Representatives of countries from an array of different regions, including Africa, Asia, Latin America and small island states, pushed to be singled out as particularly vulnerable.

Tanzania and Timor-Leste asked that the world’s poorest countries, known as least developed countries (LDCs), be added to a list of impacted communities, according to a report of the meeting by think-tank IISD.

Africa and small island developing states (Sids) were nearly cut out of one section on vulnerabilities, the IISD report says, and replaced by a reference to “developing and least developed countries”.

UN tells governments to ‘fast forward’ net zero targets

But there was a strong push from many delegates to retain them, particularly as most of those regions’ representatives had already left the talks to approve the report, as they had to catch flights home from Switzerland.

Mexico and Chile wanted to add Latin America to the list of regions that are particularly vulnerable while India wanted Asia included, according to IISD’s report.

The final document lists Africa, Sids, LDCs, Central and South America, Asia and the Arctic as particularly vulnerable.

The benefits of vulnerability

What makes some communities more vulnerable than others is not just physical factors like sea level rise but also social factors like poverty, governance, building standards and infrastructure.

This makes naming specific parts of the world as vulnerable a politically sensitive topic.

The inclusion of the Arctic as one of the most climate vulnerable places in the world, for example, was significant because it came just days after the US approved the hugely controversial Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s north slope.

There are various reasons for wanting to be named as vulnerable, including global recognition and better access to climate finance.

Last year’s Cop27 climate talks agreed that a new fund for climate victims should be targeted at countries who are “particularly vulnerable” to climate change.

Loss and damage committee ready to start talks following Asian nominations

Samoan ambassador Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr. Pa’olelei Luteru, who chairs the alliance of small island states (Aosis), said making specific note of the risks to these islands was “imperative in the context of climate justice”.

“The fact is that we are already facing devastating losses and damages of great magnitude, and funds we should be investing into sustainable development initiatives must be diverted to help us cope with climate change impacts,” he said.

IPCC highlights rich nations’ failure to help developing world adapt to climate change

But recognising growing impacts also gives states the responsibility of acting on them.

Jörn Birkmann researches climate vulnerability at the University of Stuttgart in Germany and was coordinating lead author of one of the underlying IPCC reports.

He told Climate Home: “It seems like governments fear that if their country is not mentioned, they could receive less support (e.g. global adaptation funds),”

He added: “Or vice versa; if they are mentioned it might lead to a stigmatisation or might raise questions about the role of governance.”

Measuring vulnerability

Birkmann said studies on human vulnerability all point to the same global hotspots, particularly Africa.

But even though many governments acknowledge this, there are significant tensions when measuring and mapping human vulnerability.

“It is still difficult in [a summary for policymakers report] to name specific global regions that are more vulnerable than others,” he said.

“The synthesis report is mentioning some regions, but it seems to be much easier for governments to agree on general sentences, rather than pointing to areas or countries where such deficits are evident.”

Green Climate Fund credibility hangs over response to violence in Nicaragua project

Although it misses a lot of nuance about who is vulnerable, Birkmann welcomes the fact that the report recognises global hotspots, “since the success of adaptation and resilience building also depends on the starting point communities and countries have”.

He believes adaptation strategies should not just focus on physical phenomena and climatic hazards such as storms, but also on structures and interventions that reduce human vulnerability, such as poverty reduction, education or fighting corruption – the latter being “a very controversial topic in the political arena”.

Furthermore, when new financial mechanisms for loss and damage agreed at Cop27 are being put into practice, he said it would be helpful to define adaptation goals, not just those on emission reduction.

“These goals should also take into account the very different starting points of regions/countries/communities to build resilience,” he said.” The level of human vulnerability might be such a benchmark of the different starting points.”

The post Nations fight to be called climate vulnerable in IPCC report appeared first on Climate Home News.

In a policy paper on the long-term value of energy resources submitted to the Norwegian parliament, the minority government said it will “facilitate long-term economic growth in the petroleum industry” and “pursue its exploration policy with regular concession rounds”.

It added: “The petroleum sector will remain a significant factor in the Norwegian economy in the years to come, although not on the same scale as today.”

Minister of petroleum and energy Tina Bru said the future Norwegian oil and gas sector will be “capable of delivering production with low emissions within the framework of our climate policy”.

The policy proposal also includes measures to develop offshore wind, hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.

Norwegian lawmakers are due to vote on the policy following the summer recess. The government will need the support of either the left-wing Labour Party or libertarian Progress Party, which sits on the right of prime minister Erna Solberg’s conservative party.

UK to provide Covid-19 vaccines for Cop26 delegates

Karoline Anduar, CEO of WWF Norway, said it is “embarrassing how Norway is placing itself on the wrong side of the transition”.

The paper comes after the International Energy Agency found fossil fuel exploration must stop now if the energy sector is to cut its emissions to net zero by 2050 and the world is to limit global heating to 1.5C – the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious goal.

Greenpeace Norway’s Andreas Randoy told Climate Home News the policy paper was likely to be adopted by parliament, perhaps with amendments, as opposition parties are unlikely to agree between themselves on the way forward.

Norway’s position contrasts with other wealthy fossil fuel producers like California and Denmark, which have both pledged to stop producing oil and gas by 2045 and 2050 respectively.

Janez Potocnik, former European environment commissioner and chair of the UN Environment Programme’s international resources panel, said: “Transitioning away from fossil fuels production will be difficult for all countries.”

But, he added, Norway is “best suited to implement a just transition away from fossils”.

“Norway has a well-educated workforce, a large sovereign wealth fund, and the democratic institutions to lead the world’s fight against climate change. With the latest decisions they are seriously undermining the leadership role they could and should play.”

Tar sands companies aim for ‘net zero’ by 2050 – with no plan to extract less oil

On Thursday, Norway released 84 new oil and gas exploration licences. Minister Bru said this was “important to maintain the level of activity on the Norwegian shelf”.

With a population of just five million, Norway is the world’s 14th biggest oil-producing country and the 8th biggest producer of natural gas.

It is a founding member of the Net Zero Producers Forum, a joint initiative to reduce emissions from fossil fuel production. The forum has been criticised for not discussing leaving fossil fuels in the ground.

The day before the policy paper was published, Norway’s state-owned energy company Equinor released forecasting which predicted that global oil and gas demand could be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 2019.

It estimated global oil demand would range between 50 and 115 million barrels per day, compared with 100 million barrels per day in 2019.

Equinor’s forecast for 2050. Source: Equinor

Norway sells oil and gas abroad and puts the proceeds towards its $1.2 trillion sovereign wealth fund. But its own electricity is almost all generated from hydropower. The country is also a world leader in electric vehicle sales. Nearly half the cars sold last year were electric, thanks, in part, to government subsidies.

The post Norway eyes expansion of oil and gas industry under policy proposal appeared first on Climate Home News.

The post How the shipping industry can halve climate-warming black carbon in the Arctic appeared first on Climate Home News.

It was only in September last year that Vladimir Putin used executive powers to formally endorse the Paris climate agreement, under which countries have committed to limit global heating “well below 2C” and strive for 1.5C by the end of the century.

Since then, Moscow has done little to align its climate plan with the Paris deal. Instead, it has continued to support fossil fuel expansion, spending $8.4 billion to prop up its oil and gas industry during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Earlier this month, Putin signed another executive order to reduce emissions by 30% from 1990 levels by 2030. That is the more ambitious end of its existing target but still allows emissions to rise significantly, as Russia’s emissions plummeted following the collapse of the Soviet Union and remain at about half the level they were in 1990.

Climate Action Tracker ranks the target as “critically insufficient” to meet the Paris goal and consistent with a pathway towards 4C of warming by the end of the century.

With China, Japan and South Korea recently joining the club of nations aiming to cut their emissions to net zero by the middle of the century, Russia could be one of the last major developed economies to decarbonise, Ryan Wilson, a climate and energy policy analyst at Climate Analytics, told Climate Home News.

EIB approves €1 trillion green investment plan to become ‘climate bank’

A draft long-term climate strategy published in March shows the government is considering reducing its emissions by up to 48% from 1990 levels by 2050 under an “intensive scenario”. This would allow Russia’s emissions to continue to rise for at least another nine years before reducing them just above 2017 levels — far from the 2050 net zero goal demanded by the UN.

Russia would achieve carbon neutrality “in the second half of the 21^st century, closer to its end,” the draft said.

Under a baseline scenario proposed for adoption, emissions would fall by 36% compared to 1990 levels – equivalent to 26% above 2017 levels. Emissions cuts would be achieved by boosting energy efficiency and reducing forest clearance.

Russia’s draft long term decarbonisation strategy published in March. Analysis of Skolkovo Energy Centre, Moscow. 

The country is not on track to meet its 2024 target of generating 4.5% of its energy from renewables, excluding hydropower – one of the lowest targets in the world, Wilson said.

Russia “has shown the least interest in taking the kind of action that most of the rest of the world has agreed to. It sits outside the spirit and intent of the Paris Agreement,” he added.

“There has been a lack of pressure [on Russia] as a result of their intransigence on this issue. The expectations are just so low. They are doing the bare minimum.”

Tracker: Which countries have a net zero carbon goal?

While political pressure may be lacking, a move away from fossil fuels in the European Union, Russia’s biggest gas export market, poses an economic threat. Brussels is considering a carbon border tax on imports and no longer considers gas power to be a “sustainable” or “transition” investment.

“There is an existential threat to Russia’s gas industry regarding the European energy transition,” Sergey Kapitonov, gas analyst at the Skolkovo Energy Center in Moscow, told CHN. “Coal is not the only evil now. Natural gas [demand] has already started to decline in some places.”

In response, Russia is turning its attention east. With large Asian economies expected to turn away from coal to meet their net zero goals, Russia, the world’s top energy exporter, is banking on a surge in natural gas demand.

The vast majority of Russia’s gas reserves are located above the Arctic circle, a region that is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, with temperatures reaching a scorching 38C in June.

The government plans to grow its liquified natural gas (LNG) production in the Arctic ten-fold between 2018 and 2035, according to its 2035 Arctic strategy published last month, with the Yamal peninsula in northwest Siberia the focus of recent LNG developments.

The melting Arctic sea ice will  allow to ships to export LNG to Asian markets across the Northern sea route. By 2035, Russia hopes to increase the volume of maritime cargo transportation in the Arctic more than four-fold.

First named Cop26 sponsors are big investors in offshore wind – and a gas plant

“In the mind of Russian policy makers, gas is still destined to play a huge role. They say that coal is the fuel of the past and natural gas is the fuel of tomorrow,” Kapitonov said.

“It’s a risky game… Russia has to play” to monetise its huge gas reserves, he added. “It’s the destiny of these resource-production nations.”

LNG exports to China are already on the rise and gas exports are expected to grow by 10% during the 2020-2021 heating season, according to Chinese state-owned oil and gas company Sinopec.

In anticipation of growing demand, Russian state-owned Gazprom has started a feasibility study for the construction of a second gas pipeline between eastern Siberia and China.

“If China opens its domestic market to Russian gas, it could become its biggest market,” said Vladimir Chuprov, head of Greenpeace Russia’s energy programme. But Russia faces competition from wind and solar power, as well as Australian and Qatari LNG, he added.

Investing in greenfield oil and gas Arctic projects is “economically suicidal,” said Chuprov. “It means Russia is still in the 20th century and doesn’t understand that it needs its own green deal.”

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Indra Øverland, head of the Centre for Energy Research at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, told Climate Home “Russia’s dependence on oil and gas exports is leaving them vulnerable” to an international move away from fossil fuels.

“Russia still has its head in the sand,” he said, describing it as Russia’s “Kodak moment,” blind to the impact global climate policies will have on its economy.

In an interview with the Guardian earlier this month, energy minister Alexander Novak – since promoted to deputy prime minister – said Russia planned to become a global leader in producing “clean burning hydrogen”.

At present, most hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels in a process that emits carbon dioxide. Russia is working on technology to capture the CO2, Novak said, and can also produce hydrogen by hydrolysis using renewable energy.

Yuriy Melnikov, senior analyst on the power sector at the Skolkovo Energy Center in Moscow, was sceptical. He told Climate Home that in the absence of ambitious climate targets, Russian businesses had little incentive to invest in green hydrogen.

For Chuprov, of Greenpeace, Putin’s support for the oil and gas industry allows him to exert political control over the handful of oligarchs that runs it – and is therefore unlikely to change. “Phasing out oil and gas is phasing out that political system,” he said.

The post Russia resists tougher climate targets in dash for Arctic gas appeared first on Climate Home News.

Under draft plans being negotiated at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) – the UN body responsible for international shipping – restrictions on heavy fuel oil (HFO), a dirty fuel which propels most of marine transport, would come into effect in July 2024.

But a host of exemptions and waivers would allow most ships using and carrying HFO to continue to pollute Arctic waters until 2029.

“That is much too long to wait to take action to protect the Arctic,” Bryan Comer, senior marine research at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), told Climate Home News.

In a study published on Thursday by ICCT, Comer and his co-authors estimated that if the draft ban had been in place in 2019, around three-quarters of the fleet using HFO would have still been allowed to carry and use the fuel in the Arctic.

As the Arctic fleet grows, so will the number of ships that qualify for an exemption, “and the effectiveness of the ban would be further eroded,” the study’s authors warned.

For the Clean Arctic Alliance, which campaigns to ban HFO use in the Arctic, the proposal will allow “business as usual for most shipping operators in the region, and could fuel a race towards lower safety standards”.

Mauritius oil spill compensation could be limited by maritime law technicality

When burned, HFO emits black carbon, a short-lived pollutant that absorbs sunlight and traps heat in the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. The Arctic, which is already warming twice as fast as the rest of the world, is particularly sensitive to these emissions.

Burning and carrying HFO has been banned in Antarctic waters since 2011, but plans for similar restrictions in the resource-rich Arctic have met with resistance. Russia, which could benefit from the opening of more shipping routes in the region as Arctic sea ice melts, is one of the most vocal opponents.

In the absence of regulation, HFO use in the Arctic is rapidly increasing. Between 2015 and 2019, its use by oil tankers rocketed by 300%, according to the ICCT.

Finland, Germany, Iceland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the US proposed to ban the fuel in the Arctic arguing that a single spill “could have devastating and lasting effects on fragile Arctic marine and coastal environments”.

But Russia argued a ban would “negatively impact the local communities and industries of the region” which depend on ships to bring fuel, food and goods to remote areas and that the “potential benefits [of the ban]… remain unclear” when considering national efforts to reduce the risk of oil spills.

Ship emissions: major study flags a bigger role for governments

A watered down version of the proposal is up for consideration at the next meeting of the IMO’s environmental protection committee in November. That is the last chance for delegates to make significant changes to the draft.

Campaigners argue the benefits for communities and the environment of avoiding an HFO spill in the Arctic outweigh small increases in costs for switching to cleaner fuels, which should be borne by states.

“The danger of an Arctic HFO spill is the combination of knowing its major impacts while not knowing how to clean it up,” Ilan Kelman, professor of disasters and health, at University College London and at the University of Agder, Norway, told CHN in an email.

“We do not have sufficient techniques or technologies for fully recovering released HFO or cleaning up its damage efficiently. We do not even have a detailed understanding of HFO’s behaviour and persistence in the wide ranges of Arctic temperatures and wave conditions. The possible environmental harm from an HFO spill is immense with limited options for averting this destruction,” he said.

