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global change research
UC Irvine Study Determines Levels of Ozone-Depleting Gases Emitted by Rice Paddies
A University of California Irvine study has determined that the world's rice paddies emit a small but significant amount of methyl halide gases that contribute to stratospheric ozone depletion, suggesting that agricultural sources also play a role in this atmospheric phenomena. In the first field study to understand methyl halide gas emissions from agricultural crops during an entire season, a team led by UCI Chancellor Ralph J. Cicerone, an internationally recognized researcher on stratospheric ozone depletion, and graduate student researcher Kelly R. Redeker has estimated the amounts of these gases contributed by rice farming. These findings were published in the 3 November issue of Science.

Science magazine. Full article available here for subscribers to Science Online.

The United Nations Environmental Programme's (UNEP) Global Resources Information Database (GRID) office in Arendal, in cooperation with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) secretariat have prepared a set of 40 graphics which describe the greenhouse effect, observed climate trends, and potential impacts of climate change. Presented is an overview of radiative forcing and the carbon cycle, some background on the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), trends of global average surface temperature and sea level rise, and potential impacts on forests, the cryosphere, oceans, agriculture, and human health. Based on the reports of the IPCC, Vital Climate Graphics make it possible to grasp complex facts more quickly and fully than would be possible through simple text.

global change research
Global Warming Feeds Fire Potential
Global warming may greatly accelerate the fire cycle in the desert ecosystem of North America, according to a study published in the 2 November issue of the journal Nature. Elevated carbon dioxide levels, the result of increased fossil fuel burning, can alter the delicate balance of grasses in desert areas, the report notes. This finding may have major implications for the biodiversity and health of desert ecosystems in the western United States. "This could be a real problem for land managers," said Stan Smith, a professor of biology at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas and lead author of the study. The scientists based their research on the assumption that CO₂ emissions will increase by 50 percent over the next 50 years. Using free-air CO₂ enrichment technology, they examined the impact of such an increase on four plant communities in the Mojave Desert ecosystem.

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Crucial Climate Change Talks Set for The Hague
Governments to decide future of Kyoto Protocol
Ministers and diplomats from some 160 governments will meet in the Dutch city of The Hague from 13-24 November to accelerate international action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A global strategy on climate change has been agreed under the 1992 United Nations Climate Change Convention and its 1997 Kyoto Protocol. This international legal regime promotes financial and technical cooperation to enable all countries to adopt more climate-friendly policies and technologies. It also sets targets and timetables for emissions reductions by developed countries. Most governments, however, have still not ratified the Protocol, which means that its emissions targets for developed countries--which add up to an overall 5% reduction compared to 1990 levels during the five-year period 2008-2012--are not yet in effect. Many governments are awaiting agreement on the operational details of how the Protocol will work in practice before deciding on ratification. The Hague meeting must decide these details and ensure that they will lead to action that is both economically efficient and environmentally credible. It must also strengthen the effectiveness of the many activities taking place under the Convention. The Hague meeting is officially called the Sixth Session of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention, or COP 6. It is expected to draw well over 5,000 participants and a large number of ministers. Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk has been designated the conference President.

global change news
ARS Center to Heat with Soy-based Biodiesel This Winter
As the country faces a winter with tight supplies of home heating oil, some U.S. Department of Agriculture employees in Beltsville, Md., as well as nearby dairy cows, will stay warm this winter with biodiesel fuel, Agricultural Research Service Administrator Floyd Horn announced today. Building on success with a fuel made from soybean oil for ARS snowplows, tractors and other vehicles, Horn said ARS has begun heating a dozen buildings on its 7,000-acre Henry A. Wallace Beltsville (Md.) Agricultural Research Center-including two dairy barns-with a "B5" biodiesel blend: 5-percent soy-based biodiesel and 95-percent heating oil. ARS is USDA's chief scientific research agency.

global change research
Impacts of Climate Change and Fishing on Pacific Salmon Abundance
Study looks at 300 years of lake sediments and biological indicators
The effects of climate variability on Pacific salmon abundance are uncertain because historical records are short and are complicated by commercial harvesting and habitat alteration according to a recent paper in Science magazine. The authors used lake sediment records of ¹⁵N and biological indicators to reconstruct sockeye salmon abundance in the Bristol Bay and Kodiak Island regions of Alaska over the past 300 years. According to authors, marked shifts in populations occurred over decades during this period, and some pronounced changes appear to be related to climatic change. Variations in salmon returns due to climate or harvesting can have strong impacts on sockeye nursery lake productivity in systems where adult salmon carcasses are important nutrient sources.

