Hi Jennifer,
Attached is a recent speech from Greg Bourne in which he said:
“We now know, for example, that the Himalayan glaciers which feed the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yangtze and the other great Asian rivers are likely to disappear within 40 years due to the warming of the planet.
If these rivers dry up during the irrigation season, then the rice production which currently feeds over one third of humanity collapses and the world goes into net food deficit.”
Is he being over-dramatic? Perhaps you would like to mention it in your blog.
Regards Anon.
Attached: download speech by Greg Bourne (CEO of WWF) by clicking anywhere here.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4762576.stm
Could someone explain to this fellow and his followers that the annual flow in the Ganges, the Brahmaputra, the Mekong and the Yangtze is primarily melt water from snowfall in the same mountains. And that the glaciers represent only a portion of the highest altitude permanent ice.
Does this clown seriously believe that the floods that have come down these rivers for millenia are nothing more than the annual increment from some huge stock of mountain top ice in glaciers?
Its 12.45am, give me a @$%&* break. Ni di chee sin gwai loh m ji doh ah. Wak jeh nei dei jue nei ma ge hai.
Gee I never knew that. No there’s no break from global warming. It’s a %^#&%#!@*& hotspot.
Actually I think its a good sign and a step in the right direction. Although misguided and over the top it does at least indicate public acknowlewedgement that over time technical constaints are relevant to food output, rather than the usual even more idiotic claim that they are irrelevant and that all food problems are caused by mismanaged distribution, political corruption, capitalism and waste.
It gets the task of feeding 2 billion extra people mid century on the agenda instead of being ignored by organisations like WWF.
I’d thus call it a George Monbiot moment, after George’s rather late realisation that diversion of agriculture resources to biofuel or biodiesel (so called renewable fuels) could , in principle at least, adversely affect both food supply and land use.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/
http://globallychanging.blogspot.com/2006/03/ok-lets-set-out-to-prove-what-we.html
Maybe that above quote is not quite fair – there have been reports of regional temperature increases, but that station is to provide more local data closer to the formation.
OK need to hunt it down.
The key issue is, did the snowy mountains stop delivering melt water when their last glacier melted away some time ago? Obviously not.
Another key issue might also be how much snow is left in the Snowy Mtns for skiers by the time we’ve finished !
There may be other issues too like the effect on the stability of Himalayan alpine lakes etc.
What was it that John told us be – alert but not alarmed? More information is needed.
Phil, I think that some of the information in the Contribution of IPCC WGIII to the TAR is relevant. See, for example, Table 3.31 at http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg3/131.htm , which ‘shows the technical potential for energy crop production in 2050 to be 396 EJ/yr from 1.28 Gha of available land.’
To put these figures into perspective, the IPCC
Don’t worry yourself silly over the supply of biofuels Ian C, we have technological inventiveness. Scalable superalgae will save us. You’re probably already growing some in yr bathtub.
eg algae CO2 scrubber converts exhaust CO2 from the fermentation stage of ethanol production facilities into biomass for subsequent use in ethanol or biodiesel production.
Flawed, devious logic: The climate change scenarios fail to stimulate certain govts but succeed in motivating many enterprising govts, individuals, small businesses, NGOs to devise GHG mitigating technologies, ie a desired outcome. Those desired (but alone, insufficient) outcomes are then used as an excuse to defend a bythen irrelevant attack on a few assumptions in the scenarios by the curmudgeons.
Climate change scenarios and modelling exercises are performed to see 1. where we’re heading, 2. at what rate, 3. the likely outcome, 4. teh causal factors and 5. particulary, the impact of human activities. If our understanding of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 leads us to realise a need to change 5 and then people get their butts and brains in to gear go ahead and address 5 then the whole exercise is a success. No amount of pedantic nitpicking will change that.
Ian – it looks to me that liquefying coal to oil via something like the Fischer-Tropsch method is the name of the game for the Asia Partnership. Plenty of miles to drive and CO2 to liberate. Agree biofuels don’t add up.
Would have thought we have relatively plenty of coal and that will keep the fleet rolling. Pity about the CO2 – but hey can’t have everything.
