Arquivo da tag: Meteorologia

Global warming dials up our risks, UN report says (AP)

31/03/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Desastre, Incerteza, Manifestações, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Opinião pública, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

FILE – In this Aug. 20, 2013 file photo, Syrian refugees cross into Iraq at the Peshkhabour border point in Dahuk, 260 miles (430 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. In an authoritative report due out Monday, March 31, 2014, a United Nations climate panel for the first time is connecting hotter global temperatures to hotter global tempers. Top scientists are saying that climate change will complicate and worsen existing global security problems, such as civil wars, strife between nations and refugees. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban, File)

FILE – In this Dec. 17, 2011 file photo, an Egyptian protester throws a stone toward soldiers, unseen, as a building burns during clashes near Tahrir Square, in Cairo, Egypt. In an authoritative report due out Monday, March 31, 2014, a United Nations climate panel for the first time is connecting hotter global temperatures to hotter global tempers. Top scientists are saying that climate change will complicate and worsen existing global security problems, such as civil wars, strife between nations and refugees. (AP Photo/Ahmad Hammad, File).

FILE – In this Nov. 10, 2013 file photo, a survivor walks by a large ship after it was washed ashore by strong waves caused by powerful Typhoon Haiyan in Tacloban city, Leyte province, central Philippines. Freaky storms like 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan, 2012’s Superstorm Sandy and 2008’s ultra-deadly Cyclone Nargis may not have been caused by warming, but their fatal storm surges were augmented by climate change’s ever rising seas, Maarten van Aalst, a top official at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said. Global warming is driving humanity toward a whole new level of many risks, a United Nations scientific panel reports, warning that the wild climate ride has only just begun. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File).

FILE – This Nov. 9, 2013 file photo provided by NASA shows Typhoon Haiyan taken by astronaut Karen L. Nyberg aboard the International Space Station. Freaky storms like 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan, 2012’s Superstorm Sandy and 2008’s ultra-deadly Cyclone Nargis may not have been caused by warming, but their fatal storm surges were augmented by climate change’s ever rising seas, Maarten van Aalst, a top official at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said. Global warming is driving humanity toward a whole new level of many risks, a United Nations scientific panel reports, warning that the wild climate ride has only just begun. (AP Photo/NASA, Karen L. Nyberg, File).

FILE – This May 6, 2008 file photo, shows an aerial view of devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis, seen at an unknown location in Myanmar. Freaky storms like 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan, 2012’s Superstorm Sandy and 2008’s ultra-deadly Cyclone Nargis may not have been caused by warming, but their fatal storm surges were augmented by climate change’s ever rising seas, Maarten van Aalst, a top official at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said. Global warming is driving humanity toward a whole new level of many risks, a United Nations scientific panel reports, warning that the wild climate ride has only just begun. (AP Photo/File).

FILE – This Oct. 31, 2012 file photo, shows an aerial view of the damage to an amusement park left in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, in Seaside Heights, N.J. Freaky storms like 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan, 2012’s Superstorm Sandy and 2008’s ultra-deadly Cyclone Nargis may not have been caused by warming, but their fatal storm surges were augmented by climate change’s ever rising seas, Maarten van Aalst, a top official at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said. Global warming is driving humanity toward a whole new level of many risks, a United Nations scientific panel reports, warning that the wild climate ride has only just begun. (AP Photo/Mike Groll, File)

FILE – In this Oct. 22, 2005 file photo, a motorcyclist rides past a mountain of trash, sheet rock and domestic furniture, removed from homes damaged by Hurricane Katrina, at one of three dump areas setup for that purpose, in New Orleans, LA. In the cases of the big storms like Haiyan, Sandy and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the poor were the most vulnerable, a United Nations scientific panel reports said. The report talks about climate change helping create new pockets of poverty and “hotspots of hunger” even in richer countries, increasing inequality between rich and poor. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik, File)

FILE – In this Aug. 7, 2010 file photo, a firefighter tries to stop a forest fire near the village of Verkhnyaya Vereya in Nizhny Novgorod region, some 410 km (255 miles) east of Moscow. Twenty-first century disasters such as killer heat waves in Europe, wildfires in the United States, droughts in Australia and deadly flooding in Mozambique, Thailand and Pakistan highlight how vulnerable humanity is to extreme weather, says a massive new report from a Nobel Prize-winning group of scientists released early Monday, March 31, 2014. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr., File)

FILE – This Nov. 13, 2013 file photo, shows typhoon damaged fuel tanks along the coast in Tanawan, central Philippines. A United Nations panel of scientists has drafted a list of eight “key risks” about climate change that’s easy to understand and illustrates the issues that have the greatest potential to cause harm to the planet. The list is part of a massive report on how global warming is affecting humans and the planet and how the future will be worse unless something is done about it. The report is being finalized at a meeting on the weekend of March 29, 2014 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. (AP Photo/Wally Santana, File)

CJ. Yokohama (Japan), 31/03/2014.- Renate Christ, Secretary of the IPCC attends a press conference during the 10th Plenary of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II and 38th Session of the IPCC in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, Japan, 31 March 2014. The IPCC announced that the effects of climate change are already taking place globally on all continents and across ocean waters. Although the world today is not prepared for risks resulting from a climate change, there are opportunities to act on such risks. EFE/EPA/CHRISTOPHER JUE

CJ. Yokohama (Japan), 31/03/2014.- Rajendra Pachauri (L) Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Christopher Field (R), IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair attend a press conference during the tenth Plenary IPCC Working Group II and 38th Session of the IPCC in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, Japan, 31 March 2014. The IPCC announced that the effects of climate change are already taking place globally on all continents and across ocean waters. Although the world today is not prepared for risks resulting from a climate change, there are opportunities to act on such risks. EFE/EPA/CHRISTOPHER JUE

CJ. Yokohama (Japan), 31/03/2014.- Christopher Field, IPCC Working Group II Co-Chair, speaks at a press conference during the tenth Plenary of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II and 38th Session of the IPCC in Yokohama, south of Tokyo, Japan, 31 March 2014. The IPCC announced that the effects of climate change are already taking place globally on all continents and across ocean waters. Although the world today is not prepared for risks resulting from a climate change, there are opportunities to act on such risks. EFE/EPA/CHRISTOPHER JUE

Smoke is discharged from chimneys at a plant in Tokyo, Tuesday, March 25, 2014. Along with the enormous risks global warming poses for humanity are opportunities to improve public health and build a better world, scientists gathered in Yokohama for a climate change conference said Tuesday. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Demonstrators participate in a silence protest in front of a conference hall where the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is meeting in Yokohama, near Tokyo, Monday, March 31, 2014. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra K. Pachauri, center, speaks during a press conference in Yokohama, near Tokyo, Monday, March 31, 2014. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

A guard speaks on a mobile phone in front of demonstrators participating in a silence protest in front of a conference hall where the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is meeting in Yokohama, near Tokyo, Monday, March 31, 2014. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

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YOKOHAMA, Japan (AP) — If the world doesn’t cut pollution of heat-trapping gases, the already noticeable harms of global warming could spiral “out of control,” the head of a United Nations scientific panel warned Monday.

And he’s not alone. The Obama White House says it is taking this new report as a call for action, with Secretary of State John Kerry saying “the costs of inaction are catastrophic.”

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that issued the 32-volume, 2,610-page report here early Monday, told The Associated Press: “it is a call for action.” Without reductions in emissions, he said, impacts from warming “could get out of control.”

One of the study’s authors, Maarten van Aalst, a top official at the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said, “If we don’t reduce greenhouse gases soon, risks will get out of hand. And the risks have already risen.”

Twenty-first century disasters such as killer heat waves in Europe, wildfires in the United States, droughts in Australia and deadly flooding in Mozambique, Thailand and Pakistan highlight how vulnerable humanity is to extreme weather, according to the report from the Nobel Prize-winning group of scientists. The dangers are going to worsen as the climate changes even more, the report’s authors said.

“We’re now in an era where climate change isn’t some kind of future hypothetical,” said the overall lead author of the report, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science in California. “We live in an area where impacts from climate change are already widespread and consequential.”

Nobody is immune, Pachauri and other scientists said.

“We’re all sitting ducks,” Princeton University professor Michael Oppenheimer, one of the main authors of the report, said in an interview.

After several days of late-night wrangling, more than 100 governments unanimously approved the scientist-written 49-page summary — which is aimed at world political leaders. The summary mentions the word “risk” an average of about 5 1/2 times per page.

“Changes are occurring rapidly and they are sort of building up that risk,” Field said.

These risks are both big and small, according to the report. They are now and in the future. They hit farmers and big cities. Some places will have too much water, some not enough, including drinking water. Other risks mentioned in the report involve the price and availability of food, and to a lesser and more qualified extent some diseases, financial costs and even world peace.

“Things are worse than we had predicted” in 2007, when the group of scientists last issued this type of report, said report co-author Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development at the Independent University in Bangladesh. “We are going to see more and more impacts, faster and sooner than we had anticipated.”

The problems have gotten so bad that the panel had to add a new and dangerous level of risks. In 2007, the biggest risk level in one key summary graphic was “high” and colored blazing red. The latest report adds a new level, “very high,” and colors it deep purple.

You might as well call it a “horrible” risk level, said van Aalst: “The horrible is something quite likely, and we won’t be able to do anything about it.”

The report predicts that the highest level of risk would first hit plants and animals, both on land and the acidifying oceans.

Climate change will worsen problems that society already has, such as poverty, sickness, violence and refugees, according to the report. And on the other end, it will act as a brake slowing down the benefits of a modernizing society, such as regular economic growth and more efficient crop production, it says.

“In recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents and across the oceans,” the report says.

And if society doesn’t change, the future looks even worse, it says: “Increasing magnitudes of warming increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts.”

While the problems from global warming will hit everyone in some way, the magnitude of the harm won’t be equal, coming down harder on people who can least afford it, the report says. It will increase the gaps between the rich and poor, healthy and sick, young and old, and men and women, van Aalst said.

But the report’s authors say this is not a modern day version of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Much of what they warn of are more nuanced troubles that grow by degrees and worsen other societal ills. The report also concedes that there are uncertainties in understanding and predicting future climate risks.

The report, the fifth on warming’s impacts, includes risks to the ecosystems of the Earth, including a thawing Arctic, but it is far more oriented to what it means to people than past versions.

The report also notes that one major area of risk is that with increased warming, incredibly dramatic but ultra-rare single major climate events, sometimes called tipping points, become more possible with huge consequences for the globe. These are events like the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which would take more than 1,000 years.

“I can’t think of a better word for what it means to society than the word ‘risk,'” said Virginia Burkett of the U.S. Geological Survey, one of the study’s main authors. She calls global warming “maybe one of the greatest known risks we face.”

Global warming is triggered by heat-trapping gases, such as carbon dioxide, that stay in the atmosphere for a century. Much of the gases still in the air and trapping heat came from the United States and other industrial nations. China is now by far the No. 1 carbon dioxide polluter, followed by the United States and India.

Unlike in past reports, where the scientists tried to limit examples of extremes to disasters that computer simulations can attribute partly to man-made warming, this version broadens what it looks at because it includes the larger issues of risk and vulnerability, van Aalst said.

Freaky storms like 2013’s Typhoon Haiyan, 2012’s Superstorm Sandy and 2008’s ultra-deadly Cyclone Nargis may not have been caused by warming, but their fatal storm surges were augmented by climate change’s ever rising seas, he said.

And in the cases of the big storms like Haiyan, Sandy and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the poor were the most vulnerable, Oppenheimer and van Aalst said. The report talks about climate change helping create new pockets of poverty and “hotspots of hunger” even in richer countries, increasing inequality between rich and poor.

Report co-author Maggie Opondo of the University of Nairobi said that especially in places like Africa, climate change and extreme events mean “people are going to become more vulnerable to sinking deeper into poverty.” And other study authors talked about the fairness issue with climate change.

“Rich people benefit from using all these fossil fuels,” University of Sussex economist Richard Tol said. “Poorer people lose out.”

Huq said he had hope because richer nations and people are being hit more, and “when it hits the rich, then it’s a problem” and people start acting on it.

Part of the report talks about what can be done: reducing carbon pollution and adapting to and preparing for changing climates with smarter development.

The report echoes an earlier U.N. climate science panel that said if greenhouse gases continue to rise, the world is looking at another about 6 or 7 degrees Fahrenheit (3.5 or 4 degrees Celsius) of warming by 2100 instead of the international goal of not allowing temperatures to rise more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius). The difference between those two outcomes, Princeton’s Oppenheimer said, “is the difference between driving on an icy road at 30 mph versus 90 mph. It’s risky at 30, but deadly at 90.”

Tol, who is in the minority of experts here, had his name removed from the summary because he found it “too alarmist,” harping too much on risk.

But the panel vice chairman, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, said that’s not quite right: “We are pointing for reasons for alarm … It’s because the facts and the science and the data show that there are reasons to be alarmed. It’s not because we’re alarmist.”

The report is based on more than 12,000 peer reviewed scientific studies. Michel Jarraud, secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, a co-sponsor of the climate panel, said this report was “the most solid evidence you can get in any scientific discipline.”

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who wasn’t part of this report, said he found the report “very conservative” because it is based on only peer reviewed studies and has to be approved unanimously.

There is still time to adapt to some of the coming changes and reduce heat-trapping emissions, so it’s not all bad, said study co-author Patricia Romero-Lankao of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado.

“We have a closing window of opportunity,” she said. “We do have choices. We need to act now.”

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Online:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: http://www.ipcc.ch

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Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

Um oceano nos ares (Fapesp)

31/03/2014UncategorizedClima, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Radares e sobrevoos detalham os mecanismos de formação de chuva e o efeito da poluição urbana sobre o clima da Amazônia

CARLOS FIORAVANTI | Edição 217 – Março de 2014

O mundo das águas: nuvens escuras cobrem o rio Negro e Manaus no dia 18 de fevereiro de 2014, antecipando mais uma chuva amazônica

De Manaus

Aqui em Manaus e por esta vasta região Norte chove muito o ano todo, mas as chuvas são diferentes. No início do ano – fevereiro e março – chove quase todo dia, com poucos relâmpagos, e o aguaceiro lava a floresta e as cidades durante horas seguidas. Já no final do ano – de setembro a novembro – as tempestades são mais intensas, com muitos relâmpagos, acordando medos atávicos, e as chuvas são localizadas e mais breves. Para confirmar e detalhar os mecanismos de formação da chuva – diferente em cada região do país e mesmo dentro de uma mesma região – e o efeito da poluição de Manaus sobre o clima da Amazônia, um grupo de 100 pesquisadores do Brasil, dos Estados Unidos e da Alemanha começou a escrutinar o céu da região de Manaus com radares e aviões, por meio do programa Green OceanAmazon (GOAmazon). Lançado oficialmente no dia 18 de fevereiro em Manaus, o GOAmazon conta com orçamento de R$ 24 milhões e apoio financeiro da FAPESP, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Amazonas (Fapeam) e Departamento de Energia e Fundação Nacional de Ciência (NSF) dos Estados Unidos.

A expressão green ocean nasceu em 1999, na primeira grande campanha do programa Experimento de Grande Escala da Biosfera-Atmosfera na Amazônia (LBA). Sobrevoando a floresta de Ji-Paraná, em Rondônia, os pesquisadores – muitos deles integrantes deste novo programa – notaram que as nuvens não se comportavam como o esperado. Nessa região da Amazônia já próxima à Bolívia, imaginava-se que as nuvens tivessem até 20 quilômetros (km) de altura e apresentassem alta concentração de material particulado e de gotas pequenas de chuva, características das chamadas nuvens continentais. Em vez disso, elas tinham características das nuvens oceânicas, com pouco material particulado, de formação mais rápida e topos relativamente baixos, como em áreas oceânicas – era um oceano, não azul, mas verde, por estar sobre a floresta. Antonio Manzi, pesquisador do Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia (Inpa), que participou daquela e de outras expedições do LBA e agora integra o GOAmazon, lembra-se de que foi também em 1999 que verificaram que as chamadas nuvens quentes, que não formam cristais de gelo, eram as predominantes na região – um fato inesperado em áreas continentais.

O volume de chuva que cai sobre a bacia amazônica equivale a um oceano. Segundo Manzi, são em média 27 trilhões de toneladas de água por ano. Em termos mais concretos, a chuva, se se acumulasse em vez de escoar no solo, formaria uma lâmina d’água com uma espessura de 2,3 metros ao longo dos 6,1 milhões de quilômetros quadrados da bacia amazônica, que se espalha pelo Brasil e por vários países vizinhos. Luiz Augusto Machado, pesquisador do Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Inpe), calculou o volume médio da água de chuva em todo o país: são 14 trilhões de toneladas por ano. Caso se acumulasse, essa água da chuva formaria uma camada de 1,7 metro de altura cobrindo todo o país. Machado é também o coordenador do Projeto Chuva, que integra o GOAmazon e fará agora em Manaus a última etapa de um levantamento sobre os tipos e distribuição de nuvens de chuva no Brasil.

