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New Climate Change Programme Raises Concern – Mahlung

August 2, 2016 Webmaster

A new proposal expected to reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface has raised concerns among policymakers.

They indicate it could provide an incentive for countries not to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Solar Radiation Management proposal is currently being discussed among several stakeholders with the aim of addressing some of the risks associated with climate change. It is expected to inject sulphate particles into the earth’s stratosphere, which will reduce the amount of solar radiation and add a cooling effect with respect to the earth’s temperatures.

Following the Conference of the Parties, which was held in France last year, several countries committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions in a bid to curtail global temperatures. Clifford Mahlung, project administrator at the Climate Change Division in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, said while he welcomes any initiative to mitigate against the effects of climate change, it is critical that any such project takes into account the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“It wouldn’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but it would have a cooling effect on the earth’s temperature. It’s a new science initiative. It hasn’t been tried anywhere else in the world, but there are some conclusions that it has very good potential …” he said.

“The big concern for me, though, being from a small island which suffers greatly from the negative impact of climate change, is that it could also provide an incentive for countries not to reduce their greenhouse emissions. Instead, they would rely on this technology, which would be defeating the whole purpose to combating climate change. It could give people a false sense of hope,” Mahlung told The Gleaner.

“Also, you are not sure how long those sulphates will remain in the atmosphere and, if, over time, it will not have a reverse effect. There’s a concern with respect to what is known as acid rain, which is a mixture of ordinary rainfall and sulphur dioxide which can be harmful to trees,” he added.

However, he said that once the project is properly thought through, it could produce positive results.

Gleaner

News

Feeling The Heat: Earth In July Was Hottest Month On Record

August 21, 2015 Webmaster

Earth just keeps getting hotter. July was the planet’s warmest month on record, smashing old marks, United States weather officials said.

And it’s almost a dead certain lock that this year will beat last year as the warmest year on record, they said.

July’s average temperature was 61.86 degrees Fahrenheit (16.6 Celsius), beating the previous global mark set in 1998 and 2010 by about one-seventh of a degree, according to figures released Thursday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That’s a large margin for weather records, with previous monthly heat records broken by a 20th of a degree or less.

“It just reaffirms what we already know: that the Earth is warming,” said NOAA climate scientist Jake Crouch. “The warming is accelerating and we’re really seeing it this year.”

NOAA records go back to 1880. Separate calculations by NASA and the Japanese weather agency also found July 2015 to be a record.

The first seven months of 2015 were the hottest January-to-July span on record, according to NOAA. The seven-month average temperature of 58.43 degrees (14.7 Celsius) is 1.53 degrees warmer than the 20th-century average and a sixth of a degree warmer than the old record set in 2010.

Given that the temperatures have already been so high already – especially the oceans, which are slow to cool – NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden said she is “99 per cent certain” that 2015 will be the hottest on record for the globe. The oceans would have to cool dramatically to prevent it, and they are trending warmer, not cooler, she said.

Climate Change, El Nino

Crouch, Blunden and other scientists outside of the government said these temperatures are caused by a combination of man-made climate change and a strong, near-record El Nino. An El Nino is a warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that alters weather worldwide for about a year.

The oceans drove the globe to record levels. Not only were the world’s oceans the warmest they’ve been in July, but they were 1.35 degrees warmer than the 20th-century average.

The heat hit hard in much of Europe and the Middle East. It was the hottest July on record in Austria, where records go back to 1767. Parts of France had temperatures that were on average seven degrees above normal and temperatures broke 100 in the Netherlands, which is a rarity. And an Iranian city had a heat index (the “feels like” temperature) of 165 degrees (74 Celsius), which was still not quite record.

Nine of the 10 hottest months on record have happened since 2005, according to NOAA. Twenty-two of the 25 hottest months on record have occurred after the year 2000. The other three were in 1998 and 1997.

This shows that despite what climate-change doubters say, there is no pause in warming since 1998, Blunden said.

It doesn’t matter if a month or a year is number one or number two or number five hottest on record, said University of Georgia climate scientist Marshall Shepherd.

“The records are getting attention but I worry the public will grow weary of reports of new records each month,” Shepherd said in an email. “I am more concerned about how the Earth is starting to respond to the changes and the implications for my children.”

The Gleaner