Yes we have technological inventiveness Thinksy, and that’s why the past real price of solar thermal, solar electric and wind energy has declined as shown in Figure 72 on p. 131 of Bjorn Lomborg’s ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’ , and is likely to continue to decline as shown in that Figure. As Lomborg explains in the Global Warming chapter of his book, that’s why the price of solar energy that is estimated in the IPCC’s A1FI scenario to be reached at the end of the century is by most analyses placed a few decades away (p. 285, and see the sources listed at footnote 2342.
It’s a pity that the climate change scenarios and modelling exercises of which you’re so confident didn’t get around to examining these studies.
But by all means use algae CO2 scrubbers to convert exhaust CO2 from the fermentation stage of ethanol production facilities into biomass for subsequent use in ethanol or biodiesel production. There’s no law against it, is there? There’s also a case for ‘enterprising governments’ hastening the process by subsidies, support for R&D, etc., but it’s best if they get some expert advice before going too far down that track. Did you read George Monbiot’s articles?
Another useful source is the paper by Lew Fulton, Office of Energy & Technology and R & D at the International Energy Agency, at embarq.wri.org/documentupload/ Transport%20Technology%20Leapfrogging%20-%20Lew%20Fulton.pdf :see in particular the chart showing that ethanol produced from corn in the US is estimated to cost about $600 per tonne of reduction in CO2, and in Europe the cost is about 50% greater.. To convert these estimate to the cost per tonne of Carbon, multiply by 3.664.
Meanwhile bear in mind, by way of crude illustration, that the World Health Organization has estimated that malaria’s current death toll of 1 million/year could be halved for less that $1.5 billion/year (cited by Indur Goklany in his submission to the Lords Committee). Of course the figuring is somewhat crude but on the face of it it’s possible either to reduce Carbon emissions by 500,000 tons per year (about 1/150th of one per cent of the current level of emissions) to produce ethanol in riich countries, or save 750,000 human lives each year.
Accepting that this figuring may be astray by an order of magnitude, are you quite sure that the resources should be spent on assuring the supply of biofuels rather than saving human lives?
Ian – don’t forget we are already maladapted globally to climate variability. Check the global toll on human suffering and economic pain from El Nino. Perhaps La Nina too. This is why we have climate efforts from multi-national participation in organisations such as the IRI. http://iri.columbia.edu/
Drought is my particular interest. Australia shells out millions in drought aid. Check what’s been spent since 1991 ! This tends to make one quite sensitive to any extra risks from climate change. And of course the hidden side of drought in grazing systems is the land degradation from erosion that results if an El Nino event breaks down in a big “wet”. Not all do of course.
So we already have major problems with climate. It isn’t optional ! Think of the dilemma if the Pacific turned into a semi-permanent warm event. Perhaps some speculation at the moment but enough hints to make a it a worry for more research.
Yeah baby, I read all of Monbiot’s articles.
Yes the trade-off malaria cheap shot was crude as you said. Linear, boxed-in thinking. The despicable irony is that by trying to derail efforts to mitigate climate change, you may be compounding malaria problems from accelerated warming.
You sincerely want to spend $1.5bn on malaria? Chickenfeed: Aust could do that single-handedly and it would help us to make our economy more efficient and it would give us a modest start down the path of GHG honesty. How? By cutting into the estimated A$9 bn kitty for fossil fuel subsidies. In the absence of peverse subsidies the biofuels business would take care of itself, no worries, and free markets would prosper.
Let’s see if I have this right. Glaciers feed the rivers. These rivers have been running a long time. Stopping the glaciers from melting will make the rivers dry up. Duh!
Okay, so maybe the glaciers are melting faster than they are building up, feeding the rivers more than usual. So, where is the unprecedented flooding?
Or maybe global warming is so severe, the glaciers are just flashing into steam? Headline: “Skiers Scalded.” Right.
Gotta wonder about some folks.
While we are treading on the borderline between fantasy, fact, and Moonbat fiction, can I mention the biodiesel derived from vegetable oils has current energy efficiency advantage over US ethanol from corn.
In short, I suggest a near future 2-5 years away with substantial commercial profit driven exports from North and South America of agriculturally captured atmospheric carbon dioxide by biofuel ship tankers taking it to the EU (and Japan) who will return it to the atmosphere in their biofuel burning automobiles. This will shift to include trade in straw based ethanol five years down the track (which the EU will do to).