Ainda não está claro como esse oceano aéreo se forma. “As nuvens podem ou não gerar chuva”, diz Gilberto Fisch, do Instituto de Aeronáutica e Espaço (IAE), de São José dos Campos, e pesquisador do Projeto Chuva. “Costuma-se dizer que, quando há vapor-d’água, a chuva se forma e cai, mas não é bem assim.” A maioria das gotículas que formam as nuvens, com dezenas de micrômetros de diâmetro, se dispersa na forma de vapor. Só uma minoria consegue ganhar volume e se transformar em gotas com diâmetro de 1 a 5 milímetros e cair, por ação da gravidade. Entender como as nuvens se formam e crescem e em quais a chuva efetivamente se forma é uma das metas da equipe do GOAmazon.

Em um dos locais de coleta de informações, no município de Manacapuru, 80 km a oeste de Manaus, 120 equipamentos estão funcionando dia e noite – alguns expostos, outros no interior de 15 contêineres – para levantar informações sobre o clima na região, com o reforço dos balões meteorológicos, soltados a cada seis horas. Sobre um dos contêineres está um radar com alcance de 100 km que examina o formato e a constituição de nuvens formadoras de chuva e, desde 2010, fez o mesmo serviço em outras cidades brasileiras. As informações apuradas sobre as nuvens serão confrontadas com as do satélite GPM, que deve ser lançado em 27 de fevereiro do Japão e permanecer em uma órbita de 400 km de altura, enviando informações sobre as nuvens de chuva em quase todo o planeta. “O GPM vai passar duas vezes por dia sobre Manaus, complementando nossas informações”, diz Machado.

Um avião de pesquisa vindo dos Estados Unidos chegou a Manaus no dia 16 de fevereiro com a previsão de começar a voar nos dias seguintes para examinar diretamente os tipos de cristais de gelo do interior das nuvens e os teores de gás carbônico (CO₂) e material particulado. O avião norte-americano e outro da Alemanha devem sobrevoar a cidade e a floresta em setembro para medir as eventuais alterações do clima na estação seca.

Os experimentos, previstos para terminarem em dezembro de 2015, devem resultar em previsões meteorológicas de curto prazo (duas horas) e modelos computacionais de circulação atmosférica mais apurados. Em algumas regiões do país o monitoramento do volume de chuvas, dependente de satélites meteorológicos, ainda é muito impreciso, adiando as medidas de alerta que poderiam salvar vidas antes de as chuvas fortes chegarem.

Varrendo o céu: o radar de nuvem (esquerda) e o de chuva, instalados em Manacapuru, a 80 km de Manaus

Uma metrópole na floresta
Com forte base industrial, uma frota de 700 mil veículos e quase 2 milhões de habitantes, Manaus, capital do estado do Amazonas, é a maior metrópole tropical do mundo cercada por centenas de quilômetros de floresta. Como a pluma de poluentes produzida por essa megacidade no centro da Amazônia altera o ciclo de vida dos aerossóis e das nuvens em áreas de mata preservada e como esses elementos interagem na atmosfera e provocam mais ou menos chuvas na região?

Essas são as questões centrais que o experimento internacional GOAmazon tentará responder nos próximos anos. Um conjunto detalhado de medidas sobre aerossóis, gases traço (gás carbônico, metano e outros) e nuvens será realizado em seis diferentes sítios. Três se encontram a leste, antes de o vento passar por Manaus, e, portanto, sua atmosfera ainda não foi contaminada pela pluma de poluição da capital. Um quarto posto de medição será na própria metrópole e os dois últimos se situam em Iranduba e Manacapuru, a oeste, onde a atmosfera já carrega a influência dos poluentes emitidos em Manaus.

“Não há outra cidade com uma situação similar à da capital do Amazonas”, afirma Paulo Artaxo, coordenador de projeto temático ligado ao GOAmazon. “Sabemos que a poluição altera a precipitação, mas em que tipo de nuvem e em que circunstância?” Os estudos de Scott Martin, pesquisador da Universidade Harvard e integrante do GOAmazon, indicaram que o efeito dos aerossóis sobre o clima da Amazônia varia de acordo com a época do ano. Já se viu também que as nuvens que passam sobre a cidade recebem poluição e apresentam uma refletividade maior que as sem poluição. As nuvens da floresta têm uma carga de material particulado equivalente à da era pré-industrial.

Maria Assunção da Silva Dias, pesquisadora do Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas da Universidade de São Paulo (IAG-USP) que coordenou a campanha do LBA em 1999, vai modelar a influência da brisa fluvial originada pelos rios Negro, Solimões e Amazonas sobre o vento que carrega a pluma de poluentes da capital amazonense. A brisa sopra do rio para a terra durante o dia. À noite, ela inverte o sentido. “Em rios com margens largas, como o Negro, a brisa pode ser um fator capaz de alterar a direção e a intensidade dos ventos, modificando o regime de chuvas em áreas próximas”, diz Maria Assunção, que em 2004 realizou um estudo semelhante sobre a brisa do rio Tapajós, em Santarém, no Pará.

Neve no nordeste
Dispostos a entender melhor a formação de chuva pelo país e a evitar tragédias climáticas, a equipe do Inpe coletou nos últimos quatro anos dados em cinco pontos de amostragem: Alcântara, no Maranhão; Fortaleza, no Ceará; Belém, no Pará; São José dos Campos, em São Paulo; e Santa Maria, no Rio Grande do Sul. Um radar e outros equipamentos agora instalados em Manaus medem o tamanho das gotas nas nuvens e os tipos de cristais que as formam. As formas das gotas, a propósito, são bem diferentes: podem ser horizontais, elípticas ou oblongas, mas todas longe do formato abaulado com que normalmente se representam as gotas de chuva.

Preparando balão meteorológico para soltura

“Esse é o primeiro recenseamento da distribuição de gotas de chuvas e cristais de gelo no território nacional”, diz Machado. O que se notou, em linhas gerais, é que diferentes tipos de nuvens (mais altas ou mais baixas), com diferentes tipos de cristais de gelo (em forma de estrela, coluna ou cone), se formam e se desfazem continuamente em todas as regiões do país. Também se viu que há particularidades regionais, que indicam processos distintos de formação de chuvas e fenômenos surpreendentes. As formas e os humores da chuva pelo país ao longo do ano são diversificados a ponto de lembrarem o poema Caso pluvioso, no qual o poeta Carlos Drummond de Andrade descobre que Maria é que chovia (ele não conta quem era Maria) e a chama de chuvadeira, chuvadonha, chuvinhenta, chuvil e pluvimedonha. E em seguida: “Choveu tanto Maria em minha casa / que a correnteza forte criou asa / e um rio se formou, ou mar, não sei, / sei apenas que nele me afundei”.

A realidade também exibiu um pouco de poesia. “Detectamos neve nas nuvens mais altas sobre a cidade de Fortaleza”, diz Machado. Para decepção dos moradores locais, porém, a neve derrete e cai como chuva comum. No Nordeste predominam as nuvens quentes, assim chamadas porque o topo está abaixo do limite de temperatura de 0^oCelsius (ºC) e, por essa razão, nelas não se formam cristais de gelo, como nas regiões mais altas dos outros tipos de nuvens. Por não abrigarem gelo, essas nuvens passam despercebidas pelos satélites meteorológicos e pelos equipamentos de micro-ondas usados para prever a formação de chuvas, resultando em medições imprecisas. As medições de nuvens quentes feitas por radar em Alcântara indicaram que os valores de volume de água, comparados com as medições feitas por satélite, estavam subestimados em mais de 50%, como descrito por Carlos Morales, pesquisador da USP que integra o Projeto Chuva.

O limite – ou isoterma – de 0^ºC separa cristais de gelo (acima) e água líquida (abaixo): é uma espécie de porta invisível da chuva, onde o gelo derrete e forma água. Não é lá muito rigorosa, porque no Sudeste, por causa das fortes correntes ascendentes, a água permanece líquida a temperaturas de até 20 graus negativos, acima da camada de derretimento do gelo. “A combinação entre água e gelo em altitudes mais elevadas é a principal razão da maior incidência das descargas elétricas na região Sudeste”, diz Machado.

Manaus sob chuva

Por meio do radar, pode-se examinar a proporção de água e de gelo no interior das nuvens, desse modo obtendo informações que escapam dos satélites usados na previsão do tempo. “Os satélites não detectam as gotas grandes de água e de baixa concentração que vêm do Atlântico e formam as nuvens das regiões Nordeste e Sudeste”, Machado exemplifica. No Nordeste as nuvens, que se concentram na zona costeira, são alimentadas pelas massas de ar vindas de regiões próximas ao equador, que se movem do oceano para o continente. Já no Sul e no Sudeste as chuvas se devem principalmente às massas de ar frio (frentes frias) que vêm da Argentina. Os especialistas dizem que os satélites também não detectam fenômenos que não escapariam ao radar, como a transformação de um vento quente que veio do oceano, esfriou rapidamente ao encontrar as regiões mais frias do alto das serras no Sul do Brasil e desabou como uma chuva impiedosa sobre Blumenau e toda a região leste de Santa Catarina em 2008.

O radar de dupla polarização, em conjunto com outros instrumentos, envia ondas horizontais e verticais que, por reflexão, indicam o formato dos cristais de gelo e das gotas de chuva, desse modo elucidando a composição das nuvens e os mecanismos de formação e intensificação das descargas elétricas (raios) durante as tempestades. Os pesquisadores verificaram que as nuvens com muitos raios são mais altas e abrigam uma diversidade maior de cristais de gelo e mais granizo (pedras de gelo) do que aquelas que produzem menos raios. Além disso, de acordo com esse levantamento, as cargas elétricas negativas permanecem na mesma altura, logo acima do limite de 0^oC, e as positivas podem ficar mais altas, acompanhando o topo das nuvens e o aumento da intensidade da descarga elétrica (ver detalhes no infográfico).

“Quem não quer saber onde vai chover antes de sair de casa?”, indaga Machado. Os especialistas acreditam que os dados coletados, combinados com a modelagem computacional já utilizada para a previsão do clima, podem criar uma base sólida de conhecimento teórico e aplicado sobre a chuva continental. Em uma das ramificações do Projeto Chuva – o SOS, Sistema de Observação de Tempo Severo –, o grupo do Inpe trabalhou com equipes da Defesa Civil e de universidades em cada uma das cidades em que se instalaram com os equipamentos para prever a chegada de chuvas com duas horas de antecedência e uma resolução espacial que define possíveis pontos de alagamentos nos bairros, complementando as previsões fornecidas por supercomputadores como o Tupã, instalado no Inpe. Com base nessas experiências, Machado acredita que o radar, acoplado a um sistema de informação geográfica (SIG) e às tecnologias já em uso de previsão de chuva em alta resolução, da ordem de centenas de metros, viabiliza a previsão imediata de tempestades e desastres climáticos, para que o morador de um bairro possa saber, antes de sair de casa, se está chovendo no bairro vizinho, para onde está indo. “Para isso”, ele diz, “precisamos conhecer o tamanho das gotas de chuva e dos fenômenos que se passam no interior das nuvens, como já estamos fazendo”. Eles continuam trabalhando, enquanto agora, como na canção de Tom Jobim, chegam as águas de março, fechando o verão.

Com colaboração de Marcos Pivetta

Projetos
1. Processos de nuvens associados aos principais sistemas precipitantes no Brasil: uma contribuição a modelagem da escala de nuvens e ao GPM (medida global de precipitação) (nº 2009/15235-8); Modalidade Projeto Temático; Pesquisador responsável Luiz Augusto Toledo Machado – Inpe; Investimento R$ 2.188.914,06 (FAPESP).
2. GoAmazon: interação da pluma urbana de Manaus com emissões biogênicas da floresta amazônica (nº 2013/05014-0); Modalidade Projeto temático; Pesquisador responsável Paulo Eduardo Artaxo Netto – IF-USP; Investimento R$ 3.236.501,79 (FAPESP).

Réguas do clima no campo (Fapesp)

28/03/2014UncategorizedHistória, Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia, Meteorologia, Observatório Nacional, Orivaldo Bruninirenzotaddei

Estações meteorológicas de São Paulo com séries históricas mais longas surgiram em Campinas e Piracicaba

NELDSON MARCOLIN | Edição 217 – Março de 2014

Livros de registros da estação da Esalq de 1917

A coleta sistemática de dados climáticos no Brasil começou a ser feita na primeira metade do século XIX no Imperial Observatório do Rio de Janeiro, atual Observatório Nacional. Em São Paulo, o Instituto Agronômico de Campinas (IAC) instalou sua primeira estação meteorológica em 1890, no interior paulista, com um objetivo mais específico do que conhecer o comportamento do tempo: realizar pesquisas sobre a influência do clima nas culturas agrícolas. “Os técnicos observadores anotavam cinco vezes por dia, em folhas de um metro de largura, informações sobre temperatura, umidade do ar, radiação solar e nebulosidade”, diz Orivaldo Brunini, coordenador do Centro Integrado de Informações Agrometeorológicas do IAC, órgão ligado à Secretaria Estadual de Agricultura e Abastecimento.

A estação mecânica pioneira começou a funcionar três anos depois da fundação do IAC. Três técnicos se revezavam na leitura dos dados durante todos os dias, sem exceção. “Os equipamentos, os mais modernos da época, vieram da Alemanha”, diz Brunini. Os dados eram analisados posteriormente pelos engenheiros agrônomos, mas as informações demoravam a chegar aos agricultores. Com o tempo, outras cidades do interior ganharam suas estações. Em 1956, o instituto começou a fazer anuários meteorológicos agronômicos e, em seguida, boletins mensais. Hoje há 150 estações que funcionam com sensores automáticos, que não dependem de observadores e fornecem informações em tempo real via internet. O IAC recebe 120 mil consultas por mês – 4 mil por dia. Os dados são usados para orientar os agricultores e também a Defesa Civil contra enchentes ou incêndios.

“O material histórico acumulado fornece séries que ajudam na análise de mudanças climáticas e é parte da história da região por guardar o registro de grandes estiagens ou geadas, por exemplo”, diz Brunini. Segundo ele,
há registro de apenas duas interrupções do serviço. Elas ocorreram durante a Revolução de 1932, quando as tropas paulistas estacionaram na fazenda do IAC, em julho, onde ficava a estação, e quando as forças federais estiveram no mesmo local, em outubro.

Estação da Esalq nos anos 1930

Em 1917 iniciaram-se as observações que originaram a segunda série mais antiga de São Paulo na estação instalada na então Escola Agrícola Prática de Piracicaba, hoje Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (Esalq) da Universidade de São Paulo (USP). “As leituras eram realizadas quatro vezes por dia e uma delas seguia por telégrafo para a Diretoria de Meteorologia e Astronomia do Observatório Nacional, hoje Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia, o Inmet, para compor as informações meteorológicas diárias e de previsão de tempo de todo o país”, conta Luiz Roberto Angelocci, professor sênior do Departamento de Engenharia de Biossistemas da Esalq. A partir da década de 1960, os estudos se tornaram mais específicos para análise das relações clima-agricultura e, desde o final de 1996, foi instalada a coleta automatizada de dados, sem desativação da coleta convencional. Os dados estão disponíveis na internet.

Angelocci trabalha na análise das séries históricas geradas nos 97 anos de registro. “O que se pretende é uma reanálise completa da série, além de uma melhor exploração dos dados”, diz ele. Séries longas são fundamentais para o entendimento do clima e das causas de sua variabilidade. São importantes, também, para mostrar o que pode ser meramente uma anomalia climática ou uma tendência. “Aliás, certas anomalias não são tão raras como parecem. A situação atual de período seco no estado de São Paulo, por exemplo, ocorreu de forma análoga em outros anos”, conta Angelocci. Ele observou que em cinco anos da série, o primeiro deles em 1935, a chuva ficou abaixo de 40% da média de toda a série para o mês de janeiro. “Não dá para ser categórico e afirmar que a seca atual é resultado ou não de mudanças climáticas recentes quando sabemos que nos últimos 97 anos ocorreram períodos semelhantes ao atual”, conclui o pesquisador.

Roteiro Meteorológico no Museu Catavento (Fapesp)

22/03/2014UncategorizedMeteorologia, Museusrenzotaddei

19/03/2014

Agência FAPESP – A fim de marcar o Dia Mundial da Meteorologia, o museu Catavento Cultural e Educacional programou, para o dia 23 de março, um “Roteiro Meteorológico”, por meio do qual o visitante poderá saber um pouco mais sobre temas como efeito estufa, poluição atmosférica, (falta de) chuva e incidência de raios.