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Pollution Adding to Severe Global Warming
Draft IPCC report places stronger blame on man-made pollution
According to a draft report being distributed to the world's government officials in late October, new evidence shows that man-made pollution has "contributed substantially" to global warming and that the earth is likely to get hotter than previously predicted. The conclusions by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations-sponsored panel of hundreds of scientists, is expected to influence climate debate over the next decade. It is the first full-scale review and update of the state of climate science since 1995 when the same panel concluded there is "a discernible human influence" on the earth's climate because of the so-called "greenhouse" effect caused by the buildup of heat-trapping chemicals in the atmosphere. "What this report is clearly saying is that global warming is a real problem and it is with us and we are gong to have to take this into account in our future planning," said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

The structure and extent of coral reefs can now, for the first time, be monitored globally, thanks to new observations from NASA's Landsat 7 spacecraft, according to a NASA press release. Detailed images of reefs from nearly 900 locations around the world have been collected in the first year of the Landsat 7 mission. "Landsat 7's ability to see land features as small as 100 feet (30 meters) across and to repeatedly observe coral reefs worldwide makes this archive of images a unique and valuable scientific resource," said Landsat Project Scientist Darrel Williams of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "No one else has been willing or able to acquire and archive this type of high-resolution global data for use by the scientific community."

global change news
Population and Wealth, More than Climate, Drive Soaring Costs of U.S. Flood Damage
Societal changes, much more than increased precipitation, spurred a steep rise in flood-damage costs in the United States over much of the past century, according to a new study published October 15 in the Journal of Climate. U.S. annual flood losses, adjusted for inflation, rose from $1 billion in the 1940s to $5 billion in the 1990s. "Climate plays an important but by no means determining role in the growth of damaging floods in the United States in recent decades," write the authors, Roger Pielke Jr. and Mary Downton, both of the National Center for Atmospheric Research. NCAR's primary sponsor is the National Science Foundation.

global change research
Climate Change Shifts Frost Seasons and Plant Growth
An off-season "Jack Frost" is nipping life away from some plants in many regions of the country according to recent University of Maryland paper featured in Ecology Letters. David Inouye, Maryland professor of biology, has found that global climate change influences early and late frost events, which inhibit growth and possibly damage many plants. Climate change has also impacted animal populations that depend on plants that suffered frost damage. Inouye, who has studied global climate change impact on animal and plant life for over 20 years, suggests there is great evolutionary significance of frost in context of global warming that warrants further research.

global change research
Alarming Rise in CO₂ Concentrations Presents Continuing Global Challenge
G. Falkowski, a professor at Rutgers' Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences (IMCS) with a joint appointment to the geology department, is the lead author of an article in the 13 October issue of Science that shows that in the course of the last 200 years, humans have significantly altered the global carbon cycle. Falkowski and his co-authors wrote the article under the auspices of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), which Falkowski co-chaired with fellow author R. J. Scholes of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa. The IGBP Carbon Working Group, established by the United Nations, met in Stockholm in November 1999 to study the impact of human activities on the rate of change in atmospheric CO₂. The group examined changes in biogeochemical and climatological processes along with alterations in international carbon and nutrient cycles. Comparing contemporary processes with the 420,000 years prior to the Industrial Revolution, they determined that atmospheric CO₂ levels have risen at a rate of some 10 to possibly 100 times faster than at any prior time in the Earth's history.

