Category Archives: PLEA Network

PLEA Network

22 June 2015, The Carbon Brief, Climate change attribution studies are asking the wrong questions, study says. Scientists are calling for a rethink in the way we seek to understand how climate change affects extreme weather. The latest in so-called attribution studies is to study each individual event by itself, looking for how climate change may have made it stronger or more likely. But a new paper says the methods used in many of these studies underestimate the influence of climate change, and suggests a new approach to identify the “true likelihood of human influence”.

One of the first studies to attribute a single extreme weather event to climate change was published just over a decade ago. Researchers showed that climate change had doubled the chances of the record heatwave Europe experienced in 2003. In the years that followed, many more studies have aimed to provide answers on how climate change is affecting our most brutal weather. But while scientists have been able to attribute events caused by temperature extremes, linking other extreme events like storms and heavy rainfall events has proved more difficult, says a new paper in Nature Climate Change. Read More here

PLEA Network

22 June 2015, The Conversation, Climate: the elephant in the room for developing northern Australia: The recently released white paper on developing northern Australia ignores an elephant in the room: climate change. While the paper sees a bright future for the north (roads, rail, dams and food), without considering climate change we can’t be sure the north will even be liveable. The white paper also fails to take into account other environmental constraints such as water and soils….. The white paper has not referenced high-quality expert advice prepared by the Northern Australian Land and Water Task Force…. The white paper ignores reference to sophisticated climate change projections for northern Australia developed by our own CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology. Climate projections for the north this century paint a dire future and bring into question the feasibility and affordability of many of the development policies, plans and projects outlined in the white paper. Read More here

 

PLEA Network

19 June 2015, Carbon Brief, The Atlantic ‘conveyor belt’ and climate: 10 years of the RAPID project: A global project that’s been instrumental in shaping scientists’ understanding of how the oceans affect our climate celebrated its tenth birthday recently. A new paper published in Science looks back at 10 years of the RAPID project, which has been keeping tabs on how heat moves around in the Atlantic Ocean since 2004. Over its short lifetime, the project has thrown up a few surprises. Parts of the Atlantic circulation seem to have slowed down, though whether that’s down to human activity remains to be seen. Carbon Brief talks to one of RAPID’s founding scientists, Prof Harry Bryden from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, about the project. Read More here

Global heat transport

Above about 1,000 metres in the North Atlantic, warm water flows northwards from the equator towards the poles, releasing heat as it goes. The water cools and sinks at high latitudes, returning southwards towards the equator at much deeper depths.

This is known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and forms part of aglobal ocean conveyor belt that transports heat all around the world.

                 Screenshot 2015-06-19 18.22.21

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). Warm water flows north in the upper ocean (red arrows) then sinks and returns south as deep cold water (blue arrows) Source: Srokosz & Bryden ( 2015) Supplementary material

PLEA Network
19 June 2015, Renew Economy, Queensland pushes through massive rises in fixed electricity charges. A victory for McMansions? Fixed charges to households surge, while small business may pay two-thirds of their bill on fixed charges, as government owned utilities move against solar and energy efficiency. The Queensland government managed to get some sympathetic coverage on the ABC and in the local mainstream media – and even some specialist websites who should know better – about the supposed “fall” in electricity bills in the upcoming year. But what they did not mention – presumably because it wasn’t in the Queensland Competition Authority press release – was a huge jump in fixed charges that will penalise households and small business, and reduce the incentive to install rooftop solar.

Fixed charges for households will jump more than 20 per cent to $1.07 a day, meaning that with GST, households will pay a minimum $428 a year on fixed charges, no matter how little electricity they consume. The consumption rate has been cut to 22c/kWh but this means nothing for households that consume around 7kWh a day – pensioners and single person households for instance, and others who pay attention to energy efficiency. Their annual bill will now be more than $1,050 – which equates to a rate of 42c/kWh, probably the highest in the world. And their ability to offset that with solar is greatly reduced because so much of the cost is unavoidable. But small businesses – butchers, restaurants, takeaway food installations, or anyone using refrigeration and cooking – face an even greater proportion of fixed charges under the new scheme. Read More here