O roteiro inclui uma visita à estação medidora da Companhia Ambiental do Estado de São Paulo (Cetesb), situada no Parque Dom Pedro II, com entrada pelo pátio interno do Catavento. A seção Engenho conta com instalações como a “Fábrica de Raios” e o “Tornado de Água”, nos quais se explicam como se formam raios, tornados, tufões e furacões.

Ao final, os visitantes poderão conferir a exposição Momento Único, com fotos de raios feitas no Brasil.

A visitação ocorrerá em três horários (11h; 13h30 e 15h), na Praça São Vito, Parque Dom Pedro II, em São Paulo.

Mais informações sobre o museu: www.cataventocultural.org.br/home.

The March of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (Truthout)

26/02/2014UncategorizedCapitalismo, ciência, Clima, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Monday, 24 February 2014 09:11

By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | News Analysis

The March of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / Truthout)

Last year marked the 37th consecutive year of above-average global temperature, according to data from NASA.

The signs of advanced Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD) are all around us, becoming ever more visible by the day.

At least for those choosing to pay attention.

An Abundance of Signs

While the causes of most of these signs cannot be solely attributed to ACD, the correlation of the increasing intensity and frequency of events to ACD is unmistakable.

Let’s take a closer look at a random sampling of some of the more recent signs.

Sao Paulo, South America’s largest city (over 12 million people), will see its biggest water-supply system run dry soon if there is no rain. Concurry, a town in Australia’s outback, is so dry after two rainless years that their mayor is now looking at permanent evacuation as a final possibility. Record temperatures in Australia have been so intense that in January, around 100,000 bats literally fell from the sky during an extreme heat wave.

A now-chronic drought in California, which is also one of the most important agricultural regions in the United States, has reached a new level of severity never before recorded on the US drought monitor in the state. In an effort to preserve what little water remained, state officials there recently announced they would cut off water that the state provides to local public water agencies that serve 25 million residents and about 750,000 acres of farmland. Another impact of the drought there has 17 communities about to run out of water. Leading scientists have discussed how California’s historic drought has been worsened by ACD, and a recent NASA report on the drought, by some measures the deepest in over a century, adds:

“The entire west coast of the United States is changing color as the deepest drought in more than a century unfolds. According to the US Dept. of Agriculture and NOAA, dry conditions have become extreme across more than 62% of California’s land area – and there is little relief in sight.

“Up and down California, from Oregon to Mexico, it’s dry as a bone,” comments JPL climatologst Bill Patzert. “To make matters worse, the snowpack in the water-storing Sierras is less than 20% of normal for this time of the year.”

“The drought is so bad, NASA satellites can see it from space. On Jan. 18, 2014 – just one day after California governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency – NASA’s Terra satellite snapped a sobering picture of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Where thousands of square miles of white snowpack should have been, there was just bare dirt and rock.”

During a recent interview, a climate change scientist, while discussing ACD-induced drought plaguing the US Southwest, said that he had now become hesitant to use the word drought, because “the word drought implies that there is an ending.”

Meanwhile, New Mexico’s chronic drought is so severe the state’s two largest rivers are now regularly drying up. Summer 2013 saw the Rio Grande drying up only 18 miles south of Albuquerque, with the drying now likely to spread north and into the city itself. By September 2013, nearly half of the entire US was in moderate to extreme drought.

During a recent interview, a climate change scientist, while discussing ACD-induced drought plaguing the US Southwest, said that he had now become hesitant to use the word drought, because “the word drought implies that there is an ending.”

As if things aren’t already severe enough, the new report Hydraulic Fracturing and Water Stress: Water Demand by the Numbers shows that much of the oil and gas fracking activity in both the United States and Canada is happening in “arid, water stressed regions, creating significant long-term water sourcing risks” that will strongly and negatively impact the local ecosystem, communities and people living nearby.

The president of the organization that produced this report said, “Hydraulic fracturing is increasing competitive pressures for water in some of the country’s most water-stressed and drought-ridden regions. Barring stiffer water-use regulations and improved on-the-ground practices, the industry’s water needs in many regions are on a collision course with other water users, especially agriculture and municipal water use.”

Recent data from NASA shows that one billion people around the world now lack access to safe drinking water. Last year at an international water conference in Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan said: “For us, water is [now] more important than oil.” Experts now warn that the world is “standing on a precipice” when it comes to growing water scarcity.

Looking northward, Alaska, given its Arctic geo-proximity, regularly sees the signs of advanced ACD. According to a recent NASA report on the northernmost US state:

“The last half of January was one of the warmest winter periods in Alaska’s history, with temperatures as much as 40°F (22°C) above normal on some days in the central and western portions of the state, according to Weather Underground’s Christopher Bart. The all-time warmest January temperature ever observed in Alaska was tied on January 27 when the temperature peaked at 62°F (16.7°C) at Port Alsworth. Numerous other locations – including Nome, Denali Park Headquarters, Palmer, Homer, Alyseka, Seward, Talkeetna, and Kotzebue – all set January records. The combination of heat and rain has caused Alaska’s rivers to swell and brighten with sediment, creating satellite views reminiscent of spring and summer runoff.”

Another recent study published in The Cryosphere shows that Alaska’s Arctic icy lakes are losing their thickness and fewer are freezing all the way through to the bottom during winter. This should not come as a surprise, given that the reflective capacity of Arctic sea ice has is disappearing at twice the rate previously shown.

(Photo: Subhankar Banerjee)

Polar bear on Bernard Harbor, along the Beaufort Sea coast, Arctic Alaska, June 2001. (Photo: Subhankar Banerjee)

As aforementioned, science now shows that global temperatures are rising every year. In addition to this overall trend, we are now in the midst of a 28-year streak of summer records above the 20th century average.

In another indicator from the north, a new study by the UC Boulder Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research showed that average summer temperatures in the Eastern Canadian Arctic during the last 100 years are higher now than during any century in the past 44,000 years, and indications are that Canadian Arctic temperatures today have not been matched or exceeded for roughly 120,000 years. Research leader Gifford Miller added, “The key piece here is just how unprecedented the warming of Arctic Canada is. This study really says the warming we are seeing is outside any kind of known natural variability, and it has to be due to increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”

As ACD progresses, weather patterns come to resemble a heart-rate chart for a heart in defibrillation. Hence, rather than uniform increases in drought or temperatures, we are experiencing haphazard chaotic extreme weather events all over the planet, and the only pattern we might safely assume to continue is an intensification of these events, in both strength and frequency.

Iran’s Lake Urmia, once the largest lake in the country, has shrunk to less than half its normal size, causing Iran to face a crisis of water supply. The situation is so dire, government officials are making contingency plans to ration water in Tehran, a city of 22 million. Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has even named water as a “national security issue,” and when he gives public speeches in areas impacted by water shortages he is now promising residents he will “bring the water back.”

In other parts of the world, while water scarcity is heightening already strained caste tensions in India, the UK is experiencing the opposite problems with water. January rains brought parts of England their wettest January since records began more than 100 years ago. The UK’s Met Office reported before the end of that month that much of southern England and parts of the Midlands had already seen twice the average rainfall for January, and there were still three days left in the month. January flooding across the UK went on to surpass all 247 years of data on the books, spurring the chief scientist at Britain’s Met Office to say that “all the evidence” suggests that the extreme weather in the UK is linked to ACD.

Another part of the world facing a crisis from too much water is Fiji, where residents from a village facing rising sea levels that are flooding their farmlands and seeping into their homes are having to flee. The village is the first to have its people relocated under Fiji’s “climate change refugee” program.

More bad news comes from a recently published study showing that Earth’s vegetation could be saturated with carbon by the end of this century, and would thus cease acting as a break on ACD.

More bad news comes from a recently published study showing that Earth’s vegetation could be saturated with carbon by the end of this century, and would thus cease acting as a break on ACD. However, this study could be an under-estimate of the phenomenon, as it is based on a predicted 4C rise in global temperature by 2100, and other studies and modeling predict a 4C temperature increase far sooner. (The Hadley Centre for Meteorological Researchsuggests a 4C temperature increase by 2060. The Global Carbon Project, which monitors the global carbon cycle, and the Copenhagen Diagnosis, a climate science report, predict 6C and 7C temperature increases, respectively, by 2100. The UN Environment Program predicts up to a 5C increase by 2050.)

Whenever we reach the 4C increase, whether it is by 2050, or sooner, this shall mark the threshold at which terrestrial trees and plants are no longer able to soak up any more carbon from the atmosphere, and we will see an abrupt increase in atmospheric carbon, and an even further acceleration of ACD.

And it’s not just global weather events providing the signs. Other first-time phenomena abound as well.

For the first time, scientists have discovered species of Atlantic Ocean zooplankton reproducing in Arctic waters. German researchers say the discovery indicates a possible shift in the Arctic zooplankton community as the region warms, one that could be detrimental to Arctic birds, fish, and marine mammals.

Another study shows an increase in both the range and risk for malaria due to ACD, and cat parasites have even been found in Beluga whales in the Arctic, in addition to recently published research showing other diseases in seals and other Arctic life.

Distressing signs of ACD’s increasing decimation of life continue unabated. In addition to between 150-200 species going extinct daily, Monarch butterflies are now in danger of disappearing as well. Experts recently reported that the numbers of Monarch butterflies have dropped to their lowest levels since record-keeping began. At their peak, the butterflies covered an area of Mexican pine and fir forests of 44.5 acres. Now, after steep and persistent declines in the last three years, they only cover 1.65 acres. Extreme weather trends, illegal logging, and a dramatic reduction of the butterflies’ habitat are all to blame.

A recently published study that spanned 27-years showed that ACD is “killing Argentina’s Magellanic penguin chicks.” Torrential rainstorms and extreme heat are killing the young birds in significant numbers.

Distressingly, the vast majority of these citations and studies are only from the last six weeks.

More Pollution, More Denial

Meanwhile, the polluting continues as global carbon emissions only continue to increase.

Another recent study shows that black carbon emissions in India and China could be two to three times more concentrated than previously estimated. Black carbon is a major element of soot, and comes from the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. The study showed that parts of India and China could have as much as 130 percent higher black carbon concentrations than shown in standard country models.

India is now rated as having some of the worst air quality in the world, and is tied with China for exposing its population to hazardous air pollution.

Meanwhile, Australian government authorities recently approved a project that will dump dredged sediment near the Great Barrier Reef, a so-called World Heritage Site, to create one of the world’s largest coal ports.

Also on the front lines of the coal industry, miners now want to ignite deep coal seams to capture the gases created from the fires to use them for power generation. It’s called underground coal gasification, it is on deck for what comes next after the fracking blitz, and it is a good idea for those wishing to turn Earth into Venus.

Then we have BP’s “Energy Outlook” for the future, an annual report where the oil giant plots trends in global energy production and consumption. With this, we can expect nothing less than full steam ahead when it comes to vomiting as much carbon into the atmosphere in as short a time as possible.

BP CEO Bob Dudley announced at a January press conference that his company’s Outlook sees carbon emissions projected to rise “29% by 2035.”

Speaking of BP, the corporate-driven government of the United States continues to serve its masters well.

The US State Department recently released its environmental impact statement that found “no major climate impact” from a continuation in the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a pipeline that will transport tar sands oil – the dirtiest fossil fuel on Earth, produced by the most environmentally destructive fossil fuel extraction process ever known.

US President Barack Obama claims he has yet to make a decision on the pipeline, but we can guess what his decision shall be.

In late January, the US House Energy and Commerce Committee voted down an amendment that would have stated conclusively that ACD is occurring, despite recent evidence that ACD has literally shifted the jet stream, the main system that helps determine all of the weather in North America and Northern Europe. The 24 members of the committee who voted down the amendment, all of them Republicans and more overtly honest about who they are working for than is Obama, have accepted approximately $9.3 million in career contributions from the oil, gas, and coal industries.

Systemic problems require systemic solutions, and thinking the radical change necessary to preserve what life remains on the planet is possible without the complete removal of the system that is killing us, is futile.

The fact that the planet is most likely long past having gone over the cliff when it comes to passing the point of no returnregarding ACD is a fact most people prefer not to contemplate.

And who can blame them? The relentless onslaught of distress signals from the planet, coupled with the fact that the governments of the countries generating the most emissions are those marching lock-step with the fossil fuel industries are daunting, to say the least.

Oil, gas, and coal are the fuels the capitalist system uses to generate the all-important next quarterly profit on the road toward infinite growth, as required by the capitalist system.

Systemic problems require systemic solutions, and thinking the radical change necessary to preserve what life remains on the planet is possible without the complete removal of the system that is killing us, is futile.

Half measures, as we have seen all too often, avail us nothing.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

Hurricane prediction: Real time forecast of Hurricane Sandy had track and intensity accuracy (Science Daily)

26/02/2014UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Previsãorenzotaddei

Date:

February 25, 2014

Source: Penn State

Summary: A real-time hurricane analysis and prediction system that effectively incorporates airborne Doppler radar information may accurately track the path, intensity and wind force in a hurricane, according to meteorologists. This system can also identify the sources of forecast uncertainty.

Zhang stated that the model predicted storm paths 50 mile accuracy four to five days ahead of landfall for Hurricane Sandy. “We also had accurate predictions of Sandy’s intensity.” Credit: NOAA/NASA

A real-time hurricane analysis and prediction system that effectively incorporates airborne Doppler radar information may accurately track the path, intensity and wind force in a hurricane, according to Penn State meteorologists. This system can also identify the sources of forecast uncertainty.

“For this particular study aircraft-based Doppler radar information was ingested into the system,” said Fuqing Zhang, professor of meteorology, Penn State. “Our predictions were comparable to or better than those made by operational global models.”

Zhang and Erin B. Munsell, graduate student in meteorology, used The Pennsylvania State University real-time convection-permitting hurricane analysis and forecasting system (WRF-EnKF) to analyze Hurricane Sandy. While Sandy made landfall on the New Jersey coast on the evening of Oct. 29, 2012, the analysis and forecast system began tracking on Oct. 21 and the Doppler radar data analyzed covers Oct. 26 through 28.

The researchers compared The WRF-EnKF predictions to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Global Forecast System (GFS) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Besides the ability to effectively assimilate real-time Doppler radar information, the WRF-EnKF model also includes high-resolution cloud-permitting grids, which allow for the existence of individual clouds in the model.

“Our model predicted storm paths with 100 km — 50 mile — accuracy four to five days ahead of landfall for Hurricane Sandy,” said Zhang. “We also had accurate predictions of Sandy’s intensity.”

The WRF-EnKF model also runs 60 storm predictions simultaneously as an ensemble, each with slightly differing initial conditions. The program runs on NOAA’s dedicated computer, and the analysis was done on the Texas Advanced Computing Center computer because of the enormity of data collected.

To analyze the Hurricane Sandy forecast data, the researchers divided the 60 runs into groups — good, fair and poor. This approach was able to isolate uncertainties in the model initial conditions, which are most prevalent on Oct. 26, when 10 of the predictions suggested that Sandy would not make landfall at all. By looking at this portion of the model, Zhang suggests that the errors occur because of differences in the initial steering level winds in the tropics that Sandy was embedded in, instead of a mid-latitude trough — an area of relatively low atmospheric pressure — ahead of Sandy’s path.

“Though the mid-latitude system does not strongly influence the final position of Sandy, differences in the timing and location of its interactions with Sandy lead to considerable differences in rainfall forecasts, especially with respect to heavy precipitation over land,” the researchers report in a recent issue of the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems.

By two days before landfall, the WRF-EnKF model was accurately predicting the hurricane’s path with landfall in southern New Jersey, while the GFS model predicted a more northern landfall in New York and Connecticut, and the ECMWF model forecast landfall in northern New Jersey.

Hurricane Sandy is a good storm to analyze because its path was unusual among Atlantic tropical storms, which do not usually turn northwest into the mid-Atlantic or New England. While all three models did a fairly good job at predicting aspects of this hurricane, the WRF-EnKF model was very promising in predicting path, intensity and rainfall.

NOAA is currently evaluating the use of the WRF-EnKF system in storm prediction, and other researchers are using it to predict storm surge and risk analysis.

Journal Reference:

Erin B. Munsell, Fuqing Zhang. Prediction and uncertainty of Hurricane Sandy (2012) explored through a real-time cloud-permitting ensemble analysis and forecast system assimilating airborne Doppler radar observations. Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems, 2014; DOI: 10.1002/2013MS000297

Volcanoes contribute to recent global warming ‘hiatus’ (Science Daily)

26/02/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Visualidaderenzotaddei

Date: February 24, 2014

Source: DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Summary: Volcanic eruptions in the early part of the 21st century have cooled the planet, according to a new study. This cooling partly offset the warming produced by greenhouse gases.