The point I’m getting to is that North America is likely to have cost advantages over the EU on production of biodiesel, to echo a point Ian Castles has just made. My gut feeling is that soy based diesel from the US will be cheaper than rapeseed diesel from the EU. Also Canadian canola biodiesel from GM varieties will have cost advantages over EU non-GM rapeseed and Canadian canola oil already being shipped to the EU to be burned in cars. The next step will be turning it into biodiesel before shipping.
The main driving force for this coming trade is EU’s apparent need to subsidise their farmers.
In the US and South America, opportunies for technological improvement of agricultural feedstock production are better than in the EU, as they don’t ban biotechnology innovation like the EU does with the intention of susidising their farmers. This de-facto subsidy game is not helping EU competitiveness in future biofuel trade.
Ian’s Fulton link is http://embarq.wri.org/documentupload/Transport%20Technology%20Leapfrogging%20-%20Lew%20Fulton.pdf
There is one advantage by adopting bio fuels, a shift in balance of payments.
BTW Jennifer, good article in this week’s “The Land”, I see you have attracted a gang of “activists” who fill the letters page with their so-predictable ad hominen attacks.
Perhaps the angst is justified !
Nature 438, 303-309 (17 November 2005) | doi:10.1038/nature04141
Potential impacts of a warming climate on water availability in snow-dominated regions
T. P. Barnett1, J. C. Adam2 and D. P. Lettenmaier3
All currently available climate models predict a near-surface warming trend under the influence of rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. In addition to the direct effects on climate—for example, on the frequency of heatwaves—this increase in surface temperatures has important consequences for the hydrological cycle, particularly in regions where water supply is currently dominated by melting snow or ice. In a warmer world, less winter precipitation falls as snow and the melting of winter snow occurs earlier in spring. Even without any changes in precipitation intensity, both of these effects lead to a shift in peak river runoff to winter and early spring, away from summer and autumn when demand is highest. Where storage capacities are not sufficient, much of the winter runoff will immediately be lost to the oceans. With more than one-sixth of the Earth’s population relying on glaciers and seasonal snow packs for their water supply, the consequences of these hydrological changes for future water availability—predicted with high confidence and already diagnosed in some regions—are likely to be severe.
Climate Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California 92093, USA
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering,
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-2700, USA
Correspondence to: T. P. Barnett1D. P. Lettenmaier3 Correspondence should be addressed to T.P.B. (Email: timdotbarnett@ucsd.edu) or D.P.L. (Email: dennisl@u.washington.edu).
Himalaya–Hindu Kush region
Perhaps the most critical region in which vanishing glaciers will negatively affect water supply in the next few decades will be China and parts of Asia, including India (together forming the Himalaya–Hindu Kush (HKH) region), because of the region’s huge population (about 50–60% of the world’s population). The ice mass over this mountainous region is the third-largest on earth, after the Arctic/Greenland and Antarctic regions. The hydrological cycle of the region is complicated by the Asian monsoon, but there is little doubt that melting glaciers provide a key source of water for the region in the summer months: as much as 70% of the summer flow in the Ganges and 50–60% of the flow in other major rivers40, 41, 42. In China, 23% of the population lives in the western regions, where glacial melt provides the principal dry season water source43.
There is little doubt that the glaciers of the HKH region are melting and that the melting is accompanied by a long-term increase of near-surface air temperature (ref. 44 and Figs 2.9 and 2.10 in ref. 1), the same level of warming we saw impacting the western USA. After 25 years of study, the China Glacier Inventory was recently released45. It showed substantial melting of virtually all glaciers, with one of the most marked retreats in the last 13 years (750 m) of the glacier that acts as one of the major sources of the Yangtze River, the largest river in China. In total, it is estimated that the entire HKH ice mass has decreased in the last two decades. Furthermore, the rate of melting seems to be accelerating46.
The few analytical studies that exist for the region suggest both a regression of the maximum spring stream-flow period in the annual cycle by about 30 days (ref. 47) and an increase in glacier melt runoff by 33–38% (ref. 48). These numbers seem consistent with what is being observed and bear striking similarities to the stream-flow results from the western USA. The huge inconsistency, however, occurs in the impacts on local water supplies. In the western USA, model-predicted impacts are already being seen in the hydrological cycle. The models suggest that the impacts will appear as a long-term trend in snow amount and runoff. But in the HKH region, there may (for the next several decades) appear to be normal, even increased, amounts of available melt water to satisfy dry season needs. The shortage, when it comes, will likely arrive much more abruptly in time; with water systems going from plenty to want in perhaps a few decades or less.