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And yet, to bring Russia onside, waivers were introduced for Arctic coastal nations’ ships operating in their own waters. In 2019, this would have made 366 ships eligible for a waiver – including 325 Russian-flagged vessels, according to the ICCT.

“Not all of these ships are re-supplying Arctic communities. Most of them are transporting resources extracted from the Arctic,” Comer told CHN.

Waivers came on top of exemptions, including for recently built ships with fuel tanks designed to prevent spills. Most of the largest oil tankers, built after August 2010 and operating in the Arctic – many of which transport Russian oil  – already meet exemption criteria under the current proposal, Comer said.

The research found that had the draft ban applied in 2019, it would have reduced the carriage of HFO by only 30%, its use by 16% and black carbon emissions by 5%. Doing away with exemptions and limiting waivers would have reduced HFO use by 75% and cut black carbon emissions by more than a fifth.

Most new bulk carriers and oil tankers joining the Arctic fleet will likely join the exemption list and be allowed to use and carry heavy fuel oil until 2029, Sian Prior, lead advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance, told CHN.

“This is unacceptable,” she said. “If exemptions and waivers are included than the reality will be that little will change when the ban comes into effect in the middle of 2024.”

“In order to provide the Arctic with the protection so desperately needed, the Clean Arctic Alliance is calling for the draft Arctic ban regulation to be strengthened with no exemptions and no waivers.”

The post Loopholes in Arctic heavy fuel oil ban defer action to the end of the decade appeared first on Climate Home News.

Air temperatures hit 38C in Russia on 20 June in the Russian town of Verkhoyansk in Siberia, claimed as a heat record in the Arctic, which is warming twice as fast as the global average.

The previous day, the land surface temperature hit an extraordinary 45C at several locations in the Arctic Circle, according to European satellite data.

Often overlooked compared to air temperature records, temperatures in the ground are trending ever higher across the Arctic, according to the UN panel of climate scientists.

Permafrost, permanently frozen ground often just below the surface which melts to mud in summer, covers about a quarter of the land in the northern hemisphere. And shrinking permafrost is causing wrenching long-term changes to nature.

“As one of our elders says: ‘Nature doesn’t trust us any more’,” said Vyacheslav Shadrin, chair of the Yukaghir Council of Elders, of the Republic of Sakha-Yakutia in the Russian far east, about 600 km from Verkhoyansk. The Yukaghir total about 1,500 people.

“We can’t predict what will happen tomorrow. This is maybe the main challenge. All our lives are based on traditional knowledge. We used to know that tomorrow we catch fish or have our reindeer. Now we can’t say,” he told Climate Home News. Rivers that were reliable roads for months in winter can now be treacherous.

A bison horn revealed by melting permafrost in Siberia (Pic: Johanna Anjar)

Until a few decades ago, he said that many Yukaghir did not dig up ancient mammoth bones or tusks, fearing that disturbing bones entombed in the frozen soil could release malevolent spirits from an underworld below.

Today, however, the thaw of permafrost means such finds are more common – and valuable to collectors – and many Yukaghir have abandoned the belief.

“Traditionally the most forbidden things are connected to the mammoth, the spirit of the underworld. Now we use mammoth bones as a profit,” he said.

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Around the Arctic, the loss of white snow and ice that reflects sunlight back to space reveals darker soil and water, that absorb ever more heat and accelerates the thaw.

At the time of publication, the extent of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean was tracking close to 2012 levels, the minimum on records dating back to 1979, NSIDC data show. On land, snow and ice cover is also among the lowest for the time of year, according to Rutgers University, and Greenland’s melt so far this year is also rapid, adding to sea level rise.

The World Meteorological Organization said it is checking last month’s heat record in Siberia. Daily records can be natural freaks – Fort Yukon on the Arctic circle in Alaska hit 37.7C as long ago as 1915, before climate change was a worry.

The temperature spike in Siberia was “an iconic threshold that indicates the warming we’re seeing over the long term” both in the air and the soil, said Walt Meier, senior research scientist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center.

“The Arctic is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the globe and the Siberian region, even in the Arctic, is warming rapidly,” he told CHN. “We’re seeing buildings cracking, roads buckling around the Arctic.”

Greenpeace takes Arctic oil lawsuit to Norway’s supreme court

The thaw of permafrost may have caused the collapse of a fuel tank that spilled 21,000 tonnes of diesel into rivers and subsoil near the city of Norilsk on May 29. Elsewhere, loss of permafrost has been blamed for causing more frequent avalanches.

It may also be releasing diseases frozen in the ice – such as outbreaks of anthrax in remote parts of Russia in 2015 and 2016, perhaps from reindeer carcasses in long-frozen soils.

Indigenous peoples want more action by major emitters to limit greenhouse gas emissions, and to get more say in international UN negotiations such as such as the Paris climate agreement, or UN conventions to restrict mercury and poisonous chemicals that can build up in the Arctic.

“We have these international treaties… but nobody really seems to be taking it seriously enough,” Dalee Sambo Dorough, chair of the Inuit Circumpolar Council, said in an interview from Alaska.

“We have relied on the sea ice for centuries,” she said, adding that Indigenous peoples’ oral histories were too often wrongly dismissed as unreliable, anecdotal evidence. Some communities will have to move inland because of coastal erosion, aggravated by sea level rise.

And the thaw of permafrost can add to global warming by releasing greenhouse gases from the frozen soils.

UN climate science report to consider lessons from coronavirus

The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrote in a report last year that “permafrost temperatures have increased to record high levels”.

“Widespread disappearance of Arctic near-surface permafrost is projected to occur this century as a result of warming, it said, adding that could release tens to hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon by 2100, further stoking climate change.

Rising temperatures pose huge engineering problems for building on permafrost in the region, which is opening to more economic activity, from shipping to mining or oil and gas exploration, as ice recedes. About four million people live in the Arctic region.

Arne Instanes, an engineer in Norway and an expert on permafrost construction, said global warming was one of many complications of building in the Arctic.

“Whenever you do construction with permafrost you start a climate change experiment,” he said. “Experience from Siberia to Alaska for the last 200 years is that when you start construction work on the tundra you change the heat exchange between the atmosphere and the ground.”

Too often, he said, climate change was blamed when buildings collapsed or runways cracked, for instance, when the underlying reason was simply poor planning that let heat seep into the frozen ground below.

Newer techniques mean buildings get built on stilts, ideally with steel piles driven into bedrock below a layer of permafrost. Instanes said it also helps to have artificial refrigeration of the steel piles in summer to prevent heat from reaching the permafrost.

“Clients don’t like it – it costs a lot more and it’s complicated,” he said.

While the Siberian heat has attracted most headlines, a study this week showed that the pace of warming at an Arctic airport on the Svalbard archipelago north of Norway averaged 1.7 degrees Celsius a decade since 1991, seven times the global average and double the Arctic average.

“That was astonishing,” Ketil Isaksen,  a co-author of the study at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, said of the pace of  Arctic warming.

By contrast, the toughest goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit the rise in average world surface temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial times by 2100.

The post ‘Nature doesn’t trust us any more’: Arctic heatwave stokes permafrost thaw appeared first on Climate Home News.

Together with Nature & Youth, the Norwegian branch of Friends of the Earth, the campaign group has been arguing since 2016 that Arctic oil drilling breaches the constitutional right to a healthy environment for future generations.

A district court and then an appeals court upheld the government’s right to award oil exploration licences in the Barents Sea.

Undeterred, with fresh backing from Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg, the campaigners have secured a hearing in the supreme court.

All 19 supreme court justices are to hear the case. Frode Pleym, head of Greenpeace Norway, told Climate Home News this was a sign “they think it is super relevant”. Only around one in ten petitions to the supreme court are granted a hearing, typically by five justices.

The latest ruling in January scored a minor victory for the campaigners. Appeal judges agreed Norway was responsible for the environmental impact of its oil exports abroad – an argument the district court rejected.

Coronavirus: which governments are bailing out big polluters?

However, they said the scale of emissions associated with the oil licences in question was too low to justify the court intervening in government policy.

“That is what we are challenging,” said Pleym.

Emissions associated with Norway’s oil and gas exports are ten times the level of domestic emissions, according to Greenpeace. The campaigners argue there is no room for any expansion of the oil industry under the global warming limits set by the Paris Agreement.

The case gains prominence at a turbulent time for oil markets. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, demand has plummeted, storage filled up and prices even briefly turned negative in the US, prompting oil majors to cancel frontier projects.

“Some of these licences might not be used because it is not economic,” said Pleym, “but the whole issue with the Norwegian oil policy is that it is not only not rational for what is best for the climate, it is increasingly not rational in economic terms.”

Four more EU nations back a green post-coronavirus recovery

Greenpeace and Nature & Youth have raised money for the legal battle through crowdfunding and received a 250,000 kroner ($23,000) donation from the Greta Thunberg Foundation.

Thunberg dedicated her share of prize money from the Fritt Ord Award, which promotes freedom of expression, to the cause.

In a statement, she said: “Science is clear that fossil fuels have to stay in the ground. As a major oil producer and exporter, Norway needs to make the transition away from polluting fossil fuels, and show the way for other fossil-dependent economies.

“I am happy that this grant will go into the fight against new oil drilling and for a safe and healthy environment for future generations.”

The post Greenpeace takes Arctic oil lawsuit to Norway’s supreme court appeared first on Climate Home News.

In partnership with the Climate Justice Resilience Fund (CJRF), we are supporting original reporting that focuses on communities, mainly in developing nations, who are suffering most from climate change even though they have contributed little to the problem of rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Articles will put a spotlight on CJRF’s goal of supporting “communities first hit, first to respond, and first to adapt to climate change”. We will highlight women, youth and indigenous peoples on the front lines of climate change who are creating and sharing their own solutions for resilience.

The ideal story for us will capture the attention of our international audience with a combination of on-the-ground reporting from affected communities, scientific evidence, innovative and rights-based solutions, and political tension or controversy.

The grants will cover competitive rates and reasonable travel expenses, to be negotiated in advance.

We plan to publish eight articles under the project, lasting until 30 November 2020. At least half of the stories will focus on CJRF’s priority areas – the Bay of Bengal, East Africa and the Arctic – where climate change is already affecting landscapes and livelihoods.

In the Bay of Bengal, communities in Bangladesh and the Indian states of Orissa and West Bengal are at risk from heat waves, erratic rainfall, and storms surges. Rising seas may force relocation, but how are communities working to delay any moves, or to ensure they move on their own terms?

In the drylands of Tanzania and Kenya in East Africa, more variable rainfall linked to climate change is disrupting food production. How are communities innovating to safeguard their crops, livestock and livelihoods?

In the Arctic, a thaw is threatening the hunting livelihoods of indigenous peoples in CJRF´s focus areas of Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Can they adapt?

If you are a journalist with at least three years’ experience, please send us your pitches. Local reporters will be given preference, although we would also consider pitches from travelling reporters for stories in areas where local reporting is harder to source.

Your pitch should explain the top line of the story and essential context in no more than 150 words. If we like the idea, we will ask for more detail. Briefly explain what sources you would interview and any travel required. Our focus is on written articles but we are also open to multimedia projects.

When pitching for the first time, tell us a bit about your journalism experience and background. Include links to one or two recent stories you are proud of. Editors will work closely with you to give feedback and advice.

For transparency to our readers, each piece would note that it was produced with support from CJRF along with a link to our editorial guidelines that outline how we interact with grant makers while ensuring independence.

You must have fluent spoken and written English. It helps if you have worked with international media before and have some awareness of climate change themes.

Please send your pitches to acting editor Megan Darby md@climatehomenews.com. We will review the first pitches in mid-March and subsequent ideas in coming months and will publish until November.

This article has been amended to update the contact details.

The post Climate Home News launches front line climate justice reporting programme appeared first on Climate Home News.

The UN Biodiversity summit, due to take place in Kunming in October, is a critical moment for countries to agree on a global framework to halt the destruction of the planet’s plants and wildlife.

But the coronavirus outbreak has forced UN agencies to relocate preparatory talks due to take place next month in Kunming to the offices of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in Rome, Italy.

The move came after the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a “public health emergency of international concern” because of the rapid spread of the virus. More than 200 people in China have died since the beginning of the epidemic and nearly 10,000 cases have now been reported.

Meanwhile, travel restrictions to and from China have intensified in recent days. On Thursday, the Italian government announced it was suspending all flights between Italy and China. Travel restrictions could make it more difficult for Chinese participants to attend the meeting.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) said it was committed to ensure preparations for the October summit “proceed in a timely and effective manner”.

Spawning crisis

The desert locusts swarm in the Horn of Africa could provoke a humanitarian crisis, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has warned.

The insects are ravaging the East African region in the worst outbreak in decades and is causing “an unprecedented threat to food security and livelihoods,” the UN agency has said.

Urgent calls for funding to stop the outbreak have been issued as the locusts have started laying eggs and the FAO fears new swarms could form in Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.

Fuel blunder

The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has come under pressure to regulate new shipping fuels introduced at the start of the year to reduce sulphur levels, which could be accelerating warming in the Arctic.

Research shows the new fuel blends could be causing a surge in black carbon emissions – a short-lived but potent pollutant that traps heat in the atmosphere and contributes to warming.

The fuels which were designed to improve air quality and protect human health could be increasing the shipping’s sector climate impact, especially in the Arctic region.

Now campaigners are asking tough questions about who knew what and when about the new fuels’ potential impacts on emissions. “It’s hard to see how experts in marine fuels like yourselves could not have been aware” of the risks, they said.

Carbon source

A new study found that indigenous and protected land in the Amazon emit far less carbon dioxide than the rest of the rainforest.

The study is the first to comprehensively include carbon losses from forest degradation (such as illegal logging and mining, floods and droughts), deforestation and forest growth and provides a detailed carbon account of the changing land use.

It prompted calls for greater support for indigenous land rights as a cost-effective way to limit climate change. Jocelyn Timperley reports.

Ratification

10 countries still haven’t ratified the Paris Agreement. Turkey and four large oil exporting countries, including Iran, Iraq, Angola and Libya, have not formally endorsed the agreement. Alister Doyle takes a look at who makes the list.

Quick hits

• UN relocates biodiversity talks to Italy from China after coronavirus emergency
• UN biodiversity meeting in China under review following coronavirus outbreak
• Locusts lay eggs as plague worsens in Horn of Africa, UN warns
• Indigenous lands, protected areas limit Amazon’s carbon emissions
• IMO under pressure to regulate new ship fuels over Arctic warming
• Which countries have not ratified the Paris climate agreement?

And in climate conversations

• UN ruling on climate refugees could be gamechanger for climate action

The post Coronavirus side effect – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

From 1 January this year, stricter sulphur levels for ships have come into force to reduce air pollution and human health impacts such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

Shipping companies and fuel providers have been using new blends of fuels to meet the sulphur guidelines. But instead, research suggested the new fuels could lead to an increase of the sector’s climate impacts.

A study conducted by Finland and Germany and submitted to the IMO found the new very low sulphur fuel oil (VLSFO) used by ships contained more aromatic compounds which are causing a surge in black carbon emissions – a short-lived pollutant that strongly absorbs sunlight and traps heat in the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.