LLNL scientist Benjamin Santer and his climbing group ascend Mt. St. Helens via the “Dogshead Route” in April 1980, about a month before its major eruption. The group was the last to reach the summit of Mt. St. Helens before its major eruption that May. New research by Santer and his colleagues shows that volcanic eruptions contribute to a recent warming “hiatus.” Credit: Image courtesy of DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Volcanic eruptions in the early part of the 21st century have cooled the planet, according to a study led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. This cooling partly offset the warming produced by greenhouse gases.

Despite continuing increases in atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, and in the total heat content of the ocean, global-mean temperatures at the surface of the planet and in the troposphere (the lowest portion of Earth’s atmosphere) have shown relatively little warming since 1998. This so-called ‘slow-down’ or ‘hiatus’ has received considerable scientific, political and popular attention. The volcanic contribution to the ‘slow-down’ is the subject of a new paper appearing in the Feb. 23 edition of the journalNature Geoscience.

Volcanic eruptions inject sulfur dioxide gas into the atmosphere. If the eruptions are large enough to add sulfur dioxide to the stratosphere (the atmospheric layer above the troposphere), the gas forms tiny droplets of sulfuric acid, also known as “volcanic aerosols.” These droplets reflect some portion of the incoming sunlight back into space, cooling Earth’s surface and the lower atmosphere.

“In the last decade, the amount of volcanic aerosol in the stratosphere has increased, so more sunlight is being reflected back into space,” said Lawrence Livermore climate scientist Benjamin Santer, who serves as lead author of the study. “This has created a natural cooling of the planet and has partly offset the increase in surface and atmospheric temperatures due to human influence.”

From 2000-2012, emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere have increased — as they have done since the Industrial Revolution. This human-induced change typically causes the troposphere to warm and the stratosphere to cool. In contrast, large volcanic eruptions cool the troposphere and warm the stratosphere. The researchers report that early 21st century volcanic eruptions have contributed to this recent “warming hiatus,” and that most climate models have not accurately accounted for this effect.

“The recent slow-down in observed surface and tropospheric warming is a fascinating detective story,” Santer said. “There is not a single culprit, as some scientists have claimed. Multiple factors are implicated. One is the temporary cooling effect of internal climate noise. Other factors are the external cooling influences of 21st century volcanic activity, an unusually low and long minimum in the last solar cycle, and an uptick in Chinese emissions of sulfur dioxide.

“The real scientific challenge is to obtain hard quantitative estimates of the contributions of each of these factors to the slow-down.”

The researchers performed two different statistical tests to determine whether recent volcanic eruptions have cooling effects that can be distinguished from the intrinsic variability of the climate. The team found evidence for significant correlations between volcanic aerosol observations and satellite-based estimates of lower tropospheric temperatures as well as the sunlight reflected back to space by the aerosol particles.

“This is the most comprehensive observational evaluation of the role of volcanic activity on climate in the early part of the 21st century,” said co-author Susan Solomon, the Ellen Swallow Richards professor of atmospheric chemistry and climate science at MIT. “We assess the contributions of volcanoes on temperatures in the troposphere — the lowest layer of the atmosphere — and find they’ve certainly played some role in keeping Earth cooler.”

The research is funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Science in the Office of Science. The research involved a large, interdisciplinary team of researchers with expertise in climate modeling, satellite data, stratospheric dynamics and volcanic effects on climate, model evaluation and computer science.

Journal Reference:

Benjamin D. Santer, Céline Bonfils, Jeffrey F. Painter, Mark D. Zelinka, Carl Mears, Susan Solomon, Gavin A. Schmidt, John C. Fyfe, Jason N. S. Cole, Larissa Nazarenko, Karl E. Taylor, Frank J. Wentz. Volcanic contribution to decadal changes in tropospheric temperature. Nature Geoscience, 2014; DOI:10.1038/ngeo2098

Better way to make sense of ‘Big Data?’ (Science Daily)

24/02/2014UncategorizedClima, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Matemática, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Visualidaderenzotaddei

Date: February 19, 2014

Source: Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

Summary: Vast amounts of data related to climate change are being compiled by researchers worldwide with varying climate projections. This requires combining information across data sets to arrive at a consensus regarding future climate estimates. Scientists propose a statistical hierarchical Bayesian model that consolidates climate change information from observation-based data sets and climate models.

Regional analysis for climate change assessment. Credit: Melissa Bukovsky, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR/IMAGe)

Vast amounts of data related to climate change are being compiled by research groups all over the world. Data from these many and varied sources results in diﬀerent climate projections; hence, the need arises to combine information across data sets to arrive at a consensus regarding future climate estimates.

In a paper published last December in the SIAM Journal on Uncertainty Quantification, authors Matthew Heaton, Tamara Greasby, and Stephan Sain propose a statistical hierarchical Bayesian model that consolidates climate change information from observation-based data sets and climate models. “The vast array of climate data — from reconstructions of historic temperatures and modern observational temperature measurements to climate model projections of future climate — seems to agree that global temperatures are changing,” says author Matthew Heaton. “Where these data sources disagree, however, is by how much temperatures have changed and are expected to change in the future. Our research seeks to combine many different sources of climate data, in a statistically rigorous way, to determine a consensus on how much temperatures are changing.” Using a hierarchical model, the authors combine information from these various sources to obtain an ensemble estimate of current and future climate along with an associated measure of uncertainty. “Each climate data source provides us with an estimate of how much temperatures are changing. But, each data source also has a degree of uncertainty in its climate projection,” says Heaton. “Statistical modeling is a tool to not only get a consensus estimate of temperature change but also an estimate of our uncertainty about this temperature change.” The approach proposed in the paper combines information from observation-based data, general circulation models (GCMs) and regional climate models (RCMs). Observation-based data sets, which focus mainly on local and regional climate, are obtained by taking raw climate measurements from weather stations and applying it to a grid defined over the globe. This allows the final data product to provide an aggregate measure of climate rather than be restricted to individual weather data sets. Such data sets are restricted to current and historical time periods. Another source of information related to observation-based data sets are reanalysis data sets in which numerical model forecasts and weather station observations are combined into a single gridded reconstruction of climate over the globe. GCMs are computer models which capture physical processes governing the atmosphere and oceans to simulate the response of temperature, precipitation, and other meteorological variables in different scenarios. While a GCM portrayal of temperature would not be accurate to a given day, these models give fairly good estimates for long-term average temperatures, such as 30-year periods, which closely match observed data. A big advantage of GCMs over observed and reanalyzed data is that GCMs are able to simulate climate systems in the future. RCMs are used to simulate climate over a specific region, as opposed to global simulations created by GCMs. Since climate in a specific region is affected by the rest of Earth, atmospheric conditions such as temperature and moisture at the region’s boundary are estimated by using other sources such as GCMs or reanalysis data. By combining information from multiple observation-based data sets, GCMs and RCMs, the model obtains an estimate and measure of uncertainty for the average temperature, temporal trend, as well as the variability of seasonal average temperatures. The model was used to analyze average summer and winter temperatures for the Pacific Southwest, Prairie and North Atlantic regions (seen in the image above) — regions that represent three distinct climates. The assumption would be that climate models would behave differently for each of these regions. Data from each region was considered individually so that the model could be fit to each region separately. “Our understanding of how much temperatures are changing is reflected in all the data available to us,” says Heaton. “For example, one data source might suggest that temperatures are increasing by 2 degrees Celsius while another source suggests temperatures are increasing by 4 degrees. So, do we believe a 2-degree increase or a 4-degree increase? The answer is probably ‘neither’ because combining data sources together suggests that increases would likely be somewhere between 2 and 4 degrees. The point is that that no single data source has all the answers. And, only by combining many different sources of climate data are we really able to quantify how much we think temperatures are changing.” While most previous such work focuses on mean or average values, the authors in this paper acknowledge that climate in the broader sense encompasses variations between years, trends, averages and extreme events. Hence the hierarchical Bayesian model used here simultaneously considers the average, linear trend and interannual variability (variation between years). Many previous models also assume independence between climate models, whereas this paper accounts for commonalities shared by various models — such as physical equations or fluid dynamics — and correlates between data sets. “While our work is a good first step in combining many different sources of climate information, we still fall short in that we still leave out many viable sources of climate information,” says Heaton. “Furthermore, our work focuses on increases/decreases in temperatures, but similar analyses are needed to estimate consensus changes in other meteorological variables such as precipitation. Finally, we hope to expand our analysis from regional temperatures (say, over just a portion of the U.S.) to global temperatures.”

Journal Reference:

Matthew J. Heaton, Tamara A. Greasby, Stephan R. Sain. Modeling Uncertainty in Climate Using Ensembles of Regional and Global Climate Models and Multiple Observation-Based Data Sets. SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification, 2013; 1 (1): 535 DOI: 10.1137/12088505X

O homem do tempo (Trip)

04/02/2014UncategorizedÍndios, Clima, FCCC, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Religiãorenzotaddei

Cacique Cobra Coral: um espírito que luta contra o desequilíbrio da natureza

11.07.2012 | Texto: Millos Kaiser | Fotos: Abiuro

Foto: Abiuro

Empenhado em “intervir nos desequilíbrios provocados pelo homem na natureza”, o espírito do velho Cacique Cobra Coral se manifesta no Brasil e faz clientes entre produtoras de shows, governos e até em casamentos reais

De: The Weather Son
Sent from iPad 3 – from Rio City Maravilhosa

Depois de segurar por mais de dez dias a chuva e o vento para a montagem e o início da Rio+20, o cacique Cobra Coral ficou muito triste com a apresentação do relatório que deve ser ratificado pelos chefes de Estado. Acionado pelo prefeito Eduardo Paes diante da previsão de chuva durante a conferência da ONU, o cacique isolou as áreas do Forte de Copacabana e do Riocentro, onde ocorria a Rio+20, e conseguiu espantar totalmente as nuvens carregadas nesses locais, fazendo uma distribuição da chuva pelo estado do Rio de Janeiro.

O remetente do e-mail “The Weather Son”, o filho do tempo, é Osmar Santos, marido da médium Adelaide Scritori. Juntos, eles são responsáveis pela Fundação Cacique Cobra Coral, criada, segundo o site oficial, “para intervir nos desequilíbrios provocados pelo homem na natureza”. Adelaide é a responsável pelo trabalho espiritual (ela prefere o termo “operações”), enquanto Osmar é “o homem do marketing”. “Eu trabalho usando uma conexão concreta, via celular, tablet e notebook, e a Adelaide opera com o cacique, conectada pelo espiritismo”, ele esclarece. A dupla contaria ainda com o auxílio de um professor aposentado da Universidade de São Paulo (USP), de um pesquisador do Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Inpe) e de outros conselheiros – até o escritor Paulo Coelho já foi um deles, entre 2002 e 2004.

Nos últimos dias, o casal estava na fronteira entre Brasil e Argentina, tentando atrasar a chegada de uma frente fria na Rio+20. No antepenúltimo dia do evento, porém, choveu. O cacique errou? “Não erramos a previsão, porque não é isso que fazemos. Alteramos o tempo para atender o povo. Funcionamos como um airbag, mas cada uma das peças do carro precisa também fazer sua parte. E isso não ocorreu. Céu azul não combina com desatenção, insensibilidade e falta de compromisso dos que se acham donos deste planeta. Não passarão incólumes ao crash climático de 2047, quando a Terra não terá mais água, comida ou ar limpo”, justifica Osmar, adiantando de quebra o ano em que será o apocalipse final.

Nem um mês antes, os dois estavam espantando tempestades no Grande Prêmio de Fórmula 1 em Mônaco e no Rock in Rio Lisboa. Terminando a Rio+20, embarcariam para a edição espanhola do festival, em Madri, e de lá seguiriam para Londres, onde dariam uma forcinha na abertura da Olimpíada. São quase todos clientes de longa data. A FCCC mantém convênio com a secretaria de obras do Rio de Janeiro desde o segundo mandato de César Maia, iniciado em 2001. Réveillon, Carnaval, Jogos Pan-Americanos, visitas de Bush, Obama e do papa à cidade… Em todos esses eventos, o cacique estava lá. Desde o mesmo ano, ele também pode dizer “Rock in Rio, eu fui”. Na época, o espírito teria salvado o festival de uma chuva que acometera toda a Barra da Tijuca, com exceção da Cidade do Rock, e convertido Roberto Medina – em sua autobiografia, o idealizador do RIR escreveu: “O cacique quase faz parte da empresa”.

“Contratamos sempre que dá. É satisfação garantida. Quando não dá para mandar a chuva para outro lugar, ele avisa antes” , diz uma produtora de eventos

Já com a Inglaterra a relação é ainda mais antiga, data do inverno de 1987. Londres agonizava sob 30 graus abaixo de zero e a então primeira-ministra Margaret Thatcher pediu socorro dos brasileiros. No dia seguinte, a temperatura já chegava a tolerável um grau negativo. O jornal The Guardian apelidou os milagreiros de “interceptadores de catástrofes”. Acabaram virando queridinhos do gabinete real, a ponto de intercederem no recente casamento do príncipe William com Kate Middleton.

Convênios com órgãos públicos são gratuitos. Em troca, a fundação pede aos governos que apresentem um comprovante de tudo que fizeram para reduzir os danos ambientais. Quem são os clientes particulares ou quanto pagam, a FCCC não revela, dizendo apenas que “eles estão espalhados por 17 países diferentes”. A produtora de eventos Valeria (nome fictício), que utilizou o serviço seis vezes, revela que o preço varia entre R$ 20 mil e R$ 25 mil, dependendo do porte do evento e do tempo de antecedência da contratação.

Contrata-se, na verdade, a Corporação Tunikito, um conglomerado com mais de dez CNPJs (El Niño Administração, Nostradamus Corretora de Seguros, La Niña Metereology, TWX Capas de chuva etc.) cuja sede fica na cidade de Guarulhos, em São Paulo. Osmar explica melhor: “A contratação pode incluir uma série de bens e serviços, como boletins meteorológicos, seguros contra desastres, aluguel de veículos e de capas de chuva. Mas é natural que quem contrate a Tunikito espere uma retribuiçãozinha providencial do cacique, afastando a chuva no dia de seu evento”. A fundação seria mantida com 20% dos lucros da Tunikito.

Iniciais no bolso
Adelaide e Osmar se conheceram quando eram promotores comerciais da Clam Clube de Assistência Médica, uma empresa do Grupo Silvio Santos. “Sempre trabalhamos com vendas”, ele conta. Quando não estão atuando como “senhores do tempo”, Adelaide trabalha como corretora de imóveis de luxo, “de acima de R$ 1 milhão”; o forte de Osmar são os seguros de automóveis.

A Fundação Cacique Cobra Coral foi fundada em 1931 por Ângelo, pai de Adelaide. Ele teria sido o primeiro Scritori a receber o espírito do índio norte-americano, que antes haveria encarnado no ex-presidente Abraham Lincoln e no cientista Galileu Galilei. Adelaide incorporaria também “uma equipe de engenheiros siderais, cada um responsável por um fenômeno da natureza”, e teria o dom de prever o futuro – no site da fundação há a cópia de uma carta supostamente enviada à Casa Branca comunicando ao presidente George W. Bush sobre o atentado de 11 de setembro, um mês antes do ocorrido. Suas habilidades mediúnicas estão sendo transmitidas para Jorge, o primogênito, 33 anos, de seus três filhos, sacerdote em um centro umbandista.

Abiuro

Osmar e Adelaide raramente dão entrevistas. ÀTrip, toparam falar apenas por e-mail, pois pessoalmente, alegaram, “o Astral não permitiu”. A reclusão suscita notícias a seu respeito que nem sempre procedem. Recentemente, por exemplo, a mídia anunciou que o Cacique Cobra Coral havia sido solicitado na gravação do show de Roberto Carlos em Jerusalém. “Eles estavam lá, é verdade”, esclarece Léa, assessora de comunicação do concerto. “Mas a lazer, até porque a cidade é um deserto e não chove nunca. Eles eram convidados da produção, ficaram no mesmo hotel que a gente, porém acabaram indo embora antes do show por causa de um chamado urgente.”

Geralmente, quem vai até os eventos é Osmar. Adelaide fica em um hotel na cidade ou em algum ponto estratégico. “Ele chega e começa a mapear as dissipações das nuvens, medir a umidade relativa do ar. E não larga do laptop”, conta Valeria. Osmar, em suas palavras, é “um senhor extremamente simpático, de aproximadamente 60 anos, pele clara e rosto arredondado, parecido com um executivo de banco”. Dirige um Citroën C3 e suas camisas costumam ter as iniciais de seu nome bordadas no bolso.