It appears that some areas of the most populated region on Earth are likely to ‘run out of water’ during the dry season if the current warming and glacial melting trends continue for several more decades. This may be enough time for long-term planning to see just how the region can cope with this problem. Unfortunately, the situation here is that when the glaciers melt and their fossil water is used or lost, their contribution to the water supply of the region will cease.
Sorry for slightly disjointed last two comments by detribe on biofuels. I was hit the the doubtful comment sofware block. It wouldnt even let me use numbers to say biodiesel is twice as efficient on fuel energy yield E out over E in ratio as ethanol from corn, or that cane sugar in Brazil now and future straw conversions give much better yields.
Clarification – my comment above – that wasn’t angst on the Land newspaper comment. Was on previous discussion.
In all this defence of the claimed benefits of climate directed measures, theres very little discussion of the basic point made by Ian that changing climate is a very expesive way of dealing with important priorities like diseases, flooding, and food, and that the money is more efficiently spent dealing directly the proble. This is NOT trying to derail things as Thinksy points out, but an attempt to question the judgement of those who advocate surgery with very blund cudgels.
There is alo the point that the economic effect of temperature change are about one percent fall in output per one degree change in temperature, so any response that is economically less efficient than these numbers suggest is better spent investing in economic growth to provide wealth for mitegation.
Thats not a great boost per year needed.
So detribe – see what I said to Ian above – how much havoc do El Nino and hurricanes now cause. Have you calculated the impact of changing the tail of the distribution?
Seems to be the bit that most people don’t get! And if we were clever the new technologies for CO2 removal or hydrogen/renewables/nuclear would be the economic earner. i.e. see waiting queues for a Toyota Prius
It the inverse of the not leaving the stone age for rock deficits joke.
I don’t think Ian has done a job of calculating the downside of current climate variability at all. We’re stuck on SRES details not what the consequences of his best two scenarios are (high and low).
In the end is not economic worth about perceived value and risk not real resources and real damages.
The point I’m making is about relative returns for effort and expense in responses to problems. It turns out that the mooted damages can be dealt with locally and specificaly usually more effectively that globaly, as the whole system is so huge.
At the trivial level, its cheaper to wear less clothing than to cool down the planet. Also more effective and easier to understand, more certainly practical.
Detribe – Check out global impact of ENSO !
http://iri.columbia.edu/
Thanks Phil, thats my kind of site. So is it more effective to respond to El Ni~no forecasts by modifying farming practices (eg use less fertiliser, plant differently) or try and change Global weather patterns? Local or Global which is it in terms of payoff and certainty?
Queensland DPI and many other state departments of agriculture now push the adapative farming, seasonal forecast line (e.g. NSW, SA, WA).
The problem is that when you get into serious El Nino drought – you may have few options but to destock, not plant at all, shut the farm gate and go the beach – certainly reduce inputs and stop spending more money. Those who drought-feed in general tend to get into a bad state financially and emotionally and then need to sell anyway on further reduced prices. And then if you’re in SW Qld the inevitable roo plague will finish off your pastures.
Multiple back to back El Nino events over many years such as we have had since 1990 are big crunchers. Will send some farms to the wall. Of course not all droughts are due to El Nino.. ..
In Australia farm family income support from Exceptional Circumstances funding kicks in at some point in dire conditions (the 1 in 20 year rule) – in Africa you starve !
The interaction with AGW – do we want more of this sort of phenomenon. OK jury still out on interaction of GW with El Nino. But imagine the Pacific Ocean in an El Nino-like semi-permanent warm state.
You will find other examples of ENSO interacting with crop and animal disease and flooding depending on what part of the global teleconnection you end up! Eastern Australia and northern Queensland is an epicentre for drought impact. Sometimes El Nino events break down in major deluges sending tons of erosion from bare soil surfaces into the creeks, rivers etc. Loss of topsoil is irreparable in many systems.
Phil, The reason we’re stuck on SRES details is that the SRES authors, most of whom are employed at well-funded research institutions, chose to analyse the consequences of many high emissions scenarios and to ignore low emissions scenarios which are equally likely.
My best scenario (high) is the SRES A2 scenario, which finds that on average a world population of 15 billion in 2100 will emit about twice the present per capita CO2 emissions level on average. These results have been fed into climate models and the consequences for GHG concentrations and temperatures have been ascertained.