The new hybrid fuels resulted in a 10% to 85% increase in black carbon emissions compared to previously used heavy fuel oil, the study found. Black carbon is already estimated to represent up to 21% of shipping’s climate impact.

Is the shipping industry’s R&D climate fund a Trojan Horse?

“While black carbon stays in the atmosphere for only a few days or weeks, in that time, it traps 3200-times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, measured over a 20-year period,” Bryan Comer, a senior researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) told Climate Home News.

When black carbon settles on the Arctic, it reduces the reflectiveness of the snow and ice and generates heat, which accelerates melting. This makes the Arctic – which is already warming twice as fast as the rest of the world  – particularly sensitive to these emissions.

Global warming is melting Arctic sea ice and opening the region to more shipping, including a short-cut route between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Now campaigners are asking the marine fuel organisations responsible for drawing up official guidance on the supply and use of the low-sulphur fuel blends, why the impact on black carbon emissions was not identified before the new fuels were put on the market.

In a letter sent to the 11 organisations that co-authored the joint industry guidance, the Clean Arctic Alliance, a coalition of organisations campaigning for a ban on heavy fuel oil from Arctic shipping, demanded the authors to explain why action hadn’t been taken sooner.

“It’s hard to see how experts in marine fuels like yourselves could not have been aware of the elevated aromatics in these new fuels and of the link between aromatics in fuels and black carbon emissions, and we believe an explanation from industry and refiners is urgently needed,” the letter read.

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Sian Prior, lead advisor to the Clean Arctic Alliance who wrote the letter, told Climate Home News: “If [the oil industry] know their product at all they would have realised there was a potential problem.”

The IMO’s sub-committee on pollution prevention and response is meeting next month and the issue of black carbon emissions and the use of heavy fuel oil in the Arctic are on the agenda.

An IMO spokeswoman said the committee will have the opportunity to discuss the submission made by Finland and Germany and report back to its parent body, the Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC), which is meeting at the end of March.

CHN contacted seven of the 11 organisations recipients of the letter which have a formal consultative status at the IMO.

A spokesman for Ipieca, the global oil and gas industry association for advancing environmental and social performance, said the remit of the guidance provided to the shipping sector was “limited” and  focused on supporting ship managers with the “operational aspects of the transition” and “help ensure the safety of vessels and crews”.

He added the research by Finland Germany focused on fuel blends “most likely to be used in 2020” and that at this stage there was “no comprehensive overview available that documents the actual variability of fuel types and representative fuel quality on the market”.

This, he said, made it “too early to draw any valid and meaningful conclusions on the level of black carbon emissions” associated with the use of VLSFOs.

Today, shipping is taking responsibility for our role in the climate crisis

The International Union of Marine Insurance (IUMI) and the Royal Institute of Naval Architects declined to comment before the issue was addressed by the IMO in February.

The International Association of Classification Societies (Iacs), the International Bunker Industry Association (Ibia), the Oil Companies International Marine Forum (OCIMF) and the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science & Technology IMarEST did not immediately respond to CHN’s requests.

Prior said the response needed to focus on the Arctic and called for “immediate measures” to require ships in the Arctic – and eventually everywhere else in the world – to switch to higher-quality distillates fuels, which have lower sulphur levels and emit less black carbon.

More than half of all ships in the Arctic are already using distillates fuel, Prior said. “This is not an impossible ask and could happen very quickly. This issue needs to be taken serious by the IMO.”

Lucy Gilliam, a shipping campaigner at the NGO Transport & Environment, described the blunder “a failure of [the IMO’s] regulatory process”.

Gilliam called for countries parties to the IMO, such as the EU, to demand urgent action at the February meeting.

The shipping sector accounts for about 3% of global emissions annually. In 2018, countries parties to the IMO agreed to cut the sector’s emissions by 50% by 2050.

The post IMO under pressure to regulate new ship fuels over Arctic warming appeared first on Climate Home News.

That was UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s message to African heads of state gathered in London this week to talk investments.

As the UK prepares to pull out of the EU, it has turned some of its attention to the African continent, where it intends to compete for business.

Johnson promised the UK would end all direct support for coal mining and coal-fired power plants overseas. Instead, he pledged to help African countries “extract and use oil and gas in the cleanest, greenest way possible” while “turbocharging our support for solar, wind and hydro”.

In the last few years, the UK had largely stopped financing coal mines and coal-fired power plants abroad but continues to spend billions in supporting oil and gas projects. About £2bn worth of oil and gas deals in Africa were announced shortly after the summit.

Environmentalists blasted hypocrisy, warning the announcement was “a drop in the ocean” compared with ongoing support for foreign oil and gas projects.

Carbon sinks

In other UK news, a fifth of the country’s agricultural land needs to be released for climate mitigation if it is to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, government advisers have said.

That means planting trees, restoring peatlands and soils and growing bioenergy crops with carbon capture and storage. Consumption of carbon-intensive food such as beef, lamb and diary also needs to be reduced by a fifth and so does food waste.

The report comes as the UK’s first climate citizen assembly is due to meet this weekend to thrash out solutions to achieve the net zero emissions goal by 2050.

Ireland and France have also used citizens assembly to inspire climate policies and Spain could soon follow suit.

‘Prophets of doom’

Climate change was the hot topic in Davos. Greta Thunberg reminded the world’s rich and powerful of the science, warning the 1.5C goal risked slipping out of reach as the world rapidly consumes its remaining carbon budget to limit warming below the Paris deal temperature target.

“We don’t need to lower emissions, our emissions have to stop,” she said.

Donald Trump lamented missing Thunberg’s speech. There was no eye roll this time but the US president hit back at climate activists, denouncing them as “prophets of doom” as he boasted about the economy. Expect more of this in the run-up to November’s presidential election.

Gullies

In Nigeria, where climate change is causing more intense downpours, land is opening up under people’s feet, swallowing homes, farms, businesses and roads.

The erosion crisis is exacerbated by more frequent landslides and has been estimated to cost up to $100 million every year. Up to 90% of agricultural yield have been lost as a result in some areas.

Linus Unah reports from Nigeria.

Icy ruling  

Norwegian plans to drill for more oil and gas in the Arctic do not violate people’s rights for a healthy environment.

The ruling by the Oslo Court of Appeals endorsed a previous court decision vindicating the government’s handing out of oil exploration licences in the Arctic. However, the court acknowledged that emissions from burning Norwegian fossil fuels abroad should be included in assessing environmental damage.

Greenpeace, which brought the lawsuit, said it would take the case to the Supreme Court.

Quick hits

• Erosion crisis swallows homes and livelihoods in Nigeria
• UK to stop funding coal abroad but will help Africa with oil, gas
• Thunberg says only ‘eight years left’ to avert 1.5°C warming
• Trump criticises ‘prophets of doom’ in Davos and touts fossil fuels
• UK must cut land use emissions by two thirds to meet 2050 goal, advisers warn
• Oslo court backs Arctic oil exploration in defeat for environmentalists

And in climate conversations

• 2020 may be ‘last opportunity’ to limit warming to 1.5°C

The post ‘Trundling over to Africa’ – Climate Weekly appeared first on Climate Home News.

The lawsuit, launched in 2016 by Greenpeace and Nature & Youth, is part of a mounting trend around the world of plaintiffs turning to the courts to combat global warming and to enforce the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

“The appeal is rejected,” the three-judge panel in the Oslo Court of Appeals ruled, upholding a lower court ruling in 2018 that approved the Conservative-led government’s permits for exploration drilling in the Barents Sea.

Greenpeace said it would appeal to the Supreme Court and said the ruling included glimmers of hope. Article 112 of Norway’s constitution speaks of a right to a healthy environment for future generations.

UK must cut land use emissions by two thirds to meet 2050 goal, advisers warn

“We are happy. It’s a big step forward for us,” head of Greenpeace Norway Frode Pleym told Climate Home News.

Pleym especially welcomed a part of the ruling that greenhouse gases from burning Norway’s fossil fuels abroad should be included in assessing any environmental damage.

That overruled the lower court’s verdict that only local emissions, from exploration and production, should be taken into account in judging harm. Norway is western Europe’s biggest oil and gas exporter.

Overall, however, the Appeals Court backed the government’s approval of exploration licenses, awarded to Equinor, Chevron, Lukoil, ConocoPhillips and others.

The judges said that courts should be cautious about intervening in decisions made by the government and parliament in line with existing laws.

They also said it was uncertain whether exploration in the Arctic would lead to any new oil or gas finds and that any emissions would be regulated by carbon markets.

Ernst Nordtveit, a law professor at Bergen University, ruling and predicted that the Supreme Court would also reach a similar conclusion if it takes up the case in coming months.

Trump criticises ‘prophets of doom’ in Davos and touts fossil fuels

“There is a high threshold for the court to intervene in political decisions in such a complex area,” he told CHN.

The environmental groups argue that any new oilfields in the Arctic would take years to develop and keep pumping for decades, undermining Norway’s pledges to slash greenhouse gases as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement.

There are now 1,143 climate lawsuits in the US s and 319 cases in other nations, according to databases maintained by the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School and Arnold & Porter.

Among the most high profile rulings, the Dutch Supreme Court in December 2019 said the government had done too little to fight climate change. It ordered the government to slash emissions by at least 25% from 1990 levels by the end of 2020.

The post Oslo court backs Arctic oil exploration in defeat for environmentalists appeared first on Climate Home News.

This is where the gas from the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will be produced. Yamal did not originally belong to Russia. The Russian Empire began the colonisation of Yamal in the 16th century.

The Russian empire was mainly interested in profiteering from the region’s fur, which it sold to Europe. One third of the Russian state’s public treasury derived from the fur trade with the West. Before that could happen, land was seized. The indigenous peoples of Yamal resisted colonisation and, in response, the colonialists brutally killed them.

The Soviets separated indigenous peoples from their children and reindeers by force. Indigenous peoples have organised the Mandalada, a movement to safeguard their traditional way of life. After fierce resistance, Mandalada participants were arrested.

The discovery of oil and gas deposits in the Yamal Peninsula, which promised the region prosperity, did not improve, but rather worsened the situation. Gazprom continues to seize the lands of the indigenous peoples of Yamal in an attempt to extract even more gas. As a result, the local population is left without grazing [land] for its reindeer. For the indigenous peoples of Yamal, little has changed since the 16th century: the empire took furs from them and sold them to the West. Now the empire is taking oil and gas from them and selling it to the West. The lion’s share of tax revenue from the sale of fossil fuels does not remain in the Yamal region, but is sent to Moscow.

Russia formally joins Paris Agreement

One of the serious climatic problems in Yamal is gas flaring. It is barbaric and wasteful. Due to procedural imperfections, the gas is simply burned and released into the atmosphere, increasing greenhouse gas emissions. According to the World Bank, Russia is the world’s biggest gas flare emitter. In 2018, Russia accounted for nearly 21.3% of global gas flaring.

In the Yamal Peninsula, there are about 1,500 such flares. Gazprom systematically pollutes the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. In 2015, the local prosecutor’s office in Yamal increased methane emissions six-fold and carbon black emissions 37-fold.

The Russian authorities are not fighting Gazprom’s environmental crimes. The fines and warnings that Yamal prosecutors impose on Gazprom don’t have any impact on the company’s behaviour.

Indigenous Finno-Ugric peoples saw their rights violated during the construction of Nord Stream 2. The gas pipeline destroyed the native Finno-Ugric lands and the Kurgalsky reserve, which is home to rare plants, mosses and bird species.

Nord Stream 2 AG, the company behind the project, has hidden the true value of the Kurgalsky reserve. The real consequences of the construction of the gas pipeline on this nature reserve were never mentioned, be it during the public hearings on the project in Russia and other countries, or in the company’s Espoo report.

Greenpeace Austria has obtained secret minutes of meetings between the Russian government, Nord Stream 2 AG and Gazprom, during which they discussed changes to environmental legislation.

Surveys began illegally, without any permits, on the Kurgalsky reserve. As a result of this intrusion into a unique ecosystem, hundreds of rare plants have been destroyed.

The fight for the world’s largest forest

Double standards are rife when it comes to carving out the routes of the gas pipeline in Germany and Russia.  In Germany, where the value of the coastal territory is lower than that of the Kurgalsky reserve, Nord Stream 2 AG considers that it is possible to use a micro-tunneling construction method. In Russia, under similar conditions and with the incomparably higher value of the Kurgalsky Reserve, the “traditional method of construction with a 85m wide open trench” has been adopted. This method has a negative impact on the ecosystem of the Kurgalsky Reserve.

Nord Stream 2 violates Russian rights. The truth is that after selling Russian gas to the West, there are not enough to meet the needs of the Russian people. Gas programmes have been reduced: 30% of Russians live in gas-free houses.

The Russian authorities fix this internal energy supply problem in the most environmentally damaging way possible: they use coal instead of gas. The operation of coal-fired power plants, which are not equipped with modern filters, leads to real environmental catastrophes. For example, in Krasnoyarsk, residents often witness the “black sky” effect caused by finely fragmented coal dust.

Thanks to the Nord Stream 2 project, Europeans will receive less polluting gas. While the Russians will choke on coal dust, the indigenous peoples of Yamal will continue to suffer from gas combustion by Gazprom and will be deprived of the best pastures, and the unique Kurgalsky reserve will suffer severely. With the proceeds from the sale of fossil fuels, Putin’s regime is able to achieve its archaic political ambitions, carry out political repression, seize the territories of neighbouring states, bribe Western politicians and produce propaganda. Obviously, without the demand for Russian gas, Putin’s plan would simply not work.

Are Europeans okay with this reality and with the price of “cheap” Russian gas?

Yevgeniya Chirikova is a Russian environmental activist who received the Goldman Prize for the Environment in 2012 for her fight to preserve the Khimki forest from the Moscow-St. Petersburg motorway.

The post What is the real cost of cheap Russian gas? appeared first on Climate Home News.

Many fish, corals and other marine life are suffering in ever warmer waters, with more frequent underwater heatwaves, acidification caused by man-made carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and a decline in levels of oxygen, the world’s leading climate scientists said.

“Over the 21st century, the ocean is projected to transition to unprecedented conditions,” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a special report about the oceans and the cryosphere – the world’s frozen regions. It was compiled by more than 100 authors from 36 nations.

The report is the most detailed look at the impact of climate change ranging from melting glaciers on the world’s highest mountains to the depths of the oceans that cover 71% of the Earth’s surface.

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“The open sea, the Arctic, the Antarctic and the high mountains may seem far away to many people,” said Hoesung Lee, chair of the IPCC. “But we depend on them and are influenced by them directly and indirectly in many ways.” Melting Himalayan glaciers, for instance, provide water to grow crops or generate hydropower before flowing into the oceans.

The report points to alarming signs of an accelerating melt of Antarctica that could herald an irreversible thaw from the world’s biggest store of frozen ice, ahead of Greenland.

Even so, sea level rise could be limited to 43cm by 2100, and around a metre by 2300, if the world sharply cuts greenhouse gas emissions in line with a goal set by almost 200 nations in the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit warming to 2C above pre-industrial times, it said.

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But a future with no meaningful action and rising greenhouse gas emissions could push up sea levels by 84cm by 2100, about 10cm higher than estimated in the most recent IPCC global assessment in 2014 because of Antarctica’s quickening melt.