Scientists who fertilized a small patch of the Southern Ocean near Antarctica in 1999 to determine if the iron would stimulate growth of algae that consume carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, say their results show that iron supply does control algal growth during the summer but that the long-term fate of the carbon remains unknown. The results of the 1999 experiment were reported in the 12 October issue of the journal Nature. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists Ken O. Buesseler and Matthew Charette, co-authors of the Nature study, say the results are important to our understanding of the ocean's role in carbon cycling. They also caution that the results of this study don't necessarily mean that adding iron in short bursts will lead to a decline of carbon from the surface ocean, and note that a major unanswered question is the fate of the carbon in the ocean.

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Carbon Flux to the Atmosphere from Land-Use Change
CDIAC adds new dataset
The U.S. Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center has added a new section to its Trends Online publication for data on fluxes of carbon to the atmosphere from land-use change. The inaugural dataset in this section, Carbon Flux to the Atmosphere from Land-Use Changes, was contributed by Richard Houghton and Joseph Hackler of the Woods Hole Research Center. This dataset provides annual estimates, from 1850 through 1990, of net fluxes caused by deliberate changes in land use (e.g., clearing of forests for agriculture, harvest of wood for fuel or timber) in nine regions of the world. The estimated global total net flux of carbon from changes in land use increased from 397 Tg C in 1850 to 2187 Tg C or 2.2 Pg C in 1989 and then decreased slightly to 2103 Tg C or 2.1 Pg C in 1990. The global net flux during the period 1850-1990 was 124 Pg C.

global change data
New National Land Cover Dataset Now Available
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have teamed up to compile the first seamless National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) using satellite imagery for the conterminous United States. At 30-meter resolution, the NLCD is the most detailed land cover information ever compiled at a national level. The new CD-ROMs include data for the states east of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Data for the remaining states will be available within the next six months. The first eight CD's of a planned 31-volume disc set contains 21 categories of land cover information across the lower 48 states. These data are used in a variety of national and regional applications, including watershed management, environmental inventories, transportation modeling and land management. "Many federal, state, and local agencies rely on land cover data in making critical decisions related to managing natural resources," said USGS associate director for geography Barbara Ryan. "Land cover has changed considerably since the last data set was developed in the 1970's, and it's important to provide resource managers with the most up-to-date information available." The release of the CD's is the culmination of a five-year effort by the USGS, EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Forest Service to purchase and analyze the necessary Landsat satellite Thematic Mapper imagery used in the NLCD. Scientists at the USGS used a variety of supporting information in addition to the satellite data, including topography, census, agricultural statistics, soil characteristics, other land cover maps, and wetlands data to determine and label the land cover type for each 30-meter pixel. This imagery database is also being used by the partner organizations for their own programs.

global change news
NASA Scientist Predicts Less Climate Cooling from Clouds
Don't count on clouds to come to the rescue if the Earth's current climate warming trend continues. That's according to new NASA research published in the October issue of the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate. Heating and cooling of the Earth are influenced by cloud cover. Clouds can act as a natural sun shield by reflecting light back into space. But clouds can also coat the skies like a blanket, trapping warmth. Precisely how these competing attributes will change in response to a warmer atmosphere is not well understood. Anthony Del Genio of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, analyzed three years of observations of low clouds over land, a type of cloud thought likely to contribute to future cooling. Some climate theories predict that a warmer atmosphere would evaporate more water, and this additional water vapor would form thicker clouds. However, Del Genio's research found that when air temperatures were higher, clouds were thinner and thus less capable of reflecting sunlight. These thinner clouds occurred regardless of weather conditions, season, or time of day. "The bottoms of the clouds rise with warmer temperatures and the clouds become thinner," Del Genio explains. "When low clouds are present, warmer air flowing over land tends to be drier. As a parcel of dry air rises, it has to rise farther before it saturates with enough water to form the cloud base." How much warmer will the climate become? Del Genio believes a theory that rising carbon dioxide levels will have only a slight impact on global temperatures is flawed because it doesn't take into account real-world cloud behavior.