I guess my best scenario (low) would be a world of about 4 billion people in 2100, with per capita emissions equivalent to the projected per capita levels in the SRES B1T MESSAGE scenario. I don’t know what the consequences for GHG concentrations and temperatures are, because this storyline hasn’t been translated into an emissions scenario, and the resulting emissions scenario hasn’t been fed into a climate model.
Given that the SRES writing team consisted of 89 well-paid professionals, I continue to be bemused by the notion that it’s my job to turn myself into a one-member unpaid research institute to do the job at the low end of the range of plausible emissions that the Special Report the IPCC commissioned failed to do.
The stock answer I get to this argument is that the IPCC SRES spans the full range of emissions scenarios in the literature – i.e., if there are no lower scenarios in the literature they can’t happen. Perhaps this answer says more about the preconceptions of the researchers in the field than about the prospects for my ‘best’ scenario being realised.
The population projections in the SRES scenarios were developed in 1996, and published by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria. In 2001 IIASA produced a probability analysis of global and regional population to 2100, based on 2000 simulations. I’m not a demographer so I can’t explain the method and rationale of this process. But I do know that the IIASA team found that there was only a 2.5% probability that the world population would exceed 14.4 billion in 2100, and that there was also a 2.5% probability that the global population would be LESS than 4.3 billion.
So my best (low) scenario is unlikely, but at least as far as population is concerned, the IIASA systems analysts have found it to be just as likely as the SRES A2 scenario which the Stern discussion paper presents as a business-as-usual (and highly likely) outcome. If a 15 billion global population in 2100 is ‘plausible’ (as it must be by definition to be an IPCC scenario), why isn’t a 4 billion population equally plausible, and why hasn’t the IPCC assessed the consequences for climate?
Phil and detribe, I didn’t intend to cut off the interesting discussion you were having about the possibly serious consequences if El Nino interacts with AGW. Let’s assume that we knew for certain that it did. There’s still the problem that MOST mitigation options (I don’t say that this is true of all) are very expensive in relation to the extent of mitigation achieved.
It’s not only that an individual country such as Australia can’t achieve much through mitigation and has to depend on others doing the same. It’s also that countries generally are more interested in being seen to be doing something, as distinct from doing something.
The comparison between Canada and Australia is interesting here. According to all the standard measures, Canada’s performance in mitigation since the UNFCCC base year (1990) has been worse than Australia’s. The absolute level of their emissions has increased more than Australia’s, as has their per capita level, as have emissions per unit of GDP. This applies to all of these measures both including and excluding land use changes. Yet because Canada has ratified Kyoto (although it was always obvious they couldn’t get within a bull’s roar of achieving the target) the Canadians present themselves to the world as responsible environmental citizens and Australia is pilloried as an environmental ‘rogue state’.
Basically, the system rewards hypocrisy – and the policy conclusion that must be drawn, to my mind, is that whatever governments SHOULD do in the interests of the world as a whole, solutions must take into account what they WILL do in the best interests of their own citizens (including in order to be re-elected).
Ian – I agree .. ..
I don’t the world will do much about CO2 at all. Possibly for good reason as detribe suggests – that adaptation is cheaper. Possibly for a feisty encounter I had with Rog on issues like malaria and TB being more pressing. But also that it’s very hard for us to change and nobody will vote for a lifestyle cut without being in a war.
But when you work on drought you do with a certain degree of blood pressure. You tend to curse the lack of control ability that forecasts give you; and you start to worry about the probabilities changing through climate change. Then you start to see back-to-back events and few La Ninas since 1976 and more specifically since 1990. You also observe drying trends in eastern Australia and SW WA which seem to trace back to hemispheric ciculation changes. All this happens about the same time.
Hence some pre-occupation with interacting climate variability and change.
Thanks Phil. I can see that this is the sort of experience that would concentrate the mind.
To me it seems that attention to the “bigger” issue of climate change and CO2 is distracting from the stronger message of drought management with huge resonance in Australia and Africa , irrespective of global change.
Drought in Kenya at the moment has my attention too.Its really there.