On that track, seas could rise by anywhere between 2.3 and 5.4 metres by 2300, it said. That would redraw maps of the world, make entire low-lying nations in the Pacific Ocean uninhabitable and swamp coasts from Bangladesh to Miami.

Lee said that there were worrying signs that the world was losing the race against climate change. “We need to take immediate and drastic action to cut emissions right now,” he said.

“Humanity is exacting a terrible toll on the ocean,” Norway’s prime minister Erna Solberg and Palau president Tommy Remengesau Jr. wrote in CNN on Monday. “Global warming, combined with the negative impacts of numerous other human activities, is devastating our ocean, with alarming declines in fish stocks, the death of our reefs, and sea level rise that could displace hundreds of millions of people.”

Authors said those different futures for rising seas highlighted stark choices now.

“Although many of the messages may seem depressing … there are actual, positive choices that can be made to limit the worst impacts of climate change,” said Michael Meredith, of the British Antarctic Survey.

Nerilie Abram, of Australian National University, also said: “We see changes in all of these areas, from the tops of high mountain to the depths of the oceans and the polar region …We see two very different futures ahead of us.”

The report was published two days after leaders failed to match UN secretary general Antonio Guterres’ call for nations to cut global greenhouse gas emissions by 45% below 2010 levels by 2030 at a summit in New York.

Global CO2 output continues to rise. Guterres said such immediate action was needed to get on track to limit warming to 1.5C, the toughest goal of the Paris Agreement. Global average temperatures are already up about 1C.

The UN asked for climate plans. Major economies failed to answer

Delegates to the IPCC said Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s top oil producer, had repeatedly sought changes at the Monaco meeting, partly to weaken links to an IPCC report in 2018 that examined ways to achieve the 1.5C goal.

Largely at Saudi insistence, Wednesday’s text, for instance, merely said it “follows” the 1.5C report and another about climate change and land issued this year. Many other delegates had favoured the word “complements” to underscore that the reports are part of a family of scientific studies.

Delegates said the Saudis pushed to water down any wording that would link this report to the IPCC’s 1.5 degrees report. In Katowice, the COP only “noted” the 1.5C report, under pressure from Saudis, Americans etc, stopping short of “welcoming” it. 

Saudi Arabia seemed to worry that the Santiago COP may “welcome” this new report. If so, it could implicitly endorse the findings in the 1.5C report if they were strongly connected in the text, so they wanted to loosen any links.

Some authors said wrangling over wording ended up helping because authors tightened the scientific findings.

Martin Sommerkorn, an author with the WWF conservation group, said that “the report ended up stronger because of a defence of the science.”

Delegates said the wrangling contributed to delay the meeting, with an all-night session lasting into Tuesday, from a scheduled finish on Monday.

They also said that the US delegation did not stand in the way of the science, even though US president Donald Trump plans to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

Climate science on 1.5C erased at UN talks as US and Saudis step in

Among other findings, the report said the maximum catch of fish in the oceans, already falling because of factors including over-fishing and pollution as well as warming waters, would fall by between 20 and 24% this century unless governments take strong action to rein in greenhouse gas emissions.

And fish stocks would be driven polewards or to the depths as the waters warm, perhaps causing conflicts over dwindling resources.

The report said extreme high tides or storm surges that historically happened only once a century could become at least annual events by 2100, exacerbated by rising sea levels. And a melt of permafrost could release methane and undermine infrastructure in mountains or polar regions.

“The impacts of human-made carbon emissions on our oceans are on a much larger scale and happening way faster than predicted,” said Taehyun Park, global climate political advisor with Greenpeace East Asia.

The post Dying oceans rising faster than predicted, UN warns in stark report appeared first on Climate Home News.

Unusually hot weather along with dry thunderstorms this summer have combined to turn the Arctic Circle into a tinder box. More than 2.4 million acres of forest have burst into flames in Alaska. 13 million acres – an area bigger than Belgium – have burned in Siberia, Russia, unleashing plumes of smoke the size of the European Union. Meanwhile, fires continues to sweep through Northern Canada.

Edward Alexander, co-chair of Gwich’in Council International (GCI), a body representing the rights of 11,000 people in the indigenous territory of Alaska and permanent member of the Arctic Council, told Climate Home News that the region could no longer look south for emergency assistance, but had to build its own resilience.

In the event of extreme wildfires, states have been known to request firefighters from southern countries. July of last year was one example, when Sweden sought emergency assistance from the European Union and Turkey.

“What we’ve tried to say is: ‘Let’s look to the north to solve some of these problems, let’s look across the pole, and remember that there are resources around the table that we could bring to bear on new problems’,” Alexander said. “Whether that’s understanding the problems from a scientific point of view, or coordinating our emergency management systems and having some sort of agreement that’s based on the best practices of the region.”

US breaks from Arctic consensus on climate change

The group submitted a proposal to increase cooperation among Arctic states at the the Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (EPPR) working group of the Arctic Council in June. Founded in 1996, the Arctic Council seeks to encourage cooperation between Arctic countries, especially in the area of environmental protection. Member states include Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States, while six indigenous groups also sit in the negotiations as permanent participants.

The proposal would see states develop training partnerships to fight fires specific to the local ecosystems such as the taiga and pool expertise on fire management, including from indigenous communities.

It garnered enthusiasm, one source told CHN, with the US also stepping in to suggest creating a regional inventory of firefighters.

“It’s a big deal,” said Alexander. “Not just as an emergency response, but as a response to climate change. Wildland fire is not just an effect of climate change anymore, it’s also becoming a significant driver of climate change, and we really need to understand what’s going on there in the north. We also need to better work together to address the issue.”

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Jens Peter Holst-Andersens, the chair of the EPPR working group, said that he was “thrilled that this project proposal on wildfires is from a permanent participant, because they are the people who live in Arctic and have to deal with the consequences of wildfires”.

A second proposal by the GCI aims to refine the region’s understanding of fire ecology by encouraging research into the impacts of fire on flora and drawing up a circumpolar map showing fires affecting the region, rather than a single-state.

Alexander said that the fires and climate change in general were having a profound impact on the lives of the Gwich’in people. Scattered across Alaska, most of the communities can only be accessed by air or snowmobile, largely relying on hunting for food. Fires have burned trap lines and disrupted people’s hunting traditions, while plumes of smoke have considerably lowered the local air quality.

“We’ve seen fish mortality,” Alexander said. “Some of the rivers got so warm that the fish died before they spawned. We’re seeing new insects. We’re seeing a prevalence of unusual species.”

The next Arctic Council meeting is slated for September in Stockholm, where member states intend to discuss Arctic cooperation on wildfires and oil spillages.

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The post Indigenous leaders call for Arctic cooperation against wildfires appeared first on Climate Home News.

Founded in 1996, the Arctic Council seeks to encourage cooperation between Arctic countries, especially in the area of environmental protection. Member states include Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States, while six indigenous groups also sit in the negotiations as permanent participants.

Addressing the Council on Monday, US secretary of state Mike Pompeo did not mention climate change once, but instead welcomed the opportunities unlocked by rapidly receding ice sheets.

“The Arctic is at the forefront of opportunity and abundance,” he said. “It houses 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30% of its undiscovered gas, an abundance of uranium, gold, diamonds and millions of square miles of untapped resources, fisheries galore.”

Timelapse video: shipping first as LNG tanker crosses Arctic in winter without icebreaker escort

Such were divisions on climate between the Trump administration and other countries that the Arctic Council issued two separate statements, for the first time in its history.

A two-page statement signed by all the foreign ministers present, including Pompeo, did not mention climate change. A longer chair’s statement emphasised most members continued to support climate action.

“A majority of us regarded climate change as a fundamental challenge facing the Arctic and acknowledged the urgent need to take mitigation and adaptation actions and to strengthen resilience, and welcomed the outcomes of the UNFCCC COP24 in Katowice, including the Paris agreement work programme,” the 10-page document read.

“The reason for which we didn’t have a ministerial declaration was pretty much [down] to one state,” Gosia Smieszek, a researcher at the Arctic Centre and the University of Lapland, told Climate Home News.

It marked a hardening of the US position since 2017, when Pompeo’s predecessor Rex Tillerson acknowledged the climate challenge, albeit without endorsing the Paris Agreement.

US: House passes bill opposing Trump Paris Agreement withdrawal

In April, Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov called out the US’ reluctance to mention climate change.

“Our American colleagues strongly oppose even mentioning the Paris Climate Agreement in the strategy, as well as the United Nations 2030 sustainable development goals,” he said. “All others are confident that the strategy will be watered down if we fail to do that. I hope that team spirit will prevail.”

Diplomats from member states who did not wish to be named told The Washington Post that they had battled the Trump administration to refer to global warming. At a meeting in April, the US had “indicated its resistance to any mention of climate change whatsoever.”

Iceland’s ambassador for Arctic affairs, Einar Gunnarson, however sought to put divisions in perspective. The presence of all foreign ministers at the meeting for the second time in the Arctic Council’s history bodes well for future relations, he told CHN.

“Of course, there were strongly differential views between member states on individual aspects on the direction of work of the Arctic Council,” Gunnarson said. “But what remains uncontested is that all agree on the importance of the Arctic.”

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The diplomatic standoff came as a report from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (Amap) sounded the alarm on unprecedented rates of climate change in the region.

The Arctic is warming 2.4 times faster than the Northern hemisphere, it said. Arctic annual surface air temperatures in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 were the highest since records began in 1900.

Arctic winter sea ice maximums in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 hit record low levels, and the volume of Arctic sea ice present in the month of September was 75% lower than 1979.

Marianne Kroglund, a biologist by background and chair of Amap, described the temperature increase as “larger than [she] would have expected”.

“Even if we know the direction of climate change, I think the extent of climate change, of the temperature change, and how fast the sea is disappearing and so forth … never ceases to amaze us,” Kroglund told CHN.

“It’s going very quickly. Some of these changes can be reversed if we manage to mitigate greenhouse gases, but other changes such as the melting of glaciers or of the Greenland ice sheet will continue even if we have deep cuts in greenhouse gases.”

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The post US breaks from Arctic consensus on climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.

Advocates for the ban warn the risk of heavy fuel oil spills is increasing as melting sea ice, linked to climate change, is opening the sensitive environment to seaborne trade.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is discussing the issue this week, with a view to giving instructions to a technical committee that will begin work in early 2019.

“HFO represents the cheapest fuel that the global shipping industry could use if the Arctic were ice-free,” Austin Ahmasuk, an Alaskan from the Bering Straits nonprofit group Kawerak, Inc, said on the sidelines of the IMO meeting on Monday. “The natural logical concern is that shipping is going to increase, there’s going to be an increase in HFO presence in the Arctic, and that represents a potential significant risk.”

The Bering Sea lost around half of its sea ice cover in two weeks in February, accentuating concerns about increased shipping in waters that used to be frozen, according to the Clean Arctic Alliance. Three-quarters of Arctic summer sea ice has melted since the 1970s and the remainder is expected to disappear before 2050, it added.

In Alaska, February sea ice levels were at their lowest in living memory, said Verner Wilson, an Alaskan working with Friends of the Earth International.

“February and March is when we have the most sea ice,” he said. “It really hurts [communities’] ability to go hunting for marine wildlife that we have depended on for thousands of years. We depend on that sea ice not just to protect the communities from erosion, but also to continue our traditional ways of life.”

Timelapse video: shipping first as LNG tanker crosses Arctic in winter

Heavy fuel oil accounts for around 80% of marine fuel used worldwide and 75% of the fuel carried in the Arctic, the campaigning network said. More than half the ships crossing the Arctic seas are flagged in non-Arctic countries.

HFO emits more air pollutants such as sulphur oxide and black carbon than alternatives like distillate fuel and liquefied natural gas. Black carbon acts as a global warming agent and when it settles on ice, it can make it reflect less sunlight and melt more quickly.

Green groups started pushing for a ban in the Arctic around the time the IMO negotiated the “Polar Code” to exclude the heavy fuel oil from Antarctica, which was adopted in 2014. A group of seven countries, led by the US and Canada, put it on the organization’s agenda last July.

Most Arctic countries are supporting the ban, including Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland, along with the Netherlands, Germany and New Zealand. Finland has proposed imposing it by 2021.

But there are potential spoilers too. Russia, one of the biggest shipping players in the Arctic, has not expressed support for the ban, and other big shipping countries outside the region appear resistant any move to close off the emerging route.

In a more unexpected shift, Canada and the Marshall Islands responded to Finland’s proposal last month by cautioning not to set a ban too quickly. They argued the IMO must first evaluate the economic effects of higher shipping costs on northern indigenous communities that depend on shipped goods, Radio Canada International reported.

Both Canada and the Marshall Islands, the world’s second-largest shipping registry, are vocal advocates for setting a strong greenhouse gas emissions reduction strategy in the global maritime industry.

Investigation: The tax-free shipping company that took control of a country’s UN mission

The Marshall Islands seat at the IMO has historically been occupied by officials from the flag registry, which has its business headquarters in the US. In recent years the government has reasserted control, to highlight the Pacific islands’ vulnerability to climate change and call for action.

The country’s environment minister David Paul told Climate Home News the government’s tough stance on climate change would win out.

“Whatever our technical arms of the government or programs affiliated with the government do, we will make sure that they are always in consistence with our overall message and our position on the climate action,” he said. “So if there is going to be any contradiction – and I hope not – certainly they will have to revisit it.”

A few industry players have backed the Arctic ban in recent years. The Danish Shipowners’Association called in 2016 for a global requirement that applies to all ships, stressing the need to avoid disadvantaging ships that use the more environmentally friendly but pricey diesel fuel. The Norwegian Shipowners’ Association announced its support in 2017, and Germany’s Bremen and Bremerhaven ports followed suit in March.

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The post Arctic countries call for regional heavy fuel oil ban at UN shipping talks appeared first on Climate Home News.

It marks a milestone in the opening up of Russia’s northern coastline, as thawing polar ice makes industrial development and maritime trade increasingly viable.

The Teekay vessel Eduard Toll set out from South Korea in December for Sabetta terminal in northern Russia, cutting through ice 1.8m thick. Last month, it completed the route, delivering a load of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Montoir, France. Its voyage was captured by the crew in a timelapse video.

Bermuda-based firm Teekay is investing in six ships to serve the Yamal LNG project in northern Russia. A similarly designed vessel owned by Sovcomflot made the same passage last August. This small and growing Arctic-ready fleet can operate independently of icebreaker escorts, which are also in high demand.

Arctic sea ice is steadily thinning and receding, with seasonal fluctuation, as global temperatures rise due to human activity. In January 2018, ice extent hit another record low for the month, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center.

While polar conditions remain tough, the trend creates market opportunities. The northern sea route is shorter than alternatives through the Suez Canal for many trade links between Europe and Asia.

The post Timelapse video: shipping first as LNG tanker crosses Arctic in winter without icebreaker escort appeared first on Climate Home News.

Judges rejected the argument by Greenpeace and Nature and Youth that expanding oil production is incompatible with the country’s climate change obligations.

Norway is only responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions within its borders, not those caused by burning exported oil and gas, according to the verdict.

Truls Gulowsen, head of Greenpeace Nordic, expressed disappointment in the outcome. “It is terribly sad that the court did not take into account the global perspective of climate change,” he said, as reported by Norwegian publication NRK.