global change news
Negotiator Pushes for Climate Treaty
The top U.S. negotiator in upcoming talks on the Kyoto climate treaty said on 26 October that the administration "is determined to make this a cost effective agreement" and rejected suggestions the accord be abandoned. Undersecretary of State Frank Loy told a Senate hearing it "would be a big step backward" to walk away from the 1997 climate treaty which has been signed, but not yet ratified by the Senate. "We would lose many years of effort and we don't think that's the right way to go," said Loy, who will head the U.S. negotiations in pivotal climate talks scheduled for mid-November in the Netherlands. The talks are aimed at fleshing out critical mechanisms for implementing the treaty. Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska, said it was "time for us to move beyond the Kyoto protocol" and adopt a "commonsense" long-range approach to dealing with the climate issue since the industrial countries are unlikely to meet their emission reduction targets anyway. At the negotiations, beginning 13 November, the Europeans are expected to press for limits on the use of pollution trading and how "sinks" are used in determining treaty compliance. Loy said without the flexibility and cost-reduction mechanisms, the United States and other industrial countries may have "very difficult time" achieving the reductions committed to in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan.

global change research
Managing Carbon from the Bottom Up
The world needs to get serious about managing the exponential growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to M. Granger Morgan. In his recent article in Science magazine, Morgan casts doubt on whether diplomats are likely to simultaneously agree to any serious program to curtail emissions of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases. Pointing to initial unilateral action undertaken by Norway, the Netherlands, and others which he characterizes as a "genuine moral and political commitment by the citizens of these states," Morgan asserts that the growth of local and regional regimes should be encouraged. Further, coordination among these regimes should be promoted so that they can ultimately coalesce into a comprehensive set of global arrangements. Morgan predicts that this evolutionary bottom-up strategy will inspire (or shame) citizens in some regions to take action once early adopters have demonstrated proof of concept.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has created a new website called the Arctic Theme Page. The site is designed to provide arctic data and related information to scientists, students, teachers, academia, managers, decision makers, and the general public. Data, maps, listings of arctic research programs, and climate index information are available under the scientific heading. General interest resources include photos, links to related sites on arctic education, essays on selected topics, and a Frequently-Asked-Questions (FAQ) section.

global change research
Equity and Greenhouse Gas Responsibility
Disagreement over principles for the inclusion of developing countries in future global greenhouse gas caps remains an obstacle to the ratification and implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. In the 29 September issue of Science, Paul Baer and his co-authors argue that a transition from allocations based on past emissions (with a "grandfather clause"), such as the Kyoto Protocol, embodied for the industrialized nations, to allocations of a new regime based on equal per capita emissions rights, is a necessary and fair solution that can lead to an effective global reduction regime. Such an allocation is consistent with numerous ethical principles and legal precedents, could facilitate trading in emissions permits, and can be implemented through a transitional period that accommodates the different situations and emissions levels of various countries.

Though ozone-depleting chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons are beginning to fade from the atmosphere, there's no telling when the ozone layer will begin to recover, NOAA scientists say. "Depletion has occurred mainly over the last two decades," said Elizabeth Weatherhead, a University of Colorado scientist at NOAA's Air Resources Laboratory. Most scientists believe we're living with the lowest ozone-layer levels ever recorded, she added. But there's hope on the horizon. "We should expect to be able to detect recovery in most regions of the world within the next 15 to 45 years," said Weatherhead. "That's based on full compliance with the Montreal Protocol and its amendments and no other complicating factors such as major volcanic eruptions or enhanced stratospheric cooling." Weatherhead and colleagues analyzed predictions from a NASA chemical model and forecasts from models used in the World Meteorological Organization's 1998 ozone assessment to estimate how much time is needed to detect ozone recovery in mid-latitudes, the most populated areas of the world. The results of the study, published in the 16 September issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, suggest that it will be several decades before an increase in overhead ozone, also known as total column ozone, can be detected.

