Climate change & biodiversity…

United Nations Environment Programme
Key Polar Centre

«Climate change is impacting biodiversity at a global and unprecedented scale.
The Arctic region is hit particularly hard. It is already warming 2 to 2.5 times faster than the global average, due to a thinner atmosphere and several positive feedback responses.
Changes in the Arctic will have major repercussions for all other global regions through changes in the hydrological cycle, the weather cycle, the carbon cycle or atmospheric changes, but also by impacting its unique biodiversity.
Many Arctic species are migratory, connecting the entire globe by their annual migration routes of billions of migratory birds, marine mammals and fish.
The changes in the Arctic region will determine the future of its major wealth in ecosystem goods and services, mostly its natural resources, marine and freshwater fish and terrestrial reindeer. They all provide vital income for the peoples of the North and to a large extent to the global community as a whole.
Its unique location in still largely pristine wilderness and little direct human impacts allow the Arctic region for monitoring the impact of climate change and industrial development on biodiversity in a less complex ecosystem, providing us with an early warning system of what is likely to happen to our near future.
Arctic biodiversity and ecosystems are an ideal test case for measuring progress towards the Convention on Biological Diversity's 2010 target to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010, a barometer for the state of biodiversity.
The Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Program is part of the International Polar Year initiative, which creates a huge scientific focus on the Polar regions, generating the attention to the vulnerable status of both poles. More than 100 projects focus on the Arctic region.


Arctic biodiversity is more than just the Polar Bear. This charismatic Arctic predator has been the focus of the media, rightly reporting on the sombre destiny of the largest predator on Earth. It will suffer severely if the sea ice continues to disappear in many areas of the Arctic. But little has been mentioned on the fate of other Arctic species, namely the following four.

● The charismatic, solely Arctic Ivory Gull pagophila eburnea is living entirely in High Arctic marine seas, closely associated with the Polar Bear, which it follows, scavenging on leftovers on the ice edge. Its entire life cycle is intimately linked with sea ice and the rare gull is potentially severely threatened by the disappearance of the sea ice.

● The Reindeer and Caribou rangifer tarandus are the most dominant large mammal species in the Arctic, living in every Arctic country, mostly in the tundra. They provide the major source of income for many local people in the Arctic, depending highly on the thriving of their huge populations. Climate change may have severe impacts on the future of this valuable element of Arctic ecosystems.

● Polar regions are home to 70% of all global freshwater, most of it stored in the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, but the Arctic region contains the largest amount of freshwater available for biodiversity. Huge peatlands and tundra wetlands lie in the Arctic region, and Arctic rivers altogether discharge more than 4,600 km3 into the Arctic Ocean every year. Many of them belong to the largest ten rivers on Earth, hardly impacted by dams or any other human impacts, allowing a huge diversity of freshwater fish to thrive in their streams. The Arctic Char salvelinus alpinus is the most northerly distributed freshwater fish and a characteristic representative for this unique biome.

● The large majority of all Arctic vertebrates are migratory. Arctic breeding birds are connected with virtually every corner of the globe – apart from the Antarctic ice sheet – through the annual migration of birds, whales, fish and even reindeer and caribou. The Red Knot calidris canutus is one of the most fascinating globetrotters. In winter the High Arctic breeder can be found in South and West Africa, South America, India, Australia and New Zealand. However, four out of six populations are presently in decline, some sharply, and for two the trend is unknown.


These, like many other population trends from the Arctic regions, are alarming signals of changes in the Arctic ecosystems, which should alert us all. We still do not know the trend for many populations of Arctic biodiversity and we still know far too little as well to fully understand the root causes of these trends.»

Do you still believe never-ending economical growth rates are more important?
I don't! Not anymore!

RIC

Nature in the centre of our concerns

«The New 7 Wonders of Nature launches the nominations that will continue through August 8th, 2008.
Then a panel of experts will create a list of 21 candidates from which voters worldwide will elect the 7 wonders of Nature.

Criteria to be observed:

• Nominations must be for a clearly defined natural site or natural monument that was not created or significantly altered by humans.

The nominees must be one of the following:
• a natural site;
• a natural monument;
• a landscape.