The green groups were ordered to pay the state’s legal costs of 580,000 kroner ($94,000). They have not decided whether to appeal, according to Gulowsen.

This decision in Norwegian #climatechange case #PeopleVsArcticOil is a step backward. The courts should not buy into the political gamble of “our/their #emissions” and protect the public from dangerous activities disrupting the #climate if there’s sufficient interest involved. https://t.co/LTqXxC1Tka

— Sam Varvastian (@SamVarvastian) January 4, 2018

Comment: Norway must put oil ventures to a ‘climate test’

The suit was a test case for the keep-it-in-the-ground movement, which calls for constraints on fossil fuel production to tackle climate change.

Analysts calculate at least two thirds of proven coal, oil and gas reserves cannot be used if global warming is to be held below 2C – the internationally agreed goal. But the Paris Agreement focuses on cutting emissions, giving no explicit guidance on which fossil fuels may be exploited within those limits.

Norway has one of the most ambitious national carbon-cutting targets in the world and is ahead of the curve in promoting clean technology like electric vehicles. At the same time, its energy exports have a substantial carbon footprint abroad.

While the Oslo judgment does not prohibit Arctic oil exploration, it is increasingly contentious politically, becoming a major theme in the 2017 general election campaign.

There are also signs of industry interest waning, following weak initial results. Only 11 companies applied for drilling rights in the Barents Sea in the latest licensing round, down from 26 in the previous offering. Shell was the sole supermajor to bid.

Depressed oil prices since a 2014 peak make the economics of operating in tough environments like the frozen north more challenging.

Norway’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund last year proposed to ditch oil and gas stocks to limit its exposure to price risks.

The post Norwegian campaigners lose court case against Arctic oil drilling appeared first on Climate Home News.

The case, which oil companies want justices to hear, challenges a 2012 listing of the Pacific bearded seal as threatened due to climate change.

Ross inherited the long running case from Barack Obama’s administration, which successfully saw off legal challenges in lower courts. But wildlife advocates fear a u-turn, given US president Trump’s antipathy towards science-based decisions made under Obama.

News on Wednesday that the administration had reversed a finding that walrus were threatened by climate change seemed to confirm those fears.

Oil companies, native Alaskans and the Alaskan government were unhappy when the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) listed the Pacific bearded seal as threatened under the endangered species act (ESA), due to projections that climate change could erase its habitat by 2095.

Branding the decision “literal nonsense”, they are hoping to take the case to the Supreme Court in order to have the decision overturned. The court must now decide whether to hear the case. Both sides have been given until 27 October to make their arguments.

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The documents due to be filed this month should reveal how the new administration plans to handle an awkward clash of priorities. If the government decides to defend the listing against these groups – as it did in lower courts during the previous administration – it will mean standing by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (Noaa) assertion that long-term climate change is a threat to the habitat of the bearded seal.

This would be contrary to most actions Trump has taken on climate change since taking power – including pressure on officials of various departments to cleanse their programmes of “the double-C word”. Ross, who is the chief defendant in the case because the scientific agency Noaa sits within his department, supported Trump’s decision to leave the Paris Agreement.

Kristen Monsell, who is representing the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), an intervenor in the case, said that the government might try to avoid fighting the case by dissuading the court from considering it.

“What could happen is, if the government is reconsidering the listing of the bearded seal they could indicate that in their response to the court as a reason of why it’s not worthy of Supreme Court review,” she said.

Tammy Olson, a biologist at NOAA who worked on the listing for the bearded seals, said: “NMFS does not comment on ongoing litigation, so I can’t discuss what NMFS’s response will be.”

This will be the first time that the case has been heard in Trump’s America, with the appointment of Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch swinging the balance of power in favour of conservativism.

“We definitely think we’ll have a better chance than we had on the Ninth Circuit [Court of Appeals], but then it’s difficult given Gorsuch’s relative newness to the Supreme Court to have any sense of how he may see environmental issues,” said Josh Kindred, environmental counsel for Alaska Oil and Gas Association, one of the organisations challenging the listing. Association members include majors BP, Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil.

“There are legal but also scientific issues at play here, so it’s difficult to predict how a panel would view this.”

The world’s major conservation body, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), currently lists the bearded seal as a species of  “least concern” and notes populations are still in the hundreds of thousands. But the IUCN does recognise climate change is “very likely” to negatively impact the seals in decades to come.

(Photo: Mike Pennington)

This echoes the determination of Noaa scientists that a reduction in Arctic sea ice would deplete areas for nursing, rearing and moulting, leading to declines. The US endangered species act provides different listing criteria to the IUCN. To list a species as “threatened”, the agency must determine that the creature in question is likely to become endangered in the foreseeable future.

Those opposing the listing say that impact of long-term climate projections on bearded seals are pure speculation, and it could have a serious impact on Alaska’s economy, offshore drilling and the rights of native people.

They have also warned that, if the case succeeds, it could set a precedent that would open the floodgates to many more species being listed under the endangered species act unnecessarily and prematurely. The Alaskan government pointed to a recent study suggesting that one in six species may be threatened by climate change in the future.

“Listing a now-healthy species on that basis opens the door to almost unfettered future listings of myriad species, each of which will result in heavy burdens on a local human population,” the state government wrote in their petition to the Supreme Court.

The Alaska Federation of Natives, which is also challenging the listing, even suggested that protections for the seal could become a national security threat, creating burdensome regulations that could prevent the construction of infrastructure and strategic military assets necessary for protecting the Arctic in the face of future geopolitical tension in the region.

Those who support the listing say that the impacts would be far more limited.

In particular, the ruling does not prevent the capture or hunting of the bearded seals, as this was not deemed to be a significant threat to their populations. In addition, the endangered species act contains exemptions for Alaskan native groups when it comes to taking species for subsistence.

CBD suggests that a ruling in their favour could make it easier to list certain species as threatened – such as the walrus, pika and wolverine. But the suggestion that this case would lead to a flood of premature listings is an exaggeration, says Monsell.

“The agency isn’t listing every single species. They’re analysing how the species will react to various threats based upon the best available science,” she said, highlighting how the agency had simultaneously declined to list the Atlantic subspecies of the bearded seal because it didn’t meet this scientific threshold.

Report: Trump lawyers try ‘extraordinary trick’ to quash youth climate case

The Supreme Court only hears a fraction of the petitions that it receives each year, and declined to consider a similar case challenging the listing for the polar bear even while Gorsuch was on the panel.

While the original ruling is likely to stand, a question mark hangs over how government agencies will treat the listing of animals threatened by climate change under the endangered species act in the future. In particular, a listing of the walrus is expected soon, and providing a further test of how the Trump administration will deal with the climate threat to species.

“If the agency follows the science, we think it’s clear they need to list the species, but we also know that this is an administration that doesn’t follow the science,” said Monsell.

“That’s a huge concern for the walrus, the bearded seal and other species that are threatened by climate change but might not get the protections they need, because the administration is beholden to the industry and has blinders on when it comes to the science.”

The post Big oil vs bearded seal: Case to test Trump climate stance appeared first on Climate Home News.

To take advantage of shrinking Arctic sea ice, Russian oil and gas shipper Sovcomflot invested in a carrier that can ply the polar seas year-round.

On its maiden voyage, the Christophe de Margerie completed the northern sea route in record time: six and a half days. The ship carried a cargo of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Norway to South Korea in 19 days, about 30% quicker than a typical passage by the Suez canal.

“It was a significant thing to order this vessel, it was a significant first, it had not been done by anybody before,” Sovcomflot spokesperson Bill Spears told Climate Home.

Maritime traffic along Russia’s northern coastline is increasing in tandem with industrial developments, enabled by global warming. State company Rosatomflot reported a doubling in demand for its nuclear icebreaker escorts between 2015 and 2016.

Spears said: “There has always been a window in the summer period where we have been able to go through there with an icebreaker escort. Now, that window is getting a little bit longer. That obviously reflects different climatic conditions.”

Designed to plough through sea ice up to 2.1 metres thick, the Christophe de Margerie can operate independently and not only in the summer months, giving it an edge over competitors. The Cypriot-flagged vessel is named for the former chairman of French oil major Total, who died in a plane crash at a Moscow airport in 2014.

Comment: One kilometre along the Arctic sea ice – my hardest ever swim

While sea ice in the Arctic grows and shrinks with the seasons, there is an overall declining trend, as north pole has warmed roughly twice as fast as the global average.

In March 2017, the annual maximum extent of Arctic sea ice hit a record low for the third straight year, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre.

The fact that Sovcomflot invested in an ice-capable LNG carrier showed it was expecting the trend to continue, said Andrew Holland of the American Security Project.

“Even 10-12 years ago, you would not have been thinking about this as an option at all,” he told Climate Home. “It was too unpredictable and folks were saying: maybe we will get an open Arctic a long time from now. Businesses, in order to plan for this, have to really see this trend over multiple years; they are not going to make huge investment based on one or two years [of low ice conditions].

“Since Arctic ice fell off in 2007, it has been this significant long term trend. There is no denying it. This is a very clear and predictable effect of climate change.”

Truls Gulowsen of Greenpeace Norway criticised “greedy companies” for exploiting the meltic Arctic as a business opportunity. Instead, he said they should see it as “a message from Earth that we need to get off fossil fuels as soon as possible”.

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The opening up of Russia’s Arctic coastline creates trade routes to growing oil and gas markets such as Japan, China and South Korea. It also expands president Vladimir Putin’s naval options, noted Holland.

When Russia went to war with Japan in 1904-05, its eastern port of Vladivostock was ice-bound for half the year. Reinforcements from its Baltic fleet had to travel thousands of miles around Africa to reach the arena of battle. When they arrived, resources depleted, the Russian fleet suffered heavy defeats.

While there is nothing to suggest Russia is headed for another conflict, Holland said the dynamics of military power were shifting along with the sea ice: “Things like this have unpredictable consequences.”

Other countries are also eyeing opportunities in the thawing polar region.

Icebreaker Xuelong (snow dragon) is attempting China’s first circumnavigation of the Arctic, state news outlet Xinhua reports. An onboard team of 96 people is carrying out frontier research on everything from geology to ocean acidification, chief scientist Xu Ren said.

The post Gas tanker crosses thawing Arctic without icebreaker for first time appeared first on Climate Home News.

The anxiety before this last swim, along the edge of the Arctic sea ice, was the worst I’ve ever experienced.

The training leading up to it was not what I’d wanted. Even though my preparation went well, and I was fit and strong – probably in the best pre-swim condition ever – there was just not enough cold water training.

When I arrived in Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen for the final acclimatisation, the water was 10C (50F) – and this was just 1,300 kilometres from the North Pole! Yet another example of the runaway climate change we are witnessing in the Arctic.

When I did my North Pole swim in 2007, there were a number of leaders denying what was happening in the Arctic. Today there is just one.

This swim returned us to the high Arctic ten years later to show the world the speed at which things are changing, and remind our leaders that what happens here affects all of us.

There were some added pressures on this swim. For one, we had a Sky News team on the expedition filming a documentary – the first time we’d had a TV crew on board.

Report: Arctic sea ice melt “like a train wreck” says US scientist

This would be my fifteenth long distance swim in very cold water. People assume that it gets easier over time. It doesn’t. It gets harder, because you know the place you’re going to; you know the pain you’re in for. Once you experience such extreme cold, you never really thaw out. Plus I’m not getting any younger.

Before I set out on this expedition I wrote the names of every person who has helped me prepare for this swim. There were 67 names in all, starting with Professor Tim Noakes who pioneered the science behind my cold-water swimming. Now I had one of the most competent safety officers a swimmer could wish for in Karin Strand, I had photographer Kelvin Trautman close by, and safety paddler Kyle Friedenstein alongside.

The setting was perfect; a brilliant sunny day and a clean edge of Arctic sea ice at 80° North, along which to mark our kilometre. When the team measured the water temperature, it was minus 0.5C (31F). They told me it was 2C (37F). In retrospect, I’m glad they kept the truth from.

I've received lots of questions about how I’m able to swim in the Arctic. Read this thread > pic.twitter.com/rsop2Iqyov

— Lewis Pugh (@LewisPugh) August 1, 2017

The moment I dived in I knew I had a problem. The sun never sets this far north in July, and at this latitude it angled straight into my eyes. I couldn’t see Kyle’s signals, and I couldn’t hear him shouting directions. I had to rely on counting strokes to measure my distance.

My cadence was off from the start. Perhaps it was the shock of sub-zero water, but whereas I usually count 100 strokes for 100 metres, it took me 130 strokes to reach that same distance. At 650 metres I was struggling to coordinate my kick, and my hands were frozen so they couldn’t grip the water. I stopped and shouted to Kyle, ‘I think I’m finished. Let’s get out!’

But at that moment, the support boat, which had been filling with water, had to peel away in a wide circle to clear the sluices. It was easier to swim on than to tread water in the freezing sea. I decided to try and squeeze out another 50 metres.

“I don’t remember ever having been so cold”
(Photo: Kelvin Trautman)

Earlier in the day, I’d given a talk on board the expedition vessel about my North Pole swim. I spoke about how frightened I was diving into the unknown, how breaking that swim into manageable chunks had helped me get though it, and how quitting can very easily become a habit.

Having relived that day, 10 years ago to the day, how could I give up now? I decided to press on to 750m. Once I got there, I reached for 800m. At 900m my body was shutting down, and I hardly remember the rest of the swim. But somehow I crawled to the end.

At 22 minutes in the water, it was my longest sub-zero swim, and it took its toll. I don’t remember ever having been so cold. Getting into the support boat was an ordeal. Kelvin Trautman had to stop taking photos to help me. But my hands were so frozen that I could not hold onto him. In the drama that ensued the only way I could hold onto him was by biting his arm, and holding on tight. Luckily he was wearing a dry suit. My body is now bruised all over. When I get back on shore I’ll be examined by my medical team to find out exactly why.

The Sky News team will air their documentary later this year; we’ll advertise the date, but issue a warning. I’ve watched the footage and it does not make for comfortable viewing. It is as raw as it gets.

Anyone who tells you they enjoy swimming in freezing water is either mad, or has never done it. I certainly don’t enjoy it. I am doing it to carry a message about the health of our oceans. We are in a very, very dangerous situation, and the world needs to know about it, and take immediate action.

Will I still be doing this in 10 years time? After this swim, I’m not so sure; but be assured that my commitment to being on the frontline of this battle to protect our oceans will go beyond the next decade.

Lewis Pugh is an endurance swimmer and the UN Patron of the Oceans. This article was orignally published on his blog.

The post One kilometre along the Arctic sea ice – my hardest ever swim appeared first on Climate Home News.

Secretary of state Rex Tillerson signed a declaration along with seven other foreign ministers in Fairbanks, Alaska on Thursday.

The statement merely noted the entry into force of the Paris climate deal. The Trump administration has yet to decide whether to continue US participation or quit the agreement.

International declarations signed by the previous administration, such as the 2016 G20 leaders communique, went further, recommitting to pledges made under the accord.

But the expression of support for a key objective of the deal, to curb emissions, goes further than the holding statement the US offered at a recent G7 energy ministerial.

It came alongside an agreement to enhance scientific cooperation in the region, which is warming at twice the global average rate.

