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Is the recent heat wave a clue to global warming?
Experts say computer models point to it
Jane Kay, SF Chronicle
Northern California, withering under last week’s punishing heat, wasn’t the only hot spot in the world this year — thermometers have spiked throughout much of the United States, Canada and Europe, and scientists are predicting more intense, longer and more frequent heat waves in the future.
While leading climate scientists have been reluctant to link regional heat waves with rising temperatures in the world’s atmosphere and oceans, they say the recent weather patterns are consistent with computer projections for global warming.
In the United States, the first six months of 2006 were the hottest recorded in more than a century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center. Canada reported the hottest winter and spring since it started keeping track about a half-century ago, while England, Germany and France are sweltering, and the Netherlands is recording the hottest month since temperatures were first measured 300 years ago.
“The current heat waves throughout much of North America and Europe are consistent with the predictions of our global climate models,” said physicist John Harte, a professor and researcher in UC Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group and the Ecosystem Sciences Division.
(30 July 2006)
Clinton Foundation to Work to Reduce Greenhouse Gases
Jennifer Steinhauer, NY Times
LOS ANGELES — The Clinton Foundation, a nonprofit organization that has focused on combating AIDS, poverty and childhood obesity, will turn its attention to greenhouse gases, former President Bill Clinton said here Tuesday.
…Mr. Clinton said in an interview on Tuesday that his interest in climate issues arose during his presidency and had grown in recent years as he followed news reports on heat-trapping gases, watched with chagrin as the United States rejected the Kyoto Protocol and observed his wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, negotiate energy policy with “Republicans who were recalcitrant on the issue.”
He said he would focus heavily on the climate issue over the next year.
“It seems to me that there is now a consensus in the world that climate change is real and that we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. “What we need now is more information about how to do it quickly, economically, and organize the efforts to do it. It seemed to me that the challenge was quite a bit like the work I’ve done on AIDS.”
For its first act, the foundation, with a $3 million grant from three donors, has formed a partnership with the Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, led by the mayor of London, to work on reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases in cities, which generate roughly 70 percent of the world’s such gases.
“This is probably the only thing that Barbra Streisand and Rupert Murdoch agree on,” Mr. Clinton said, referring to two of the donors. The third is Anson M. Beard Jr., a New York investor.
The group’s purpose, Mr. Clinton said, will be to create a consortium through which cities can buy energy-saving products, similar to the way the foundation lowered the price of AIDS drugs for some nations. The group will also create common measurement tools, allowing cities to establish a base line for the gas emissions and determine the effectiveness of programs to lower them.
(1 Aug 2006)
Downloadable study predicts a much hotter, drier California
Jane Kay, SF Gate
California will become significantly hotter and drier by the end of the century, causing severe air pollution, a drop in the water supply, melting of 90 percent of the Sierra snowpack and up to six times more heat-related deaths in major urban centers, according to a sweeping study compiled with help from respected scientists from around the country.
The weather — up to 10.5 degrees warmer by 2100 — would make last month’s heat wave look average. If industrial and vehicle emissions continue unabated, there could be up to 100 more days a year when temperatures hit 90 degrees or above in Los Angeles and 95 degrees or above in Sacramento. Both cities have about 20 days of such extreme heat now.
The good news: If emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are significantly curtailed, according to the report released Tuesday, the number of extremely hot days might only increase by half that amount.
The report, released by the California Environmental Protection Agency, comes from the California Climate Change Center, established three years ago by the California Energy Commission. Scripps Institution of Oceanography and UC Berkeley are responsible for the core research and about 75 scientists from universities, government agencies and nonprofit groups contributed to the report, which has been billed as a layperson’s guide to technical documents prepared in support of initiatives to address global warming by Gov. Schwarzenegger and legislators.
“What we wanted to do with the document is summarize the scientific reports, so regular citizens can understand the grave concerns that we believe are facing California,” said Claudia Chandler, assistant executive director of the California Energy Commission.
…Highlights of the report include:
— Hotter weather would increase the risk of death from dehydration, heat stroke, heart attacks, stroke and respiratory distress. Under the most extreme scenario, heat-related deaths could increase four or six times.
— The snowpack, the state’s top source of fresh drinking water, could nearly disappear. That would pose a challenge to water agencies that now rely on slowly melting snow to replenish reservoirs.
— Power demand could up as much as 20 percent, but hydropower supplies would drop.
— Heat stresses dairy cows, which could produce up to 20 percent less milk. Fruit and nut trees could produce smaller, inferior quality crops. Wine grape quality could be severely impacted in all but the coolest growing regions.
— Sea levels would rise, possibly inundating the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a source of two-thirds of the state’s drinking water.
(1 Aug 2006)
The report is available online as a PDF – Our Changing Climate: Assessing the Risks to California.
Related:
Supporting documents (all downloadable)
California Climate Change Portal