Valeria trabalhou com a FCCC pela primeira vez em 2008. Era cética, até que viu a mágica acontecer. “A tempestade era tanta que não dava nem para montar a estrutura do palco. Faltando cinco minutos para o show começar, o céu abriu em cima do palco, enquanto em volta estava tudo preto ainda”, ela rememora. “Depois dessa, contratamos ele sempre que dá. É satisfação garantida. Quando não dá para mandar a chuva para outro lugar, ele avisa antes.” Após se encontrarem em diversos trabalhos, os dois viraram amigos. “Vou ter um casamento sábado que vem. Escrevi para ele perguntando se vai chover, para saber com que roupa devo ir.” A resposta ainda não havia chegado.

Nature can, selectively, buffer human-caused global warming, say scientists (Science Daily)

03/02/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Date: February 2, 2014

Source: Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Summary: Can naturally occurring processes selectively buffer the full brunt of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities? Yes, says a group of researchers in a new study.

As the globe warms, ocean temperatures rise, leading to increased water vapor escaping into the atmosphere. Water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas, and its impact on climate is amplified in the stratosphere. Credit: © magann / Fotolia

Can naturally occurring processes selectively buffer the full brunt of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions resulting from human activities?

Yes, find researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Johns Hopkins University in the US and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

In a detailed study, the researchers from the three institutions examined the causes of changes in the temperatures and water vapor in the tropical tropopause layer (TTL). The TTL is a critical region of our atmosphere with characteristics of both the troposphere below and the stratosphere above.

The TTL can have significant influences on both atmospheric chemistry and climate, as its temperature determines how much water vapor can enter the stratosphere. Therefore, understanding any changes in the temperature of the TTL and what might be causing them is an important scientific question of significant societal relevance, say the researchers.

The Israeli and US scientists used measurements from satellite observations and output from chemistry-climate models to understand recent temperature trends in the TTL. Temperature measurements show where significant changes have taken place since 1979.

The satellite observations have shown that warming of the tropical Indian Ocean and tropical Western Pacific Ocean — with resulting increased precipitation and water vapor there — causes the opposite effect of cooling in the TTL region above the warming sea surface. Once the TTL cools, less water vapor is present in the TTL and also above in the stratosphere.

Since water vapor is a very strong greenhouse gas, this effect leads to a negative feedback on climate change. That is, the increase in water vapor due to enhanced evaporation from the warming oceans is confined to the near- surface area, while the stratosphere becomes drier. Hence, this effect may actually slightly weaken the more dire forecasted aspects of an increasing warming of our climate, the scientists say.

The researchers are Dr. Chaim Garfinkel of the Fredy and Nadine Herrmann Institute of Earth Sciences at the Hebrew University and formerly of Johns Hopkins University, Dr. D. W. Waugh and Dr. L. Wang of Johns Hopkins, and Dr. L. D. Oman and Dr. M. M. Hurwitz of the Goddard Space Flight Center. Their findings have been published in theJournal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, and the research was also highlighted in Nature Climate Change.

Journal References:

C. I. Garfinkel, D. W. Waugh, L. D. Oman, L. Wang, M. M. Hurwitz. Temperature trends in the tropical upper troposphere and lower stratosphere: Connections with sea surface temperatures and implications for water vapor and ozone. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 2013; 118 (17): 9658 DOI: 10.1002/jgrd.50772
Qiang Fu. Ocean–atmosphere interactions: Bottom up in the tropics. Nature Climate Change, 2013; 3 (11): 957 DOI: 10.1038/nclimate2039

Influência humana é clara no aquecimento “inequívoco” do planeta, diz IPCC (Portal Terra)

31/01/2014UncategorizedClima, Incerteza, IPCC, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4885, de 31 de janeiro de 2014

Os cientistas do IPCC – que já foram premiados com o Nobel da Paz em 2007 – fizeram um apelo enfático para a redução de gases poluentes

Painel Intergovernamental de Mudanças Climáticas divulga primeira parte de estudo sobre aumento da temperatura no globo e afirma que últimas três décadas foram sucessivamente mais quentes que qualquer outra desde 1850.

O aquecimento do planeta é “inequívoco”, a influência humana no aumento da temperatura global é “clara”, e limitar os efeitos das mudanças climáticas vai requerer reduções “substanciais e sustentadas” das emissões de gases de efeito estufa. A conclusão é do Painel Intergovernamental de Mudanças Climáticas (IPCC), que divulgou nesta quinta-feira (30/01), em Genebra, a primeira parte do quinto relatório sobre o tema.

Os cientistas do IPCC – que já foram premiados com o Nobel da Paz em 2007 – fizeram um apelo enfático para a redução de gases poluentes. “A continuidade das emissões vai continuar causando mudanças e aquecimento em todos os componentes do sistema climático”, afirmou Thomas Stocker, coordenador e principal autor da Parte 1 do quinto Relatório sobre Mudanças Climáticas, cuja versão preliminar já foi apresentada em setembro de 2013.

O documento serviu de base durante a Conferência das Partes (COP) das Nações Unidas sobre o Clima em Varsóvia, na Polônia, no final do ano passado. Em 1500 páginas, cientistas de todo o mundo se debruçaram sobre as bases físicas das mudanças climáticas, apoiados em mais de 9 mil publicações científicas.

“O relatório apresenta informações sobre o que muda no clima, os motivos para as mudanças e como ele vai mudar no futuro”, disse Stocker.

Correções
A versão final divulgada nesta quinta é um texto revisado e editado e não tem muitas mudanças em relação ao documento apresentado em setembro do ano passado, que elevou o alerta pelo aquecimento global e destacou a influência da ação humana no processo.

“A influência humana no clima é clara”, afirma o texto. “Ela foi detectada no aquecimento da atmosfera e dos oceanos, nas mudanças nos ciclos globais de precipitação, e nas mudanças de alguns extremos no clima.”

Segundo o IPCC, desde a década de 1950, muitas das mudanças observadas no clima não tiveram precedentes nas décadas de milênios anteriores. “A atmosfera e os oceanos estão mais quentes, o volume de neve e de gelo diminuíram, os níveis dos oceanos subiram e a concentração de gases poluentes aumentou”, diz um resumo do documento.

“Cada uma das últimas três décadas foi sucessivamente mais quente na superfície terrestre que qualquer década desde 1850. No hemisfério norte, o período entre 1983 e 2012 provavelmente foi o intervalo de 30 anos mais quente dos últimos 800 anos”, prossegue.

Aquecimento dos oceanos
O grupo de cientistas também lembra que o aquecimento dos oceanos domina o aumento de energia acumulada no sistema climático, e que os mares são responsáveis por mais de 90% da energia acumulada entre 1971 e 2010.

“É praticamente certo que o oceano superior (até 700m de profundidade) aqueceu neste período, enquanto é apenas provável que tenha acontecido o mesmo entre 1870 e 1970”, diz o relatório.

O nível dos mares também aumentou mais desde meados do século 20 que durante os dois milênios anteriores, segundo estima o IPCC. Entre 1901 e 2010, o nível médio dos oceanos teria aumentado cerca de 20 centímetros, diz o documento.

As concentrações atmosféricas de dióxido de carbono, metano e protóxido de nitrogênio (conhecido como gás hilariante) aumentaram, principalmente por causa da ação humana. Tais aumentos se devem especialmente às emissões oriundas de combustíveis fósseis. Os oceanos, por exemplo, sofrem acidificação por absorver uma parte do CO2 emitido.

Futuro sombrio
A temperatura global deverá ultrapassar 1,5ºC até o final deste século em comparação com níveis estimados entre 1850 e 1900. O aquecimento global também deverá continuar além de 2100, mas não será uniforme, dizem os cientistas do clima. As mudanças nos ciclos da água no mundo também não serão homogêneos neste século, e o contraste entre regiões secas e úmidas e regiões de seca e de chuvas deverá aumentar.

O resumo do texto ainda constata que a acumulação de emissões de CO2 deverá ser determinante para o aquecimento global no final do século 21 e adiante. “A maioria dos efeitos das mudanças climáticas deverão perdurar por vários séculos, mesmo com o fim das emissões.”

Até outubro, o IPCC ainda vai publicar mais duas partes do relatório e também um documento final. A segunda parte será divulgada em março, no Japão, e detalhará os impactos, a adaptação e a vulnerabilidade a mudanças climáticas. Em abril, Berlim será palco das conclusões do IPCC sobre mitigação.

(Portal Terra)

OMM prevê possível episódio climático do El Niño em meados de 2014 (AFP)

31/01/2014UncategorizedEl Niño, Meteorologiarenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4885, de 31 de janeiro de 2014

Hoje as condições são “neutras”, isto é, não se observa a chegada nem de um episódio de El Niño, nem de La Niña, segundo a OMM

O oceano Pacífico pode viver o fenômeno climático conhecido como El Niño no terceiro trimestre deste ano, anunciou nesta quinta-feira, em Genebra, a Organização Meteorológica Mundial (OMM), uma agência da ONU.

Segundo a OMM, há dois possíveis cenários dentro de seis meses: ou “a persistência de condições neutras” ou “um episódio de El Niño de baixa intensidade durante o terceiro trimestre de 2014″.

Os dois cenários “são quase tão plausíveis, tanto um quanto o outro”.

Atualmente, as condições são “neutras”, isto é, não se observa a chegada nem de um episódio de El Niño, nem de La Niña, segundo a OMM.

Estas condições “persistirão provavelmente até o segundo trimestre de 2014″, acrescentou a organização.

Os episódios climáticos El Niño e La Niña têm grande influência no clima da Terra.

O El Niño acontece a cada dois e sete anos, quando os ventos tropicais sobre o oceano Pacífico perdem força, o que provoca fortes chuvas, com inundações e deslizamentos de terra a oeste da América do Sul, seca no Pacífico ocidental e mudanças de correntes ricas em alimentos para os peixes.

O último episódio ocorreu entre junho de 2009 e maio de 2010.

Ao El Niño se segue geralmente um episódio do La Niña, que supõe temperaturas mais baixas das águas superficiais do Pacífico central e tropical.

O último episódio terminou em abril de 2012.

(AFP, via portal UOL)

Soap Bubbles for Predicting Cyclone Intensity? (Science Daily)

18/01/2014UncategorizedClima, Incerteza, Matemática, Meteorologia, Modelagem, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Jan. 8, 2014 — Could soap bubbles be used to predict the strength of hurricanes and typhoons? However unexpected it may sound, this question prompted physicists at the Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d’Aquitaine (CNRS/université de Bordeaux) to perform a highly novel experiment: they used soap bubbles to model atmospheric flow. A detailed study of the rotation rates of the bubble vortices enabled the scientists to obtain a relationship that accurately describes the evolution of their intensity, and propose a simple model to predict that of tropical cyclones.

Vortices in a soap bubble. (Credit: © Hamid Kellay)

The work, carried out in collaboration with researchers from the Institut de Mathématiques de Bordeaux (CNRS/université de Bordeaux/Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux) and a team from Université de la Réunion, has just been published in the journal NatureScientific Reports.

Predicting wind intensity or strength in tropical cyclones, typhoons and hurricanes is a key objective in meteorology: the lives of hundreds of thousands of people may depend on it. However, despite recent progress, such forecasts remain difficult since they involve many factors related to the complexity of these giant vortices and their interaction with the environment. A new research avenue has now been opened up by physicists at the Laboratoire Ondes et Matière d’Aquitaine (CNRS/Université Bordeaux 1), who have performed a highly novel experiment using, of all things, soap bubbles.

The researchers carried out simulations of flow on soap bubbles, reproducing the curvature of the atmosphere and approximating as closely as possible a simple model of atmospheric flow. The experiment allowed them to obtain vortices that resemble tropical cyclones and whose rotation rate and intensity exhibit astonishing dynamics-weak initially or just after the birth of the vortex, and increasing significantly over time. Following this intensification phase, the vortex attains its maximum intensity before entering a phase of decline.

A detailed study of the rotation rate of the vortices enabled the researchers to obtain a simple relationship that accurately describes the evolution of their intensity. For instance, the relationship can be used to determine the maximum intensity of the vortex and the time it takes to reach it, on the basis of its initial evolution. This prediction can begin around fifty hours after the formation of the vortex, a period corresponding to approximately one quarter of its lifetime and during which wind speeds intensify. The team then set out to verify that these results could be applied to real tropical cyclones. By applying the same analysis to approximately 150 tropical cyclones in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, they showed that the relationship held true for such low-pressure systems. This study therefore provides a simple model that could help meteorologists to better predict the strength of tropical cyclones in the future.

Journal Reference:

T. Meuel, Y. L. Xiong, P. Fischer, C. H. Bruneau, M. Bessafi, H. Kellay. Intensity of vortices: from soap bubbles to hurricanes. Scientific Reports, 2013; 3 DOI:10.1038/srep03455

Scientists: Americans are becoming weather wimps (AP)

11/01/2014Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Cognição, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Psicologia, Visualidaderenzotaddei

By SETH BORENSTEIN

— Jan. 9, 2014 5:33 PM EST

Deep Freeze Weather Wimps

FILE – In this Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014, file photo, a person struggles to cross a street in blowing and falling snow as the Gateway Arch appears in the distance, in St. Louis. The deep freeze that gripped much of the nation this week wasn’t unprecedented, but with global warming we’re getting far fewer bitter cold spells, and many of us have forgotten how frigid winter used to be. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — We’ve become weather wimps.

As the world warms, the United States is getting fewer bitter cold spells like the one that gripped much of the nation this week. So when a deep freeze strikes, scientists say, it seems more unprecedented than it really is. An Associated Press analysis of the daily national winter temperature shows that cold extremes have happened about once every four years since 1900.

Until recently.

When computer models estimated that the national average daily temperature for the Lower 48 states dropped to 17.9 degrees on Monday, it was the first deep freeze of that magnitude in 17 years, according to Greg Carbin, warning meteorologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That stretch — from Jan. 13, 1997 to Monday — is by far the longest the U.S. has gone without the national average plunging below 18 degrees, according to a database of daytime winter temperatures starting in January 1900.

In the past 115 years, there have been 58 days when the national average temperature dropped below 18. Carbin said those occurrences often happen in periods that last several days so it makes more sense to talk about cold outbreaks instead of cold days. There have been 27 distinct cold snaps.

Between 1970 and 1989, a dozen such events occurred, but there were only two in the 1990s and then none until Monday.

“These types of events have actually become more infrequent than they were in the past,” said Carbin, who works at the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. “This is why there was such a big buzz because people have such short memories.”

Said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private firm Weather Underground: “It’s become a lot harder to get these extreme (cold) outbreaks in a planet that’s warming.”

And Monday’s breathtaking chill? It was merely the 55th coldest day — averaged for the continental United States — since 1900.

The coldest day for the Lower 48 since 1900 — as calculated by the computer models — was 12 degrees on Christmas Eve 1983, nearly 6 degrees chillier than Monday.

The average daytime winter temperature is about 33 degrees, according to Carbin’s database.

There have been far more unusually warm winter days in the U.S. than unusually cold ones.

Since Jan. 1, 2000, only two days have ranked in the top 100 coldest: Monday and Tuesday. But there have been 13 in the top 100 warmest winter days, including the warmest since 1900: Dec. 3, 2012. And that pattern is exactly what climate scientists have been saying for years, that the world will get more warm extremes and fewer cold extremes.

Nine of 11 outside climate scientists and meteorologists who reviewed the data for the AP said it showed that as the world warms from heat-trapping gas spewed by the burning of fossil fuels, winters are becoming milder. The world is getting more warm extremes and fewer cold extremes, they said.

“We expect to see a lengthening of time between cold air outbreaks due to a warming climate, but 17 years between outbreaks is probably partially due to an unusual amount of natural variability,” or luck, Masters said in an email. “I expect we’ll go far fewer than 17 years before seeing the next cold air outbreak of this intensity.

And the scientists dismiss global warming skeptics who claim one or two cold days somehow disproves climate change.

“When your hands are freezing off trying to scrape the ice off your car, it can be all too tempting to say, ‘Where’s global warming now? I could use a little of that!’ But you know what? It’s not as cold as it used to be anymore,” Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe said in an email.

The recent cold spell, which was triggered by a frigid air mass known as the polar vortex that wandered way south of normal, could also be related to a relatively new theory that may prove a weather wild card, said Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis. Her theory, which has divided mainstream climate scientists, says that melting Arctic sea ice is changing polar weather, moving the jet stream and causing “more weirdness.”

Ryan Maue, a meteorologist with the private firm Weather Bell Analytics who is skeptical about blaming global warming for weather extremes, dismisses Francis’ theory and said he has concerns about the accuracy of Carbin’s database. Maue has his own daily U.S. average temperature showing that Monday was colder than Carbin’s calculations.