Excerpt of the Fairbanks declaration

David Waskow, international climate director at the World Resources Institute, welcomed the statement. He said: “If anyone had doubts about the urgent threat of climate change, this communique endorsed by the entire Arctic Council – including the United States – must set them to rest.

“I find it very encouraging that the council acknowledged that global action is necessary to address this global challenge. That is exactly why the Paris Agreement, which the communique highlights, is so important.”

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Retreating ice is, paradoxically, opening up previously inaccessible areas of the Arctic for oil exploration. That oil, when burned, will drive further global warming.

In one of his last acts as US president, Barack Obama sought to block offshore drilling in the Arctic. His successor Donald Trump has signed an order to overturn the ban.

At present, the main barrier is economic: oil prices hovering around $50 a barrel may not be sufficient to justify ventures into what are still hostile, icy conditions.

Shell halted its activities in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea in 2015 after a controversial $7 billion investment failed to strike significant reserves. A spokeswoman for the oil major told Climate Home its position had not changed since then.

Melting Arctic: ‘It’s a very different Svalbard’

Meanwhile Norway, which full-throatedly endorses climate action, is most vigorously expanding oil exploration northwards.

Statoil is set to drill five wells in the Barents Sea, starting this month. Thanks to the Gulf Stream, the area in question is ice-free and the state oil company claims it can operate there safely and at a competitive cost.

Investigative news site Greenpeace Energydesk challenged that claim this week, with the revelation safety breaches at Statoil increased last year. It identified 14 major incidents including four gas leaks, two fires and an oil spill, occurring as the company cut more than a hundred jobs in health, safety and environment.

Environmental groups Greenpeace and Young Friends of the Earth are suing the Norwegian government to block all oil exploration in the region, arguing it is incompatible with international climate goals.

The post US endorses global action to curb greenhouse gases at Arctic summit appeared first on Climate Home News.

Eight countries are set to agree a ministerial statement on cooperation in the region, which is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. It will cover both environmental protection and economic development – including oil exploration and shipping made possible by retreating ice.

Ahead of the summit, state department career diplomat David Balton told media the statement would “have a lot of material about climate change in the Arctic”.

He added: “Anybody who spent time in or studying the Arctic knows that the region is warming, that climate change is a real issue here, and the Arctic Council has certainly been paying attention to it. And so the Fairbanks Declaration will certainly be talking about that work that the Arctic Council has done.”

Balton said he was “very confident” the US would remain engaged in the work of the Arctic Council on climate change.

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But the Trump administration is seeking to water down references to the Paris climate deal, E&E Climatewire reports, pending a decision on whether to withdraw from the deal.

While Tillerson has advocated for the US to keep a seat at international climate talks, he has also disputed the scientific consensus that global warming is mostly caused by human activity.

Russia, too, has shown ambivalence towards the climate agenda. President Vladimir Putin defended science deniers in a recent CNBC interview, adding that global warming “brings in more favourable conditions and improves the economic potential of [the Arctic]”.

It puts them in opposition to Nordic countries, which last week emphasised their commitment to the Paris Agreement and noted “with grave concern” the rapid pace of change in the Arctic.

Vidar Helgesen, Norway’s minister for the climate and environment, said: “The situation in the Arctic is in no way a problem that affects only the Arctic. The thawing permafrost is releasing methane, which contributes to further warming. The melting ice sheets and rising sea levels put low-lying and densely populated communities throughout the globe in danger.”

Finland is taking over chairmanship of the forum after the US’ two-year term.

At an event at the Finnish ambassador’s residence in London on Thursday, officials emphasised opportunities both for scientific collaboration and infrastructure investments.

Harri Mäki-Reinikka, secretary general of Finland’s Arctic advisory board, stressed that climate change affected everything. “If we have the US and Russia that are not really sharing the view that it is happening or how much it is man-made, it is difficult to proceed,” he said.

The post Tillerson to answer climate questions at Arctic Council appeared first on Climate Home News.

Only a few days earlier, on 3 March, Antarctic sea ice reached its own new record summer low since satellite observations began in 1979.

And on 13 February the total area of frozen ocean in the two hemispheres was at its lowest: 16.21 million square kilometres, which is about 2m sq km less than the average global minimum for 1981 to 2010.

In effect, the NASA scientists report, the world had lost a chunk of sea ice of an area bigger than Mexico.

“It has been quite extraordinary for several months in the Arctic,” says Julienne Stroeve, professor of polar observation at University College London. “Pretty much all through October, November, December, January, February and now March, we have been tracking record low conditions. I don’t think there has ever been a time in the Arctic when we have seen so many months of just record consecutive low conditions.”

Source: NSIDC

The most dramatic losses of sea ice have over the decades been observed in summer – where the decline has been measured at 14% per decade. Winter shrinkage has been at a much lower rate: about 3% per decade. But the ice has been thinning as well as dwindling in area, and temperatures earlier in the winter were unusually high: 20°C above the average for the time of the year.

Nobody can be sure what will happen once the spring thaw has begun, but polar scientists are expecting the worst. “We are pretty much poised to have really low summer ice conditions,” Stroeve says.

The frozen ocean around the Antarctic continent, too, has scientists worried. Sea ice fell to 2.11m sq km on 3 March. This is below the previous lowest minimum on record, exactly 20 years ago.

The two poles are very different. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is a vast continent ringed by ocean, therefore the dynamics of ice formation and loss are not the same. And in recent years, the extent of sea ice in Antarctica had been growing. But this March, at the close of the Antarctic summer, there was a dramatic change.

“It is tempting to say that the record low we are seeing is global warming finally catching up with Antarctica,” says Walt Meier of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland.

“However, this might just be an extreme case of pushing the envelope of year-to-year variability. We’ll need to have several more years of data to be able to say there has been a significant change in the trend.”

Both polar regions are affected by natural variation. But the suspicion is that the long-term trend in global warming driven by human combustion of fossil fuels that dump vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere must be playing a part. One research group recently proposed that human action might be responsible for at least half and perhaps 70% of Arctic warming.

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Southern polar sea ice reached its peak at the end of August, and November, December, January and February all saw rapid declines.

“We have been at record low levels,” says Emily Shuckburgh, deputy head of polar oceans at the British Antarctic Survey. “There is a lot of year-to-year variability, and it was only a couple of years ago we saw a maximum.

“This is just one year where there is a lot of variability, and really understanding what the implications are is the research challenge.”

This article was originally published by Climate News Network.

The post Polar sea ice hits record new low appeared first on Climate Home News.

But analysts were quick to warn that renewed growth and even a late-2016 coal demand surge were signs that China could quickly shift back to the hard stuff.

Carbon Brief carried a strong analysis that broke down the factors at play – what can be known at least.

“It is still too early to say whether Chinese emissions have peaked, plateaued, or will start to curve upwards again,” said Drs Jan Ivar Korsbakken and Glen Peters.

Greenpeace analysis found coal plant approvals in China fell by 85% in 2016.

Shipping blues

The EU has signalled that given the International Maritime Organisation’s glacial progress on self-regulation it may include shipping emissions in its carbon market.

Ship owners were furious, environmentalists were pleased and Terry Macalister pointed out that the EU emissions trading scheme isn’t actually that good at compelling polluters to do anything anyway.

Marshalling the troops

An amendment to the Montreal Protocol that will slash the amount of greenhouse-causing HFCs from fridges and air conditioners received its first official ratification from the parliament of the Marshall Islands.

“This deal is good for our people, the planet, and the profits of those that follow in our footsteps,” said president Hilda Heine.

Joining @Twitter to boost our fight for #climate action. Proud my country is first to ratify #KigaliAmendment today! https://t.co/Giaaclc3r3 pic.twitter.com/cbsw4BA5ZT

— Dr. Hilda C. Heine (@Senator_Heine) February 28, 2017

Seasonal affective disorder

The blooming of the Arctic and the shooting of leaves in the American east are two signals that scientists of phenology – the calendar record of the first signs of spring in nature – have found to have been getting increasingly out of whack as spring arrives earlier and earlier.

A Greenland sedge currently holds the record for the most seasonally-challenged plant, now sprouting nearly four weeks earlier than it did ten years ago.

Meanwhile in the Australian state of New South Wales, scientists announced that the hottest summer on record (which officially ended on Wednesday) was made fifty times more likely to have happened because of climate change.

Fix or fixation?

In an article that proved provocative, Pep Canadell, Corinne Le Quéré and Glen Peters argued that the world was in a decent place to meet the 2C requirement of the Paris climate accords – but only if it employed carbon capture and storage technology – or “fairy dust” as one Twitter user called it.

The authors argued, without necessarily advocating the technology or commenting on its commercial readiness, that the models that chart the way to a stable climate all include the ability to drag carbon from the air, which necessitates carbon capture.

Meanwhile in Trumpland

Huge budget cuts to the EPA and other departments will help Donald Trump pay for a 10% expansion of military expenditure. That was likely to spell the end for US contributions to the Green Climate Fund, environmental groups told Climate Home.

Later in the week, the scale of those cuts emerged. The EPA faces a 25% staffing cull with executive orders expected next week on the future of the clean power plan – Barack Obama’s key climate initiative.

… and finally, some baby turtles

Megan Darby has been enjoying the hospitality of the Maldivian government, which included a four hour detention in the immigration section of the airport after a paperwork mix-up. She said diving on the reefs on Friday was “mind blowing”, with loads of life and a mix of healthy and not so healthy corals.

I should qualify: the first reef we visited was vibrant. The next one was pretty bleached. About to hear about an experimental electric reef https://t.co/Isfkh4q5a4

— Megan Darby (@climatemegan) March 3, 2017

Hawksbill turtles rescued from Planet Earth-style beach side massacre pic.twitter.com/KPoTTgxzYF

— Megan Darby (@climatemegan) March 3, 2017

The post Weekly wrap: Will China turn its back on coal? appeared first on Climate Home News.

One sedge species in Greenland is now springing to growth 26 days earlier than it did a decade ago. And in the wintry United States, spring arrived 22 days early this year in Washington DC, the national capital.

The evidence comes from those silent witnesses, the natural things that respond to climate signals. The relatively new science of phenology – the calendar record of first bud, first flower, first nesting behaviour and first migrant arrivals – has over the last three decades repeatedly confirmed meteorological fears of global warming as a consequence of the combustion of fossil fuels.

Researchers say the evidence from the plant world is consistent with the instrumental record: 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded, and it was the third record-breaking year in succession. Sixteen of the hottest years ever recorded have happened in the 21^st century.

Melting Arctic: ‘It’s a very different Svalbard’

And the most dramatic changes are observed in the high Arctic, the fastest-warming place on the planet, according to a study in Biology Letters. As the polar sea ice retreats, the growing season gets ever longer – and arrives earlier.

The pattern is not consistent: grey willow sticks to its original timetable, and dwarf birch growth has advanced about five days earlier for each decade. But the sedge, almost four weeks ahead of its timetable in a decade, holds the record, according to a study that observed one plot at a field site in West Greenland, 150 miles inland, for 12 years.

“When we started studying this, I never would have imagined we’d be talking about a 26-day per decade rate of advance,” says Dr Eric Post, a polar ecologist at the University of California Davis department of wildlife, fish and conservation biology, who has been studying the Arctic for 27 years.

“That’s almost an entire growing season. That’s an eye-opening rate of change.”

The eastern US has seen much earlier emergence of spring leaves than is usual. (Source: USGS)

Caribou come to the study site during the calving season, to graze on the rich plant life of the brief Arctic summer. The caribou set their migration calendar by day-length. But some of the plants prefer to respond to temperature, which means that by the time the caribou arrive, the plants have flourished and the pickings are not as nutritious. So fewer calves are born and more die.

“That’s one example of the consequences of this for consumer species like caribou, who have a limited window to build up resources before going into the next winter,” Post says. “With the most recent study, we’re taking a step towards understanding how extensive and cryptic the effects of sea ice loss might be in the Arctic.”

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Further south, spring keeps on springing, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), which has just published a new set of maps based on phenological observations.

And, once again, an early spring doesn’t mean a sunnier, kinder world for everybody. Ticks and mosquitoes become more active, pollen seasons last longer. Crops could flourish – or be at risk from a sudden late frost or summer drought.

Plants could bloom before the arrival of the birds, bees and butterflies that feed on and pollinate the flowers, with consequences for both the plant and the pollinator.

“While these earlier springs might not seem like a big deal – and who among us doesn’t appreciate a balmy day or a break in dreary winter weather – they pose significant challenges for planning and managing important issues that affect our economy and our society,” says one of the authors of the report, Dr Jake Weltzin, a USGS ecologist and national director of the USA National Phenology Network.

The post It’s 1 March, but spring got started weeks ago appeared first on Climate Home News.

At this time of year they should be around minus 16C. Instead locals are having to adapt to a fast-changing environment, one that leaves Norway’s environment minister Vidar Helgesen in a sweat.

“What is happening now is a harbinger of things to come, we are seeing drastic changes,” he tells Climate Home in an interview.

“One of our major glaciers is retreating one metre a day, two kilometres in five years. It’s happening very fast and the world should take note.

“This will happen faster in the Arctic. We know a 2C rise in global average temperatures means up to 4C in the Arctic.”

The unusual conditions should alarm all governments, he says, given the Arctic’s influence on global weather patterns and the evolving links between climate change and issues such as conflict and migration.

For the third time this winter, the North Pole may hit the melting point this wk. Explainer: https://t.co/Z6rvybuGM1 pic.twitter.com/YyTze6Ntih

— Andrew Freedman (@afreedma) February 6, 2017

With around 10% of Norway’s population living within the Arctic circle, climate change is a live issue for politicians in Oslo.

On land, residents face melting permafrost and unusual temperatures impacting agriculture. At sea diminishing Arctic ice opens up the country’s seas to foreign trawlers and Russian warships.

“Traditionally we have viewed the Arctic through an economic and security angle. Most of our ocean territory is in the Arctic and we have a history of harvesting the oceans,” says Helgesen.

“Since the end of the cold war we have seen gradually more economic attention, but now evidently security is back as a major issue.”

2016: record low amounts of sea ice, particularly in the Arctic pic.twitter.com/DHH7NT2cFh

— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) January 18, 2017

By security he means Russia – the hulking colossus that Norway shares an Arctic border with.

Bodø Air Station is one of NATO’s frontline bases facing off Moscow: Norwegian jets routinely shadow Russian bombers as they test the alliance’s defences.

At sea, Russia plans to build three new icebreakers, Reuters reported last month, as Arctic sea routes become more accessible.

Old Soviet bases are being reactivated, radar equipment and anti-aircraft missiles are being upgraded.

Last week the US military revealed the levels of its concern with the publication of a 16-page Arctic strategy, urging more investment in military hardware and training.

Pentagon: Arctic melt requires updated US strategy https://t.co/Rlsdbcr6sA pic.twitter.com/ybPdMaiFsZ

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) February 3, 2017

One concern is that as the ice melts, historic claims from Russia, Canada and the US together with other Arctic nations on portions of the oil and mineral-rich ocean will cause friction.

Another worry is that ice-free routes will see a surge in shipping. According to the UN’s IPCC climate science panel Arctic shipping lanes could be open for four months a year by 2050. There are already signs of an uptick in traffic.