global change news
Ozone Hole Could be Deepest on Record, U.N. Says
The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is growing at an unprecedented rate and could reach a record depth this year, United Nations meteorologists said on 22 September. The findings of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) come two weeks after the U.S. space agency NASA said the largest hole ever seen had opened up over Antarctica (see globalchange.gov, September 2000), a sign that greenhouse gases are taking their toll on earth's protective layer. "The rapid and early development of the ozone hole . . . continues, as sunlight reached the South Pole after the total darkness of winter," the Geneva-based WMO said. "If the losses persist as is now expected, we will have the deepest ozone hole on record," it added. The report came two months before ministers gather in The Hague to discuss progress on implementing a U.N. framework convention on climate change. Governments are under pressure to comply with pledges made in Kyoto in 1997 to curb emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide that are blamed for global warming and other extreme weather patters.

As our climate changes, extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, heat waves, heavy rainfall, tropical storms and hurricanes are expected to increase, according to a team of scientists, led by David R. Easterling of NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Scientists reached this conclusion after reviewing hundreds of studies that used data and climate models to examine past and future changes in climate extremes. Their work, which includes reviews of studies using observations, modeling, and impacts, is reported in the 22 September edition of Science magazine. "Our review shows consistency between our climate models and what we have observed in the 20th century. Models of 21st century climate suggest that many of these changes in climate extremes are likely to continue. We also found that extreme weather events have had increasing impact on human health, welfare, and financial losses." Easterling continued, "this trend is likely to become more intense in the years to come both as the climate continues to change, and society continues to become more vulnerable to weather and climate extremes."

global change research
Planting New Forests Can't Match Saving Old Ones in Cutting Greenhouse Gases, Study Finds
A new study has cast doubts on an important element of a proposed treaty to fight global warming: the planting of new forests in an effort to sop up carbon dioxide, a heat-trapping gas. The research concludes that old, wild forests are far better than plantations of young trees at ridding the air of carbon dioxide, which is released when coal, oil and other fossil fuels are burned. The United States and other countries with large land masses want to use forest plantations to meet the goals of the proposed treaty. The study's authors say that any treaty also needs to protect old forests and that, so far there is no sign that such protections are being considered. The analysis, published in the 22 September issue of the journal Science, was done by Dr. Ernst-Detlef Schulze, the director of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, and two other scientists at the institute. Several climate and forestry experts familiar with the work said the study provided an important new argument for protecting old-growth woods. And they say the study provides a reminder that the main goal should be to reduce carbon dioxide emissions at the source, smokestacks and tailpipes.

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U.S. Unlikely to Meet Climate Targets
The US is "very unlikely" to meet its international commitment to reduce greenhouse gases, according to the former assistant secretary of state. She is Eileen Claussen, whose career included stints at the Environmental Protection Agency as well as the State Department, where she was responsible for developing US policy on climate change. Ms. Claussen, who is now president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, says governments must give a strong signal to prompt business to start reducing emissions. But she says western governments are failing to provide the leadership the world needs. Ms. Claussen, who spoke to BBC News Online during a recent trip to London, said, "The American public and industry say there's enough scientific evidence on climate change to start acting. But we have a small and vocal group of sceptics." In addition to her other comments on the problems associated with the Kyoto Protocol, she said, "My hunch is that many countries won't reach their targets. It's very unlikely that the US will."

global change news
EU on Track to Meet Kyoto CO₂ Target
A senior official at the European Union's executive Commission told a new briefing on 19 September that statistics due to be published in the coming weeks would show emissions of so-called greenhouse gases had stabilized at 1990 levels. Under the Kyoto Protocol, a United Nations treaty agreed in Japan in December 1997, the EU committed to reducing its greenhouse gases by eight percent of 1990 levels by 2008-2012. "Our calculations show that if we do what we promise to do in the fields of renewables, taxation, etc, in the (EU) member states and at Community level we are quite confident we will reach those levels," the official, from the Commission's environment department, said. The comments were made during a briefing to tell journalists that government negotiators at a conference in Lyon the previous week had made "good progress" on preparing the ground for a meeting of the world's environment ministers in The Hague in November.

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