world’s richest economies, account for nearly 40 per cent of the global footprint. While there are twice as many people living in BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – as there are in OECD countries, the report shows the current rate of per-person footprint of the BRIC countries puts them on a trajectory to overtake the OECD bloc if they follow same development path.

“Countries that maintain high levels of resource dependence are putting their own economies at risk,” said Mathis Wackernagel, President of the Global Footprint Network. “Those countries that are able to provide the highest quality of life on the lowest amount of ecological demand will not only serve the global interest, they will be the leaders in a resource-constrained world.”

New analysis in the report also shows that the steepest decline in biodiversity falls in low-income countries, with a nearly 60 per cent decline in less than 40 years.

The biggest footprint is found in high-income countries, on average five times that of low-income countries, which suggests unsustainable consumption in wealthier nations rests largely on depleting the natural resources of poorer, often still resource rich tropical countries.

The Living Planet Report also shows that a high footprint and high level of consumption, which often comes at the cost of others, is not reflected in a higher level of development. The UN Human Development Index, which looks at life expectancy, income and educational attainment, can be high in countries with moderate footprint.

The Report outlines solutions needed to ensure the Earth can sustain a global population projected to pass nine billion in 2050, and points to choices in diet and energy consumption as critical to reducing footprint, as well as improved efforts to value and invest in our natural capital.

Aiming for an average global warming target of 2 degrees will still allow devastating heatwaves to occur.

Recent policy discussions on climate change have focused on limiting global average temperature increases. For instance, the European Union has set a goal of limiting global warming to 2°C. However, this goal represents a global average—regional and local temperature changes may vary, and substantial increases in regional extreme heat events could occur, possibly with serious consequences for some communities.

To help inform discussion, Clark et al. (2010) used an ensemble of climate simulations to study the potential increase in extreme heat waves under a scenario in which global warming is limited. They found that even if average warming is limited to 2°C, estimated increases in temperature during the hottest days range from 2°C to 6°C for parts of Europe, North America, and Asia. The researchers also investigate the sources of uncertainty in estimates of regional changes.

Citation: Clark, R. T., J. M. Murphy, and S. J. Brown (2010), Do global warming targets limit heatwave risk?, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L17703, doi:10.1029/2010GL043898.

So what happens to threatened species conserved in nature reserves as global warming progresses, and preferred habitats move polewards and upwards? In short, some (perhaps many) will go extinct unless we can do something about it, said conservation expert and author Prof Tony Barnosky (U California -Berkeley) in an interview last year on Discovery News.

His book (called Heatstroke: Nature in an Age of Global Warming) has a two-part message:

1. Nature has a new problem called global warming – the climate is warming too fast for nature to keep up in the ways she has been adapted to do.

2. As a result conservation biology will need new tools unless we want to see nature as we know it disappear.

What is wilderness and can we save it? Should we?

He says that the goals of conservation biology are to KEEP (protected areas protected), CONNECT (protected areas together with wildlife corridors) and CREATE (a new concept that recognizes that something different is required to save each of the three faces of nature: ecosystem services, biodiversity, and a feeling of wilderness).

There is a conflict between the need to intervene to save ecosystem services and biodiversity versus saving the feeling of wilderness. A large part of this conflict is due to fragmented habitats and small pieces of remnant wildness surrounded by human development – this prevents species from moving with their habitat, and brings animals into conflict with humans.

One possible solution is called assisted migration, where animals are transported from old habitats to more suitable ones. There are several potential issues including conflict with existing ecologies, invasive species, and cost among others.

Barnosky proposes a novel solution – two separate-but-equal kinds of nature reserves with ‘species reserves’ to receive moved species and ‘wildlands reserves’ to preserve a feeling of wilderness and also watch how Nature adapts to climate change without human intervention.

Prof Barnosky's new book

While he recognises that there letting nature take its course is probably cheaper, ‘the problem with doing that everywhere is that it means we are bound to lose many species from global warming, which we can’t really afford to do given that those losses will be thrown on top of the extinction perils we already recognize”.

Climatic conditions to shift one mile polewards on average every three years for the next 100 years

Recent research adds more weight and urgency to Barnosky’s message. A study reported at the end of last year finds that climates will shift polewards on average about one-third of a mile per year during the current century. Faster shifts are expected over flatter terrains like deserts flooded grasslands (up to six miles per year), while the shift will probably be slower in mountainous areas.

“All of us were quite astonished at that average speed,” said study author Healy Hamilton of the California Academy of Sciences. “Of course we’re not trying to suggest that every spot on the planet is going to be experiencing a fixed rate of climate change, but the overall rate of temperature increase at any given point on the surface of the earth is really surprisingly high.”

The authors state that only 8% of protected areas are big enough to contain the expected change over the next century. “Our central conservation strategy is to draw static boundaries around an area we want to protect,” she said. “Unless species are far more adaptable than we ever imagined them to be, species are going to try to track their preferred climates, and they’re going to track them right out of the areas we’ve designed to protect them”, said study author Healy Hamilton of the California Academy of Sciences.

Also check out The World Is Blue: How Our Fate and the Ocean’s Are One

Record-high temperatures throughout the East Coast this summer generated plenty of headlines. But one ominous facet of those heat waves never saw the light of day, so to speak.

Record-high nighttime temperatures, where the evenings did not cool as usual, were also common in 2010 and are a likely sign of trends to come, according to analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

According to the report, released Thursday, nighttime lows were the hottest on record at nearly one in four weather stations in the federal network this summer. Some 37 states recorded record-high nighttime temperatures, causing some 36 million people to either turn up the AC or ponder why they didn’t get that fan while it was in stock and on sale.

Experts say nighttime, rather than daytime, highs are what make heat waves so deadly, as hotter nights offer little chance for the day’s heat to dissipate, compounding the misery. Last year, a University of California study [pdf] found those heat waves hit minorities and the poor the hardest, a gap that will only widen unless policymakers intervene, the authors said.

Higher night-time temperatures hidden killer in heat waves.

Source: Daily Climate.org