Norway is taking action; buying fighter jets, patrol aircraft and submarines and has banned the use of heavy fuel oil near its Arctic coastlines.

Despite signs Donald Trump wants to pull the US back from the multilateral arena, Helgesen is confident the Arctic Council – a forum bringing together 8 nations with Arctic interests – can resolve any disputes.

Barack Obama’s Arctic envoy Admiral Papp is no more, but Helgesen hopes to meet his replacement soon to ensure “stable cooperation” with Washington continues.

Senior US officials pledged continued support at last month’s Arctic Frontiers Conference, he says, stressing there is “no change in direction” as far as he can see from the new administration.

“Even through the Cold War we had well functioning arrangements with the Soviet Union on fishing,” Helgesen adds.

The post Think climate change is a hoax? Visit Norway appeared first on Climate Home News.

An updated US military strategy for the Arctic says “diminishing ice levels” due to warming temperatures pose a series of security risks to the country.

Released this week at the request of Alaska senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican, the 16-page document says the US must boost investment in its military assets around the North Pole.

“Diminishing sea ice will give rise to new economic opportunities in the region while simultaneously increasing concerns about human safety and protection of a unique ecosystem that many indigenous communities rely on for subsistence,” reads the Arctic Strategy.

“The breaking up of sea ice also threatens existing detection and warning infrastructure by increasing the rate of coastal erosion.”

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In stark contrast to claims Trump’s administration may axe funding to climate science programmes, the Pentagon report says weather and climate science is a matter of national security.

“Robust observations, remote sensing capabilities, and modelling of the space, air, sea surface, ice, and ocean environments that affect operations in the Arctic are key aspects of domain awareness and safe operations, particularly in a remote and harsh region,” it says.

Citing NASA’s findings that the Arctic is “warming more rapidly than the rest of the planet”, the report says planners must consider the safety of their teams when evaluating environmental risk.

In a statement Sullivan – who sits on the influential Senate Armed Services Committee – said he hoped president Trump and Pentagon officials would “take a serious look at this document” and start work on a comprehensive Arctic strategy.

Trump’s new defence chief General James Mattis was confirmed in his post on 20 January, 12 days before this document was published.

“After nearly two years of advocacy and bipartisan efforts, I am pleased that we finally have a much more serious military strategy for the Arctic region,” said Sullivan. 

“While this strategy is not perfect – including a failure to offer how best to counter the common threat it identifies – it is a dramatic improvement from the 2013 version which was more platitudes and pictures than actual substance.”

Report: Watch the Arctic melt away as the Earth warms

The Arctic is believed to hold over 20% of the world’s oil and gas reserves, and is also rich in minerals – all of which will be easier to access as sea ice levels recede.

In recent years Russia has invested heavily in the region. According to Reuters the scale of military build-up is the largest since 1991, seeking to impose control over half a million square miles of ocean.

Andy Holland, director of studies at the American Security Project, a bipartisan think tank based in Washington DC, said there was growing consensus among lawmakers of the need for a clearer Arctic plan.

“There is pressure to do this – and external pressure from the Russians. There have been a number of articles saying the Russians are militarising the Arctic,” he said.

Holland, who was recently in Norway speaking to NATO officials at the Bodo airbase, on the edge of the Arctic, said they reported an increase in Russian activity in the past year. “They are clearly pushing,” he added.

The post Pentagon: Arctic melt requires updated US strategy appeared first on Climate Home News.

In the Arctic scientists reckon diminishing floating ice levels around the North Pole are a direct result of warming temperatures and extreme weather events linked to climate change.

Ed Hawkins, a climate scientist at Reading University, has captured the collapse in Arctic ice in the latest of his viral gifs (check out his 2016 global temperatures visual here).

According to recently release data from leading climate monitoring agencies, 2016 was the hottest year on record, 1.1C above the pre industrial average.

2016: record low amounts of sea ice, particularly in the Arctic pic.twitter.com/DHH7NT2cFh

— Ed Hawkins (@ed_hawkins) January 18, 2017

The post Watch the Arctic melt away as the Earth warms appeared first on Climate Home News.

That’s harsh weather for camping, even if you’re used to it – like the intrepid Arctic researchers who have pitched their tents on the fringes of the World Economic Forum.

They held a parallel science conference on Wednesday to bring home the reality of rapidly melting ice caps to the global power players gathered here.

“I spend a lot of time researching in these kind of tents in the Arctic,” Jeremy Wilkinson of the British Antarctic Survey told the BBC. “But it’s getting much more tricky to set these tents up because the ice is getting much thinner.”

‘I want to cry seeing the ice melting but we will change a sad story into science-based action.’ Peter Bakker @MPB_WBCSD #wef17 @ArcticDavos

— Femke Groothuis (@femkegroothuis) January 18, 2017

Gail Whiteman, professor of sustainable development at Lancaster University, told Climate Home this wasn’t just a concern for polar bears.

“The Arctic plays such an important role in the global climate system that the risks that come from the Arctic don’t stay in the Arctic. The risks for the rest of the world are potentially very costly.”

Farmers, insurers and infrastructure businesses should beware of weather extremes that are linked to changes at the north pole, Whiteman said.

As one of the organisers, she was “overwhelmed and delighted” with the level of interest. They are hoping to set up a global platform to look at the issues in more depth – and come up with solutions.

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Climate crusaders Al Gore and Christiana Figueres gave keynote speeches at the event.

The former US vice president and UN climate chief needed no convincing that greenhouse gases must be phased out to save what’s left of the Arctic ice.

Other speakers included Norway climate minister Vidar Helgesen, former Finland prime minister Paavo Lipponen and UN environment chief Erik Solheim.

The #ArcticMatters. To save the ice caps, we must bend the curve of emissions by 2020 #WEF17

— Christiana Figueres (@CFigueres) January 18, 2017

A short walk away at the International Davos hotel, sponsors of the main conference include BP, Lukoil and Chevron, who see opportunities in the thawing northern ocean.

Last month, the US and Canada declared a ban on oil drilling in their sections of the polar region, citing climate concerns.

It makes no sense to develop these frontier resources, argued President Barack Obama, when the world needs to move away from fossil fuels.

Russia’s share remains open for business, though, while green groups are suing Norway’s government in an attempt to block further exploration.

“It’s incredibly ironic that fossil fuel use is of course driving emissions, which are driving ice melt, and that is opening up the Arctic to more extraction,” said Whiteman. “My personal opinion is: keep it in the ground in the Arctic.”

The post Arctic scientists take climate warning to World Economic Forum appeared first on Climate Home News.

With former Exxon boss Rex Tillerson at the State Department, Trump is likely to lift sanctions on Moscow and usher in an oil investment boom.

That is the view of Igor Yusufov, CEO of the state oil company Rosneft from 2001-2004 and energy minister during Vladimir Putin’s first term as president.

Yusufov will attend Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington on Friday, which he hopes will herald a new era of relations between the two countries.

Closer ties “would open the doors for massive investment into the Russian oil and gas exploration and production,” he told Climate Home by email.

He expressed confidence sanctions imposed by the US after Russia’s invasion of the Crimea would be lifted, citing a senior Trump advisor. Anthony Scaramucci told the World Economic Forum this week sanctions had had the “opposite effect” to their intention.

At State, Tillerson could get Exxon off human rights chargeshttps://t.co/mCkL8qpEUq pic.twitter.com/osqvHtywK0

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) January 15, 2017

A joint Exxon-Rosneft project in the Kara Sea that was abandoned in 2015 has an “excellent future”, he added.

“I see it as the first step to the future cooperation of giants as Exxon and Rosneft in hydrocarbons production in Arctic regions… shortly we will get the encouraging news on the discovery of a new important deposit”.

Yusufov now runs a US$2bn investment foundation for exploring for oil and gas in Russia. But his former deputy told the Guardian last week he maintains close ties to the Kremlin.

He has known Tillerson, who recently resigned as the boss of Exxon to make himself available as Trump’s top diplomat, since 2002.

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In December 2015, Russia was among 195 countries to adopt the Paris Agreement, agreeing to reach net zero carbon emissions in the second half of this century. That means ending a reliance on fossil fuels.

“Russia sees the Paris Climate agreement as a cornerstone of the future environmentally conscious world… we all either think about effective and generally excepted ways to cut down emissions or confront disastrous consequences pictured for years in catastrophic movies,” said Yusufov.

“At the same time we clearly understand, that at this stage the Russian economy would not survive without hydrocarbons our companies explore and produce.”

This raised the prospect of a transition to renewable energy and the production of carbon nanotubes, which he said could stop millions tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere by replacing intensively manufactured materials.

This transition, he said, could be bolstered by renewed collaboration between the US and Russia on energy.

Vladimir Putin’s global warming fix: Carbon nanotubes

The post Exxon has ‘excellent future’ in Russia says ex-energy chief appeared first on Climate Home News.

In September 2016, the global sea ice area swerved wildly away from the paths plotted by in previous year since satellite measurement began in 1978. By mid-January, the ice was lower than ever recorded.

The milestone was reported by the Arctic Sea Ice Blog using data from the US government’s National Snow and Ice Data Centre.

Scientists at Nasa and the British Antarctic Survey reviewed the graph and confirmed that the findings were in line with their own observations.

Source: Wipneus

This year’s anomaly occurred because for the first time since measurement began, very low Arctic ice has coincided with very low Antarctic ice.

In the Arctic, where the surface temperature has increased more than anywhere else on earth, sea ice levels have been almost continuously dropping. This winter has been another exceptionally poor one for the annual refreezing.

“In the Arctic, there’s definitely that connection between the substantial warming and the substantial sea ice decrease,” said Dr Claire Parkinson, a senior scientist at Nasa. “In the Antarctic case there hasn’t been substantial warming so the connection is not as clear.”

Source: NSIDC

In the Antarctic, sea ice coverage has actually been increasing since records began – despite predictions that it would decline in a warming climate. This trend was broken in 2016 in emphatic fashion. But scientists have warned against attributing this to climate change.

“[Antarctica is] probably the worst place on earth to look for a signal of increasing greenhouse gases, because natural variability is so large there,” said professor John Turner from the British Antarctic Survey. “People have said to me ‘is this global warming suddenly kicking in?’ I don’t think there’s any evidence of that.”

Turner said there was a “real danger in making assumptions from a very short record”. After watching the Antarctic for less than forty years, he said, we cannot have witnessed all of its natural variations. “We have to be aware of the surprises that the system has in store for us.”

Source: NSIDC

Southern sea ice is more volatile than its Arctic counterpart because it hugs the fringe of the continent and is exposed to rough, ice breaking weather. Antarctic sea ice almost completely disappears every year, making it much thinner and more fragile than thick Arctic ice that can last for years.

Variability makes it harder to understand trends. No-one yet understands why ice around Antarctica has been stubbornly growing. There have been a number of theories put forward, including the cooling influence of the ozone hole. But in light of this year’s switcheroo, “all those speculations need to be reconsidered”, said Parkinson.

We do know what caused the major decline in 2016 – a slackening of the winds that govern the Southern Ocean weather. This sent down warmer northerly winds, that buffeted and melted the sea ice. This effect was particularly dramatic in November.

Source: NSIDC

But the underlying mechanics of the climate that are changing the Antarctic’s ice remain mysterious and the search for human fingerprints has proved elusive.

This highlights a weakness in combining Arctic and Antarctic sea ice into one measure and then trying to draw conclusions about global warming, said Turner.

“It’s a very unnatural thing to do, to add together Arctic and Antarctic sea ice, because they really are not connected in any way and they will come in and out of phase.” It is mere coincidence that in 2016 the two combined to such dramatic effect, he said.

The post Global sea ice at lowest area ever recorded appeared first on Climate Home News.

The announcement was made on Tuesday evening with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, who agreed to similar measures that will be reviewed every five years.

The White House says Obama’s decision – which is based on a 1953 law allowing the president to stop offshore drilling – is permanent and will survive under a Donald Trump administration.

A total of 115 million acres of the Arctic will be protected by the move, which the White House said was at “significant” risk of oil spills had future drilling permits been awarded.

“It would take decades to fully develop the production infrastructure necessary for any large-scale oil and gas leasing production in the region – at a time when we need to continue to move decisively away from fossil fuels,” said Obama in a statement emailed to media.

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US climate campaigners were quick to signal their approval for the measures, and said they would fight the next administration in court if it tried to reverse the decision.

“Like every bit of climate action now on the books, this designation will be defended vigorously against any Trump administration assaults,” said David Turnbull, campaigns director at Oil Change International.

“If Donald Trump tries to reverse president Obama’s withdrawals, he will find himself in court,” said Friends of the Earth.

“Presidents can’t reverse their predecessors’ decisions to bar drilling in parts of the outer continental shelf,” added Niel Lawrence, a legal advisor with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a US NGO.

How #Trump played Gore, DiCaprio + the media for #climate fools… https://t.co/QHohT5wWYN pic.twitter.com/roQz1CXnt2

— Climate Home News (@ClimateHome) December 8, 2016

According to US government data 0.1% of US offshore crude production came from the Arctic. Total and Shell are among oil majors to announce they have no plans to drill in the region due to tough conditions and low oil prices.

Still, US oil lobbyists have vowed to fight the move: Erik Milito from the American Petroleum Institute said there is “no such thing as a permanent ban” and warned the API would work with the incoming Trump team to overturn it.

“We are hopeful the incoming administration will reverse this decision as the nation continues to need a robust strategy for developing offshore and onshore energy,” he said.

Trump’s picks for his environment and energy secretaries are both climate sceptics, while he has chosen the CEO of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson, to be his top diplomat.

In an interview on Fox News on 11 December he said he was “studying the implications” of the Paris climate deal ahead of making a call on whether the US should remain or leave the greenhouse gas cutting pact. Trump’s pick for interior secretary Ryan Zinke is also a strong advocate for the fossil fuel industry.

The decision in full:

Due to the important, irreplaceable values of its Arctic waters for Indigenous, Alaska Native and local communities’ subsistence and cultures, wildlife and wildlife habitat, and scientific research; the vulnerability of these ecosystems to an oil spill; and the unique logistical, operational, safety, and scientific challenges and risks of oil extraction and spill response in Arctic waters – the United States is designating the vast majority of U.S. waters in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas as indefinitely off limits to offshore oil and gas leasing, and Canada will designate all Arctic Canadian waters as indefinitely off limits to future offshore Arctic oil and gas licensing, to be reviewed every five years through a climate and marine science-based life-cycle assessment.

The post Obama’s last climate play: US, Canada agree Arctic oil ban appeared first on Climate Home News.

“It is about 10C above the normal for this time of the year. And plenty of rain throughout October and November, which is unusual at best,” says Holmén. “Today it is minus two, which is balmy for this time of year. But it is just a few days since we’ve had the first freezing event.”

Reports of wildly abnormal weather and ice conditions across the Arctic have resulted in a blizzard of graphs and reports in recent weeks. For residents of the main settlement on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, the weirdness reverberates through the community, causing fear and uncertainty.

Ice in Svalbard is an integral part of ecosystems, society, even the land itself. But this year, it has failed utterly. By November, the great arms of the Arctic sea ice would normally have wrapped the archipelago in its crushing, cracking embrace. But the ice fringe remains hundreds of kilometres to the north.