Categories that help us to sort and evaluate your proposals:

Animal reserve, Canyon, Cave, Cliff, Coastline, Desert, Fjord, Forest, Geological site, Glacier, Grotto, Lake, Mountain, Nature conservancy park, Oasis, Prehistoric natural site, Reef, River, Rock, Sea, Underwater world, Volcano, Water, Waterfall, Wood…

Eligible examples:

• Aletsch Glacier, Switzerland
• Baikal Lake, Russia
• Dinosaur Provincial Park, Canada
• Galapagos Islands, Ecuador
• Geirangerfjord, Norway
• Grand Canyon, USA
• Great Barrier Reef, Australia
• Iguaçu Waterfalls, Argentina/Brazil
• Ha Long Bay, Vietnam
• Kilimanjaro, Tanzania
• Redwood National Park, USA
• Sagramatha Park, Nepal
• Serengeti Park, Tanzania

The following examples are not valid:
Bird migrations, Gulf Stream, monsoon rain, shooting stars, North and South Poles, northern lights, Milky Way…

Note: As this is the nomination phase and not yet a vote we want a wide range of sites to help create the most diverse list possible for later voting.»

Salto Ángel, Venezuela

Here is the link to the site where you can make your 7 nominations.

And here are a few suggestions I submit to your judgement and opinion; maybe I'll nominate them later:

• Amazon rainforest, South America;
• Angel Falls (Salto Ángel), Venezuela;
• Mariana trench, Marianas Islands;
• Mount Everest, Nepal;
• Ngorongoro crater, Tanzania;
• Okavango delta, Botswana;
• Santorini Island's caldera, Greece.

Maybe this is not the best way to be concerned with Nature, but at least it may bring some visibility to a few world areas that indeed deserve common attention.

I. The Mediterranean: end of a temperate climate

«Ever more glow furnace days on the Mediterranean

Rome 43°C, Athens 45°C – so could soon summer everyday life look like in the Mediterranean regions: according to a new study, a climatic projection, the number of lethal hot days will strongly increase there – if the greenhouse gas output should rise further. A new study by several scientists confirms the fear that it might shortly become unpleasant in southern Europe: towards end of this century, extreme heat days could occur two to five times as frequently per season as on average in the past decades, the researchers write in the US specialized magazine "Geophysical Research Letters":

"Heat stress intensification in the Mediterranean climate change hotspot (Abstract)

(Noah S. Diffenbaugh, Jeremy S. Pal, Filippo Giorgi, and Xuejie Gao
West Lafayette, Indiana, USA and Trieste, Italy)

We find that elevated greenhouse gas concentrations dramatically increase heat stress risk in the Mediterranean region, with the occurrence of hot extremes increasing by 200 to 500% throughout the region.
This heat stress intensification is due to preferential warming of the hot tail of the daily temperature distribution, with 95.th percentile maximum and minimum temperature magnitude increasing more than 75.th percentile magnitude.
This preferential warming of the hot tail is dictated in large part by a surface moisture feedback, with areas of greatest warm-season drying showing the greatest increases in hot temperature extremes.
Fine-scale topographic and humidity effects help to further dictate the spatial variability of the heat stress response, with increases in dangerous Heat Index (cf. graphic) magnified in coastal areas.
Further, emissions deceleration substantially mitigates heat stress intensification throughout the Mediterranean region, implying that emissions reductions could reduce the risk of increased heat stress in the coming decades."
(Published June 15.th 2007)

"Rare events like the heat wave in 2003 will become the standard", says Noah Diffenbaugh, earth and atmosphere researcher at the Purdue University in West Lafayette (Indiana) and main author of the study. "The extreme events of the future will be without example in their consequences." What today are the hottest summer days, by the end of the 21.st century will become the coolest ones, according to simulations.

Summer days with "dangerous heat stress"

For their view into the future the researchers used the supercomputer of the national Chinese climatic centre in Beijing and fed it with two different, internationally common global scenarios: a pessimistic and a rather optimistic. In one case the output of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases rises exponentially, their content in the atmosphere doubles compared to today (A2 scenario); in the other one the world-wide emissions increase less strongly due to larger efforts of climatic protection, but even so by approximately 50% (B2 scenario).

These data were put into a regional climatic computer model. In the end it supplied a picture of the temperature extremes that can be expected on the Mediterranean up to the year 2099, and with a rather high spatial resolution of 20 × 20 km. Finally, Diffenbaugh and his colleagues determined the number of summer days with "dangerous heat stress" for groups of risk like older people and infants, derived from formulas used by weather forecast services. On the Mediterranean those are generally days with temperatures beyond 40.5ºC.