Still, he acknowledged that cold nationwide temperatures “occurred with more regularity in the past.”

Many climate scientists say Americans are weather weenies who forgot what a truly cold winter is like.

“I think that people’s memory about climate is really terrible,” Texas A&M University climate scientist Andrew Dessler wrote in an email. “So I think this cold event feels more extreme than it actually is because we’re just not used to really cold winters anymore.”

Solution to Cloud Riddle Reveals Hotter Future: Global Temperatures to Rise at Least 4 Degrees C by 2100 (Science Daily)

06/01/2014UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Incerteza, Mediação tecnológica, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Dec. 31, 2013 — Global average temperatures will rise at least 4°C by 2100 and potentially more than 8°C by 2200 if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced according to new research published inNature. Scientists found global climate is more sensitive to carbon dioxide than most previous estimates.

Scientists have revealed the impact of clouds on climate sensitivity. Global average temperatures will rise at least 4 degrees C by 2100 and potentially more than 8 degrees C by 2200 if carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced, according to new research. (Credit: © Maksim Shebeko / Fotolia)

The research also appears to solve one of the great unknowns of climate sensitivity, the role of cloud formation and whether this will have a positive or negative effect on global warming.

“Our research has shown climate models indicating a low temperature response to a doubling of carbon dioxide from preindustrial times are not reproducing the correct processes that lead to cloud formation,” said lead author from the University of New South Wales’ Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science Prof Steven Sherwood.

“When the processes are correct in the climate models the level of climate sensitivity is far higher. Previously, estimates of the sensitivity of global temperature to a doubling of carbon dioxide ranged from 1.5°C to 5°C. This new research takes away the lower end of climate sensitivity estimates, meaning that global average temperatures will increase by 3°C to 5°C with a doubling of carbon dioxide.”

The key to this narrower but much higher estimate can be found in the real world observations around the role of water vapour in cloud formation.

Observations show when water vapour is taken up by the atmosphere through evaporation, the updraughts can either rise to 15 km to form clouds that produce heavy rains or rise just a few kilometres before returning to the surface without forming rain clouds.

When updraughts rise only a few kilometres they reduce total cloud cover because they pull more vapour away from the higher cloud forming regions.

However water vapour is not pulled away from cloud forming regions when only deep 15km updraughts are present.

The researchers found climate models that show a low global temperature response to carbon dioxide do not include enough of this lower-level water vapour process. Instead they simulate nearly all updraughts as rising to 15 km and forming clouds.

When only the deeper updraughts are present in climate models, more clouds form and there is an increased reflection of sunlight. Consequently the global climate in these models becomes less sensitive in its response to atmospheric carbon dioxide.

However, real world observations show this behaviour is wrong.

When the processes in climate models are corrected to match the observations in the real world, the models produce cycles that take water vapour to a wider range of heights in the atmosphere, causing fewer clouds to form as the climate warms.

This increases the amount of sunlight and heat entering the atmosphere and, as a result, increases the sensitivity of our climate to carbon dioxide or any other perturbation.

The result is that when water vapour processes are correctly represented, the sensitivity of the climate to a doubling of carbon dioxide — which will occur in the next 50 years — means we can expect a temperature increase of at least 4°C by 2100.

“Climate sceptics like to criticize climate models for getting things wrong, and we are the first to admit they are not perfect, but what we are finding is that the mistakes are being made by those models which predict less warming, not those that predict more,” said Prof. Sherwood.

“Rises in global average temperatures of this magnitude will have profound impacts on the world and the economies of many countries if we don’t urgently start to curb our emissions.

Journal Reference:

Steven C. Sherwood, Sandrine Bony, Jean-Louis Dufresne.Spread in model climate sensitivity traced to atmospheric convective mixing. Nature, 2014; 505 (7481): 37 DOI: 10.1038/nature12829

Assessing the Impact of Climate Change On a Global Scale (Science Daily)

30/12/2013UncategorizedClima, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

Dec. 16, 2013 — Thirty research teams in 12 different countries have systematically compared state-of-the-art computer simulations of climate change impact to assess how climate change might influence global drought, water scarcity and river flooding in the future. What they found was:

• The frequency of drought may increase by more than 20 per cent in some regions.

• Without a reduction in global greenhouse-gas emissions, 40 per cent more people are likely to be at risk of absolute water scarcity.

• Increases in river flooding are expected in more than half of the areas investigated.

• Adverse climate change impacts can combine to create global ‘hotspots’ of climate change impacts.

Dr Simon Gosling from the School of Geography at The University of Nottingham co-authored four papers in this unique global collaboration. The results are published this week — Monday 16 December 2013 — in a special feature of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

For the project — ‘Intersectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP)’ — Dr Gosling contributed simulations of global river flows to help understand how climate change might impact on global droughts, water scarcity and river flooding.

Dr Gosling said: “This research and the feature in PNAS highlights what could happen across several sectors if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t cut soon. It is complementary evidence to a major report I jointly-led with the Met Office that estimated the potential impacts of unabated climate change for 23 countries. Those reports helped major economies commit to take action on climate change that is demanded by the science, at the 17th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP17) in Durban.”

One of the papers reports a likely increase in the global severity of drought by the end of the century, with the frequency of drought increasing by more than 20 per cent in some regions — South America, Caribbean, and Central and Western Europe.

This in turn has an impact on water scarcity. Another paper co-authored by Dr Gosling shows that without reductions in global greenhouse-gas emissions, 40 per cent more people are likely to be at risk of absolute water scarcity than would be the case without climate change.

Dr Gosling said: “The global-level results are concerning but they hide important regional variations. For example, while some parts of the globe might see substantial increases in available water, such as southern India, western China and parts of Eastern Africa, other parts of the globe see large decreases in available water, including the Mediterranean, Middle East, the southern USA, and southern China.”

Another paper in the PNAS feature found that while river flooding could decrease by the end of the century across about a third of the globe, increases are expected at more than half of the areas investigated, under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario.

Dr Gosling said: “More water under climate change is not necessarily always a good thing. While it can indeed help alleviate water scarcity assuming you have the infrastructure to store it and distribute it, there is also a risk that any reductions in water scarcity are tempered by an increase in flood hazard.”

The ISI-MIP team describe how adverse climate change impacts like flood hazard, drought, water scarcity, agriculture, ecosystems, and malaria can combine to create global ‘hotspots’ of climate change impacts4. The study is the first to identify hotspots across these sectors while being based on a comprehensive set of computer simulations both for climate change and for the impacts it is causing. The researchers identified the Amazon region, the Mediterranean and East Africa as regions that might experience severe change in multiple sectors.

The findings of the ISI-MIP are amongst the scientific publications that feed into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II report on climate change impacts to be presented in March 2014. The IPCC Working Group I report on physical climate science was published in September 2013.

Dr Gosling’s 23-volume report, Climate: observations, projections and impacts, commissioned by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), which he jointly led with the UK Met Office, addressed an urgent international need for scientific evidence on the impact of climate change to be presented in a consistent format for different countries, particularly those that lack an adequate research infrastructure, to facilitate valid international comparisons. Since COP17, the research has prompted governments to re-consider their options for adapting to climate change.

He said: “I think the results presented in the PNAS special feature have the potential for similar impact.”

Journal Reference:

F. Piontek, C. Muller, T. A. M. Pugh, D. B. Clark, D. Deryng, J. Elliott, F. d. J. Colon Gonzalez, M. Florke, C. Folberth, W. Franssen, K. Frieler, A. D. Friend, S. N. Gosling, D. Hemming, N. Khabarov, H. Kim, M. R. Lomas, Y. Masaki, M. Mengel, A. Morse, K. Neumann, K. Nishina, S. Ostberg, R. Pavlick, A. C. Ruane, J. Schewe, E. Schmid, T. Stacke, Q. Tang, Z. D. Tessler, A. M. Tompkins, L. Warszawski, D. Wisser, H. J. Schellnhuber. Multisectoral climate impact hotspots in a warming world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1222471110

Drought and Climate Change: An Uncertain Future? (Science Daily)

30/12/2013UncategorizedClima, Desastre, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsão, Secarenzotaddei

Dec. 16, 2013 — Drought frequency may increase by more than 20% in some regions of the globe by the end of the 21^st century, but it is difficult to be more precise as we don’t know yet how changes in climate will impact on the world’s rivers.

The results come from a study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), which examined computer simulations from an ensemble of state of the art global hydrological models driven by the latest projections from five global climate models used for the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The research was led by Dr Christel Prudhomme from the UK’s Centre for Ecology & Hydrology working with colleagues from the UK, USA, the Netherlands, Germany and Japan.

Increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are widely expected to influence global climate over the coming century. The impact on drought is uncertain because of the complexity of the processes but can be estimated using outputs from an ensemble of global hydrological and climate models.

The new study concluded that an increase in global severity of hydrological drought — essentially the proportion of land under drought conditions — is likely by the end of the 21st century, with systematically greater increases if no climate change mitigation policy is implemented.

Under the ‘business as usual’ scenario (an energy-intensive world due to high population growth and slower rate of technological development), droughts exceeding 40% of analysed land area were projected by nearly half of the simulations carried out. This increase in drought severity has a strong signal to noise ratio at the global scale; this mean we are relatively confident that an increase in drought will happen but we don’t know exactly by how much.

Dr Prudhomme said, “Our study shows that the different representations of terrestrial water cycle processes in global hydrological models are responsible for a much larger uncertainty in the response of hydrological drought to climate change than previously thought. We don’t know how much changed climate patterns will affect the frequency of low flows in rivers.”

One important source of uncertainty depends on whether the models allow plants to adapt to enriched carbon dioxide atmosphere. If this is accounted for, the increase in droughts due to warmer climate and changes in precipitation is mitigated by reduced evaporation from plants, because they are more efficient at capturing carbon during photosynthesis. The process of plant adaptation under an enriched carbon dioxide atmosphere is currently absent from the majority of conceptual hydrological models and only considered on a few land surface and ecology models.

Dr Prudhomme added, “When assessing the impact of climate change on hydrology it is hence critical to consider a diverse range of hydrological models to better capture the uncertainty.”

Journal Reference:

C. Prudhomme, I. Giuntoli, E. L. Robinson, D. B. Clark, N. W. Arnell, R. Dankers, B. M. Fekete, W. Franssen, D. Gerten, S. N. Gosling, S. Hagemann, D. M. Hannah, H. Kim, Y. Masaki, Y. Satoh, T. Stacke, Y. Wada, D. Wisser.Hydrological droughts in the 21st century, hotspots and uncertainties from a global multimodel ensemble experiment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1222473110

Desafios do clima (O Globo)

30/12/2013UncategorizedAnimais, Clima, Desastre, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4869, de 05 de dezembro de 2013

Artigo de Carlos Rittl* publicado no Globo. Em nosso caso, precisamos deixar de lado discurso de que já fizemos muito e mais que os outros

A 19ª Conferência das Partes da Convenção-Quadro da ONU sobre Mudança do Clima, realizada em Varsóvia, acabou com resultados fracos. Em vez de respostas à emergência climática, países como Japão e Austrália reduziram seus compromissos de corte de emissões de gases de efeito estufa. Venceu o lobby dos que não querem ação, como o setor dos combustíveis fósseis. Perdemos, todos, o recurso mais precioso que temos para resolver o problema, o tempo.

Talvez a única boa nova da COP19 tenha sido a mobilização para a COP20, em Lima, em 2014. O governo do Peru prometeu restabelecer a confiança no processo. A sociedade civil global se mobiliza para cobrar todos os governos em 2014. A COP20 será fundamental: é preciso definir quem vai “pagar a conta” das mudanças climáticas, como pagará (cortes de emissões, financiamento, tecnologia etc.) e quando pagará. E também garantir apoio a países em desenvolvimento, em especial os mais pobres e mais vulneráveis, aos efeitos das mudanças climáticas, de que forma será este apoio e a que tempo.

Em 2014, todos os países precisam apresentar sua proposta de compromisso de redução de emissões para o pós-2020. Em nosso caso, precisamos deixar de lado o discurso de que já fizemos muito e mais do que os outros, que nossa matriz energética é limpa, que reduzimos o desmatamento. Nenhum dos nossos maiores planos de desenvolvimento ou nossa política fiscal e tributária é vinculado a uma lógica econômica baseada em reduções progressivas de emissões de gases de efeito estufa.

O Plano de Expansão da Geração de Energia 2022 prevê mais de R$ 800 bilhões de investimentos em combustíveis fósseis – 72% do investimento total em energia do país. Apenas de 1% a 2% dos recursos do Plano Agrícola e Pecuário anual são investidos em agricultura de baixo carbono. Uso da terra, energia e agropecuária são responsáveis por mais de 90% das nossas emissões, como aponta o Sistema de Estimativas de Emissões de Gases de Efeito Estufa do Observatório do Clima. Com o salto da taxa do desmatamento na Amazônia em 2013, de 28% em relação a 2012 – terceiro maior aumento relativo da taxa já registrado – teremos muito provavelmente todos os setores de nossa economia contribuindo para o aumento das emissões em 2013.

O documento de atualização do Plano Nacional sobre Mudança do Clima, objeto recente de consulta pública, relaciona ações em execução, mas não é nada estratégico, com metas, prazos, orçamento, sistema de monitoramento e avaliação bem definidos.

Para colocar nossa economia no caminho inevitável e estratégico de baixas emissões de carbono no longo prazo, o país tem cumprir o que rege a Política Nacional sobre Mudança do Clima, promover a compatibilização dos princípios, objetivos e diretrizes de todas as políticas e programas governamentais com os desta Política. Ao fim de 2013, estamos longe disso.

*Carlos Rittl é secretário executivo do Observatório do Clima.

(O Globo)
http://oglobo.globo.com/opiniao/desafios-do-clima-10971024#ixzz2mc121Ii6

* * *

JC e-mail 4869, de 05 de dezembro de 2013

Painel afirma que mudanças climáticas trazem risco a curto e longo prazo

Relatório do Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa americano cita possível colapso do gelo no mar polar, uma potencial extinção em massa da vida vegetal e animal, e a ameaça de zonas mortas no oceano

O aquecimento global contínuo representa um risco de mudanças rápidas e drásticas em alguns sistemas humanos e naturais, advertiu nesta terça-feira um painel científico, que cita ainda o possível colapso do gelo no mar polar, uma potencial extinção em massa da vida vegetal e animal, e a ameaça de zonas mortas no oceano.

Ao mesmo tempo, alguns dos piores temores em relação a mudanças climáticas já incorporados ao imaginário popular podem ser descartadas como improváveis, pelo menos durante o próximo século, o painel concluiu. Estes incluem um repentino aumento de liberação de metano dos oceanos ou do Ártico capaz de fritar o planeta, bem como o desligamento da circulação de calor no Oceano Atlântico, que iria resfriar áreas de terras próximas – temor que inspirou o apocalíptico filme “O dia depois de amanhã”, de 2004.

O painel foi nomeado pelo Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa (National Research Council, em inglês), um grupo sem fins lucrativos de Washington que supervisiona estudos sobre as principais questões científicas. Em um relatório divulgado terça-feira, o painel pediu a criação de um sistema que alerte com antecedência a sociedade sobre mudanças capazes de produzir caos. Surpresas climáticas desagradáveis ? já ocorreram, e novas surpresas parecem inevitáveis, talvez dentro de algumas décadas, avisaram os membros do painel. Mas, segundo eles, pouco tem sido feito para se preparar para elas.

– A realidade é que o clima está mudando – disse James WC White, paleoclimatologista da Universidade de Colorado Boulder, que chefiou a comissão sobre os impactos das mudanças climáticas bruscas. – E ele vai continuar mudando, e fazer parte do cotidiano dos séculos vindouros. Talvez até mais do que isso.

A maioria dos cientistas do clima acredita que a liberação de gases do efeito estufa causada pelo homem tem tornado as enormes mudanças na terra inevitáveis, mas também espera que muitas delas evoluam num ritmo lento o suficiente para que a sociedade possa se adaptar.

O documento do painel divulgado terça-feira é o último de uma série de relatórios a considerar a possibilidade de algumas mudanças ocorrem de forma súbita, provocando estresse social ou ambiental, e até mesmo colapso. Como os relatórios anteriores, o novo considera muitas possibilidades potenciais e descarta a maioria delas como improvável – pelo menos a curto prazo. Mas alguns dos riscos são reais, aponta o painel, e em vários casos já aconteceu.

Ele citou o surto de besouros no oeste americano e no Canadá. Sem as noites muito frias no inverno que antes os matavam, os besouros destruíram dezenas de milhões de hectares de florestas. O dano foi tão grave que pode ser visto do espaço.

