Climate and hope on emissions? - headlines
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America delivers climate hope, again. US CO2 fell 3.8% last year
Barry Saxifrage, Vancouver Observer
The world has yet to figure out how to stop the relentless increase in global climate pollution. But one of the biggest obstacles to international climate action appears to be shifting.
The US Energy Information Agency (EIA) just reported that America's CO2 emissions plunged 3.8% in 2012. This is especially remarkable because their GDP grew by 2.8%. Economy growing -- emissions falling. America's CO2 emissions have now fallen in five of the last seven years since 2005...
(24 October 2013)
U.S. carbon emissions fell sharply in 2012. But don’t expect that to last.
Brad Plumer, Wonk Blog, Washington Post
This chart is inspiring plenty of headlines:
The big news: U.S. carbon-dioxide emissions from energy sources dropped 3.8 percent in 2012, and hit their lowest point since 1994.
That all seems like encouraging news on the climate-change front. But there's reason to think the emissions drop over the past few years is about to end...
(22 October 2013)
Are global emissions heading for a permanent slowdown?
Jessica Shankleman, Business Green
A "remarkable" shift towards the use of clean energy in some of the world's largest economies could be leading to a permanent slowdown in the increase of global carbon emissions.
That is the stark finding of a new report released today, which shows greenhouse gas emissions in 2012 increased at a significantly slower rate than the annual average seen during the past 10 years...
(31 October 2013)
Trends in global CO2 emissions: 2013 report - PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency
Study: Arctic Sea Ice Loss Shifts Jet Stream, Driving Deluges In NW Europe, Drought In Mediterranean
Joe Romm, Climate Progress
Yet another study finds Arctic sea ice loss can shift the jet stream and alter the climate.
Scientists predicted a decade ago that Arctic ice loss would shift storm tracks and bring on worse western droughts of the kind we are now seeing. Recent studies find that Arctic sea ice loss may well usher changes in the jet stream that lead to more U.S. extreme weather events (see here and here). Several studies also suggest that in Arctic sea ice loss is driving more extreme weather in other parts of the world (see review here).
Now a new study in Environmental Research Letters, “Influence of Arctic sea ice on European summer precipitation” finds a “a causal link between observed sea ice anomalies, large-scale atmospheric circulation and increased summer rainfall over northern Europe.” The University of Exeter news release explains:
A new study offers an explanation for the extraordinary run of wet summers experienced by Britain and northwest Europe between 2007 and 2012. The study found that loss of Arctic sea ice shifts the jet stream further south than normal resulting in increased rain during the summer in northwest Europe...
(30 October 2013)
Unprecedented warming uncovered in Pacific depths
Michael Marshall, New Scientist
The effects of climate change are being felt almost a kilometre down in the biggest ocean on Earth.
A new record of water temperatures shows how the Pacific has warmed and cooled since the last ice age. It shows that the ocean has warmed 15 times faster in the last 60 years than at any time in the previous 10,000.
The fact that the heat of global warming is penetrating deep into the oceans is yet more evidence that we are dramatically warming the planet, says Yair Rosenthal of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, who led the study...
(31 October 2013 2013)
Link to report (behind paywall)
Storm clouds image via shutterstock.
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