The results should bring sweat pearls to some people's foreheads already: The daily maximum temperature on the hottest days rises accordingly for instance in Paris from 27º to 35ºC, if greenhouse gas emissions will follow the A2 path without brakes. Also summer nights on the Seine would then be by the end of the century around full 4ºC warmer than today. In Rome and Tel Aviv heat periods could become the standard, when the thermometer would show only just 43ºC and more during the day. In Athens it might be even 45ºC and in Algiers 46ºC – with nocturnal maximum values of 28ºC and 29ºC. In the more optimistic B2 scenario temperatures would lie around 1.2ºC to 2ºC lower.»




… What are we all still waiting for?
For us to open our outside doors and dive into a sand dune?
For us to drink water from the Atlantic?
For us to die instantly from a heat stroke?
Tell me all about political summits and more… I just love being fooled!

RIC - Translation and editing

Global Warming = European New Ice Age?…

«The Gulf Stream, together with its northern extension towards Europe – the North Atlantic Drift – is a powerful, warm, and swift current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico, exits through the Strait of Florida, and follows the eastern coastlines of the USA and Canada before crossing the Atlantic. At about 30ºW-40ºN, it splits in two, with the northern stream crossing to northern Europe and the southern stream recirculating off West Africa.


It influences the climate of the east coast of North America from Florida to Newfoundland, and the west coast of Europe. It is a western-intensified current, largely driven by wind stress. The North Atlantic Drift, in contrast, is largely thermohaline (temperature and salinity) circulation driven. By carrying warm water northeast across the Atlantic, it makes Western Europe warmer than it otherwise would be. However, the extent of its contribution to the actual temperature differential between North America and Europe is a matter of dispute.

The Gulf Stream transports about 1.4 petawatts of heat – equivalent to 100 times the world energy demand. It carries water at a rate of 30 million cubic meters/second (30 sverdrups) through the Strait of Florida. After it passes Cape Hatteras (North Carolina), this rate increases to 80 million cubic meters/second.

As it travels north, the warm water undergoes evaporative cooling and brine exclusion. The cooling is wind driven and causes evaporation, leaving a saltier brine. In this process, the water increases in salinity and density, and decreases in temperature. The second process involves the formation of sea ice, which likewise increases the salinity of the brine solution, thereby decreasing its freezing point. These two processes produce water that freezes at a lower temperature than 0ºC.

In the North Atlantic, the water becomes so cold and dense that it begins to sink down through warmer, less salty and less dense water. This downdraft of heavy, cold and dense water becomes a part of the North Atlantic Deep Water Current, a south going stream.

There is some speculation that global warming could decrease or (even) shutdown thermohaline circulation and therefore reduce the North Atlantic Drift. This could trigger localised cooling in the North Atlantic and lead to cooling (or lesser warming) in that region, particularly affecting areas such as Scandinavia and Great Britain. The chances of this occurring are unclear.

At present, most available data show that Gulf Stream flow was stable over the past 40 years. One report, based on a snapshot survey, suggested that the deep return flow has weakened by 30% since 1957, which would imply a weakening in the North Atlantic Deep Water production. However, this should have caused a temperature drop of several degrees in northwest Europe, which has not been observed. It was later discovered, using the first cross-Atlantic array of moored current meters, that variations within one year were just as large.


At least part of the apparent weakening of the Gulf Stream, if real, may be cyclical and connected to recent positive values of North Atlantic Oscillation. Recent research shows that Gulf Stream volume transport during the Little Ice Age was 10% weaker than today’s, implying that diminished oceanic heat transport may have contributed to the 16.th- to the mid-19.th-century cooling in the North Atlantic.»

"Gulf Stream", Wikipedia - edited & abridged

Man had no significant intervention in the Little Ice Age.
But what about now?
The Industrial Revolution only started by the end of the 18.th century, and up till now gazillions of tons of Carbon Dioxide (CO2) have been already thrown into the atmosphere, being the first cause of the greenhouse effect and of global warming.
For the very first time in the history of our planet – ± 4,500 million years – mankind may be altering life support conditions forever. From now on, environment and eco-worries will always be inseparable.
But what kind of signals do we get from economy and politics?
You think about that, dear blogger friend, and find it out…
Think meanwhile about Seychelles Islands, which are about to be submerged by the Indian Ocean… Or some of Solomon and Vanuatu islands threatened by the Pacific… Can this be sheer speculation?

RIC