Probabably a focus of communication on serious drought is much more effective without the distracting uncertainty about global climate knowledge. We’re always going to need better drought management even if it does’nt get worse in a long term trend. Youv’e got me interested,Phillo, and in time maybe I’ll shift further to taking on board your other perspectives
David of course drought gets very personal – to the point of suicide for some, economic ruin for others, breakup of families, the end of a lifetime’s work in breeding, the final loss of a property in the hands of a family for generations. And it’s the very stoicism of our graziers and farmers that adds to the problem. Not knowing when to turn away. Epitomised perhaps in Jill Ker Conway’s book “The Road from Coorain”.
The environmental issues of course are eventual soil erosion from eventual rain, wind erosion, and the inevitable increase in woody weeds.
Of course economists like Ian say we’re not allowed to talk about economic losses from drought – something about “wool unshorn from lambs unborn”.
On a climate change note it’s interesting to compare the 1902 drought with the 2002 drought. The Federation drought vs the Millenium drought !! Although 1902 was probably more widespread I think the evaporative demand was worse in 2002 – lower vapour pressures and higher temperatures added to it. Perhaps a climate change bonus? So might our future droughts be more demanding is an interesting thing to ponder.
How do you compare droughts – extent, duration, rainfall deficit, evaporative demand ??
Anyway it’s the back-to-back events over multiple years that get ya ! And in this case there is interesting discussion about the Pacific entering a semi-permanent “warm event” state under AGW – whether this is an El Nino or a proxy for an El Nino I’m not sure. Certainly the TAR says there’s insufficient evidence. (But that doesn’t stop mug punters wonderng).
David or Warwick might comment.
P.S. Buggered if I know how got here from the Himalayas !!
Yes, Phil, back at the Himalayas, So the snow fall will be less but the rain will be more. And shock horror, the runoff will come earlier. But they already have this really neat bit of technology to deal with water that comes down the river earlier than needed.
It is called the “Dam”, and I understand the Queen of Sheba in ancient Yemen was one of the first rulers to employ one, between bonking King David of the Israelites. They say it lasted for 1400 years, the dam not the bonk.
And in any event, I think the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze might have enough slack in it to deal with the problem for the Chinese quarter of mankind. And my recollection of the landscape on the Nepali part of the Tibetan Plateau was that there were some very spectacular dam sites in places with minimal need for human resettlement.
But of course, dams are the tools of the anti-gaia, even though they do a really good job of keeping silt off coral reefs.
Yours heretically,
How we can entertain a conversation about efficiency and whether money is better spent on mitigation or adaptation when we have a model of governance where vested interests co-opt policies for their own benefit and we have substantial subsidies, ensuring the continued emission of more GHGs and a relatively inefficient, inflexible economic structure?
The Wolfdene of the Ganges !!
Yes Ian but .. .. .. have you considered .. ..
Monsoons may dry up
Land use changes in India could turn off the rain.
Philip Ball
The Indian monsoon, which waters India’s agriculture, could run dry because of human impacts on the environment, a team of climate researchers has warned.
Kirsten Zickfeld and her colleagues at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research say that the monsoon has two major settings: on, as at present, and off, when it produces very little rainfall. A switch-off would be catastrophic for India’s main crop, rice, which depends on heavy monsoon rains.
Even a minor change in monsoon timing or intensity can have a big impact. “If the rains are delayed by just a few days, that affects the agricultural yields,” says Zickfeld. The monsoon’s disappearance would wreak havoc, probably requiring Indian farmers to completely change their crops and methods.
Zickfeld and colleagues have shown that changes in land use and air pollution on the Indian continent are pushing conditions towards the off state. They don’t know if or when it might happen, but they say there is cause for concern.
The pressure’s on
The monsoon is driven by an air-pressure difference between the land and the Indian Ocean. Usually, the hot season creates low-pressure zones over the warm continent. Air rushes in from the higher-pressure zone over the water, bringing rain to the land.
Anything that reduces this pressure difference – such as cooler land temperatures – can weaken the monsoon. And once the weakening exceeds a certain threshold, the climate switches into a new state in which moist air over the ocean is no longer carried inland, they report in Geophysical Research Letters1.
In India and southeast Asia, several factors are causing less sunlight to warm the ground. There are more aerosols, because of industrial growth and greater vehicle use, which reflect light back into space. And clearing forests for farmland is replacing dark, light-absorbing treetops with lighter, more reflective soil.
“This raises a red flag”, says Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Zickfeld’s co-worker and director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, UK. “If we continue to change land cover, and at the same time aerosols increase, we’re moving towards the ‘off’ point.”