Da mesma forma, um declínio drástico do gelo marinho de verão ocorreu muito mais rápido no Ártico do que os cientistas esperavam. O painel advertiu que o gelo do mar Ártico pode desaparecer no verão dentro de várias décadas, com impactos severos sobre a vida selvagem e as comunidades humanas na região, além de efeitos desconhecidos para os padrões climáticos do mundo.

Entre os maiores riscos para os próximos anos, o painel prevê um aumento da taxa de extinção de plantas e animais, com as mudanças climáticas provocando a sexta extinção em massa na história da Terra. Muitos dos recifes de coral no mundo, fontes vitais de peixes que servem de alimento para milhões de pessoas, já parecem fadados a desaparecer dentro de algumas décadas.

Outro risco, visto como moderadamente provável no próximo século, é o aumento de calor na parte superior do oceano provocar a redução de oxigênio nas profundezas. No pior dos casos, haveria criação de grandes zonas com muito pouco oxigênio para a sobrevivência das criaturas do mar, com consequências desconhecidas para a ecologia global do oceano, disse o painel.

O relatório considerou a que a possibilidade de um colapso do manto de gelo da Antártica Ocidental, considerada especialmente vulnerável ao aquecimento do oceano, iria acelerar bastante a taxa de aumento do nível do mar. A curto prazo, este risco “desconhecido, mas provavelmente baixo”.

(Justin Gillis, do New York Times/O Globo)
http://oglobo.globo.com/ciencia/revista-amanha/painel-afirma-que-mudancas-climaticas-trazem-risco-curto-longo-prazo-10965038#ixzz2mbqJmetX

Leis para enfrentar mudanças climáticas já foram aprovadas em 15 estados (Jornal da Ciência)

17/12/2013UncategorizedClima, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Políticas públicasrenzotaddei

JC e-mail 4877, de 17 de dezembro de 2013

Estudo da USP define Rio de Janeiro como pioneiro no combate às mudanças climáticas

Relatório que será divulgado hoje cita que a cidade, além de obrigar as empresas a reportarem suas emissões de CO2, condiciona o licenciamento ambiental às metas globais e setoriais de emissões e exigir planos de mitigação de gases de efeito estufa das empresas

Quinze dos 27 estados brasileiros estão dando exemplos positivos no combate às mudanças climáticas, estabelecendo regras próprias para reduzir as emissões de gases de efeito estufa. O mesmo não pode ser dito do governo federal, que precisa ser mais cobrado para criar uma agenda capaz de unificar essas iniciativas locais. Esta é a mensagem de um estudo que será divulgado nesta terça-feira em São Paulo pelo Núcleo de Economia Socioambiental da Universidade de São Paulo (USP), o Nesa. O relatório traz elogios específicos ao Rio de Janeiro: cita que o estado “tem se destacado no cenário nacional como pioneiro”.

– Além de obrigar as empresas a reportarem suas emissões de CO2, o Rio vai além: condiciona o licenciamento ambiental às metas globais e setoriais de emissões, além de exigir planos de mitigação de gases de efeito estufa das empresas – conta Juliana Speranza, pesquisadora do Nesa.

O estudo foi preparado em parceria com o Forum Clima, que reúne grandes empresas como Andrade Gutierrez, CSN, Odebrecht, Vale e Natura. A pesquisa cita ainda como boas iniciativas um programa de pagamento por serviços ambientais (PSA) já em vigor no Acre, que tem uma lei que permite a remuneração a quem preserva os serviços ecossistêmicos e a biodiversidade; além da iniciativa do Mato Grosso de criar uma legislação específica para a Redução de Emissões por Desmatamento e Degradação (Redd). São Paulo, embora já obrigue suas empresas a reduzir emissões, ainda não tem projetos tão avançados quanto o carioca.

– O PSA e o Redd aconteceram antes nos estados. A nível nacional, eles ainda estão sendo discutidos. Seria muito melhor se houvesse um envolvimento a nível federal, que desse ao Brasil um programa nacional de mudanças climáticas, interministerial, para unificar toda essa metodologia. Caso contrário, estaremos falando lé com cré – avalia Speranza.

Segundo a pesquisadora, esta harmonização se daria em três frentes: nas políticas estatais entre si; no conjunto delas com a política nacional (criando, por exemplo, um inventário nacional de emissões de gases de efeito estufa), e na adoção do que chama de “postura pública coerente”.

– Você não pode sair reduzindo impostos para estimular o consumo de carros, por exemplo, enquanto sabe-se que os transportes individuais emitem mais CO2. Tem que ter coerência, tem que se criar uma estrutura de governança – opina a pesquisadora.

O relatório vê como positiva iniciativas do Ministério do Meio Ambiente de, até 2015, criar um plano nacional de adaptação às emissões de gases de efeito estufa. E elogia o fato de o país ter conseguido reduzir significativamente o desmatamento, o que deixa o Brasil numa posição confortável até 2020 – mesmo ano em que o Protocolo de Kyoto será revisto. Uma nova ordem mundial frente às mudanças climáticas ocorrerá em 2020. Por enquanto, o Brasil tem apenas um compromisso voluntário com Kyoto, mas esta situação, lembra o estudo, pode mudar.

– O país pode vir a ser obrigado a reduzir metas, num momento em que seu eixo de emissões mudou do desmatamento, que já foi reduzido e cujas metas estão batendo num teto, para a agropecuária e para o setor de energia e de transportes. Ou seja, é preciso pensar para além de 2020 – recomenda Speranza.

(Mariana Timóteo da Costa/ O Globo)
http://oglobo.globo.com/ciencia/estudo-da-usp-define-rio-de-janeiro-como-pioneiro-no-combate-as-mudancas-climaticas-11089052#ixzz2njxCIUU3

* * *

JC e-mail 4877, de 17 de dezembro de 2013

Leis para enfrentar mudanças climáticas já foram aprovadas em 15 estados

As normas antecipam muitos pontos que estão apenas em discussão no plano federal, explica a pesquisadora do Núcleo de Economia Socioambiental da USP, Juliana Speranza, informa a agência Brasil

Leis que definem instrumentos para enfrentar as mudanças climáticas já foram aprovadas em 15 estados brasileiros, mostra a pesquisa O Desafio da Harmonização das Políticas Públicas de Mudanças Climáticas, divulgada hoje (17). As normas antecipam muitos pontos que estão apenas em discussão no plano federal, explica a pesquisadora do Núcleo de Economia Socioambiental da Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Juliana Speranza. “Há avanços, tem uma massa crítica de como se pensa a política, até os instrumentos, marcos regulatórios que são criados, anteriores ao que o governo federal agora vem discutir”, enfatiza.

O levantamento foi lançado pelo Fórum Clima, que reúne o Fórum Amazônia Sustentável, o Instituto Ethos e a União da Indústria de Cana-de-Açúcar (Unica). Entre os destaques da pesquisa estão os estados do Amazonas, Acre e de Mato Grosso, que implementaram sistemas de remuneração para evitar o desmatamento. O Amazonas tem em sua política de mudanças climáticas mecanismos de Redução de Emissões por Desmatamento e Degradação Florestal (Redd+) e de Pagamento por Serviços Ambientais (PSA). Em 2013, o estado de Mato Grosso criou o marco regulatório para o Redd+, enquanto o Acre tem, desde 2010, legislação que prevê o PSA.

“Nos estados da Amazônia, sempre houve uma preocupação com a questão do desmatamento, você tem a sociedade civil ali muito presente e é natural que tenham emergido iniciativas de políticas estaduais”, explica. A pesquisadora lembrou que um programa nacional de PSA, que remunere proprietários de terra por conservar recursos naturais, está sendo discutido no Senado.

As metas de redução de emissões de gases são realidade em São Paulo, no Rio de Janeiro e na Paraíba. Na avaliação de Juliana, ações como essas acabam ajudando o país a diminuir os níveis de poluição. “Se os estados começam a ter uma agenda doméstica, que está gerenciando essas emissões e assumem um compromisso de que lá na frente, em uma data X, tem que reduzir tantos por cento [as emissões], isso ajuda na conta que a gente tem para o Brasil como um todo”, acrescentou.

Além dos efeitos concretos, as políticas estaduais trazem, segundo a pesquisadora, determinados temas para a pauta nacional e também funcionam como experiência prática das medidas. “Os estados têm um universo de instrumentos de políticas públicas que já ocorrem em seu território e agora, em nível federal, você acaba bebendo um pouco na fonte desses estados”.

A especialista chama a atenção, no entanto, para a necessidade de coordenação das ações para obter melhores resultados. “Existe a necessidade de que, em nível nacional, você coordene um pouco as iniciativas, senão cada estado vai fazer da sua forma e você vai ter problemas de harmonização de metodologia, de parâmetros”, destacou Juliana sobre a necessidade de padrões de medidas e normas. A pesquisadora destaca que a falta de uma regulação unificada pode complicar, por exemplo, a situação de empresas que atuam em mais de um estado.

(Daniel Mello/Agência Brasil)

Países pobres estão 100 anos atrás dos ricos em preparação climática (CarbonoBrasil)

16/12/2013UncategorizedClima, Economia, Enquadramento, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

16/12/2013 – 11h52

por Jéssica Lipinski, do CarbonoBrasil

Novos dados do Índice de Adaptação Global da Universidade de Notre Dame enfatizam disparidades entre países pobres e o risco em relação à resiliência climática; Brasil aparece em 68º lugar, com classificação considerada média-alta

Um novo relatório publicado por pesquisadores da Universidade de Notre Dame afirma que levará mais de um século para que os países em desenvolvimento atinjam o nível de preparação climática que as nações desenvolvidas já possuem.

O Índice de Adaptação Global da Universidade de Notre Dame (ND-GAIN), lançado nesta quinta-feira (12) avaliou 175 países e se foca em questões como a vulnerabilidade das nações às mudanças climáticas, ao aquecimento global e a eventos climáticos extremos, como secas severas, tempestades devastadoras e desastres naturais.

Alguns exemplos de países nessa trajetória de 100 anos incluem o Camboja, o Quênia e o Haiti. “Devido ao recente tufão nas Filipinas, algumas pessoas podem estar se perguntando onde essa nação insular fraqueja em termos de prontidão”, comentou Nitesh Chawla, diretor do Centro Interdisciplinar para Ciência de Rede e Aplicações.

“De acordo com os dados, as Filipinas estão mais de 40 anos atrás dos países mais desenvolvidos em preparação climática. Embora isso seja menor do que os países mais pobres, mostra que as Filipinas ainda tem um longo caminho pela frente”, continuou Chawla.

Já alguns dos países emergentes mais industrializados, como o Brasil, apresentaram uma classificação considerada média-alta, apresentando um nível relativamente satisfatório de resiliência. Nosso país ficou em 68º lugar no geral, sendo classificado em 56º em vulnerabilidade e em 79º em preparação.

“Sabíamos que havia disparidades entre os países mais ricos e mais pobres quando se tratava de adaptação e preparação às mudanças climáticas”, colocou Jessica Hellmann, bióloga da Universidade de Notre Dame.

“Mas não sabíamos que levaria mais de 100 anos para que os países mais pobres atingissem os níveis de preparação que os países mais ricos já alcançaram”, acrescentou ela.

Mas os especialistas que trabalharam no relatório declararam que, de acordo com as pesquisas, nem mesmo os países desenvolvidos são exatamente à prova de mudanças climáticas e do aquecimento global.

Pelo contrário, o documento sugere que, embora eles estejam exercendo esforços para aumentar sua resiliência aos fenômenos naturais e eventos climáticos extremos que acontecem em seus territórios, ainda há espaço para melhorias.

“Esses dados são preocupantes, porque eles evidenciam o quão despreparadas algumas das nações mais vulneráveis realmente estão. Mas eles também mostram que os países mais desenvolvidos não estão fazendo o suficiente, o que levanta sérias questões sobre políticas públicas, não importa quão bem desenvolvida uma economia nacional possa ser”, observou Hellmann.

Os pesquisadores esperam que as descobertas ajudem os líderes mundiais a estabeleceram prioridades globais, regionais e nacionais, assim como estimulem a preparação para as mudanças climáticas.

* Publicado originalmente no site CarbonoBrasil.

Plano Clima: Versão final deve ser apresentada no primeiro trimestre de 2014 (Ministério do Meio Ambiente)

16/12/2013UncategorizedCidadania, Clima, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, participatividade, Política, Políticas públicas, Previsão, sociedade civilrenzotaddei

13/12/2013 – 12h16

por Tinna Oliveira, do MMA

Klink: propostas da sociedade foram incorporadas. Foto: Martim Garcia/MMA

Reunião presencial marca fim da consulta pública do Plano Clima

A sociedade civil contribuiu, por meio de consulta pública, para a atualização do Plano Nacional sobre Mudança do Clima (Plano Clima), o principal instrumento para a implantação da Política Nacional sobre Mudança do Clima. A consulta pública eletrônica ficou aberta de 25 de setembro a 8 de novembro. Nessa quinta-feira (12) aconteceu a última reunião presencial. Durante o período, qualquer cidadão brasileiro pode oferecer suas contribuições, por meio do formulário disponível na internet. Do total de 27 formulários enviados, foram totalizadas 111 contribuições da consulta pública eletrônica. A versão final do plano revisado deve ser apresentada no primeiro trimestre de 2014.

O Ministério do Meio Ambiente (MMA) é o coordenador do Grupo Executivo (GEx) do Comitê Interministerial sobre Mudança do Clima (CIM). Apresentado em 2008 pelo governo federal, o Plano Clima visa incentivar o desenvolvimento e o aprimoramento das ações de mitigação no Brasil, colaborando com o esforço mundial de redução das emissões de gases de efeito estufa, bem como objetiva a criação das condições internas para lidar com os impactos da mudança global do clima (adaptação).

Avaliação

O secretário de Mudanças Climáticas e Qualidade Ambiental do MMA, Carlos Klink, destacou que a consulta pública permitiu incorporar os avanços que aconteceram no Brasil na questão de mudanças do clima e a suas articulações com a negociação internacional. “Isso mostra o tamanho da ambição que o tema mudanças do clima tem dentro do país, pois não é só uma questão internacional, mas também a sociedade brasileira está muito engajada”, enfatizou.

Klink lembra que existem nove planos para mitigação e já está sendo construído o Plano Nacional de Adaptação, previsto para ser concluído até 2015. O tema de mudanças do clima está em destaque no País. “Estamos nos tornando um exemplo internacionalmente e, aqui no Brasil, está criando raízes muito fortes em todos os setores da sociedade”, explicou. Para o secretário, a governança permite um diálogo para construção e elaboração de todos esses planos, com envolvimento de todos os setores dentro e fora do governo. “O documento reflete esse avanço e mostra de maneira sintética esse tremendo trabalho de coordenação”, salientou.

Etapas

A atualização do Plano Clima passou por várias etapas. Desde janeiro, foram realizadas 17 reuniões do Grupo Executivo e sete reuniões do Fórum Brasileiro de Mudanças Climáticas (FBMC). “O fórum é o canal entre a sociedade e o governo para essa questão clima, por isso a gente sempre estimulou que a sociedade usasse o Fórum nas discussões”, explicou o diretor de Climáticas do MMA, Adriano Santhiago.

Segundo ele, vários setores trouxeram contribuições que foram incorporadas no texto apresentado durante a consulta eletrônica. A contribuição da população foi encerrada nesta reunião presencial, na qual participaram representantes do governo, da academia, do setor produtivo e da sociedade civil. O próximo passo é uma discussão governamental para fechar o documento final.

Em 2009, o Congresso Nacional aprovou a Política Nacional sobre Mudança do Clima, com o ineditismo da adoção de vários compromissos nacionais voluntários de redução de emissões. Além disso, foi criado o Fundo Nacional sobre Mudança do Clima e lançados diversos planos setoriais. Outros pontos que merecem destaque são a redução substancial do desmatamento no país, a mudança do perfil das emissões nacionais de gases de efeito estufa e a transformação substantiva da forma como diversos setores, governamentais ou não, se engajaram no esforço para enfrentar a mudança do clima..

* Publicado originalmente no site Ministério do Meio Ambiente.

Mushrooms can change the weather, scientists reveal (Telegraph UK)

29/11/2013UncategorizedBotânica, Cogumelos, Meteorologiarenzotaddei

The fungi can whip up winds that blow away their spores and help them disperse

Mushrooms can change the weather, scientists reveal

Magic Mushrooms? According to scientists, mushrooms can alter the moisture of the air around them, whipping up winds that blow away their spores and help them disperse Photo: ALAMY

By News agencies

1:49PM GMT 25 Nov 2013

Mushrooms have an extraordinary ability to control the weather, scientists have learned.

By altering the moisture of the air around them, they whip up winds that blow away their spores and help them disperse.