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“It is a very different Svalbard that we are seeing now. The fjord doesn’t freeze and there were people fishing for cod just last week still; and that the cod themselves are in the fjord is an indication of a warmer ocean,” says Holmén.

Instead of bitterly cold wind driven across the ice, the sea is governing the weather in Svalbard; bringing rain, rain and more rain. Between October 2015 and October 2016, the island was hit by 64% more rain than normal.

That doesn’t account for a storm on 8 November in which nearly three times the monthly average fell in a single day.

The glaciers, which grow through the late autumn and winter are still retreating and the rain breaks the ice apart. Warm water seeps into the land, exacerbating the melting in the soil.

After the last storm, a portion of Longyearbyen was evacuated because of fears of a landslide. Last December, a man was killed when an avalanche buried about 10 houses.

“People are worried and disturbed,”  says Holmén. All those living on Svalbard are migrants, there is no indigenous population. Holmén hints that this may mean they might be less likely to cling on in the face of change.

“Certainly [they] feel it very strongly under their skin that this is not good. I think there are some people that are considering if it is worthwhile to continue being here.”

Residents await the results of a Norwegian government report into the changing landscape. It may decide that some parts of the town are unsafe and have to be moved. “It certainly will be a tremendously costly and painful process,” says Holmén.

Although, he adds, at least some residents welcome the changes. There is the prospect of new industries, such as a year-round cod fishery or the arrival of the lucrative snow crabs from the south.

But for many of the species that rely on the ice, this competition from warmer climes is a death knell. Arctic bird species are plummeting in number as they are out-matched by southerners.

The effect on the islands’ famous polar bears is uncertain because the population is still rebounding since a hunting ban was put in place in 1973.

Some species will cling for while to the disappearing glacier faces, says Holmén: “There is no land north of us. There is nowhere to migrate towards if the climate changes such that their specialisation rather than a competitive advantage becomes a loss compared to the temperate species that are moving in.

“So we are seeing the Atlantification of Svalbard. For the specialised species it is grim because the areas with that type of habitat are diminishing.”

Your daily reminder—until this makes front page news—that what’s happening right now at our planet’s poles is *not* normal. pic.twitter.com/1VK0BgcuS8

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) November 19, 2016

The post Melting Arctic: ‘It’s a very different Svalbard’ appeared first on Climate Home News.

It beats the current record, which stood for just 12 months, by 0.2C. It also means the last 16 years have all been in the top 17 hottest years ever recorded – the other was 1998.

The preliminary report was released early, in order to coincide with UN climate talks in Marrakech.

“Another year. Another record,” said WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas. Global surface temperatures in the last few years have received a bump in recent years because of a large El Niñ0 event, which brought warm water up from the depths of the Pacific ocean and released the energy into the atmosphere. But the effect is estimated to be around 0.1-0.2C.

“The extra heat from the powerful El Niño event has disappeared. The heat from global warming will continue,” said Taalas.

It will be the third consecutive year that the temperature record has fallen. A run, professor Peter Stott of the UK Met Office, said was “remarkable”.

Stott said the end of the El Niño meant it was unlikely the next year would continue the sequence.

“However, 2017 is likely to be warmer than any year prior to the last two decades because of the underlying extent of anthropogenic warming due to the increasing atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases,” he said.

Source: WMO

As in previous years, the far north had warmed to an extreme extent. In some regions of the Russian Arctic, the year-long average was 6-7C above normal.

Other parts of Russia, Alaska and parts of Canada the saw anomalies of 3C or more. In all, 90% of land areas in the northern hemisphere were at least 1C above average.

The extra heat in the ocean has caused the sea level to rise 15mm since November 2014, much faster than the rate of 3-3.5mm per year over recent decades. Although that has levelled out since February this year.

“Because of climate change, the occurrence and impact of extreme events has risen. ‘Once in a generation’ heatwaves and flooding are becoming more regular. Sea level rise has increased exposure to storm surges associated with tropical cyclones,” said Taalas.

The most deadly climate related event was Hurricane Matthew, which devastated the island of Haiti just over a month ago.

The post UN confirms 2016 will be hottest year on record appeared first on Climate Home News.

Greenpeace and Norwegian Young Friends of the Earth launched the case with a live webcast on Tuesday.

They will argue that licenses to drill in the northern Barents Sea violate the Norwegian constitution, the Paris climate deal and the rights of young people.

“It is a lawsuit about oil, the Arctic and our common climate,” said lawyer Cathrine Hambro. “In the lawsuit, we claim that oil licenses for drilling in the Barents Sea that have recently been awarded are illegal.”

Report: Norway minister urged to halt Arctic oil drilling

The case hinges on article 112 of the Norwegian constitution, which was recently amended to guarantee citizens the right to a healthy environment.

It states: “Every person has the right to an environment that is conducive to health and to a natural environment whose productivity and diversity are maintained.

“Natural resources shall be managed on the basis of comprehensive long-term considerations which will safeguard this right for future generations as well.”

This will be the first time that provision is tested in the courtroom, Hambro said.

Norway has ratified the Paris Agreement, which aims to hold global temperature rise “well below 2C” from pre-industrial levels and aim for 1.5C. Since the deal was struck last December, Norway set a new target to go carbon neutral by 2030.

Yet there has been no move to rein in oil and gas production, which accounts for more than a fifth of the country’s GDP. Indeed, the petroleum directorate has issued further exploration licenses for the Barents Sea, off Norway’s northern coast.

Report: Norway awards new Arctic oil licences days after drilling pledge

The Paris deal does not explicitly limit fossil fuel production, but burning coal, oil and gas is the biggest driver of global warming. Various analysts have shown a significant proportion will have to stay in the ground to meet the Paris goals. Most recently, a report by Oil Change International found that mines and rigs already operating will blow the 2C carbon budget, if fully exploited.

Truls Gulowsen, director of Greenpeace Norway, called the government “mindless and irresponsible” for continuing to permit oil drilling. The case will seek to prove it is also unlawful.

Ingrid Skjoldvaer of Young FoE set out why the youth environmental movement was backing the lawsuit.

“Climate change really is dangerous, it is unfair and it is already happening,” she said, through a simultaneous translator. “I am speaking here on behalf of all the young people around the world and whose children’s children will be affected by climate change.”

Campaigners were flanked by US scientist James Hansen and philosopher and author Jostein Gaarder as they announced the case.

Hansen is the lead author on a paper undergoing open peer review, which argues continued high greenhouse gas emissions place a burden on the younger generation. If stronger carbon-cutting measures are not taken, it calculates meeting the Paris goals by removing carbon dioxide from the air will cost US$104-570 trillion dollars this century.

He is also the star witness for a youth climate lawsuit in the US, in which his granddaughter Sophie Kivlehan is a co-plaintiff.

Analysis: Is it time for Norway to stop looking for oil?

Gaarder, best known for his novel Sophie’s World, addressed the ethics of the case. “A basis for all ethics shall be the golden rule of reciprocity,” he said, applying it between the generations. “You shall do to the next generation what you wish the previous generation had done to you…

“We have no right to hand over a planet earth that is in a more miserable condition than is the one we have had the good fortune to live on.”

Among those who agree that the Paris deal demands limits on fossil fuel exploration, there is debate over who has the right to extract. Some say only the most economic reserves should be used during the transition to a cleaner energy system. Others want more leeway for developing countries.

Arctic drilling is generally seen as risky, frontier territory, with harsh operating conditions pushing costs up. Shell abandoned its plans off Alaska amid campaigner pressure and low oil prices, having spent US$7 billion.

Statoil, Norway’s largely state-owned oil company, claims it can operate in a carbon-efficient and cost-competitive way in the Barents Sea.

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The post Green groups sue Norwegian government to block Arctic oil appeared first on Climate Home News.

That is the charge Greenland foreign minister Vittus Qujaukitsoq made in Danish national paper Berlingske last week.

Following fresh evidence that toxic waste from Cold War relics is likely to surface as ice caps recede, it intensifies decades-long tensions between the former colony, its colonist and a global superpower.

“Along the coasts and under the ice sheet of Greenland, extensive pollution has been left behind by the Americans over the 75 years where they have had military installations in our country,” wrote Qujaukitsoq, according to an English translation supplied by his department.

“As an indigenous people and in accordance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the people of Greenland have the right to conservation and protection of the environment of our lands, territories and resources.

“This right may be put to the test unless the question about the responsibility for clearing up after the American military camps and bases is resolved very soon.”

There are more than 30 old US military sites across Greenland, the Danish government revealed in a 2003 mapping exercise.

A recent study of one of these, Camp Century, found “a nontrivial quantity” of cancer-causing PCBs and large volumes of diesel, as well as previously acknowledged nuclear waste.

Cut 8 metres below the icy surface of northwest Greenland in 1959, the camp housed up to 200 soldiers at a time. It was the base for “Project Iceworm”, a top secret attempt to build nuclear missiles capable of firing on the Soviet Union.

Due to unstable ice, the project was cancelled in 1966 and the base closed. It was assumed that pollutants would stay safely frozen underground for eternity.

Global warming has shattered that assumption. The latest research, led by William Colgan of York University, Canada, found the ice sheet over Camp Century is likely to start melting within 75 years. That would “guarantee” the eventual release of the hidden waste, it warned.

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That may be a distant prospect, but the debate over who is responsible for the clean-up operation is just beginning. Greenland, an autonomous country since 2008, is taking aim at its former rulers first.

“The government of the United States of America has formally handed over the military installations to Denmark,” wrote Qujaukitsoq.

“This is why Denmark is formally responsible for handling clearing up and any due compensation for damages, unless something else has been agreed between Denmark and the USA, of which Greenland has no knowledge.

“Having waited in many cases more than 70 years for the polluter to take care of clearing up or paying for such operations, Greenland is losing its patience with changing Danish governments’ vague response.”

The Colgan paper suggests it might be more complicated than that, however. While Denmark gave permission for the base to be established, it remains unclear whether it was adequately consulted over decommissioning. The US could still be liable.

It is one of many settings where climate change is “likely to amplify political disputes associated with abandoned wastes,” the researchers said.

Kristian Jensen, Denmark’s minister of foreign affairs, said in a written statement: “The potential effects of climate change in Greenland, including at Camp Century, naturally makes an impression, and the Danish Government takes the matter seriously.

“The potential effects of climate change, however, do not pose an urgent environmental problem. Rather, it is a long term challenge, that we have time to examine in cooperation with the relevant Danish authorities and in close dialogue with Greenland.

“Specifically, the Government will look into the possibility of expanding existing climate monitoring to the area surrounding Camp Century. On this background, the government will examine the possibilities for a subsequent environmental examination of possible contamination. This will happen in close collaboration with Greenland.”

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NGOs including Greenpeace, Sierra Club and Alaska Wilderness League have written to oil minister Tord Lien, urging him to cancel drilling licenses.

The announcement last month of a 24th licensing round goes against the country’s commitment to the global climate deal struck in Paris, they argue.

“The vast majority of proven fossil fuel reserves cannot be burned if we wish to limit global warming to the goals agreed to in Paris,” says the letter.

“Now is the moment for Norway to walk the talk of the Paris climate agreement.”

NGO letter to Norway energy minister by climatehomescribd on Scribd

The campaigners highlight a disconnect between the ambitious greenhouse gas emissions cuts countries have signed up to and continued exploitation of fossil fuels.

Coal mines and oil and gas fields already under operation contain enough carbon to blow the global warming limits in Paris, a recent report by Oil Change International found. If burned, these reserves will produce emissions in excess of the budget for holding temperature rise below 2C or 1.5C.

Expensive frontier projects risk getting stranded as tougher emissions curbs kick in, analysts warn. The Arctic is generally considered to fall into that category – and oil majors have shelved several ventures amid low oil prices and civil society pressure.

Analysis: Is it time for Norway to stop looking for oil?

However, Norway’s largely state-owned producer Statoil argues it can extract oil in the northerly Barents Sea at a competitive cost.

The NGOs urged Minister Lien to look beyond such calculations: “The question must not be who will develop the last barrel of oil, it must be who will show the leadership needed to ensure we do not fail in our commitment to protect this and future generations from climate disruption.”

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The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) says: “Dramatic and unprecedented warming in the Arctic is driving sea level rise, affecting weather patterns around the world and may trigger even more changes in the climate system.

“The rate of change is challenging the current scientific capacity to monitor and predict what is becoming a journey into uncharted territory.” 

The WMO is the United Nations’ main agency responsible for weather, climate and water.    

Its president, David Grimes, said: “The Arctic is a principal, global driver of the climate system and is undergoing an unprecedented rate of change with consequences far beyond its boundaries.

“The changes in the Arctic are serving as a global indicator – like ‘a canary in the coal mine’ – and are happening at a much faster rate than we would have expected.”

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He was speaking ahead of the first White House Science Ministerial meeting in Washington DC, held to develop international collaboration on Arctic science.

Climate change is causing global average temperatures to rise: 2014, 2015 and the first eight months of 2016 have all been record-breakers. The Arctic is warming at least twice as fast as the global average, and in places even faster: the Canadian town of Inuvik has warmed by almost 4°C since 1948, about four times the global figure.

The increasing loss of Arctic sea ice is threatening polar bears across their range; melting sea ice is affecting the Arctic climate in a feedback loop; and scientists expect melting permafrost will release more carbon dioxide and methane. 

The WMO secretary-general Petteri Taalas said the Arctic changes had also been a factor in unusual winter weather patterns in North America and Europe. He said the thawing of the permafrost could release vast quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

“These are part of the vicious circles of climate change which are the subject of intense scientific research”, he said.

“The Arctic is a principal, global driver of the climate system and is undergoing an unprecedented rate of change with consequences far beyond its boundaries”

Despite its certainty that the Arctic is in trouble, the WMO says it is hard to establish the implications of what is happening there. The Arctic makes up about 4% of the Earth’s surface, but the WMO says it is “one of the most data-sparse regions in the world because of its remoteness and previous inaccessibility.

“Lack of data and forecasts in the Arctic does impact on the quality of weather forecasts in other parts of the world.” 

That’s a worry which is echoed at the other end of the planet. A study led by Dr Julie Jones, from the department of geography at the University of Sheffield, UK, says limited data on Antarctica’s climate is making it difficult for researchers to disentangle changes caused by human activity from natural climate fluctuations.

It was only when regular satellite observations began in 1979 that measurement of surface climate over the Antarctic and the Southern Ocean became possible, says the study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change. 

To gain a longer view, Dr Jones and her colleagues used a compilation of records from natural archives such as ice cores from the Antarctic ice sheet, which show how the region’s climate has changed over the last 200 years.

Report: Arctic sea ice falls to second lowest extent, despite cool summer

They confirmed that human-induced changes have caused the belt of prevailing westerly winds over the Southern Ocean to shift towards Antarctica.

But they conclude that for other changes, including regional warming and sea ice changes, the observations since 1979 are not yet long enough for the signal of human activity to be clearly separated from the strong natural variability.

The shift in the westerly winds has moved rainfall away from southern Australia. This year is set to be the country’s hottest on record.

Dr Jones said: “The Antarctic climate is like a giant jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces still missing.

“There are some parts of the picture which are clear, particularly the way that climate change is causing westerly winds to shift southwards, but there are still huge gaps that we need to fill in order to fully understand how much human activity is changing weather in the region.”

This article was produced by Climate News Network

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