Schellnhuber says there are signs that the Chinese monsoon is weakening, perhaps for the same reasons. “It’s not science fiction,” he says.
Roller coaster
Zickfeld and colleagues admit that their model is crude, so it can’t predict when, or even if, current trends will trigger a change in the state of the monsoon.
But their work’s simplicity also has its advantages. Complicated computer models have suggested that the monsoon might change, but it has been hard to pick out the crucial causes.
The researchers add that global warming, caused by rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, might make the monsoon more intense, increasing rainfall. That could be equally bad for the area, as illustrated by the 1,000 people killed in Mumbai last week in floods due to abnormally heavy monsoon rains.
The worst case would be what Zickfeld’s team calls a ‘roller-coaster effect’: drying of the monsoon, followed by the return of an even more intense wet monsoon as aerosol emissions are cleaned up but carbon dioxide goes on increasing. Such a series of changes “would seriously challenge the adaptive capabilities of India’s rural society”, the researchers say.
References
Zickfeld K., et al. Geophysical Research Letters, 32. L15707 (2005). | Article |
Speaking as one who has had the pleasure of riding up the Grand Trunk Road on a fully laden bicycle in the monsoon, it is appropriate to advise that an excess of aerosols and dust is the least of one’s worries. You are correct on one thing though, this reference certainly is simplistic.
For a start, clearing of trees in a monsoonal landscape increases surface temperatures, increases high pressure systems (as in Australia) and will therefore increase the monsoonal intensity, not diminish it.
End of story.
But can we assume by this diversion that a towel has been tossed in on frightening the kids with the Himalayan Glacial bunyip?
Probably explains the Pilbara heat low.
No it’s still on – the monsoon is changing. The effect of aerosols and increased albedo from clearing does affect regional radiation budgets significantly. Albedo is a major climate driver.
I’m not frightening any kids – they’re safe in Xbox virtual reality ! And bunyips don’t exist – it’s drop-bears you have to worry about.
I almost failed the Army Cadet CUO course for delivering a presentation on Drop Bears. The only thing that got me through was that I dig a first rate Latrine. Been shoveling it ever since.
So tell me this, Phil. If the atmoshere and oceans all increase in temperature by 2 degrees then surely the amount of albedo must decline by the same amount as the temperature of landmass increases as well?
Albedo clearly varies with latitude, altitude and season in response to site specific factors affecting average air and water temperature. So it must also vary in response to a global average change. And the interesting question would then be, “how deep does this warming take place”? And, “what volume of solid matter is being warmed and how much of that heat will transfer from atmosphere and oceans”?
From my understanding, no such landmass warming has been factored into GW theory so all warming is assumed to take place in air and water, not solid matter. Is this correct?
Cripes you don’t let up when you’ve got a bloke on the ropes do you.
OK. Global CLimate Models have a land surface scheme which represents the global land surface with its variety of vegetation and land use – includes albedo, surafce roughness and stomatal resistance. They will also run some sort of water balance. If you use Google Scholar and type in “land surface schema and parameterizaion” you get a truckload on the subject. Heavy shite for those of us with only Pentium II processors.
Yes on the soil warming – check this “brief” description of how GCMs work by William Connolley (did I spell his name right or Ian will get up me) aka Stoat
http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2005/11/how-coupled-ao-gcms-work.html
I’ll examine you after you have read it. Actually its quite readable.
Phil, I couldn’t care less how you spell Connelley’s name or mine either. It just amuses me that he takes time off to complain about such trivia – part of his nitpicking attitude generally I guess.
Drought in Somalia !
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4801820.stm
In regards to Ian’s comments warming has been observed in bore hole temperatures down to hundreds of meters. However the rate of heat moving around is quite slow, takes a long time to move much heat in and out of the system, unlike water and air which have the big effect on the biospgere and us. In GCMs I believe soil temperature is tracked down to about 7-10m (a depth beyond which the annual temperature cycle is difficult to detect) but as to the boundary conditions imposed, I am not sure if +10m is set to an infinate sink or to the average annual temperature therefor loosing a bit of the heat flux. Tricky stuff, partial differential equations etc.
This is what I have always suspected, Richard. There could be some very serious fudging of the Global Warming Models due to the failure to properly deal with terrestrial warming. It is exactly the same stunt used in the ocean acidity models where acidity is assumed to be only present in the top 100 metres (2% – 2.5%) of the oceans.