Plants use a variety of methods to spread seeds, including gravity, forceful ejection, wind, water and animals. Mushrooms have long been thought of as passive seed spreaders, releasing their spores and then relying on air currents to carry them.

But new research has shown that mushrooms are able to disperse their spores over a wide area even when there is not a breath of wind – by creating their own weather.

Scientists in the US used high-speed filming techniques and mathematical modelling to show how oyster and Shitake mushrooms release water vapour that cools the air around them, creating convection currents. This in turn generates miniature winds that lift their spores into the air.

The findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics in Pittsburgh, suggest that mushrooms are far more than mechanical spore manufacturers.

”Our research shows that these ‘machines’ are much more complex than that: they control their local environments, and create winds where there were none in nature,” said lead scientist Professor Emilie Dressaire, from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. ”That’s pretty amazing, but fungi are ingenious engineers.”

The scientists believe the same process may be used by all mushroom fungi, including those that cause diseases in plants, animals and humans.

A mushroom – or toadstool – is technically the fleshy, spore-bearing, fruiting body of a fungus.

Millions of spores, microscopic single-celled ”seeds”, may be produced by a single mushroom, at least a few of which are likely to land somewhere suitable for fungal growth.

More than 80 different types of wild edible mushroom grow in the UK, as well as many poisonous species.

One of the world’s deadliest mushrooms, the death cap, is a common sight in British woodland. Although pleasant tasting, just one ounce of the fungus is enough to kill.

Something Is Rotten at the New York Times (Huff Post)

25/11/2013UncategorizedCapitalismo, ciência, Clima, Desastre, discurso ambiental, Enquadramento, Incerteza, jornalismo, Mídia, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Previsãorenzotaddei

By Michael E. Mann

Director of Penn State Earth System Science Center; Author of ‘Dire Predictions’ and ‘The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars’

Posted: 11/21/2013 7:20 pm

Something is rotten at the New York Times.

When it comes to the matter of human-caused climate change, the Grey Lady’s editorial page has skewed rather contrarian of late.

A couple months ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishedits 5th scientific assessment, providing the strongest evidence to date that climate change is real, caused by us, and a problem.

Among other areas of the science where the evidence has become ever more compelling, is the so-called “Hockey Stick” curve — a graph my co-authors and I published a decade and a half ago showing modern warming in the Northern Hemisphere to be unprecedented for at least the past 1000 years. The IPCC further strengthened that original conclusion, finding that recent warmth is likely unprecedented over an even longer timeframe.

Here was USA Today on the development:

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the internationally accepted authority on the subject, concludes that the climate system has warmed dramatically since the 1950s, and that scientists are 95% to 100% sure human influence has been the dominant cause. In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983 to 2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the past 1,400 years, the IPCC found.

And here was the Washington Post:

The infamous “hockey stick” graph showing global temperatures rising over time, first slowly and then sharply, remains valid.

And the New York Times? Well we instead got this:

The [Hockey Stick] graph shows a long, relatively unwavering line of temperatures across the last millennium (the stick), followed by a sharp, upward turn of warming over the last century (the blade). The upward turn implied that greenhouse gases had become so dominant that future temperatures would rise well above their variability and closely track carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere….I knew that wasn’t the case.

Huh?

Rather than objectively communicating the findings of the IPCC to their readers, the New York Times instead foisted upon them the ill-informed views of Koch Brothers-fundedclimate change contrarian Richard Muller, who used the opportunity to deny the report’s findings.

In fact, in the space of just a couple months now, the Times has chosen to grant Muller not just one, but two opportunities to mislead its readers about climate change and the threat it poses.

The Times has now published another op-ed by Muller wherein he misrepresented the potential linkages between climate change and extreme weather–tornadoes to be specific, which he asserted would be less of a threat in a warmer world. The truth is that the impact of global warming on tornadoes remains uncertain, because the underlying science is nuanced and there are competing factors that come into play.

The Huffington Post published an objective piece about the current state of the science earlier this year in the wake of the devastating and unprecedented Oklahoma tornadoes.

That piece accurately quoted a number of scientists including myself on the potential linkages. I pointed out to the journalist that there are two key factors: warm, moist air is favorable for tornadoes, and global warming will provide more of it. But important too is the amount of “shear” (that is, twisting) in the wind. And whether there will, in a warmer world, be more or less of that in tornado-prone regions, during the tornado season, depends on the precise shifts that will take place in the jet stream–something that is extremely difficult to predict even with state-of-the-art theoretical climate models. That factor is a “wild card” in the equation.

So we’ve got one factor that is a toss-up, and another one that appears favorable for tornado activity. The combination of them is therefore slightly on the “favorable” side, and if you’re a betting person, that’s probably what you would go with. And this is the point that I made in the Huffington Post piece:

Michael Mann, a climatologist who directs the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, agreed that it’s too early to tell.

“If one factor is likely to be favorable and the other is a wild card, it’s still more likely that the product of the two factors will be favorable,” said Mann. “Thus, if you’re a betting person — or the insurance or reinsurance industry, for that matter — you’d probably go with a prediction of greater frequency and intensity of tornadoes as a result of human-caused climate change.”

Now watch the sleight of hand that Muller uses when he quotes me in his latest Times op-ed:

Michael E. Mann, a prominent climatologist, was only slightly more cautious. He said, “If you’re a betting person — or the insurance or reinsurance industry, for that matter — you’d probably go with a prediction of greater frequency and intensity of tornadoes as a result of human-caused climate change.”

Completely lost in Muller’s selective quotation is any nuance or context in what I had said, let alone the bottom line in what I stated: that it is in fact too early to tell whether global warming is influencing tornado activity, but we can discuss the processes through which climate change might influence future trends.

Muller, who lacks any training or expertise in atmospheric science, is more than happy to promote with great confidence the unsupportable claim that global warming will actuallydecrease tornado activity. His evidence for this? The false claim that the historical data demonstrate a decreasing trend in past decades.

Actual atmospheric scientists know that the historical observations are too sketchy and unreliable to decide one way or another as to whether tornadoes are increasing or not (see this excellent discussion by weather expert Jeff Masters of The Weather Underground).

So one is essentially left with the physical reasoning I outlined above. You would think that a physicist would know how to do some physical reasoning. And sadly, in Muller’s case, you would apparently be wrong…

To allow Muller to so thoroughly mislead their readers, not once, but twice in the space of as many months, is deeply irresponsible of the Times. So why might it be that the New York Times is so enamored with Muller, a retired physicist with no training in atmospheric or climate science, when it comes to the matter of climate change?

I discuss Muller’s history as a climate change critic and his new-found role as a media favorite in my book “The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars” (the paperback was just released a couple weeks ago, with a new guest foreword by Bill Nye “The Science Guy”).

Muller is known for his bold and eccentric, but flawed and largely discredited astronomical theories. But he rose to public prominence only two years ago when he cast himself in theirresistible role of the “converted climate change skeptic”.

Muller had been funded by the notorious Koch Brothers, the largest current funders of climate change denial and disinformation, to independently “audit” the ostensibly dubious science of climate change. This audit took the form of an independent team of scientists that Muller picked and assembled under the umbrella of the “Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature” (unashamedly termed “BEST” by Muller) project.

Soon enough, Muller began to unveil the project’s findings: First, in late 2011, he admitted that the Earth was indeed warming. Then, a year later he concluded that the warming was not only real, but could only be explained by human influence.

Muller, in short, had rediscovered what the climate science community already knew long ago.

I summarized the development at the time on my Facebook page:

Muller’s announcement last year that the Earth is indeed warming brought him up to date w/ where the scientific community was in the the 1980s. His announcement this week that the warming can only be explained by human influences, brings him up to date with where the science was in the mid 1990s. At this rate, Muller should be caught up to the current state of climate science within a matter of a few years!

The narrative of a repentant Koch Brothers-funded skeptic who had “seen the light” andappeared to now endorse the mainstream view of human-caused climate change, was simply too difficult for the mainstream media to resist. Muller predictably was able to position himself as a putative “honest broker” in the climate change debate. And he was granted a slew of op-eds in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, headline articles in leading newspapers, and interviews on many of the leading television and radio news shows.

Yet Muller was in reality seeking to simply take credit for findings established by otherscientists (ironically using far more rigorous and defensible methods!) literally decades ago. In 1995 the IPCC had already concluded, based on work by Ben Santer and other leading climate scientists working on the problem of climate change “detection and attribution”, that there was already now a “discernible human influence” on the warming of the planet.

And while Muller has now admitted that the Earth had warmed and that human-activity is largely to blame, he has used his new-found limelight and access to the media to:

1. Smear and misrepresent other scientists, including not just me and various other climate scientists like Phil Jones of the UK’s University of East Anglia, but even the President of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences himself, Ralph Cicerone.

2. Misrepresent key details of climate science, inevitably to downplay the seriousness of climate change, whether it is the impacts on extreme weather and heat, drought, Arctic melting, or the threat to Polar Bears. See my own debunking of various falsehoods that Muller has promoted in his numerous news interviews e.g. here or here.

3. Shill for fossil fuel energy, arguing that the true solution to global warming isn’t renewable or clean energy. No, not at all! Muller is bullish on fracking and natural gas as the true solution.

To (a) pretend to accept the science, but attack the scientists and misrepresent so many important aspect of the science, downplaying the impacts and threat of climate change, while (b) acting as a spokesman for natural gas, one imagines that the petrochemical tycoon Koch Brothers indeed were probably quite pleased with their investment. Job well done. As I put it in an interview last year:

It would seem that Richard Muller has served as a useful foil for the Koch Brothers, allowing them to claim they have funded a real scientist looking into the basic science, while that scientist– Muller—props himself up by using the “Berkeley” imprimatur (UC Berkeley has not in any way sanctioned this effort) and appearing to accept the basic science, and goes out on the talk circuit, writing op-eds, etc. systematically downplaying the actual state of the science, dismissing key climate change impacts and denying the degree of risk that climate change actually represents. I would suspect that the Koch Brothers are quite happy with Muller right now, and I would have been very surprised had he stepped even lightly on their toes during his various interviews, which he of course has not. He has instead heaped great praise on them, as in this latest interview.

The New York Times does a disservice to its readers when it buys into the contrived narrative of the “honest broker”–Muller as the self-styled white knight who must ride in to rescue scientific truth from a corrupt and misguided community of scientists. Especially when that white knight is in fact sitting atop a Trojan Horse–a vehicle for the delivery of disinformation, denial, and systematic downplaying of what might very well be the greatest threat we have yet faced as a civilization, the threat of human-caused climate change.

Shame on you New York Times. You owe us better than this.

Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University and author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (now available in paperback with a new guest foreword by Bill Nye “The Science Guy”)

Majority of red-state Americans believe climate change is real, study shows (The Guardian)

21/11/2013Uncategorizedciência, Clima, Desastre, Incerteza, Meteorologia, Mudanças climáticas, Política, Previsãorenzotaddei

Study suggests far-reaching acceptance of climate change in traditionally Republican states such as Texas and Oklahoma

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent

theguardian.com, Wednesday 13 November 2013 19.40 GMT

Texas drought A cracked lake bed in Texas. Findings in this study are likely based on personal experiences of hot weather. Photograph: Tony Gutierrez/AP

A vast majority of red-state Americans believe climate change is real and at least two-thirds of those want the government to cut greenhouse gas emissions, new research revealed on Wednesday.

The research, by Stanford University social psychologist Jon Krosnick, confounds the conventional wisdom of climate denial as a central pillar of Republican politics, and practically an article of faith for Tea Party conservatives.

Instead, the findings suggest far-reaching acceptance that climate change is indeed occurring and is caused by human activities, even in such reliably red states as Texas and Oklahoma.

“To me, the most striking finding that is new today was that we could not find a single state in the country where climate scepticism was in the majority,” Krosnick said in an interview.

States that voted for Barack Obama, as expected, also believe climate change is occurring and support curbs on carbon pollution. Some 88% of Massachusetts residents believe climate change is real.

But Texas and Oklahoma are among the reddest of red states and are represented in Congress by Republicans who regularly dismiss the existence of climate change or its attendant risks.

Congressman Joe Barton of Texas and Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma stand out for their regular denials of climate change as a “hoax”, even among Republican ranks.

However, the research found 87% of Oklahomans and 84% of Texans accepted that climate change was occurring.

Seventy-six percent of Americans in both states also believed the government should step in to limit greenhouse gas emissions produced by industry.

In addition, the research indicated substantial support for Obama’s decision to use the Environmental Protection Agency to cut emissions from power plants. The polling found at least 62% of Americans in favour of action cutting greenhouse gas emissions from plants.

Once again, Texas was also solidly lined up with action, with 79% of voters supporting regulation of power plants.

The acceptance of climate change was not a result of outreach efforts by scientists, however, or by the experience of extreme events, such as hurricane Sandy, Krosnick said.

His research found no connection between Sandy and belief in climate change or support for climate action.

Instead, he said the findings suggest personal experiences of hot weather – especially in warm states in the south-west – persuaded Texans and others that the climate was indeed changing within their own lifetimes.

“Their experience with weather leaves people in most places on the green side in most of the questions we ask,” he said.

There was some small slippage in acceptance of climate change in north-western states such as Idaho and Utah and in the industrial heartland states of Ohio. But even then at a minimum, 75% believed climate change was occurring.

The findings, represented in a series of maps, were presented at a meeting of the bicameral task force on climate change which has been pushing Congress to try to move ahead on Obama’s green commitments. There was insufficient data to provide findings from a small number of states

Henry Waxman, the Democrat who co-chairs the taskforce, said in a statement the findings showed Americans were ready to take action to cut emissions that cause climate change.

“This new report is crystal clear,” said Waxman. “It shows that the vast majority of Americans – whether from red states or blue – understand that climate change is a growing danger. Americans recognise that we have a moral obligation to protect the environment and an economic opportunity to develop the clean energy technologies of the future. Americans are way ahead of Congress in listening to the scientists.”

Some 58% of Republicans in the current Congress deny the existence of climate change or oppose action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress.

Uma (in)certa antropologia

An (un)certain anthropology

Arquivo da tag: Meteorologia

Global warming dials up our risks, UN report says (AP)

Um oceano nos ares (Fapesp)

Réguas do clima no campo (Fapesp)

Roteiro Meteorológico no Museu Catavento (Fapesp)

The March of Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (Truthout)

During a recent interview, a climate change scientist, while discussing ACD-induced drought plaguing the US Southwest, said that he had now become hesitant to use the word drought, because “the word drought implies that there is an ending.”

More bad news comes from a recently published study showing that Earth’s vegetation could be saturated with carbon by the end of this century, and would thus cease acting as a break on ACD.

Systemic problems require systemic solutions, and thinking the radical change necessary to preserve what life remains on the planet is possible without the complete removal of the system that is killing us, is futile.

Hurricane prediction: Real time forecast of Hurricane Sandy had track and intensity accuracy (Science Daily)

Volcanoes contribute to recent global warming ‘hiatus’ (Science Daily)

Better way to make sense of ‘Big Data?’ (Science Daily)

O homem do tempo (Trip)

Empenhado em “intervir nos desequilíbrios provocados pelo homem na natureza”, o espírito do velho Cacique Cobra Coral se manifesta no Brasil e faz clientes entre produtoras de shows, governos e até em casamentos reais

Nature can, selectively, buffer human-caused global warming, say scientists (Science Daily)

Influência humana é clara no aquecimento “inequívoco” do planeta, diz IPCC (Portal Terra)

OMM prevê possível episódio climático do El Niño em meados de 2014 (AFP)

Soap Bubbles for Predicting Cyclone Intensity? (Science Daily)

Scientists: Americans are becoming weather wimps (AP)

Solution to Cloud Riddle Reveals Hotter Future: Global Temperatures to Rise at Least 4 Degrees C by 2100 (Science Daily)

Assessing the Impact of Climate Change On a Global Scale (Science Daily)

Drought and Climate Change: An Uncertain Future? (Science Daily)

Desafios do clima (O Globo)

Painel afirma que mudanças climáticas trazem risco a curto e longo prazo

Leis para enfrentar mudanças climáticas já foram aprovadas em 15 estados (Jornal da Ciência)

Estudo da USP define Rio de Janeiro como pioneiro no combate às mudanças climáticas

Leis para enfrentar mudanças climáticas já foram aprovadas em 15 estados

Países pobres estão 100 anos atrás dos ricos em preparação climática (CarbonoBrasil)

Plano Clima: Versão final deve ser apresentada no primeiro trimestre de 2014 (Ministério do Meio Ambiente)

Mushrooms can change the weather, scientists reveal (Telegraph UK)

Something Is Rotten at the New York Times (Huff Post)

Majority of red-state Americans believe climate change is real, study shows (The Guardian)