It obviously takes a lot more heat to raise the temperature of a solid than it does for the same volume of water or air. But the models appear to have assumed that all the oceans and atmosphere will warm but this supposedly ‘global warming’ will not include much land at all.
This is justified on the basis that landmass does not circulate heat with anywhere near the efficiency of liquid or gas. But clearly, if an average of a range of air and water temperatures can increase by 1 to 5 degrees over a century, as IPCC scenarios have suggested, then surely a body of landmass must also be able to do the same.
And that warming of landmass must continue over an undefined period until the warming influence from the surface, net of albedo, meets the same temperature rising from the Earth’s core.
We know that heat doesn’t circulate well in a solid but it is certainly conducted better than in a liquid or gas. So it would seem, to this admittedly non-geologist, that the mass of rock that will be subject to the influence of global warming, in the long term, will be the mass of rock that is above the depth at which the temperature from the core equals the average temperature at the surface.
This obviously varies quite a bit around the world but it would seem that the volumes involved are still quite significant. The key questions would seem to be;
1 how much of the ocean and atmospheric warming will be absorbed by how much landmass over what period?
I await constructive input with interest.
Hey hey hey – just a minute.
“the failure to properly deal with terrestrial warming” – say who? “Same stunt with ocean acidity models” and we don’t know what’s in them nor the transit times properly?? Ian takes on the world’s physicists and oceanographers with his envelope and biro.
So on one hand we have a heat flux that travels very slowly through rocks – then on the other hand we’re very worried about it.
How powerful is the sun/atmosphere interaction – well gets a tad cool in the Simpson desert on those clear nights. But not as cold as on the Moon !
Do we not know that ocean sea surface temperature anomalies are major disruptors of global weather e.g. El Nino.
Then I’d do some reading on what we know about the models. They do seem to represent those feedbacks and fluxes.
Tell me what you find in http://mustelid.blogspot.com/2005/11/how-coupled-ao-gcms-work.html
And report back.
I had already looked at that site, Phil, but it is interesting to note that the interaction of oceans with their part of the Earth’s crust doesn’t appear to have been taken into account either.
This accounts for 70% of the planets surface and it seems obvious that an increase in the temperature of the oceans must also produce an increase in the temperature of the landmass forming the ocean floor.
And this means the total mass to be heated by global warming is greater than the mass being used in the models. The implications of this, if for example, the mass of earth’s crust left out of the model was 25% of the mass of water and air, then the model would overstate the extent of warming by 20%.
And given that the average depth of oceans are from 4,000 to 5,000 metres, and the density of the rock is approx. 3 times that of water then the average thickness of crust involved would only need to be 330 to 416 metres to produce that outcome.
As I have already said, I would welcome more informed input.
Fluxes of heat are done by calculating the temperature at various depths in the soil which gets you a surface temperature – Ian suggest you have a Google on Land Surface Schemes.
But of course these guys are comparing models against observations in many experiments so I think it’s unlikely you have a “whoops – we didn’t think of that” hole in the science. And the ocean expansion from warming is in line with expectations?
I suggest we need to find out more what the models actually do. And as Stoat’s article says – there’s a dearth of information on how GCMs and AOGCMs work outside the specialised literature.
“This year’s world grain harvest is projected to fall short of consumption by 61 million tons, marking the sixth time in the last seven years that production has failed to satisfy demand. As a result of these shortfalls, world carryover stocks at the end of this crop year are projected to drop to 57 days of consumption, the shortest buffer since the 56-day-low in 1972 that triggered a doubling of grain prices.” Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute.
This is assuming Australia pulls in a 36 million tonne grain harvest which at the moment looks unlikely to crack 10 million with Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland in dire trouble. NSW has recently received rains but has no subsoil moisture and South Australia has had a good start but will be needing rains very soon.
We know that India has had problems with its wheat crop this year importing 3.5 million tonnes, the first time it has imported any grain since 1999. China has just become a net importer of corn despite prediction this would not occur until next year.
There will be food shortages within 5 years in affluent countries. The question society needs to ask itself is this. Just how do we propose to reinvigorate the rural sector now we have almost brought it to its knees by bankrupting social and intellectual capital, discouraging investment, and offering meager reward for the great spoils of a rich culinary rersource base. Pigs eating out of a trough rarely give thought to where the next meal will come from. Are humans any different?